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“Why is everything mad around here?” cried Sarah in Hollyoaks as her deranged mother absconded with her little sister’s baby. “Why is nothing ever normal?” Because you live in Hollyoaks, dear. While it might not have reached the bizarre heights of The Colbys’ UFO abduction storyline (yet), things are certainly weird just outside Chester.

Craig and John Paul continue their mad, passionate and presumably doomed affair. Guy Burnet and James Sutton, two young and not unattractive actors, work well to convey the characters’ doomed passion for each other, hampered somewhat by their inability to remove their clothes when in bed together. All right, it’s a pre-watershed show, but would it destroy the nation’s morals to show that people normally take off their vests while having sex? It’s not just for my own gratification I’d like to see this, honest it’s not.

Going even further north than Chester this week were the Top Gear team, who took it into their heads to attempt to drive to the North Pole. Well, Jeremy Clarkson and James May did, while condemning the ever-unlucky Richard Hammond to racing them with a sled pulled by dogs. This was actually rather a thrilling show, as the presenters gradually realised that their usual larking about was rather inappropriate when faced with the danger of getting frostbite of the penis.

Clarkson and May, attempting to cruise effortlessly through the Arctic in a Toyota Hi-Lux pick-up, initially had a lot of fun, drinking gin and tonic as they drove. “Don’t write to us about drinking and driving,” snorted Jeremy, “we’re actually sailing!” And so they were, as they proved when their Toyota almost plunged through the ice to the frozen depths of the Arctic Ocean. Fortunately, they had a back up team of Icelandic mechanics and a BBC camera crew to help drag them out.

Hammond, on the other hand, had only a relentlessly cheerful dog trainer and a constant shower of dog excrement. Still, I found myself rather hoping that old would triumph over new and the dog sled would beat the Toyota to the Pole. No such luck, though, as after negotiating some genuinely terrifying thin ice and bergs the size of cathedrals, Clarkson and May beat him to it. The real winner, when the snow settled, was Toyota, who will never get such great publicity for their flagship pickup. And to think, the licence payer actually paid for that!

Channel-surfing later that night, I happened on Metal Hammer magazine’s annual award show, Golden Gods 2007, on MTV2. Once again, I was staggered by quite how seriously metal fans take their milieu. Presumably this was some edited highlights version of the show, unless the artists really can get on and off stage and do an interview in the time it takes for a Napalm Death song to be over. Napalm Death themselves put in an appearance, winning some sort of lifetime achievement award. “Fucking great!”, they enthused later, Brummie accents undimmed by the passing of time.

Meanwhile, suitable “we’re not worthy” respect was granted as Tony Iommi took the stage, accompanied by the increasingly freakish looking Ronnie Dio. Of an uncertain but presumably great age, Dio is beginning to resemble the kind of zombie that Send More Paramedics aspire to be. “Let’s fucking rock!” he exhorted the crowd, who responded with feverish enthusiasm. Later, as frenzied hordes headbanged in blurred slo-mo to Dimmu Borgir’s “Progenies of the Apocalypse” I found myself wishing that metal would lighten up a bit. Blimey, I must be getting old.

Footnote: OK, it’s been a while since I posted here. I could flabble about how I was so dazzled by the season finale of Doctor Who that I was left creatively stunned for several weeks, but the truth’s rather more prosaic. After being told I was being made redundant from my job, I had a bike accident, gave myself concussion and then wrote off my beloved Triumph Herald convertible in an accident (not of my making). After absorbing all this, I reckon it’s time I got back to writing. If only to take my mind off it! Keep watching this space…

So there’s this guy, see? He was bitten by a radioactive spider and took on spider abilities. So far, so Marvel. But after two rather good movies, does Spiderman really have anything more to contribute to the increasingly crowded superhero arena?

Sad to say, no he doesn’t. I’m not an avid reader of Spiderman (the comic), but my spider sense alerted me early that this was a hodge podge of ideas drawn from several, unconnected comic plot strands, just as Constantine mangled Hellblazer by nicking the comic’s best set pieces and putting them in a story that made little sense.

