Words To Live By?

Conan & Dragonero #3 (Titan Comics)

In this month's issue of the non-canonical crossover comic, Conan & Dragonero, our Cimmerian protagonist delivered a throwaway, mid-combat, line that rather caught me by surprise.

"I don't worry about anything until it happens".

I am, by no stretch, a Robert E Howard scholar or expert on his most famous creation, but I guess this has always been Conan's philosophy - even though I don't recall him specifically spelling it out like that.

Perhaps, in all my years of consuming the adventures of Conan The Barbarian in various media, I've never really given this much serious thought.

To be honest, I'm not one hundred percent sure that this statement is a sensible approach to life as, taken at face value, surely that means a total absence of forward planning... and yet Conan is a master of the cunning trick and unpredictable battle strategies.

However, though the lens of stoicism, he is right. Only worry about things within your control. 

There's no point worrying about the possibility of wild wyverns slashing the balloon of your airship and sending you plummeting to the ground... because that's out of your control. 

Fighting the monsters that are in front of you, though, is within your control.

I wish I could adopt this mindset.

I've always been quite an anxious person, but since the sudden aortic aneurysm that struck me down out of the blue a couple of decades ago (and the stroke I suffered during the emergency, life-saving surgery), my PTSD-fuelled anxiety and general nervousness has gone through the roof.

Things that used to bug me or worry me can now reduce me to a blubbering wreck.

But these are - nearly always - things that are out of my control.

I'd love to have a modicum of Conan's stoicism. I shall endeavour, next time an appropriate situation arises, to tell myself "not to worry about anything until it happens".

This reminds of another phrase I heard last year that I try to put into use when I can.

In the brutal Netflix Western serial, American Primeval, Taylor Kitsch's character tells a kid with a broken arm: "It's only pain."

A simple, little phrase, but one I now repeat to myself when I'm going to the doctor's or the hospital for a procedure that involves sticking needles into my tiny, elusive veins.

I still hate it, it doesn't stop me screaming out or crushing Rachel's hand, but - at the end of the day - it is "only pain". It's not going to kill me, and it will pass.

So, who still thinks that comic books and television aren't good for you?

Noah (2014)

Although I'm not a religious person, I've always had a soft spot for film's based on Biblical stories for some reason, but Noah is the closest yet to crossing over into my usual playground of epic fantasy or science-fiction.

While I haven't really studied the Great Flood myth, I'm pretty sure I'd have remembered rock giants (fallen angels bound to the Earth by rock and mud, resembling elemental creatures from The Neverending Story or The Hobbit) helping Noah build his Ark.

Darren Aronofsky's take on the story certainly owes as much to Tolkien as it does The Bible - occasionally even straying into B-movie sword-and-sorcery territory - with its surfeit of magical items and mysticism.

Russell Crowe plays a surprisingly misanthropic and nihilistic Noah, a vegetarian action hero who believes The Creator wants to wipe all humanity from the planet and his job, and that of his family, is purely to shepherd all the animals to the new, post-Flood world and then die out, so the innocent animals can run free.

Noah has visions of The Creator's genocidal plans to obliterate his failed experiment from the Earth - like a child with an Etch-A-Sketch shaking his messed-up picture into oblivion so he can start again from scratch - and so sets about building the Ark, to preserve the creatures of the land and air (the fish have to make their own arrangements).

However, having grown a forest from a seed left over from The Garden Of Eden and recruited the rock giants to help with the Ark building, Noah attracts the attention of local warlord and one-dimensional bad guy Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone), who decides he's going to take the Ark to save his meat-eating people (they believe they gain 'strength' from eating the flesh of animals) from the coming deluge.

Naturally Noah and the giants have something to say about this.

Along for the ride are Noah's wife, Naameh (Jennifer Connelly), his sons Shem (Douglas Booth), Ham (Logan Lerman) and Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll) and Shem's lady-friend, Ila (Emma Watson), who is barren until magically cured by Noah's grandfather Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins).

Noah's kids quickly realise that their dreams of repopulating the Earth after the Flood are slightly flawed as the men outnumber the women in their group and the only women are their mum and Ila, who is - at that point - infertile.

What passes for a romantic sub-plot essentially involves Ham running into the nearby community, grabbing the first woman he meets - a girl called Na'el (Madison Davenport) - and deciding she'll do for a wife (still a better love story than Twilight, though).

As a brief aside, I can't help but guess that whatever Tubal-cain's followers were getting up to must have been some really nasty stuff if the Creator was so determined to wipe them all off the face of the Earth, but is totally okay with what's happening here at the moment (e.g. Iran, Gaza, Ukraine, the continued rise of the Right in Western nations etc)

Once the Flood comes, Tubal-cain stows away on the Ark for the better part of nine months (again, I don't remember this from Sunday School), with the aid of Ham, surviving on an all-you-can-eat buffet of slumbering animals (presumably he ate the unicorns, dinosaurs, dragons etc and those cute armadillo/dog creatures that we saw early on in the movie).

