I've just finished Fathers and Sons, Alexander Waugh's book about his male ancestors. He begins with his great-great grandfather, also called Alexander, but known to the family as the the Brute, and then moves on to his great-grandfather, Arthur, then to his illustrious grandfather, Evelyn. I haven't got any further than that yet, but I assume that he moves on to his father, Auberon, Evelyn's eldest son.
It's a delightful read and I enjoyed it very much - he's not the greatest of writers, but his style is easy, and comfortable to read, especially last thing at night when one's feeling a bit dozy and doesn't want anything too demanding.
But why I am I reading such a book, one which has absolutely no relevance to my life, past or present? Well, it's the Waugh magic, of course,and it's fascinating to see how it was born, grew and matured. I've always loved Evelyn's books, and have grown up with them. I first started reading them in my early 20s and have never stopped. They bear repeated reading as Waugh's prose style is perfect - the book reveals that he was a stickler for correct grammar, and being a bit of a grammar fanatic myself, it's not surprising that his writing is so satisfying, like most grammatically-correct writing. Alexander's writing is OK, but unlike Evelyn's, his writing is sometimes clunky, with rather infelicitous descritopns - but, no matter - his book is highly enjoyable and readable.
Its centrepiece, surprisingly, is Arthur, Evelyn's father who turns out to be a complex and fascinating character, and possibly the source, unwittingly, of Evelyn's talent. He openly favoured his older son, Alec and Evelyn was ignored and neglected throughout his childhood. Arthur's worship of Alec was bizarre and pathological, while Evelyn was left to make his own way in life, turning out, of course to be a literary genius. Arthur was, however, a benign and benevolent character, and after his death, Evelyn wrote a wonderfully forgiving piece about him, remembering his exuberance, and love of home-grown family entertainments. Arthur was certainly the source of many of Evelyn's fictional fathers, and few of them are monsters. Charles Ryder's father's benign neglect in Brideshead Revisited is clearly based on Arthur's.
Alexander's father, Auberon, Evelyn's eldest son, had another neglected childhood and it's fascinating to see how the near delinquent became a lovely, if deeply flawed man, who somehow manged to break the cycle of bad parenting, which went all the way back to Arthur's father, also Alexander, who was known, accurately, as the Brute. Auberon inspired enormous love and affection in his children and clearly worshipped them, but not in Arthur's dysfunctional manner. So, a fascinating family memoir, and a wonderfully vivid picture of Victorian and Edwardian parenthood. Is ours an improvement? Time will tell....
Saturday 14 March 2009
Sunday 8 March 2009
A Beautiful Mind
I've been working my way through a pile of DVDs left here by one of my sons, and finally reached the last one, A Beautiful Mind. I knew about the film, of course; knew it came garlanded with Oscars including a Best Actor for Russell Crowe, but was never tempted to go and see it when it came out.
I was more engrossed by the film than I imagined I would be, but, as with so many Ron Howard films, it's far too long, and ultimately soft-centred. I did, however, find it far more engrossing than I thought I would and was held right up to the end, though I did get impatient in the last half hour, and found myself silently mouthing 'Oh get on with it!'.
The main talking point is Russell Crowe, who is turning into one of our great character actors. It's as if he's saying, I can do anything - bring it on, whatever it is. And he can. He's been completely convincing in everything he's done, from his debut in the masterly LA Confidential, to his wonderful performance in Master & Commander, and, of course, Gladiator. There's much else, The Insider was another high point, and there haven't been many low points, maybe A Year in Provence but we'll draw a veil over that. Anyway, he puts in a creditable effort at capturing John Nash's weirdness. He was a mathematical genius, but this gift came with the burden of paranoid schizophrenia, from which he eventually made a miraculous recovery. Crowe successfullymanages to inhabit his world view and Howard successfully conveys this with his direction, so we don't realise that Paul Bettany, who play his friend and Ed Harris, who is an entirely plausible secret agent, are entirely imaginary. But his world-picture, and his mind, starts to unravel completely as he descends into madness. Crowe conveys this gradual descent and recovery perfectly but the audience realises only gradually that there's something wrong.
