insideentertainment Inside Time in association with Gema Records

March 2014

Philomena

movies - was when Martin had to tell Philomena that Michael was dead. She claimed that she knew deep down; she also wasn’t the least bit surprised when in a very roundabout way, probably to protect this devout Catholic lady’s sensibilities, he told her that Michael had been gay. She wasn’t surprised she said, she remembered how sensitive he was even as a small boy and it didn’t bother her, she was more concerned that he might be obese. Although they tried to make contact with Michael’s partner, Pete was very reluctant to meet them and at a meeting with his adopted sister Philomena was unable to glean any idea if Michael ever thought of his Irish roots, Kathleen had not done anything like as well as Michael and wasn’t in the least bit interested in her past. Philomena lost heart and decided to go home. She was waiting at the airport when Martin showed her another film clip of Michael. It showed a close up and on his lapel was a Celtic harp - the symbol of Ireland (and Guinness!) This was all she needed to persevere in the States and she and Martin went back to Pete with a real foot in the door approach, which worked. They spent time talking about Michael, watching home movies, going through photo albums. Then came the bit which should have made me cry - Pete revealed that Michael was actually buried in the cemetery at the convent! He too had been back searching for his birth mother and had also been fobbed off with the ‘lost records’ story.

A world-weary political journalist picks up the story of a woman’s search for her son, who was taken away from her decades ago after she became pregnant and was forced to live in a convent. Lucy Forde reviews the cinematic version of this true story.

I

was somewhat dubious about going to see this film, I only knew Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge and I would have crawled over hot coals and broken glass to turn the television off if that was all that was on offer so not a good start! However, any film with Judi Dench has got to be worth stumping up the entrance fee and so it was that I ended up in our local pictures - cinema to those under 50! Coogan plays the part of Martin Sixsmith many will remember him as a respected journalist and also as a Labour spin doctor, dismissed in disgrace. At a party he is approached by Jane, Philomena’s daughter, to see if he’d be interested in her mother’s story - one that she had only just heard. Philomena tells her daughter that fifty years before she had given birth to a son, Anthony, out of wedlock; most definitely not the done thing in the 1950s and considered a mortal sin in a Catholic Ireland. Philomena had been in a Catholic convent in Ireland where the unmarried mothers were expected to work to pay off their medical and child care fees for at least four years. One day Philomena was told that Anthony was being taken away by a

couple who had come to adopt a little girl. Because Anthony and the little girl were so inseparable the couple decided to buy both children; yes you read that right buy! The nuns were selling these children, mainly to Americans and keeping the mothers as unpaid slaves - doing a service for which the nuns were being paid! For many years Philomena returned to the convent to try and trace Anthony but was fobbed off with excuses such as ‘the records were destroyed in a fire’ - it later transpires that the fire was actually a bonfire set by the Sisters! At first Sixsmith isn’t interested in a human interest story but an editor convinces him and funds an initial investigation. Martin and Philomena go to Ireland and whilst the nuns are ingratiating and sickly sincere to Philomena they keep on that they have no record of where the children have gone. Sixsmith, however will not take their word and in true investigative journalist style snoops round. It is a photo of an American actress that sparks his next stage of investigation. Using his contacts in the States he finds out that there is a film clip of the children and their adoptive parents

arriving in America. They are a wealthy and influential family, hence the interest in their family lives - some things never change then! Martin and Philomena go to America; for Philomena it is an adventure beyond her wildest dreams, she gets excited about the hotel, the range of food on offer and annoys Martin with her childlike enthusiasm. He is there doing his job and has, it appears, lost sight slightly of the emotional reason they are in America - not something Philomena can forget. Finally she is on the same side of the Atlantic as Anthony; although now he is Michael. More than anything Philomena wants to know if he ever thought of Ireland and if he remembered anything about it. Martin discovered that Michael had risen to dizzy heights in American politics; he found a newsreel clip which he showed Philomena; she jumped on the clip and pointed out that there was someone who looked just like Martin in the clip - when he realised that it was him Philomena was overjoyed to be with someone who had actually met him. The only point that I cried - unusual for me who can cry at the least little thing at the

On their return to England Martin and Philomena hot foot it to the convent. Whilst Philomena is trying to take a more ‘Christian’ approach to the subject Martin goes in all guns blazing and lets the Sisters know exactly what he thinks of them and their appalling treatment of Philomena and Michael - not to mention all the other girls who experienced the same treatment. The film, a true story which has earned Philomena Lee an audience with the Pope, highlights yet another atrocity and, until now, untold cruelty put in place at the hands of the Catholic Church along with the Magdalene Sisters and priests. It is enough to test the most faithful; in the film Philomena and Martin had been having an argument about religion and they stop at a church. As she gets out of the car Martin asks what God would say to him in reply to their discussion; a very demure Philomena turns and says: ‘He’d say you were a fecking eejit’. My favourite film line to date! Coogan and Dench were superb and deserving of every one of the awards they are being nominated for, it will be a complete travesty if Philomena doesn’t walk away with at least one Oscar. I view Steve Coogan in a totally different light; an extremely talented actor and screen writer; he and Jeff Pope wrote the script. Judi Dench was, as usual, perfection and portrayed Philomena with sensitivity. I’ve heard Philomena Lee on the radio and she doesn’t appear to bear any ill will towards the Sisters; although an aside to Steve Coogan when they met the Pope - ‘Those nuns would be so jealous now’ - perhaps gives us an insight into an underlying resentment and now, I hope, a touch of smugness!

insideentertainment

The worst films of all time?

