St. Aloysius' College: A Review

Well, this week I’ve decided to do something a little different (I did say that I’d post about other stuff aside from TV and film, so, unfortunately, you have no legal case against me. Ha). I shall be reviewing my experience at St. Aloysius’ College. Otherwise known as; my school. Prepare for sentimentality...

I’ve decided to take a break from following, in my writings, such mainstream areas of criticism as film, TV, music and literature. All modern criticism seems to focus upon imaginative creations; fiction, conjured up by someone’s grey matter, with only the ambition to conjure separating them from any other person’s grey matter. The afore-mentioned sections of criticism covers this, and it includes theatre and opera, and even food criticism. This is what makes humanity uniquely wonderful; our potential to imagine, and to dream. And criticising these imaginative creations is what makes humanity hilariously sadistic. It’s just so much damn fun. However, this immensely restrictive idea that it is only suitable to review fantasy, to review dreams, is practically medieval. With contemporary society having access to, essentially, every experience man has encountered previously with the press of a button, why can’t we review reality? It’s already started to take hold. People have been, for a few years now, reviewing hotels, holidays, plane and train journeys, and even, through the most malicious of websites, Spillit, each other. Reviewing my school is not odd.

After 15 years as one of its pupils, I enter my final weeks at St. Aloysius’ College, and I find myself overwhelmed by heart-breaking nostalgia. After taking part in a photo with the remaining members of the Kindergarden class of ’99, along with the early departure from the school of a friend who I have known for 13 years, the realisation has finally hit me that my entire life is about to change. No longer will I wake up at half 6 on Monday morning, depressed at the prospect of yet another school week, before putting on that iconic green blazer and being driven into a dreary, smog-drenched Glasgow city centre. No more will I walk the RE Corridor to hear dialogue from Mean Girls blaring out of the classrooms unabashedly. For the last time I will barge into my English teacher’s room first thing to rant and rave about the football at the weekend. Never again will I write AMDG in the upper-left corner of my jotter. My childhood is over; my school days are slowly washing away to the confines of memory, forever.

St. Aloysius’ College has been the very definition of a home away from home for me. When I was sad, after a family tragedy for instance, the school, and more importantly, my friends, consoled me. When I was ambitious, the school made sure that I aspired to them with the best of my abilities. When I was hungry, the school fed me. With ridiculously over-priced food, but that doesn’t matter.

As an institution, St. Als is one of the best schools in the country, but the quality and consistency of its exam results is not what makes it so special. In order to find out just what differentiates St. Als from the rest, I’ve had to ask friends and acquaintances on their personal opinions of the school, as I, personally, have never been a pupil somewhere else. Their contentions confirmed my suspicions. They, and I, believe that St. Als is not so much a school, as it is a community.

As a Catholic Private School in Glasgow, we already have quite a distinct identity, one which is frequently, and unfairly, held under a negative light by many. Perhaps it’s an example of self-involved first-world problems, but I deem it unnecessarily cruel to be called a ‘posh, fenian w****r’ in Sauchiehall Street. I have seen first years physically threatened by random passers-by, purely because they are wearing that green blazer. Newspapers constantly single out St. Als when writing opinion articles about the negatives of private schools, as opposed to any of the other numerous ones which operate in the city, with one journalist even labelling our pupils ‘posh Sebastians and Julias’, showing, in the process, the grace and journalistic integrity of a doorknob. St. Als is, according to the West of Scotland media, an indirect link to both poverty and sectarianism, and that we have an evil, complex plan to brain-wash children into Catholicism, (which, in actuality, is what my aunt genuinely believes happens). Our school attracts an almost ludicrous amount of resentment.

This is a fundamental factor behind the community spirit of the school. The term ‘whatever doesn’t kill you, only makes you stronger’ is, although sometimes untrue, apt in this situation, regarding the school. As we are bombarded on all sides by hate and misunderstanding, it drives us closer together. Our identity defines us.

