Speaking of Movies...

...and speaking of actors I used to fancy when I was 14, I went to see State of Play today, which I really enjoyed notwithstanding poor old Ben Affleck's "acting." (This from the guy who made me cry during Armageddon so touched was I with his "bravery" and the way he proposed to Liv Tyler using animal crackers; not to mention the way he sung the most off-key rendition of Leaving on a Jetplane I've ever heard--including my own.) I used to loathe Russell Crowe but now I find myself strangely drawn to him (I didn't even recognise him in Body of Lies until I saw the credits and indeed, he said himself that the grey hair and extra weight his character required made him look like his dad), although I suspect I will probably give Nottingham / Robin Hood / Whatever It's Called This week a miss.

Not having seen the TV series on which State of Play is based probably predisposes me to liking it more than I would otherwise have done but in any case, it was an engaging enough romp of a thriller--after Duplicity,  it was a relief that it was a pretty straight thriller with plenty of tension and just the right number of twists, because I would have walked out if it had been as camp as Duplicity. There are bad people and good people and people who appear to change sides or to have been on the other side all along. They're all interconnected and so even though Russell Crowe doesn't get it on with Rachel McAdams, he does have some back-story with the wife of his former college roommate (Affleck), who is the congressman at the centre of the whole plot when his foxy, red-haired mistress dies mysteriously on the subway. I liked Robin Wright Penn in Breaking and Entering, where she also played the spurned wife but in State of Play, she hardly has a blemish-free past herself, which is more interesting. 

I also liked the tentative forays into the now ubiquitous "are blogs killing the newspapers?" debate, although to some extent, this was only really a way of contriving the tension between Russell Crowe's old-school, investigative journalist who knows everyone in town (especially the cops) and Rachel McAdams's young, somewhat naive reporter who writes the newspaper's Capitol Hill blog. They could just have easily have made her a young reporter on the print edition as Crowe's character could still have been initially just as dismissive, but this way was more interesting (and probably realistic) as he teaches her not to blow her wad by posting little titbits of a story based on rumours and hearsay rather than waiting until she has enough facts to hit it big with something huge.

I will, of course, now have to acquire the original TV show so that I can honestly tear the film to bits and say how it has been butchered in its transition from a six-hour TV series into a two-hour film but I do like a good thriller and this was indeed a good thriller. 

She Screams in Colour, She Screams in Red

After her cat-fanatic phase ended, sometime in 1996, Celine became a movie buff--movie obsessive even. This was a time when I would watch the occasional film but you could hardly call me a connoisseur. I remember her talking a lot about watching films on laser discs when I wasn't sure what that meant (I'm still not quite sure but I think they were ill-fated) and her two favourites were Jaws and Scream (the latter, obviously, because of its superb (horror/thriller) film meta). Although Celine looked about 18 in 1996 when Scream was released and went to see it at the cinema, I certainly didn't and so I watched it at her house one night after it came out on video (Celine didn't have the laser disc, for some reason). 

It became an immediate favourite of mine and when it was next on Sky Movies, I taped it and then rewatched that tape many, many times over the coming years. I loved the witty dialogue and subtle references and self-mockery. I loved the music. I loved the meta. So much so that it didn't even matter that I knew very little about the films or the genres it was mocking. There was a time when I could quote long passages of dialogue although my memory seems to be foggy as I can only seem to remember, Fuck you. / We already played that game. You lost., which I thought was hilarious when I was 15 and even incorporated it into one of my novels. And back then, I also thought Skeet Ulrich was sex on legs.

I probably last saw Scream about seven years ago when my tape of the film and my TV-with-video-player were last in the same room. My video collection was all life laundered a few years ago for being obsolete but I'm going to have to re-acquire a copy of Scream as I just (finally) watched Psycho and it feels wrong to have watched Scream so many years before Psycho. Worst of all was that in parts, I was able to finish the Psycho characters' sentences because they had been quoted or paraphrased in Scream. As soon as I heard the line, "She just goes a little mad sometimes," I knew it would be followed by, "we all go a little mad sometimes," which was quoted in Scream.

