The fact that all of Ireland's main political parties supported gay marriage, and a number of opinion polls indicated the likely outcome, it still came as a profoundly moving moment when the Irish people voted for gay marriage and thereby rejected the admonitions of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, a hierarchy which has held sway in that troubled land for hundreds of years.
Perhaps centuries of being buggered by priests and tortured by nuns had something to do with it. I like to think so. The hypocrisy of these authority figures has been so great it has almost beggared belief, yet, it seems, it was all true. And now the ordinary people of Ireland have said no to the hypocrisy, no to the ignorant prejudice and no to the attempts of the catholic leaders to keep Ireland entrenched in the past, when their word was law.
There seems to be no good reason in my eyes why every country in the world where gay marriage (and indeed, homosexuality itself) is unlawful should not have a referendum of its own. I foresee problems, however. In much of central Africa, Uganda being a notable example, homosexuality is a crime attracting the death sentence, while armed gangs roam the streets, beating and murdering anyone they have decided is gay. And what do think IS, and its financial sponsors, Saudi Arabia, feel about the whole LGBT thing?
In India there are large sections of the male population who think it's OK to rape a woman. What happened in Ireland is evidence that, little by little, the world is moving forward to a better place. But let's face it people, it's got an awfully long way to go.
Sunday, 24 May 2015
Saturday, 16 May 2015
Get ready for an IS takeover
In 1941, when Adolf Hitler was preparing to invade Russia, he told his generals:
"All we have to do is kick the door in and the whole rotten structure will fall in."
Not only did he underestimate the potent effect of generals January and February, he also underestimated the will of the Russian people to resist his advances.
In Iraq there is no general January or February, and the will of the Iraqi people, and particularly the Iraqi army has been shown to be found wanting whenever it faces a threat. Hence when IS kicks the door in they will indeed find the whole rotten structure of post-war Iraq falls in, leaving a vacuum IS will fill all too easily.
IS forces, well organised and well equipped, are closing on Baghdad as I write. I predict that within a few months, or even weeks, they will be the "legitimate" government of Iraq. They are also surrounding the desert city of Palmyra, furthest outpost of the Roman Empire and still astonishingly well preserved. Standing next to the remains of the Roman city is the great Temple of Baal, an even older structure and unique in the ancient world. Based on their actions thus far, there appears to be a significant risk they will bulldoze the entire site, thus removing from the face of the Earth one of the finest archaeological sites in the world.
I visited Palmyra in 2008 and was almost overwhelmed by its grandeur. To think that quite soon the whole place may be reduced to a pile of rubble is more than I can bear. As for Iraq, sites like Samara and Ur may also destroyed, while the contents of the great museum in Baghdad, already badly looted in the aftermath of the 2003 war, may either be smashed or, even more cynically, sold off to the highest bidder.
How has all this come about? To answer this question we need look no further than our own doorstep, and our friends and allies, the Americans. To put it another way, this is the sort of thing that happens when you decide to indulge in a spot of regime change...
"All we have to do is kick the door in and the whole rotten structure will fall in."
Not only did he underestimate the potent effect of generals January and February, he also underestimated the will of the Russian people to resist his advances.
In Iraq there is no general January or February, and the will of the Iraqi people, and particularly the Iraqi army has been shown to be found wanting whenever it faces a threat. Hence when IS kicks the door in they will indeed find the whole rotten structure of post-war Iraq falls in, leaving a vacuum IS will fill all too easily.
IS forces, well organised and well equipped, are closing on Baghdad as I write. I predict that within a few months, or even weeks, they will be the "legitimate" government of Iraq. They are also surrounding the desert city of Palmyra, furthest outpost of the Roman Empire and still astonishingly well preserved. Standing next to the remains of the Roman city is the great Temple of Baal, an even older structure and unique in the ancient world. Based on their actions thus far, there appears to be a significant risk they will bulldoze the entire site, thus removing from the face of the Earth one of the finest archaeological sites in the world.
I visited Palmyra in 2008 and was almost overwhelmed by its grandeur. To think that quite soon the whole place may be reduced to a pile of rubble is more than I can bear. As for Iraq, sites like Samara and Ur may also destroyed, while the contents of the great museum in Baghdad, already badly looted in the aftermath of the 2003 war, may either be smashed or, even more cynically, sold off to the highest bidder.
How has all this come about? To answer this question we need look no further than our own doorstep, and our friends and allies, the Americans. To put it another way, this is the sort of thing that happens when you decide to indulge in a spot of regime change...
Saturday, 9 May 2015
Cons win overall majority- excuse me?
Those having some trouble accepting what just happened in Britain (myself included) might do well to observe that Britain is a conservative nation; therefore a political party actually called Conservative is probably going to do quite well. Yet thus was not always the way. Labour's famous victory against all the odds in 1945 is probably the best example, but there are others, notably their two wins in the 60s which I mentioned in Wednesday's blog, Callaghan's win in 1974, plus of course the Blair years.
