Released in 2009, award-winning Canadian film The Trotsky has so many elements of being a typical North American indie high school comedy.

An array of awkward, middle class suburban teenagers  – check. Geeky male protagonist with crush on an older woman – check. Family arguments over the dinner table – check. Constant feuds with authority, usually in the form of the school’s management – check. Hip indie soundtrack – check. Bill Murray – check.

Okay, I did make the last one up, but the similarities with Rushmore, the 1998 Wes Anderson movie, don’t go unnoticed.  But there is a few vital differences. For one, while both film’s eccentric protagonists spend all their times devoted to far-fetched extra-curricular activities, Rushmore’s wants a school aquarium. Our anti-hero in The Trotsky, on the other hand, wants… a union! And nor is his go-to guy an eccentric wealthy industrialist, but in this case, an aging leftie scholar just waiting to rediscover his student activist past.

The reason being, that The Trosky’s central character, slightly neurotic seventeen year old student Leon Bronstein, is convinced that he’s the reincarnation of his namesake, Leon Trotsky – to such an extent that’s he’s mapped his life out accordingly. There’s no doubt that it’s an interesting interpretation of Trotskyism, with Bronstein, played by Canadian actor Jay Baruchel, obsessed with ‘fate’, pretty peculiar in itself for a self-declared dialectical materialist – or as one character puts it ‘for a Marxist you make a great Hindu’. His attitude to women leaves a lot to be desired as well – one of the key plotlines of the film is Bronstein’s attempts to get PhD student Alexandra, which happens to also be the name of Trotsky’s first wife, to fall in love with him. Pretty creepy.

Bronstein’s major obsession is starting unions. So when his factory-owning father takes him in for some work experience and Leon tries to unionise the workforce and calls a ‘hunger strike’, as punishment, his dad takes him out of his exclusive private school and he begins the new term in a state school. Joining the student union, he soon discovers that their entire ‘legislative power’ extends to organising the school dance.

Taking a couple of other students under his wing, he sets about organising a ‘real’ union, predictably coming into conflict with the school principal (who for reasons which are never explained bears a startling resemblance to Lenin), student bureaucrats and the school board. There’s various trials and tribulations along the way as we then see Bronstein organise a strike of the school’s students and step things up as the film reaches its conclusion. As for the school dance, the theme becomes ‘social change’, leading to one of the funniest, most offbeat scenes of the film as groups of Zapatistas, Black Panthers and Maoists march on the school hall.

There’s a few pitfalls in the film – the fact it plays to every negative stereotype of Trotskyists as being a bunch of crazy idealists being one of them. Bronstein is eccentric to the max, not always in a good way, meaning he’s always more of an anti-hero than anything else. But the film does becomes more sympathetic to him and his aims as it goes on, with his friends rallying their sceptical class mates to the cause.

It’s a film that doesn’t take itself too seriously though – director Jacob Tiernay has said that he tried making serious political films before coming to the realisation that “Fuck me. I am not Ken Loach.” So if you’re looking for a deadly serious appraisal of Leon Trotsky, his life and ambitions, this is not that film (FAO: boring trot blogs). But for what The Trotsky is, a quirky high school comedy in the vein of Wes Anderson, with some radical politics thrown in for good measure, it’s a decent watch and pretty funny, and enough in-jokes to keep leftie viewers entertained, but without making it totally inaccessible to people who haven’t written a thesis on the Russian Civil War.

ps. The Trotsky is now out on DVD in Canada. It hasn’t been released in Europe, and isn’t available on Region 2, but there are a few torrents kicking about the internetz…

In an absolutely astonishing move, the government of Aotearoa/New Zealand has decided to rush through emergency anti-trade union laws in order to appease the Warner Brothers movie studio, and keep the filming of ‘The Hobbit’ in New Zealand. In the words of opposition politicians, the country has been reduced to the “client state” of an entertainment corporation.

As we already reported, production of the ‘Lord of the Rings’ prequels was coming under attack from unions who were trying to negotiate collective contracts to guarantee the rights of actors working on the films. Given that the epic scale of Middle Earth films involves lots of extras, this really affects the livelihoods of many people.

However, the union has come under a vicious attack from the NZ right wing, unfortunately assisted by a bunch of dafties who thought parading round the streets of Wellington doing cosplay would help matters. Emboldened by this onslaught, Warner Brothers then took the opportunity to put the screws on the government.

