CRAZY RICH ASIANS (2018) D- John Chu
A perky New Yorker travels to Singapore to meet her BF Nick, not realizing till she gets there that he’s actually the scion of one of the richest (and most snobbish) families in Singapore. She’s an accomplished academic, but that doesn’t cut much ice with these guys. What they admire is money and the courage to spend it big. Chief among her critics is Eleanor, Nick’s mum (played by the only class act in the film, Michelle Yeoh), who doesn't think she’s got the right stuff and isn’t backward about coming forward in telling her so. Much complication ensues, with these and other related billionaires until, like some far-eastern fairy tale, it all comes right in the end.
I’d say more, but I’m feeling a bit nauseous. Despite the film’s popularity (it cost $30 million and made nearly $300 million) I became annoyed early and it got worse. Sure, it looks good, full of gaudy colours and evidence of extravagant wealth, but, sorry, I found it a thin, vapid exercise in wealth-envy. However, as I say, I am clearly in the minority.
THE BREAKFAST CLUB (1984) D- John Hughes
A crew of high school kids are stuck in detention on a Saturday when they’d really rather be out having their adolescent fun. Well, they shouldn’t have been naughty, should they? It’s a mixed bag, the cool kid, the Goth, the geeky one, the misfit girl. Etcetera. The film is bravely shot almost entirely in this one classroom, the miscreants presided over by a teacher (Paul Gleason) who is in a kind of detention himself, as he has to stay there all day too.
What follows is an essay in adolescent alienation as one pupil after another describes their life, in engaging, and sometimes heartbreaking detail.
This film marked the debut of a number of stars who came to be known collectively as the ‘Brat Pack’, including Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez and Ally Sheedy. John Hughes, who wrote as well as directed the film, struck gold. Costing barely $1 million dollars to make, it grossed more than $50 million, ensuring his place as a Hollywood Player. I for one say he deserved it.
PRETTY IN PINK (1986) D- Howard Deutsch
A somewhat socially outcast Milly Ringwald finds herself dating a boy from the right side of the tracks, but soon finds trans-class relationships are not without their problems... Fortunately she has one true anchor in her life - her dad (Harry Dean Stanton, perfect as always), who is always there for her, no matter what.
Written by John Hughes (see above), apparently in just 2 days, this was perhaps the high-water mark of the Brat Pack era, and like The Breakfast Club, featured excellent writing and some fine acting from its young stars. Some of them, like James Spader went on to even greater things; others, such as Molly Ringwald seemed almost to disappear from the screen altogether. Strange how that happens...
I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING! (1945) P/D- Powell and Pressburger
A feisty young woman travels from London to the outer Hebrides to marry her (much older) millionaire fiancée, who has rented an island for the occasion. But inclement weather prevents her from making the last leg of the journey and she finds herself stranded in a highland village until the wind drops. And there she meets Roger Livesy, the local laird, who despite all the land he owns (including the island in question) is, like everyone else in the village, little richer than a church mouse. There’s a key moment in the film when he says of one of his friends:
“She isn’t poor, she just doesn’t have any money.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“Oh no, not at all.”
Our gold digger doesn’t get this at all, or at least she has to go through a number of formative and quite scary experiences before she does.
A lot of people hold this film in very high regard. Martin Scorsese, for example, rates this among the ten best films he’s ever seen, and it is true that there is something very special about the atmosphere it creates, despite its low budget and limited material. I think it’s called cinematic magic, and in this film Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger takes that to its very highest level. Wonderful.
Wednesday, 31 July 2019
Tuesday, 30 July 2019
July 2019 book review
THE FATAL ENGLISHMAN, by Sebastian Foulks
Being three brief lives of Englishmen whose lives were cut short in their prime, their perhaps enormous potential never realized. Faulks’s book begins with the story of Christopher (“Kit”) Wood, who threatened at one point to be Britain’s foremost painter of the 20th century before opium and inner demons swept him away, in his case under the wheels of a train. No less a figure than Picasso saw his pictures when he was living in Paris in the years before the Great War, and surprising for a man more used to damning with faint praise, told Wood he had a touch of greatness about him.
Unfortunately, he also got caught up with a playboy count who liked to smoke opium, and decided to travel around Europe in luxury with him rather than concentrate on his art. A series of women tried to save him, but it was a task doomed to failure. Only a few paintings survive (some of which are illustrated in the book), but it is clear from them that Wood had indeed discovered something new, something unique. Had he lived, he might have eclipsed Augustus John, but fate determined a different path...