Since then, as well as the more directly relevant Psycho I've seen a lot more films and although I would hardly consider myself a connoisseur, I think I would get a lot of enjoyment out of a rewatching of Scream (although certainly not either of its sequels, which were OK but no better). It will be interesting to see which of the lines I still laugh at and which jokes and in-jokes I now get. I'm almost twice as old as I was when I first saw Scream so I hope that my tastes will have matured: Liev Schreiber, if anyone, is probably the most lust-worthy actor and will I like Courtney Cox's pushy, bitchy roving reporter character so much now that Friends is no longer my favourite TV show? Will I be able to hear the line (addressed to Billy, a 17-year-old guy), "What are you doing with a cellular telephone, son?" without laughing? Will I still appreciate Kevin Williamson's writing now that I don't watch Dawson's Creek? 

Most importantly, can I possibly take Wes Craven seriously having seen Cursed?

Still Unpredictable

Despite a decidedly mediocre performance since the end of November, my football team continues to confound me with its unpredictability as they have now been guaranteed promotion to the Premier League next season and will, in fact, probably come top too, unless we lose both remaining matches and Birmingham score about ten goals. My godfather, who went to watch Wolves beat QPR yesterday, said he hadn't seen them play better since last autumn, not that that's saying much.

Amusingly, the QPR boss said, after the match, according to the BBC, "I don't want to take anything away from Wolves, it's their day. I've got a lot of respect for Mick McCarthy. It would be nice to be in the same situation next season." Ah yes, it's always good for football managers to aspire to inconsistency, unpredictability, opportunities missed, fans disappointed and the inevitable chant of, "maybe next season."

Well, maybe next season, Wolves will actually make something of themselves in the top flight. However, I don't think it's too cynical or pessimistic of me to predict that they will be straight back down the following season. Unless they gave up predictability in 2009, of course...

One Night in Hertfordshire

Update (2015): St Alban has, sadly, long since closed.

Well, not quite--Lower Regent's Street more like--but that was where we told Maman we were going for dinner and as the restaurant was called St Alban, it was almost true. St Alban is the younger sister of the Wolseley--a little younger, a little cheaper, a little funkier and a little easier to get a reservation for the same evening when it's already 4.30 and your name is Bexquisite. After 40+ days of effective pudding fast, thanks to my chocolate ban, it was nice to be able to have a range of chocolatey options on the menu from which to select. I had to forgo a starter to make sure I had room but we had some nice bread and the parents ate some nice-looking olives (but I don't do olives). A glass of prosecco helped me to wind down after a hectic Friday early evening involving calls to people in Hawai'i; I realisee too late Hawai'i was ten not eight hours behind the UK and that I had therefore rudely awakened the poor recipient of my call.

Comme entrée, I had a delicious, melt-in-the-mouth chargrilled salmon with some sort of posh mushy peas (with garlic) as a garnish. Papa's pizza and Maman's belly of black pig (black belly of pig? Pig of black belly?) also looked pretty tasty and the waitress was extremely friendly, if a little too quick to say "you're extremely welcome" at every opportunity. I decided to go for one of the recommended puddings--chocolate and hazelnut caprese with crème fraîche sorbet. I was initially worried that the chocolate and hazelnut would come garnished withe mozzarella or basil, as you would expect with a caprese salad, but the waitress assured me it was like a really chocolatey brownie. And it was very nice, although I couldn't quite finish. With coffee, they brought macaroons, which looked very pretty, all green with their coloured wrappers but weren't as tasty as Paul's.

For years when I was growing up, we went out for a family dinner in Oxford most Friday nights, usually to Pizza Express (the Oxford branch in a 12th century building is one of the non-plasticky branches and is so quite nice) or Browns. We would then go to either Haagen Dazs or Borders for ice cream and book shopping respectively. Tonight was a little rainy so we got a cab to the Borders at Oxford Circus. I bought another Tudors book (Antonia Fraser's biography of the wives of Henry VIII), Papa bought about 10 books, including one on the Tudors and one on the War of the Roses. By the time we'd finished, the rain had stopped so I guided the parents back to the Mews, through the eastern part of Marylebone (EaMa?), which was quite a pleasant walk (it avoided the cacophany and chaos of Oxford Street, at any rate).

So, it was a nice Friday evening. Tomorrow, we're going to the Tate Britain to do some culcha at the van Dyck exhibition. It's quite nice reintroducing the parents to the delights of London and getting them keen about all of the little places I know and the routes I go...

AIANOS Horribilis

The title of this post obviously stands for Acronyms, Initialisms and Abbreviations Not Otherwise Specified. For years I knew that it was wrong to call the type of abbreviations such as NYC, the PO (a favourite Oxford pub) and OHS (my school) "acronyms" but it took me a while to remember that the correct term for them is "initialisms" (or sometimes "alphabetisms"), probably because it's not a very good term--sure, it conveys the meaning but it doesn't have the nice, pseudo-Greek ring to it as acronym. Maybe that's why most people don't know or care that only AIANOS, SPEW and CUMS and the like, which can be pronounced as a word without having to enunciate each letter in turn, really count as acronyms.