H

ow often have you sat through a film, either on TV, DVD or in the cinema, and been so disappointed that you wonder how anyone could have poured buckets of money into it and made such a bad job? Sometimes it can be the acting or the script that let the film down, other times it can be a preposterous storyline or poor sound and lighting, and sometimes the whole lot in one package! Well, Inside Time has been on a trawl of archives and memories in order to hunt down the films that, rather than going straight to DVD, should have gone straight into the dustbin. The films we have listed have been cited as the worst ever made by reputable critics in multiple reputable sources. Maybe you’ll agree with their/our choices for the worst films ever made, or maybe you will think some of them classics, but whatever you may think of them its odds-on that copies of them are mouldering in a bargain bin in a pound shop somewhere in this country.

1

Reefer Madness Reefer Madness (originally released as Tell Your Children and sometimes titled or subtitled as The Burning Question, Dope Addict, Doped Youth and Love Madness) is a 1936 American exploitation film and propaganda work revolving around the melodramatic events that ensue when high school students are lured by pushers to try marijuana- from a hit and run accident, to manslaughter, suicide, attempted rape, and descent into madness. The Los Angeles Times has claimed that Reefer Madness was the first film that a generation embraced as “the worst”. Leonard Maltin has called it “the grand-daddy of all “Worst” movies”. Las Vegas Citylife named it the “worst ever” runner-up to Plan 9 from Outer Space, and AMC described it as “one of the worst movies ever made”. The movie has inspired a number of parodies, including an off-Broadway musical satire and a 2005 film based on the musical.

commented about the unintentional comedy, “Some things are best watched at 3am, wrapped in the warm glow of drunkenness... Plan 9 From Outer Space is one of them”. The Radio Times Guide to Films described Plan 9 as “the worst film ever made” and “tediously depressing”.

4 Exorcist II: The Heretic

2 The Conqueror Howard Hughes funded this epic film featuring American actor John Wayne as Mongolian chieftain Genghis Khan and the redheaded Susan Hayward as a Tatar princess. The movie was filmed near St. George, Utah, downwind from a nuclear testing range in Nevada, and is often blamed for the cancer deaths of many of the cast and crew, including Hayward, Wayne, Agnes Moorehead, Pedro Armendáriz, and director Dick Powell. In addition to filming near the testing range, truckloads of the red sands were transported back to the studios for interior scenes. The film made the 10-worst list in The Book of Lists, appears in Michael Sauter’s book The Worst Movies of All Time, and was one of the films listed in Michael Medved’s book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time. Originally written for Marlon Brando, the choice of Wayne for Khan was called by The Guardian “one of the worst casting decisions of all time”. Hughes, one of the richest men at the time, had previously produced the popular dramatic films Hell’s Angels, Scarface, and The Outlaw. After seeing The Conqueror himself, Hughes bought every existing print for $12 million and refused to let the film be seen on television until 1974. Reportedly, he felt very guilty over the decision to shoot at such a hazardous site. By 1980, 91 of the 220 cast and crew members had been diagnosed with cancer. This was the last film that Hughes produced.

3 Plan 9 From Outer Space Ed Wood’s Plan 9 was labeled the “Worst Film Ever” by The Golden Turkey Awards. This movie marked the final appearance of Bela Lugosi. Wood shot only a small amount of test footage featuring his idol Lugosi before the actor’s death. This footage, repeated several times, was included in the final movie. Following Lugosi’s death, the character was played by Tom Mason, the chiropractor of Wood’s wife at the time, who played his scenes holding the character’s cape in front of his face. Wood was apparently undeterred by the numerous physical differences - such as height, build and the fact that Mason was nearly bald while Lugosi retained a full head of hair until his death - that distinguished Mason from Lugosi. Years later, video distributors such as Avenue One DVD began to make light of this, adding such blurbs as “Almost Starring Bela Lugosi” to the cover art. Numerous critics also pointed out the cheap, hardly believable special effects and kitschy dialogue. Shot in 1956, the film was not released until 1959 due to difficulty in finding a distributor. It has played at the New Orleans Worst Film Festival. In 1994, Tim Burton directed Ed Wood, which includes some material about the trials and tribulations of making Plan 9. On the popular film review site Rotten Tomatoes, Phil Hall calls it “far too entertaining to be considered as the very worst film ever made.” Likewise John Wirt goes as far as to call it “the ultimate cult flick”, and Videohound’s Complete Guide to Cult Flicks and Trash Pics states that, “In fact, the film has become so famous for its own badness that it’s now beyond criticism.” Ian Berriman of SFX

The sequel to William Friedkin’s Academy Award winning 1973 film, directed by John Boorman. In contrast to calling the original film his favourite film of all time, British film critic Mark Kermode believes that the sequel is the worst film ever made. The Golden Turkey Awards named it the second worst film ever made, after Plan 9 from Outer Space. Critic Bill Chambers stated that it was “Possibly the worst film ever made and surely the worst sequel ever made.” It also appeared in The Official Razzie Movie Guide: Enjoying the best of Hollywood’s Worst book. Friedkin has stated that this sequel diminished the value of the original and called it “one of the worst films I’ve ever seen”. Eventually, the film garnered so much hate that Boorman disowned the film. In an interview with Bob McCabe for the book The Exorcist: Out of the Shadows, he confessed, “The sin I committed was not giving the audience what it wanted in terms of horror.”