Faulks’s next portrait is of Richard Hillary, who as a Spitfire pilot in the Battle of Britain was shot down, surviving but horribly burned in the process. He went on to write one of the key books of WW2, The Last Battle, which chronicles his slow, agonising recovery. But he too had some kind of death wish and pulled every string he knew to get back into the air. But perhaps I shouldn’t spoil this story...
Finally, Faulks turns to Jeremy Wolfenden, a man once described as ‘the cleverest young man in England’. At Eton he finished top of year apparently without any effort on his part, and the same thing happened at Oxford. But Wolfenden was gay in an era when that was a crime, not that that prevented him flaunting his sexuality in sometimes outrageous fashion. But his life took a radical new direction when he was recruited by MI6 and sent to Moscow, where the KGB soon heard about him and tried to turn him for their own purposes. Once again I shouldn’t spoil the story, but here again we see how a great future was blighted by inner demons, and in particular in Wolfenden’s case, alcohol.
Sebastian Faulks is a fine writer of nonfiction and tells his stories with considerable compassion and insight. Highly recommended.
THE CHARTERHOUSE OF PARMA, by Stendhal.
A young man in a hurry would fight for his beloved Napoleon, but his first battle is Napoleon’s last: Waterloo. Fabrice, for lo that is his name, then finds himself in the complex political jigsaw that was northern Italy in the early 19th century. A good-looking young fellow, he is favoured by various well placed and gorgeous ladies, one of whom is his aunt. Are her intentions towards him entirely honourable? Even he is not completely sure, and she’s far too intelligent to reveal her hand until she’s ready. Then he manages to upset the prince of Parma, who, exercising his absolute power, imprisons him in the impregnable Farnese Tower. But even there he finds another beautiful woman to comfort him, albeit at a distance. Can she somehow help him to escape from a prison cell no one has escaped from before? Read on...
Stendhal is best known for just 2 books, this one and The Scarlet and the Black. Each book has its adherents, but regardless of which they believe is the greater of the two, all are agreed they represent two of the finest novels of the 19th century. They both read like contemporary thrillers, and both demonstrate a deep understanding of the human soul. Read ‘em both, I say.
THE JOY LUCK CLUB, by Amy Tan.
Every week a group of four Chinese ladies in San Francisco get together to play Mah Jong and reminisce. The stories they tell are often of their old life in the home country, and are redolent of the exploitation they experienced at the hands of a patriarchal society and their menfolk in particular. Each has a daughter, and they too are given the opportunity to tell their stories, in their case of their lives in the Land of the Free. Four mothers, four daughters, their stories interweave like a game of Mah Jong (which was the author’s clever design) and in the process we gain a very special insight into the Chinese mind - not so different from ours in its fundamentals: they want to prosper, do better than their ancestors, and find some happiness along the way. If they can...
A fascinating little book, well written and containing a host of intriguing, and sometimes heartbreaking tales.
Being three brief lives of Englishmen whose lives were cut short in their prime, their perhaps enormous potential never realized. Faulks’s book begins with the story of Christopher (“Kit”) Wood, who threatened at one point to be Britain’s foremost painter of the 20th century before opium and inner demons swept him away, in his case under the wheels of a train. No less a figure than Picasso saw his pictures when he was living in Paris in the years before the Great War, and surprising for a man more used to damning with faint praise, told Wood he had a touch of greatness about him.
Unfortunately, he also got caught up with a playboy count who liked to smoke opium, and decided to travel around Europe in luxury with him rather than concentrate on his art. A series of women tried to save him, but it was a task doomed to failure. Only a few paintings survive (some of which are illustrated in the book), but it is clear from them that Wood had indeed discovered something new, something unique. Had he lived, he might have eclipsed Augustus John, but fate determined a different path...
Faulks’s next portrait is of Richard Hillary, who as a Spitfire pilot in the Battle of Britain was shot down, surviving but horribly burned in the process. He went on to write one of the key books of WW2, The Last Battle, which chronicles his slow, agonising recovery. But he too had some kind of death wish and pulled every string he knew to get back into the air. But perhaps I shouldn’t spoil this story...
Finally, Faulks turns to Jeremy Wolfenden, a man once described as ‘the cleverest young man in England’. At Eton he finished top of year apparently without any effort on his part, and the same thing happened at Oxford. But Wolfenden was gay in an era when that was a crime, not that that prevented him flaunting his sexuality in sometimes outrageous fashion. But his life took a radical new direction when he was recruited by MI6 and sent to Moscow, where the KGB soon heard about him and tried to turn him for their own purposes. Once again I shouldn’t spoil the story, but here again we see how a great future was blighted by inner demons, and in particular in Wolfenden’s case, alcohol.