The fascinating thing about this election, however, is how no one saw it coming, least of all the pollsters who had us talking about the rise of UKIP, the SNP and the Greens and a hung parliament as the result. Clearly it was the floating voter effect, where people made up their minds only at the polling booth, with many of them going blue at the crucial moment. Turns out the only thing the pollsters got right was north of the border, which was a foregone conclusion anyway. The interesting question is, how and why did they get all the rest so spectacularly wrong?
To my mind the Tory victory is down to two things: the effectiveness of the right wing gutter press in presenting Milliband as a bumbling idiot not fit to govern the country, and the failure of Milliband and his team to counter that growing belief among the general public. It shouldn't have mattered that Ed has a funny voice and undeniably resembles Wallace. But it did. The electorate couldn't bring themselves to trust a lacklustre nerd, and the seeds of disaster were sown.
Yesterday we saw the "Day of the Long Knives", with three leaders falling on their swords within hours of each other. The only pity it couldn't have been four. Natalie Bennett, in her usual concrete manner has told us she was unanimously elected to lead the Green Part for two years and that that is exactly what she is going to do. Yet her performance in the campaign was lamentable and contributed significantly to their failure to break through and win more seats. To me her performance with Alex and Josh on The Last Leg" said it all. Watchers of this programme had already seen Nick Clegg do rather well with the gentle piss-taking that the team indulge in, and even persuaded Alex to vote, with the rather convincing argument: "not voting is like letting someone else order your meal at Nando's then complaining when you don't like what you get". Bennett must have been briefed that this programme is essentially comedic and indeed the questions put to her were designed to get a laugh. Did she follow them down the road that her questioners (and us) wanted her to go? Did she fuck. She just banged on about the Green manifesto, completely ignoring their questions like some George Osborne in drag, in other words acting in exactly the way we'd hope the Greens wouldn't. After all, didn't they want to offer the nation a new. more honest politics? Instead she came over as a humourless, strident bitch that no one, repeat no one would want to support. And with the exception of the blessed Saint Caroline of Brighton, they didn't. So Natalie, my message to you is this: go back to Australia and pursue your career in political journalism which is clearly your metier. As a politician in Britain, you just don't cut it.
The fascinating thing about this election, however, is how no one saw it coming, least of all the pollsters who had us talking about the rise of UKIP, the SNP and the Greens and a hung parliament as the result. Clearly it was the floating voter effect, where people made up their minds only at the polling booth, with many of them going blue at the crucial moment. Turns out the only thing the pollsters got right was north of the border, which was a foregone conclusion anyway. The interesting question is, how and why did they get all the rest so spectacularly wrong?
To my mind the Tory victory is down to two things: the effectiveness of the right wing gutter press in presenting Milliband as a bumbling idiot not fit to govern the country, and the failure of Milliband and his team to counter that growing belief among the general public. It shouldn't have mattered that Ed has a funny voice and undeniably resembles Wallace. But it did. The electorate couldn't bring themselves to trust a lacklustre nerd, and the seeds of disaster were sown.
Yesterday we saw the "Day of the Long Knives", with three leaders falling on their swords within hours of each other. The only pity it couldn't have been four. Natalie Bennett, in her usual concrete manner has told us she was unanimously elected to lead the Green Part for two years and that that is exactly what she is going to do. Yet her performance in the campaign was lamentable and contributed significantly to their failure to break through and win more seats. To me her performance with Alex and Josh on The Last Leg" said it all. Watchers of this programme had already seen Nick Clegg do rather well with the gentle piss-taking that the team indulge in, and even persuaded Alex to vote, with the rather convincing argument: "not voting is like letting someone else order your meal at Nando's then complaining when you don't like what you get". Bennett must have been briefed that this programme is essentially comedic and indeed the questions put to her were designed to get a laugh. Did she follow them down the road that her questioners (and us) wanted her to go? Did she fuck. She just banged on about the Green manifesto, completely ignoring their questions like some George Osborne in drag, in other words acting in exactly the way we'd hope the Greens wouldn't. After all, didn't they want to offer the nation a new. more honest politics? Instead she came over as a humourless, strident bitch that no one, repeat no one would want to support. And with the exception of the blessed Saint Caroline of Brighton, they didn't. So Natalie, my message to you is this: go back to Australia and pursue your career in political journalism which is clearly your metier. As a politician in Britain, you just don't cut it.