The film met with mixed reviews when it was released in spite of being clear Oscar-fodder. Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian slated it (predictably), for being hopelessly at odds with John Nash's real-life persona which is classic Bradshaw. He always misses the point, criticising films for not being realistic. It does have obvious problems, though, and the period detail is hopelessly messy. The hair isn't right for a start - not short enough for the men, and the women's are too casual, not remotely recognisable as a 40s look. The actors try to reproduce the quick-fire snappy delivery of 40s films, but can't do it - they should all be sentenced to watch multiple episodes of Mad Men.
So, an ultimately unsatisfactory film - I felt cross for the missed opportunity. Nash's story is actually more interesting than the one Howard tells. He was a closeted homosexual for a start, and Crowe, good as he tried to be, couldn't ultimately convey Nash's fragility convincingly enough. Inother words, a classic Ron Howard film, soft-centred, and a cop-out,
I was more engrossed by the film than I imagined I would be, but, as with so many Ron Howard films, it's far too long, and ultimately soft-centred. I did, however, find it far more engrossing than I thought I would and was held right up to the end, though I did get impatient in the last half hour, and found myself silently mouthing 'Oh get on with it!'.
The main talking point is Russell Crowe, who is turning into one of our great character actors. It's as if he's saying, I can do anything - bring it on, whatever it is. And he can. He's been completely convincing in everything he's done, from his debut in the masterly LA Confidential, to his wonderful performance in Master & Commander, and, of course, Gladiator. There's much else, The Insider was another high point, and there haven't been many low points, maybe A Year in Provence but we'll draw a veil over that. Anyway, he puts in a creditable effort at capturing John Nash's weirdness. He was a mathematical genius, but this gift came with the burden of paranoid schizophrenia, from which he eventually made a miraculous recovery. Crowe successfullymanages to inhabit his world view and Howard successfully conveys this with his direction, so we don't realise that Paul Bettany, who play his friend and Ed Harris, who is an entirely plausible secret agent, are entirely imaginary. But his world-picture, and his mind, starts to unravel completely as he descends into madness. Crowe conveys this gradual descent and recovery perfectly but the audience realises only gradually that there's something wrong.
The film met with mixed reviews when it was released in spite of being clear Oscar-fodder. Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian slated it (predictably), for being hopelessly at odds with John Nash's real-life persona which is classic Bradshaw. He always misses the point, criticising films for not being realistic. It does have obvious problems, though, and the period detail is hopelessly messy. The hair isn't right for a start - not short enough for the men, and the women's are too casual, not remotely recognisable as a 40s look. The actors try to reproduce the quick-fire snappy delivery of 40s films, but can't do it - they should all be sentenced to watch multiple episodes of Mad Men.
So, an ultimately unsatisfactory film - I felt cross for the missed opportunity. Nash's story is actually more interesting than the one Howard tells. He was a closeted homosexual for a start, and Crowe, good as he tried to be, couldn't ultimately convey Nash's fragility convincingly enough. Inother words, a classic Ron Howard film, soft-centred, and a cop-out,
Saturday 7 March 2009
Terminators I & II
I've just been catching up on the first 2 Terminator films in preparation for the impending TIV, or whatever it's going to be called. I was initially sceptical, but then I saw that Christian Bale is going to be playing John Connor, and a) I'll go and see virtually anything CB is in, plus b) I trust Bale's choice of parts - he rarely makes a bad one.
I'd seen both I & II, but a long time ago, so it was an interesting exercise revisiting them as I couldn't really remember them too well. The first thing that struck me was Arnie - he's perfect! But more perfect in the first film, when he's bad Arnie. He's scary, and somehow his unadulterated, implacable evil is more convincing than his warmer, cuddlier righteousness in the second film. T2's enjoyable, though, but you can see the early signs of Cameron overkill. T1 is short and snappy, about 100mins, which is about right, whereas T2, at least in the T2 Special Edition which I borrowed off my son, clocks in at a bloated 2.5 hours and I started to mentally clock off long before the end.
There's a preponderance of special effects, and we're supposed to be amused at AS subverting his role, and the ironic asides. Well, it probably did seem funny when it was released, but now it's a bit tiresome as we've seen so much of this sort of stuff since. The first film doesn't have anything like that at all, and it's the better film for it. I suppose it belongs to Arnie's perfect period, when he made Predator and Conan. They, to me, are just right, whereas in T2, he's beginning his Kindergarted Cop and Twins period.
