Double Duplicity

I was duped. I've almost been tricked by the Odeon website before. In some of their cinemas, you see, they construct the cinema not to make some seats better than an average seat in an average cinema but to make other seats worse by putting random balconies in the way of the screen and angling the seats really oddly. I suppose this makes some people want to fork out the extra £2, although if I'm already paying a tenner for the cinema, for an extra two quid, I'd want free ice cream and a really comfortable seat. They also construct the website so that when you book your seat, you have to first click on your "section"--standard or premium--but the two sections are so intermingled and the design of the site is so clunky (or Chrome-unfriendly) that it's hard to see which section you have selected. This meant I ended up paying £12 for a "premium" seat in an almost deserted cinema. My view of the screen was perfect (at least compared to the artificially impaired views in the standard seats) but the seat wasn't very comfy (it seemed to be designed for someone at least eight inches taller than me, which meant that by the end, my neck was immensely uncomfortable) and there wasn't even enough leg room for my short legs.

I was also duped because I had the impression that Duplicity was a straight thriller instead of the campest effing thriller I've seen in a long time. Actually, thriller is probably the wrong word because although there were a few thrilling moments (Clive getting his kit off did it for me more than Julia running around some corporate HQ trying to find a photocopier before she got caught, somehow), I wasn't exactly on the edge of my seat for most of the film. In fact, towards the end, I was expecting that Clive would rip off a mask and reveal that he was actually George Clooney in Intolerable Cruelty (or even in Ocean's Eleven) because it felt like a very Clooneyesque role. Maybe that's just because I think Clive's hotter when he's being serious (a la Children of Men or Sin City), though I did quite enjoy his Chancer days, not to mention his working class guilt in Closer.

Actually, Closer, which also starred Clive and Julia, isn't a bad connection to make for Duplicity because the former was all about four people who don't trust one another, duping (duplicitising?) one another as much as they could get away with, although the main motive seemed to be "true love" rather than lots of lolly. Duplicity too is about Clive and Julia screwing--and screwing each other over, while also trying to screw the companies for whom they work. It's all a little complicated with plenty of flashbacks, gorgeous hotel rooms and characters who may or may not be playing for the other team--or both teams--and it really isn't very deep (I think there was maybe one scene, of about 50 seconds where C and J let down their defences briefly and even appear vulnerable and emotionally involved (well, emotionally involved, anyway, as opposed to the randy competitiveness (or is that competitive randiness) that is the dominant mood for the rest of the movie).

Duplicity is a funny film, although I'm not sure it's always intentional. I'm not sure whether Clive's Nashville accent was intended to be quite so awful but it was pretty hilarious (and still got him laid). As in The International, I couldn't help but snicker at some of his cheesy lines and at Clive's character's arrogance (people he's slept with are a traditional strength for him, don'tcha know?) and the way he can't stop grinning when two of the guys on his team tell him what a big swinging dick he is.

Of course, I had to watch out for the scene I saw being filmed. We waited at Grand Central for an hour while I watched and they were filming when we started and after we left and, of course, the scene lasted about 20 seconds. I was hoping to catch a glimpse of myself, blurry, in the background (all of the people on camera were proper extras) but the stupid information booth in the centre of the station blocked me out. However, as with the punt scene in Sylvia, It was still quite fun to see a scene I had seen been filmed.

I felt it all lost momento at the very moment it should have been climaxing (possibly because at two hours, it was a little too long); by then, it was all rather, "yes, we know...they're all very duplicitous and yes, we're sure it's going to be another 20 minutes before we find out who duplicitised whom the best." It was entertaining, though, and more enjoyable than The International, not least because in Duplicity Clive was more Bogart-with-a-heart than the random dude with about seven words of backstory and about five personality keywords he played in The International. He and Julia do have good chemistry and the characters were charismatic enough, if frothy and a little predictable.

Blaise Pascal summed it up pretty well: "We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves." Duplicity is, at least, smart enough not to try to preach this explicitly...

A Voracious Appetite for Page-Turning

Much as I loathe the phrase "voracious appetite for literacha," especially when it is proudly draped all over a CV and "I [heart] books" would have done the trick, my reading tally for 2009 is already pretty high, currently hovering at the number of Shakespeare's surviving plays. The count includes four and a half books read since Sunday thanks mainly to the Red Riding books (I made myself finish Mistress of the Art of Death, of which I read the first chapter on Saturday before I started on 1974, which made me skim through Ariana Franklin's book pretty quickly; I did indeed finish The Age of Innocence last night before starting on 1977 this morning and I've now finished the latter and started on 1980 thanks to having to wait in the cold at the Nowheresville train station tonight). 

According to the findings of a survey of unknown origins, published in the Telegraph, I should blame my gender for my strong desire to power through books from cover to cover before greedily diving into the next one, which I have already got queued up at my bedside--they report that more than half of women but only a quarter of men have this voracious appetite (I guess Papa and his multiple libraries of books, all now finished, was in the 26% then; Maman, meanwhile would be in the non-page-turning half). The Torygraph adds:

"The survey 2,000 adults also found those who take a long time to read books and only managed one or two a year were twice as likely to be male than female."

Ignoring the presumed missing word after "survey," I'm curious to know how many of the people they surveyed did only manage (or admit to managing) one or two books a year. So far, thanks to the commuting, I'm on track to clear 150 by the end of year, although I'll possibly run out of money and/or books in the library I would actually want to read before then.