Thursday, 7 May 2015
All hail to the floating voter
The earliest General Election I can remember is the one in 1964. This was the first time I watched election broadcasts on behalf of the major parties- only three then, and I never paid much attention to the Liberal ones, as my Dad informed me that as there was no chance of them getting into power they could say anything they wanted. And as I watched I would be thoroughly persuaded by each argument in turn. The result (not influenced by me of course), was a narrow victory for Harold Wilson's Labour Party. By 1966 and the time of Labour's emphatic victory I had already begun to develop my left-of-centre political analysis and bought only the Labour view of things.
And thus has been the case ever since. Consequently, I harboured something approaching contempt for people who couldn't make up their minds until polling day, and sometimes not even then. What was wrong with them? I thought- can't they think for themselves?
Now, however, I find myself taking a different view. Now I don't blame anyone for finding it difficult to decide which box to tick in the sanctity of the polling booth. Right and left have converged, producing policies that mirror each other almost exactly. People might vote for the LibDems, but can they be trusted since their U turn on student tuition fees? Others might be instinctively attracted by the Greens, but like my Dad said, they're not going to get into power; not this time at least. The Scots, having voted No in the referendum have felt sufficiently embarrassed by their decision to back the SNP in previously unprecedented numbers.
So my advice is: if you don't already have a well-formed political analysis which will have determined which way you are going to vote long ago, by all means go for the one that strikes you as appealing at the very moment you take that pencil in your hand- it's as good a way as any.
And thus has been the case ever since. Consequently, I harboured something approaching contempt for people who couldn't make up their minds until polling day, and sometimes not even then. What was wrong with them? I thought- can't they think for themselves?
Now, however, I find myself taking a different view. Now I don't blame anyone for finding it difficult to decide which box to tick in the sanctity of the polling booth. Right and left have converged, producing policies that mirror each other almost exactly. People might vote for the LibDems, but can they be trusted since their U turn on student tuition fees? Others might be instinctively attracted by the Greens, but like my Dad said, they're not going to get into power; not this time at least. The Scots, having voted No in the referendum have felt sufficiently embarrassed by their decision to back the SNP in previously unprecedented numbers.
So my advice is: if you don't already have a well-formed political analysis which will have determined which way you are going to vote long ago, by all means go for the one that strikes you as appealing at the very moment you take that pencil in your hand- it's as good a way as any.
Tuesday, 5 May 2015
He's an overnight success but it took him years to do it
A big chapeau to Stuart Bingham for his sensational victory in the World Snooker championship. Apparently he has been playing snooker professionally in the lower orders for nearly twenty years before discovering that elusive something, that ineffable quality of being able to concentrate and deliver under the severest pressure imaginable. The problem with snooker, as with golf, is that there is so much time, time for the player to wind him or herself into knots of anxiety whilst considering the shot in hand. The great golf psychologist Dr Bob Rotella says the key to success in any sport, whether it be holing a six foot putt, potting a long red or scoring a three-pointer in basketball is quite simply:
"To concentrate on the target without worrying about the outcome"
But oh dear, how difficult that is in practice! You can go part of the way with incessant practice, but even that isn't enough when under the greatest pressure.
But however thrilling the match was last night, I found the occasion marred by the BBC's practice of leaving the arena at the end of each frame to go into that little bubble studio and listen to the erudite comments of various experts. And they were erudite too- world champions like Steves Davis and Hendry. Having said that a lot of what they said simply described action we had just seen for ourselves. No, what I believe the audience wants is to continue to be absorbed by the atmosphere in the Crucible Theatre; to watch the balls being re-racked, look at the faces of the crowd and especially to observe the demeanour of the two players. You want to look at their eyes. Are they calm and indicating a steely resolve, or are they shitting themselves? Forgive me for banging on about this yet again, but what I want at a sporting event is the best seat in the house, courtesy of the cameras- and I want to stay there as the match unfolds, not be jerked off somewhere else every few minutes. There's plenty of time for reflection during the mid-session intervals and the longer breaks between sessions. Otherwise, leave the coverage where the action is- on and around the table.
Could these frequent breaks have something to do with lucrative contracts made with the Asian countries which have taken to snooker in such a big way? I wonder...
"To concentrate on the target without worrying about the outcome"
But oh dear, how difficult that is in practice! You can go part of the way with incessant practice, but even that isn't enough when under the greatest pressure.
But however thrilling the match was last night, I found the occasion marred by the BBC's practice of leaving the arena at the end of each frame to go into that little bubble studio and listen to the erudite comments of various experts. And they were erudite too- world champions like Steves Davis and Hendry. Having said that a lot of what they said simply described action we had just seen for ourselves. No, what I believe the audience wants is to continue to be absorbed by the atmosphere in the Crucible Theatre; to watch the balls being re-racked, look at the faces of the crowd and especially to observe the demeanour of the two players. You want to look at their eyes. Are they calm and indicating a steely resolve, or are they shitting themselves? Forgive me for banging on about this yet again, but what I want at a sporting event is the best seat in the house, courtesy of the cameras- and I want to stay there as the match unfolds, not be jerked off somewhere else every few minutes. There's plenty of time for reflection during the mid-session intervals and the longer breaks between sessions. Otherwise, leave the coverage where the action is- on and around the table.