Anyway, watching them was a mildly interesting exercise and I fancy the new film, so we'll see how the reinvention will go. I'm sure it'll be too long, though, as is the fashion today for these sorts of blockbusters. It would be nice to see a T1-style action film, but I'm not holding out any hope.
I'd seen both I & II, but a long time ago, so it was an interesting exercise revisiting them as I couldn't really remember them too well. The first thing that struck me was Arnie - he's perfect! But more perfect in the first film, when he's bad Arnie. He's scary, and somehow his unadulterated, implacable evil is more convincing than his warmer, cuddlier righteousness in the second film. T2's enjoyable, though, but you can see the early signs of Cameron overkill. T1 is short and snappy, about 100mins, which is about right, whereas T2, at least in the T2 Special Edition which I borrowed off my son, clocks in at a bloated 2.5 hours and I started to mentally clock off long before the end.
There's a preponderance of special effects, and we're supposed to be amused at AS subverting his role, and the ironic asides. Well, it probably did seem funny when it was released, but now it's a bit tiresome as we've seen so much of this sort of stuff since. The first film doesn't have anything like that at all, and it's the better film for it. I suppose it belongs to Arnie's perfect period, when he made Predator and Conan. They, to me, are just right, whereas in T2, he's beginning his Kindergarted Cop and Twins period.
Anyway, watching them was a mildly interesting exercise and I fancy the new film, so we'll see how the reinvention will go. I'm sure it'll be too long, though, as is the fashion today for these sorts of blockbusters. It would be nice to see a T1-style action film, but I'm not holding out any hope.
Wednesday 25 February 2009
Local Hero
I saw a programme on TV the other day in the series Movie Connections, about the 80s film Local Hero. The series interviews ppeople involved with certain iconic films, a sort of where-are-they-now type exercise. I haven't seen any of the others as they were about films I either hadn't seen or had much interest in, but Local Hero is different.
It would make my personal top ten -it's a film I've seen many times and have always found magical and very, very special. For those who don't know it, it's about a Texan oilman who's despatched to this Scottish village somewhere on the west coast in order to persuade the villagers to sell the beach, where oil has been discovered, for vast sums of money. which will make the village unimaginably wealthy. They all quite fancy this, except for an old bloke who lives in a hut on the beach and scrapes a living as a beachcomber, and who refuses to have anything to do with it, thus throwing a gigantic spanner in the works.
Over the course of the film, the oilman becomes captivated by the area, the village and the beach, and the deal collapses. The film reveles in the magic of the area - I'm reminded, not so much of Whisky Galore, the film its most often compared with, as of I Know Where I'm Going, the semi-mystical Powell and Pressburger film of the 1940s, in which a brittle English girl becomes captivated by the local laird, and the Scottish islands. It's a classic of the highest order, and Local Hero belongs definitively in that category - a lovely, lovely film. I've been prompted to get it on DVD to as it belongs in my permanent collection.
It would make my personal top ten -it's a film I've seen many times and have always found magical and very, very special. For those who don't know it, it's about a Texan oilman who's despatched to this Scottish village somewhere on the west coast in order to persuade the villagers to sell the beach, where oil has been discovered, for vast sums of money. which will make the village unimaginably wealthy. They all quite fancy this, except for an old bloke who lives in a hut on the beach and scrapes a living as a beachcomber, and who refuses to have anything to do with it, thus throwing a gigantic spanner in the works.
Over the course of the film, the oilman becomes captivated by the area, the village and the beach, and the deal collapses. The film reveles in the magic of the area - I'm reminded, not so much of Whisky Galore, the film its most often compared with, as of I Know Where I'm Going, the semi-mystical Powell and Pressburger film of the 1940s, in which a brittle English girl becomes captivated by the local laird, and the Scottish islands. It's a classic of the highest order, and Local Hero belongs definitively in that category - a lovely, lovely film. I've been prompted to get it on DVD to as it belongs in my permanent collection.