Sebastian Faulks is a fine writer of nonfiction and tells his stories with considerable compassion and insight. Highly recommended.
THE CHARTERHOUSE OF PARMA, by Stendhal.
A young man in a hurry would fight for his beloved Napoleon, but his first battle is Napoleon’s last: Waterloo. Fabrice, for lo that is his name, then finds himself in the complex political jigsaw that was northern Italy in the early 19th century. A good-looking young fellow, he is favoured by various well placed and gorgeous ladies, one of whom is his aunt. Are her intentions towards him entirely honourable? Even he is not completely sure, and she’s far too intelligent to reveal her hand until she’s ready. Then he manages to upset the prince of Parma, who, exercising his absolute power, imprisons him in the impregnable Farnese Tower. But even there he finds another beautiful woman to comfort him, albeit at a distance. Can she somehow help him to escape from a prison cell no one has escaped from before? Read on...
Stendhal is best known for just 2 books, this one and The Scarlet and the Black. Each book has its adherents, but regardless of which they believe is the greater of the two, all are agreed they represent two of the finest novels of the 19th century. They both read like contemporary thrillers, and both demonstrate a deep understanding of the human soul. Read ‘em both, I say.
THE JOY LUCK CLUB, by Amy Tan.
Every week a group of four Chinese ladies in San Francisco get together to play Mah Jong and reminisce. The stories they tell are often of their old life in the home country, and are redolent of the exploitation they experienced at the hands of a patriarchal society and their menfolk in particular. Each has a daughter, and they too are given the opportunity to tell their stories, in their case of their lives in the Land of the Free. Four mothers, four daughters, their stories interweave like a game of Mah Jong (which was the author’s clever design) and in the process we gain a very special insight into the Chinese mind - not so different from ours in its fundamentals: they want to prosper, do better than their ancestors, and find some happiness along the way. If they can...
A fascinating little book, well written and containing a host of intriguing, and sometimes heartbreaking tales.
Monday, 22 July 2019
We did it!
I was an eighteen year-old lad, waiting to take my place at Liverpool University medical school in just a few week’s time, when at around 4 o’clock in the morning of 21st July 1969, I watched the grainy images of Neil Armstrong making his way down the ladder of the LEM (Lunar Excursion Module). As he “stepped off the LEM”, I heard his immortal words “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”, badly garbled by static but still intelligible, and I knew my life, and the life of humanity, would never be the same again. A few minutes later I went outside into the early dawn, and there was the moon, just past half-full, and thought to myself: My God! There are people walking around on that thing! To me that moment marked a fundamental step forward in the progress of human kind. To develop the technology to visit our neighbouring world, across the terrible, airless void of space, remains the most significant event of the 68 years I have lived on this planet.
I wasn’t alone. Much later I heard Buzz Aldrin being interviewed about the world tour the Moonmen undertook in the months following their landing, and he said that everywhere people would say the same thing to him: “We did it!” OK, it was an American flag that was planted in the Sea of Tranquillity, and let’s face it, if we’d done it there would be a Union Flag there now. But the point Aldrin was making was that everyone felt it to be an achievement of the whole human race, not just the Yanks. They just led the way.
Yet not everyone was a fan of the Apollo project, and I’m not referring to the idiots who continue to insist that the whole thing was a movie made by Stanley Kubrick. A number of people felt the money, and to be fair it was an enormous sum, could have been better used to help end world poverty, or something else more relevant to humanity here at home. Trouble is, you can’t solve poverty simply by throwing money at it. Most poverty and hunger is politically based, famines especially so. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to end poverty, hunger and famine, of course we should, but we should explore space too.
Human beings have been saying “I wonder what’s out there. Let’s go and find out” ever since the time of Cro Magnon. The Phoenicians regularly set sail to parts unknown in search of new trading routes way before the pyramids were built. The Vikings sailed right across the Atlantic Ocean and discovered the New World hundreds of years before Columbus tried the same thing. And what we did in 1969 was in the same spirit, even if it was a fortuitous consequence of the arms race and the Cold War. It’ll be the same when we finally set foot on Mars, then Titan, then Triton, as Arthur C Clarke predicted we one day will. The burning desire to find out what’s out there is as strong now as it ever was.
I wasn’t alone. Much later I heard Buzz Aldrin being interviewed about the world tour the Moonmen undertook in the months following their landing, and he said that everywhere people would say the same thing to him: “We did it!” OK, it was an American flag that was planted in the Sea of Tranquillity, and let’s face it, if we’d done it there would be a Union Flag there now. But the point Aldrin was making was that everyone felt it to be an achievement of the whole human race, not just the Yanks. They just led the way.