The article also links in another survey designed to see how honest people are when telling their friends and acquaintances about books they have read (a little recursive: "Question 1. Are you the kind of person who would lie to your friends about reading books you haven't read? Question 2. Are you the kind of person who would lie when responding to a survey about lying to your friends about books you haven't read?"):

"The men polled said they would be most impressed by women who read news websites, Shakespeare or song lyrics. Women said men should have read Nelson Mandela's biography or Shakespeare."

The men would be impressed by women who read song lyrics? What, as a hobby? "I have a voracious appetite for song lyrics"? I mean, I tend to like songs whose lyrics please me or mean something to me but is that really very impressive? And news websites? Are there people who think, "I like chicks who dip in and out of random bits of froth alongside the "important" stories by getting my news fix online"? Still, perhaps "song lyrics" and "news websites" were the honest answers and "Shakespeare" was thrown in to make the list look more profound. Still, I guess people with Jilly Cooper and Jeffrey Archer on their bookshelves shouldn't throw trivialities... 

Did the women really list Nelson Mandela's biography though (and do they really mean his biography or did they mean his autobiography, The Long Walk to Freedom? Who are these women? Maybe it's because I'm not really a biography kinda gal (unless we're talking the biography of 15th and 16th century English monarchs) but I don't think Nelson Mandela would have made my top three; I don't think it would even have crossed my mind. The survey was probably multiple choice, though, and again, the respondents probably thought selecting Mandela's bio would show that they were thoughtful, deep and interested in global issues: "Would you be more impressed by a potential partner who had read a) Shakespeare [any/all/the sonnets], b) www.thesun.co.uk news websites, c) the lyrics of the Home Video song on this week's Gossip Girl, d) Ulysses, or e) Nuts? Also, it doesn't seem like a fair comparison when men will only be impressed by women who read (every day, say) news websites and song lyrics, while women are impressed by guys who have read Mandela's book at some point in the past. Conclusion: the survey should just have stuck to books.

(In the same way people will order the second most expensive entree when dining at someone else's expense in a restaurant, which leads the restaurants to plant a "trick" super-expensive entree on their menus just so that people will feel like they're saving masses of cash by ordering the second most expensive, sticking James Joyce on the list would probably be a bluff too far but Mandela's (auto)biography is probably more plausible.)

And what would my top three be? Perhaps it's a cop-out but for someone with as miscellaneous a taste in books as I do (it was so fun to daintily sandwich sweet as love The Age of Innocence between black as hell and dark as night 1974 and 1977), making a judgement as to whether someone would be suitable dating material on the basis of just three books seems rather hasty, if not completely ridiculous. Time for me to go and devour the next installment of doom and gloom...

voracious, a

1. Of animals (rarely of persons, or of the throat): Eating with greediness; devouring food in large quantities; gluttonous, ravenous.

b. fig. Of persons: Excessively greedy or eager in some desire or pursuit. "Circe's Cups..Which with his Mates, voracious of their Woe, If he had blindly tasted." (1746 FRANCIS tr. Horace, Epist. I. ii)

The first example the OED gives of the term being used to describe one's need for books is from 1883 in Evangelical Mag: "Mr. Rowlands..was a voracious reader."

Grim Pasts, Grimmer Presents

Given that a huge chunk of the video ad space on IMDb as well as on other websites I frequent has been taken up with trailers for Red Riding (a new trilogy of made-for-TV movies based on a quartet of novels by David Peace, which recount gory tales of woe and corruption in the West Yorkshire police force in the 1970s and 1980s), I felt like I had to at least watch the first part, 1974. With an advertising budget that high, you'd imagine there might be something good about it. 

And yes, part one was good--gritty, dark and convoluted but attention-grabbing (especially as watching on 4OD means no adverts interrupting). Yes, it definitely is grim up north; or, at least, it was in 1974. I'm not sure that I found any of the promised "harrowing scenes of violence" to be overly traumatic but I've long since been convinced that I'm fairly desensitised to portrayals of violence on film (although it still upsets me to see animals--particularly cats--being killed or hurt). The acting was good, though, with Sean Bean playing the nasty, dirty, evil businessman and Rebecca Hall with a lot more to work with than in Frost/Nixon (blonde hair really doesn't suit her, though).

Andrew Garfield, who played the keen, rookie reporter trying to solve the crimes and getting in way over his head, looked strangely familiar although the only other film he's been in that I've seen is The Other Boleyn Girl, where he played one of the other other Boleyn girl's supposed lovers, although I was probably too busy wishing that film were more like the book--or like actual historical events--to remember much of him. 

I did, however, notice that Garfield is now currently linked to the movie version of Never Let Me Go, my favourite book of last year, presumably playing Tommy--he looks enough like the Tommy I had imagined for me to support this casting. However, two actresses are also tentatively linked with the film: Carey Mulligan (who hasn't been in much apart from this made-for-TV rubbish, which I only watched because an annoyingly pretty, model/actress in the year below me at school had a bit part playing Samantha) and Keira Knightley. I can only imagine that Ms Knightley will be playing Kathy, the novel's protagonist, and this saddens me greatly (I can see her better playing Ruth, the third part of the love triangle, who has less screen time, although both Ruth and Kathy are pretty complex characters). Of course, as this is still in pre-production, there is plenty of time for cast changes. It will be interesting to see what Alex Garland does with the script and how Mark Romanek directs the project (his pedigree seems to consist mostly of music videos). 

Nearer the time, I might have to decide whether or not seeing the movie might ruin the book for me. Now this book was something that was seriously dark and haunting, without the need for any graphic descriptions of gruesome murders and violence.

ETA (22:58): Actually, IMDb notes that K-Squared is tipped to be playing Ruth and not Kathy but that still doesn't make the casting OK!