Sure, Julian Blanc is a twat. But should we ban him?

You know the guy. He's made a large sum of cash explaining how men can best score with women.
"If you're a white male in Tokyo, you can do pretty much anything. Just grab 'em."
Another of his pronouncements gives tips on that most annoying scenario: when a woman has agreed to have sex but then most unreasonably removes her permission.


These and other obnoxious pieces of counselling have caused him to be banned from entering the U.K. Women's rights workers have said that if you are going to ban Islamic clerics because of their hate-filled rhetoric, then Julian Blanc falls into the same category. This is hard to argue against, though libertarians, of which I humbly count myself as one, counter that by banning him we are infringing on the right to free speech.


So I think he should be allowed in to preach his disgraceful credo, and that we in turn should be allowed to heckle him furiously, hurl jelly, rotten eggs and whatever else comes to hand at this disgusting little creep. While we're about it, how about mounting a twitter campaign against him.? Give him a taste of his own medicine, as it were.


Here's the news Julian. What works best with women in my experience is taking an interest in their lives, rather than going on and on about yourself like so many men do in the mistaken belief women give a toss. Give good eye contact, try not to go on about your work, and develop some interesting hobbies. I have always found that women find juggling sexy for some reason. Give that a try, and don't grope them unless they have indicated that that's what they actually want. Got it? Good. Now fuck off back where you came from.

Jerusalem attack: can you blame the Palestinians?

Damn right you can, if you're an Israeli, (Netenyahu has warned of dire consequences, and you can be sure they will not be long in coming) or come to that a Brit or a Yank. Around the world of Israel supporters, there has been a great cry of outrage at the murders in Jerusalem. Yet these voices were mute during the genocidal violence committed in Gaza just a few brief months ago. I am no supporter of violence, but I can at least go some way to understanding the circumstances which led to the attack.


Have you wondered what's been happening in Gaza since the bombing stopped? The answer is absolutely nothing. The blockade remains in place, meaning that no new building materials have been permitted to enter that stricken area. So those parts of Gaza which by the end of August resembled nothing so much as Berlin at the end of World War II, remain in exactly the same condition as they were when the Israelis decided they had achieved their ends and ceased their bombing campaign. In the West Bank the illegal settlement building programme goes on unabated, despite the agonised protest of the Palestinians who are being pushed aside to make way for them.
 In Jerusalem, the Israeli authorities continue their extremely provocative posture of claiming the right to worship on what they call the Temple Mount, despite this area being for many centuries the domain of Islam. Anyone with any knowledge of the situation there will tell you that this is a deliberate and cynical provocation on the part of the Israelis. They want to goad the Palestinians into a response, and look at that! They got one. Now they can use that good old argument of "See?  We're dealing with a bunch of murderous terrorists here. Now let us handle the situation in whatever way we see fit, to keep our people safe."


The defence of "extreme provocation" is rightly seen as exculpatory in the judicial systems of many civilised countries. Hence we should use extreme caution before condemning the actions of some angry and desperate Palestinians, determined to strike back against a regime which has dominated and subjugated their people for over sixty years.

Bravo Rosetta!

The success of the Rosetta mission has demonstrated, and quite marvellously so, that ESA (the European Space Agency) has finally come of age. In soft-landing a probe on the surface of a speeding comet they have achieved a feat equal to, or even greater than, say, NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover. After all Mars is a rather larger target (by a factor of several billion) as well as being a helluva lot closer. The most recent reports do suggest problems have arisen, which is scarcely surprising. First, its anchoring hooks failed to deploy, causing the probe to bounce more than a kilometre back into space. And when it finally fell back down it was in the lee of a steep cliff which shaded it from the sunlight it needs to keep its batteries charged.


You might be wondering why it bounced so high when it landed the first time, but the answer is simple. The escape velocity on Comet 67P Churimov-Gerasimenko, as it is charmingly named (after the Russian astronomers who discovered it in 1969), is just 3 feet per second. (compare that with the escape velocity here on Earth, which is 7 miles a second), which means a man standing on it could easily jump off it and head out into space. Another problem is the extraordinary topography of the "dirty snowball" in question, which by the way remains as good a definition of what a comet is made up of as anything else. It is riven with deep canyons and vertiginous mesas and pinnacles; indeed, the astounding photographs already sent back from Rosetta show a world remarkably similar in appearance to the comet visited by messrs. Willis, Affleck et al in the film Armageddon. Made in 1996, that film, which amongst other things featured cinema's most improbable astronaut in the shape of Steve Buscemi, seemed at the time to lack authenticity in a number of aspects. Strange then, that one of the unexpected results of the Rosetta mission has been to vindicate that film's (at the time) absurd vision of what the surface of a comet might look like.


