The Line of Beauty

The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst won the Booker prize in 2004 - I've just finished it, and found it very readable indeed. However, it seems to have had mixed reviews; as well as the Booker, an article in the Guardian described it as Little Britain meets Evelyn Waugh. I think that's unfair - it was much better than that, but I can see where it came from.
Hollinghurst makes no secret of his love for, knowledge of, and debt to Henry James, who is referenced throughout. The protagonist, Nick Guest, is a James scholar, engaged in writing up a PhD on James. I've never read any James, except The Turn of the Screw years ago - he's one of those writers whose work I've always kept at the back of my mind, unread, waiting for the space I hope I'll have in old age. I do know that his work is dense, with long, ornate sentences, and Hollinghurst has produced what I imagine must be a deliberate pastiche of James's style.

I found much of the writing thrilling, and gloried and luxuriated in the prose style. Some of Hollinghurst's sentences made me breathless with admiration at times, and left me smiling at their audacity and sheer style. The Guardian review describes the prose as 'restrained' - I couldn't agree less; it's anything but.

The novel is set in the early-to-mid 1980s, and follows Nick's fortunes, after he leaves Oxford. Just down from Oxford, he lodges in Kensington, at the home of the Fedden's, whose son Toby, is a friend from Oxford, and Gerald Fedden, Toby's father, is a Tory MP married to the daughter of a wealthy Jewish industrialist. Nick comes from a relatively humble, provincial background, so the book therefore offers an outsider's view of the comfortable middle-to-upper classes in London during the early-to-mid-1980s, as they became rich under the Thatcher government, becoming almost drunk on success and money. Nick is attempting to complete his PhD, and remains an aesthete, while all around him are philistines,building lucrative careers in politics or finance.
Few of the characters are likeable - the only one I warmed to was Catherine, Toby's emotionally and psychologically fragile sister, another outsider, who periodically supplies a caustic commentary on the excesses of her surroundings. There are several set pieces throughout the book - one of most delicious being the appearance of Thatcher herself at a party at the Feddens She's dressed in a lavishly-spangled jacket, prompting Catherine to comment that 'she looks like a country-and-western singer'.
Cocaine-snorting and gay sex sometimes dominate the narrative, becoming increasingly tedious, and this, I think, ultimately damages the book. It sagged horribly in the middle, I thought, but rallied at the end; I wouldn't have given it the Booker, but there is much to enjoy.

Richard Attenborough

I've just listened to a very interesting interview with Richard Attenborough on Radio 3's Night Waves. Obviously he's had a long, full and fascinating life (he's 84), but what interested me was the light and shade in his life. He didn't go into much detail but acknowledged the interesting contrasts between many of the characters he's played in his career, and the rather avuncular image he presents. He admitted he possessed a ruthless streak, which is hardly surprising for a film director, and he revealed a vulnerable, sensitive core to him, which manifested itself in feelings of inferiority to his parents, who sounded almost too good to be true, and of course to his illustrious brother, Sir David Attenborough, who has achieved virtually god-like status in British television history, culture and is seen as a national treasure, with good reason. In spite of Richard being granted a lordship and David being a mere knight of the realm, one gets the impression that Richard has always felt inadequte. Unlike his younger brothers he went to drama school instead of university, and it may stem from that - who knows?
A few years ago I visited the glorious BBC Written Archives at Caversham as part of my postgraduate studies in TV history during the 60s and 70s, and saw many of the memos handwritten by Sir David, who was then Controller of BBC-2 and later Director of Television. They revealed a steely side to his character, was clearly made of extremely stern stuff, and was an inspirational character to work for. His older brother has also achieved a great deal, but there is evidence of a thinner skin, which I found endearing.
Until middle age he was renowned for playing either spivs, psychopaths or cowards, such as Pinky in Brighton Rock; in fact his first screen appearance was a small part in In Which We Serve, as a humble stoker who is terrified by the bombardment, eventually drowning (if my memory serves me correctly) . The film critic Gavin Lambert once memorably described the film as perfectly representing the class stratification of Britain during World War II, with Noel Coward at the pinnacle, as the saintly ship's captain, right down to 'little Richard Attenborough cowering in the stokehold'.
Looking at his CV on the IMDB, I'm struck by the number of memorable films in which he's featured - Private's Progress, The League of Gentlemen, I'm All Right, Jack and many, many others - all illustrious examples of British cinema in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. His place in the pantheon of cinema history would be assured, but he ventured into direction in the 1960s, starting with The Angry Silence in 1960, and carved out a remarkable career, directing Oh, What a Lovely War, Cry Freedom, Gandhi, A Bridge Too Far and Shadowlands. His work has been dismissed by the snobbier branch of the critical industry as safe and middlebrow, but they are all films that have stood the test of time, and remain highly watchable.
However, I remain very fond of his spiv movies of the 40s and 50s - he really could do psychopathic menace better than nearly everyone, except perhaps Dirk Bogarde before he ventured into the realms of the highbrow.
There remains, however, a sunny side to his character, which is most evident when he talked about the immeasurable loss of his daughter and granddaughter in the Boxing Day tsunami 3 years ago. He has survived, and mentioned the fact that his daughter remains a huge part of his life, leaving him with much of value by which to remember her. I can't imagine the pain he and his wife must have endured, and must continue to suffer, but he maintains there is still much happiness remaining in his life, and much to celebrate. This tragedy seems all of a part to his life, which remains marked by, and defined by, darkness and light.

Led Zeppelin

I was interested in Led Zeppelin's reunion concert the other day at the O2 arena (previously the notorious Millenium Dome). It's funny, but I think I would have enjoyed it. I saw Led Zep twice, in 1969 and 1970, the first time at a Blues Festival at the Recreation Ground in the middle of Bath. I know Bath pretty well now, as my mother moved there 20 years ago, but in those days it was way off my beaten track.

It was in the early days of open-air festivals - I'm a bit muddled about the dates. I remember giong to the Blind Faith free concert in Hyde Park, and finding myself sitting next to John Peel - was that 1968? Or 1969? There was the famous Rolling Stones free concert in Hyde Park, just after Brian Jones died - the one where Mick Jagger released all those butterfies and wore a dress. I was on my own there (it's a long story), and found myself near the front, so felt immersed in the whole event. It's funny how time has cast a patina over such occasions - it felt huge at the time, and was, but now it's legendary. I was 18 at the time so you don't think you're making history - it's just your life. What strrikes me now is the way an 18-year-old could wander into Hyde Park, and drift about in perfect safety. Also the absence of money-making outlets, just the odd ice-cream van. And, even with so many people, the ease with which one could get around. Ah, those were the days - I think the lack of commercialism is the thing I'm most nostalgic about.....

I can't remember who I went with to the Bath Festival, or how I got there, but I know I must have been with some friends from college. I can remember vividly being there, where I sat in relation to the stage - I can see it now. I found a website devoted to Led Zep which had some pictures of them performing, against a backdrop of Georgian terraces. The stage was ridiculously small by today's standards, and apparently there were only about 12,000 people there. The website brought back so many memories, and there was much that I'd forgotten. Lots of people had posted their own memories, and it was interesting to see how young everyone was. I was 17, and most were around that age. I suppose we really were the first generation to really get into music in such an obsessive way, so there wouldn't have been many people there who were much older.

It was billed as a blues festival and according to the website page dedicated to the event, all the usual suspects played, the bands who seemed to be there at every festival at that time; Chicken Shack, Keef Hartley, Fleetwood Mac, Blodwyn Pig, Colosseum, The Nice, John Mayall, Ten Years After and Taste. I wasn't actually particularly fond of any of this, but, as one did then, convinced myself that I was. I was distinctly underwhelmed by much of what I heard, as, by this time, I was becoming deeply enamoured of American music. Blues music seemed dull, and the fashion for extended drum/guitar/etc solos - many of them exceptionally tedious, had firmly taken hold. Led Zeppelin seemed no better or worse than the other bands, and I took little notice of them.
They did even less for me a year later, at the huge festival at the Bath & West Showground at Shepton Mallet. I'll do more extensive blog entry on that festival, and the one on the Isle of Wight graced by Bob Dylan, but I'll mention Led Zep. I a year they had become huge, and played (I think) for about 3 hours. It seemed the longest 3 hours of my life. I found them unutterably tedious, though I was in a tiny minority.
I disliked their music intensely throughout the 1970s, but sometime in the 1980s I came across Kashmir, and I thought, I like this - with its pumping powerhouse underbelly. There was a perfect description of it in a recent review by Pete Paphidis in The Times of their reunion concert at the O2 arena - Kashmir, he said, had a rhythm that sounded like the 'advancing of Martian tripods'.
I saw a recording of a concert Robert Plant did a year ago at the festival on TV, and I enjoyed it very much. Such is the passage of time - it does strange things. I find much of the West Coast stuff I liked so much in the early 70s pretty hard to listen to now, and Led Zep's stuff now has a power, strength and authenticity which somehow sounds good today - who would have though it?