Beyond negativity, it is the completely open-minded attitude of the school and its ethics which is the single most important foundation in the community spirit. Regardless of race, religion or creed, you are just as welcome as everyone else.  The bursaries programme ensures that, if you are intelligent enough, you can join the school, no matter the financial situation. The pupils embody the Jesuit spirit through their attitude of helping the less fortunate than ourselves, with the almost peerlessly diverse range of charities and organisations. As one of my teachers says, it is what you learn about yourself and life in general which is the imperative, not the exam results. The teachers are (mostly) interested in helping you achieve your best, and enjoy yourself while doing it, and I hope to keep in contact with many of them after I leave. The school exerts itself to always maintain a friendly and welcoming atmosphere. Our ideals define us.

Lastly, the community nature is enhanced through the retreat programmes, especially the Kairos retreat. It is a soulful, eye-opening, and for some people, even life changing (as difficult as it may be to believe) experience. Kairos attempts to reinforce your faith, as well as your respect for yourself, and your friends and family. Even though I didn’t feel as though it immediately changed my life, it has certainly had a lasting impact upon me. On these retreats, you bond with people you’ve never spoken to before in ways best friends never do. By the time you reach 6^th year, all concepts of ‘cliques’ or exclusive social groups are non-existent; it is an inherently friendly relationship between everyone in the year. Our relationships define us.

Beyond the community feel of the school, St Als has had an incredibly personal effect on me. Here’s where it gets really sentimental. When I first came to senior school, I was incredibly shy and unconfident, nearly self-loathing. For many years, I retreated into fantasy via images on screen, words in books, or my own imagination. I have always been, and still am, a ‘loner’, or someone who prefers their own company much of the time, but back then my choice was more of complete isolation than simply just being by myself. I was also doing poorly in school. In hindsight, I must have been worrying those who cared about me. With no disrespect to my parents, who had just as big a part to play in my development, and to a certain extent, myself, St Als was one of my biggest helps to escape this. The teachers instilled the belief in me that I could do better in my studies, the retreats and numerous events, as well as the school’s focus on socialising, helped me realise the positive effect others had on me. The school’s morals encouraged me to be a better person and showed me that I had the potential to be live up to that person I aspired to be. I slowly left my own personal dream world and accepted reality, and myself. My appreciation for it helping me become the person I am today (I apologise for the arrogance) cannot be evoked through words. St Als moulded me.

If this entire article sounds overly soppy and sentimental, then that’s because it is. If it sounds unashamedly propagandist for the school’s sake, then that’s because it is. If it sounds like a personal eulogy to my past as a pupil at St Als, then that’s because it is. None of this masks the fact that everything I have written is completely true. I simply cannot thank the school enough. Despite its traditionalist doctrines (long skirts? How dare they!) St Als remains one of the most modern schools in its adoption of a welcoming and down-to-earth community spirit. Entire families are brought together through attending the school, generation by generation.  I know I will remain an Aloysian long after I leave the school, although, you never quite leave St Als, at least not in spirit (HA! There’s your cheesiness!) I will come back to see the old place again, and again; I’ve been institutionalised, just like so many others; Mr. Divers, Mr. Renton, and of course, one of the most consistent people in my life, Bertie Banyard, and I'm sure many of my current peers feel the same. Just as my grandfather went to St Als, I hope my children go, and my grand-children. It is a community. It is a family. I felt safe, well-looked after, and above all else, happy. My future uni days have a lot to live up to...

Teenage American Problems. On the Telly.

The Easter holidays gave me time to reflect; time to socialise; time to pursue my ambitions and study. Instead, I watched small-budget American teenage dramadies I stumbled across on TV Choice with one eye, with the other focussed on a Maths past-paper question I had started 2 and a half hours earlier. I regret nothing.