As the topic involves linguistics and pedantry, I am usually interested, though and so a post I read on the BPS Research Digest Blog today caught my attention: "Eating a BLT at the BBC - we love our acronyms but are they really words?" The post reported on a paper published in a journal which requires me to register and (I think) also pay, entitled, "Is there room for the BBC in the mental lexicon? On the recognition of acronyms," which I would like to read. 

Of course, the blog post (and, no doubt, the paper) refers throughout to BBC et al. as acronyms rather than initialisms. This might sound like an overly pedantic point for me to make but the paper is dealing with the definition of "word" (a definition that causes as much trouble for linguists as "species" does for biologists), more specifically, whether priming effects can be observed when a participant is primed with an "acronym" (e.g. BLT) and then recognises "sandwich" as a word more quickly. Does "BLT" get stored as a "unit of meaning" in our mental lexicon, the authors ask, and the answer seems to be yes.

Lumping acronyms and initialisms in the same category doesn't seem very sensible to me, though, if that is what the authors did. If a word is a unit of meaning associated with an (arbitrary) sound, there might be a psychological difference between acronyms (which are pronounced like "ordinary" words) and initialisms (which are, effectively, spelled out). Of course, even the word BBC is associated with the sound beebeecee so it doesn't really matter that English does not allow words without vowels and words with an initial double b. Initialisms don't break any phonological rules of the English language--it is precisely because English doesn't allow initial-double-b that BBC must be pronounced letter by letter rather than a Croatian-like [bbk]. It sounds like there is some confusion between the spelling of a word (i.e. the letters it contains) and the units that make up the sound pattern we associate with the word. Poor old de Saussure wouldn't be impressed.

The post ends with a quotation from the paper. "Whether this may be interpreted as an encouragement to further increase the number of acronyms in the English language is a different matter that cannot be addressed on the basis of the present data," the researchers said. 

You might expect such a comment were the authors based at the Académie française (I'm sure there are laws in France to limit the number of acronyms and initialisms allowed to enter the French language each year). I don't think that the fact that acronyms are represented in the mental lexicon in the same way as "ordinary" words means we should start creating new ones (like AIANOS) just for the hell of it or that if the authors' findings had been different, we should have started to cull abbreviations from the dictionary.

In answer to the authors' question, then, there is plenty of room in the mental lexicon for acronyms and initialisms. Of course, not every speaker of a language will know every abbreviation that exists in the language; many are very jargonistic and specific, some are formed hapax legomenon, some just don't catch on. There is certainly plenty of room for all of these abbreviations and more in the dictionary (if there is room for some of the words and phrases Schott comes across, there is definitely room for The OC, the BBC and MTV--I mean, FFS!) . 

Not that any of this gets us any closer to a satisfactory definition of the word word, however; perhaps it's just easier to stick to orthographical words, phonological words, lexemes, et tout ça.

Ghosts of Quartiers Past

As I have temporarily run out of history to read, I've side-stepped into historical fiction. Ever since Joseph Fiennes portrayed Robert Dudley in Elizabeth: Is She or Isn't She, Will She or Won't She?, he has been one of my favourite historical characters and so I ate up Philippa Gregory's book The Virgin's Lover in which Dudley and Princess Elizabeth (later QE1) frolic and fall in love and, Gregory suggests, may even have had to make use of some very rudimentary prophylactics. 

I've read several of Gregory's other books including her latest, The Other Queen, which tells the tale of Mary, Queen of Scots in the late 1560s and early 1570s while she is being "hosted" (i.e. imprisoned) in the house of the Earl of Shrewsbury. As she is half-French and was brought up as a French princess, she cannot 'elp but être très séduisante and poor Shrewsbury--and his wife, Bess of Hardwick, property tycoon, ancestor of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (and Princess Di) and arriviste to end all arrivistes--cannot 'elp but fall for 'er Gallic charms. The book was entertaining enough but I always came down on Elizabeth's side when it came to Mary vs. Elizabeth; maybe it's because I'm English, maybe it's because she won or maybe it's because Mary is always portrayed as the silly flirt who kept falling in and out of love and lust without the slightest bit of foresight. 