It seems Rosetta has now gone into hibernation, though ESA mission control say it might rejuvenate when the comet draws nearer to the Sun. But even if we never hear another word from it, the mission will to me still have been a resounding success.


In  his book 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C Clarke looked forward to a world where the people of the World had finally found something as interesting and exciting as war: space exploration. We aren't there yet, by a long way unfortunately. But we are allowed to dream. One day I can envisage a world where the wealthy nations come together to build a permanent colony on the Moon, send men and women to Mars, and one day even search for life on places like Europa and Enceladus. The technology to do things like this exists already, but we are too busy trying to screw each other every chance we get to devote the energy and will to mount such ambitious projects. But in the future... None of this will happen in my lifetime but it is coming, and children born today will, with any luck, see the first two of these great projects get under way. And their grandchildren could even see the human race reaching for the stars...

Leave Ed alone!

Poor Ed Miliband has been having a hard time of late. The right wing press have been going after him in a campaign of almost unprecedented hatred for some time, and it may be working. There was the incident of him "forgetting" to mention the deficit in his speech to the labour party conference. Then there was the shot of him giving money to a beggar, though the way it was photographed made him look like he wished he was a thousand miles away. Then that shot of him going in for a kiss with his wife, who was clearly not up for it. All this is to say nothing of the disgraceful piece in the Daily Mail filled with irrational vitriol, not about him, but his father! Then of course, there was the embarrassment of that teeshirt...


Fact is, there are issues about his presentation. He looks a little, well, odd; he speaks a little, well, oddly, and perhaps most importantly, the way politics has shifted in the last 20 years means his policies often look not wholly dissimilar to his opponents. In short, he comes over as awkward, louche and wholly unsuited for the high office he already holds, and even less worthy of the even higher office to which he aspires. All this, and more, has conspired to make him the most unpopular labour leader since Neil Kinnock on a bad day. Worse, we are told, he is seen as electoral cyanide to Labour's hopes of winning the next election.


But is it really true? I can't help feeling that much of this is indeed down to the right-wing gutter press, who don't want to see him, or any other labour figure, lead Labour into power next year. And thus they have mounted a highly successful hatchet job on someone who is actually a highly skilled operator whose heart is actually in the right place.


Today's politics is all about soundbites. But I have to say I liked his latest pronouncement. He said he wanted to see the end of zero hours contracts at one end of the economic spectrum, and the end of zero taxes at the other. If he and his mates really are going to do something substantive about those worst excesses of capitalism if they get into power next year, they'd have my vote, right there.

Grief: worse- and stranger, than you can imagine

I was watching the American series Hoarders today. One of the cases featured a woman who had filled her house with all the usual clutter, but among the wall-to-ceiling piles of unusable rubbish that she was nonetheless unable to throw away was a vast collection of dead things: dead rats, dead cats, a dead owl she had found in the street. All had been carefully wrapped in cling film, many had been consigned to a huge freezer. One drawer was found to be stuffed with the husks of dead cicadas, thousands of them. The resident  psychologist dared to ask her why she saved these things, and she replied "to make their deaths less meaningless".


It then emerged that she had been widowed some years before, losing her husband aged 41 to a massive coronary. Ah so! The psychologist, bless her, again dared to go there and invite her to consider that her bereavement and her bizarre practices with dead things might in fact be related. And more kudos to the lady, she eventually got to the point where she was able to acknowledge this.


When my son died suddenly in 2006, my own life began to fall apart. I started to indulge in a series of self destructive behaviours, some of which got me in very serious trouble  With agonising guilt dominating my life, it was almost as if I needed to punish myself for my failures in parenting- surely if I had done my job as a parent properly; if I had simply loved him more, he would be alive today. And I have held to this view despite the best efforts of my wife, my friends and my psychiatrist. Don't try to take my guilt away! I cry- it keeps me warm at night.


I know some people resolve their grief in a meaningful way and go forward to lead useful lives in a reasonably well adjusted way. Good for them. For me, I remain damaged goods, leading a quiet, almost reclusive life where I rarely go out, see my friends seldom and spend the majority of my time reading, recycling and watching the TV. Occasionally I try to write but it is an excruciatingly difficult effort. At least I am now avoiding self-harming behaviour except in minor ways like cigarette smoking and drinking whisky. I expect to continue living this way until my dying day. It isn't so bad, really. But I will never be a whole man again. Don't get me wrong: I'm not complaining. Compared to some my life has a lot going for it. Many, many people have a much worse life than I do. The people of Gaza, the people of West Africa and indeed not a few people right here in Britain would doubtless exchange their miserable lives for mine in a heartbeat.