5 I Spit on Your Grave A controversial film notable for its graphic violence and lengthy depictions of gang rape. The film was initially unable to find a distributor until 1980, when it received a wider release. Luke Y. Thompson of The New Times stated that “defenders of the film have argued that it’s actually pro-woman, due to the fact that the female lead wins in the end, which is sort of like saying that cockfights are prorooster because there’s always one left standing”. Critic David Keyes named it the worst film of the 1980s. Scott Tobias of The A.V. Club called it “one of the era’s most abhorrent pieces of exploitation trash“ and Patrick Naugle of DVD Verdict stated “it’s one of the

insideentertainment most soulless, vile, and morally reprehensible things I’ve ever had to sit through.” Roger Ebert gave the film no stars, referring to it as “a vile bag of garbage...without a shred of artistic distinction,” adding that “Attending it was one of the most depressing experiences of my life.” Ebert also included it on his “most hated” list and considered it to be the worst movie ever made. Gene Siskel also considered it to be one of the worst films ever made. Despite the intense negative reception from some critics, the film currently has a 55% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics arguing that the film “shows us the raw, shocking reality of rape, in all its bloody viciousness.”

6 Howard The Duck Produced by George Lucas and based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name, Howard the Duck received overwhelmingly negative reviews from film critics. Orange Coast Magazine writer Marc Weinberg and Leonard Maltin criticized the decision to shoot the film in live action. Maltin described the film as a “hopeless mess ... a gargantuan production which produces a gargantuan headache”.

7 Superman IV: The Quest for Peace Superman IV was the last film in the Christopher Reeve series of Superman films and co-starred Mark Pillow as the villain Nuclear Man. Critically panned by fans and critics alike, it is the lowest-grossing film in the franchise, only raking in $15,681,020 at the North American box office. The film’s special effects were singled out as some of the worst ever, such as a scene in which Superman repairs the Great Wall of China with his supervision. Such scenes and special effects led Rita Kempley of the Washington Post to call the film “one of the cheesiest movies ever made.” Film critic Jeffrey Lyles voiced similar hatred, claiming that the film “isn’t just one of the worst comic book films, it’s one of the worst films ever made.” Currently, Superman IV holds a 9% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 32 reviews. It appears on Empire magazine’s list of the 50 worst movies of all time, as well as the MRQE’s 50 Worst Movies list. The film was nominated for two Razzies at the 8th Golden Raspberry Awards: Worst Supporting Actress (Mariel Hemingway) and Worst Visual Effects. Due to the harsh criticism of the film, no Superman films were produced until 2006’s Superman Returns

The appearance of Howard was criticized as being unconvincing due to his poorly functioning mouth, drunkenness, pervertedness, and expressionless face. Reviewers also criticized the acting and humor and found the film boring. In The Psychotronic Video Guide, Michael Weldon described the reactions to Howard as being inconsistent, and that “It was obviously made in LA and suffers from long, boring chase scenes”, but praised the stop-motion special effects in the film’s final sequences. Jay Carr of The Boston Globe claimed that “They Don’t Get Much Worse Than ‘Howard’”, while Chuck Yarborough of The Plain Dealer wrote that it was “one of the worst movies ever made.” Film website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 15% based on 32 reviews, making it the lowest-rated Lucasfilm production of those reviewed on the site. The site’s consensus states: “While it has its moments, Howard the Duck suffers from an uneven tone and mediocre performances.” The film received seven Golden Raspberry Award nominations in 1987 including Worst Supporting Actor (Tim Robbins), Worst Director (Willard Huyck) and Worst Original Song (“Howard the Duck”). It won four trophies for Worst Screenplay, Worst New Star (“the six guys and gals in the duck suit”), Worst Visual Effects, and Worst Picture, tied with Under the Cherry Moon. The movie won also a Stinkers Bad Movie Awards for Worst Picture. The negative reaction to the film had a difficult effect on the cast, who found themselves unable to work on other projects because of the film.

8 The Garbage Pail Kids Movie A live-action adaptation of the then-popular trading card series of the same name, itself a gross-out parody of the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. The title characters are depicted by dwarf actors in low budget costumes, with poorly functioning mouths and expressionless faces. The film is often criticized for its gross-out humour, nonsensical plot, poor explanations, bad acting, and the creepy appearance of the Garbage Pail Kids. It has a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Caryn James of the New York Times said the movie is “too repulsive for children or adults of any age” and is “enough to make you believe in strict and faraway boarding schools.” Carlos Coto of the Sun-Sentinel called the film “one of the worst ever made”. Much of its content is said to be inappropriate for children, its intended audience. Throughout the movie, the Garbage Pail Kids steal, get in fights, bite toes off people, fart in people’s faces, threaten others with switch blades, urinate upon themselves, and run over cars. Some have pointed out that the movie contradicts its own message, that people should be judged by their behaviour, not their

appearance. In addition to scatological behavior, the movie has several scenes that feature sexual images, violence, and drinking. Offended parents launched a nation-wide protest of the movie that successfully resulted in the movie being withdrawn from circulation. The shortened release contributed to the movie’s poor gross of only $1,576,615. It was nominated for three Razzies at the 8th Golden Raspberry Awards: Worst Visual Effects, Worst New Star for the Garbage Pail Kids collectively, and Worst Song.

largely from existing material, with certain scenes removed and others added back in, and the entire sequence of events changed. These new edits of the film are somewhat more comprehensible and provide a more fantasy-based story for the characters’ origins.