Gregory depicts her as a fierce, strong woman who is desperate for her freedom, more than anything else (more even than to see her son again) whose fate was inevitable simply because she desired her liberty too much not to get caught up with the Duke of Norfolk, Ridolfi, Babington and all the other plotters who sought so often to use her. Some of the narrative devices grate, though; Mary, Bess and Shrewsbury all take turns to dictate but Gregory constantly drops the little turns of phrase she denotes as being characteristic of each voice (like Mary's frequent self reassurances that, "I was a Princess of France, I am a Queen Dowager of France, I am the Queen of Scotland and the only true heir to the throne of England..." And I will have my vengeance, she doesn't add, but when she starts on these reveries, I can't help but hear Russell Crowe).

Alison Weir is actually a proper historian. Well, she has written historical biographies (including an excellent one of Eleanor of Aquitaine--another Strong Woman--which I've just finished reading and which made me appreciate the striking similarities between Henry II and Eleanor (and their children Henry, Richard I and John I, the eldest of whom died shortly before his father, which meant the second son became king--the spare became the heir) and Henry VII, his wife Elizabeth of York (and their children Arthur (who died just before his father) and Henry (who became Henry VIII) and some girls)). 

I was reading about a new bio of Lady Jane Grey and her lesser known younger sisters Catherine and Mary on an amusing (and occasionally educational) blog called Raucous Royals, but it's only out in hardback at the moment and I refuse to pay £20, so instead I bought Weir's historical novel Innocent Traitor, which also tells the tail of such woe that is that of Lady Jane and her Dudley-o, thanks to the scheming of her mother (who is daughter to Charles Brandon, Duke of Phwoar, no less!) and father. 

I was interested to note that before they inherited the Dukedom of Suffolk, Jane's parents were the Marquis and Marchioness of Dorset and there are plenty of references to Dorset House. As I live close to Dorset Street, it suddenly occurred to me that Jane may have spent much of her youth in a house near to my current flat; her sister Catherine, certainly, was born at Dorset House. Dorset House exists no more and former its location (beyond "Westminster") doesn't seem too easy to track down on the intertubes but according to this site, at least, Dorset House did indeed once stand on Dorset Street. Jane, is intelligent, scholarly and strong willed, like many of the women about whom Weir writes (Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of Castile, Elizabeth I), she is contradictory--precocious and sharp and yet a pawn in the schemes of others. Born way before her time. Very sympathetic. And it makes an engaging story, even if it is only a novel.

Tales from the River Bank

It's been a long time since my last proper, long run--the ten-mile trek from Brooklyn Bridge to West 95th Street, which I completed last September, probably--and as I never really stray very far south of the river, other than in that small segment of the South Bank between the Hungerford Bridge and the BFI, I felt it was time for a little jaunt along the south side. As it's a bank holiday weekend, the weather was pretty dire--grey, cloudy, rainy and humid--but this at least meant that once I cleared the London Eye, going west, there weren't too many tourists and incompetents getting in my way.

My original plan had been to take the tube to Canada Water and start there but as the Jubilee Line was broked this weekend, even getting to London Bridge was a bit of a mission, involving going to Elephant Castle and changing back on to the right branch of the Northern Line. London Bridge was a bit of a zoo but because I wanted to take a look at the Tower and at Tower Bridge (having finished Henry: Virtuous Prince, I've now started on Philippa Gregory's The Other Queen so Tudor sites are still on my mind), I ran east for about a mile before turning around and battling my way back to the BFI. It was very, very busy and I almost took out a number of foreigners who should have been paying more attention. 

By the time I got to Lambeth Bridge, there was hardly anyone else around. By the time I got to Battersea Power Station and sticking to the Thames Path didn't prove very easy, I was starting to wish I had more company when I ended up at a dead end (thank you, sign posts!) and had to run back past them and all the way around the power station before I finally got onto Chelsea Bridge Road and from there, it was just straight up Sloane Street to the south side of Hyde Park and, eventually, Marylebone.

I had measured the route roughly on Google Maps beforehand and had come out with a distance of about seven miles but that hadn't included a) my little detour to eye up the Tower and Tower Bridge or b) the many diversions from the actual, riverside Thames Path the "Thames Path" forces you to make after Vauxhall Bridge. Not to mention the few dead ends I came to in Battersea that required me to retrace my steps. However, I got back to W1 without a map and without smacking any slow incompetents over the head, so I don't think I did too badly. My limbs are inclined to disagree but if they make too much fuss, I might make them start at Greenwich next time, preferably when the weather's a little nicer; they were saved by my lack of desire to deal with non-Tube forms of public transport, on this occasion.