30,000 research papers show global warming is real: happy now?

You should be. The UN having announced that a meta-analysis of no less than 30,000 research papers confirms that global warming is real and that human activity is contributing to it should be proof enough for anyone with half a brain. Unless of course that brain is under the influence of the vested interests of the fossil fuel business.
The rest of us, hopefully, now see what an enormous problem the Erath is dealing with. Unless CO2 emissions are virtually eliminated by 2100 it seems we will be more or less fucked.


I hear you muttering, if Britain gets a bit warmer that ain't such a bad thing, right? I mean, we could have vineyards like France has now- that's a good thing surely. I wouldn't be too sure. Yes, Britain might get warmer, but it will also get wetter and windier (last winter should serve as an example of how that will work). Far worse is the strong possibility that it could actually get a lot colder in north-western Europe. At the moment we enjoy a far balmier climate than we have any right to considering our high latitude, courtesy of the Gulf Stream, or Atlantic Conveyor as scientists like to call it these days. But as the Greenland icecap melts, which it is already doing at an alarming rate, cool water will flood down from the far north, and this could easily disrupt or even destroy the Gulf Stream. Then we could find ourselves no warmer than say, Newfoundland. FYI, Newfoundland has the same sort of climate as central Norway. So don't start planting those vineyards just yet.


For me, the first thing to do is to completely abandon ALL plans for fracking- not just in the UK but around the world. Instead, let's start looking at sustainable energy sources on the kind of scale which will be needed when oil and gas become anathema. There are plenty out there already, but using some of the massive resources we would have sunk into fracking could bring about revolutionary developments hitherto undreamed of. Necessity is the mother of invention, they say, and boy, do we ever have a necessity right now...

October 2014 book and film review

BOOKS


EDWARD WILSON'S ANTARCTIC NOTEBOOKS, edited by D.M. and C.J. Wilson.
After Captain Scott himself, the most revered man to have died on the return from the South Pole in 1912 was undoubtedly Dr Edward Wilson. Described by Scott as the finest man he had ever known, Wilson was a talented naturalist and highly skilled watercolourist, as well has having endless stores of energy and strength, which is why Scott included him in the last party. He was also a devout Christian, literally devoting his life to living according to Christ's teachings.


This beautifully produced book contains many of Wilson's watercolours which show, inter alia, the extraordinary subtlety of colours in the Antarctic sky as the sun slowly rose over, or sank below, the horizon. Most of his pictures are tucked away in the archives of the Scott Polar Research Institute because they deteriorate rapidly on exposure to light. But here they are reproduced with loving attention to detail, the new advances in digital printing having enabled remarkable authenticity to be achieved. Reading the book and looking at these pictures was deeply moving, cataloguing as they do a great man's final days, engaged in a grand scheme of scientific discovery that would ultimately cost him his life.


THE BEST OF CORDWAINER SMITH.
Can you imagine a world 6000 years in the future? 16,000 years? That's what Cordwainer Smith did in the late 40s and 50s, inhabiting it with genetically engineered cats that can talk, robots that can read minds, and humans with such powerful minds they can fold space.
Cordwainer Smith (his real name was a scarcely more plausible Dr Cornelius Linebarger) imagined all this and more. His stories come down to us as if transported direct from the future in some sort of time capsule. The concepts he introduces are so strange, even the words used are unfamiliar sometimes, and the characters so exotic that we find ourselves strangely involved in his uniquely realised Universe.
Rather special.


IN TRANSIT, by Anna Seghers. As France falls before the Nazis, a young German man escapes from a concentration camp, swimming across the Rhine before finding his way to Paris. He adopts the identity of a writer who has killed himself and, holding his papers, makes his way to Marseille where he launches a campaign to flee his oppressors and make a new life in the New World. He soon finds this is the hardest job in the world, doubly so as half the time he is pretending to be someone else. He meets a handsome woman who is also trying to escape, but won't leave until she finds her husband- and guess who that is: the very man whose identity our hero has adopted. Can he keep the secret from her and still achieve his aim of leaving Europe with her? It seems an impossibly difficult task, which doesn't stop him trying. And trying...