There's a lot that isn't explained in Noah (and perhaps that's not a bad thing, actually). For instance, the TARDIS-like capacity of the Ark to hold two of every species is hand-waved (perhaps, as they were all sleeping, Noah's brood stacked them neatly like containers in a warehouse) and I don't get why the sloughed skin of The Serpent from the Garden Of Eden is an artefact for Good?

And when you look at the surviving unit of humanity at the end of movie: just who is going to father future generations and repopulate the planet, anyway (without getting into icky, incestuous inbreeding territory)?

Conversely there are some clever ideas in there, such as the Flood waters rising out of the Earth, which kind of circumvents the physical impossibility of sea levels rising to such a degree all around the world - and presumably that was where the water returned to, when the Floods receded.

But for all my ribbing of the various plot holes (many of which, of course, are carried over from the source material anyway), Noah is an impressive feat of movie making,  a powerful and engaging film even if you are not of a religious bent.

Aronofsky has brought his usual visual eye to the story giving it an epic, fantastical feel that (almost) transcends its specific religious origins (The Flood myth is found in many early cultures anyway and the ark probably has its origins in Babylonian stories that pre-date the Bible).

I don't know Aronofsky's personal views on religion, but Noah manages to be thought-provoking but not preachy with Noah himself being a complex and interesting character, of a far darker temperament than you might expect, channelling some mighty Old Testament fury not normally associated with the builder of the Ark.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Let's Get Spiritual

The Hall of Harmony and Peace at Yonghe Temple, Beijing. Picture: Yinan Chen

 
Continuing my recollections of the highlights of my visit to China (to visit Paul) in 2002, I will never forget my visit to the Yonghe Lamasery in Beijing.

Paul had gone to work, so I took a taxi into the temple, little realising that I was turning up in the middle of a major Buddhist new season festival, a kind of exorcism of evil spirits.

There was an hour of dancing by monks in freaky masks, in front of the chief Lama and his posse.

Then everyone paraded through the temple to the main gate, where there was more banging of drums and cymbals, and stuff got burnt (which I couldn't see). 

Then everyone paraded back to the main arena, had a team huddle and threw 'gifts of the gods' (ie. food) out into the crowd.

STAMPEDE TIME!

I got a peanut, then an old Chinese woman offered me a little orange, which I thanked her for.

After this people seemed to disperse, so I started to wander the temple grounds, and found the last temple, which holds a giant Buddha, where all the monks - and the locals - were praying.

All the other Westerners had vanished by now.

The monks were handing out sacred yogurt, which people were either storing in jam jars or rubbing into their hands and faces. I decided to go for the hand/face option with my dollop!

Outside of the temple I watched more Chinese saying their prayers and lighting joss sticks.

It was all very moving, and one more illustration of why the Buddhists have the coolest religion.  

Heretic (2024)

Trying to up their "conversion" numbers, two young Mormon missionaries - hard-edged Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and slightly naïve Sister Paxton (Chloe East) - end up on the doorstep of reclusive Mr Reed's (Hugh Grant) isolated home.

It's pouring with rain and so Mr Reed invites them in, assuring the young women that his wife is in the other room and will be out shortly.

As the missionaries try to engage Reed in the benefits of Mormonism, he throws them a curveball, revealing his knowledge of world religions and starts to challenge their convictions.

What begins as intellectual, philosophical sparring soon ratchets up a gear when Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton realise they are locked in Reed's peculiar house and that the only exit appears to be out the rear of his property.

The increasingly sinister Mr Reed, talking about his discovery of the "one true religion", presents them with a choice of two doors: one marked Belief and one Disbelief.

Distributed by A24, Heretic is an incredible film, resting as it does largely on the shoulders of its three stars.

Giving a disturbing, tour-de-force, award-worthy performance Hugh Grant demonstrates how he has morphed into playing the most incredible bad guys in recent years while still drawing on his legendary, natural, charm.

However, standing up to his strength of personality, both Chloe East and Sophie Thatcher shine as the two women of great faith and mental fortitude.

The volume of intellectual repartee sometimes gives Heretic a play-like ambience, but the incredible tension generated by the exchanges between the main characters never lets you forget that you're watching a horror movie and that anything could happen at any moment.

Although the film runs for almost two hours, the tension and pacing ensures that once you are intellectually immersed in this world, time flies by.

Be warned, depending on your genre expectations, this is not a pulpy slasher flick, more a psychological powder keg ready to figuratively explode in unexpected - and mysterious - ways.

Written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, Heretic is trying something different with the genre and - for the most part - this works really well if you let it.

The movie is almost a "think piece", designed to stimulate conversation about the topics raised (such as the iterations and roots of organised religion, the nature of belief etc) rather than the quality and goriness of any particular kills.

As with all the best horror films - and this is one such beast - the less you know about the plot going in the better.

Also, as with a great many horror films (where such an act is often the hardest to pull off), I'm not entirely sure that Heretic sticks the landing, but it certainly hammers home its message in no uncertain terms.

While not always particularly subtle, I'm sure there are layers, symbolism and metaphors in this work that I missed.

To that end, Heretic is definitely a film I can see myself not only revisiting but recommending to others wholeheartedly to hear their thoughts and opinions.