As a reward, I'm going to go to see Les 400 Coups at the BFI and engage in some chillaxation. Probably with a small piece of chocolate.

The Colour of Truth is Grey

Belfast, 1988. Not so much the Emerald Isle as the Grey City. There is a lot of grey in Kari Sklogland's new film Fifty Dead Men Walking, much of it in the minds--and the morals--of the main characters. The film is based on the autobiography of Martin McGartland, a former salesman of stolen goods who was recruited by Ben Kingsley, of the British police, as a "tout," spying on the IRA. From the start, McGartland is unwilling to be a "tout" and to inform on his friends and his community, especially as he has a young family. But Kingsley's character Fergus plays a good father figure and McGartland eventually agrees and moves up through the ranks of the IRA, always passing on relevant information to Fergus and saving lives in the process, until he has to skip the country and go into hiding, where he remains now, changing his name every few months.

It's not that simple, of course. The good thing about the BFI is that you never know who will drop by for screenings (going to see Blade Runner might mean you get Ridley Scott turning up to chat) and the director of Fifty Dead Men came along for a Q&A after the screening last night. She explained that her film was based only loosely on McGartland's autobiography, which wasn't endorsed by him or even really approved by him, and that the main reason for this was because she wanted to paint as balanced a picture as possible whereas the autobiography, of course, portrays McGartland's own politics, including his understandably passionate hatred of the IRA. And she does a good job to portray the dilemmas the characters--especially McGartland--must go through. Early on, the Brits offer McGartland money in exchange for spying on his mates and he is almost offended by this. The social cost of becoming a tout would be far higher than the Brits would be willing to offer. Sklogland also invests a lot in the love story between McGartland and his girlfriend who later becomes the mother of his children. The fact that he adores his family make the choices he must make even more difficult.

Belfast in 1988, as portrayed in Fifty Dead Men, could easily double for any dystopian near present or near future (it reminded me a lot of Children of Men). It is dark and grey but with an edgy, punk-folk soundtrack and scenes where the grey is bathed in sickly shades of lurid green and yellow. Embarrassingly, perhaps, I don't know how accurate it is. My knowledge of the Northern Island conflicts--or, indeed, anything about Ireland--is close to zero. Maybe I was too young during the heyday but even now, I really know very little about the issues. 

When I saw the trailer for this film last week with the guy from 21 putting on an Irish accent and not a Yank one this time (apparently, during the filming, Jim Sturgess started using an Irish accent on arrival in Northern Ireland and didn't stop until they left the country at the end of filming; accordingly, his accent is pretty decent) and running away from some armed men who could be the good guys, the bad guys, the British police or the IRA, I initially thought it would be yet another political drama to be avoided. It soon became clear there was more to the film than this and I'm glad I went to see it.

The woman sitting next to me wasn't quite so happy. She would shudder violently and let out a small cry every time one of the characters was being tortured (which happened a few times during the film). I was convinced that during the Q&A she would ask the director why she felt that the graphic violence was necessary but she didn't. In fact, no one really had any questions at all at first. Some old man asked whether Sklogland wrote one of the lines (which went something like, "we're fighting for the law, against the law, in the name of the law") but actually she got that from someone she was speaking to when doing her Northern Irish research. Later on, some people seemed to be getting quite heated when asking their questions. 

One woman asked what the (ex-) IRA Sklogland spoke with thought of McGartland. When the director asked what the woman went, the latter seemed to be on the defensive (she had a Belfast accent) but eventually asked whether Sklogland's making of the film and her "research" could possibly have endangered McGartland's life. Of course, the director just said that that was always their number one concern and that they always took any measures necessary to ensure McGartland came to no harm as a result of the film. He did, of course, write his autobiography 10 years ago, which led to the IRA busting his latest hiding place and shooting him, but as Sklogland pointed out, things are different now.

The accents were generally quite good throughout. Ben Kingsley's northern Fergus was, of course, great, and only Rose McGowan, who played a feisty female IRA officer, tended to flit between American and Irish. The director explained that the key motivation in the film was for authenticity and so she was happy when some of the locals, watching the filming, added comments on the accents or word use of the actors. When asked about the international release of the film, Skogland noted that some American releases of the film would probably end up with subtitles, much to her consternation. She compared the measures they took to ensure all scenes were understandable by an international audience with an episode of ER: two doctors chatting away with their medical babble; you don't know what the words they use mean but you do know that one scenario is good and one is bad and that is enough.