Yet not everyone was a fan of the Apollo project, and I’m not referring to the idiots who continue to insist that the whole thing was a movie made by Stanley Kubrick. A number of people felt the money, and to be fair it was an enormous sum, could have been better used to help end world poverty, or something else more relevant to humanity here at home. Trouble is, you can’t solve poverty simply by throwing money at it. Most poverty and hunger is politically based, famines especially so. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to end poverty, hunger and famine, of course we should, but we should explore space too.
Human beings have been saying “I wonder what’s out there. Let’s go and find out” ever since the time of Cro Magnon. The Phoenicians regularly set sail to parts unknown in search of new trading routes way before the pyramids were built. The Vikings sailed right across the Atlantic Ocean and discovered the New World hundreds of years before Columbus tried the same thing. And what we did in 1969 was in the same spirit, even if it was a fortuitous consequence of the arms race and the Cold War. It’ll be the same when we finally set foot on Mars, then Titan, then Triton, as Arthur C Clarke predicted we one day will. The burning desire to find out what’s out there is as strong now as it ever was.
Wednesday, 17 July 2019
He said what they’re all thinking
One of the saddest things about the latest disgraceful tweets from US president Trump is the signal failure of Republican lawmakers to come out and call them for what they were: racist and completely un-American. But it isn’t hard to see why. They know they are doomed if they say what I’m sure a lot of them are thinking, namely something like:
“I believe in the Republican Party and the conservative views it stands for, but I cannot support a president who persists in his racist tirades. This is not an America I want to part of.”
By telling those congresswomen to “go back where they came from”, Trump broke they rules of his own Equal Opportunities Commission, which cites on its website the kind of language that if used in the workplace could be deemed, not just deeply offensive to people of colour but actually illegal. And perhaps the most worrying aspect of this is that bigots can now shout at an ethnic minority person walking down the street to go back where they came from, and if challenged, they can now say: “Hey! if the President of the United States can say it, so can I!”
But those Republicans who have reservations about Trump’s racism know that if they go against him, he will not back them in the upcoming primaries, and put his support behind an alternative candidate who will toe the Trump line, right or wrong, whatever it takes. So it’s really about power. There is nothing new about politicians abandoning their moral sense in their quest for power. I just think it’s got worse than it has ever been, and this in a world that ought to be moving towards a better, more humanitarian future.
Trump knows he is tapping into an extremely rich vein of underlying racism in the United States, just as the Brexiteers here know they’re onto a good thing with the closet racists in our own country. You can’t go wrong appealing to the worst in people, it seems...
“I believe in the Republican Party and the conservative views it stands for, but I cannot support a president who persists in his racist tirades. This is not an America I want to part of.”
By telling those congresswomen to “go back where they came from”, Trump broke they rules of his own Equal Opportunities Commission, which cites on its website the kind of language that if used in the workplace could be deemed, not just deeply offensive to people of colour but actually illegal. And perhaps the most worrying aspect of this is that bigots can now shout at an ethnic minority person walking down the street to go back where they came from, and if challenged, they can now say: “Hey! if the President of the United States can say it, so can I!”
But those Republicans who have reservations about Trump’s racism know that if they go against him, he will not back them in the upcoming primaries, and put his support behind an alternative candidate who will toe the Trump line, right or wrong, whatever it takes. So it’s really about power. There is nothing new about politicians abandoning their moral sense in their quest for power. I just think it’s got worse than it has ever been, and this in a world that ought to be moving towards a better, more humanitarian future.
Trump knows he is tapping into an extremely rich vein of underlying racism in the United States, just as the Brexiteers here know they’re onto a good thing with the closet racists in our own country. You can’t go wrong appealing to the worst in people, it seems...
Saturday, 13 July 2019
He said what we’re all thinking
Poor old Kim Darroch. Forced to resign for doing his job. Ambassadors are charged with explaining coherently the situation in their adopted nation to the powers that be at home, and he did that with wit, perspicacity and insight. He revealed the chaos that reigns in the dark heart of the White House, and the truth of his remarks was what caused Trump to launch yet another of now famous hissy fits against anyone fearless enough to call him on it.
Of course his remarks were not intended for his ears, or indeed anyone outside the higher echelons of the Foreign Office, but someone, probably an arch-Brexiteer, was determined to bring him down. We can probably expect more revelations from him or her as they attempt to trash the rep of anyone brave enough to label Brexit for what it is: the greatest folly the UK has ever enacted upon itself.