Could these frequent breaks have something to do with lucrative contracts made with the Asian countries which have taken to snooker in such a big way? I wonder...
Saturday, 2 May 2015
April 2014 book and film review
BOOKS
PARADISE LOST, by John Milton. In a world where Joss Whedon and the Avengers production team decide to make a $200 million movie called "Paradise Lost", only the love of God can save the Human Race now. Let's face it, all the ingredients for a blockbuster are here: a host of action sequences requiring the most cutting edge graphic effects, like where Lucifer (played by Robert Downey Jr) and his band of fallen angels take on Jesus (Bradley Cooper) and his league of superheros (sorry, angels) in a Titanic struggle to re-take Heaven and evict God ( Morgan Freeman, naturally) from his lovely home. All this before God decides to create Adam and Eve (Jesse Eisenberg and Jennifer Laurence), and way before Satan, disguised as the Serpent (amazing blue-screen special effects here) tempts Eve with the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.
What's not to like? This feature is going to go down a storm everywhere: fundamentalists of all the Big Three religions buy into this story. Re-titled "The Devil: Winter Soldier" or some such, by the time it hits the screen it will bear little if any resemblance to Milton's original classic, but, we will all say: who cares? it's a movie Goddammit...
THE ABOMINABLE MAN, by Maj Sjowell and Per Waloo. An old man is lying in the cancer ward of a Stockholm hospital, within days of his death. But that isn't good enough for someone, who breaks into the ward and slits the old man's throat and disembowels him before making his escape.
But as Martin Beck and his team struggle to find a single meaningful clue to the perp, what they learn about the victim opens their eyes wide. Seems he was a senior police officer himself, and one who regularly beat confessions from suspects and planted evidence on innocent men and women. Suddenly the list of possible suspects with a grievance grows to epic proportions...
Number seven in the famous ten-book series from two of Sweden's most insightful crime writers, and I think they are getting better and better. And not just in the thrilling and sometimes horrific depictions of violence, but also their political analysis, with their rejection of Sweden's great social experiment of the 1960s, which cast aside the noble traditions of the past without replacing it with anything more inspiring than faceless apartment blocks and clover-leaf road junctions. An experiment which drew together the nation's police forces into a single homogeneous mass with the emphasis on para-militarism and red tape. But amidst this faceless bureaucracy are the people: Beck himself, the anarchic Gunnvald Larsson, Melander with his amazing photographic memory (better than any computer) and the other plods who work long and hard, sometimes putting their lives in danger, all to ensure their pensions.
A very fine read.
BEIRUT NIGHTMARES, by Ghadda Samman. In 1975, a young woman finds herself literally caught in the crossfire of Lebanon's vicious civil war. Trapped in her apartment by a sadistic sniper in the hotel opposite who kills anything that moves in his gun sights, she slowly begins to run out of food. And water. Understandably perhaps, her sleeping hours are inhabited by a series of nightmares, each one stranger and more terrible than the last. Eventually nightmares and "daymares" become fused into a long, horrific narrative of destruction and murder.
Apparently written from manuscripts she created during her real-life incarceration in Beirut's city centre during the war, this book is a remarkable and entirely authentic portrayal of the horrors of urban warfare as it affects the non-combatants,. Not easy reading, but unforgettable.
FILMS
OPEN BETHLEHEM 2013, (Docu), D- Leila Sansour. Sansour left Palestine aged 17 to live in Paris, but returned in 2004 to document the building of the segregation wall around her village by an implacable Israeli occupying force. As she was filming she came up with the idea of creating a "Palestinian Passport" and offering them to the great and good in the Rich World. This novel idea caught the imagination of a public starved of genuine information about the injustices being perpetrated in the occupied territories, due to the careful news management of Zionists around the world.
So here we have a fascinating piece of film making, but one which at the same time seems somehow dated. The action is at least ten years old (apparently there were a lot of production problems) and you feel this is kind of old news. Nonetheless the finished product is very polished and worth watching.
HEART OF GLASS (1976) D- Werner Herzog. An 18th century Bavarian village is famous for its glass making, and especially its trademark ruby-red colouring. Then the old glass Meister dies and the secret of the ruby-red glass is lost with him. Now the village panics; everyone from the lowliest glass blower to the local count embarks on a desperate search to re-discover the secret before everyone goes broke. And insane. Then they seek out a hermit/seer who lives nearby; unfortunately his counsel offers little encouragement. Looks like they're screwed...
Famous for Herzog's technique of hypnotising the cast members just before they went on camera, this film does indeed carry a strange, hypnotic atmosphere throughout. It can't have been an easy thing to do; certainly Herzog never used the same technique in any other film, but it stands as a fascinating relic of Germany's most celebrated film maker.
EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS (2014) D- Ridley Scott. In a world where Egyptian Gods and Kings (specifically Joel Edgerton) exercise cruel dominion over their Israelite slaves, one man (Christian Bale) is born to turn things around for his God-forsaken people.
OK then. Here we have what is essentially a remake of Cecil B deMille's The Ten Commandments. His 1950s version (already a remake of his silent movie made in the 20s) established a vogue for historical and Biblical epics which hit the heights in the 60s and continues to some extent to this day. DeMille's second attempt featured everyone's favourite epic actor in the shape of Chuck Heston, who went on to secure his rep in Ben Hur, but this latest offering from Ridley Scott can only offer up Christian Bale, a good actor I'm sure, but no match for Chuck, a man whose very looks and physique exemplified the word epic. And as for Joel Edgerton in the Yul Brynner role, well it just don't cut it in my book. And it suffers too from the same fault of so many Biblical epics both then and now: a poor script stymied by over-reverence to its subject matter. Pity, because I love Scott's work. He has made some of the most acclaimed movies of my life ( Alien, Bladerunner) but I fear he has lost his way badly this time.
THE SECRET OF THE INCAS (1954) D- Jerry Hopper. Adventurer Harry Steele (Charlton Heston) is in Peru in the search for a legendary artefact: a solid gold, jewel-encrusted starburst believed lost hundreds of years ago. Tall and rangy, toting a large black revolver and donning a brown leather jacket and fedora hat (does that remind you of anyone?) Harry acquires an Eastern European lovely (Nicole Maurey) along the way to assist him in his search. But there are others equally keen to get their hands on the treasure, even it means clutching it out of his cold, dead hands...
Notable both for its providing a model for the Indiana Jones movies as well as being one of the first Hollywood movies to be filmed (almost) entirely on location in another country, this film charges along much like a Spielberg thriller and looks great on the screen. It also features Yma Sumac, the celebrated Peruvian singer showing off her extraordinary five octave range in several songs.
Terrific fun.
INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIES (2013) W/D- The Coen Brothers. In the New York of the 1960s a young folk singer (Oscar Isaac) struggles to make his mark on the music scene while attempting to bring his personal life into some sense of order. As we watch one week in his chaotic life, we see him achieve these ideals with varying degrees of success.
Allegedly loosely based on the life of singer Dave Van Ronk (who he? -Ed) I also detected parallels with a rather more notable figure, i.e. Bob Dylan, strains of whose song Positively Fourth Street can be heard issuing from a bar towards the end of the movie.
I have a lot of time for the Coen brothers, who have worked together on some of the key films to come out America since the 80s (Fargo and The Big Lebowski would be two of the best examples) but here I failed to be convinced. The characters fail to grab the attention of the viewer and it was not as well written as some of their other work. I was also puzzled by the award of an And to the performance of Justin Timberlake who plays another aspiring folk singer. Wiki informs me that this accolade is given to major stars who have a significant, if not a leading role in a movie. But Timberlake appears on screen for barely five minutes and he can scarcely be regarded as a major film star, regardless of his success with NSync.
THE PAST (2013) D- Asghar Farhadi The Buddhists tell us we should be living in the present, but that isn't always easy in practice, as the players in this film discover. An Iranian man travels to Paris to finalise his divorce settlement with his ex, only to find she has shacked up with another middle-eastern man. Then he learns that the new bloke is married, but to a wife who now lies in a hospital bed in a deep coma. Even if he can put this out of his mind, there are still the problems of his old relationship to negotiate- and here there is clearly a lot of unfinished business.
This film was widely praised on its release, nominated for best foreign language film, though I imagine its Iranian connection scuppered any chance of it winning. Maybe they would have been luckier if the film had come out now, when the US is once again cosying up to Iran under the threat of IS. I certainly enjoyed this movie, even though it becomes rather melodramatic in its closing phases.
GEORDIE (1956) W/D- Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat. Somewhere in the wilds of western Scotland, a weedy youth sends off for a booklet with instructions on how to transform from a six stone weakling into a super-hunk. He learns to throw the hammer, and soon he's turning heads at the Highland Games. There he is spotted by a talent scout who suggests he may have a shot at the Olympic title, But does he really want to leave the mountains and glens of his beloved Scotland and the bonnie lass who is his sweetheart?
Hard-bitten observers of today might find this movie naive, though I think a better word would be innocent, or even elegiac. Bill Travers wanders through the film in a kind of dozy, half-asleep glaze, oblivious to all but his girl and the desire to better himself physically. The result is an extraordinary effort, much loved at the time though its reputation has been somewhat trashed in subsequent eras. In my opinion, however, the original praise it attracted was entirely appropriate.