So, we have Spidey’s Venom-enhanced black suit that draws on Peter Parker’s inherent darker side, we have the genesis of the new Green Goblin in Norman Osborn’s son Harry, and the birth of Venom as a villain in his own right, once the (X-Files-like) black oil latches onto someone other than Peter. Not to mention the appearance of Flint Marko, the apparent murderer of Peter’s Uncle Ben, who by unwisely stumbling into an area marked “Particle Physics Test Area” (there’s so many of them about) is reincarnated as the near intangible Sandman.

This is a crowded plot by any definition, but the writers feel bound to draw on the movie series’ own mythology by expanding the character conflicts built up in the previous two films. So, we see Peter’s nascent relationship with Mary Jane falling apart as his fascination with his own (Spiderman’s) fame eclipses her modest ambitions to be a Broadway singer, while Harry Osborn’s discovery of his father’s Green Goblin hardware leads to a low key series of confrontations with Peter, who Harry feels to be responsible for his father’s death. The result of this is rather like an episode of a TV soap with occasional superhero battles, which are too few and too far between.

When they come, though, these are stonking, directed with Sam Raimi’s usual flair for kinetic action. An early battle between Spidey and the new Goblin takes place entirely down an impossibly long New York alley, with the two gravity defying enemies smashing the hell out of each other and the nearby buildings. This conveniently wipes Harry’s memory for a while, lengthening an already unnecessarily convoluted plot, but the sequence is amazing. Likewise, some impressive CG is used to realise Flint Marko’s transformation into Sandman, as he falls into a rather contrived death device not dissimilar to Watchmen‘s Intrinsic Field Remover, then reconstructs himself out of sand much as Dr Manhattan did out of whatever was handy. The ensuing sequences of Sandman’s crime wave across New York also make very good use of the CG possibilities inherent in the character.

Sad to say, though, it almost feels like these play second fiddle to a script that takes its own mythology far too seriously. Rewriting the movies’ own continuity to make Marko responsible for Uncle Ben’s death smacks far too much of convenience, of giving Peter an additional motivation to go all “dark” and try to kill him. The concept of Venom allows the screenwriters to further explore Peter’s darker depths as the alien parasite infesting his new black suit brings out nastier sides to his character. Still, while I like Tobey Maguire a great deal, brushing your newly black dyed fringe down in a Hitler hairdo is not the subtlest means of indicating that you’ve gone all “dark”. Similarly, we were supposed to believe that Peter’s new look made him very seductive to women… Well, I quite fancy Tobey Maguire, and I thought he looked like a dick.

Laboured screenplay aside, director and cast did a pretty good job. Tobey Maguire was likeable as always, if unconvincing as the “dark” Spidey, and Kirsten Dunst added increasing (though unnecessary) levels of complexity to Mary Jane. The problem was the rather heavyweight cast of villains somewhat unbalancing the movie. With James Franco getting the lion’s share of the motivation as Harry Osborn, Thomas Haden Church and Topher Grace were left with rather cardboard characters as Sandman and Venom. It was constructed well enough, but each character was given an overly A-B-C motivation, as Marko’s desire to help his sick daughter and Grace’s Eddie Brock’s desire for a photography job were the most obvious of motivators.

I think the main problem with the movie, though, is that it commits the cardinal sin in a comic book movie of being rather dull. All the relationship detail and colourful characters (notably the usual Stan Lee cameo and a hilarious Peter Sellers-like Bruce Campbell) can’t make up for a singular lack of drive and spectacle. This is a great big summer blockbuster, not Ingmar Bergman’s Winter of My Despondency! It needs more joie de vivre, more colour, and ultimately more action. Spiderman is a loud four colour classic from Marvel, but it’s not Batman. I’m the first to champion depth in superhero comics, but not at the expense of excitement and fun, which let’s face it was what made us kids read these things in the first place!