Thursday 12 February 2009
Billy Liar
I watched this the other day - it was on an ancient video and I'd taped it years ago; I'd actually written an essay on it, so had watched it several times and knew it very well. But that was a few years ago, so I thought I'd give it another look. It's about a northern working-class lad who lives in a fantasy world, where fantasy is more real and fulfilling than reality. He has 2 girlfriends, both of whom he strings along, because he has a fantasy that he can have both. This doesn't sound very appealing, but somehow Courtenay makes Billy lovable and endearing.
I love Tom Courtenay. He's wonderful-looking, of course, with his chiselled bone structure, but there's a vulnerability about him that's enormously appealing. He was in the recent Little Dorrit - he's about 70 now, and he played Mr Dorrit, Amy's father, who's incarcerated in the Marshalsea, the debtor's prison, with his family He's retained that vulnerability and deep-rooted sadness, and his performance was heartbreaking.
He produced a book recently consisting of letters his mother sent to him when he was a young man down in London at drama school. He comes from a very working-class background in Hull, so he, unlike Billy, got away. The letters are wonderful, and they're interspersed with his memories, and some of his own letters. The whole thing is a marvellous read.
Anyway, back to Billy. The original play was written by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, and it's hilarious. In the film, as well as TC playing Billy (who was played by Albert Finney in the original play), his sidekick at the undertakers where he works, is played by Rodney Bewes. Both lads fantasise, and there's a hilarious scene in which the two wander through the town (which I think is Bradford, though I could be wrong), trading witty fantasies and impersonations. Leonard Rossiter plays their boss, and his performance is another gem.
The thing about the film, as opposed to the play, is its vision of life in the early 60s, as Victorian buildings were pulled down to be be replaced by concrete and modernity. The first scene is a joy - Godfrey Winn is presenting Housewives' Choice, something I remember well from my own childhood, and reads out requests. We see the overjoyed housewives in their tower blocks hearing their requestes read out. Winn was a media ever-present in those days; an iconic figure, and hia performance is a joy. We see a nation in a ferment of change, yet which clings to the safety of tradition. The film is full of such scenes - there's a hilarious scene which depicts a supermarket opening, complete with visiting celebrity.
Billy has the chance to escape to London with Julie Christie, but he doesn't leave - he deliberately misses the train to London and life with Julie ,as, in the end, fantasy is safer than reality. I must mention Christie, as her appearance was one of those iconic moments in cinema. The sight of this loose-limbed, fancy-free girl, sashaying through the city streets, summed up swinging Britain and the atmosphere of the first half of the decade, when you really did feel that anything was possible. A true gem of British cinema - delightful.
I love Tom Courtenay. He's wonderful-looking, of course, with his chiselled bone structure, but there's a vulnerability about him that's enormously appealing. He was in the recent Little Dorrit - he's about 70 now, and he played Mr Dorrit, Amy's father, who's incarcerated in the Marshalsea, the debtor's prison, with his family He's retained that vulnerability and deep-rooted sadness, and his performance was heartbreaking.
He produced a book recently consisting of letters his mother sent to him when he was a young man down in London at drama school. He comes from a very working-class background in Hull, so he, unlike Billy, got away. The letters are wonderful, and they're interspersed with his memories, and some of his own letters. The whole thing is a marvellous read.
Anyway, back to Billy. The original play was written by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, and it's hilarious. In the film, as well as TC playing Billy (who was played by Albert Finney in the original play), his sidekick at the undertakers where he works, is played by Rodney Bewes. Both lads fantasise, and there's a hilarious scene in which the two wander through the town (which I think is Bradford, though I could be wrong), trading witty fantasies and impersonations. Leonard Rossiter plays their boss, and his performance is another gem.
The thing about the film, as opposed to the play, is its vision of life in the early 60s, as Victorian buildings were pulled down to be be replaced by concrete and modernity. The first scene is a joy - Godfrey Winn is presenting Housewives' Choice, something I remember well from my own childhood, and reads out requests. We see the overjoyed housewives in their tower blocks hearing their requestes read out. Winn was a media ever-present in those days; an iconic figure, and hia performance is a joy. We see a nation in a ferment of change, yet which clings to the safety of tradition. The film is full of such scenes - there's a hilarious scene which depicts a supermarket opening, complete with visiting celebrity.
