“Following reports of harassment and malicious communications, which are criminal offences, a man and a woman from Borehamwood, both aged in their forties, were arrested on Wednesday 29 January.
The arrests were necessary to fully investigate the allegations as is routine in these types of matters. Following further investigations, officers deemed that no further action should be taken due to insufficient evidence.
In relation to the police visit on 20 December, a complaint was submitted which was reviewed by our Professional Standards Department. It was deemed that the service provided by officers was appropriate.”
Prophet, the chief constable, said: “As the new chief constable for Hertfordshire my priorities are to fight crime, arrest criminals and build public trust and confidence. We will do this by tackling violent and sexual crime, street robbery, burglary, car and shop theft. I am equally focused on supporting my officers and staff in the difficult judgments they have to make on our behalf every day.”
a producer for the film, because he thought people
wouldn't take it seriously
if they knew he was involved.
When people DID find out,
he decided to make the most of it
by handing out deely boppers
at the premiere.
Mark Kermode - Bee Movie
"....Several problems with it
and they goes something like this :
Firstly, it has noproper sense of its anthropomorphism --
The way in which you domovies
about animals talking to each other is,
The Animals talk to each other, okay,
you don't then cross over
the species boundary,and have
The Animals then talking to The Humans
and The Gag is, 'The Animals talk --'
Right -- when we're in The Hive
with all The Animals talking
to each other, it's fine
We're in Animal World,
We're in Fantasy World,
but there's a plot Point here,
which is that He meets A Woman
thenHe starts talking to her
and she goes "Blimey! A Talking Bee!"
So The Gagisn't that
‘Bees live their life in relation to --
The Gagis that
‘Allbeesactuallytalk —’
which means that none of the rest of movie
makes any sense because
Bees don't wear hats,
Bees don't fly Planes, Bees don't -- don't --
Bees don't -- y'know -- drive cars... None of these things happen
so you've trodden over The Line,
you've brokenThe Unwritten Rule
of 'You can do this, you can't do that --'
It's like 'No, you can't --'
It's like --
"....It's made up.
It's not True
Work it out."
...No, There are Rules, that you --
That doesn't workif you do that,
in the same way as it doesn't work
in Ocean's Thirteen, when
Julia Roberts manages to get into a club
because she looks like Julia Roberts,
but nobody says 'Yeah, but,
he looks like Brad Pit and
he looks like George Clooney
and that other guy looks like Casey Affleck
and anyway there's a whole
movie carrying on around it -- '
“It doesn't. You —
No, sorrythere's ways
of doing anthropomorphism
and thatain't one of them,
Number one --
Number two,
It's A Comedy aboutLawyers;
It's A Comedy in which A Bee sues The Human race, right?
Very funny for the... you know, the grown ups
and all the rest of it -- Kids :
"What.....? 'Sue', what does 'Sue', mean? I don't know --
Isn't Sue you know, A Boy Called Sue …?
“…because they'll go straight away with
that Johnny Cash reference weren't they?”
Well they're more likely to do that
than say “Oh yes, I understand
it's a legal term, so —
I don't think so
Point number two —
“They're more likely
to get the legal term
than they are the
Johnny Cash reference --
Point number three : the whole thing about
'I don't want to be A Drone --'
is ripped off of ANTZ, which in itself
was kind of ripped off of A Bug's Life
and that, you know that's all been done before
Point number four : The Jokes aren't
as funny as they ought to be; that's not to say that I didn't laugh a few times but when I did laugh, I laughed as an adult laughing at adult humor -- not adult in the... in the you know in the Jimmy Carr sense, but as in the --
So it's almost like you gone through the Looking Glass, the cartoon is no longer being made for the kids audience it's being made as a sort of you know I want to make gags that will make sense to the older audience and I've kind of completely bypassed the kids oh bother you know what I've got to do something for the kids let's do it as a cartoon --
And this all kind of came into Focus for me when I saw that trailer and the trailer was the gag is he Jerry sign but dressed up as a Bee he can't do the dressing up as a Bee so Steven Spielberg says and incidentally not very convincing Steven Spielberg may be a director but boy he can't act his way out a paper bag says why don't you just do it as a cartoon and you know what there's a terrible sense of that there's a terrible sense of that's what they've done they've just gone why not do it as a cartoon --
It's not terrible but it ain't a Kids film --
It's not a proper Kids film,
because if it is a proper Kids film,
it doesn't do --
the anthropomorphism thing
doesn't work, the animation
should be funny, the story
should be better and the jokes should be better and that -- none of those are True.
Wesley is grinding something into a paste in a mortar and pestle, mumbling to himself while doing so. Illyria is sitting behind him on the edge of the bed.
ILLYRIA
I don't understand.
WESLEY
It'll help you heal faster.
(shakes the paste off the pestle, sets it aside)
If you really plan to joinus in this fight—
(grabs a strip of muslin and dredges it in the paste)
ILLYRIA
I will fight. I've been broken and humiliated. I will return in kind every blow, every sting. I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces.