Described by some as one of the greatest short novels of the 20th century, Anna Seghers has produced a multi-layered work of great depth and subtlety, but one which also captures the attention at the most basic level. It is exciting, gripping even, in its  depiction of a whole army of displaced people who are desperate to escape the tyranny of the Nazis, but as in a book previously reviewed here, B Traven's The Death Ship, they are up against foes almost worse than storm troopers with machine guns: the implacable forces of bureaucracy and indifference. Terrific.


FILMS


GROSSE POINT BLANK (1997) D- George Armitage. A freelance hitman (an excellent John Cusack) takes a commission in his home town, where by sheer coincidence his old high school reunion is also taking place. He'd like to reconnect with an old flame (Minnie Driver), but he has a job to do. There are other small complications too, like another hitman who has been paid to kill him. It's all a bit too complicated for our hero, who just wants to score with his old GF.
Superior "hitman with a heart" movie with splendid performances all round, especially from John Cusack, who could put this film along with The Grifters in his claim to be placed in the front rank of  Hollywood actors.


THE FROZEN GROUND (2013) D- Scott Walker. A hooker bursts into an Alaska police station claiming to have been abducted at gunpoint. Her story sounds plausible until she names her assailant, a local baker with strong ties to the community who surely couldn't be capable of such a terrible act. Could he? Only one detective believes her story (Nick Cage) and it seems he's up against the whole town when he insists he's onto the right guy.


Based on the true story of Robert Hansen, who in the 1970s kidnapped a series of young women, flying them into the icy wastes of Alaska, where he let them go- and hunted them down like game. I admired this film, with John Cusack (yep, him again) playing the super-respectable Hansen with ice-cool menace, and Vanessa Hudgens as the hooker with guts enough to help bring her kidnapper down despite the odds.


THIS IS NOT A FILM (2011) D-  Jafar Pamali and Mojtaba Mirtakmash. An Iranian film maker is under house arrest for speaking against the government. He's desperate to continue working at his art, so he begins to make a film of his life within the prison of his home. As he doesn't do much, the film threatens to be a bit dull, but what emerges is an absorbing study of artistic frustration: what we see is a subtle and moving portrait of a man determined to fulfil his creative destiny. Scenes like the one where he simply observes the bin man going from floor to floor in his apartment block picking up the rubbish become somehow transformed into an epic tale. An extraordinary effort.


BRANDED TO KILL (1967) D- Seijun Suzuki. The number three ranked hitman in Japan botches his latest job and finds himself targeted by the number one guy. Add to this some very complex relationships with a girlfriend with a death wish and a wife who would also like to kill him and you have one very strange movie. You could call it a sort of Japanese noir, or you could call it an amazing piece of existentialist cinema. Whatever you call it, this is as revolutionary a film as you could wish to find: certainly as bold as say, Breathless or Les Enfants Terrible.
To summarise, wow!


MUD (2012) W/D- Jeff Nichols. While fooling about on a small island in the middle of the Arkansas river, two twelve year old boys come across an odd fellow living there. They rapidly fall under the spell of his downhome charisma and start to help him out in small ways: bringing him food, procuring tools to help him repair a small boat and passing messages to his girlfriend (a sultry, trailer-trash Reese Witherspoon). Then they hear the state police are searching for a man accused of murder. Could it be their guy?
This movie flows slowly, rather like the great river around which is centred, but a denouement is just around the next bend and we just know it ain't gonna be pretty. Well written and skilfully directed, this is another example of how Matthew McConnaughey, who plays the eponymous lead, has come of age, placing him now at the forefront of Hollywood acting talent.


PUSHOVER (1954) D- Richard Quine. A hard bitten detective (Fred McMurray) is given the job of surveilling a gangster's moll in the hope it will lead to him plus the 200 grand which was stolen in a recent bank robbery. Unfortunately he falls for her almost immediately (understandable: she is played by Kim Novak in her movie debut, with the kind of face and body anybody would wreck their career for) and teams up with her to get the girl, and the money for himself. But as in all the best Hollywood noirs, things soon begin to go horribly wrong.
Accomplished piece of movie making, with some rather strange parallels with Double Indemnity: a femme fatale, a grand plan which falls apart very quickly leaving a bloody conclusion. It doesn't have the sheer class of that classic, but it's still highly watchable.


