FILMS
LA LA LAND (2016) D- Damien Chazelle.
In the City of Angels, two young hopefuls meet and fall in love. She wants to be an actress, he a serious exponent of jazz. Can they make it, either in their careers or together? Let's watch.
My brother is a big opera fan. He goes to every new production at Glyndebourne, Covent Garden and so on and he reckons it's the greatest art form going. But I say, try this. La La Land is an opera for 20-teens, shot in a kind of pastel-shading that gives it a highly original feel. The plot, of course, is as old as the Hollywood Hills, but its strength lies in the two protagonists, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, who are now basically the two hottest stars in the world. They are pretty good too, doing their own singing, dancing and playing. They're not quite the classical triple-threats that, say, Julie Andrews or Gene Kelly were, but that's a rather exacting standard to aspire to.
My only problem with this delightful movie is that the songs aren't quite good enough (and that, I suggest, is where a musical or an opera must ultimately score). There are no really memorable show-stoppers- the sort of numbers you can't stop humming afterwards. But not everybody agrees. My wife, for instance, who knows a lot more about music than I do, thinks the songs were just fine. Watch it yourself and make up your own mind.
LES BELLES DE NUIT (1953) D- Rene Clair.
A young but down-at-heel French composer looks out of the window in his garret and watches a series of beautiful, but unobtainable women pass by in the street below. But in his dreams, ah, that's a different story. There they become characters in a series of improbable scenarios where he is a courtier, musketeer, revolutionary etc. Here he is free to play out his fantasies with these idealised beauties, until that is, he is woken by some street urchin shouting in the street or some other irritating distraction.
This film, with its switching timelines and complex plotting, was well ahead of its time and is something of a forgotten masterpiece of 1950s French cinema, being somewhat sidelined by the daring and trendy efforts of the New Wave. Fascinating.
THE HELP (2011) W/D- Tate Taylor. In 1950s America, a collection of southern belles are brought up by the "help" (black housemaids), while their parents lead their lives unecumbered by any of the drudge of actual parenting. Then a young journalist (Emma Stone, you really can't avoid her these days, not that you'd want to do any such thing) has the idea to chronicle the lives of these forgotten people. But in a land still dominated by Jim Crow laws, this is not going to go down well...
In 1865, when the slaves were freed, state after state passed the notorious "Jim Crow" laws, making segregation not only legal, but mandatory. Thus a situation arose where black servants were used to do everything the whites couldn't be bothered to do themselves, but paid a pittance and systematically denied all the privileges their white "masters" enjoyed. And this situation obtained right into the 1960s, when Lyndon Johnson finally laid down the legislation to do away with it all.
Here Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer excel as the "helps" who finally agree to talk to Emma Stone, who eventually writes a book exposing the hypocrisy of her own class. Superior movie making.
SHADOWLANDS (1993) D- Richard Attenborough. An Oxford academic and successful children's novelist falls for an American divorcee. They marry, but then she gets cancer and dies. That's it.
So, is this finely wrought little piece from Dickie Darling with spending 131 minutes of your time on? I think so. For one thing, you've got Anthony Hopkins playing C.S. Lewis, a man who never turned in anything other than an exceptional performance in his life, opposite Deborah Winger, who gives an equally neat performance as his doomed paramour. Then you have the feel Attenborough gives to this understated little movie. Put it all together and you have a very satisfying whole. No special effects that cost billions, no huge musical score trying to force you into feeling something you don't, no dizzying cuts and other directorial flourishes. Just quality movie making.
10 CLOVERFIELD LANE (2016) D- Don Trachtenberg. Mary Elizabeth Winstead (you remember her in Final Destination 2) gets in a car crash and when she wakes up she appears to have been abducted by John Goodman. Then she meets a fella who seems to have met a similar fate. But when we meet the abductor, he don't seem such a bad guy. He says he's simply protecting them from the apocalyptic events that have occurred outside the bunker they're holed up in, and if they venture outside they'll die. MEW doesn't buy it, however, and determines to escape one way or another. Goodman's spiel's got to be bullshit, right?
I rather enjoyed this strange little ride, a "sequel" to the original Cloverfield movie, though apparently bearing little resemblance to it. Entertaining. And of course John Goodman is always good VFM.