10 Sex Lives of The Potato Men

9 Highlander II: The Quickening A sequel to the cult film Highlander, which transitions the fantasy franchise into science fiction and retcons the mystical warriors of the first film into aliens. It was met with harsh criticism by both critics and audiences. Based on 23 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, the film currently holds a 0%, “Rotten” rating, all 23 reviews being negative. Common criticisms included the lack of motivation for the characters, the new and seemingly incongruent origin for the Immortals, the resurrection of Ramirez, and apparent contradictions in the film’s internal logic. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a score of one-half star (out of four), saying: “Highlander II: The Quickening is the most hilariously incomprehensible movie I’ve seen in many a long day-a movie almost awesome in its badness. Wherever science fiction fans gather, in decades and generations to come, this film will be remembered in hushed tones as one of the immortal low points of the genre.” He continued, saying “If there is a planet somewhere whose civilization is based on the worst movies of all time, Highlander 2: The Quickening deserves a sacred place among their most treasured artifacts.” Giving the film a score of 2 out of 10, IGN’s review of the film said: “How bad is this movie? Well, imagine if Ed Wood were alive today, and someone gave him a multi-million dollar budget. See his imagination running rampant, bringing in aliens from outer space with immensely powerful firearms, immortals who bring each other back to life by calling out their names, epic duels on flying skateboards, and a blatant disregard for anything logical or previously established-now you are starting to get closer to the vision of Highlander II.” Awarding the film one star out of five, Christopher Null of Filmcritic.com said, “Highlander has become a bit of a joke, and here’s where the joke started. ... Incomprehensible doesn’t even begin to explain it. This movie is the equivalent of the ‘Hey, look over there!’ gag. You look, and the guy you wanted to beat up has run away and hid.” In 1995, the film’s director Russell Mulcahy made a director’s cut version known as Highlander II: The Renegade Version and then later released another version simply known as Highlander II: The Special Edition for its 2004 DVD release. The film was reconstructed on both occasions

A British sex comedy about a group of potato delivery men, the film received strongly hostile reviews from the British media. Reviews of the film claimed Sex Lives of the Potato Men was unfunny, disgusting, and depressing. Writing in the Daily Mirror, film critic Kevin O’Sulllivan called Sex Lives of the Potato Men “one of the worst films ever made”. The Times reviewer James Christopher called Sex Lives of the Potato Men “one of the two most nauseous films ever made...a masterclass in film-making ineptitude”. The Sunday Express film critic, Henry Fitzherbert, also strongly condemned the film: “Sex Lives is so awful it left me slack-jawed in disbelief...it must be one of the worst British comedies.” Catherine Shoard, in a critique of the film in The Sunday Telegraph, stated “It’s hard to know what to say to this - it’s like finding the right words at a nasty accident... Sex Lives of the Potato Men is probably the lewdest Brit-com since Confessions of a Window Cleaner, and certainly the worst”. Shoard also described the film as “Less a film than an appetite suppressant.” The Irish Times later noted that “Sex Lives of the Potato Men attracted some of the worst reviews in living memory”. The film was also featured in Empire’s 50 Worst Movies Ever poll.

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insideentertainment

Chop Chop!

Inside Time on the death of one of Australia’s most notorious criminals

M

ark Brandon ‘Chopper’ Read died of liver cancer on the 9th of October 2013 aged 58. He had packed a hell of a lot into such a short life and, according to his last television interview, went to his death with no fear or remorse. Chopper was a bit more than just a common criminal and Inside Time have decided to look at the life of this extraordinary man in detail.

accomplished street fighter and the leader of the Surrey Road gang. He began his criminal career by robbing drug dealers based in massage parlours in the Prahran area. He later graduated to kidnapping and torturing members of the criminal underworld, often using a blowtorch or bolt cutters to remove the toes of his victims as an incentive for them to produce enough money so that Read would leave them alive.

Read was born on 17 November 1954 to a former army father and a mother who was a devout Seventh Day Adventist. He was placed in a children’s home for the first five years of his life. He grew up in the Melbourne suburbs of Collingwood, Thomastown, Fitzroy and Preston. He was bullied at school, claiming that by the age of 15, he had been on the “losing end of several hundred fights and that his father, usually on his mother’s recommendation, beat him often as a child. Read was made a ward of the state by the age of 14 and was placed in several mental institutions as a teenager, where, he later claimed, he was subjected to electroshock therapy.

Read spent only 13 months outside prison between the ages of 20 and 38, having been convicted of crimes including armed robbery, firearm offences, assault, arson, impersonating a police officer and kidnapping. While in Pentridge Prison’s H division in the late 1970s, Read launched a prison war. His gang, dubbed “The Overcoat Gang” because they wore long coats all year round to conceal their weapons, were involved in several hundred acts of violence against a larger opposing gang during this period. Around this time, Read had a fellow inmate cut both of his (Read’s) ears off in order to be able to leave H division temporarily. While in his early biographies Read claimed this was to avoid an ambush by other inmates, by being

When he was still young, Read was already an

transferred to the mental health wing, his later works state that he did so to “win a bet”. The nickname “Chopper” was given to him long before this, from a childhood cartoon character. Read was ambushed and stabbed by members of his own gang in a sneak attack when they felt that his plan to cripple every other inmate in the entire division and win the gang war in one fell swoop was going too far. Another theory is that James “Jimmy” Loughnan, a longtime friend of Read, with Patrick “Blue” Barnes, wished to benefit from a contract put on Read’s head by the Painters’ and Dockers’ Union. Read lost several feet of intestine in the attack. At the time Read was serving a 16 and a half-year sentence after attacking a judge in an effort to get Loughnan released from prison. Loughnan would later die in the Jika Jika fire at Pentridge in 1987. In 1992, Read was convicted of shooting Sydney Michael Edward Collins in the chest. The incident took place in Read’s car, which was in the driveway of Collins’s residence at Evandale, Tasmania. The bullet was recovered from the backseat of the vehicle, and Collins named Read as the shooter. Pleading not