The first series I watched was Glory Daze, a love-letter to the American student-in-college lifestyle of partying hard and working not so hard, and an even more poetic letter to American ‘Fraternities’. Set in the eighties, all the cheesy rock anthems are present; ludicrous shenanigans and pranks are carried out on those dastardly Republicans from Theta-somethingorother house; alcohol is consumed via red plastic cups. It’s not entirely dissimilar from a sketch performed by a famous Glaswegian comedian, a sketch mind you, which has been referenced so excessively, that any possible crumb of humour which remained has been crumpled into nothingness, accompanied by a self-satisfied guffaw. Anyways, four newly arrived freshmen; The Decent Leader And Protaganist, The Awkward Jewish Comic Relief, The Quirky Jock, and the Conservative Rich Kid, find themselves rejected from every ‘fraternity’, sort of the equivalent of the British ‘College’ system, except for the house that has only one rule; PAARTAAYYYYY!!! Totally, wicked, crazy antics ensue. Glory Daze should be the type of programme that I hate; it’s contrived, clichéd, embarrassingly corny and wholly unoriginal.

But I liked it.

The prize of eternal friendship to whoever can name me the characters from this photo alone.

In the forced humour, wit seeps through the cracks. The characters may be simplistic, but they are all very likable and you hold genuine affection for them by the end of the series. My personal favourites are The Oracle, a 32 year-old stoner who illegally remains in the ‘fraternity’ house; his drug-induced philosophical and theological rantings are easily the highlights of the show, and Reno, the laid-back, insanely charismatic (unofficial) leader of the ‘fraternity’, who approaches every challenge life presents with a casual witticism, and the offering of a beer. The 80’s soundtrack is great, and the inevitable romance which blossoms between the protagonist and his (already involved) love interest is surprisingly intelligent, both in its development and its conclusion. In fact, despite the clichéd storylines and (the majority of the) jokes, it’s actually quite a smart show. Contemporary themes such as the repression of hip-hop in the music business are represented. I never said they were socially important themes, mind, but they do, technically, still count. They do, honestly. Its unapologetic love of hedonism is infectious, and I am unashamed to say that I fell for its wily charms. Very entertaining.

What wasn’t entertaining was Awkward. I really hated this TV show. It’s basically a less funny Mean Girls/Clueless/Easy A, without the self-awareness which made those teen-movie classics so enjoyable. Jenna Hamilton, played by Ashley Rickards, who looks like a more attractive Ellen Page, is a strong contender for the most (unintentionally) dislikeable protagonist in any form of fiction. Teenagers are, by their very nature, generally self-involved people; we’ve all experienced this in some form, however, Jenna’s overwhelmingly selfish and deluded outlook blows all these conceptions out of the water. We teenagers all, at one stage or another, experience the search for our ‘self-being’, to solve the mystery of our individuality. Jenna goes one step further, beyond the journey for her identity; she strives for attention. She repeatedly narrates that she’s ‘invisible’, and that she just wants people to ‘notice her.’ In fact, it seems to me that that’s all she talks about. The opening scene involves her losing her virginity with one of the down-with-it, cool kids in the school. He looks at her, hereby showing her the sexual attention she desperately craves, nods in the direction of an empty storage cupboard, and they go off and have sex. That’s it. No character backstory or anything. We’re supposed to immediately sympathise with people as hopelessly shallow as that? That sets the rest of the tone for the series. Easy A and Clueless succeeded because they dealt with the topical issue of ‘first-world teenage problems’ with honesty, while having the tongue firmly in cheek. Awkward takes its self far too seriously, when it really has no right to do so. It just isn’t fun.

Don't roll your eyes at me or I'll break your other arm, you self-absorbed, nihilistic fart-weasel.