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Saw this last night - it's been showing in only one cinema here, and it was packed, as I suspect it has been every night. I suppose its distribution company is trying it out and seeing how the word-of-mouth goes. I imagine that if (and that's a big 'if' as it's hardly standard Oscar fare) it gets nominated for Oscars it'll eventually make it to the multiplexes.
It's a demanding night out, at two-and-half hours, but the audience was obviously gripped. Hardly a muscle moved apart from the odd trip out for a toilet break. You can always tell if a film has captured its audience - it rarely happens, and when it does it's something special. There's a palpable stillness; you could sense the audience holding its breath.
The film looks wonderful, with cinematography by the celebrated Roger Deakins. It's set in a wintry landscape, in a country with new settlements springing up all over - a superbly-realised picture of a society in transition.
Jesse James is coming to the end of his career, but he's still a larger-than-life character, and Brad Pitt's performance gives him the requisite stature. Pitt is getting better and better as he reaches middle age and is now a considerable presence. Casey Affleck has been rightly lauded for his performance as Robert Ford and there should be Oscars all round if there was any justice. Pitt, however, gives the picture a stature and weight - he's tired and disillusioned, yet retains unhinged sociopathic behaviour which erupt suddenly and terrifyingly.
Affleck's Ford is a pathetic character, but dangerous with it. It's an unselfish performance - Affleck's achievement is to make him truly creepy, yet pitiful.
Not long before I saw this I watched The Long Riders, in which Stacy Keach played James. It was one of the first westerns to attempt a period flavour, with long coats and moustaches all round, and a sepia-toned visual aesthetic. Yet it remained in thrall to the outlaw aesthetic common in the early-70s, and, in the end, was a triumph of style over content.
Assassination was a far meatier affair - it's a meditation on the nature of celebrity, but it's far more than that. Philip French, who's reviews are always worth reading as his knowledge of film history is unparalleled, says it's also about the complex relationship between assassin and victim. He also mentions that a few weeks after James's death in St Joseph, Missouri, Oscar Wilde came to town as part of his American lecture tour, and wrote about the looting of James's possessions by souvenir hunters. He thinks it's a shame this wasn't mentioned in the film, but I I think it might have overloaded it. I've realised that I'll have to see it again, as I want to immerse myself in it once more - it needs repeated viewing. I feel sure that it'll grace the multiplexes eventually - after all, it's a Brad Pitt film! A real treat to see such a serious, subtle and perceptive film - great stuff.

Beowulf

I've recently realised that I have a problem with animated films. I've never really thought about it until now but it came to me in a blinding flash the other day that I have a real blind spot with them. It's the only genre with which I have difficulty - anything else I will go and see (except low-rent raucous US teen comedies which really are not accessible to people my age).
Which probably means I've missed out on some good stuff, so as I have a DVD of Belleville Rendezvous (it was free in a newspaper), I'll take a deep breath and watch it sometime soon.
I'm thinking about animation because I went to see Beowulf the other day - I took my 12-year old nephew as I thought he would probably enjoy it (he did), as it has battles, arrows, suits of armour, swords, flying dragons etc. etc. He spends a fair bit of time playing computer games which involve vast medieval armies so it was his sort of thing.
It was entirely computer-generated, with no discernible live action, but it was strangely messy; all you got of Ray Winstone (Beowulf) was his voice, whereas Anthony Hopkins was recognisably himself, except that he was computer-generated as well, if you get me. I'm having problems describing the film - it really was a bizarre experience. I suppose the fact that it was made to be shown in 3D contributes to the sense of disorientation I experienced, as nothing looked quite right. Robin Wright Penn plays the female lead (I have no idea what her name was) and her character looked very strange indeed , with a bizarrely elongated chin.
Ray Winstone bellowed his way through the film, and his (highly recognisable) voice was totally at odds with the gleaming, buffed-up physique of his computerised image.
There's some good dragon-killing action near the end, which was reasonably well done, and the story rattled along at a decent pace, but I kept thinking about John Boorman's Excalibur, a wonderful film of which I'm very fond. It deserves a decent DVD release, and it still hasn't got one. I await a special edition with anticipation.

Rescue Dawn

I've just been to see Rescue Dawn, the new Werner Herzog film. I knew the story, of Dieter Dengler, the German-born pilot, who, after emigrating to the US, became a pilot in the US Air Force, was captured by the Vietcong, and escaped through the jungle, the only POW to have done so. Herzog made a documentary about him a few years ago, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, and this was a feature film version.
One of my sons is a huge fan of Herzog, and, although I've always liked his films very much, I was familiar with only a few, such as The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre: the Wrath of God and knew little of much of his other work. So he lent me 2 Herzog box sets, and Herzog on Herzog, a book of interviews with him, and I was able to get to know the man and his work properly.
Where to begin! He really is a remarkable character, and I cannot begin to try and sum him up in just a few words. What does come over, in the book, and in some of the interviews with him on radio and TV, is a geniality, gentleness and openness which is quite disarming. He lives in California now, and his English is excellent. I heard an interview with him on the radio a couple of weeks ago, and it was obvious he could quite easily have talked all day, and I'd have been quite happy to listen to him.
What came over clearly was that, although he didn't say as much, Dengler was a classic Herzogian hero, and that their backgrounds had much in common. Both were born during the war, and grew up without fathers. German children at that time led punishingly hard lives, almost feral in many ways, but with a great deal of physical freedom. Herzog's father was away in the military, Dengler's was dead, and their mothers were busy struggling to survive. Herzog talks at length about it in the book, and I have to assume that he must feel a strong identification with him, not only because of his background, but also because of his free spirited character and his mercurial personality, which must have surely helped him negotiate his journey through the jungle. He seems to have been fascinated and amazed by him, as well as lost in admiration, and in the radio interview he talked about him with great affection, mentioning especially his sorrow at his recent death. So, although he saw the documentary, and helped with it, he wasn't able to see Rescue Dawn.
Christian Bale played Dengler, and my admiration of this actor (he deserves a blog posting to himself) grows every time I see him in anything. I've followed his career since Empire of the Sun, in which he produced an extraordinary performance. Very few child actors make the grade when they reach adulthood, but Bale has. His career choices have been excellent, with very few duds (I remember particularly his coruscating performance in American Psycho), and, although he's made the bigtime with Batman Begins, in which he gave the caped crusader an emotional core missing from the previous incarnations, he still appears in interesting small budget films.
Anyway, back to Rescue Dawn. It was a Hollywood production, so there were compromises, but not too many. The ending is regrettable, seems gratuitously tacked on, with no real connection to the rest of the film, which is great stuff. Herzog recreates Dengler's journey through the jungle in extraordinary detail, which is hallucinatory at times. Bale plays Dengler as an open-hearted, yet driven character, whose determination to survive, like his determination to fly planes, somehow keeps him going, against all the odds.
I must mention Steve Zahn, who played Dengler's co-escapee Duane. A gentle, sad character he falls apart, and eventually dies through sickness and hunger. Zahn gives him a heartbreaking humanity, and we feel that Duane's fate is what most of us would experience - Dengler exceptional and extraordinary, and, one has to say it, incredibly lucky.
So, not one of Herzog's greatest films, but even so, it's still streets ahead of nearly everything else. I'll be returning to Herzog in a later blog - I'm still working my way through his oeuvre, an exciting and illuminating task, and plan to see Little Dieter as soon as I can.

American Gangster

American Gangster is Ridley Scott's latest film, and I saw it the other day, very soon after it had been released. I wanted to see it on a big screen, as I knew that a Ridley Scott film would be visually exciting, and this was no exception.
It recreated the grungy 1970s setting of The French Connection, which had clearly inspired Scott, visually and thematically, and every frame was a treat. Scott has a bit of a bashing after his recent films: Kingdom of Heaven, which I saw, would have been far better without the execrable Orlando Bloom in the lead, a role for which he is clearly unfitted. It lumbered a bit, and wasn't Scott's finest hour. Then came A Year in Provence, which was apparently embarrassing - not that anyone went to see it. Scott really can't do, and musn't try to do anything approaching comedy.
Anyway, he's back on form with this, and, although it was nearly 3 hours long, I didn't lose concentration for a moment. Ifound it enthralling and engrossing, and both leads, Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington, were tremendous. I'd been a bit worried about Washington as I've found him unconvincing in several films, but he came up trumps in this, and was utterly convincing. Crowe produced an unselfish performance - another one which involved some weight gain and a bad haircut. He needed to redeem himself after some pretty naff films recently, and he did well.
So, a good, meaty, satisfying evening out. Sometimes you don't want fireworks, or brilliance, but a solid, well-made film, and this ticked all the boxes.

In the Shadow of the Moon

In the Shadow of the Moon is an account of the moon landings, which took place in the dim and distant past, i.e. 1969-72. I went to see it last week with one of my sons, who is especially interested in space travel and has read quite a bit about it.
I found it entralling, and extremely moving. To start with, it brought back a flood of memories - I was at home, looking after my parents' house while they were on holiday. I can't remember if their TV was black and white or colour. I know that colour had been around for a couple of years, and my father liked to acquire new technology as soon as he could - they had ITV and BBC-2 as soon as possible.
Anyway, all I remember was some flickery pictures, and after the initial amazement, feeling fairly underwhelmed - space travel had become part of the landscape in the 60s - just another thing that happened. Also, teenagers then were far more exercised over the war in Vietnam - I remember marching through the streets of Oxford shouting 'Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?' and attending a meeting of the Young Communist League, where it was all 'explained'. In the end I didn't join, as I had other more pressing things going on in my life, such as my appearance and my social life.
I can see now what an extraordinary, amazing event it was. Those men are the only people alive who have ever stood on another celestial body, and seen the earth from space. They experienced it differently, but all were profoundly moved, their lives and the ways in which they saw life, changed utterly. My son has the book A Man on the Moon which I read a while ago, so I knew a bit about it, but it was still good to see them in person. Michael Collins, who sat in the capsule while Aldrin and Armstrong landed on the moon, the first men to set foot on it, was a delightful character - he could have become bitter and twisted, eaten up by the knowledge that he missed out, but he didn't - quite the opposite. He proved a great interviewee, amusing, optimistic and intelligent.
Armstrong. the first man to stand on the moon, was absent, and having read the book, it wasn't a surprise, he's always been a bit of a recluse, and who can blame him? And to be the first does confer a special status that must sometimes be difficult.
There will come a time when these men are no longer with us, and there doesn't seem to be much of an appetite to go to the moon again. What struck me, looking at the footage now, is how home-made it all was, the spacecraft looked like the sort of thing a child might cobble up, perhaps with the help of an ingenious parent. Now it would have to be impossibly high-tech. Another thing that struck me was how muted and constrained was the reaction at Mission Control by today's standards. Yes, there were cheers, but only the most modest air punching and no high-fiving. That simply would not happen now, everone would be going berserk. And the reaction in the newsrooms, TV newsreaders were suitably awestruck, but again, there was little in the way of triumphalism. How different that would be today! The hysteria would be almost unbearable.
So, a fascinating glimpse into history, great stuff.