guilty, Read was found guilty of grievous bodily harm, a downgraded charge from attempted murder, and sentenced as a “dangerous criminal” to indefinite detention. He walked free early in 1998. In 2002, Read was again questioned over the disappearance of Sydney Collins, who is still on the Australian Missing Person list after going missing under suspicious circumstances. Read admitted to murdering Collins in his last broadcast interview before his death on the Australian 60 Minutes program aired on 20 October 2013. Read rejected any sense of remorse for killing Collins alleging he was ‘stupid’ for being shot by Read on two separate occasions with Collins’s own gun. Read claimed to be involved in the killing of 19 people and the attempted murder of 11 others. In an April 2013 interview with the New York Times, Read said “Look, honestly, I haven’t killed that many people, probably about four or seven, depending on how you look at it.” Read also spoke of his mid-1980s to early 1990s rivalry with Alphonse Gangitano in the TV series Tough Nuts. Read explained that he had a disagreement with Gangitano regarding

insideentertainment an elderly neighbourhood hero whom Gangitano admired. It is alleged that Gangitano burst open the toilet cubicle door with a number of associates and began a serious assault on Read who made his escape but not before spreading his faeces into Gangitano’s face. In 2001, Read was featured in an advertisement on behalf of the Pedestrian Council of Australia warning of the dangers of drunk driving. Read is seated at a kitchen table undoing his shirt and, while pointing to the numerous scars and injuries on his body, says: in 2005, Read embarked on a tour of Australia performing a series of shows titled I’m Innocent with Mark “Jacko” Jackson and later toured Sydney in a stage show with a new co-star, former detective Roger “The Dodger” Rogerson.

an alleged incident in Johnson Street, Collingwood. Read was attacked by a tomahawkwielding man he said he had never met before. He said: “I ran to the panel beaters and grabbed a pipe. I said, ‘Come here now’ and he jumped into a car and pissed off.” Read suffered a minor injury to his arm after being hit with the blunt end of the tomahawk. Read was questioned by detectives at Richmond police station before being released without charge. His alleged attacker has not been found.

Read’s success in selling tales of his criminal past has prompted widespread calls to amend the Federal Proceeds of Crime Bill (2001) which confiscates the proceeds of drug deals and robberies - to also apply to indirect proceeds of crime, including book sales, TV appearances, and the like. Read described his political beliefs as “to the right of Genghis Khan. In his book Chopper 2, he lists Bruce Ruxton and American conservative G Gordon Liddy as his political heroes.

Read was an author of crime novels, selling more than 500,000 copies of his works. In recent years, he has made recordings of voice narratives, which have also sold well.

A fictionalised version of Read was featured in several sketches on The Ronnie Johns Half Hour. In some of these sketches, such as “Harden The Fuck Up!” Read was portrayed by Heath Franklin. Read said that although the parody was not totally accurate, he found it funny.

Read’s first book, Chopper: From the Inside, was collected from letters he sent while incarcerated in Melbourne’s Pentridge Prison and published in 1991. It contains tales and anecdotes of his criminal and prison exploits. Further biographical releases followed in a similar vein. With the advent of Chopper 5: Pulp Faction, Read began writing fictional tales based on his experiences of criminal life. Attempts were made to ban a children’s book written by Read titled Hooky the Cripple.

In 2006, Read appeared in another commercial speaking out against domestic violence. On 13 March 2006, he released a rap album titled Interview with a Madman. He also appeared in the 2002 Australian comedy Trojan Warrior. Read allowed use of his name to a beer called “Chopper Heavy“. The beer is produced in Rutherglen, Victoria, a town associated with Australia’s most notorious outlaw, Ned Kelly.

Read frequently appeared on radio and television talk shows to promote his books. He had a column in Ralph magazine, was regular columnist for the British magazine FHM, and Zoo Weekly.

He made the headlines again, on 15 December 2008, after being questioned by police about

The versions of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed developed by Australian games developer Krome Studios featured a criminal boss named Chop’aa, inspired by Chopper Read. Jim G Thirlwell, in his 1995 Foetus release, Gash, wrote and performed a song titled “Steal Your Life Away” which included a somewhat Read-like persona and several quotes from Read’s first book, including “I’m a garbage disposal expert”, “You’ve got to stand at the edge of the grave for the rest of your life”, “Me and my mental health don’t agree most times” and “Why ask why?”.

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The 2000 film Chopper, starring Eric Bana as Read, was based on stories from Read’s books and independent research, leading to events portrayed on screen that somewhat contradicted Read’s version. For instance, Read claimed in early books to be vehemently against drugs, but the film portrays him as a casual drug user. In response, Read stated, “You have to have tried something to be able to say you hate it.” Read married Australian Taxation Office employee Mary-Ann Hodge in 1995 while imprisoned in Risdon Prison in Tasmania for the shooting of Sidney Collins. The couple had one son, Charlie. They divorced in 2001. On 19 January 2003, he married long-time friend Margaret Cassar. They had one son, Roy Brandon. Read contracted hepatitis C during his time in prison, possibly contracted by using a bloodstained shaver. In March 2008 he revealed he only had two to five years to live and required a liver transplant. However, he refused to agree to the procedure, stating that while a transplant would save him, he did not want one when an organ could be provided to someone else. In April 2012, Read was diagnosed with liver cancer. He underwent surgery in July 2012 to remove tumours from his liver and in late September 2013 he was admitted to Melbourne Private Hospital in failing health. Read died of the illness on 9 October 2013, aged 58, in Parkville Victoria.