In the end, I think this movie was a victim of the sequels’ syndrome: a perceived need to get bigger and bigger with each movie. The vast number of plot strands here would be difficult to do justice in a three hour arthouse flick, and this certainly isn’t one of those. While it is still fun, you get a sense that director and cast are fed up with the whole thing and merely going through the motions, quite different than the energetic first Spidey movie of 2001. Let’s hope that they call it a day, for now, and let the new Batman movie take the reins of the “dark” superheroes.

I notice Help, I’m As Fat As My Dog has been replaced by the similarly themed Dogs Borstal Unleashed. Clearly the indolence and evil of household pets cannot be underestimated. Personally, I’m waiting for Help, My Budgie’s Joined Al Qaeda.

According to BBC news, the police drug squad who burst into the home of a terrified 80-year old woman were “acting on intelligence”. Of course they were.

I noticed that the BBC3 Sunday repeat of Doctor Who and Confidential was bookended by shows with the titles Help, I’m as Fat as My Dog and F*** Off, I’m a Hairy Woman. Thank heaven the BBC haven’t gone downmarket.

In a week when I didn’t actually watch much telly, a few things nonetheless grabbed my attention.

Firstly, The Sky at Night celebrated its 50th anniversary with the marvellous conceit of showing the eternal Patrick Moore conversing with himself on the very first episode and his successors in 2057. Apparently devised by Moore himself, it was a highly entertaining piece which still managed to be educational and informative about astronomy. The ubiquitous Jon Culshaw was used to good effect as the younger Moore, reining in his usual caricature for a believable impression on the convincingly recreated set of the show’s first broadcast, while chatting to the Moore of the present day. Highly amusing though this was, it still didn’t distract from the fact that Patrick has, in keeping with the older person, now acquired a pair of trousers the waistline of which is placed somewhere just below his armpits.

Elsewhere (on Mars, in fact), Brian May appeared to have been comically made up as Catweazle to represent his fifty years older self. While discussing what had turned out to be right and wrong in the last fifty years of astronomical speculation, May also let slip the accident that occurred in the Live Aid on the Moon show, in which Roger Taylor drummed on the landing stage of the Apollo spacecraft, unaware of its remaining fuel. Cue a shot of a spacesuited figure clutching drumsticks hurtling into space which had me laughing out loud.

It can’t be argued that The Sky at Night‘s 50th anniversary was well worth celebrating; in its history, it’s been an inspiration to many young would-be astronomers, and Patrick Moore himself is a treasured national institution. In keeping with the show that has revolved around him for five decades, Patrick still managed to both entertain and educate, and you can’t ask for better than that. It’s worth mentioning, though, that when I described this programme to a friend at work, he was convinced that I must have dreamed it…

Doctor Who, as usual when its new series begins, seemed to be everywhere this week. David Tennant appeared on Graham Norton (as it were) and a special edition of The Weakest Link, both to good comic effect, but had slightly less luck on children’s tie-in Totally Doctor Who. Slightly more polished as a production than last year, this shameless cash-in was still shot and edited in a style that made MTV look like the arrival of Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia. It was apparently a bad thing to hold a single camera shot for longer than a second, but if that had to be done, the camera had an obligation to wobble and swerve alarmingly, as though its operator had had a liquid lunch. David Tennant popped up a couple of times, firstly discussing the episode he was shooting (which immediately ruined the show’s intended impression to have been shot yesterday, since shooting on the show has now wrapped) and then in the first of a serialised animated story which also utilised the talents of new companion Freema Agyeman and cult actor Anthony Head. The animation was stylishly done, but unfortunately somewhat hamstrung by a script pitched at, presumably, the less intelligent child. It’s worth remembering that just because something is made for children, it doesn’t have to talk down to them. Still, the frenetic pace of the thing leaves little room to stop for consideration, I suppose.