Billy has the chance to escape to London with Julie Christie, but he doesn't leave - he deliberately misses the train to London and life with Julie ,as, in the end, fantasy is safer than reality. I must mention Christie, as her appearance was one of those iconic moments in cinema. The sight of this loose-limbed, fancy-free girl, sashaying through the city streets, summed up swinging Britain and the atmosphere of the first half of the decade, when you really did feel that anything was possible. A true gem of British cinema - delightful.
Wednesday 4 February 2009
The Wrestler
I saw this last night at a cinema I hadn't been to for years, the Odeon in the middle of Bristol. It was the only cinema which was still showing it at a reasonable time, so, as my daughter and I both wanted to see it, we went along to the 6.00 showing.
The last time I'd gone there was to see The Blair Witch Project, so you're talking about 10 years ago. It was an unhappy experience - the cinema was packed, hot and sweaty, and any suspense in the film was destroyed by mobile phones going off throughout, and a couple of girls behind us talked all the way through. I think one of them was didn't speak English, and the other one translated throughout! At the end, as we all got up to go, someone shouted out, 'Well, that was a load of rubbish!' And it was hard to disagree, though I've heard that it's much better seen at home - much scarier, so I might give it another try sometime.
Anyway, the cinema is now totally different - clean and comfortable, though it wouldn't do to go when it's packed as there's no stadium seating, which is now mandatory in new cinemas. And it's cheap! A new cinema opened in the middle of Bristol recently, in the new development, and it's pricey. I haven't been yet, and I feel I want to support the old Odeon, as I hate seeing cinemas close down. To keep up the competition, they're charging only £4.75, or £5.75 for the deluxe seats, which have higher backs and better leg room, which is where we went, and it was fine, though there was no-one sitting in front of us.
The film was great - Mickey Rourke was a revelation. I don't remember seeing him in anything before this, but I do know that his life has been a bit of a car crash in recent years. This is etched all over his face, and his huge, hulking presence is in virtually every scene. The camera follows him around, so we see what he sees - I've rarely seen a film where the central character has such presence. I found it one of the most compelling fillms, I've seen for a long time - it depicts people who one can believe really exist, doing the sort of jobs and living the kind of lives actual people live, not Hollywood stars. We see the lives of mobile-home-dwellers, supermarket workers and low-rent pole dancers brought to the screen in unforgiving, yet humane detail. Rourke is a wrestler approaching the end of his career, and he has managed to ruin every aspect of his private life; his ex-wife has disappeared from view and his shaky relationship with his daughter is destroyed when he fails to turn up for a meal in a restaurant with her, because he was too busy getting drunk and sleeping with a prostitute. He collapses with a heart attack and after his operation, is told he must never wrestle again. The final scene follows him as he returns to the ring, as it is the only place where he feels validated. Wrestling gives him the only reason to go on living.
I found the film deeply moving, and it's stayed with me. I couldn't recommend it more highly. Rourke, and his co-star, Marisa Tomei have both been nominated for well-deserved Oscars.
The last time I'd gone there was to see The Blair Witch Project, so you're talking about 10 years ago. It was an unhappy experience - the cinema was packed, hot and sweaty, and any suspense in the film was destroyed by mobile phones going off throughout, and a couple of girls behind us talked all the way through. I think one of them was didn't speak English, and the other one translated throughout! At the end, as we all got up to go, someone shouted out, 'Well, that was a load of rubbish!' And it was hard to disagree, though I've heard that it's much better seen at home - much scarier, so I might give it another try sometime.
Anyway, the cinema is now totally different - clean and comfortable, though it wouldn't do to go when it's packed as there's no stadium seating, which is now mandatory in new cinemas. And it's cheap! A new cinema opened in the middle of Bristol recently, in the new development, and it's pricey. I haven't been yet, and I feel I want to support the old Odeon, as I hate seeing cinemas close down. To keep up the competition, they're charging only £4.75, or £5.75 for the deluxe seats, which have higher backs and better leg room, which is where we went, and it was fine, though there was no-one sitting in front of us.