Anyways, back to hating Jenna. This self-absorbed, superficial persona does not develop into anything remotely likable as the series drags on. Even when she has the two popular boys in the school lusting after her, which initially seemed to be everything she aspired to have in life, (The Twilight effect of female characters’ sole ambition as being someone’s boyfriend appears to be more widespread than earlier thought) she still isn’t happy. It’s get to the point where I just don’t care. In fact, I’ve written her a letter;

Dear Jenna,

I don’t care, okay? I don’t care that nobody gives you attention that you probably don’t warrant. I don’t care that you have to choose between two guys, who are so stereotypically ‘teenagery’ that they are literally hormones who have assumed human form, and who desire you so extensively that you can physically see their pupils dilate as they stare at you, reeking of testosterone and adolescent angstiness. More importantly, I don’t care that you are embarrassed by walking about with a broken arm. That’s just stupid. If I wanted to listen to a teenage girl complain about stuff I didn’t care about for half-an-hour, I’d go and ask my sister to list every thing/person/situation which annoyed her. But that’d be sanity-suicide, so I don’t. Please, please, please, get over yourself, and just be happy? You’re witty, clever and attractive. It isn’t difficult to be happy with your life. Try it sometime.

Yours sincerely,

Everyone, everywhere

There, that should do the trick. Oh no wait, it wouldn’t, because every other character is just as infuriatingly self-obsessed. I’ve mentioned the arrogant romantic (I use the term purely out of triple irony, being oh so very superior and clever) interests, but Awkward also bears host to countless self-consciously quirky characters; you know the type, they say gibberish like ‘I feel like a meercat on a scooter after last night,’ and it feels as if they’re grabbing you aggressively by the shoulders and screaming in your ear ‘omg, I’m so random! LOL AT ME!,’ forcing you to break down into tears of terror, confusion and bitter hatred. You’ll wake up screaming and naked in six years time, as the image of bright pink beanie hats comes back to haunt you in a flashback which had seeped out of the darkness of receded memory.

This is your life if you watch Awkward. You’ve been well warned.

Mini Review #1

Mini Reviews

For this week, I have decided to review the four films which I’ve watched this holiday in... (wait for it) miniature form. I’ve set myself some guidelines for this; 1) Reviews have to be written in 250 words or less. End of rules. Also, I have decided that it would be quite fun for people to tell me a film that I should watch, and then I follow through by reviewing it. So if you have any ideas for me (and please, be kind with your choices) then please tell me. Enjoy.

Wrath of the Titans

Before I watched Louis Leterrier’s 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans, I was anticipating an experience which would be entertainingly rubbish. It turned out to be rubbishly rubbish. I was expecting hackneyed writing and an idiotic plot, but awful CGI and boring action scenes... Sir Leterrier, you go too far! It is with great pleasure, ladies and gentlemen, that I can conclude that Wrath of the Titans is not completely awful. Just mostly.

One of the main problems with the first instalment was that it took itself so seriously, when really it’s dumber than fans of dubstep. They clearly took this criticism on board, as there is the addition of a comic-relief character this time in the form of Poseidon’s son, who turns out to be both unfunny and really, really annoying. The writing and acting are just as poor as before, but it betters its sequel for three reasons; 1. The CG monsters no longer look like something I draw in History when bored, 2. The Greek God family drama subplot, (of course, Greek family tragedy inspired Shakespeare’s own family dramas ironically enough) is basically now a soap opera with bushy beards and genocide, and therefore, interesting, 3. Sam Worthington now boasts a perm as opposed to a shaved head, which is far more Greek-hero (read, camp). So. It’s not terrible. If this narrow improvement is progressive, by the 23^rd sequel, Breakfast of the Titans, we might genuinely have a good end-product on our screens.

Drive

Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, best known for his violently bleak, and criminally underrated, Norse tale, Valhalla Rising, received a standing ovation at Cannes last year, followed by a nifty Best Director win, for this (already) cult classic. One of my favourite films of 2011, this is blockbuster entertainment of the best kind; stylish, intelligent, moving, and frequently awe-inspiring.