One of the more unseemly spin-offs of this whole farrago has been the signal failure of Boris to offer any kind of succour to Kim Darroch, despite knowing full well, as a previous foreign secretary, that ambassadors have a job to do, and that he was doing that job exactly according to his job description. Of course I understand that his position in Washington has been fatally compromised by the leaks, especially since Trump said he wanted nothing more to do with him (once again showing that Trump’s representation as an angry baby was uncannily accurate), but he should at least have been backed publicly by the UK establishment until his term of office came to end at the end of this year.
Shame on you leaker, and shame on you Boris for supporting him!
Of course his remarks were not intended for his ears, or indeed anyone outside the higher echelons of the Foreign Office, but someone, probably an arch-Brexiteer, was determined to bring him down. We can probably expect more revelations from him or her as they attempt to trash the rep of anyone brave enough to label Brexit for what it is: the greatest folly the UK has ever enacted upon itself.
One of the more unseemly spin-offs of this whole farrago has been the signal failure of Boris to offer any kind of succour to Kim Darroch, despite knowing full well, as a previous foreign secretary, that ambassadors have a job to do, and that he was doing that job exactly according to his job description. Of course I understand that his position in Washington has been fatally compromised by the leaks, especially since Trump said he wanted nothing more to do with him (once again showing that Trump’s representation as an angry baby was uncannily accurate), but he should at least have been backed publicly by the UK establishment until his term of office came to end at the end of this year.
Shame on you leaker, and shame on you Boris for supporting him!
Wednesday, 3 July 2019
it isn’t just climate change that threatens us
BBC news last night ran an extremely disturbing story about the indigenous Indians of the Amazon and how their future is threatened by encroaching farmers and loggers. These people don’t see why the Indians should have the forest, even a relatively tiny portion of it, to themselves. They have a right to work the land themselves, they claim, and anyway, the Indians just waste what they have.
Underlying this, I feel, is an undercurrent of racism. All over Latin America, the paler your skin, the more you can trace your ancestry back to Europe, the higher up the social scale you are. Conversely, the darker your skin, the less evolved you are, and the fewer human rights you should enjoy. The jungle bunnies are untermensch, if I may borrow a phrase from another culture, so why should we pay them any mind? Unfortunately, this despicable attitude is being encouraged by Brazil’s new populist president Bolsonaro, who has joked (we hope) that he’d be just as happy to see the whole of the rainforest paved over if it would help his country’s economy. And the fate of the indigenous populations, who have lived there in harmony with nature for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived? Fuck them. They don’t count.
And what does count? Money, stupid, and the maintenance of power. Ask Donald Trump. He’s the fountainhead from which populists around the world got their inspiration. Which is why, even if he loses in 2020 (which I have no particular reason to believe he will) his toxic legacy will persevere for decades to come...
Tuesday, 2 July 2019
June 2019 film review part 2
ROCKETMAN (2019) D- Dexter Fletcher
A man dressed as the Devil walks into an addiction clinic like he owns the joint. He could certainly afford it: he’s Elton John, one of the most successful pop singers in history. So what’s he doing here? Ah, the price of fame...
Unlike Tristram Shandy, this biopic does start at the beginning, with young Reg Dwight realising he has certain talents, and this being recognised by his Mum (though not Dad) and his music teacher. Some time later he bumps into a guy called Bernie Taupin, who can write songs but not the music, but Reg reckons he was born to do that job for him. The rest as they say, is history...
Comparisons with Bohemian Rhapsody are inevitable at this point, as both look at the lives of iconic figures in pop music, from humble beginnings to life at the top with all the pitfalls that brings. For my money though, this is the better movie: more tightly scripted, more involving, and with some brilliant set pieces, especially a terrific tapestry of a scene set to the music of Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting. Definitely the film of the summer.
THE GREAT ECSTASY OF WOODCARVER STEINER (1974) D- Werner Herzog
There’s this Austrian dude called Walter Steiner, and he was born to do two things: carve wood and fly, the latter with the assistance of two long skis. In fact he’s so good at ski jumping, can fly so much so much further than anybody else in history, that the organizers have to have him launch off much lower down the slope than everyone else, because if they don’t he’ll go so far he’ll land on the flat and possibly kill himself. Even then he still wins virtually every competition he enters.
In order to do justice to the great man, director Herzog uses a 500 frames per second slow motion film camera to catch every glorious moment of Steiner’s flights towards the infinite, before coming back to earth, seemingly as light as a feather. And as usual, Herzog works his magic, adding his own distinctive voice-over which adds to the strange, hypnotic atmosphere of the film. This film is available on You Tube, and, in this reviewer’s opinion, is unmissable.