My Boy Jack

My Boy Jack was on ITV this evening, Remembrance Sunday. I watched it as I was a) intrigued by the story of Kipling's extremely shortsighted son, who was killed in battle in World War I, aged eighteen, b) interested in seeing if Daniel Radcliffe could act at all, and c) trying out an ITV dramas again, just in case it was any good.
Well, it wasn't. It seems that no young actor today is remotely capable of the received pronunciation that would have been the norm in 1914 - even older actors struggle with it. But, to make matters worse, the dialogue was frequently dreadful - it's as if being on ITV means that everyone has to talk as if they're on Eastenders. Carey Mulligan, who played Kipling's daughter was especially at fault, and I cringed every time she opened her mouth.
Radcliffe valiantly tried his best, and put on a creditrable performance, but his part was grossly underwritten, and he really didn't have much to do other than lend his name to the production for publicity purposes.
I don't know a great deal about Kipling, but what I do know is that he was an extremely complex, intelligent and perceptive man. Here, he was a mouthpiece for simplistic patriotism. Once again, I was left deeply dissatisfied by an ITV drama, which, when you consider the great productions, such as Brideshead Revisited, it has made, is very sad. I tend to have zero expectations these days, and end up wishing I hadn't wasted my time. Meanwhile there's a new BBC production of Cranford coming soon for which I have high expectations.

Eastern Promises

Eastern Promises is not for the faint-hearted - none of David Cronenberg's films are, but this one is very scary. The London it portrays is both familar and very strange - populated by Russian gangsters, steeped in the codes and rituals of the labour camps and the black economy. Their modus operandi is brutal in the extreme, yet at the same time, convivial family gatherings and seasonal festivals all take place, populated with nicely-spoken children, complete with perfect English accents almost certainly learnt at exclusive English prep schools. The film is telling British society, 'This is how your world is, now, and you'd better get used to it'.
Viggo Mortenson was scarily superb - I heard Mark Kermode call him, in his review on Radio 5, the new Robert DeNiro, in his commitment to his roles and the film, and the lengths to which he's prepared to go in inhabiting his character. Apparently he spent a great deal of time in Russia, meeting some extremely dodgy character, and perfecting his accent. I thought he was remarkable as the low-ranking taxi-driver for the criminals, complete with tattoos acquired in a labour camp.
The film had mixed reviews, with many claiming it wasn't as good as the superb History of Violence. I thought the ending was a bit tacked on, and didn't quite hang together, but taken as a whole, its portrait of the post-Communist Russian incursion into London was compelling and eye-opening, especially an eye-wateringly scene in a bath-house which left me gasping.

Control

I went to see Control the other day - it had been on for a while but somehow I'd not been able to get to see it for various reasons, so I'd resigned myself to missing it. Then I found it on at a small local cinema which specialises in second runs, and it was showing at 2.00 in the afternoon. I don't usually go to evening screenings as I'm usually too sleepy to stay up too late. So, I thought I'd make the effort to see it, and I'm very glad I did.
It was saturated in the atmosphere of the Seventies and I almost felt the film as well as saw it. The late-seventies is probably my favourite period for music, although I was well into my twenties. Sixties music is almost too familiar - it's embedded in my DNA, and I know most Sixties songs by heart. I spent hours listening to the radio, and on Radios Luxembourg and London tracks would be repeated endlessly. Seventies music started badly, and I could never like Led Zeppelin and their ilk however hard I tried (although I have a sneaking fondness for Kashmir), and , although I was a big fan of West Coast stuff at the time, as my boyfriend, later husband was, and still is, an ardent Deadhead, I tired of it eventually.
When punk took hold, it was a response to what was increasingly seen as a bloated, self-indulgent musical culture. Tracks would drag on for hours, and musicians saw themselves as heirs to Beethoven and Mozart. There was much talk of classical-rock, or jazz-rock 'fusion', but the music press, led by the NME were beginning to actively promote something called 'punk'. Something was in the air.....
My brother-in-law worked in a record shop in London, so we began to receive a flood of free albums, by bands, mostly British ones, that I'd never heard of. It was great stuff, and I loved it. Talking Heads, Television, Joe Jackson, Graham Parker, and all the punk bands, the Pistols, Buzzcocks, the Clash - all were a bracing blast of very fresh air. Joy Division were a bit different, more doomy, blacker, and when Ian Curtis died they seemed to disappear off the map. My children were getting older, and there were more of them, and life took over, so music began to take a back seat. Eighties music wasn't much to my taste anyway. So that's why the music of the late Seventies still has a hold on me.
Back to the film - its depiction of its period was extraordinarily vivid - the phone boxes, the grim interior decor, the clothes; all were recreated with a realism that was palpable, because it was felt as well as visualised. It made me realise once again, the extent to which life has changed in the 1990s, with the advent of mobile phones and the internet -this was a world in which they did not yet exist, there was no virtuality, everything had to be done manually. It was a world my parents, brought up by Victorians, recognised - it now seems antideluvian.
Curtis was a deeply troubled soul - it's funny, but in the film, he seemed happiest at work, dealing with the unemployed at the Jobcentre. It seemed to suit him, being a civil servant. On stage, performing, he was consumed, tormented - it made a compelling spectacle, but destroyed him. Sam Riley didn't just portray him, he inhabited him intuitively. He was terrified of losing control, but exulted in it simultaneously. It looked marvellous, the monochrome depiction of Macclesfield made it look beautiful, but never idealised. A great film, I thought, a tremendous achievement.

Once

Once, which I saw the other day, is one of the most enchanting films I've seen for a long time. Itr's set in Dublin and filmed on a tiny budget, with no stars, and using what looks like digital video. it had originally been scheduled to be released on DVD only, in a small-scale release - then, apparently someone, somewhere, an American, saw it and took it to the Sundance Film Festival, where it was a huge hit. It took off from there, and and it's been in the top 30 box-office list for weeks, longer than some expensive blockbusters.
A lot of this can be attributed to the traditional American fondness for all things Irish, but there's gentle charm about the film that's captivating. There are no stars - the male lead is played by the singer in a little-known Irish band, The Frames, and is best-known for a small part in The Commitments. The young Czech girl, who has a baby, a mother, and lives in a grim lodging house in the shabbier part of Dublin along with several other immigrants from Eastern Europe, is played by a nineteen-year-old complete unknown. However, she's musically talented, plays the piano and sings like an angel.
It's a love story of sorts, but once again, it has echos of Lost in Translation. It's not a sexual relationship, just two lonely, but compatible people who happen to click. They part at the end, and you feel that it's doesn't matter - what's important is what they've given each other.
It's a lovely film - difficult to describe. There's lots of music, as the two pick up some other musicians and make a CD, and the film spends a great deal of time watching them get this together.
Apparently, in real life, the two leads are now an item. Whatever, it's had a huge impact. It speaks of life as it is today, with people just scratching along as best they can, and making the best of things - I loved it.

Bob Dylan

I can't wait to see the Todd Haynes film, I'm Not There. It's due to be screened at the London Film Festival this week, and it won't go on general release until Christmas, so I'll have to be patient. It's hard to describe, and I'm not going to try until I've seen it, but basically, six actors (I think it's six), portray Dylan at various stages of his career. Only they aren't called Dylan in the film. See what I mean?
I'm looking forward to seeing it because, as I think I've mentioned before, Dylan has played a major part in my life. My earliest memory of him is of hearing Tambourine Man and Blowing in the Wind and becoming hooked; buying a book of sheet music of his songs, and sitting in the front room (I was in my early-mid teens and had been learning the piano since I was seven), and doggedly playing the songs, singing them to myself. I'd never actually heard any of them, as we didn't have a record player then.
I can remember hearing Like a Rolling Stone on Radio London for the first time, one of the pirate stations, to which I listened obsessively - was it 1965? It's hard, now to conjure up a time when Dylan was new, hadn't been analysed to extinction. He was hard - wrote lyrics of a kind nobody had ever written before, and sang them with a passionate menace that was thrilling in the extreme to a teenager who was just beginning to become aware that the world was changing in ways that were only dimly becoming understood. Certainly not by my parents generation. That line - 'something is happening, and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr Jones', summed up how I was starting to feel about the world. We, the younger generation, were in possession of the world - there were more of us than them, our lives hadn't been blighted by having to fight in a war, and somehow, we felt we were in possession of a secret knowledge - we knew more than they did. I suppose it was our education, something denied to our parents, that gave us the key to all this, but Dylan spoke to us and articulated what was in our heads. HIs appearance in Don't Look Back, which I saw in about 1968, said it all. He treated people in suits with contempt - all the time he seemed in possession of a secret. It was revelatory.
So I'm looking forward with enormous anticipation to I'm Not There: I'll post more when I've seen it.