Oh, and I was very glad to have recognised two characters from The Tudors in Fifty Dead Men; Nick Dunning (who played Anne Boleyn's father) played a doctor and Anthony Brophy (Chapuys, the Spanish ambassador) was Jonathan. The latter was particularly hard to spot because in The Tudors he has to speak with a thick Spanish accent!

Overall, Fifty Dead Men was a thought-provoking thriller. Sturgess did well to portray McGartland sympathetically but then Ben Kingsley's character was also very likable, despite the difficulty of working out who is on which side and who--if anyone--is right. I'll certainly try to get hold of some of the soundtrack, most of which was performed by a random Belfast band, Phoenix 23, who happened to be fronted by the boyfriend of one of the editors of the film.

The Year of Our Lord 1536

Yorkshire (Northern England). The year of Our Lord, 1536. It was pretty grim up north in 1536. Corruption was rife among the very people who were supposed to instill order and discipline and--worse--certain poxy southern upstarts (mentioning no names, Thomas Cromwell) have got way too big for their boots and started foisting their heathen, Protestant beliefs upon the king and forcing him to close down the monasteries, plundering their wealth. He even wanted to ban holy days! What a cad! 

No, it's not a prequel to the David Peace Red Riding quartet; it's the first episode of the new season of The Tudors and the producers have realised that having invested the entire first two seasons in the dramatic rise and spectacular fall of Anne Boleyn, and Henry tended to move through his wives more quickly after number two, they are going to need to find some additional plot points this season. As there hasn't been much history so far, they decided to go all out and introduce the Pilgrimage of Grace--a 1536 uprising in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire with many disgruntled northerners protesting against the dissolution of the monasteries. Incidentally, although every scene depicting Naughty Northern Rebels is prefixed with the subtitle, "Yorkshire--Northern England," you don't really need to be told because the sun never shines, the people look depressed and the buildings look decrepit. The same happened in The O.C. whenever any of the characters left the glorious sunshine of the "perfect" Newport Beach to go visit some hellhole like Chino, the sun always disappeared and no one ever smiled.

Not only have C.J. Sansome's Shardlake books been very popular recently, but April 2009 also marks the 500th anniversary of Henry's accession and so it's naturally the perfect time to start the new season (it also means there are plenty of Tudor-themed events in London, including the Man and Monarch exhibition at the British Library).

Anyway, after the charisma and freaky blue eyes of Anne Boleyn (they could at least have made the actress wear contacts; everyone knows Anne was famous for her dark, "witchy" Boleyn eyes), Jane Seymour (played by a girl my age who is also from Oxford--grrr) is a little bland, although this episode, which probably covers about half of her reign as queen, does show Henry's initial frustrations of son-lack even towards his Jane. Henry was always as fickle to his favourite advisors as he was to his wives and women, in The Tudors, at least, with the rise and fall of Wolesey occupying much of season one and poor Thomas More's decline from favour in season two while Cromwell just rose and rose. In the new series, Cromwell goes from being knighted and made Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal one minute (having told Henry he's dumped one billion (or even several million) pounds into the crown's coffers following the ransacking of an assortment of monasteries) to being bitch slapped and told he was an idiot by the king about four minutes later after Henry found out there was something rotten in the state of Yorkshire.

And of course, Charles Brandon, Duke of Phwoar is still around, happily married to his second wife. He is, however, sent to Coventry--well, to Lincoln--to go and put down the rebels/pilgrims. It seems like a futile effort--the north of England remained a problem for monarchs throughout the sixteenth century; it was just too far away from London and the court for the monarch to have any proper control, especially when the local gentry and nobles themselves rebelled as in the Rising of the Northern Earls of 1569. Such troublemakers. I hope they don't kill off Charles, though, as he's the main talent on the show (Jonathan Rhys-Meyer's intrusive Irish accent is totally off-putting). 

There is also Max Brown (AKA Danny from Grange Hill) who plays Edward Seymour, brother of Jane and also of Thomas who later marries Henry's sixth wife before frolicking around with a young and impressionable Princess Elizabeth in a most unfitting manner. Seymour eventually becomes the self-styled Duke of Somerset (hence Somerset House) and ran England as the regent/dictator of Edward VI until he was ousted (and executed) for being too powerful and replaced by the (self-styled) Duke of Northumberland who I like less as a dictator but who is at least father to Robert Dudley, who looks like Joseph Fiennes and so can be forgiven a lot.