A man dressed as the Devil walks into an addiction clinic like he owns the joint. He could certainly afford it: he’s Elton John, one of the most successful pop singers in history. So what’s he doing here? Ah, the price of fame...
Unlike Tristram Shandy, this biopic does start at the beginning, with young Reg Dwight realising he has certain talents, and this being recognised by his Mum (though not Dad) and his music teacher. Some time later he bumps into a guy called Bernie Taupin, who can write songs but not the music, but Reg reckons he was born to do that job for him. The rest as they say, is history...
Comparisons with Bohemian Rhapsody are inevitable at this point, as both look at the lives of iconic figures in pop music, from humble beginnings to life at the top with all the pitfalls that brings. For my money though, this is the better movie: more tightly scripted, more involving, and with some brilliant set pieces, especially a terrific tapestry of a scene set to the music of Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting. Definitely the film of the summer.
THE GREAT ECSTASY OF WOODCARVER STEINER (1974) D- Werner Herzog
There’s this Austrian dude called Walter Steiner, and he was born to do two things: carve wood and fly, the latter with the assistance of two long skis. In fact he’s so good at ski jumping, can fly so much so much further than anybody else in history, that the organizers have to have him launch off much lower down the slope than everyone else, because if they don’t he’ll go so far he’ll land on the flat and possibly kill himself. Even then he still wins virtually every competition he enters.
In order to do justice to the great man, director Herzog uses a 500 frames per second slow motion film camera to catch every glorious moment of Steiner’s flights towards the infinite, before coming back to earth, seemingly as light as a feather. And as usual, Herzog works his magic, adding his own distinctive voice-over which adds to the strange, hypnotic atmosphere of the film. This film is available on You Tube, and, in this reviewer’s opinion, is unmissable.
June 2019 film review Part 1
A COCK AND BULL STORY (2005) D- Michael Winterbottom
Was an alternative title offered by Laurence Sterne to his masterpiece Tristram Shandy (double entendre intended), a book they said was impossible to film. But one of Britain’s cleverest directors, Michael Winterbottom, wasn’t listening. But how to do it? Winterbottom decided on a film-within-a-film method, taking his inspiration from Fellini’s 8 1/2 and Truffaut’s Day for Night, and casting Steve Coogan as Tristram and Rob Brydon as his uncle Toby, playing themselves whilst attempting to make a period piece in a variety of English country houses dotted around the Norfolk countryside.
Did it work? Most critics agreed that it did, and once I got my head around Winterbottom’s method, I did too. Coogan is good enough to make you forget about Alan Partridge (even if some characters keep reminding him of his most famous creation), and his double act with Rob Brydon, which is reminiscent of the series they later made together, called The Trip is often hilarious This, presumably, is where the idea for that series came from.
Verdict: this is what Millennial Brit cinema is all about: Intelligent, funny and insightful.
THIS IS ENGLAND (2006) D- Shane Meadows.
A kid (a brilliant Thomas Turgoose) barely in his teens fights off the bullies who taunt him about his father’s death in the Falklands War. His courage is noticed by older lads, and word gets back to a local BNP organiser (an early outing from Stephen Graham) who decides to take him under his wing. Adolescence is an impressionable age, and soon our lad is going on all the marches and demos...
Shane Meadows and Stephen Graham recently came together again to make the brilliant TV series The Virtues about a man scarred by sexual abuse in childhood, but it is well worth it to see the impact they made when this film came out in 2006. While working in a very different way from Michael Winterbottom, Shane Meadows has established himself, like the latter, as one of the most talented directors in British cinema. And when he works with Graham, it seems he can do no wrong. One of the best British films in the last 20 years.
GONE IN 60 SECONDS (1974) D- H P Halicki
Not to be confused with the much later remake starring Nick Cage, this film is ostensibly about a gang of car thieves who are commissioned to steal 48 luxury cars in 5 days. The key to what this film is really about can be found in the opening credits, where top billing is given to “Eleanor”, who turns out to be a 1973 Ford Mustang Mach 1. And it is she who is taken through her paces, and then some, when the police catch up with the gang leader, who then embarks on one of the longest and most dramatic car chases ever committed to film. Everyone has seen the car chase in Bullitt, and the car vs train chase in French Connection, but surprisingly few people have even heard of this cult classic, the pet project of HP Halicki, who himself, somewhat ironically, died 20 years later in a car smash.
A notable collector’s item.