Right wing broadcaster Paul Holmes (previously well known for calling Kofi Annan “a cheeky darkie”) wrote in a coloumn:

“Man, I’m angry. Angry that a group of gullible actors have allowed themselves to be used by some bolshie, left-wing filth from Australia…..what the whole disastrous affair shows is the unbelievable ego and rank selfishness of actors. What in God’s name were they thinking?”

His ranting also shows that a key element of the right’s campaign was whipping up nationalist, anti-Australian feeling, when many in the film industry work in both countries and it makes sense to co-operate -- quite apart from which, all the unions involved were primarily NZ ones, with international solidarity from Australia. Never mind the fact that the national government has rolled over to a foreign (US) company’s demands, when it’s a big company that’s commercial reality, when it’s a union they’re greedy foreign bastards. Showing these double standards, Holmes wrote:

“And if it all has simply been a brilliant game by Warner Bros to garner greater tax breaks, they have played it brilliantly.”

So why is it ok for them, but not workers?

During the dispute, it was raised again and again what a disaster it would be for the country to lose filming of The Hobbit. It’s almost as if Aotearoa/NZ has become a banana republic, it’s entire economy dependent on one export. Except that export is films set in Middle Earth. Knowing how desperate the government was not to lose the project, Warner Brothers therefore took the opportunity to demand a big cash handout, as well as the union laws for the film industry being rewritten to their liking.

Local official responsible for running Warner Bros. colony: PM John Key

The Prime Minister, John Key of the NZ Tories (they’re called the National Party down there), led the surrender delegation negotiations personally. The deal he helped broker last week promised to just hand over $25 million (£11.8 million) of tax payers cash to the company, mostly in tax rebates.

But even more worryingly, they are now rushing legislation through parliament that will make it legal to force workers in the film industry to be employed as independent contractors rather than employees. That means they can be sacked with impunity and can’t sue for unfair dismissal, they can’t negotiate collective contracts and they can be forced to work without pay, as they will be paid a certain sum no matter how long a job takes.

This overturns a hard won legal right in the country that film workers could claim to be employees and sue for unfair dismissal because of the conditions they work under.

‘The Hobbit’ row has been one of the most prominent labour disputes in Aotearoa/New Zealand for years. The fact that it’s come to such a terrible conclusion shows how necessary it is to hold your nerve when fighting with bosses. Warner Bros. knew what they wanted out of this situation -- money and power, and they were prepared to act as stone cold extortionists to get it. To hold them back, they needed to take a stand, Helm’s Deep style.

They had made a completely reasonable demand that film makers meet with them, which, when refused, led them to call a worker’s boycott of the film. But, under the intense pressure exerted by the right, they caved, and gave an assurance there would be no industrial action on a film that hadn’t even begun filming yet (how could they know what issues might come up?) At this point the bosses smelled manflesh blood, and went for the jugular, taking brutal concessions from the compliant Tory government. The unions should have stood firm, but in a climate of massive unemployment in NZ it’s easy to understand how they collapsed. What should have been an opportunity to advance the rights of all film workers in the country on the back of a very prominent movie became the opposite.

Robyn Malcolm in LOTR

A special mention should be reserved for one figure in the saga, popular NZ actor Robyn Malcolm. She’s been in loads of stuff down there, and was also Morwen in ‘The Two Towers’. She came under personal attack for her determined support of the struggle, but her response speaks on behalf of all the less famous actors struggling to try and get a living out corporate movie studios in the country:

“I really believe in this stuff. I believe in workers’ rights. I could choose not to care. I could just very quietly not rock the boat. I am a working solo mother of two boys and I don’t have a job. Outrageous Fortune has finished. I am looking for work. Would I really, in the words of Cheryl West, want to root my own industry?”

Bonus: Check out veteran NZ actor and former Hobbit Ian Mune defending the workers:

A small band of heroes have set out on a quest to get back what they’re owed from a dragon who just wants to hoard their treasure all for himself.

Sounds like it could potentially make a good movie, but it emerged today the big story of the (maybe) upcoming films of The Hobbit isn’t the adventures of Bilbo Baggins and the dwarves, but rather the epic quest of trade unionists to get what they’re owed from director. Actor’s unions from around the world have told their members to refuse to work on the movies, after the makers refused to agree to negotiating a contract that would guarantee minimum wages and working conditions.

Throwing a massive huff in response, Jackson has threatened to move the entire production from New Zealand to Mordor Eastern Europe, claiming it was full of Orcs who would be glad of the work.