Elsewhere, Louis Theroux was back, insinuating himself into yet another set of objectionable oddballs in The Most Hated Family in America. This focussed on the hugely unpleasant views of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, and its congregation, largely drawn from the 70-strong extended Phelps family. Church leader Fred Phelps achieved a degree of notoriety some years ago with his charming website godhatesfags.com, a testament of homophobic hate that makes Adolf Hitler look like Mother Teresa. Given that Middle America already has a bit of a problem with homophobia that contributed greatly to George Bush’s second election victory, you might at first wonder how this makes them the most hated family in America. But Phelps and co have taken their argument further. In a staggering chain of reasoning, they’ve worked out that by tolerating gays, America has doomed itself in the eyes of God, and that its many casualties in the Middle East are part of God’s judgment. Accordingly, they like to picket the funerals of recently killed soldiers, while carrying placards bearing such charming messages as “America is doomed” and “Thank God for 9/11”. Given that patriotism is probably the strongest characteristic in American society, this hasn’t gone down well.

Louis was first to be seen attending one of these pickets. Unusually for his show, he was strongly unequivocal from the first about not sharing the views of the Church. This led to many smiling women of the congregation assuring him that he was bound for hell, and that this made them very happy. Mostly guided by picket organiser Shirley Phelps, Louis was nonetheless tenacious in his pursuit of Fred, the man who’d started it all. Fred, unfortunately, was less than forthcoming. “That’s a dumb question” seemed to be his standard response in the two minutes or so before he less than politely buggered off.

The most unsettling thing about the show was its depiction of the Church’s inculcation of its hatred into the younger generations of the Phelps family. Most of these seemed to be young women in their late teens or early twenties, a few of whom Louis met.

“You’re going to Hell”, smiled an attractive young lady wearing a T-shirt that said “Italia”. Presumably Italy was less of a sinner than, say, Sweden, whose punishment of a homophobic incident led to a new website, godhatessweden.com. Another young lady was a student lawyer at the local college. “Do you have friends here?” Louis gently probed. “Er… friendly acquaintances” was as far as she would go. When the rest of the world is composed of doomed sinners on their inevitable way to Hell, friends were obviously surplus to requirements.

Finally, we saw yet another funeral picket, at which Louis conversed with a pretty girl of about seven holding a placard that proclaimed “God Hates Fags”.

“Do you know what the sign means?” Louis asked. Smiling politely, the little girl replied that she didn’t. Louis then enquired the same of a ten-year-old boy called Noah, who gave the same answer. At this point, Shirley swept swiftly in to coach the children on their answers, but the point had been made; the Phelps children aren’t born to hate, they’re taught to.

A more depressing than usual show, this showed that none of Louis’ rational, lucid arguments were going to sway these rabid fanatics. As he held up a placard proclaiming that “fags eat poop”, a smiling Shirley proclaimed that this is “absolutely true”. A later gentle probe as to whether Shirley could change her worldview was met with the compelling rebuttal “not a chance, poopie-pants”.

The Phelps family are convinced that their church is the only one preaching the true message of God, and that, concomitantly, everyone else in the world is bound for Hell. It seems to me that a Heaven populated only by the Phelps family would be fairly empty, and not somewhere that I would ever like to be.

In some years of processing incoming stock for HMV, one of the things I’ve had to do is sort the CDs into genres relevant to each department. Over time, I’ve figured out a sort of code in album covers by which they can be easily sorted into genre. It’s a little general, but here’s the broad overview:

Angry looking black men – hip hop

Angry looking white men – metal

Happy looking black men – Jazz

Seductive looking black men, possibly with shirts open to display their implausibly toned bodies – R n B

White men with hairstyles twenty years out of date, possibly wearing stetsons – country

Impossibly wholesome four strong groups containing balanced samples of every race and gender, all in their early twenties – manufactured pop

Three/four scruffy young men, wearing clothes that appear to have been bought in several different charity shops – Indie

Nubile black women with impressively large bottoms, perhaps sprawled across an over-chromed Hummer’s bonnet – R n B again

The poster from that film you saw – Soundtracks

Stylised paintings of rock formations on an alien world, through which flying dolphins dance while watched by the benevolent silhouette of Merlin – prog rock