WESLEY
(pulls the strip out of the paste and walks with it toward Illyria)
You're a very inspirational person. Have I mentioned that?
(brushes her hair away from her neck)
ILLYRIA
You are what I don't understand.
WESLEY
And that would be different because?
(presses the strip to Illyria's skin)
ILLYRIA
Angel told you to do whatever you wanted. Today... tonight, you may all be dead.
WESLEY
Yes. Good point.
ILLYIRA
I am not what you want.
WESLEY
(stands back, turns away, walks to his preparation area)
(his voice nearly cracking)
No.
ILLYIRA
(touches her bandage)
Then why—
WESLEY
(prepares another bandage)
Don't I go off and have one last perfect day? Smell the flowers, or sky-dive, or have a go with Mistress Spanks-A-Lot... or whatever the hell one is supposed to do in this situation.
(places another bandage on Illyria's neck)
ILLYRIA
Mistress who?
WESLEY
There is no perfect day for me, Illyria. There is no sunset or painting or finely-aged scotch that's going to sum up my life and make tonight any... There is nothing that I want.
ILLYRIA
You want to be with Fred.
WESLEY
(finishes bandaging Illyria, wipes his hands on a hand towel)
Yes. Yes, that's where I'd be if I could.
ILLYRIA
I could assume her shape, make her come alive again this once for you.
(looks down)
But you would never ask me to.
WESLEY
The first lesson a watcher learns is to separate truth from illusion. Because in the world of magics, it's the hardest thing to do. The truth is that Fred is gone. To pretend anything else would be a lie. And since I don't actually intend to die tonight, I won't accept a lie. Is it better?
[Scene now shows the interior of Astrotrain as the Decepticons aboard escape inside him, adding heavy loads that prevent him — he says — from making it back to Cybertron. Now it is Decepticons versus Decepticons...The Strong wish to stay onboard whilst The Weak get thrown off to die in outer space]
137 ASTROTRAIN: "Jettison some *weight* or I'll never make it to Cybertron!"
�138 STARSCREAM: (stepping forward, gleeful) Fellow Decepticons, Astrotrain has requested that we *lighten* our *burden!*
�139 BONECRUCHER: "In that case I say it is survival of the fittest."�140 STARSCREAM: "Do I hear a *second* on that?"�141 SOUNDWAVE, DIRGE, RAMJET, THRUST, BLITZWING, : "ayes."
“A descendant of Polish Jewish immigrants, Gaiman had gotten his start in the ’80s as a journalist for hire in London covering Duran Duran, Lou Reed, and other brooding lords of rock, and in the world of comic conventions, he was the closest thing there was to that archetype.
Women would turn up to his signings dressed in the elaborate Victorian-goth
attire of his characters and beg him
to sign their breasts or slip him key
cards to their hotel rooms.
One writer recounts running into Gaiman at a World Fantasy Convention in 2011.
His assistant wasn’t around, and
he was late to a reading. “I can’t get to it
if I walk by myself,” he told her.
As they made their way through the convention side by side, “the whole floor
full of people tilted and slid toward
him,” she says. “They wanted to be entwined with him in ways
I was not prepared to
defend him against.”
A woman fell to her
knees and wept.
People who flock to fantasy conventions
and signings make up an “inherently vulnerable community,”
one of Gaiman’s former friends,
a fantasy writer, tells me.
They “wrap themselves around a beloved text so it becomes their self-identity,” she says.They want to share
their souls with The Creators
of these works.
“And if you have morality
around it, you say ‘no.’”
It was an open secret in the late ’90s and early aughts among conventiongoers that Gaiman cheated on his first wife, Mary McGrath, a private midwestern Scientologist he’d married in his early 20s.
But in my conversations with Gaiman’s old friends, collaborators, and peers, nearly all of them told me that they never imagined that Gaiman’s affairs could have been anything butenthusiastically consensual. As one prominent editor in the field puts it,
“The one thing I hear again and
again, largely from women,
is ‘He was always nice to me.
He was always a gentleman.’”
The writer Kelly Link, who met Gaiman at a reading in 1997, recalls finding him charmingly goofy. “He was hapless in a way that was kind of exasperating,” she says, “but also made him seem very harmless.” Someone who had a sexual relationship with Gaiman in the aughts recalls him flipping through questions fans wrote on cards at a Q&A session. Once, a fan asked if she could be his “sex slave”: “He read it aloud and said, ‘Well, no.’ He’d be very demure.”
But there were some who saw another side of the author. One woman, Brenda (a pseudonym), met Gaiman in the ’90s at a signing for The Sandman where she was working. On signing lines, Gaiman had a knack for connecting with each individual.
He would ask questions, laugh, and assure them that their inability to form sentences was fine. After the Sandman signing, at a dinner attended by those who had worked the event, Gaiman sat next to Brenda. “Everyone wanted to be near him, but he was laser focused on me,” she says. A few years later, Brenda traveled to Chicago to attend the World Horror Convention, where Gaiman received the top prize for American Gods, the book that cemented him as a best-selling novelist.