“It’s incredibly easy to wave the flag on behalf of workers and target the rich studios. It’s not hard to generate an emotive response, nor is it hard to sway public opinion, since nobody seems to like the facts to get in the way of a good story in these situations,” Jackson said in a press release. “Behind the claims of exploiting actors who are cast in the ‘non-Union’ Hobbit production, and claims that various high-profile stars will refuse to take part in the films, there are clear agendas at work. As usual with these agendas, they are based on money and power.” He is reported to have added with a snarl “They’ll never take away my precious profits!”

Jackson's lies are fooling no one

“So why don’t they film most of it in America?…oh, right. ‘Cause we got unions here and you gotta pay the staff a livable wage.

Hey Mr Jackson! Skip Eastern Europe, they got enough d-bags already. Just move the production to Calcutta…..that’ll show everybody!

…..what an a-hole.”

YOU SHALL NOT PASS. . .THIS PICKET LINE!

When you check out just how fantastically wealthy Sir Peter has got off the back of Middle Earth, and how the multi millionaire spends his cash, his attempts to portray himself as the victim seem even more ridiculous. When he’s not sleeping on top of his treasure under Lonely Mountain, he’s indulging his passion for planes. He recently spent $50 million on a private jet to shuttle him across the Pacific, but his real love is (I shit you not) building from scratch replicas of World War 1 military aircraft and flying them around for fun. Which keeps him far too busy to speak to trade unionists.

Bosses groups in NZ have lined up to back Jackson, after he promised they would taste worker flesh. But the Fellowship of Trade Unionists are not deterred, and point to the fact that this is one of the few union disputes that can claim the support of both elves and wizards, with cast members Sir Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving in support. The battle for Middle Earth is over. The Battle for Union Rights is about to begin.

In honour of our 300th blog post, Leftfield brings you the EPIC SAGA of Scotland’s long-standing resistance to the Tory hordes of England:

When SSY members were born, like all Scots they were inspected. If they showed any sympathy for the Tories, they would have been discarded. By the time they could stand, they were baptised in the fire of combat. Taught never to retreat, never to surrender, taught that resistance to the Tories was a service to Scotland and the greatest glory they could achieve in their lives. At age 7, as is customary in Scotland, children are taken from their families and plunged into primary 3.

Manufactured by 300 years of the Act of Union, to create the finest socialists the world has ever known. Taught to show no pain, no mercy, constantly tested, tossed into the wilds of Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweedale, left to pit their wits and will against posh farmers’ fury. It was their initiation, their time in the wild, for they would return to their people as a socialist, or not at all. The Tory begins to circle the revolutionaries, claws of steel, heart as black as night, eyes glowing red -- jewels from the pit of hell itself. The rabid Tory is sniffing, savouring the scent of the cuts to come. It’s not fear that grips them, but only a heightened sense of things. Cold air in their lungs, windswept banner moving against the coming riot cops. Their hands are steady, their form perfect. The Tories are defeated!

Tory voter shows the hidden goat path into Scotland

And so the young socialists, given up for dead, returned to their people, to sacred Scotland, victorious. It’s been 13 years since the Tories, the cold, and now, as then, a beast approaches, patient and confident, savouring the meal to come. This beast is made of Tories and Lib Dems, Lords and Ministers, an army of civil servants vast beyond imagining, ready to devour tiny Scotland. Ready to snuff out the world’s one hope for reason and justice. A beast approaches.

Although Scotland stands united against the Tories, one solitary constituency (perhaps disgruntled about their horrific disfigurements as a result of inbreeding amongst their posh, landed families) decided to betray their people by showing the Tories their hidden goat path into Scotland. Now it falls on the shoulders of a new generation of socialist warriors to defeat the assembled hoardes of the ConDem occupation. We do not wish tributes or songs (unless they come in the form of blog posts or funny videos), our wish is simple: an independent socialist Scotland!

(Credit to Liam T for his tireless work creating our amazing video and pictures, and to Jack and TheWorstWitch for additional writing. Seriously Turbo you are amazing.)

Chris Morris, the comedy genius behind shows like Brass Eye and The Day Today, has turned to the cinema with the release of his first feature film, ‘Four Lions.’

But he’s moved on from attacking ridiculous “news” programmes or hypocritical celebrities. For the last four years Morris has been engaged in a huge programme of research to produce what’s probably the world’s first laugh out loud funny comedy about suicide bombers.

