Teenage Mutant Ninja Turd-les...

I only ever tend to write about films that I either really loved, or that I really despised. This is mostly because I find it a lot easier to write about something I have strong feelings for rather than something that didn’t stir up anything in me. Last night I went to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles knowing that I’d definitely be writing about it afterwards. The question was which side of the fence would the film fall?

Even More Film Reviews

This weekend was one of those times that I really made the most of my Cineworld Unlimited card, after a rather lax September in which I basically avoided the box office. I took in I three films, a rather eclectic collection of films actually, and I’m glad to say that they were all pretty decent. One of them I’d recommend to everyone, another I’d recommend to a handful of people and the other I actually wouldn’t recommend to anyone despite the fact I did enjoy.

Moaning About Charity

Occasionally I like to write things on this blog but not half as often as I should. Even more occasionally what I write is somewhat thought provoking, again not as half as often as I want it to be. Today I'm writing to have a little bit of a moan about charity, naturally. More specifically the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.

It's the viral phenomenon of the summer, well other than Ebola, and seeing as my mum and her husband have now been 'challenged' I can only assume it wont be long before somebody I know 'challenges' me. When that happens I will gladly donate £10 to an ALS charity, but I won't be spending any time making a video to help raise awareness (self-congratulating vanity project to show the world how funny, creative and charitable I am) and I won't be giving it to the ALS Association.

It would be easy to spend time criticising the way that people are using this charity as a way to draw attention to themselves online but to be honest as annoying as those self-serving videos are I can look past them if it helps people with ALS. Much like Mo-Vember, Pink-Tober and those annoying wrist bands, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge annoys the shit out of me, but I would happily look past my irritation if they were doing a great deal of good. The problem is that they aren't, they just allow knob heads to feel better about themselves without doing any where near as much as good as people think.

“But Glenn!” I hear you scream, “We're raising awareness for ALS.” Well yes, these charity trends do help to raise awareness which is all well and good but then again 53% of people in Britain have no idea what the Ice Bucket Challenge is in support. These are people that are watching and making the videos but still manage to have no idea what the ALS Association is. A good portion of these people still don't know what ALS is either. Lou who?

“But Glenn!” I hear you say, “We're raising money for ALS!” Well yeah, some people are but one fact that says pretty much everything about the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is this - over half of the people in Britain that made a video didn't donate a penny to the charity. At least if people are buying a fashionable charitable wrist band they actual contribute something to the charity. I sadly know people that have jumped on the Ice Bucket bandwagon, done a 'funny' video, felt better about helping spread awareness and then not given a penny. This is charity in the 21^st century.

“But Glenn!” I hear you cry, “We've raised nearly a hundred million dollars for ALS!” Well yeah, that's fantastic, that's an immense amount of money to go towards helping people with ALS, but how much of that money is actually going towards that? Obviously lots of figures are thrown about, I've seen as low as 5%, but until the ALS Association's accounts are released nobody can know for sure. The figure being touted by the ALS Association is only 27%, and that's from the company that you're giving your money too, if they're happily admitting that they only spend a quarter of your donation on helping end ALS I can guarantee it's actually a lot lower than that.

So what does the rest get spent on? The majority of it gets spent on 'public and professional education' which can be roughly translated as advertising and marketing. So a big portion of the money that people are donating goes into trying to get people to donate more. That's a bigger portion of the donations going towards encouraging more donations than helping people with ALS. The rest of it goes towards helping pay the wages of the ALSA and for those that don't already know this – working in charity is a very lucrative career. It would be rather impartial of me if I didn't point out that this figure was given before the summer Ice Bucket Challenge craze kicked off, maybe all of the extra money they've made this year will go towards helping people and not towards marketing, solicitors and big bonuses for the board members. I won't be holding my breath though.

“But Glenn!” I hear you roar, “We've still raised like a quarter of million dollars for ALS!” Well yeah that's great but do you have any idea what that money is being spent on either? Nope, didn't think so. Well obviously the majority of that money goes into researching the disease, finding out ways to help ease people's suffering and find an effective cure. Which is great, it really is, but most of this research is done by massive pharmaceutical companies and this is where this charity model really goes to fucking shit. I can look past the self-serving pricks making the videos, I can look past the lack of awareness from people taking part and I can look past the small portion of donations that goes towards actual charity work. It's harder to look past the fact that all the Ice Bucket Challenge is really doing is lining the pockets of already extremely wealthy pharmaceutical companies.

The research that these charitable donations are supporting is already being done by these companies and they are doing them for one reason only – money. If a company finds a more effective treatment to help lessen the symptoms of ALS or discover a form of chemotherapy with less severe side-effects then they can patent this drug and sell it for even more money than they are already charging. Effectively the donations that people are making just enable companies to more cost-effectively make a product that they can charge extortionate money for. And if that isn't the definition of charity I don't know what is.

So there you have it, the full effect of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge – helping to swell the coffers of companies that already make a fortune from helping to treat diseases. At least the middle classes can feel good about themselves though, and they get to look cool on the internet as well. Everybody wins! Apart from people suffering from ALS, or whatever the fashionable charity of the month is.

I'm sure that half the people that read this will just think I'm being a cock for the sake of it but that's never stopped me from speaking my mind before. I'm also aware that there are a lot of lovely people out there who do have the best intentions when they take part in the Ice Bucket Challenge. Unfortunately this country is dangerously unaware of what they can do to help actually help charities and are taking the most visible options, so the wrong people are profiting from it. If people really do want to donate money to help people with ALS I urge them to put down their camera phones and instead do some research into where their money is going. This goes for anybody who wants to donate money to any charity.

Here's a link to follow if you like animals and want to find some charities that help animals.

Here's a link to some information on charities doing great work in Africa.

Here's a link to check out some great charities that are trying to ease the damage that we're doing to the planet.

Oh and here is a link to a list of the 50 worst charities in America, so avoid giving to any of these companies or their subsidiaries.

Chef

It’s rare that I leave a cinema feeling, for lack of a better word, happy. That’s not to say there aren’t lots of films that I enjoy, this year in particular has been a great one for cinema. Under the Skin was brilliant but I left the cinema feeling rather disturbed and uncomfortable. Twelve Years a Slave was incredible but everybody left the cinema in complete silence, unable to put into words how harrowing the film was. When I left the cinema after watching Chef I was happy, “Ow my face hurts from smiling and I feel warm inside” happy.

The Edge of Tomorrow

I went into the Edge of Tomorrow with low expectations, and I can honestly say that I didn’t come out disappointed. Whilst it didn’t have me on the edge of my seat (see what I did there?) it did manage to keep me in it until the end of the film…just about.

Oh I've done a blog entry.

So let’s talk about Captain America: Winter Soldier. I sat down in the cinema with low expectations, Captain America’s flag-waving patriotism has always belonged in ‘golden era’ of comics in my mind, out of touch with contemporary thinking. That being said Brubaker’s run on Cap was exquisite, as is more or less everything the man does, and I was hoping that Marvel would take this on board with this latest instalment in the Captain America franchise.