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 (2014) D- Dean DeBlois. It's five years on from when Hiccup trained his first dragon and showed his people how to live in harmony with the fire-breathing monsters. But on an expedition to the outlands he finds another chieftain who is training dragons- to destroy...
I really liked How to Train Your Dragon, with its plot of a young man who befriends and helps an injured Night Fury (the most terrifying of all dragons, apparently) and teaches his people to work with, rather than spend all their time trying to kill, all dragons. But this one was... too much. Now there are literally thousands of the buggers, darkening the skies as they mass for attack. Now I don't know a lot about dragons (apart from what I've learned in Game of Thrones) but I do know that there definitely weren't many of them about. And there you have it- an overblown dragon film, My verdict: see the first one, don't trouble yourself with this.
DUMB AND DUMBER TO (2014) W/D- Bobby and Peter Farrelly. When Harry Dunne (Jeff Daniels) rescues his friend Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey) from a mental institution he informs him that he needs a kidney transplant. Then they remember an old flame with whom Harry may (or may not) have had a baby. Maybe she will be a) a compatible and b) a willing, donor. OK, sounds like a plan, though such a plan would present a challenge even to people of normal intelligence, never mind two folk with the combined IQ of a brain damaged gnat. Hilarity ensues, as we might imagine.
I remember quite enjoying the original D and D all of twenty years ago, watching it with my son who was only seven but still got most of it. And this too sort of tickled the old funny bone (although I did watch it on a plane, which can have a strange effect on one's perspicacity). The film didn't go down well critically, though it made money at the box office. Not too bad.
X MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (2014) D- Bryan Singer. In the world of today, mutants are threatened by super-robots that have been imbued with "X Men"-like attributes. So an idea is hatched to send Logan, aka Wolverine, aka Hugh Jackman back 50 years into the past to ensure the damn things are never invented. In order to achieve this they use the special powers of one particular mutant who can hurl people's consciousnesses back into the past. Clear so far? Good. OK, we're back in 1973 and we've got Wolverine trying to persuade a youthful brat who only later will become Dr Charles Xavier to help with the grand plan, along with the young Magneto, aka Eric Lehnsherr, aka Ian McKellen.
I have loved the X Men movies and have watched them over and over. I loved their look, their pace, their special effects and perhaps most of all their high standard of acting, courtesy of such giants as Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. All these elements seemed to be in place for this latest offering, and certainly the public has taken it to its heart in a big way. However I found this one just too complicated and the pace a little too manic. Maybe it's me, or maybe the whole franchise has reached its sell-by date. Don't be too sure though. I've heard at least two more X Men movies are in the pipeline...
PARADISE LOST, by John Milton. In a world where Joss Whedon and the Avengers production team decide to make a $200 million movie called "Paradise Lost", only the love of God can save the Human Race now. Let's face it, all the ingredients for a blockbuster are here: a host of action sequences requiring the most cutting edge graphic effects, like where Lucifer (played by Robert Downey Jr) and his band of fallen angels take on Jesus (Bradley Cooper) and his league of superheros (sorry, angels) in a Titanic struggle to re-take Heaven and evict God ( Morgan Freeman, naturally) from his lovely home. All this before God decides to create Adam and Eve (Jesse Eisenberg and Jennifer Laurence), and way before Satan, disguised as the Serpent (amazing blue-screen special effects here) tempts Eve with the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.
What's not to like? This feature is going to go down a storm everywhere: fundamentalists of all the Big Three religions buy into this story. Re-titled "The Devil: Winter Soldier" or some such, by the time it hits the screen it will bear little if any resemblance to Milton's original classic, but, we will all say: who cares? it's a movie Goddammit...
THE ABOMINABLE MAN, by Maj Sjowell and Per Waloo. An old man is lying in the cancer ward of a Stockholm hospital, within days of his death. But that isn't good enough for someone, who breaks into the ward and slits the old man's throat and disembowels him before making his escape.
But as Martin Beck and his team struggle to find a single meaningful clue to the perp, what they learn about the victim opens their eyes wide. Seems he was a senior police officer himself, and one who regularly beat confessions from suspects and planted evidence on innocent men and women. Suddenly the list of possible suspects with a grievance grows to epic proportions...
Number seven in the famous ten-book series from two of Sweden's most insightful crime writers, and I think they are getting better and better. And not just in the thrilling and sometimes horrific depictions of violence, but also their political analysis, with their rejection of Sweden's great social experiment of the 1960s, which cast aside the noble traditions of the past without replacing it with anything more inspiring than faceless apartment blocks and clover-leaf road junctions. An experiment which drew together the nation's police forces into a single homogeneous mass with the emphasis on para-militarism and red tape. But amidst this faceless bureaucracy are the people: Beck himself, the anarchic Gunnvald Larsson, Melander with his amazing photographic memory (better than any computer) and the other plods who work long and hard, sometimes putting their lives in danger, all to ensure their pensions.