Chris Morris on The Day Today

The premise of the film is that a group of young Muslim guys from Northern England are plotting a terrorist attack against the UK. Their problem? They’re totally incompetent. There’s Waj, a none too bright spark who, not quite managing the Qu’ran focuses more on reading ‘The Camel Who Went to Mosque.’ Or Faisal, who plans to attach a bomb to a crow that he’s trained to fly into a building. There’s wannabe rapper Hassan, who, after exploding a fake bomb full of party poppers in a public meeting shouts “Oh what, just because I’m a Muslim you thought it was real.” But the two most interesting characters are the feuding would-be heads of the cell, Barry and Omar.

Barry is clearly a man with a lot of issues. A white convert to Islam, he constantly raves and rants about his desire to bring jihad to British streets. His greatest resentment though is that the others have not recognised him as the natural leader.

Omar on the other hand is a security guard at a shopping mall, where he sits day after day listening to his inane boss drone on about his fitness regime whilst staring at CCTV monitors. He is the heart of the film, and you can’t help but sympathise with him.

When Waj and Omar are eventually summoned to take part in a training camp in Pakistan, they make a total arse of things, culminating in firing a rocket propelled grenade the wrong way and accidentally killing their hosts. When they return to Britain they are unable to face Barry and others and tell them the truth, and so invent a mythical sheikh who has given them orders to attack.

We see their chaotic preparations of explosives, and their inept attempts to film martyrdom videos. The video scenes are some of the funniest, as they try to explain what has motivated them on to their present course. They denounce western consumerism, decrying Britain as a “McDonalds, Disneyland, TK Maxx” land of bullshit, to which Waj enthusiastically responds “Fuck Mini Babybels!”

Barry

In another pivotal scene, Omar tries to convince Waj of the justice of their cause by comparing earthly life to the queues at Alton Towers, and the martyr’s paradise as the rides. From that point on, when Waj is trying to explain what he’s fighting for, he constantly tells people “Rubber dinghy rapids!”

One of the strengths of the film is in fact that it makes little reference to Islam itself. Omar has a devout brother, who in fact tries to argue Omar out of what he’s doing, saying that it’s contrary to Islam. The underlying message seems to be that these terrorists’ motivation has little to do with their religion or some mythical goal of a global caliphate, and everything to do with alienation from the society they live in, particularly represented by Omar’s job. It’s a message that seems all the more credible after reporters discovered that the guy who recently attempted to bomb New York’s Times Square was probably motivated mainly by the impact of the credit crunch on his family, and is more comparable to that guy who flew his plane into a tax office than Osama Bin Laden.

Perhaps this could have been explored further by showing us a little bit more about how Barry came to be one of the group. He’s a self-important nutter who clearly has turned to Islam to give his ridiculous life some meaning, as seen in the scene with the meeting, where he’s on the platform spouting slogans and generally making a lot of noise. (Omar, btw, consistently derides him for this public activity, recognising his need for attention undermines their efforts.) But Barry’s full motivation and background are never explored fully, and he remains a bit of a comedy caricature.

But the exploration of the group’s motives is perhaps the film’s most important achievement. Morris has attended hundreds of trials and demonstrations, and interviewed all kinds of experts from the police to imams. What his film sets out to do is what we also tried to do here on Leftfield when deconstructing Islam4UK: debunk the myth of the massive Islamist conspiracy. The Scottish/English Defence Leagues are the street expression of a political idea perpetrated by a right wing media seeking to bolster the power of the state: that there is a well organised extreme Islamist movement poised to take over Britain and impose Sharia law. Something which is total nonsense.

The fact is that hardcore Islamist political ideas are held by about 4% of the Muslim population in the UK. The idea that they represent some kind of powerful movement is a dangerous lie, used to justify racism against completely innocent people, and to give the state ever growing powers to control our lives and snoop on us.

Morris has attempted to make this stance clear, writing for example to attack vile racist Martin Amis. He’s also talked about how footage of the September 11th planners dicking about on a farm and having a laugh convinced him he had to humanise terrorists, and make us understand they are real people rather than cartoon monsters.

The group prepare to implement their devastating plan

The only part where this falls flat for me is the introduction of Omar’s family. Omar’s wife is an intelligent, modern woman who nevertheless fully supports Omar in his plan, as does his boy. Something about the ease with which they talk about his plans to kill himself made me feel that the message about the realities of Muslim life was being undermined. Not because I think that intelligent people don’t ever think that it’s ok for their families to become suicide bombers -- it’s just the lack of seriousness about it, the fact that it’s something that can easily be chatted about over a cup of tea.