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Riddick £14.95

Fable – Anniversary £34.95

Thor £14.95

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A$AP Rocky Long Live A$AP............................ 12.95 Drake Nothing Was The Same (Deluxe)............ 12.95 Eminem Marshall Mathers LP 2 ....................... 11.50 French Montana Mac & Cheese 3 .................... 9.51 French Montana Excuse My French ................ 11.50 Giggs When Will It Stop ................................... 10.70 Gucci Mane Writing On The Wall ....................... 3.95 Gyptian Hold You ............................................ 11.50 K Koke Pure Koke Vol. 2 .................................. 11.95 Kendrick Lamar Good Kid Maad City .............. 11.50 Rick Ross God Forgives, I Don’t ........................ 6.50 Styles P The Diamond Life Project ..................... 9.51 The Game Code Red Level Six ........................... 3.95 Ub40 Labour Of Love 1 2 & 3 (3CD) ................. 11.70 Uncle Murda The First 48 ............................... 10.70 The Sound Of Deep House (DBL) .................... 12.95 Vybz Kartel Pon Di Gaza 2.0 (DBL) .................. 19.49 Vybz Kartel Trilogy (3CD) ................................ 21.95 Young Jeezy Trappin Ain’t Dead ....................... 3.95

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Movie reviews Andrew Cousins of Gema Records reviews the best of the latest DVD releases

CAPTAIN PHILLIPS

134 minutes / Cat 15 / £14.95

“Everything is going to okay.” You’ll hear that line, or subtle variations thereof, repeated many times during Captain Phillips. It’s an unsettling and ironic mantra and, given it’s spoken by a Somali pirate, also the hollowest of reassurances. And yet, crucially, it never plays as a veiled threat. Partly this is due to an impressive performance by first-time Somali actor Barkhad Abdi, as pirate lieutenant Muse. But also due to a level of emotional (and political) complexity we should have come to expect from both writer Billy Ray (Shattered Glass, Breach) and director Paul Greengrass. This is a tale less of heroism-versus-villainy than different shades of victimhood.

PRISONERS

Even later, once Phillips - “Irish” to his captors - has been taken hostage and the drama transfers to the claustrophobic, hotbox confines of a hijacked lifeboat floundering toward the Somali coastline, Muse and his boys (for they are barely men) attract the full might of the US Navy. “There’s got to be something other than fishing and kidnapping people,” Phillips says to Muse while the shadow of a warship falls over them. “Maybe in America, Irish, maybe in America,” Muse shrugs.

155 minutes / Cat 15 / £14.95

Having earned an Oscar nomination for his last film, Incendies, French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve crosses the border for his English-language debut, Prisoners, a very American crime mystery. Villeneuve’s never been the cheeriest of filmmakers, so his portrait of US suburbia squats beneath dirtywhite skies, draped in a thin snow that you know will never make for good angels.

The subject matter is inherently stark, concerning the mysterious disappearance of two girls. But this isn’t a straight investigation - when are they ever? - as the cops arrest the likely abductor just a few scenes later: a greasy-haired creep with a Michael Jackson voice and “the IQ of a ten-year-old” played by Paul Dano. So it can’t be him, right? Too obvious? The father of one of the girls, Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman), would disagree, and being a good, Christian, American survivalist, with gas masks and bags of lime in the

basement, takes matters into his own hands. On his release due to lack of evidence, Dano’s Alex Jones is abducted and incarcerated in Dover’s DIY torture dungeon until he gives up the girls’ location. Meanwhile, the investigation continues by loner cop Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal). Prisoners is a smartly structured, solidly performed thriller, executing intertwining races against time - to save both the girls, and prove Alex’s innocence or guilt - within the same psychological labyrinth. And the political undercurrent is not hard to detect: Dover is the America that invaded Iraq, believing his grief-fuelled quest for justice places him beyond morality and the law. Back on the surface, there are all the expected turns and twists, and anyone familiar with the genre will sniff out one particularly plump red herring. Also, it is a shame the film resorts to the cliché of a character spotting a vital clue after throwing all their files to the floor in frustration. But Villeneuve and writer Aaron Guzikowski (Contraband) keep you engaged while they keep you guessing, never allowing either the tension, or the grimness, to relent. Verdict A decent, cogent, greyly atmospheric thriller with something to say about War-On-Terror America.

the seamen, who have the odds stacked against them. Phillips’ ship is an immense metal hulk festooned with high-pressure water cannons. “We got the speed, we got the height, we got the hoses,” insists Phillips. As an audience, we are so used to rooting for underdogs that there’s a temptation to applaud Muse and his three (three!) companions once they do board, especially as we’ve had a brief insight into the impoverished and perilous circumstances which induced them to do so. “No al-Qaeda here,” Muse ‘assures’ Phillips once he’s taken nominal control. “Just business.”

As you’d expect, on the Greengrass spectrum Captain Phillips is closer to United 93 than The Bourne Ultimatum: based on recent true events, with an even-handed, detail-heavy procedural approach that in no way constrains psychological and emotional exploration. As in United 93, Greengrass aims to present reality through a clear, documentarian lens, observing things as they likely happened, blow by horrible blow, rather than filtered through Hollywood clichés. There are no cutaways to desk-thumping Pentagon guys, tie-straightening politicos, or hand-wringing relatives gathered around TVs. Yet it still has all the momentum and clenchstrength to please crowds. After brief parallel set-ups in Vermont, USA and Eyl, Somalia, during which there’s some thematically ripe dialogue (“Gotta be strong to survive out there,” Phillips tells his wife Andrea, played by Catherine Keener, while discussing their kids on a drive to the airport), the action thunders along while relentlessly maintaining tension. Greengrass has a passion for detail: after an hour you’ll know how to repel assault riflewielding pirates if you don’t have access to firearms, and how to react if they do fight their way onto the decks. What is most surprising is how it is the pirates, rather than