It’s visually stunning, Los Angeles and the labyrinthine architecture of its roads and routes is one of the primary characters in the story, and the synth, 80’s pop inspired soundtrack is nothing short of incredible, substantiating the dreamy atmosphere of the images, as well as the poignancy of the themes through the lyrics. Screenwriter Hossein Amini uses minimal dialogue to develop his characters, and Refn prefers simple framing of the scenes as opposed to complex camera shots. Instead, both rely upon the performances to succeed, namely those of Ryan Gosling, whose eyes would turn Mitt Romney gay, and Carey Mulligan, and they pull it off remarkably; they reveal more in a single look than most films do in five pages of dialogue. The romance between the two of them is beautifully paced. The fairy-tale love story soon descends into cold reality, and the scenes of shocking brutality which follow in the second half of the film act as an extremely effective, and very tragic, contrast to the poetically innocent affair which preceded it. Drive is ultimately a lesson in the importance of human connection in today’s computerised, distinctly isolationist world.

Yes, man-crush. Of course it's only a man-crush...

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Zak ‘That’s good, but slow-mo’s even better’ Snyder made this utterly pointless remake while clearly missing the entire point of Romero’s masterpiece. The original was not a unintelligible gore-fest, but an immensely clever satire on the commercialism of modern society; by staging it in a shopping mall, we see the remaining un-undead mindlessly take delight in having access to every materialistic good in the building for free, despite them taking part in the small factor of an Apocalypse, not to mention the shots of the zombies themselves shambling around the shops. Romero highlights our unnatural and immoral consumerist greed.

The 2004 Dawn of the Dead is an unintelligible gore-fest. It’s not terrible; as far as unintelligible gore-fests go, this is shallowly entertaining; with decent production values and enough over-the-top violence to satiate the blood-thirstiness of all you sadists out there and a bit-part for Modern Family’s Ty Burrell (Phil Dunphy) as a one-dimensionally selfish playboy, made me chuckle, but this does not excuse the enormous disservice it does to the original. It’s insulting Romero, to be frank. Excusing the hideously caricatured characterisations, (the token badass, the aforementioned self-obsessed businessman, the well-intended leader who lost his family to Zombitis), there simply isn’t anything to recommend it thematically. Nothing. Squat. It’s an embarrassment to the Zombie mini-genre, which gets an unfair amount of shtick as it is for not being intellectually rewarding. You know what? Just watch Zombieland. It’s better in every conceivable way. And it has Bill Murray.

Donkey Punch

A title inspired by a sex move which I’ve decided on the grounds of common decency not to describe here. As a film, it’s very average. As an experience, it’s very awkward. When I heard about it initially, I thought to myself ‘Ew that sounds horrible, I’m never watching that.’ Last week I saw that it was scheduled to be on Film 4, and my annoyingly human sense of curiosity got the better of me. I recorded it. I watched it. I, inevitably, regret doing so.

Honestly, this picture tells you all you need to know

It starts off well; the characters, clearly inspired by the rise of British ‘lad’ culture, are believable and realistic, if most of them aren’t at all likable. Most of them are incredibly shallow; their dream is along the lines of having a thousand-person ‘sex and drugs’ orgy at a DJ Scizzle Frizzle gig, which carries on until they die from either a cocaine overdose, body-fluid loss or a crushed pelvis. It’s surprisingly gripping. A docu-drama on this uniquely British lifestyle, it’s almost fascinating. I think to myself; ‘hey, maybe you were wrong.’ Then a girl dies in a freak sex accident, it falls into mind-numbing stupidity, and myself thinks to I ‘HA! Take that!’ Seriously, the decisions these people make will make you scream things at your television. It’s like what would happen if the cast of Hollyoaks cameod in an episode of CSI. So, in conclusion, it’s a film with two differing halves and an incredibly weird plot. Watch it with your parents.

'Come as a Bright Day' Review

Simon Aboud’s directorial debut, Come as a Bright Day, is backed by an ambitious premise; in the space of a few hours, under the life-altering stress and strain of a hostage situation, the lives of a group of unrelated upper-class London socialites (and wannabe socialites) become forever changed and inter-linked with one another. An ambition, I may add, Come as a Bright Day doesn’t come close to fulfilling.