It must be tricky to make a historical TV series--more so than in a film--because you can't always tell which actors and characters will be the most successful or the most popular in advance and it's always unfortunate if an old favourite gets the chop (often quite literally). Wildly inaccurate though The Tudors may be, it does at least pretend to stick to the truth occasionally and certainly wouldn't stoop to changing the ending of season two (i.e. not executing Anne Boleyn) just because the producers had invested so much time and energy into building her up and striking her down. I wonder whether they will stop when they reach the end of Henry's reign (this season, even though he still has three and a half wives to get through) or whether they will carry on to Edward and his pimps, LJG, Bloody Mary and Good Queen Bess.

It's also amusing watching The Tudors in conjunction with David Starkey's Henry VIII: Mind of a Tyrant, which also started on Monday (oh, and did you know his latest Henry-fest came out in paperback a couple of weeks ago too?). The acting's probably better in Starkey's show--certainly, there are fewer North American northerners and Irish kings of England. Also, Starkey's lust for Henry is even greater than that of any would-be queen consort and her posse...

Sun, the Southbank and a Long Overdue Secret Burger

The Ex was in town today and so after I'd finished with the day's batch of estate agent appointments, we met at Lantana, my favourite Fitzrovia cafe, for coffee. I declared today the first official day of summer because it was warm and sunny enough for me to go out without a coat, jacket or even a proper jumper, apart from my three-quarter-sleeve cardigan, although I was equipped with my trusty green scarf, which masks a world of sins (forgotten coat and forgotten umbrella, mainly). We therefore sat outside in Charlotte Place while enjoying our coffees (my enjoyment was reduced slightly by having to first extract all of the artisanally applied chocolate topping.

We decided to amble down to and along the Southbank--luckily the Chocolate Festival was not visible or smellable--stopping for a browse at the book market, pausing briefly in the turbine hall of the Tate Modern (it was a fairly interesting exhibition, which I entitled, "Dystopian Nightmares" but probably had a more artistic name--it involved lots of large nightmarish sculptures (e.g. a giant spider) and underneath, a whole load of identikit yellow bunk beds to which a copy of a book telling of a dystopian future (e.g. Fahrenheit 451 and The Man in the High Castle) was chained, while clips from films portraying depressing visions of the future were shown on a big screen), before acquiring some non-chocolate cake at Borough Market and sitting to eat it in the sun. Most of the south of England had the same idea and it was extremely busy with competence levels very low.

After a long afternoon of lingering, it was time for something to eat. Several years ago, while in Covent Garden with the family, Papa took us off to a restaurant called Joe Allen. "It's American comfort food," he said. "You'll get a great burger there." But when we arrived, the menu was distinctly burger-free and back then, I was a much more difficult person to take out to dinner and there wasn't anything on the menu I liked. Since then, though, I have learned that Papa was right after all as I've read several reviews, which said that the best thing to order was the "secret burger," which isn't on the menu. I must have read something this morning that reminded me of this as I decided to go there with the Ex tonight and I knew that when you ordered the burger, you would be asked whether you wanted it medium rare, with cheese and bacon and fries on the side (my usual specifications, anyway). 

I was still quite nervous tonight though. What if I ordered and they denied all knowledge of the burger? What if they only let you order it if they like the look of you? What if I looked like an idiot? I had to at least try though so when prompted, I said, "I'll have the burger, please." I used the definite article to imply that there was a particular burger that they made rather than, "although you don't do burgers, could you get one for me from somewhere?" The waitress replied, "With cheese and bacon? And fries? Medium rare?" Hell yes... And it was a damn good burger. One of the best burgers I've had in this country: the burger was juicy and meaty and very medium rare, the fries were tasty, the bacon was crispy enough and very flavoursome and the cheese was sufficiently melted. It was a shame the cheesecake we shared for pudding wasn't quite so adequate in that only a tiny essence of a base had been applied and the cake was a little too rich to be enjoyed without some pastry for contrast. In general, though, a nice restaurant and a great burger; I'll be back, I'm sure, and will order with more confidence next time.

Afterwards, we entered the hell that is the West End on a mild evening that follows a warm London day. People had obviously been sitting in the parks or by the river all afternoon getting wasted and were drunker than is usual for a Saturday night in April. Finding a pub that was a) acceptable and b) not over-populated with the drunken, unwashed masses proved difficult. Eventually, we settled for a quiet enough, reasonable enough pub near Carnaby Street where we got two drinks for £1.88 (OK, so one of them was tap water but the other was a pint so for central London, that's not bad).