However, it should also be pointed out that the film, although it dwells on terrorists, does not leave out the incompetence and thuggery of the state as well. At several points you think the game is up for the gang, only to find out that racist cops have got the wrong folk. In the final sequence, when the film is at its funniest, the remaining members of the group have disguised themselves in silly costumes to cover their bombs as they infiltrate the London marathon. Omar is dressed as the Honey Monster. Police snipers receive an order to shoot a grizzly bear, and promptly take out someone dressed as Chewbacca, leading to an argument on police radio about whether the Honey Monster, or Chewbacca, are bears.

The film has also been compared to Dr Strangelove in that it doesn’t shy away from showing the realities of what’s being discussed. In a similar way to the Kubrick classic, Four Lions tries to make us ask real questions about what’s going on in our society through the medium of farce. There’s no doubt that the realities of imperialism, and terrorism, are horrific, but constant repetition of those horrors has been used to shut down debate and justify some pretty awful things. Just as he’s done with drugs or paedophilia in the past, Chris Morris has successfully used humour to once again break through those barriers, and to see that for every September 11th, there’s a whole lot more Glasgow airports, with terrorists so inept it only took the likes of John Smeaton kicking a burning man in the balls to stop them.

“The names Bond, James Bond. I’ll have a martini, sha -- fucks sake, how much? Er, actually Tiffany Broadchest, how does Wetherspoons sound?” -- unfortunately nobody is immune from the international recession, not even Britain’s most famous international secret agent 007; the new Bond movie has been indefinitely suspended, due to MGM’s inability to pay it’s debts. This is despite threatening a legal case against “007 fridges -- Licence to Chill”.

Many people on the Left won’t be upset to see Bond go, due to his massive disruption and annoyance of planned economies on the other side of the Iron Curtain for decades, his questionable use of expenses in casinos, his controversial shoot to kill policy and his poor line on 50/50 gender representation.

The Bond of the 21st century is much better in many respects now however -- in the last film, he helped take on the CIA, a military dictator, and an international evil syndicate -- QUANTUM- and stopped them from overthrowing the left-wing Government of Bolivia. The CIA turn to QUANTUM because they’ve been stuck in Iraq, and let Bolivia and Venezuela fall away “like Dominoes”. Fortunately for Morales James Bond manages to blow up his secret solar powered lair and leaves him to die in the desert -- btw, did we mention the bad guy does greenwashing? Yes, we can see you warming to 007 already.

Bond Villain Max Zorin guns down a predominantly unionised workforce

Even The Bond of old wasn’t too bad -- just look at all the massive international companies he fucked up, all because they wanted to start nuclear war/annihilate silicon valley with an earthquake generated flood/drop viral gas from space etc. We also can’t confirm if Goldfinger was a tax exile who funded the Tories “Are you thinking what were thinking?” posters in 2005, but we wouldn’t be surprised if they did.

Thats why I think the Left should be leading the call to save Bond. MGM who own the Bond series have announced the new film has been indefinitely postponed due to their massive debt, which is estimated to be almost £2.2 billion. Just think, the £100 billion that has been wasted on Trident could be spent on making James Bond films with sets the size of small countries.

Just picture 10,000 young people taken off the dole, dressed as ninjas abseiling down into Hampden stadium which has been modified to look like the inside of a volcano as part of a massive public works programme. Then our ninjas would carry out a staged battle with 15,000 SPECTRE operatives, considerably slashing the number of long term unemployed in Glasgow. I think we can all agree that is a better future for our young people than living on benefits, or working in a call centre.

Scrap Trident, Build Volcano bases and Rockets.

Max Zorin, one of the many neo-liberal Thatcherites Bond has killed. Not included in this video segment is his plan to privatise schools and hospitals using an underwater base PFI scheme.

Tory party Chairman Auric Goldfinger in action.

On Sunday I went to see the Glasgow Film Festival’s showing of Michael Moore’s new film ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’. Although out in the US since last September the film won’t go on general release in the UK till Friday. I’m not sure about other cinemas across Scotland but it will definitely be showing for a good while at the GFT.

I’ve seen a few of Moore’s earlier films and definitely wasn’t disappointed this time. It’s easily accessible for those who don’t care much for dry economics and has its funny moments while at the same time really showing up the utter devastation and despair which capitalism brings. We see 10 police cars turning up and the cops breaking their way into families’ homes to carry out eviction orders from the banks, leaving those who have lived there all their lives in tears with nothing left and nowhere to go. Many of these people had been encouraged to refinance their homes before being caught out by unfair terms and charges they were unable to keep up with.