It’s incredibly frustrating viewing. With such a fantastic British cast, you’d be forgiven for having lofty expectations. For a film as character-driven as this, the single most important factor behind it reaching its potential is the quality of the writing, and yet the dialogue is hideously contrived and forced. It’s as if Aboud was flicking between his current script draft and a copy of ‘Screenplay Writing for Dummies.’ The line “Amen to that, brother” is uttered without a single whiff of irony. I sincerely hope that you, dear reader, are as terrifically outraged by this as I am. You can always tell the measure of a film by the general attitude shown towards it by the cast, and in this case it speaks volumes, Craig Roberts being the only one of the four leading stars to turn up for the film’s world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival.

The characterisation is painfully one-dimensional; Aboud has about the same appreciation for character development as Samantha Brick has for modesty; the butterfly jewel which acts as the film’s McGuffin is its most developed aspect, and that’s, you know, an inanimate object. Roberts’ Sam is a snide, detestable slug whose sole ambition is to slime his way up the ladder of society, and assumedly will get off at the ‘politics’ rung, considering his lack of human decency and profound self-obsession. Timothy Spall, as the friendly, wisdom-spouting father figure, is infuriatingly, and stupidly, calm and resolute in a situation of real menace, and as for Kevin McKidd’s robber? I’m not sure he’s even human. Numerous romantic questions for McKidd are poised, and moral dilemmas hypothesised, but none are ever developed or concluded. I’m sure Aboud’s intentions were positive; that he should be a complicated individual; that his past determines his morally dubious actions, and that therefore, he should be just as empathised with as feared. But there’s a thin line between being a complex character, and a nonsensical one. McKidd has crossed that line twice now after deciding to return to his original side, because it’s what a nonsensical person would do after all.

Aboud is essentially flipping off such backwards things in today’s film industry, such as structure, believability and development of theme.

Yes, that is a tiny statuette of the Virgin Mary on his mask. Nonsensical, you see. 

Sometimes even the poorest writing cannot prevent some genuine chemistry being created between romantic leads, and Come as a Bright Day could potentially succeed in this regard, if it wasn’t so blatantly obvious that Roberts and Poots utterly despise each other. Sheer contempt pours out of every orifice. This hatred-rivalry would be funny, if it wasn’t so central to the significance of the bloody film.

The film is the opposite of a rough diamond; it’s a slightly polished brick fallen off of a 60’s Glasgow high rise. It does have some positive elements. Imogen Poots is not just One Of The Best Looking Women In The World, as Mary she also performs amicably with material with which the accompanying term of ‘limited’ would be laughed off as the funniest joke ever told. She has genuine likeability, and there is a surprisingly touching scene where Spall describes how he inherited the butterfly jewel, and how he treasures its beauty and magnificence each day. He is, of course, referring to Mary. It’s very moving, and an immense pity that the film built around this moment is so utterly disappointing. Mary wishes to travel the world, and her desire to leave the world of these unsympathetic, hollow, materialism-addicted shells almost matches my own.

She's like Scarlett Johansson without the difficult-to-spell name

Aboud clearly wished to satirise the superficiality of the lifestyle of this latest generation of the ‘Bright Young Things,’ but his film is depressingly shallow, and therefore an inherently unrewarding experience. When considering the corruption of humanity by commercialism and capitalism, it is not in the least bit comprehensive, at least not beyond the main character’s own disillusionment with the upper-classes’ lifestyle. Its political references, the two thieves adorn the names ‘Cameron’ and ‘Clegg,’ are nothing more than yet another saddening wink to what could have been. This film will just leave you bitterly waiting for Kevin McKidd to just shoot the lot of them, before walking away, mooing, without stealing any jewels. Because, of course, that wouldn’t make sense.