This exchange may seem heavily loaded, but Abdi and Hanks handle it with compelling sincerity. At first, the role of Phillips doesn’t feel like too much of a stretch for Hanks: part Catch Me If You Can’s Carl Hanratty with its no-nonsense Bostonian bark, part Cast Away’s Chuck Noland, a clear-headed professional hurled into extreme calamity. But by the devastating (yet quiet and intimate) final scene, the differences are obvious and acute. Throughout his crisis, Phillips is a man running with a bowl of water, desperate not to spill a drop, desperate not to slow down. As well as suffering an ordeal, he is also experiencing a kind of alien encounter. Except, of course, he is no more or less human than those at the other end of the guns so regularly pressed into his face. There is no hoary ‘we’re just the same, you and I...’ moment. His attackers are firmly separated from him by geography, culture and a generation, but there is desperation and a kind of naivety, carefully portrayed, on both sides. Just as Phillips can’t fathom how there is no alternative to fishing and piracy for these kids, the pirates themselves fail to accept that, no, everything is not going to be okay. Verdict Both Greengrass and Hanks are on awarddeserving form in a riveting, emotionally complex and hugely intelligent dramatisation of a real-life ordeal.

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ELYSIUM 2154. The wealthy have abandoned an exhausted Earth to live on Elysium, a satellite habitat. Max (Damon), an ex-crook, sustains a fatal radiation dose in an industrial accident and has five days to live... unless he can get to Elysium and use advanced medical machines to cure himself. For his follow-up to District 9, writer-director Neill Blomkamp has again gone for satirical science-fiction. It’s beside the point that the society shown here isn’t a credible extrapolation of its imagined tech (if the medical machine existed, it would be more likely to create a world like that of In Time, where renewed health is used to keep the labouring poor at work supporting the rich folk). This future is a bitter cartoon of the way things are right now: most of the world lives in squalor either unemployed or doing dirty, dangerous, ill-paid jobs - while the 2001-look silver wheel Elysium hangs tantalisingly visible in the sky.

It takes guts for a contemporary, Hollywoodbacked film to be unashamedly in favour of illegal immigration and socialised medicine indeed, the plot boils down to sick third-world people desperate to crash into a luxurious superpower (i.e.: America) in order to take advantage of medical facilities. Watch the Obama hatred ignite on the IMDb comments threads for Elysium to get a sense of Blomkamp’s ambitions in an era when most science-fiction blockbusters can too easily be mistaken for toy commercials or military recruitment films. There’s little to the easy, privileged, lounging-on-the-lawn elite life of Elysium, though Blomkamp gives thought to grubby-handed doers like an icy Jodie Foster and a weaselly William Fichtner, who have to keep the money flowing in and the unwashed firmly out. However, the satirical barbs (which include RoboCop-style polite but murderous law droids) are packed between bursts of

109 mins / Rating 15 / £14.95 bleeding-edge movie action and dollops of soap opera about sick kids and saintly nurses. Alice Braga, the go-to angel of worldwide collapses, repeats the act she did in Blindness and I Am Legend, representing the humane values the compromised hero has to preserve. Sharlto Copley (who seems about two feet taller here than in his other films) is more entertaining as the Worst Of Both Worlds, an Elysium agent who lives on Earth because the world-spanning, rubble-strewn refugee camp gives him more opportunities to kill and ravage.

Using hand-held, grubby, jittery camera style and extremely polished CGI, Blomkamp stages extraordinary, visceral moments: a robot blown apart and disassembled in slo-mo by a percussion grenade, a character having his face grown back after it’s been blasted off. As in District 9, Blomkamp and company really think through the design of this world - the Amstrad-level computer-screen displays, the contrast between sleek Elysium shuttles and grungy people-smuggling ships. It’s gritty and uncompromising in politics, but doesn’t stretch too far in characterisation - Matt Damon is good as a shaven-haired cyborg in an armoured exoskeleton with a flash-drive in his head leaking access codes into his brain, but Max is still a simplistic character. There should be a moment of disappointment when he gets to the place he’s dreamed of all his life and finds it’s just a satellite version of Beverly Hills, but by then we’re too busy in crash-landing shoot-out mode for it to register. Verdict Not perfect, but a much more satisfying Earthin-ruins film than Oblivion or After Earth. It is a little more conventional than District 9 (what isn’t?), but confirms Blomkamp as one of the potential science-fiction greats of this decade.

The Hobbit and how Bilbo might fit right in to prison Noel Smith Inside Time

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or many years the word ‘hobbit’ has been used as an insult in British prisons. Hobbits are classed as cowardly home-loving little creatures, so anyone who liked to stay in their cell or the old communal television rooms (before the introduction of in-cell TV these were commonly known as ‘hobbit holes’) during association were dismissed as ‘hobbits’ by some of the more robust members of the prison population. It is odds-on that most of those using the word ‘hobbit’ had never even heard of JRR Tolkien the man who actually created the hobbit in the first place, but had just used the word as a piece of slang without wondering about its origins. Of course, these days with all the big budget Hollywood blockbusters (and the massive publicity surrounding them) based on the books of JRR Tolkien nobody could be in any doubt what a hobbit is. But it might surprise some people to know that Tolkien actually wrote ‘The Hobbit, or There and Back Again’ in the 1930s. The book has become a classic of children’s literature and was first published on the 21st of September 1937 to much critical acclaim. Set in a time ‘Between the Dawn of Faerie and the Dominion of Men’ - so in a lost timeframe The Hobbit is the story of Bilbo Baggins, the titular hobbit, and how he finds a magic ring and goes ‘on an adventure’ - in a nutshell. Tolkien’s original story was influenced by the classic Norse poem Beowulf and he is credited with being the first critic to expound on Beowulf as a literary work with a value beyond historical. The Beowulf poem contains some elements that Tolkien borrowed from for The Hobbit, including a monstrous intelligent dragon (Smaug). I’m sure there cannot be many people left on the planet who do not know the story after director Peter Jackson brought Tolkien’s epic