CERTIFIED COPY (2010) D- Abbas Kiarostami. A self-obsessed author (A rather good George Shimell taking a sabbatical from his usual career as an opera singer to be a film actor)arrives in a Tuscan town to deliver a lecture about his latest book, in which he argues for the value of copies in art. They can have as much merit as the originals, he proposes. Afterwards he is taken for a little tour by a local art dealer (Juliette Binoche, absolutely delectable, as usual). A strange dynamic develops between them, and when a bar- keep thinks they must be man and wife, they decide by some strange default to behave as such. What follows is a mysterious, haunting scenario as they take to their new roles like they've been doing it for years.
Not everyone took to this movie, but I found it remarkably skillful and thought provoking. The "couple" we see tell us a lot about how proper marriage works, its pluses and minuses, the supreme irritation it can incite, as well as the tenderness and love that, hopefully, are also part and parcel of it.
Tuesday, 31 January 2017
January 2017 book review
BOOKS
LIFE A USER'S GUIDE, by Georges Perec.
An apartment block in central Paris, built around 1875. There are seven floors, which house an extraordinary menagerie of human specimens: an eccentric British millionaire with a very strange hobby, a judge and wife who get their kicks from shoplifting, a wealthy woman who holds dinner parties where the food is all of the same color, the list goes on and on. We are taken around these apartments and offered detailed descriptions of the interiors, and equally minute dissections of the lives of their occupants.
What emerges is an extraordinary set of tales, quite unlike anything I have ever read, moving, beautiful and often hilarious. Perec was a founding member of the French neo-surrealist movement "OULIPO", founded in 1960, which sought to break free from the usual constraints of writing by inventing new constraints of their own. One of the most famous members was Raymond Queneau, who famously wrote Exercises in Style: 99 ways to tell a Story, in which a simple tale is re-worked in, you've guessed it, 99 different styles. In Life, Perec devised his "story making machine" in order to construct this remarkable and indeed unique piece of literature. Hard to read? Not at all. One sails through it in a kind of haullucinatory daze, as the characters weave their interconnected magic through the pages. Not to be missed.
I CAPTURE THE CASTLE, by Dodie Smith
A writer and his family live in a medieval castle for peppercorn rent, but he has only written one book. That caused a sensation, but it was many years ago and he hasn't written a word since, and they are now as poor as a collection of highly intelligent and sophisticated church mice. Two Americans inherit the estate where the castle is situated and Cassandra and Rose, the two daughters of the household are smitten, sort of. So too are the American scions, and surely romance is just around the corner. But who will snag who, and will it all work out without too many complications? I doubt it. And will father ever write another word, or just go on reading and re-reading pulp fiction?
Dodie Smith is best known for 101 Dalmatians, but here, in a book written while she was living in America, she writes wistfully of the land she has left behind, constructing a sometimes sad, sometimes funny, but always beautiful coming-of-age drama. My wife warned me it was a girl's book, and in some ways it is, but it is also a book which may be enjoyed by anyone with a love of impeccable style and first-rate story telling.
THE RINGS OF SATURN, by W.G. Sebald
A fiercely intelligent German emigree hikes around the Suffolk countryside and allows his mind to wander. As he traipses about between various inns and dingy hotels, he thinks about many diverse subjects:
-The 17th century polymath Thomas Browne
-the carpet bombing of Germany
-the natural history of the herring
-the relationship of Joseph Conrad and Roger Casement
-The life of Vicomte de Chateaubriand
-the history of sericulture in China and its spread to the West
And so on. What have all these things got to do with each other? Not a lot at first glance, but the real connection between them is Sebald himself. Writing with a sublime, matchless prose he takes us on a journey through his mind and its obsessions, and we find ourselves drawn in and happy to go as deep as we wish into that amazing thing: the brain of Max Sebald.
Sebald only wrote 4 books before he was tragically killed in a car crash in 2007. At that point he was on the Nobel committee's short-list for the prize for literature, such was the impact his books made. You'd be nuts not to give it a go.
Please see next post for movies...
LIFE A USER'S GUIDE, by Georges Perec.
An apartment block in central Paris, built around 1875. There are seven floors, which house an extraordinary menagerie of human specimens: an eccentric British millionaire with a very strange hobby, a judge and wife who get their kicks from shoplifting, a wealthy woman who holds dinner parties where the food is all of the same color, the list goes on and on. We are taken around these apartments and offered detailed descriptions of the interiors, and equally minute dissections of the lives of their occupants.
