I reem therefore I am

One of the first signs of Christmas is that I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here (or IACGMOOH as the kids all know it) is back. Perhaps, in the distant future, the other aspects of Christmas will fade away, and the true meaning of Christmas will involve being fed marsupial genitals in the jungle. After all, Christmas has pagan origins and might easily go back there. Eventually, one supposes, the lucky winner will become a human sacrifice.

Joey Essex is on this year's programme. He should do well – he has a rubbery resilient quality that ought to insulate him from all the torture. To put it another way, he's thick – but not simple. In the first show, which is all I've seen, he expresses his determination not to 'confrontate' anyone unless it is absolutely necessary. It would have been easier to say 'confront', but Joey Essex (real name: Alan Bedfordshire) feels the need to coin a more elaborate new word which conceivably has a meaning quite distinct from the original verb. This meaning remains submerged in the depths of Joey's rubbery brain – most likely, it will never be fully uncovered, so hard it is to penetrate this area. But that doesn't mean it isn't there.

I've said it before, Joey is a natural philosopher. Rather than be bound by pre-existing knowledge about how the world works, he is determined to reinvent human experience from the ground up, over and over again. Just like Heidegger. Or a small child. Finding himself on a moving boat with three other celebrities he shrewdly concludes that they must be 'going somewhere'. Instead of striking us as banal (it is worth pointing out here that great philosophical pronouncements are often confused with statements of the obvious) this comment achieves a level of  'idiocy' that forces us to look at the phrase 'going somewhere' (and also its obverse, 'going nowhere') afresh, and completely reconsider it as it relates not only to this situation but also to such concepts as – to take one example – Joey Essex's 'career'.

In its primitive aspect, the jungle is the perfect place for Essex to continue his philosophical quest to experience life as if for the first time. I doubt that we will ever see the fruits of his research in written form – Joey is not that kind of philosopher – and neither is 'learning' really part of his repertoire. He instinctively understands that 'knowing' separates us irrevocably from our surroundings - in order to truly experience life we must forget everything we ever knew. Joey has something of a head start here, and I wish him well in his endeavour. Sadly, I will not be following him on his journey, not wishing to condone the exploitation of cockroaches.

deja vu

I got in on Thursday and the radio had been retuned from Radio 2 to Magic FM. Every now and again this happens, as Jeremy Vine fatigue takes its toll. The reception isn't perfect but this is not without its plus points: my colleagues can enjoy the wall-to-wall hits and I can enjoy the bursts of static. Plus certain information that you don't get from Jeremy Vine: for example, the news that 'Christmas has definitely come early at Dagenham Motors'. Our listening is further enlivened by visits to 'the Magic newsroom', but this is not as exciting as it sounds.

As for the playlist it is largely aimed at making Radio 2 seem cutting edge, and it succeeds. In order to refresh my acquaintance with the latest hip new sounds I found myself once again watching The Official Top 40 on Viva at the weekend. I didn't get to the end – maybe I should have tackled something less ambitious, like the Official Top Ten. I didn't even find out whether Tinie Tempah made it to number one for – as our host, known only as 'me Danielle' put it – 'the third time today'. The third time today? How often do they compile the chart nowadays – every hour? I think she meant he'd be number one for the third time ever, today. But I wasn't hearing that comma. Standards are slipping. Sometimes 'me Danielle' couldn't even muster up a video because, so she said, no official video was available yet. Given the fly-by-night nature of some of these acts this was understandable, but it even applied to Cher. Really? It's hard to believe that someone so long in the tooth would be so careless. But it was so: no 'official' video for whatever it is she's churning out these days – just (conceivably) a suppressed YouTube clip of her dancing in her bedroom.

Perhaps it says it it all that What Does The Fox Say? was the best thing on offer. It won't break my heart if I never hear it again but, if it doesn't really answer the titular question, it has a lot of fun not doing that. Elsewhere, sound ideas were scuppered by poor execution. Take Rizzle Kicks' Skip To The Good Bit – nice title, shame there unaccountably wasn't a good bit, only what sounded like the chorus from EMF's Unbelievable with a mariachi band playing over the top of it.