Rugby

Watched the rugby World Cup yesterday, and that has to be a first for me. I've never actually sat through a rugby match before, and I doubt that I ever will again, though you can never say never. I suppose if England, or any other of the 'home' nations ever get to the final again, that I suppose I might.
Rugby really isn't my sport, and never has been. My father was a great sports fan, but only of football, cricket, horse racing and boxing. These sports were always on TV, whenever there was something on, which wasn't often in pre-Sky Sports days, and sport was always part of my life. One of my earliest memories is going to Oxford City's White House ground (they played in the Isthmian League, one of the top amateur divisions) which was round the corner to our house. He would take me from the age of about two, to get me out of the house and give my mother a break. I spent the time toddling up and down the terraces out in the fresh air, my father would watch the football, and a good time was had by all. So football was part of the landscape of my life from the beginning.
As I grew older my brother became a football fan and played for his school team, and although he went to a rugby-playing secondary school, it remained a major part of his life.
It's not, now, and if he goes to watch anything, it's rugby. You can still stand, and there's a complete lack of yobbish behaviour, and rugby isn't, as yet, tainted with the unimaginable avalanche of money that has blighted football.
But somehow I really can't get worked up by rugby. I don't understand the rules - I know what scrums, line-outs, drop-kicks, and penalties are, but have no idea what they're awarded for, and have no real wish to know. It seems to me to consist of 15 men hurling themselves at each other for 80 minutes - I know there's a lot more to it than that, but, ultimately, my interest in finding out what that is is, is virtually non-existent.
But any World Cup final is, nevertheless, a great sporting occasion, and I always feel drawn to the big occasion - I'm sure my father would have watched it, though he didn't have a great deal of interest in rugby. I don't think he felt it was particularly relevant to his life - though I know things have changed.
So I watched it. I have to admit my eyelids drooped at times - I really don't know whether I'd have been more interested if England had won, but, to me, they never looked like doing so.
A strange experience - will it be repeated? Who knows.....
Now for Formula One tomorrow....

The Singer (again)

While watching the last scene of The Singer I was nagged by a feeling that I was reminded of something. Anyway, I was putting some back issues of Sight and Sound (1999-2004 done now, just need to do 2005-7 now) into binders today, and came across a review of Lost in Translation. A eureka moment - of course! At the end of LiT Bill Murray whispers something in Scarlet Johansen's ear, on a crowded Tokyo street, something we can't hear; she smiles. The scene has exactly the same feel and impact as the final scene in The Singer. In both scenes there's the same lack of closure, yet they feel absolutely right - lovely.

The Singer

Just been to see The Singer, a new French film starring Gerard Depardieu. I've always liked Depardieu as an actor, and in this, he's very much the film's heart and soul. he plays an ageing, overweight chanteur who makes an unostentatious living playing provincial dancehalls. He gives a nicely unselfish and self-deprecating performance and there's no sign of botox or any other cosmetic enhancements - always a major plus for me. I enjoyed enormously the way he mocks his size - 'I am the Massif Central'. He admits to hair dye, and it's a lovely touch to show him as perfectly content playing modest casinos, dancehalls, spas and other similarly unfashionable locations, and refusing to go on stage in a huge auditorium when given a chance to go on to bigger and better things.

He's utterly convincing throughout - he's not washed up, just content with his life. The key, I think is at the end, when he's sitting alone in his dressing room, singing to himself, and you suspect, for himself. In the hands of a lesser actor, the character could have been an caricature but Depardieu gives him a good-natured dignity, and what's so impressive is that the film respects all its characters and in the hands of a lesser director it would have been easy to poke fun at everyone. The film depicts ordinary, provincial, middlebrow life, the sort of scenario that British directors, especially, are often fond of sending up. Yes, the songs are cheesy and sentimental, but somehow they never come across as corny, and everyone seems to be having a good time, joining in with ancient dance routines such as the Madison.
Depardieu never makes us feel sorry for him, and I liked the ending very much. he says goodbye to the young woman with whom he's had a one-night stand. with a handshake, she leaves, and then returns. They embrace, but we never know if they'll rekindle their liaison, or whether she's just showing affection for him. The whole scene is shot behind glass doors, at a distance. I like open-ended endings, and althhough on the face of it the film is unresolved, it feels ulitmately optimistic
I liked this quote from the review in the Independent - 'it's an exceptionally astute anatomy of corniness, of the way it keeps people afloat through mundane, disappointing lives'. That, for me, sums it up beautifully. It's a lovely, quiet film that, although modest, ranks as one of Depardieu's best.

Bill Bryson

I've just started The Lost Continent, Bill Bryson's first book. I've read it before, a long time ago, but had it to hand. I needed to read something light and frothy after the marathon that was The Tenderness of Wolves, and Bryson's books are perfect for filling in those gaps when you're not in the mood for anything demanding. The last one I read was Neither Here Nor There, but the previous two were A Walk in the Woods and The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, his most recent book. Some of them are mine, but others are borrowed - my children and my brother have several, so I never need to buy them.
I have to confess to a very slight ambivalence about him - he's my generation, and I always feel a bit funny about people my age. I wonder what their experiences of for example, the fifties and the sixties, were, and compare their subsequent lives to mine. I suppose there's a special intimacy which is absent from people from a different generation. I expect it's like this for everyone - people from the war generation will feel that particularly intensely. I suppose what reading Bryson means, for me, is that his experiences of school, college, growing up, etc all took place at roughly the same time as mine, even though his life in Des Moines was very different to mine. But not that different. Because growing up in the West in the Sixties and Seventies took place in the thick of a cultural revolution - the impact of which we are still experiencing. And our parents grew up in World War II, something which had a profound effect on our lives. We rejected their experiences, and we had to rediscover them.
Bryson's books are permeated with his childhood, and the lives of his parents and grandparents, and this has made them fascinating and compulsive for my generation, and I have to say, for succeeding generations. My children have his books, and enjoy them. I think it's their irreverence, their cynicism, yet open-hearted, wide-eyed innocence that appeals - who knows? Whatever it is, he's made a fortune, and good luck to him. He's made a pretty a decent career out of his travels and observation - it's not everyone who can construct a genial personality and make a living out of it. If that sounds a bit snarky, it's because reading his earlier books, I've come across stuff he's recycled in later books. Other writers have committed worse crimes, and Bryson only plagiarises himself - in that sense, he's a true original.
Anyway, I enjoy his freeform, improvisatory style - there's a school essay feel about them, especially the earlier books, a kind of school essay, 'what I did on my holidays' feel. He goes into places with a blank canvas and takes them as they come, but he's quite open about his prejudices. If he doesn't like a place at first sight, it's difficult for him to change his mind, but he often finds something to enjoy, even if it's only sitting in a motel room with a six-pack and a TV.
One of his main characteristics, which occurs in all his books, is his habit of making things up - I can see why he does it, it's a bit of exaggeration, a way of adding colour. Sometimes I find it a bit tiresome, but not always - sometimes it's funny. It's another thing he just does, and I suppose his books wouldn't be the same without it. He's everyman, really, but of course, he isn't any more - he's a best-selling writer, and famous.
He's a youngest child of three, and that's very obvious. There's something a bit attention-seeking about him. He wants to be heard, and noticed and feels a bit hard-dome-by if he's ignored. Often youngest children are good at playing the fool, as they often have trouble making themselves heard, or getting people to notice them. So you always get the feeling he's basking in his celebrity, and loves the attention - and who can blame him.
When he recently became President, I think it was, of the CPRE, he was all over the radio airwaves, thoroughly enjoying himself, so I hope he's hard at work. He's now an adopted Englishmen, with an English wife and children, and as is often case, more English than the English, a strange journey for someone from Des Moines, but that's the 20th century for you.

The Tenderness of Wolves

I've just finished The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney. I take much longer to read books nowadays - I used to blast through books incredibly quickly but don't seem to have the ability to do so nowadays, but even by my current standards it I seem to have been reading this for ages. It wasn't a difficult read by any means, but it is a long book, and towards the end I got the feeling that Penney had become so immersed in her characters, and the atmosphere of the bleak snowbound Canadian wilderness in which the narrative takes place, that she wasn't too sure how she was going to finish it. There are a great many characters in the book, not all of them as well developed as they might be, and a map would have been useful, as I found it difficult at times to work out where everyone actually was.
However, I found much to admire and enjoy, and liked very much the fact that not all the questions were answered. The Macguffin of the bone tablet was a particularly pleasing little feature, and the central relationship between Mrs Ross and Parker was well portrayed and, ultimately very moving.
One thing that kept nagging away at me all the way through was the question of historical authenticity. I'd read that Penney had undertaken meticulous researcc in the British Library, and it shows - everything about conditions in 19th century Canada; the landscape, weather, living conditions, seems immaculately realised. But I couldn't help feeling throughout that we were seeing 21st-century people plonked down in the 19th century. The characters spoke, thought and felt with modern voices and attitudes. I didn't however, feel this was necessarily a problem - sometimes attempts at period authenticity get in the way and overpower narratives. Somehow it didn't seem to matter that a married woman would take off into the wilderness with another man to look for her son. We'd been given a picture of a woman with a complicated background who obviously had enough independance of thought to do something like this, but it didn't really ring true for me. This, surely, would never, could never have happened in the mid-19th century, even in the wilds of Canada? But who am I to question this? Penney had exhaustively researched her book, and it's possible she may have found a similar story. I'm coming round to the idea that authenticity really is an over-valued concept. What does it actually mean? We can only go by whether we think and feel something is authentic, and why.
Anyway, I stuck with the book, and, although it's by no means perfect, it ultimately convinced me. Several critics found the ending unsatisfactory - endings are difficult, and more celebrated writers have come to grief over them. I hope she writes more as I think there's plenty there to suggest she has enormous talent - I've read that she suffers from agoraphobia, so I hope that doesn't prove too great an obstacle. She produced this without leaving Britain, so obviously has a fine imagination. I look forward to more from her.