What emerges is an extraordinary set of tales, quite unlike anything I have ever read, moving, beautiful and often hilarious. Perec was a founding member of the French neo-surrealist movement "OULIPO", founded in 1960, which sought to break free from the usual constraints of writing by inventing new constraints of their own. One of the most famous members was Raymond Queneau, who famously wrote Exercises in Style: 99 ways to tell a Story, in which a simple tale is re-worked in, you've guessed it, 99 different styles. In Life, Perec devised his "story making machine" in order to construct this remarkable and indeed unique piece of literature. Hard to read? Not at all. One sails through it in a kind of haullucinatory daze, as the characters weave their interconnected magic through the pages. Not to be missed.
I CAPTURE THE CASTLE, by Dodie Smith
A writer and his family live in a medieval castle for peppercorn rent, but he has only written one book. That caused a sensation, but it was many years ago and he hasn't written a word since, and they are now as poor as a collection of highly intelligent and sophisticated church mice. Two Americans inherit the estate where the castle is situated and Cassandra and Rose, the two daughters of the household are smitten, sort of. So too are the American scions, and surely romance is just around the corner. But who will snag who, and will it all work out without too many complications? I doubt it. And will father ever write another word, or just go on reading and re-reading pulp fiction?
Dodie Smith is best known for 101 Dalmatians, but here, in a book written while she was living in America, she writes wistfully of the land she has left behind, constructing a sometimes sad, sometimes funny, but always beautiful coming-of-age drama. My wife warned me it was a girl's book, and in some ways it is, but it is also a book which may be enjoyed by anyone with a love of impeccable style and first-rate story telling.
THE RINGS OF SATURN, by W.G. Sebald
A fiercely intelligent German emigree hikes around the Suffolk countryside and allows his mind to wander. As he traipses about between various inns and dingy hotels, he thinks about many diverse subjects:
-The 17th century polymath Thomas Browne
-the carpet bombing of Germany
-the natural history of the herring
-the relationship of Joseph Conrad and Roger Casement
-The life of Vicomte de Chateaubriand
-the history of sericulture in China and its spread to the West
And so on. What have all these things got to do with each other? Not a lot at first glance, but the real connection between them is Sebald himself. Writing with a sublime, matchless prose he takes us on a journey through his mind and its obsessions, and we find ourselves drawn in and happy to go as deep as we wish into that amazing thing: the brain of Max Sebald.
Sebald only wrote 4 books before he was tragically killed in a car crash in 2007. At that point he was on the Nobel committee's short-list for the prize for literature, such was the impact his books made. You'd be nuts not to give it a go.
Please see next post for movies...
Saturday, 21 January 2017
A New Dawn for British Tennis
As I write this, Britain has no less than four players in the 4th round of the Australian Open: 3 men, Kyle Edmonds, Dan Evans and of course Sir Andy, and one woman, Johanna Konta. This, I believe, is unprecedented in my 66 years of life. I can remember the wilderness years only too well. The days when the best we had to offer was a plucky Roger Taylor, an execrable Buster Mottram (he of the ties to the BNP) or Tim Henman, a man with a delightful style and elegance in his play, but whose serve was so weak several players on the women's circuit were hitting their serves faster.
But now we seem to have no less than 4 players of world class, players who all have terrific all-court games, serve well and don't give up. No wonder we won the Davies Cup last year, even though some players scorn it these days.
I have just been watching Raphael Nadal come through in 5 sets against the youthful Alexander Zverev in a quite stunning comeback from the depths, as he rolled back the years to show he has still very much got it. He seems to have been around forever, though he is only 30. I still remember his astonishing 2008 season, when he won in France, Queens and Wimbledon, a feat no one else has ever achieved. Then he had his problems, his injuries and self doubt, but here he is again, playing as well today as I have ever seen him play. As for his opponent today, Brits look out: this Kraut is dangerous. He's huge (nearly 2 metres tall) strong fast and aggressive. He's knocking on the door of the world's top 20 players (he's 24 currently). And he's only 20...
On the subject of being around forever, how about the Swiss Mister? Remember, he was Nadal's hero when he was a junior, if you can believe that. He's now 35, an age when most players are retiring or preparing to go on the seniors tour, and here he is in Melbourne, looking as lean and fit as ever, and showing he remains another player in the drawer for the Brits and others to fear- even our Andy...
But now we seem to have no less than 4 players of world class, players who all have terrific all-court games, serve well and don't give up. No wonder we won the Davies Cup last year, even though some players scorn it these days.