A very fine read.
BEIRUT NIGHTMARES, by Ghadda Samman. In 1975, a young woman finds herself literally caught in the crossfire of Lebanon's vicious civil war. Trapped in her apartment by a sadistic sniper in the hotel opposite who kills anything that moves in his gun sights, she slowly begins to run out of food. And water. Understandably perhaps, her sleeping hours are inhabited by a series of nightmares, each one stranger and more terrible than the last. Eventually nightmares and "daymares" become fused into a long, horrific narrative of destruction and murder.
Apparently written from manuscripts she created during her real-life incarceration in Beirut's city centre during the war, this book is a remarkable and entirely authentic portrayal of the horrors of urban warfare as it affects the non-combatants,. Not easy reading, but unforgettable.
FILMS
OPEN BETHLEHEM 2013, (Docu), D- Leila Sansour. Sansour left Palestine aged 17 to live in Paris, but returned in 2004 to document the building of the segregation wall around her village by an implacable Israeli occupying force. As she was filming she came up with the idea of creating a "Palestinian Passport" and offering them to the great and good in the Rich World. This novel idea caught the imagination of a public starved of genuine information about the injustices being perpetrated in the occupied territories, due to the careful news management of Zionists around the world.
So here we have a fascinating piece of film making, but one which at the same time seems somehow dated. The action is at least ten years old (apparently there were a lot of production problems) and you feel this is kind of old news. Nonetheless the finished product is very polished and worth watching.
HEART OF GLASS (1976) D- Werner Herzog. An 18th century Bavarian village is famous for its glass making, and especially its trademark ruby-red colouring. Then the old glass Meister dies and the secret of the ruby-red glass is lost with him. Now the village panics; everyone from the lowliest glass blower to the local count embarks on a desperate search to re-discover the secret before everyone goes broke. And insane. Then they seek out a hermit/seer who lives nearby; unfortunately his counsel offers little encouragement. Looks like they're screwed...
Famous for Herzog's technique of hypnotising the cast members just before they went on camera, this film does indeed carry a strange, hypnotic atmosphere throughout. It can't have been an easy thing to do; certainly Herzog never used the same technique in any other film, but it stands as a fascinating relic of Germany's most celebrated film maker.
EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS (2014) D- Ridley Scott. In a world where Egyptian Gods and Kings (specifically Joel Edgerton) exercise cruel dominion over their Israelite slaves, one man (Christian Bale) is born to turn things around for his God-forsaken people.
OK then. Here we have what is essentially a remake of Cecil B deMille's The Ten Commandments. His 1950s version (already a remake of his silent movie made in the 20s) established a vogue for historical and Biblical epics which hit the heights in the 60s and continues to some extent to this day. DeMille's second attempt featured everyone's favourite epic actor in the shape of Chuck Heston, who went on to secure his rep in Ben Hur, but this latest offering from Ridley Scott can only offer up Christian Bale, a good actor I'm sure, but no match for Chuck, a man whose very looks and physique exemplified the word epic. And as for Joel Edgerton in the Yul Brynner role, well it just don't cut it in my book. And it suffers too from the same fault of so many Biblical epics both then and now: a poor script stymied by over-reverence to its subject matter. Pity, because I love Scott's work. He has made some of the most acclaimed movies of my life ( Alien, Bladerunner) but I fear he has lost his way badly this time.
THE SECRET OF THE INCAS (1954) D- Jerry Hopper. Adventurer Harry Steele (Charlton Heston) is in Peru in the search for a legendary artefact: a solid gold, jewel-encrusted starburst believed lost hundreds of years ago. Tall and rangy, toting a large black revolver and donning a brown leather jacket and fedora hat (does that remind you of anyone?) Harry acquires an Eastern European lovely (Nicole Maurey) along the way to assist him in his search. But there are others equally keen to get their hands on the treasure, even it means clutching it out of his cold, dead hands...
Notable both for its providing a model for the Indiana Jones movies as well as being one of the first Hollywood movies to be filmed (almost) entirely on location in another country, this film charges along much like a Spielberg thriller and looks great on the screen. It also features Yma Sumac, the celebrated Peruvian singer showing off her extraordinary five octave range in several songs.
Terrific fun.
INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIES (2013) W/D- The Coen Brothers. In the New York of the 1960s a young folk singer (Oscar Isaac) struggles to make his mark on the music scene while attempting to bring his personal life into some sense of order. As we watch one week in his chaotic life, we see him achieve these ideals with varying degrees of success.
Allegedly loosely based on the life of singer Dave Van Ronk (who he? -Ed) I also detected parallels with a rather more notable figure, i.e. Bob Dylan, strains of whose song Positively Fourth Street can be heard issuing from a bar towards the end of the movie.
