“Shoot all the Bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a Mockingbird.” 

Atticus Finch gives this advice to his children as he defends the real Mockingbird of this pulitzer prize winning novel, Tom Robinson a black man falsely accused of raping a white girl.

As I read this book I remembered the film with Gregory Peck
who portrays one of the great heroes of literature, a lawyer whose lone struggle for justice pricks the conscience of a town steeped in prejudice and hypocrisy.

Although I’m an atheist I am interested in religious beliefs, metaphysics and philosophy. I am however a lazy atheist, so I like to explore these concepts, NOT in academic text books, but in science fiction novels.

CONTACT is a novel by the late scientist Carl Sagan about first contact with alien lifeforms. Sagan’s enthusiasm and belief in Alien Intelligences led to the establishment of SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestial Intelligence).

Contact was an excellent science fiction novel exploring themes of religious belief, science, rationality, faith and god. Contact is also a hollywood film staring Jodie Foster. The film version however, left out my favourite part of the book.

I like to read for pleasure, and Science Fiction gives me the greatest pleasure of all………..Sorry, SECOND greatest pleasure; (Thanks for reminding me Margaret).

When I choose a science fiction book I usually go for a title with ‘God’ or ‘Eternity’ or ‘Infinity’ in it. I want to travel to the furthest reaches of human imagination. I usually enjoy the book but I’m almost inevitably disappointed by the conclusion. 

I’m looking for the answer to “life, the universe and everything” (as Douglas Adams would say), but it’s obviously naive of me to think a science fiction author has got all the answers.

I read quite a lot, but the majority of  it has been Marvel Comics and Science Fiction books. When I first joined my book club, (which is mainly populated by female teachers), I didn’t think they would like such a ‘boys only’ genre, so I picked other books for the group to read.

My first choice was I thought fairly ’safe’. “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey. This was also a great film with Jack Nicholson. The book however gives terrifying descriptions of probably the most evil monster in fiction: Nurse Ratched.

Nowhere Boy is a great new film dealing with something rarely covered in books, and never portrayed in film – John Lennon’s childhood. It brilliantly manages to evoke the atmosphere of suburban life, circa 1960.

The Director Sam Taylor-Wood manages to avoid the obvious cliche of telling Lennon’s story through his and the Beatles songs, instead there is plenty of the 1950’s music that inspired the Group during their formative teenage years.

The artist Steve Ditko collaborated with writer Stan Lee to forge a unique style for Spider-Man that the film director Sam Raimi has reinterpreted for the screen.

Although Stan Lee created the character and wrote the origin story, Steve Ditko felt restricted by Lee’s editorship and asked if he could plot the Spiderman stories. Lee eventually agreed to this, although no other Marvel artist in the early 1960s had won this concession.

Ditko would hand over the completed Spiderman illustrations and Stan Lee would insert the dialogue. This created the unique Spiderman style with numerous pages dealing soley with Peter Parker’s private life, instead of battling the latest super-villain, which tended to happen in other Marvel titles.

I have always been anti-TV. I love reading, so having a TV on in the room interferes with that. Whenever I watch a lot of TV, (more than an hour), I’m left with an empty, “what a waste of time” , feeling. I have never been able to put my finger on why I felt like this, until now.

The psychologist Oliver James has written a book called “Affluenza“, which is an analysis of the causes of depression in a materially affluent world. On page 284 he looks at the effect of TV;

Why are many new films so long? I ask this question as someone who remembers when going to the Cinema involved watching TWO films: The Main Feature and the ‘B’ film. The ‘B’ film was shown first as a ‘warm up’ to the main act.

This was followed by an intermission where ice creams and chocolates were sold. The cinema may also show some short cartoons and ‘Pathe News’ to keep the audience up to date with world events.

It was an entertaining evening which lasted around 3 hours, which meant each of the films was about 90 minutes long. Many, many films these days are 3 hours or even longer! Why is this?

I go to the cinema regularly and one of the few adverts I enjoy are the series for Orange Wednesday. They involve famous actors/actresses being interviewed for a film role. The actors are always deadly serious and want high-profile Oscar winning roles.

The Interviewers are only interested in getting the word ‘Orange’ and ‘mobile phones’ into the script as often as possible, no matter how inappropriate or even historically inaccurate to the film. The advert usually ends with the actor storming out of the interview room. They are funny adverts.

Last night I enjoyed the best film I have seen for a long time. The Fantastic Mr Fox is a kids film based on a Roald Dahl book.

I’m too old to have read Roald Dahl, and I have no children, (so I didn’t catch the book second time around). But I did get the film references that were littered thoughout.

The film’s main influence was Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Kill Bill’. It had the same titled episode format, and the same dramatic rapid drum music, for the action sequences.