An entirely black cover with illegible gothic script, with some blurry monochrome photos of gothic harlequins on the back – Scandinavian death metal

An olde worlde pub painted green with a rusty bicycle chained outside and several men in waistcoats holding accordions – Irish folk

A ruined castle silhouetted on a bleak, desolate crag – Scottish folk

Multi coloured fractals spinning in a way that makes your eyes hurt if you look at them too long – dance/electronica

A five year old’s drawing of happy children dancing around a too brightly coloured carousel – Children’s

A simplistic coloured sketch of a figure who looks almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a major pop star for legal reasons – karaoke

The list could probably go on, and I may amend it as I find more examples, but you get the picture. What happened to the days of truly interesting album covers, like the Pink Floyd ones designed by Storm Thorgerson? Actually, they’re mostly by bands like Muse, who have covers designed by – Storm Thorgerson. Is that really his name?

Zwartboek (Black Book) (1996)

Paul Verhoeven’s latest is an interesting, if flawed story of the subject that is apparently closest to the director’s heart – the Nazi occupation of Holland. Verhoeven was a child during the occupation, but to a greater or lesser degree it has shaped every film he has ever made. There are even apocryphal stories of him directing films in full SS uniform. Certainly even his Hollywood output, particularly Robocop and Starship Troopers, shows a fascination with fascism and its superficial trappings that borders on fetishism.

So now that he has returned to approaching his subject directly, as in his early Dutch films, how does he fare? Interestingly, this is a film that sees a collision of his two styles, the earnest European filmmmaker and the Hollywood trash-monger. The first half hour or so is an impressive, almost worthy tale of the hardships of out plucky heroine Carine Van Houten as a Jew in hiding, attempting to escape the Nazis. She is reunited with her estranged family just in time for them to be brutally massacred in an SS trap that is just the first in an increasingly improbable series of double -crosses involving the Gestapo and the Dutch Resistance.

Surviving this, Carine becomes more deeply involved with the Resistance, disguising herself by bleaching her hair. It’s the point when you see her applying the same treatment to her pubes that you find yourself in more comfortably familiar Verhoeven territory, and by the time she goes to a party with top SS honcho Muntze and his cohorts Paul lets it all hang out. Literally, in the unwelcome case of paunchy SS goon Franken, who wanders blithely naked into the ladies’ room to cop a feel  of his redhead girlfriend and an eyeful of Carine, who obligingly flashes her tits at him. Yes, the Third Reich has met Showgirls!

To be fair, Carine’s illicit affair with Muntze ( who has discovered she is Jewish) is well realized, a typical Verhoeven plot of the innocent seduced into darkness. And the twisty, turny plot has more than its share of wartime action, impeccably photographed by Verhoeven with the experience of a director of Hollywood action films. The problem is, it’s all rather too polished, too gripping even. By making it a Dutch Resistance thriller -cum – action movie, Verhoeven distances himself from the realistic portrayal of the Nazi occupation he so obviously also wants to portray. Occasionally, hard-hitting details like the exhumation of a mass grave of SS victims are somewhat undercut by John Woo-style action face-offs between the resistance and disposable SS troopers. It’s a movie that doesn’t know quite what it wants to be; wartime action epic, or intimate portrayal of the effect of Nazi occupation on individuals (With gratuitous bits of muff thrown in)?

It does hold the attention very well, the two and a half hours fairly flying by, though by the end you’ll probably feel there’s been a betrayal (or eight) too many. It makes Where Eagles Dare look straightforward in its corkscrew portrayal of where its characters’ loyalties lie, and at times you’ll be asking yourself if anyone in the Dutch Resistance WASN’T secretly working for the Nazis.

Still, the compelling characters, well-observed details and impeccable sense of a tyrannical occupation in its death throes do make for a gripping movie, whose real failing is its frequent straining for a depth it doesn’t have. If you’re looking for a Dutch Schindler’s List, look elsewhere; however if you think Shining Through actually had the potential to be a good movie this could be the film for you.