And we see workers at a recently shut factory in Chicago who weren’t even paid the money owed to them since the bank wouldn’t provide the necessary finances despite themselves being at the receipt of billions of dollars of taxpayers money. Frustrated the workers go back and occupy the factory, receiving strong support from the local community and with even Obama expressing his sympathy for their cause. In the end the workers win a small but significant victory as the bank changes its mind and gives them their redundancy pay in full. The resistance in the US (and most other places too) may as of yet be isolated and sporadic but as cases like this show only through collective action can ordinary people ever hope to claim back what is theirs.

Moore returns briefly to his home town of Flint, Michigan to show us the twisted wreckage of the factory where his Dad once worked and which was torn down by GM despite record company profits. It is in Flint where he made his first film ‘Roger & Me’ back in 1989 not so long after GM’s chief Roger Smith had chosen to inflict so much misery upon the local population. As with many places hit by de-industrialisation the town has never recovered, being left to rot by successive governments and by an economic system which is completely incapable of meeting people’s most basic needs.

In some of the film’s funnier moments we see Moore, in his typical style, trying to get to get interviews with top bankers and CEOs and turning up at the banks with an armoured van to collect the American people’s stolen cash. It’s safe to say that security didn’t let him get too far in either instance. More successfully though he interviews some Catholic priests and bishops who seem to united in the belief that capitalism is a sin and an evil which must be eradicated. Moore, himself a Christian, asks on whose side Jesus would likely have stood in a country in which religion is so frequently used to justify inequality and right-wing political causes.

An interesting fact mentioned in the film is that the top rate of income tax in the US was once as high as 90% -- and right enough this was the case from during the war through to the mid 60s. By the time Reagan took power in 1980 it was still 70% but he soon changed that – appointing a finance department completely filled with his Wall Street cronies who slashed the top rate to just 28% and oversaw a decimation of American industry. Any pretence about having a democracy which is impartial and serves the interests of all its citizens has been stripped away as one small interest group – that of finance capital – has been able to achieve total control over all decision making processes at the highest levels.

Moore’s appeal is primarily to democracy, to the right of all citizens to have equal to the political and economic decisions that shape their lives. We see two different examples of workers’ cooperatives, one in which assembly line workers get paid three times as much as the average American airline pilot all because there isn’t a profit being skimmed off to go on bonuses for fat-cat bosses and shareholders. Everything goes back to the company and to those workers who keep it going through their common effort. And decisions are voted on democratically by all which creates a sense of solidarity and belonging.

There’s also, in the film, a good deal of praise for the sort of social-democratic model most European countries at least attempted to adopt in the decades after the war. One thing I hadn’t heard about which we see in the film is Roosevelt’s proposal of a ‘Second Bill of Rights‘ which would have guaranteed all Americans a home, a job and adequate medical care among other things. Unfortunately he died a year later and no later President took up the idea. The 50s, 60s and 70s nevertheless are often seen as the golden age of capitalism with almost all Americans having a job, decent housing and extensive work-related benefits, particularly for those belonging to the strong middle class for whom anything seemed possible.

But, as I think Moore himself alludes to, this endless growth and endless consumption is of course not sustainable. Especially now with the dangers of climate change (which the film itself doesn’t go in to) we need to completely rebuild and reorientate our economy towards serving the needs of all in a way which is at harmony with our natural environment. We can no longer afford to see the two as somehow being at odds with each other. But this will of course never be possible for as long as a tiny business and finance elite remains in charge. All progressive change throughout history has come from the bottom-up and it’s up to us as ordinary people to fight back and construct a better society and a better world.

Despite its strong US focus ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’ is, I believe, just as relevant here with a government which is equally committed to the insane neoliberal model which it so brilliantly ridicules and tears apart. As always there are right-wing fools who will denounce it as propaganda, and perhaps some of them genuinely believe our economy is being managed in the most sensible and rational way possible. If there’s one good thing to come out of the economic crisis though it’s the complete loss of credibility in the eyes of the public for the claims of the economic elites who expect all the praise when things are going (relatively) well but attempt to shirk all responsibility and shift the blame elsewhere when the problems inevitably begin to arise.