‘Lord of The Rings’ trilogy to the big screen over the last few years. Now Jackson has turned his attention to The Hobbit. Peter Jackson, for reasons of his own (quite possibly financial), decided to split the original story into three parts and the first part of The Hobbit, subtitled ‘An Unexpected Journey’, was released in 2012. At almost 3 hours the first part of The Hobbit is a pretty long film and, in my opinion, nothing much happens in it. I went to the cinema to see the film on release and found it hard to stay awake. Jackson stretches the original story almost to breaking point in his efforts to make three feature films from one not very long children’s book. What lights up the first Hobbit film is the cast of great actors such as Sir Ian McKellen, who plays Gandalph The Grey, Martin Freeman (formerly of Ricky Gervaise’s ‘The Office’) who plays Bilbo Baggins and Andy Serkis who gives life to the glorious Gollum, amongst many others. But I came away from the first film feeling a little bit cheated. That was in 2012, so it was with high hopes that I turned up at the cinema a year later in December 2013 to see the second part of the film - ‘The Desolation of Smaug’. I have to say that The Desolation of Smaug is a much tighter and all together more action packed film than the first offering. Benedict Cumberbatch as Smaug the dragon is excellent. The dragon itself is CGI but Andy Serkis, who has much experience in this style of work, directed Cumberbatch and the voice and features of Smaug are very sinister and realistic. It was also good to see Stephen Fry fill a role as the Master of Laketown. The first Hobbit film was found to be the most pirated film of 2013 (8.4 million illegal copies) and it would come as no surprise if the second instalment of the film is equally, if not more, popular. The final part of The Hobbit trilogy - ‘There and Back Again’ - is due to be released in December 2014. If it is anything like The Desolation of Smaug then we are in for a treat.

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The Shawshank Redemption And why this film is the most accurate portrayal of the issues facing long term prisoners by Ray Bishop Author and ex long term prisoner

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he Shawshank Redemption, which I am sure has been viewed by many of my comrades behind bars, is in my opinion the most accurate portrayal of the affects of long term imprisonment. Written by the masterful hands of the legendary king of horror Stephen King he really has done his homework. He touches on the immense difficulties of readjusting to the outside world after years of incarceration. During the film we witness the psychological term Gate Fever which is a recognised and accepted psychological condition faced by many long term prisoners approaching release. Try to imagine serving a sentence of 20 years plus and then being told you are being discharged into a world that does not care. Your whole life for years has been regimented and orderly and suddenly you are faced with a release date into a world that you no longer know. In most cases the people that you associated with prior to imprisonment are long gone, and the sad fact is it is inevitable that many people you loved, like family members, are no longer with you as every long term prisoner has to deal with such issues as

bereavement and release seems like a great abyss full of unknowns and uncertainty. Long term prisoner’s minds have been conditioned in such a way that they no longer feel that they have any part in society. For this reason release seems like being sentenced all over again and this time the sentence is one of freedom. It really is a form of post traumatic stress disorder. You would have to experience this to know what I am talking about. All of a sudden where you were once a ‘someone’ of sorts in prison you are being released into a world that sadly is based on retribution. In short there is little support for these men in terms of support and sadly the suicide rates are high, as demonstrated with Brooks hanging himself after really trying to make a go of things. Also in part it is a reason why recidivism is so great amongst long term inmates. The sad fact that once institutionalised it is a very difficult mind-set to break. The one thing that Shawshank also carries in great detail is it is not the prison that makes a man; it is the man that makes the prison. I have been in the bowels of the British penal system and it was the cons and the camaraderie that make it what it was, bearable to an extent. Once again Stephen King covers this in great detail. The main characters form deep

alliances and carry each other through their most difficult days. It is very much like this in the dispersal system where men often serving draconian terms are still able to be there for each other and lift your spirits when you need it most. In my decades behind bars I was fortunate to experience this and without it I do not mind admitting that at times I had deep depressions that often manifested themselves in suicidal thoughts. Had it not been for staunch switched on prisoners like who knows what I could have done in a moment of madness? Who knows what I could have done at my lowest points. The Shawshank Redemption is in a league of its own as far as prison films go. It touches in a deep way the corruption that goes on in many establishments and the strong stereotypical way that many prison officers view all prisoners as scum. The act of dehumanisation is one of the things that they often do the most. I personally feel a lot of offending stems from inmates with very low senses of self worth. They often have a very low opinion of themselves whilst incarcerated. How cruel and to what purpose does it serve to reinforce that by addressing you with derogatory terms such as addressing you by a number or surname alone. A prisoner is a human being first and foremost and despite what they have done

incarceration is repaying a debt to society. In conclusion I would like you to pause and consider that not all prisoners are murderers and rapists as some tabloids would have you believe. In fact our prisons are full of remorseful men and women who given the right opportunity will go on to live law abiding and productive lives on release. Of course there are those who need to be locked up for public safety but there are those misguided souls who just need to find direction. The one thing that always shocked me the most were the amount of men I met who were products of the British care system. It is only coming to light now what a catastrophic sociological failing this was, that vulnerable children were often abused so badly that they became extremely antisocial, and also prone to all manner of mental and behavioural problems. The sad part is that no government seems to want to take any ownership for such failings. Spare a thought for those in long term jails and the immense hardships they face. I am not getting into the debate of condoning or the blame culture. I will leave that for you educated minds and personal experiences to make up your own mind. Ray Bishop is an ex long term prisoner and the Author of Outlaw. Release date July 2014 Virgin Books.