But perhaps, strange to think, the charts aren't for embittered middle-aged men. They need something bland and soothing as porridge. Oh right yes, Magic FM. I nearly forgot. 

more of that

Vic + Flo Saw A Bear

I wasn't expecting to enjoy this French Canadian backwoods middle-aged-lesbians-on-probation movie quite as much as I did. It sounded like it might be irritatingly quirky, but it feels like it really happened. To me. It was in the Love strand of the festival, but don't expect a happy ending – Vic and Flo don't see a bear, but they do get caught in bear traps and die. Despite which, thanks to the magic of cinema, they still get to walk off into the distance together. And thank Heaven for that.

The Story Of My Death

I miscalculated, leaving only fifteen minutes to get from Vic + Flo on the South Bank to Story Of My Death in Leicester Square. As I hurried breathlessly through Charing Cross station I wondered if I would in fact die in transit, and, if so, whether this would be ironic. However, I didn't die, so the question didn't arise.

A question that did arise, however, was - was the film worth the effort? The answer was: not really. The signs were good, however. Casanova-meets-Dracula was the premise, and Spanish director Albert Serra was one of those splendidly unapologetic auteurs that you can't help loving, blithely stating that he never works with actors because they are 'horrible people', has never seen a genre movie, and never looks at the rushes while filming is still in progress. He also commented on the number of walk-outs his films inspire, so that the BFI representative onstage thought twice about telling everyone to 'enjoy the film'.

'Endure the film' was more like it. I found this a ponderous, visually-muddy slog through Casanova's fictionalised later years. Serra's decision to use non-professionals mostly bears fruit, but when it comes to Dracula, you should really call in the experts – this one has all the presence of a dead sheep. He isn't the worst Dracula ever (the one in Blade: Trinity trumps him) but he's definitely in my top ten. On the other hand, unfamiliarity with genre does have its advantages - I have to admit I've never seen the social embarrassment of biting someone in the neck portrayed so vividly as here. Neither have I seen anyone squeeze so much pleasure out of taking a shit as Casanova does in one scene.

But you have to wonder – he's never seen a genre movie? He should take this directing lark a bit more seriously. Or less seriously – he shot over 400 hours of footage for this, apparently. One wonders what was left on the cutting-room floor – car chases, machine-gun battles, alien invasions, another film which I might have preferred? I didn't ask. This was the only Q&A I've attended where no-one in the audience asked a question. Maybe they didn't want to encourage Serra. He was quite garrulous; the difficulty, you worried, would be getting him to shut up. He wore a jacket and tie but was surprisingly young – though maybe I only expected an older man because he was called 'Albert'. I am wrong about this film anyway - it has won a prize, it must be good. Thank God I'm not a professional.

The Strange Colour Of Your Body's Tears

If you don't know what a giallo is, have never seen The Strange Vice Of Mrs. Wardh, anything by Dario Argento, or Amer, the debut film by the directors of this (Belgian duo Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani), you can expect to be confused by TSCOYBT. If you do know what a giallo is and have seen all of the above, you can also expect to be confused by TSCOYBT. There is a lot, as they say, to 'unpack' here. I was unpacking furiously throughout, but never got to the bottom of even one imaginary box.

But you are meant to be overwhelmed. Sensory overload is the modus operandi here: if your brain doesn't overheat, you just aren't getting it.

Giallo means yellow in Italian. Gialli were pulp paperback novels of mystery and suspense popular in Italy - they had yellow covers. The term was then applied to a number of similarly-themed films in the 60's and 70's, directed by people like Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, and Sergio Martino. See, it all makes perfect sense.

These films were noted for their heavily-stylized scenes of violence, often against women. Amer (it means 'bitter') is a kind of abstract meditation on the giallo, recasting its elements as a kind of erotic nightmare from a female perspective. OK?

TSCOYBT was written before Amer, but only Amer's moderate success gave Cattet and Forzani the money to make it. So, as Cattet or Forzani joked at the Q&A, they are regressing, not progressing. Or maybe they're doing both at the same time. There's no plot in Amer, but there is here, though it's hard to tell whether it's important or irrelevant. A man loses his wife, who it turns out has been killed, unless she has turned into someone else - he is woken up by himself buzzing to be let into his gorgeous Art Deco flat, and when his double walks in, he kills him, or is killed by him, then is woken up by himself at the buzzer again - a woman is menaced by a man who emerges from a hatbox, and pursues her behind the wallpaper – finally, in a secret room where childhood traumas lurk, a head wound becomes a vagina, or is it the other way around? Or did that happen at all? The soundtrack boxes your ears, the colours burn your eyes, and I was either pleasurably disorientated or felt like I too was suffering from a head wound. I can't wait to see it again, if only to be sure I didn't imagine it.