Here’s the trailer:

Popular culture has taken a peculiar twist in the past couple of years, one that is psychologically revealing about the times we live in. The apocalypse rules at the cinema, with recent top films including ‘The Book of Eli,’ ‘2012′ and ‘The Road.’ And there’s been a huge resurgence of vampires and zombies, most famously through the ‘Twilight’ films and books. It’s interesting to try and work out what it is about late-capitalist society, afflicted by economic and ecological collapse, that makes people want to settle down with, or even be, an undead creature.

‘Daybreakers’ is the perfect antidote to the abusive-stalker-mixed-with-moping relationship of Edward and Bella. It shows us a world just slightly in the future, where almost everyone in the world has chosen to become a vampire. Humans are kept in comas to be drained in horrific blood farms, and the few remaining on the loose are hunted by the military.

The society is still recognisably similar to our own, but has some high tech adaptations to the fact it’s inhabited by vampires. Sub-street walkways and cars with blacked out windows that can be driven by camera allow them to move about by day, for instance. But the real reason why this film grips you is because it’s speculative fiction at its best: a film about ideas, underlying it is an intriguing take on the problems that cut through the heart of our own society.

The main character, Ed, played by Ethan Hawke, is a top hematologist (that’s blood scientist) working on a project to develop and artificial substitute to human blood for vampire consumption. The reason for this is that with so few humans left in the world is approaching peak blood. His employer is the slimy and sinister Bromley (Sam Neil), a corporate magnate who is the personification of a corporate bloodsucker. He has gotten rich from human farming, and unlike humanitarian Ed, has no intentions of giving it up when a substitute is developed, declaring: “There will always be those who will be willing to pay more for the real thing.”

This is what made the film interesting for me-at its heart it is really an examination about our own society’s dependence on fossil fuels, and all the harm and problems that arise from it. Oil really is the lifeblood of our society, and in the real world huge military forces and oppression are indeed necessary to procure it for the use of the more well off.

The vampire world is capitalist to its core, and riven as ours by class divisions. As the blood supply slowly runs out the rich pull their private stocks of people out of their blood farm. When deprived for long enough of blood, the vampires degenerate into almost mindless hideous monsters that go around breaking into homes and attacking vampires who are still whole. They are known as “subsiders”, and they form a known, but hidden population within vampire society, living underground while everyone else attempts to ignore them, like the homeless in a human city. The consequences of poverty and inequality are less easy to avoid in a world of vampires though, and the ruling class are forced to confront the problem. Instead of seeing it as a problem of resource depletion and poverty however, they behave just like the real-world bosses. They hoard the blood supplies for themselves and militarise the streets, summarily executing the subsiders.

The main plot of the film follows Ed as he meets a human underground, dedicated to rebuilding humanity and finding a way to return the world’s population to being humans. This neatly ties up the allegory, as a minority seek a transformation that removes the dependence on a finite resource that is bringing about the slow death of society.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the film is perfect. All this intelligence is interspersed with some hammy acting and some classic action movie chase-and-fight scenes. It’s half action blockbuster and half intelligent allegory about class society undermining the basis of its own survival. That said, a lot of the fight scenes are greatly choreographed and exciting, and visually the world-building that has gone into creating ‘Daybreakers’ is gripping. These elements not only make the film enjoyable on a non-intellectual level, they’ll hopefully get mainstream blockbuster audiences thinking about some of the issues raised.

The point for me is that ‘Daybreakers’ is at its heart a film about ideas. It’s about really thinking about the oblivion that we’re all blindly walking into unless we can bring radical social change to our own world. Critics often negatively compare science fiction to literary books, claiming they don’t have the same subtlety or nuance of language. This is far from always true, but in any case it’s not really relevant. Science/speculative/whatever you want to-call-it fiction is a different kind of communication, one that deals with ideas, philosophical problems and extrapolating the consequences of real trends in the modern world. So, to me, it doesn’t really matter that ‘Daybreakers’ is half silly blockbuster. Because in amongst that is a real core of relevant ideas about the current state of our society.

The Daily Mirror have continued in their fine tradition of providing us with important information about celebrities as a public service. This time, they’ve broken the news that Daniel Radcliffe, who plays teen wizard Harry Potter in some famous films, might have been caught smoking a joint.

According to other party-goers, he was staggering around saying “I love weed.” and let a girl draw a comedy beard on his face. Hilarious!

He has come out and categorically denied it, though. Aww. We were going to invite him to be keynote speaker at our next Legalise Cannabis event, but it looks like we’ll have to make do with this slightly less famous Harry Potter actor.

District 9 is a film I have been excited about for months now.