Michael Clayton

I've just been to see Michael Clayton - I often find evening screenings a bit of a struggle and there's usually 5 minutes or so when I lose concentration completely, but not this time. I was thoroughly engrossed and wide-awake all the way through.
There's no-one better than George Clooney for portraying self-loathing, but you're always aware that underneath the world-weariness there burns a fierce intelligence. Tom Wilkinson was, as always, superb, as Clooney's colleague who flips, suddenly tearing off his clothes during a business meeting. Wilkinson can always be relied upon, and is particularly good at portraying frayed, damaged personalities.
I was less sure about Tilda Swinton; I was, and still am, in two minds about her. On one hand, her character was unconvincing - would someone as badly-groomed ever get near her position as counsel for a giant corporation? Surely she would be turned-out like a bandbox, and have perfect hair. I think she was probably supposed to be an emblem for the flakiness of the company, but she just wasn't smart enough. We saw her practising her lines and perfecting her appearance, but the result simply wasn't realistic on any level. And her accent wavered all over the place.
On the other hand, her slightly manic demeanour and nervy, brittle persona was highly watchable and made the film less conventional. Swinton has made a career out of taking risks and breaking convention, and can only be admired for having a go. I'm still not sure about British actors playing Americans. I like some of them very much, (Hugh Laurie in particular) but I don't want to be distracted by thinking how good/bad their accent is. I can think of too many examples of dodgy American accents, though, to be fair, there are far more examples of bad British accents by US actors.
Back to the film - you really had to put some effort into keeping track of what was going on in this film. A couple in front of us walked out halfway through - they probably thought 'Oh great, George Clooney', thinking it would be a kind of Ocean's 11, a piece of light entertainment, only to be asked to put some work in. I like a bit of mindless entertainment - who doesn't? But I also like to be asked to think. Certainly the first half-hour of this was tricky, and I found myself wondering at times what the hell was going on, but was rewarded with a knotty, gritty, well-worked film. Executive producers, I noticed, were Anthony Minghella, Steven Soderburgh and Sydney Pollack, as well as Clooney himself. Clooney seems to be very good at getting people on board to help him get good films made. It's clear that the Oceans films enable him to do this kind of stuff. One last thing - it's always good to see actors happy to display their grey hair and absence of botox. Clooney's ageing very well, as is Wilkinson - similarly unenhanced. Would that others were so confident in their acting ability.
Grey hair rules!!

Kagemusha (again)

Well, I watched this again, and enjoyed it even more. Having read a bit about it, and having seen it the first time, I had a much better idea of what was happening and who everybody was. my concentration was better, as I watched in the afternoon, instead of Saturday night, not the best time to have a clear focus. Usually, the only thing I'm fit for on a Saturday night is one of those Channel 4 '100 Best' list programmes.
Once again, I found myself sitting back and glorying in the sumptuous visuals. I've read that Kurosawa admired John Ford, and certainly there's not a wasted shot in either director's films. Each one in Kagemusha is perfectly composed and balanced, and some are awe-inspiring. I've rarely seen anything as beautiful as the shot of the soldiers marching across a high ridge against the setting sun, near the beginning, and there are many other visual treats.
I'm developing quite a taste for Kurosawa's films - a friend is similarly hooked, so I can discuss them with him. More to come......

Kagemusha

I've just seen Kagemusha, directed by Kurosawa. Watching a Japanese film is a strange experience -it's not easy to engage with them, but some of Hollywood's most famous film's are heavily influenced by, and indebted to Kurosawa's. Indeed, Kagemusha has Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas as executive producers, and Lucas has made no secret of the fact that the Star Wars opus was influenced by Kurosawa's films, notably his 1958 film The Hidden Fortress.
Of course Kurosawa himself was indebted to western cinema and this is evident in Kagemusha. The sweeping, panoramic battle scenes are set to an score highly reminiscent of spaghetti westerns. I caught the final hour of A Few Dollars More on TV yesterday and experienced the strange sense that movie language is even more intermingled and intertwined than I had suspected. And I'm not the only one that thinks that the battle scenes in The Lord of the Rings trilogy owe a major debt to Kurosawa - I typed Kurosawa alongside Lord of the Rings into Google and was overwhelmed by an avalanche of articles and reviews making comparisons between them.
Anyway, I watched it on a rented DVD - we're advised not to post anything due to the 48-hour postal strike starting today, so I might just take the opportunity to watch it again after having read a little bit about it. Some of the scenes are so visually beautiful and arresting that I have to see them once more. Japanese films require a great deal of concentration, as, to be blunt, it's not always easy to work out who is who. But they offer a rewarding glimpse into a history and culture of which we are largely ignorant.
What marks out Kurosawa's films as exceptional, though, isn't just their visual spendour. It's their humanity and compassion. The fate of the common thief conscipted into impersonating the mortally-wounded warlord, Shingen, in order to deceive his enemies, is ultimately heartbreaking, desperately sad.
It's whetted my appetite for more - I'm ashamed to admit that I've never seen The Seven Samurai, so that's got to be next....

Humphrey Jennings

Humphrey Jennings' documentaries were shown at the Watershed cinema in Bristol last weekend and I went along to the Sunday screening of Words for Battle, Spare Time, Listen to Britain and The Silent Village. I know his work well from studying British cinema from the 30s and 40s, but I'd only seen excerpts of his films, so this was a wonderful opportunity, especially as they'd all been digitised and remastered. The quality was superb, and it was a real treat to see such old films in such glorious condition. Jenningswas an exceptionally fine film-maker, and as well as being part of the famous documentary movement of the period, he was a surrealist. Rather fittingly, then, he met his premature death in 1950 at the age of 43 by falling backwards off a cliff as he attempted to get the right shot for a film he was making. Tragic, yes, but also bizarre.
Anyway, his films remain beautiful examples of the quality of British film-making of the period. His wartime films are lovely, and provide a remarkable picture of everyday life during the war, but, for me, I was struck most by Spare Time, made in (I think) 1937. It's a depiction of ordinary people, working and middle class, at leisure, in an era when most people had very little time off work, and it's a fascinating window into a vanished world. We're familiar with many of the wartime images, but the pre-war era, even with its radios, cars and bikes, still retains startling traces of the Victorians and Edwardians. The commentary was by the poet Laurie Lee, a voice which, in spite of his attempt at BBC English, still kept traces of its Gloucestershire burr.
Jennings' visual images are unforgettable and I found them very affecting. The close attention to the everyday lives of ordinary people, making them visually beautiful as well as interesting, is unparalleled. A wonderful afternoon.

David Miliband (again)

It's time to check out David Miliband again, as the Labour Party conference ends. He's just started a new blog at last - he kept one while he was Environment minister and there was a long hiatus after he became Foreign secretary. but at last a new one is up and running, complete with YouTube videos.
There's been pages of publicity in the press in the last week or so - profiles, transcripts of speeches etc etc. Something that stands out is his ackowledgement that military intervention isn't always the solution; that Iraq was divisive in the party and country. Good intentions weren't enough.
He's clearly distancing himself from the Blair regime, as I expected he would, plus he's reinventing himself as a serious, heavyweight politician. This has meant talking slowly and ponderously in an attempt to seem profound. Nevertheless, he hasn't quite been able to rid himself of the Fotherington-Thomas 'hello birds, hello, bees' impression he always manages to give. There's a feeling that emanates from him that if we were all a bit nicer to each other the world would be a better place. This is certainly true, but it's not politics, which is, and always has been , dirty in the extreme.

The Good Shepherd

I, unlike most critics, found The Good Shepherd an enthralling and engrossing film, throughout it's 2 hours 40 minutes. I usually get irritated by over-long films, but this was an exception. I've just had a look at some of the reviews, and not many liked it, and some were unnecessarily abusive, especially about Matt Damon. What is it about Damon that irritates so many? I think he's getting better and better, and maturing extremely satisfactorily. The Bourne films have shown that he can do action, but even in these he retains a riveting, buttoned-up intensity. Here he's frozen by his background, his sense of duty, his father's suicide and his failed, loveless marriage, and is utterly convincing throughout.
Most of the critics found the film impossibly long and tedious, though yet again, Philip French was one of the few exceptions and appreciated the film's strengths. Yes, there's a weighty ponderousness at times, but is that such a crime? It's far outweighed by intelligence and seriousness of purpose. French likens it to the masterly TV serialisations of John Le Carre's novels and he's absolutely right.
I need to see this film again, as I watched it at home on Saturday night, and I'm always fighting sleep at this time of the week. I didn't drift off but my concentration wavered at times. I watched it with my son who found it gripping as well. Critics - gaaaahhhhh!!!!!

3.10 to Yuma

I went to see 3.10 to Yuma the other day at my local cinema. I remember seeing the original many years ago on television, so long ago I think it was in black and white. I had a quick look at the trusty IMDB which confirmed that it was released in 1957 and starred Van Heflin and Gleen Ford, in the parts played in the new version by Christian Bale and Russell Crowe.