Two Lovers and a Whole Lot More Meh

It's always risky going to the cinema in London--especially in my quartier--because the presence of the French is almost guaranteed. The Screen on Baker Street tonight was no exception and there was a French couple in front of me who spent half the film talking (not whispering, not even pretending to make an effort to talk more quietly) and the other half kissing and making Gallic grunts; I knew they were French even before the first Gallic grunt, though. I didn't do too well in the cinema seating lottery as a couple of seats along with me were three very fat Middle Eastern women who didn't seem to have grasped the concept of shutting-up-and-watching-the-film either as they chattered away, texted, ate food noisily and even took a phone call during the film. I was initially hopeful as the steward was standing in the aisle with arms folded at the start, which kept everyone quiet but as soon as he left the chattering restarted.

Actually, I probably would have minded more were Two Lovers not so utterly dull. I haven't seen in a film where I've cared less about the characters in a very long time. As I don't wear a watch, I check the time on my phone during films only very occasionally because doing so illuminates the screen and I hate to disturb the viewing experience of others. Tonight, though, I did. I thought we were about 90 minutes into the 1h50 film but actually, only 45 minutes had elapsed. That was when I knew I was in trouble; somehow, though, the old lady chatter and the Gallic displays of affection only irritated me more.

I wasn't really expecting the film to be outstanding--the reviews I'd read were at best ambivalent--but I thought Joaquin Phoenix was hot in Gladiator in a sexy/dastardly kind of way so I thought I'd give it a try. The IMDb blurb reads as follows:

"A Brooklyn-set romantic drama about a bachelor (Phoenix) torn between the family friend his parents wish he would marry and his beautiful but volatile new neighbor."

This poses an interesting semantic question: what exactly is a bachelor? An unmarried or single man, right? But would you call the Pope a bachelor? I don't think so. Likewise, calling Leonard (Phoenix's character) a bachelor feels deeply wrong even though he is (at the beginning, at least) a single guy. There are probably better descriptions: weirdo, for example. The film opens with his failed and/or half-hearted suicide attempt where he jumps off a bridge in Brooklyn into the bay. Shortly afterwards, his parents try to foist upon him the nice Jewish girl who is the daughter of their friend (and future business partner) who is nice (if bland or, at least, she isn't given enough screen time to develop much of a personality) but he finds out that Gwyneth Paltrow lives upstairs and she's really hot and really messed up, what with her drugs and her miscarriages and her relationship with the married guy who pays the rent on her flat. 

So, obviously, poor Leonard can't decide what to do. One of the reviews I read or heard said it was highly unlikely that even one chick would be interested in a guy like Leonard, let alone one who looks like Gwyneth Paltrow and a pretty, successful Jewish girl. It's true. He mumbles so much you can barely hear him most of the time (there are occasional moments of clarity where he sounds a bit like Commodus again but I couldn't tell whether Phoenix was slipping out of character then or whether it was intentional). In fact, at first, I wasn't sure whether the character was supposed to be mentally retarded.

Anyway, they're all incredibly selfish and self-involved and make stupid decisions and mess each other up. For most of the film, I was wondering whether I had been conned because there didn't seem to be two lovers at all--sure, there are plenty of people who have sex with one another but none of them actually seem to care about anyone else--although towards the end, I concede that I may be forced to reconsider that opinion. The only vaguely likable character was non-Gwyneth but that's probably only because she wasn't on camera enough for her to become as irritating as everyone else (Phoenix and Paltrow tie for first place in the annoying stakes, with Paltrow's other bloke coming in third and Phoenix's pushy dad and mum at fourth and fifth). Nothing much really happens during the entire 1h50, the script was boring, the characters were all meh and to be honest, I really couldn't see much point to it (at a push: some of the Brooklyn / Manhattan scenes were quite nicely shot, the music was OK and Isabella Rossellini did a good job). Also, it's very deceptive because on the IMDb page for Two Lovers, there is a photo of Clive, so I was hoping he might make a guest appearance but it wasn't to be.

You can tell how little I enjoyed this film because I gave it only 5/10, which is the lowest I've given to a film in a long time (my ratings are skewed because the vast majority of movies I watch are awarded 7 or 8/10 and because I rarely hate a film, the ones that I find boring or about which I am ambivalent tend to get 6, 5 or occasionally 4). It's not that I didn't like it; I just didn't care.