South African director Neill Blomkamp and producer Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings fame) have made a tale of an alien ship that becomes stranded hovering over a near future Johannesburg. The main part of the film takes place 20 years after their arrival, and the aliens are confined to a disgusting slum outside the city, with legal segregation from the human population enforced by a massive corporation and its paramilitary mercenaries, Multi National United (MNU).

What excited me about the film was the possible combination of exciting visual effects and action with an intelligent and original sci fi story using allegorical aliens to discuss South Africa’s difficult racial history and present.

The final result certainly lived up to all my hopes in terms of an action sci fi adventure. However, its stand politically with regards to racism left a bit to be desired.

Visually, District 9 is probably the best example of a certain kind of film making that has been infecting cinema for around a decade now-cinema verite style shaky cameras. Starting with the Blair Witch Project through Cloverfield, the Bourne films and even the new TV incarnation of Battlestar Galactica, the faux documentary has been used with varying success. The thing that makes it work in District 9 is that it intercuts this with interviews with various corporate heads, academics and local people giving it the feel of a real documentary.

The talking heads introduce the starting point of the film-the forced relocation of the aliens by MNU to a virtual concentration camp in the wilderness. Leading this effort is Wikus van der Meurwe (Sharlto Copley), a South African office bureaucrat charged with overseeing the operation. Wikus isn’t one of the terrifyingly played white mercenaries of the company, but he is still a casual racist who openly refers to the aliens by the derogatory name of “Prawns”, and isn’t afraid to ruthlessly enforce human domination over the aliens. He’s the type of ordinary, unremarkable man that could easily have been a member of the Gestapo or indeed an enforcer of Apartheid.

The story of the film involves Wikus in a cathartic transformation that leads him to seeing things from the aliens’ perspective and ending up fighting alongside one of them who has been covertly preparing the way for them to be able to finally leave Earth. Whilst never becoming a fully good guy, Wikus is compelled by self interest to see things in a new way.

One thing that makes me really hopeful about this film is that it was, both visually and in the story, very original, but was made for what is, by the standards of Hollywood blockbusters, a modest $30 million. It proves that the current obsession with remakes, reboots and flogging dead horses in sci fi cinema really is a result of laziness rather than some total failure of creativity.

The problem I had with this film is that the director’s political position remains pretty opaque. The aliens themselves live in a disgusting rubbish dump, where they brawl, steal and get high on cat food. It’s difficult at first to view them sympathetically, which obviously raises questions about them as allegorical representations of black people. Ultimately, their hope for salvation from this situation lies in the actions of a (somewhat) enlightened outsider, and a lone intelligent leader. It’s at least implied in the film that the quasi-insectoid aliens operate in a caste-like way, and that most of their leaders are dead, leaving them shiftless slum dwellers.

But, on the other hand, it is necessary to make aliens feel alien, and as the film progresses we do get drawn into the world of District 9 and the daily grind and oppression faced by the aliens. All the action takes place in real world locations in Johannesburg. As director Blomkamp says:

“In my opinion, the film doesn’t exist without Jo’burg. It’s not like I had a story, and then I was trying to pick a city. It’s totally the other way around. I actually think Johannesburg represents the future. What I think the world is going to become looks like Johannesburg.”

The real problem lies with the depiction of the Nigerian gangsters who have moved in to exploit the aliens. They are brutal, exploitative and violent. Fair enough, they’re gangsters. What is pretty disgusting is that they are obsessed with gaining the power of the aliens, employing “witch doctors” and eating raw alien organs in pursuit of their technology. On top of this we’re told they run prostitution rings to “service the aliens sexually.” Black people who are superstitious and sexually voracious? Sounds depressingly familiar from over a century of Hollywood’s stereotypes.

Apartheid is constantly visually referenced in the film with signs such “For humans only” over much of the city. But the ability of the film to be any kind of an intelligent comment on Apartheid and current South Africa is pretty fatally undermined by the obviously questionable racial stereotypes it has of human black people.

However, apart from probably the other (relatively) low budget underdog Moon, District 9 definitely is the best sci fi release of the year, and one of the best in a good while. The evil corporation truly are racist capitalist and evil, and watching them getting attacked by incredible alien weaponry is pretty thrilling to watch. District 9 definitely shows it’s still possible to make an exciting, original and intelligent sci fi blockbuster without spending the GDP of a small country. My only qualification would be that it wasn’t as intelligent or politically progressive as I was hoping for. Its definitely one to go see in the cinema, as long as you’re thinking critically about some of the things it puts across, and really gives me hope for the future of science fiction film making.