I like these these two actors very much, though Crowe's career has been marred lately by poor career choices, while Bale, on the other hand, hasn't, as far as I'm aware, made a single bad decision, ever. I can't thinkof any off-hand anyway. He has the knack of submerging himself in whatever part he's playing, the definition of the character actor, whereas Crowe tends to be Crowe whoever he's playing. This wasn't always the case, however, as demonstrated by his performance in The Insider, and I think it's simply because he's become so famous that his personality has come to dominate.
Bale however, has no public persona whatever, so has retained an anonimity which means he becomes his character more effectively. I'm always impressed by the level of fierce commitment he always brings to his performances and this was no exception
Here, though, Crowe managed to let his larger-than-life star persona slide into the background and allowed the character of Wade, the outlaw to shine through. I've just been looking at some of the reviews of the film, and my favourite critic, Roger Ebert, perceptively observed that Crowe's portrayal suggested an intelligent man who has become bored with being an outlaw, bored by the expectations place on him by others, a man fascinated by the varieties of human nature.
Several of the reviews have expressed dissatisfaction with the ending, and I have to agree. It lacked clarity and consistency and, by killing off Evans (Bale), its moral compass came askew, and it's an unsatisfactory mess. Obviously complexity, post-Unforgiven, is essential in westerns nowadays, but we were left with confusion rather than ambiguity. My response was 'What just happened....???'
Philip French in the Observer points to the huge influence of Deadwood, the western series set in a frontier town just at the point at which the West was beginning to be colonised by white settlers. Deadwood is far too black and scabrous to be shown on terrestrial TV, unfortunately, but, with its baroque language and lack of moral absolutes, astonishing period detail, it's an extraordinary evocation of the West that is surely much closer to its reality. I don't have Sky One any more since Virgin Media ditched it but I intend to catch up and rent the DVDs, switching on the subtitles to experience the dialogue in all its glory.
I have to confess that I didn't recognise Peter Fonda as the bounty-hunter McElroy, and that's maybe a tribute to him. Anyway, his presence was another major plus, as was Ben Foster's as Wade's brutal sidekick, a closet gay clearly in love with his leader. Philp French descibes his performance as 'terrifying' and I have to agree - truly demented.
So, a handsome production, enjoyable, entertaining and compelling. I'd like to see it again, though - that ending! Bleahhhhhh

Atonement

I saw Atonement this weekend - it's just come out, and I do like to see films when they've just been released. There's a real buzz surrounding this film; I suppose because it's British, but also because of the Ian McEwan factor; he's just been put on the Booker prize shortlist for On Chesil Beach, and he's probably the most high-profile British author around at the moment. Also, keira Knightley; she's definitely the British actress of the moment. I saw the first 2 Pirates of the Caribbean films, against my better judgement, and couldn't be bothered to see the third (too long and cumbersome, not very funny, not exciting, not interesting on any level), so had zero expectations of KK in Pride and Prejudice. I was pleasantly surprised by her performance; she acquitted herself very well, though I did think she's a little young for Lizzie Bennet. The film as a whole had much to recommend it, and Brenda Blethyn as Mrs Bennet, was, I thought, a huge improvement on Alison Steadman in the BBC's famous production, though Matthew McFadyen was a pale, forlorn Mr Darcy after Colin Firth, who, I think, is a super-hard act to follow.
Anyway, back to Atonement. A great deal of effort has gone into establishing its period authenticity; clothes, accents, hairstyles, even the way everyone walked. So when something isn't quite it really stands out. For example, KK's eyebrows, while right once the 1940s arrived, were far too thick for 1935. Maybe it doesn't matter, but I always find myself spotting this kind of thing. There weren't too many occasions like this, though, and she, and James McAvoy, made a pretty good attempt at Celia Johnson/Trevor Howard-style received pronunciation, something many actors today find extremely difficult. I always notice immediately when Estuary English is spoken in wartime and pre-war films, and I hate it; it's just wrong. Even non-posh people spoke with clipped accents in those days, so I was pleased to see a serious attempt made at getting this right.
James McEvoy has been pretty good in everything I've seen him so far, and he did exceptionally well in this. He's one of those actors who becomes the character, shedding all traces of himself; Knightley, being more high-profile can't quite do this, remaining KK however hard she tries.
Romola Gary, on the other hand, inhabits her character completely, and both my daughter (who came with me) and I felt her performance as the sister (the WWII incarnation) was the highlight of the film. because the sister, who misinterprets the relationship between Knightley and McEvoy, is played by 3 actresses, Gary's part is necessarily smaller and less high-profile, but all the portrayals were exceptional, finishing with Vanessa Redgrave as the elderly version. A charming device, I thought, to link them, was to give them all similar hairstyles - this worked well, giving the film an extra coherence.
Much has been made of the bravura sequence depicting the beach at Dunkirk, quite rightly, I think. It encapsulates the madness and chaos that must surely have engulfed the evacuation of the BEF. So, well done all round. Whether it'll win any Oscars remains to be seen, but it's a worthy first shot across the bows of the industry. And, thank goodness, a decent film with which to kick-start the autumn season.

The Seventh Seal

The Seventh Seal has been re-released and I took the opportunity of going to see it with a friend the other day. I had seen it before, on television, many years ago, but to see it at the cinema was an opportunity I couldn't pass up.
It is extraordinary, magnificent, and I felt to see it once barely scraped the surface. It's packed with resonance and meaning, and it's picture, not only of medieval everyday life, but of it's world-picture and thought-processes, is matchless.
Actually, on second thoughts, Tarkovsky did it with Andrei Rublev, a film I plan to revisit soon, but it's rare. A world of The Seventh Seal is a world in which scientific thought did not exist on any level; in which religious faith and superstition were the organising principles of everyone's life. The world was a strange, mysterious place and science was unknown. It's a funny film as well, though, with none of the trademark Scandinavian lugubriousness, which, as far as Bergman was concerned, was always a myth anyway There is so much richmess in this film that a single viewing doesn't do it justice, so I think I might break a habit and get myself a copy. The friend who came with me to the cinema had never seen it before and was similarly overwhelmed. We came out of the cinema discussing it excitedly, all the way to the car park. Sometimes it happens, and it always reminds me the enormous part cinema plays in my life. Whatever else is going on, you can always lose yourself for a while, and there's nothing wrong with that, in fact it keeps you going, and something as good as The Seventh Seal amazes and delights. It lit up that dreary time of year when cinema often seems exhausted; the summer blockbuster season's winding down, and the Oscar contenders aren't in the cinemas yet, so, a real treat in every sense.

The Bourne Ultimatum

I enjoyed The Bourne Ultimatum very much when I went to see it this week. It's a real roller-coaster - an action movie that really is all-action. It barely stops for a minute to draw breath. But it's really well-made; directed by Paul Greengrass, who was responsible for the previous Bourne film, The Bourne Supremacy. Greengrass is fast becoming the director of the moment, and it's not hard to see why. Somehow his films, whatever their subject (sober, as with United 93, or all-action) have dramatic weight, an essential seriousness of purpose which marks them out as exceptional. And, of course, there was Matt Damon. I've always really liked him, even as far back as the Good Will Hunting Days, but it was The Talented Mr Ripley that really drew attention to the fact that here was an exceptional actor. He's not the greatest-looking leading man; with his snub nose and blank expression, but that actually works in his favour, as his looks aren't conventional in the Brad Pitt mode. BP really has to work hard to achieve substance and sometimes manages it, but his looks are always working against him. Damon essential anonymity is a blank canvas which can reveal greater depths. I thought he was superb in Ripley, in fact the whole film was grossly underrated. He seems to be getting better and better with age, now he's losing all that puppy fat. His CV since Ripley is patchy, but there are some fine performances lurking there. He was superb, I thought, in The Departed, and I have yet to see The Good Shepherd, but have high hopes for that. He's particularly good at playing characters with a secret - it's that blank canvas again, and the character in The Departed, that of the upright cop who is secretly a member of the underworld, was perfect for him.
He's starring in the upcoming Imperial Life in the Emerald City, another Greengrass project, for which I have very high hopes. I was planning to read the book anyway soon, and have had it recommended to me - it's about life in Iraq's Green Zone, but I know little else about it. I shall look forward to it with great anticipation anyway.
There's not much else to say about The Bourne Ultimatum, excepet that I think the Bourne films have been largely responsible for the reinvention of James Bond in Casino Royale. There's little in the way of special effects and gizmos, just action. And the Bourne films have the added bonus of having a mysterious central character. The ending is suitably open, yet highly satisfying at the same time. Great stuff!

The Sopranos

Although I saw it when it was on TV a while ago, I decided to watch the latest, sixth, and final series of The Sopranos on DVD, so I'm renting it from Amazon. My son, who's living with me at the moment, hadn't seen any of it, although he's seen all five of the preceding series, so it seemed like a good idea to watch it again.
Well, what can I say.....it made me want to see the whole lot again from the beginning. I've heard it compared to King Lear in its complexity, depth and range, and I can't disagree. There is so much going on in each episode - it repays repeated viewing.
Series 6 starts off conventionally, (by the Sopranos' standards) with Tony, the capo, having to deal with his ageing uncle Junior's increasing dementia, and the associated family conflicts. Junior shoots him at the end of the episode, and he is now in hospital in a coma, suffering a succession of near-death experiences which dramatise a major crisis of identity.
It's the character development that stands out - and the series' dramatisation of the way in which each generation in its turn tries to deal with the burden of the preceding generation's misdemeanours. Tony's inner life is also a major theme, and his regular visits to Dr Melfi, his psychoanalyst provide a running commentary on the action.
The language is a baroque distillation of Italian-American English, and in every episode there's a line or two that takes your breath away. I'm seriously considering getting the whole thing on DVD and watching it with the subtitles turned on as I'm sure I must have missed a great deal. Anyway - I've stayed spoiler-free, so am awaiting with huge anticipation the last half of series 6 which apparently we may get later this year, which gives us the finale. I know it's been controversial but that's all I know - what series ending isn't controversial?

The Manchurian Candidate

I saw The Manchurian Candidate (the 2004 version) the other night and, while I did enjoy it, I kept thinking how much better the original was. Denzel Washington as Captain Marco, the chief protagonist, who becomes increasingly suspicious of the Raymond Shaw, the candidate for vice-president with whom he served in the army, was fine, as usual, but the plot, with its origins in the Cold War, had been changed to accommodate the present day, and suffered accordingly. The baddies were a faceless corporate body instead of oriental Communists and it was far harder to feel the same level of paranoia. In 1962 the Cold War was still raging, whether justified or not, and the film's release coincided with the Cuban missile crisis to add an extra layer of fear and loathing. It featured one of Frank Sinatra's best performances as Marco, and Laurence Harvey was suitably sinister as Shaw.
Having said that, Liev Schrieber was an excellent substitute for Harvey in the new version, but was underused compared to Harvey - he simply didn't have enought to do. One of my favourites, Meryl Streep, played Shaw's mad mother, and was, as ever, superb, even though, really, she was in only second gear.
It wasn't bad for a remake, but, in the end, all it did, as is the case with so many remakes, was make me want to see the original as soon as possible, not just to compare it with the remake, but simply to enjoy a really great film. It's one of those movies that you never forget - it's so well put together and structured that it shows up so many of todays' films for the sprawling messes they are, and I spent most of the time waiting for the famous 'trigger line': 'Why don't you pass the time by playing a nice game of solitaire' but it never came. In fact I can't remember what was used as a substitute, it was so inconsequential. I felt the ending was a bit incoherent and messy, in fact the whole film lacked the blazing clarity of the original. As ever with remakes, I was left with the question - why? It was OK and the stroy is such a good one that it would be hard to make a bad film from it, but, in the end, the original remains the benchmark for paranoia films.