A kid (a brilliant Thomas Turgoose) barely in his teens fights off the bullies who taunt him about his father’s death in the Falklands War. His courage is noticed by older lads, and word gets back to a local BNP organiser (an early outing from Stephen Graham) who decides to take him under his wing. Adolescence is an impressionable age, and soon our lad is going on all the marches and demos...
Shane Meadows and Stephen Graham recently came together again to make the brilliant TV series The Virtues about a man scarred by sexual abuse in childhood, but it is well worth it to see the impact they made when this film came out in 2006. While working in a very different way from Michael Winterbottom, Shane Meadows has established himself, like the latter, as one of the most talented directors in British cinema. And when he works with Graham, it seems he can do no wrong. One of the best British films in the last 20 years.
GONE IN 60 SECONDS (1974) D- H P Halicki
Not to be confused with the much later remake starring Nick Cage, this film is ostensibly about a gang of car thieves who are commissioned to steal 48 luxury cars in 5 days. The key to what this film is really about can be found in the opening credits, where top billing is given to “Eleanor”, who turns out to be a 1973 Ford Mustang Mach 1. And it is she who is taken through her paces, and then some, when the police catch up with the gang leader, who then embarks on one of the longest and most dramatic car chases ever committed to film. Everyone has seen the car chase in Bullitt, and the car vs train chase in French Connection, but surprisingly few people have even heard of this cult classic, the pet project of HP Halicki, who himself, somewhat ironically, died 20 years later in a car smash.
A notable collector’s item.
June 2019 book review
THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, GENTLEMAN by Laurence Sterne
In the middle of the 18th century, a child is born into a genteel family, but immediately finds himself laboring under all manner of difficulties. First, the doctor crushes his nose with his newly invented obstetric forceps while delivering the child. Second, the serving wench mis-spells his name when given the task of registering his birth. These are both insurmountable problems for Tristram’s Father, among whose ‘hobby-horses’ are the beliefs that it is essential to go through life with at least two things: a good Christian name, and a strong, prominent nose. Oh dear.
Now, you’d think that these facts would occur at the beginning of what amounts to an autobiography, but no. We are into volume 5 of the book before Tristram is even born, because of a literary device Laurence Sterne made his own: digression, often lengthy, frequently hilarious and always fascinating. Our esteemed author, who often addresses us directly, sees these diversions not as such, but “as the thing itself”. The digressions are the book, and what make it unique in literature. And there are numerous other unique aspects to this remarkable book. All at once, we may come across a blank page, a page that appears to be an impression of marble, or another which is simply black. Some of these eccentricities are explained (though we are often not left a great deal wiser for the explanation); some are not. But what we ultimately find is an amazing novel that is literally centuries ahead of its time. The great doctor Johnson once said of it: “Nothing odd will do long”, but here the good doctor was in grave error. It has done long, never being out of print in the 260 years since it was published. Try this tiny taster, from page 332 of the Penguin edition:
“...It is from this point properly, that the story of my LIFE and my OPINIONS sets out; with all my hurry and precipitation, I have been clearing the ground to raise the building - and such a building do I foresee it will turn out, as never was planned, and was never executed since Adam. In less than 5 minutes I shall have thrown my pen into the fire, and the little drop of thick ink which is remaining at the bottom of my inkhorn, after it - I have but half a score of things to do in the time - I have a thing to name - a thing to lament - a thing to hope - a thing to promise, and a thing to threaten... this chapter therefore, I name this the chapter of THINGS, and the next chapter be upon WHISKERS, in order to keep up some sort of connections in my works...
You don’t want to go on and read 600-odd more pages of this sort of sublime, mind-expanding ridiculousness? What is wrong with you?
WATERLOG, by Roger Deakin
An academic with a lifelong interest in the environment reads the famous short story The Swimmer by John Cheever, and decides to re-enact the narrative of that story by “swimming across Britain”, taking in lakes, rivers, canals, public swimming pools and the odd estuary along the way.
His account of these exploits has become famous as one of the most lyrical and beautiful pieces of creative nonfiction to have come out of Britain since the War. Deakin was a very observant man, and noted the wildlife he encountered, be they otters, wild flowers, fellow swimmers or local anglers with loving, even ecstatic detail. Like his friend Robert McFarlane, he had a passionate love of the English countryside, and feared for the dwindling wild places, now under threat as never before from the implacable forces of capitalism and the rush to profit.
Roger Deakin died tragically young from a brain tumour in 2006, thereby depriving the world of a unique and beautiful mind. We can’t afford to lose people like him...