I have a lot of time for the Coen brothers, who have worked together on some of the key films to come out America since the 80s (Fargo and The Big Lebowski would be two of the best examples) but here I failed to be convinced. The characters fail to grab the attention of the viewer and it was not as well written as some of their other work. I was also puzzled by the award of an And to the performance of Justin Timberlake who plays another aspiring folk singer. Wiki informs me that this accolade is given to major stars who have a significant, if not a leading role in a movie. But Timberlake appears on screen for barely five minutes and he can scarcely be regarded as a major film star, regardless of his success with NSync.
THE PAST (2013) D- Asghar Farhadi The Buddhists tell us we should be living in the present, but that isn't always easy in practice, as the players in this film discover. An Iranian man travels to Paris to finalise his divorce settlement with his ex, only to find she has shacked up with another middle-eastern man. Then he learns that the new bloke is married, but to a wife who now lies in a hospital bed in a deep coma. Even if he can put this out of his mind, there are still the problems of his old relationship to negotiate- and here there is clearly a lot of unfinished business.
This film was widely praised on its release, nominated for best foreign language film, though I imagine its Iranian connection scuppered any chance of it winning. Maybe they would have been luckier if the film had come out now, when the US is once again cosying up to Iran under the threat of IS. I certainly enjoyed this movie, even though it becomes rather melodramatic in its closing phases.
GEORDIE (1956) W/D- Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat. Somewhere in the wilds of western Scotland, a weedy youth sends off for a booklet with instructions on how to transform from a six stone weakling into a super-hunk. He learns to throw the hammer, and soon he's turning heads at the Highland Games. There he is spotted by a talent scout who suggests he may have a shot at the Olympic title, But does he really want to leave the mountains and glens of his beloved Scotland and the bonnie lass who is his sweetheart?
Hard-bitten observers of today might find this movie naive, though I think a better word would be innocent, or even elegiac. Bill Travers wanders through the film in a kind of dozy, half-asleep glaze, oblivious to all but his girl and the desire to better himself physically. The result is an extraordinary effort, much loved at the time though its reputation has been somewhat trashed in subsequent eras. In my opinion, however, the original praise it attracted was entirely appropriate.
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 (2014) D- Dean DeBlois. It's five years on from when Hiccup trained his first dragon and showed his people how to live in harmony with the fire-breathing monsters. But on an expedition to the outlands he finds another chieftain who is training dragons- to destroy...
I really liked How to Train Your Dragon, with its plot of a young man who befriends and helps an injured Night Fury (the most terrifying of all dragons, apparently) and teaches his people to work with, rather than spend all their time trying to kill, all dragons. But this one was... too much. Now there are literally thousands of the buggers, darkening the skies as they mass for attack. Now I don't know a lot about dragons (apart from what I've learned in Game of Thrones) but I do know that there definitely weren't many of them about. And there you have it- an overblown dragon film, My verdict: see the first one, don't trouble yourself with this.
DUMB AND DUMBER TO (2014) W/D- Bobby and Peter Farrelly. When Harry Dunne (Jeff Daniels) rescues his friend Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey) from a mental institution he informs him that he needs a kidney transplant. Then they remember an old flame with whom Harry may (or may not) have had a baby. Maybe she will be a) a compatible and b) a willing, donor. OK, sounds like a plan, though such a plan would present a challenge even to people of normal intelligence, never mind two folk with the combined IQ of a brain damaged gnat. Hilarity ensues, as we might imagine.
I remember quite enjoying the original D and D all of twenty years ago, watching it with my son who was only seven but still got most of it. And this too sort of tickled the old funny bone (although I did watch it on a plane, which can have a strange effect on one's perspicacity). The film didn't go down well critically, though it made money at the box office. Not too bad.
X MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (2014) D- Bryan Singer. In the world of today, mutants are threatened by super-robots that have been imbued with "X Men"-like attributes. So an idea is hatched to send Logan, aka Wolverine, aka Hugh Jackman back 50 years into the past to ensure the damn things are never invented. In order to achieve this they use the special powers of one particular mutant who can hurl people's consciousnesses back into the past. Clear so far? Good. OK, we're back in 1973 and we've got Wolverine trying to persuade a youthful brat who only later will become Dr Charles Xavier to help with the grand plan, along with the young Magneto, aka Eric Lehnsherr, aka Ian McKellen.
I have loved the X Men movies and have watched them over and over. I loved their look, their pace, their special effects and perhaps most of all their high standard of acting, courtesy of such giants as Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. All these elements seemed to be in place for this latest offering, and certainly the public has taken it to its heart in a big way. However I found this one just too complicated and the pace a little too manic. Maybe it's me, or maybe the whole franchise has reached its sell-by date. Don't be too sure though. I've heard at least two more X Men movies are in the pipeline...
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