Harry Potter (again)

Well, I've now watched Harry Potter's 2,3,& 4, in the interests of research. I wanted a) to get a better idea of what the hell was going on no.5 as I hadn't a clue who anyone was or what was going on, and b) find out what all the fuss is about - get a feel for the zeitgest, I suppose.
I'm calling them by their numbers as I can't remember the titles of each individual film - I know what they are, but keep forgetting which one's which.
Anyway, back to the films. I enjoyed the 4th one the most, which I do remember is called HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It had a tighter narrative structure and a better defined plot. The others sprawled in an ungainly fashion and seemed to be a series of episodes and events rather than an actual story. I don't know if the book was better suited to a filmed narrative as I still haven't read any of them, and to be honest, I can't see myself spending any more time on the whole saga than necessary.
The 4th film had HP growing up, and it becomes clear that Daniel Radcliffe, unlike most of the other young people in the film, can actually act and so, as the central character, holds the film together well. I noticed that John Williams, the celebrated veteran film composer, did the music for this one, which means that the loud, insistent, syrupy music of the earlier films, isn't sprawled all over the action, another improvement, as it's now much more subtle and nuanced.
The director is Alfonso Cuaron, the Mexican director resonsible for The Children of Men, which I thought was an exceptionally fine film, and Y Tu Mama Tambien, which I haven't seen, but I've heard good reports about it.
Anyway, it was an interesting exercise, but I'm glad it's over. I'll watch the new film again at some point, but I'm not desperate as I've had enough of HPP for the moment. All the films are far too long - they would all be improved by tightening up; there are far too may scenes which go on and on and on unnecessarily. I would think that about half an hour could easily be lopped of each of them without destroying anything in the plot, and it would improve them enormously. The adult characters are a mixed bag; another plus point for no.4 was Gary Oldman's appearance as Sirius Black - he also appears in no.5. Robbie Coltrane, Alan Rickman, Michael Gambon and Maggie Smith are also reliably effective, and none of them make the mistake of hamming it up, which, unfortunately, neither Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson can resist doing. Honourable mentions, too, for David Thewlis and Ralph Fiennes, who although he doesn't feature much, exerts a suitably brooding and terrifying presence as the arch-villain, Voldemort. The secret in being an adult in a children's film, is to take it completely seriously, to approach it in the same way as any other piece of work, and this is the mark of the true professional. Most of the adults pass the test admirably, but Branagh and Thompson, I think, fail disastrously, both hamming it up - I found them virtually unwatchable.
I can see why kids love them - they have a strictly-defined universe, good and evil, the boarding school setting is irresistable and provides fodder for all sorts of sub-plots and minor character studies. The children are pretty good, and it's interesting to see them growing up, though Isome are doing it more successfully than others - I'm not sure about Ron, he's an OK actor, but an irritating character, though Hermione's blossoming nicely into an interesting personality.
Anyway, there we are - I'll now return to the 2 Werner Herzog box sets I've borrowed from one of my sons, with some relief.

Woody Allen

I've been thinking about Woody Allen recently, having just read a biography of him by John Baxter. What a difficult, complex personality he has, yet reading about him illuminates a great deal of the darker highways and byways of his life.
I've always loved his films and think that some of them are, and will remain the best films made by an American in the late 20th century. For me, his finest film is Crimes and Misdemeanours, a film I can watch repeatedly, such is its richness and sheer entertainment value, coupled with plenty to think about. I've never managed to sit through his Bergman-esque ventures into seriousness, such as Interiors, though I've heard that Another Woman is worth watching. I think that his best films retain an element of comedy, even when it's deepest black, as in Deconstructing Harry, another favourite of mine.
I've heard he's famously bad with actors - I don't know how true this is, but they seem to queue up to work with him. He's brought the best out of many of them - certainly Mia Farrow has never produced such good performances with anyone else. And Judy Davis, Alan Alda, Martin Landau, Dianne Weist, Barbara Hershey, Max von Sydow among many others have produced their best work for him.
Crimes and Misdemeanours was the beginning of what I believe is his best period - his 1990s films are his funniest and cleverest. Bullets Over Broadway, Mighty Aphrodite, Radio Days, The Purple Rose of Cairo are all films I can watch over and over again. They have an inventiveness, style and lightness of touch which recalls such masters as Preston Sturges.
His work became darker for a while, and Husbands and Wives and Deconstructing Harry are as black as night, but still highly watchable and entertaining, with some great performances.
In recent years his output has been extremely variable - I enjoyed Sweet and Lowdown and Match Point very much, but Melinda and Melinda less so. His most recent work has failed to find a distributor in this country - shamefully, though I suppose it'll eventually find its way to DVD. He's over 70 now, so is finding it difficult to find suitable parts to play, but Woody Allen substitutes can be found, though they vary enormously in quality. John Cusack managed it very successfully in Bullets over Broadway, but I've written elsewhere of Kenneth Branagh's disastrous attempt in Celebrity.
He seems to have fallen in love with London, and Match Point, while it had the same relationship with reality as his portraits of New York, yet I really don't think it matters. After all, film is an imaginative response to life, and produces its own form of poetry. Manhattan celebrates New York, and is a personal response to someone to whom it is central in his life. His portrait of London may be a fairy-tale version, but what's wrong with that? Realism is an overrated quality in film - see the films of Powell and Pressburger, slated when released but now hailed as masterpieces.
Allen's London in Match Point captured perfectly its excitement and buzz - those scenes in Tate Modern with the view over the river had an iconic quality about them. I've heard he's making more films in London, so we'll see....
I've glossed over the Mia Farrow/Soon Yi episode - what can you say? One will never know what really happened, and Allen is clearly a complicated and damaged personality. But Farrow is as well, with her compulsive children-collecting and serial relationships, so there's probably a lot more to it all than meets the eye. But does it affect my view of Allen as a film-maker? Not at all. Deeply unpleasant people of all kinds have made great films, and they should be judged according to their quality not by the personality and private lives of the people who made them.
On the subject of great film directors - I haven't forgotten about the death this week of 2 of the greatest, Antonioni and Bergman, and I'll be writing about them soon, when I've had a chance to think about them at length.

libraries

I always feel completely at home in any public library - I suppose it's because I've spent so much time in them over the years. My parents didn't have much money, but they were took me to the children's library in Oxford as soon as I was old enough. I can't remember not being able to read, and have always been a pretty voracious reader, so the library was a treasure chest and I spent hours in there. My parents used to drop me off while they went shopping from a pretty early age - you could do that in those days - and I made the most of it. The holy grail was finding an Enid Blyton book on the shelves - she was so popular that her books were always out, but I discovered other children's authors, Ruby Ferguson was one, I remember - I loved her books, which were all about girls with ponies on Romney Marsh, and I adored school stories. It amuses me to read that children's books should be 'relevant' - why? Nothing could be further away from my life than the pre-war girl's boarding school, but I was addicted to them. I suppose stories about friendships, bullying etc. are universal wherever you are, and the Harry Potter phenomenon is testament to the fact that the boarding school still has a hold on the childish imagination. I suppose it's the fact it's a self-contained world where adults are entirely peripheral and their world is merely incidental, so it can provide a convincingly child-centred universe.
Oxford built a new, modern, much larger library and that's where I first took my children. I don't remember too much about it - the old library remains a much more vivid memory. As soon as we moved to Bristol in 1983 I discovered the Central Library on College Green, a magnificent building which retains the original Edwardian grandeur. It's surroundings have improved enormously in recent years - traffic is banned from outside and attractive fountains and flower beds are nearby, and it's recently been expensively refurbished and reorganised. I'm sorry that so much space is now given up to DVDs but I suppose libraries have to find ways in which to survive. I still love going there, mooching around the shelves, and I can see myself spending more and more time there as I get older.
Now, the reference library upstairs - it's magnificent! It has lovely big old desks and capacious, comfortable chairs. It's not what it was and has had to make room for the music library which was expelled from the ground floor and is now a shadow of its former self. But you can still spend hours in there reading ancient bound copies of magazines and newspapers and probably much else. There's always plenty of retired people doing family history research and much else I expect. The whole place a comfortable, well-used public service and I always feel as if I've come home whenever I go there. Public libraries are a repository of ecverything good about our society and I feel sure they wouild probably fail every one of the government-inspired financial 'public use' audits. It's hugely important that we keep them, use them, preserve them ,develop them - do whatever has to be done for them - they're a necessity, a public service in the most fundamental sense. Maybe not quite as important as water and sewerage, as demonstrated by the recent floods but still a vitally important part of public life.

reading aloud

I was wondering if people still read aloud to their children? I only ask because I've just bought a couple of Young James Bond DVDs for my nephew - it's his 12th birthday soon, and I don't think his parents have read to him much, yet he still loves to listen to stories in bed and has lots of audiobooks. He doesn't have a TV or computer in his bedroom and I know his parents have absolutely and firmly resolved to hold out as long as possible on this, a stance with which I totally agree. My sons had a TV in their bedroom when they were about 15-16 and my daughter never had one at all and there's something pitiful, I think, about children holed up in their bedrooms, away from adult life, with their TV's, DVD players and computers.
Anyway, back to reading aloud. I derived enormous pleasure from reading to my children, and discovered and rediscovered many, many books. They were incredibly lucky, as the 1970s were in many ways the golden age of children's literature. TV didn't compete in the way it does now, with multi-channel, 24-hour programmes on tap, there were no computer games or videos/DVDs. We read to them every night, either individually or to all of them at once, which meant that my youngest son got to hear Lord of the Rings at the impressionable, and possibly inappropriate age of about 7 and developed a deep and abiding love of the books, and, many years later, the films. I still have many of the books and am sad that bedtime stories now seems to be a dying practice. I've seen articles in the paper about reading to children but I imagine that parents who've been at work all day are simply too tired. I feel immensely privileged to have been a mother when most mothers of young children didn't need to work - nowadays it's a necessity in order to have even a half-decent income and pay the mortgage and bills.
My life would have been immeasurably the poorer for not having had that time every evening with them. And of course there were the books. I know the Frog and Toad books, Bread and Jam for Frances and Each Peach Pear Plum, off by heart, having read them in turn 4 times over. I feel sorry, not only for the children, but for today's parents today who haven't had such richness in their lives; still, I always promised myself that I wouldn't bang on about 'the good old days' when I became old and grey, and the 1970s had its disadvantages. It certainly wasn't all bad, though - great TV, great children's books, great films and some great music.