I have just been watching Raphael Nadal come through in 5 sets against the youthful Alexander Zverev in a quite stunning comeback from the depths, as he rolled back the years to show he has still very much got it. He seems to have been around forever, though he is only 30. I still remember his astonishing 2008 season, when he won in France, Queens and Wimbledon, a feat no one else has ever achieved. Then he had his problems, his injuries and self doubt, but here he is again, playing as well today as I have ever seen him play. As for his opponent today, Brits look out: this Kraut is dangerous. He's huge (nearly 2 metres tall) strong fast and aggressive. He's knocking on the door of the world's top 20 players (he's 24 currently). And he's only 20...
On the subject of being around forever, how about the Swiss Mister? Remember, he was Nadal's hero when he was a junior, if you can believe that. He's now 35, an age when most players are retiring or preparing to go on the seniors tour, and here he is in Melbourne, looking as lean and fit as ever, and showing he remains another player in the drawer for the Brits and others to fear- even our Andy...
Monday, 16 January 2017
Fear for the future
At this moment in my life I have good reason to feel afraid for the future, but it is fear for us, Britain, and the world, that concerns me almost as much.
When Trump won in America I almost went into a state of denial: oh, it'll be all right, once in office he will take the mantle of power and it will, as if by magic, bestow upon him statesmanlike qualities even he wasn't aware he possessed, like a grieving person who draws upon deep wells of strength to bring them through their great crisis, strength they never knew they had. But now I begin to wonder if that old saying might be more apposite: "absolute power corrupts absolutely". Will he actually become drunk with power and enact so many terrible things, withdrawing all environmental checks and balances, allow Israel to utterly crush the Palestinians, even attack North Korea, that America and the world could take a hundred years or more to recover?
As for us, what will Britain look like in a couple of years from now? Will we become a low tax, low benefit niche that is good for the wealthy but very bad for the poor and the JAMS, a place where the NHS is cut back to the bone while an insurance based medical system takes over for those who can afford it, a place where councils sell all their valuables to make ends meet, and when that's gone simply cut all their services until the roads are scarcely drivable and libraries are things of the past? Will we fight a trade war with Europe that we will lose, whilst deporting our "aliens" and bringing all our expats home? I hope to God none of this will come to pass, but I fear much of it will. Nice one, you vote leavers. Fuck you.
When Trump won in America I almost went into a state of denial: oh, it'll be all right, once in office he will take the mantle of power and it will, as if by magic, bestow upon him statesmanlike qualities even he wasn't aware he possessed, like a grieving person who draws upon deep wells of strength to bring them through their great crisis, strength they never knew they had. But now I begin to wonder if that old saying might be more apposite: "absolute power corrupts absolutely". Will he actually become drunk with power and enact so many terrible things, withdrawing all environmental checks and balances, allow Israel to utterly crush the Palestinians, even attack North Korea, that America and the world could take a hundred years or more to recover?
As for us, what will Britain look like in a couple of years from now? Will we become a low tax, low benefit niche that is good for the wealthy but very bad for the poor and the JAMS, a place where the NHS is cut back to the bone while an insurance based medical system takes over for those who can afford it, a place where councils sell all their valuables to make ends meet, and when that's gone simply cut all their services until the roads are scarcely drivable and libraries are things of the past? Will we fight a trade war with Europe that we will lose, whilst deporting our "aliens" and bringing all our expats home? I hope to God none of this will come to pass, but I fear much of it will. Nice one, you vote leavers. Fuck you.
Tuesday, 10 January 2017
A humanitarian crisis in the NHS? Surely some mishtake
Frissons of incredulity spread the chattering classes this week when the British Red Cross suggested parts of the NHS were in such a Godawful mess the situation could be described as an humanitarian crisis. Compared to the crisis in Syria this probably something of an exaggeration, but we are talking about one of the world's wealthiest countries (at present at least; watch this space for updates) where patients are indeed being subjected to some appalling abuses: being kept on trolleys in corridors for up to 36 hours, waiting times for ambulances going from the ideal of 8 minutes to more like 40, A and E departments overwhelmed by patients waiting far beyond the target of 4 hours. The list is long, and deeply depressing for a country like ours whose NHS used to be the envy of the world. No longer. The health services of France, Germany, the Nordic countries to name just a few far outstrip ours in terms of the quality of service, and the situation is worsening by the day.
