What my fish photographer did teach me is to ponder! A quality rarely experienced on the isle of Manhattan. So for a few days X-Men: First Class has been apond my mind. I'm not a comic book geek (sorry, 'fan') but I did once have a boyfriend (well Viva doesn't really have such those things) so let's say significant 'geek-o'-the hun' who was into this. Methinks the geek and the etiquette niver quite meshed, though. TMI, I know...Hmmmm..And I never thought that Viva would enjoy an X-Men movie - I dimly remember seeing the first one a decade ago when I was but a jejeune. And I know I'm not supposed to like such things.

Viva should, instead, be raving about Godard's Film Socialisme out this week. Well, of course one should rave. Godard simply IS a genius. And his new film says more about the state of mankind, modernity and metropolis (even though it gyrates on an ocean liner) than any techno-geekno device you will ever order online. But America has a long way to go before it even catches up with Alphaville. Plus ça change.

Does X-Men: First Class really tell us anything about anything or is it so wondrously packaged that we throw caution to the wind and let ourselves just be entertained? Well, the latter is most certainly true. And you just KNOW that's not a given anymore in Hollywood or even in independent cinema. And if the philosopher Slavoj Žižek WERE to write about X-Men then maybe this one might set him flying. Superficially it may seem silly to put pen to paper to digital celluloid and link the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis to comic book mutants! But to even get a normal schoolkid to question any 'ffffing Hugh Jackman thing' is an A-plus achievement.

And another 'A' of Matthew Vaughn's direction is to let us other ring-side mutants into that inner realm without bamboozling our sensibilities. The narrative line (a historical prequel to X-Men, 2000 with Magneto's holocaust origins) is clear whilst never pedantic - all in the original comics I'm informed. And in the way Arthur C. Clarke's The Adjustment Bureau (and the recent film adaptation) forced one to consider just who is pulling the strings in our so-called democracies, X-Men: First Class may dazzle us with CGI bodily transformations but at heart these creatures are not simply puppets. They are willing to cut their strings, however reluctantly to question, if not exactly meet their maker. And it's lucky happenstance that the film was shot in England (yummy Architectural Digest photo spread) for there is a Celtic discombobulation of spirit- a dark, brooding, keening longing for the unknowable. The rune within ourselves: beyond and within all that bluster is the root of our evil and becoming. Those who have no more talent nor ambition but to create a fight. And those who lack any less talent nor ambivalence than to acquiesce to such primordial pomp. That's the kind of gravitas you get when a female producer (Lauren Shuler Donner - OK, she's Richard Donner's wife but hey...) is on board. Apparently Bryan Singer (director of X-Men 1&2 and 'story by' on the latest) bought Marvel Comics stock (pre X-Men) when it was in bankruptcy. A joke for a friend. Disney later paid $4 billion for the company! I'm now gonna go and rent me Matthew Vaughn's Kick Ass.

At the next SciCafe tonight Wed, June 1 (American Museum of Natural History) "Christopher Raxworthy, associate curator in the Department of Herpetology who has spent decades working in Madagascar, will discuss the mix of modern technologies—including satellite imagery and DNA sequencing—and “muddy boots” field biology to remote parts of the island that is making discovery possible today."

Hīc iacet Arthūrus, rex quondam, rexque futūrus