Harry Potter

I went to see the new Harry Potter film, which I think is called Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I confees the whole phenomenon has passed me by - my children were all too old when the books came out, though some of them have seen the films. I took my nephew and niece to see the first film when it came out - they're younger, so are much more in tune with the whole thing. I can't remember whether I enjoyed it or not - I suspect it passed me by. This film, I believe the new film is the fourth, or is it the fifth? Anyway, I hadn't a clue what was going on, or who anyone was. A group of us went to a large cinema in Kilkenny, the only one there. I'd been there a few years before to see The Perfect Storm, and it hadn't changed much since then. It's a big auditorium with no stadium seating - fortunately there wasn't anyone sitting in front of me. The sound was poor - I'm used to Dolby Surround Sound, and the audience, which was sizeable, kept getting up and down to refuel, go to the loo etc. etc. I'd been warned that Irish audiences are talkative, but this one was OK; I wouldn't have minded too much anyway with a film like this, but I'm usually allergic to cinema chatterers and give them filthy looks, ask them politely but firmly to stop talking, or as a last resort, move if they won't shut up and there's room. Bristol audiences aren't too bad actually; I've heard London ones are awful. I've trained my children from a very early age to keep quiet at the cinema and they're all as intolerant as me. I really can't bear it - I suspect it comes from doing most of your film watching at home - you get used to being free to talk as much as you like. I read recently that older audiences are flocking to the cinema, fuelling the rising popularity of mainstream arthouse films such as Brokeback Mountain and The Lives of Others, so maybe audiences will have better manners in future. We'll see....
Anyway, back to Harry Potter. I really haven't got too much to say about it except that it seemed pretty long. I liked Imelda Staunton very much - she's always a treat, but I did get a bit confused towards the end. I suspect I may have lost concentration for a while as I really didn't know who was supposed to be who. I supppose it links back to the previous four films - anyway, now I'm home I've borrowed the DVDs of HP 2,3 and 4 from my daughter so I can catch up. More on HP to come, then....

holiday reading - The Historian

I've just come back from 2 weeks in Ireland on holiday, and, as usual when on holiday, I've spent most of my time reading. I always find that it's a time when I can catch up, finish books that have been hanging around started but not finished, read ones that have been sitting there waiting for too long, and maybe discover some unexpected treats. I did all three, so feel very satisfied. The first thing I did was finally finish The Historian by Elisabeth Kostova. I'd started this on the recommendation of my daughter and it felt as if I'd been reading it for ever. It's certainly long, if nothing else - a kind of an amalgam of The Name of the Rose and Possession though nothing like as good as either. I've heard it mentioned as being a kind of Da Vinci Code for grownups but can't comment as I've never read the Dan Brown pageturner and don't intend to.
I have to say that I found it, not dull, as I managed to finish it, but unsatisfying and stodgy. The characters never sprang to life or leapt off the page - they were plot devices and that's all. The plot was labrynthine and, I suspect, deliberately complicated. I just about kept it together, and was determined to finish it, but I found it ultimately a dull, wearisome read.

1982 - part 2

Watching Wimbledon this year has been a frustrating experience at times due to the relentless rain, but it's the final Saturday, the sun's shining and it looks like it'll all be done and dusted on time. Growing up with a sport-loving father, I remember it was always on - one of those events, along with Test match cricket, football, late-night boxing and the Grand National that are part of the fabric of my life.
There's been lots of talk about the previous 'worst Wimbledon ever', in 1982, so, once again, my thoughts have been drifting back to that year - the Falklands campaign and my father's death as the conflict ended. I was reminded that the rain during that month was indeed torrential and never-ending. As I was up to my neck in small children at that time my memories are very fragmented, just a series of vivid images. My father had an allotment; as it was summer everything was coming up so I needed go down there and pick everything. More often than not, I did it in pouring rain. It's one of those memories that becomes etched on your brain - grief, rain, vegetables and fruit, and Wimbledon, all jumbled up together, and so intense it seems like yesterday.

football - the early days

It may seem strange to be talking about football in July, but in many ways it's the best time to be thinking about it. New players are being signed up, new kits are wheeled out, and the disappointments of the previous season are beginning to fade. It's a time of year when hope triumphs over expectation - supporters can dream of next season before those dreams collapse, crumbling into dust.
Many football-lovers are seriously disillusioned and disaffected by Brisith football and it's not hard to see why. The dominance of the Premier League, preposterous wage levels, the impact of television etc. etc. have led to non-renewal of season tickets and non-attendance at games. My brother, who was a huge football fan from early childhood - he attended Manchester Utd's European Cup victory at Wembley in 1968, is one of these - he now watcheds rugby. Although I don't attend matches I can't say the same, I still get a thrill when the season starts, even though I only watch games on TV these days - I suppose football's in my blood, and my interest goes a long way back
It started, I suppose when my father took me as a toddler to the ground over the road from where we lived. The club, Oxford City, played in the Isthmian League against such sides as Corinthian Casuals and Wycombe Wanderers, and attracted a pretty good crowd in those days. It meant my mother had Saturday afternoons to herself so it became a habit. I would happily occupy myself toddling up and down the terraces while my father watched the match, so I guess I absorbed the atmoosphere through a kind of osmosis. My brother who was three years younger actually played there for the school team in a primary schools' cup final, which was a great day - he still has the team photo.
I passed the 11 plus, went to a new school 'up the hill' and quickly became drawn into the orbit of Oxford United, heresy in my father's eyes - he always referred to them as 'Headington United', even though they'd changed to 'Oxford Utd' in 1960. Anyway, Utd made it to the Fifth round of the FA Cup in 1964, and beat Blackburn Rovers, who were then a top Division One side, 3-1, in a memorable match at the Manor Ground. The ground was packed and it was an incredible game. Oxford then drew Preston North End at home in the Sixth round and lost, but didn't disgrace themselves; 22,000 packed into the tiny Manor Ground and again, it was an unforgettable occasion.
I continued to go to games for couple of years, but then got a Saturday job; my football watching days were over. My interest stayed with me, though. I'll write about it again as there's plenty more to come.

Collateral

I saw Collateral last night on DVD, recommended to me by my son. It's a good action movie for a Saturday night, but, being a Michael Mann film, it's more interesting than usual. Tom Cruise, as in Magnolia, proved again that, used properly, he can act, and he was truly menacing as Vincent, the contract killer picked up accidentally by Max, Jamie Foxx's taxi driver. I hardly recognised Foxx, who showed that he is one of the most interesting actors around in mainstream Hollywood. The real star of the film, though, was LA, an unfamiliar LA; the film takes place over the course of one night, with traffic constantly circling the freeways, and tower blocks, with mean, dark alleys in between, always in the background - all looked strange, unfamiliar. As with other Mann films it wasn't a straightforward action movie; the shootouts were punctuated by scenes in which nothing happens, just conversation. I can't do any better than Roger Ebert, the distinguished critic, who describes the film here as 'one long conversation between a killer and a man who fears for his life, punctuated with what happens at five stops, which are essentially five short films in themselves'. The two stop off for a break in a nightclub, and have a conversation with a trumpeter who tells them of the night he met Miles Davis. It's a conversation steeped in warmth, regret and loss - it has little impact on the film's narrative, but nevertheless deepens and strengthens it. There are several more scenes like this; all are 'excessive' to the narrative in film studies parlance, and they confirm Mann's status as a great director.
It ends on an empty subway train, and, as I've said before, I have a fondness for trains and stations - at night they have an extraordinary atmosphere. Ebert found the ending somewhat stereotyped - I rather liked it, it was melancholy and downbeat. The sky lightens as morning approaches and the film has come full circle - it began just as darkness was falling. The whole film has a lovely symmetry but is nevertheless left unresolved. Max and Annie, the lawyer he has rescued from Vincent walk off the train and along the platform, and that's it.
Mann chooses his projects very carefully, and his films are never less than interesting. Manhunter, The Insider, Heat and The Last of the Mohicans are all fine films, and he made Miami Vice a lot better than it might have been in other hands.

Alistair Darling

Darling was always going to be Chancellor in a Brown government and so it has proved. I've had my eye on him since Labour first came to power - I clearly remember a programme (I can't remember which channel it was on) in the summer of 1997 which consisted of a cinema-verite -style look at the Treasury as it began establishing itself. Darling was a junior Treasury minister - someone said 'We can't do that', and Darling replied 'We're the government - we can do whatever we want.' It may have been a rush of blood to his head caused by the excitement of coming to power, but it stayed with me.
There was a piece in The Times yesterday on Darling - what a nice, unassuming person he was, how unlike Blair, humble and modest etc.etc. We shall see....power does things to people. Another politician to watch, along with Miliband, though Gordon will hold on to the reins very tightly.