Google Whacks

I took a day off mainly because a few films I wanted to see were released on that date. Nowadays, however, just because a film has been released, doesn't mean you can see it, even in London. It's as though they have been released into thin air – which, with all the new technologies, is now more or less the case I think. So Ulrich Seidl's Paradise: Faith was nowhere to be found in London on its release date. 'But, but - ', I spluttered, 'they talked about it on The Review Show! Marcel Theroux liked it!' No-one was listening, except a policeman. I was moved along.

'He liked Paradise: Love better', murmured the policeman in my ear. I had to admit that this was true.

I ended up at the merry Hell that is the Trocadero to see This Is The End. Loud music played as I queued for a ticket and there was a feeling that, in wanting just to see a film, I was acting eccentrically. No popcorn? No hot dog? You don't feel this kind of pressure at the ICA.

The auditorium itself, however, was refreshingly empty on a Friday afternoon. It was like that ad they run warning of the death of cinema ('an experience shared... all gone'). Ideal, in fact. They don't seem to run that ad at Cineworld - in fact I'm not sure there were any ads at all, improbable as this now seems. There were definitely trailers. I saw one for The Internship, the new Vince Vaughan/Owen Wilson vehicle in which they go to work for Google. According to reports I have read, the 'message' of this film is essentially that Google is a great company, and you are really lucky if you get to work for them. Hmm, wonder where they got the money for this project...

Anyway, I don't know about the film but I can't see the trailer holding up to repeated viewings. It begins with our heroes enumerating the Terminator sequels, but ends with a joke (admittedly quite a good one) which depends upon them knowing nothing about X-Men. This seems inconsistent. Mind you, it's probably all in keeping with a film about two middle-aged nerds who have never heard of the internet. But get to work for Google.

And then the film – This Is The End has a bunch of Hollywood celebs playing themselves, facing a Biblical apocalypse. 'I don't want to die at James Franco's house', whimpers Jay ('Who?') Baruchel – and one sympathises (especially when he is accused of being someone who 'hates movies that are universally loved' – here's someone I can identify with). Jonah Hill gets raped by a demon before doing a Linda Blair routine, but none of this is as quite as much fun as it should be. I'd hoped for a sardonic take on celebrity, but this is more of a self-indulgent laddish romp, though it has its moments. I was then pleased to move on to more familiar territory: the ICA were showing a 35mm print of Videodrome discovered in their 'orphan cupboard'. This was part of something called 'Blondiefest', so I had visions of feeling rather underdressed in a cinema full of people got up as Debbie Harry. But it wasn't like that.

The man introducing it said that they are remaking Videodrome in 2014 with Channing Tatum. Maybe this was a joke. Mind you, last time I saw Tatum (in This Is The End) he was bare-buttocked in a pink gimp mask being led around on a leash by Danny ('Who?') McBride, which suggests that he's moving in the right direction. Wonder if he'll take the Debbie Harry role...

Videodrome is about TV, specifically it's about a sado-masochistic porn channel so 'strong' that it interferes with reality – or at least with the mind. And, since this is a David Cronenberg film, also the body. Thus a rash develops on James Woods' stomach which turns into a pulsing slit that accepts videocassettes, which a sinister corporation can then use to 'play' him. It's all splendidly analogue, and one wonders how the remake will cope with that. There were never any sequels to reflect the newer formats - no Videodrome 2: The Laserdisc Horror - but in some ways Videodrome, made in 1983, feels like a premonition of the internet's rise. What is the Cathode Ray Mission (a place in which derelicts are encouraged to watch TV so as to 'patch them back into the world's mixing board') except a prototypical internet cafe?

And what about 'Spectacular Optical', the evil corporation - ostensibly an optician's - that actually makes Videodrome - as well as 'inexpensive glasses for the Third World and missile guidance systems for NATO'? Aren't Google making glasses now?

Or is Videodrome a warning about reality TV? 'Reality is less than television', says 'media guru Brian O'Blivion' (who only exists on TV), so where does that leave Brentwood? Gemma Collins has now opened a clothes shop for 'curvy girls' (there were quite a lot of girls clustered around it the other day, all of them railrod-thin) but just before it opened I was walking towards it and noticed that they'd knocked through the back wall. Through the hole, in the outside world, I could see someone walking towards me, someone I vaguely recognised – it was myself! What I'd thought was a hole was a mirror. Yet the feeling lingers that reality in Brentwood is wearing thin, and that before long Joey Essex will be coming round my flat to feed TOWIE DVD's into my nether regions... I'm not sure whether to be frightened or excited by this.