The charm offensive?

Crikey, is this the new touchy-feely Met? Are they embracing a new diplomatic, more communicative, less clubbing people over the head style of policing? Who knows…. and how long will it last…before fingers itchy for some baton whacking action  takes over along with a spot of kettling..?

Senior officers have told representatives from Climate Camp, who are planning to construct a huge campsite next week at an undisclosed location in London, that they will be met with a “community-style” policing operation that will limit the use of surveillance units and stop-and-searches wherever possible.

Furthermore

Activists have also been assured that there will be no “ring of steel” around their camp and that sleep deprivation tactics, used when officers blasted loud music at campers at last year’s Climate Camp at Kingsnorth power station in Kent, will not be repeated.

Yeah, I’ll see it to believe it.

Inglorious indeed

Oh dear, seems like film critic Peter Bradshaw is not dazzled nor overwhelmed by Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. I don’t usually take much notice of Bradshaw as he has bigged up films that really didn’t deserve being bigged up, though there are times he does, in my opinion, get it right. But hey, it is all subjective after all.

Having seen it once in Cannes earlier this year, and again for its UK release I was struck afresh by how exasperatingly awful and transcendentally disappointing it is: a colossal, complacent, long-winded dud, a gigantic two-and-a-half-hour anti-climax, like a Quentin Tarantino film in form and mannerism but with the crucial element of genius mysteriously amputated. Over-stretched scene follows over-stretched scene in plonkingly conventional narrative order and each is stuffed with dull dialogue which made it feel like Mogadon was somehow being pumped into the cinema’s air-conditioning.

Yeah, that sounds like Tarantno….But that to me is the one of the central problems regarding Tarantino, he can’t bloody edit his films! His scripts can be just too long, over-bloated, long-winded, which inevitably drags the films out unnecessarily. And I liked Kill Bill, really liked it, preferred Planet Terror to Death Proof (as part of the grindhouse double-feature).

So…..Less is more Quentin, less is more! He needs to force himself to chant that mantra 100 times a day and maybe it will become etched in his creative psyche…

Oh, and bring back your former partner in crime, Roger Avary…. Creative differences or no creative differences bring him back. He understood the art of editing scripts.

I will have to dig out my copy of Sight and Sound magazine from a couple of months ago that had a feature on Tarantino, again, it was rather mixed.

But …in saying all of that, will be buying my ticket for the two and a half hour extravaganza.

Mark Kermode on Inglorious Basterds.