THE UNKNOWN TERRORIST, by Richard Flanagan
A Sydney pole dancer saves the money she earns from her faintly dubious work because she is determined to lift herself into something more substantial, more meaningful. She is well on her way to achieving this when she has a one night stand with an attractive young Arab. They following day she’s reading the paper when he is named as a possible, (probable, definite?- it doesn’t matter, the media has already made up its collective mind) Al Qaida member. Then, CCTV footage emerges which appears to show him, and a young woman, cuddling outside his apartment. The press pull out all the stops to identify the mystery girlfriend, and The Doll (which is how Flanagan describes her) knows it’s only a matter of time before they track her down.
Richard Flanagan has carved himself a rep as one of Australia’s leading novelists, having won numerous awards including the Booker, and here he is at his best, with a sensitive and highly skilled analysis of hope, despair and a media that cares little for anything beyond ratings. Superior thriller-writing...
In the middle of the 18th century, a child is born into a genteel family, but immediately finds himself laboring under all manner of difficulties. First, the doctor crushes his nose with his newly invented obstetric forceps while delivering the child. Second, the serving wench mis-spells his name when given the task of registering his birth. These are both insurmountable problems for Tristram’s Father, among whose ‘hobby-horses’ are the beliefs that it is essential to go through life with at least two things: a good Christian name, and a strong, prominent nose. Oh dear.
Now, you’d think that these facts would occur at the beginning of what amounts to an autobiography, but no. We are into volume 5 of the book before Tristram is even born, because of a literary device Laurence Sterne made his own: digression, often lengthy, frequently hilarious and always fascinating. Our esteemed author, who often addresses us directly, sees these diversions not as such, but “as the thing itself”. The digressions are the book, and what make it unique in literature. And there are numerous other unique aspects to this remarkable book. All at once, we may come across a blank page, a page that appears to be an impression of marble, or another which is simply black. Some of these eccentricities are explained (though we are often not left a great deal wiser for the explanation); some are not. But what we ultimately find is an amazing novel that is literally centuries ahead of its time. The great doctor Johnson once said of it: “Nothing odd will do long”, but here the good doctor was in grave error. It has done long, never being out of print in the 260 years since it was published. Try this tiny taster, from page 332 of the Penguin edition:
“...It is from this point properly, that the story of my LIFE and my OPINIONS sets out; with all my hurry and precipitation, I have been clearing the ground to raise the building - and such a building do I foresee it will turn out, as never was planned, and was never executed since Adam. In less than 5 minutes I shall have thrown my pen into the fire, and the little drop of thick ink which is remaining at the bottom of my inkhorn, after it - I have but half a score of things to do in the time - I have a thing to name - a thing to lament - a thing to hope - a thing to promise, and a thing to threaten... this chapter therefore, I name this the chapter of THINGS, and the next chapter be upon WHISKERS, in order to keep up some sort of connections in my works...
You don’t want to go on and read 600-odd more pages of this sort of sublime, mind-expanding ridiculousness? What is wrong with you?
WATERLOG, by Roger Deakin
An academic with a lifelong interest in the environment reads the famous short story The Swimmer by John Cheever, and decides to re-enact the narrative of that story by “swimming across Britain”, taking in lakes, rivers, canals, public swimming pools and the odd estuary along the way.
His account of these exploits has become famous as one of the most lyrical and beautiful pieces of creative nonfiction to have come out of Britain since the War. Deakin was a very observant man, and noted the wildlife he encountered, be they otters, wild flowers, fellow swimmers or local anglers with loving, even ecstatic detail. Like his friend Robert McFarlane, he had a passionate love of the English countryside, and feared for the dwindling wild places, now under threat as never before from the implacable forces of capitalism and the rush to profit.
Roger Deakin died tragically young from a brain tumour in 2006, thereby depriving the world of a unique and beautiful mind. We can’t afford to lose people like him...
THE UNKNOWN TERRORIST, by Richard Flanagan
A Sydney pole dancer saves the money she earns from her faintly dubious work because she is determined to lift herself into something more substantial, more meaningful. She is well on her way to achieving this when she has a one night stand with an attractive young Arab. They following day she’s reading the paper when he is named as a possible, (probable, definite?- it doesn’t matter, the media has already made up its collective mind) Al Qaida member. Then, CCTV footage emerges which appears to show him, and a young woman, cuddling outside his apartment. The press pull out all the stops to identify the mystery girlfriend, and The Doll (which is how Flanagan describes her) knows it’s only a matter of time before they track her down.
Richard Flanagan has carved himself a rep as one of Australia’s leading novelists, having won numerous awards including the Booker, and here he is at his best, with a sensitive and highly skilled analysis of hope, despair and a media that cares little for anything beyond ratings. Superior thriller-writing...
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