The film was great - Mickey Rourke was a revelation. I don't remember seeing him in anything before this, but I do know that his life has been a bit of a car crash in recent years. This is etched all over his face, and his huge, hulking presence is in virtually every scene. The camera follows him around, so we see what he sees - I've rarely seen a film where the central character has such presence. I found it one of the most compelling fillms, I've seen for a long time - it depicts people who one can believe really exist, doing the sort of jobs and living the kind of lives actual people live, not Hollywood stars. We see the lives of mobile-home-dwellers, supermarket workers and low-rent pole dancers brought to the screen in unforgiving, yet humane detail. Rourke is a wrestler approaching the end of his career, and he has managed to ruin every aspect of his private life; his ex-wife has disappeared from view and his shaky relationship with his daughter is destroyed when he fails to turn up for a meal in a restaurant with her, because he was too busy getting drunk and sleeping with a prostitute. He collapses with a heart attack and after his operation, is told he must never wrestle again. The final scene follows him as he returns to the ring, as it is the only place where he feels validated. Wrestling gives him the only reason to go on living.
I found the film deeply moving, and it's stayed with me. I couldn't recommend it more highly. Rourke, and his co-star, Marisa Tomei have both been nominated for well-deserved Oscars.
Thursday 8 January 2009
Australia
I went to see this the other day with my daughter. We both knew that nobody else in our family would want to see it, but we had each other. Considering it was a late-afternoon performance on a Tuesday there were more people there than I'd expected, so others obviously had the same idea.
It had had terrible reviews in most of the papers, and Australian critics had savaged it apparently, for trotting out every single Australain cliche in the book However, all these reviews completely missed the point. The people who did like it, including (of course) my favourites, Mark Kermode on FiveLive and the Observer's Philip French got it immediately. A film can be rubbish on one level, but that doesn't in itself make it bad, or unwatchable. Yes, Australia does trot out every Australian cliche in the book, but it remains hugely watchable and enjoyable. It's the way Lurhmann says all the way through, lets not go over the top, lets go way beyond that. The final scene, in which Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman are reunited and the half -Aborigine boy goes off into the outback with the native shaman to learn the ways of his ancestors has the soundtrack of, get this, Elgar's Nimrod as a soundtrack, surely the most glaringly inappropriate use of music ever committed to celluloid. But it works, well, sort of, and anyway, it puts a smile on the audience's face.
We have the outback, cattle drives, the carpet bombing of Darwen in WWII, the lot, all ladled on with a huge spade. Austarlia itself is depicted in all its glory, and, having been there for one unforgettable trip, I can vouch for the wonder of the landscape. The country itself is the star, which I suppose was the intention.
Kidman and Jackman enter wholeheartedly into the spirit of the film - Kidman, impossibly, scarily thin, bustles around elegantly, and her transformation into a rancher is more convincing than her earlier elegant English county persona. Jackman is suitably taciturn and surly, and the little boy is suitably charming. All in all, a good evening out - very satisfying.
It had had terrible reviews in most of the papers, and Australian critics had savaged it apparently, for trotting out every single Australain cliche in the book However, all these reviews completely missed the point. The people who did like it, including (of course) my favourites, Mark Kermode on FiveLive and the Observer's Philip French got it immediately. A film can be rubbish on one level, but that doesn't in itself make it bad, or unwatchable. Yes, Australia does trot out every Australian cliche in the book, but it remains hugely watchable and enjoyable. It's the way Lurhmann says all the way through, lets not go over the top, lets go way beyond that. The final scene, in which Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman are reunited and the half -Aborigine boy goes off into the outback with the native shaman to learn the ways of his ancestors has the soundtrack of, get this, Elgar's Nimrod as a soundtrack, surely the most glaringly inappropriate use of music ever committed to celluloid. But it works, well, sort of, and anyway, it puts a smile on the audience's face.
We have the outback, cattle drives, the carpet bombing of Darwen in WWII, the lot, all ladled on with a huge spade. Austarlia itself is depicted in all its glory, and, having been there for one unforgettable trip, I can vouch for the wonder of the landscape. The country itself is the star, which I suppose was the intention.
Kidman and Jackman enter wholeheartedly into the spirit of the film - Kidman, impossibly, scarily thin, bustles around elegantly, and her transformation into a rancher is more convincing than her earlier elegant English county persona. Jackman is suitably taciturn and surly, and the little boy is suitably charming. All in all, a good evening out - very satisfying.
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