Three years ago I stopped being a provider of health care to a consumer of same, just another NHS punter you might say. And I soon began to learn what has been common knowledge amongst the general public for a long time: it's hard to get to see your G.P. In my practice my wife and I have, along with a considerable number of other people, adopted the practice of waiting outside the surgery from about 7.30 in the morning (and there are usually half a dozen who are already there waiting) and wait until the doors open at 8 am. That way you are (almost) guaranteed to get a slot that day. Don't bother trying to phone when the lines open at 8. They are continuously engaged at least until 8.15, by which time the appointments have already been allocated. Getting advance appointments is no easier. But, we have both wondered, what if you are too old or infirm, or plain ill, to wait outside in the cold and rain for upwards of half an hour? Ask for a house call. Gimme a break. You need to be seriously incapacitated to warrant one of those. And I mean seriously.
I used to be scathing about people who took their non-urgent or relatively trivial complaints to A and E departments. Not any more. Now I can see that it is really a response to the near-impossibility of getting in to see your GP that has caused this fundamental shift in the way health care is provided.
I blame the G.Ps themselves, for not opening up more slots (we used to have appointments for 18 patients per doctor per surgery; the practice I attend allows only 15), and successive governments for being slow to react to this growing crisis. Immigration is part of the problem, because often they arrive with a range of complex and hitherto unaddressed maladies to contend with, but it is only a small part. A far larger part is the failure of the systems designed to provide health care strategies to see what's happening in front of their noses and acting accordingly. Shame on them!
Three years ago I stopped being a provider of health care to a consumer of same, just another NHS punter you might say. And I soon began to learn what has been common knowledge amongst the general public for a long time: it's hard to get to see your G.P. In my practice my wife and I have, along with a considerable number of other people, adopted the practice of waiting outside the surgery from about 7.30 in the morning (and there are usually half a dozen who are already there waiting) and wait until the doors open at 8 am. That way you are (almost) guaranteed to get a slot that day. Don't bother trying to phone when the lines open at 8. They are continuously engaged at least until 8.15, by which time the appointments have already been allocated. Getting advance appointments is no easier. But, we have both wondered, what if you are too old or infirm, or plain ill, to wait outside in the cold and rain for upwards of half an hour? Ask for a house call. Gimme a break. You need to be seriously incapacitated to warrant one of those. And I mean seriously.
I used to be scathing about people who took their non-urgent or relatively trivial complaints to A and E departments. Not any more. Now I can see that it is really a response to the near-impossibility of getting in to see your GP that has caused this fundamental shift in the way health care is provided.
I blame the G.Ps themselves, for not opening up more slots (we used to have appointments for 18 patients per doctor per surgery; the practice I attend allows only 15), and successive governments for being slow to react to this growing crisis. Immigration is part of the problem, because often they arrive with a range of complex and hitherto unaddressed maladies to contend with, but it is only a small part. A far larger part is the failure of the systems designed to provide health care strategies to see what's happening in front of their noses and acting accordingly. Shame on them!
Tuesday, 3 January 2017
37 books, 107 movies
That's my tally for 2016. And a strange, terrible, yet in a way wonderful year it was. A year in which I faced the possibility of losing my freedom, and still do, and a year which saw my return to studenthood after an interim of no less than 42 years. Somehow I was able to keep up my reading and movie watching despite the distractions. The figure of 107 movies in a year beats my former record by two. 37 books in one year falls short of my record by 8.
Which were my favourites? Allow me to list 8 books and ten movies that had especial impact for me:
BOOKS
1. Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce
2. A Brief History of Seven Killings, by Marlon James
3. Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys
4. To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf
5. The Butcher Boy, by Patrick McCabe
6. Maus, by Art Spiegelman
7. A Heart so White, by Javier Marias
8. All for Nothing, by Walter Kempowski
FILMS
1. Behind the Candelabra, D- Steven Soderberg
2. The Danish Girl, D- Tom Hooper
3. Eyes Without a Face, D- Georges Franju
4. Chronicle of a Summer, D- Jean Rouche and Edgar Morin
5. Tangerines, D- Zaza Urushadze
6. Like Father Like Son, D- Hirokazu Koreeda
7. The Salt of the Earth, D- Wim Wenders
8. Inside Out, D- Pete Docter
9. The Revenant, D- Alejandro Inarritu
10. I, Daniel Blake, D- Ken Loach
I give all these books and films my highest recommendation. As you can see they represent a considerable variety of genres, obscure classics, graphic novels, contemporary works, older films, documentaries, animations and bang up to date state-of the art Hollywood blockbusters. You could do a lot worse than having a go at all of them. You, like me, will culturally enriched and ennobled as a result. Have a great year yourself!
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