THE EXILES (1961) D- Kent McKenzie. In the run down area of Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles, a group of Navajo Indians have left their reservation in Colorado and are trying to make new lives in the big city. In a way, not much happens. The men hang around the house for most of the day, getting over their hangovers while their women clean around them. When night comes they're out on the thrash again. At one point one of the men molests another Indian girl. He is quite brutish about it, and she slaps him. Annoyed and frustrated at her rejection he knocks her down. Yet only a few minutes later all seems forgiven and forgotten and the lads continue their partying until dawn. Finally they return home, where their women have been waiting for them all night long.
This film reminded me strongly of a Roberto Bolano novel: at one level it's just a group of people interacting and trying to have a good time. But it is far more than that: what emerges is for me a crucial piece of cinema- deeply insightful, compassionate and tragic in its portrayal of the disastrous consequences of the collision of two disparate cultures, the one far more powerful than the other. It was considered to close to the bone for American cinema distributors: they denied it a showing in the States for nearly forty years- thereby depriving American audiences of one of the finest films made throughout the 1960s And that is the real tragedy of this movie. It told a truth that Americans weren't ready to hear. Are they yet?


AMERICAN HUSTLE (2013) D- David O Russell. A couple attempting a financial scam are collared by the FBI and recruited to front up an even bigger scam to entrap a major league bad guy.
This film went down well in the States, where it received an Oscar nomination and there is a sustained energy about it which is highly seductive. But Bradley Cooper as the FBI agent was not believable to me. He was too excitable, too neurotic and far too erratic to be what I would consider to be FBI material. I could be wrong though. Christian Bale, however, is much more convincing as the scammer turned FBI narc, and Amy Adams who plays his wife is also good. Her gowns certainly won my approval. She wears many different ones in the course of the movie, and they all give a new meaning to the word cleavage. Apologies. As my wife would say, down boy...


THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (2013) D- Martin Scorsese. Being the life and times of Jordan Bellfort, Wall Street rogue trader and general larger than life diamond geyser. In the course of three long hours, we get to the heart of the man, and what lies at his heart, apparently, is a neatly folded $100 bill, which is waiting to be turned into more of the same. It's all about the money, stupid, and nothing else matters, not trust, not loyalty, not a moral framework, unless that moral framework is screw the other guy before he screws you. Jordan Bellfort is a real person, who was finally taken down by the FBI for insider trading, but not before he had made millions for himself and several other unscrupulous associates.
But is it a good film? I'm afraid the answer is no. For me it was a good hour too long, and lacked the polish we have come to hope for from one of America's leading auteurs. Scorsese has made, in Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas, three of the best films to come out of America in the last forty years. He has also made some appalling dogs, notably Gangs of New York and Casino. I am sorry to have to report that, despite a rapturous reception on his home turf, in Wolf  he has made another in the latter category. Leo di Caprio is a fine actor, but here he is only asked to rant and rave for three hours and that just isn't good enough. Shame, I wanted to like it.


ALL IS LOST (2013) D- J.C. Chandor. A lone yachtsman in the middle of the Indian Ocean wakes from a deep sleep to find his boat has snagged a half-submerged container and been holed above the water line. Demonstrating the truth that you can fix absolutely anything with gaffer tape, he effects a repair. All seems well, but our ancient mariner (a gnarled but still beautiful Robert Redford) knows that all he has to do is hit some rough water and the whole thing could fail. Then he espies storm clouds off the port bough. Oh, shit...
This is a very unusual film: There is only one cast member, and there is scarcely any dialogue. In fact about the only thing you do hear him saying is an occasional  "Oh, shit". The rest is one man's struggle against the elements, elements that seem to be conspiring to kill him. Remind me not to go ocean sailing in a small boat any time soon.
Despite its unusual nature, this film works surprisingly well. Redford completely captures the attention as he uses his intelligence and manual dexterity to keep death by drowning at arm's length for long enough for another boat to find him.
Some have criticised the ending, which I shall not spoil for you. Endings are hard, I know. But you judge for yourself. It's well worth it.


BARBARA (2012) D- Christian Petzold An attractive East German doctor (Nina Hoss) has fallen out with the authorities by having had the temerity to ask for an exit visa, and is sent to a provincial town near the Baltic coast to cool her heels. Knowing the Stasi are watching her every move, she still contrives to have a life of her own- albeit a rather dangerous one. Every month or so her apartment is raided and she is subjected to a full (and I mean full) strip search. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, she spends much of her mental energy working on ways to get the hell out of there. Finally a chance arrives, but by now she has befriended a young girl who was admitted to her hospital with an overdose. Will she run regardless or will her new friend keep her confined in her little hell?
Made to high professional standards and with great human warmth and compassion, this languid tale of fear and loathing in the East Germany of the 70s creeps into the soul, leaving this viewer not a little moved. Excellent work.