Dinner and a movie...the classic Saturday night combination... I don't think a Burger King Chicken Royale and a Jason Statham movie really count but laughs were had...
After an action-packed 24 hours in The Shire, involving burgers and caipirinhas at Quod, dress alterations in a garden shed, party plans in the Covered Market and a good deal of life laundry in my old bedroom, I headed into Oxford to meet L, one of my oldest friends. We were supposed to go for dinner at a nice Thai restaurant and then head to the cinema, along with her boyfriend and their housemate. Unfortunately, the restaurant had a power problem in the kitchen and the other places we tried on this section of the Cowley Road and St Clements were either fully booked or power deprived. This was true even of the few dingy looking places we tried in Cowley proper. We had joked about going to the Frankie and Bennys at the multiplex... Little did we know...
I suggested we ditch the cinema and go for dinner at Jamie's in the city centre but the cinema tickets were already booked -- and for The Mechanic. Error. Anyway, we got to the multiplex and were amazed to find there was an hour-long queue at F and Bs and a 30-minute wait at the Indian next door. We were then left with a choice between a sandwich from Sainsbury's or a trip to Burger King, several miles away. I'd have preferred the sarnie but BK it was--my first visit in about 10 years.
The film itself was, well, a Jason Stathan film--silly, action-packed, script-lite and predictable. Pretty crap, in other words, although I suppose it's good for me to see films I wouldn't ordinarily watch from time to time. To feel sorry for poor Donald Sutherland if nothing else. Meanwhile every teenage/20-something male chav in The Shire seemed to be there, several of whom spent the film laughing in inappropriate moments and looking as though they were going to steal L and her boyfriend's coats.
Still, it was good to catch up with L and to be grateful that I don't have to spend most Saturday nights in The Shire with its decidedly limited charms.
30 January 2011
25 January 2011
Taking a Gamble on Bob
Bob is a gambler. In fact, he's the eponymous gambler (and the eponymous Bob) in Melville's Bob le flambeur. Along with the gambling (particularly his nightly draw of the one-armed bandit in his flat), Bob occupies his days with a variety of criminal activities; he's totally the Danny Ocean of 1950s Montmartre. Oh, and he's also the benefactor of gamine young girls who can't afford a place to stay. Fed up with the small time, he and his pals plot to steal 800 million francs from the Deauville Casino on the morning of the Grand Prix. Everything is going perfectly until Bob forgets his promise that he won't gamble while they're on the job...
This film wouldn't normally have got me down to the South Bank at 8.30 on a Tuesday and it was definitely losing me in the last half hour (not helped by the fact that the projector failed for a couple of minutes at the start of the dénouement) but the ending--particularly the closing lines--made it worthwhile, even though I think they could have got to the same point in a more interesting or more efficient way.
The film was shown as part of BFI's Screen Epiphanies series--a regular event for BFI members where a celebrity will pick a film that is important to them and they will then introduce it at a screening of the film at the BFI. I really enjoyed David Morrissey's Epiphany on Kes last year and figured that even if I didn't know jack about Bob, I might enjoy hearing Jonathan Ross talking about it (and film in general). Ross is, of course, always good value for money (especially when the ticket is free). Ross discovered Bob a few years ago, he said, and has since introduced it to a number of people including Stephen Spielberg and Richard Attenborough. In fact, when Ross was rewatching the film to prepare for the event, he found a sweet note to him from Attenborough slipped inside the DVD case, which he read out to us.
Jonathan Ross could probably have talked for hours and I would have been happy to listen for longer than the allotted 30 minutes but time was tight and only three audience questions were taken (to be fair, the host didn't manage to get many in either), one of which was wasted by someone who worked for Green & Blacks (who, thanks to Amex's sponsorship, had provided free chocolate) who asked whether Ross would like some chocolate and then proceeded to run up onto the stage. Yeah, thanks. Ross also mentioned that he doesn't have a favourite film (he likes almost everything) but that he does like crime thrillers, although not the ones that are really long because they're usually shit anyway. He was briefly stumped when the host asked what inspired him apart from film; eventually, he came up with "books," "comic books," "French comic books" and "walking in the rain."
Maybe it was because Ross was there but there was a rowdier crowd than usual tonight at the BFI. People started whooping when Amex were thanked and were heckling Ross throughout his piece; they also heckled the poor projectionist when the screen/projector/movie conked out. Anyway, it was a good evening's entertainment, although with hindsight, I would have napped through the middle 30 minutes of the movie.
This film wouldn't normally have got me down to the South Bank at 8.30 on a Tuesday and it was definitely losing me in the last half hour (not helped by the fact that the projector failed for a couple of minutes at the start of the dénouement) but the ending--particularly the closing lines--made it worthwhile, even though I think they could have got to the same point in a more interesting or more efficient way.
The film was shown as part of BFI's Screen Epiphanies series--a regular event for BFI members where a celebrity will pick a film that is important to them and they will then introduce it at a screening of the film at the BFI. I really enjoyed David Morrissey's Epiphany on Kes last year and figured that even if I didn't know jack about Bob, I might enjoy hearing Jonathan Ross talking about it (and film in general). Ross is, of course, always good value for money (especially when the ticket is free). Ross discovered Bob a few years ago, he said, and has since introduced it to a number of people including Stephen Spielberg and Richard Attenborough. In fact, when Ross was rewatching the film to prepare for the event, he found a sweet note to him from Attenborough slipped inside the DVD case, which he read out to us.
 |
| A blurry and distant Jonathan Ross |
Maybe it was because Ross was there but there was a rowdier crowd than usual tonight at the BFI. People started whooping when Amex were thanked and were heckling Ross throughout his piece; they also heckled the poor projectionist when the screen/projector/movie conked out. Anyway, it was a good evening's entertainment, although with hindsight, I would have napped through the middle 30 minutes of the movie.
24 January 2011
No Country for Young Girls
2011 has been a good year for free film previews, so far. As well as the frothy but fun Morning Glory, the unnecessary duplicative Next Three Days and the 'armful 127 Hours, I've also fitted in trips to see The Fighter and, most recently, True Grit. Although I wanted to have seen both of the latter two, I wasn't convinced that either was my kind of film. I was, however, pleasantly surprised.
Christian Bale's acting in The Fighter is superb; he plays a former champion fighter who is now a bit of a ne'er do well (sleeps around, does crack, is generally unreliable) but also coaches his younger brother, Mark Wahlberg. With some good turns from Melissa Leo, playing the brothers' Mommie Dearest, and Amy Adams as the Mark Wahlberg character's tough girlfriend, it didn't even matter that I don't like boxing and don't really have any interest in finding out more. The movie trope about the two brothers and their relationship that proves more complex than a first glance might reveal is, by now, hackneyed but there was great chemistry between Bale and Wahlberg. This film is really Wahlberg's baby (he is also credited as a producer) but it's Bale who is strangely mesmerising as the painfully lean, tough-talking, screw up, who turns out to be surprisingly loyal--and three-dimensional.
I'm wary of Coen brothers films (I loved Fargo, quite liked The Big Lebowski, thought that No Country for Old Men and Burn after Reading were OK, and didn't enjoy Intolerable Cruelty, so I'm about evens) and I'm wary of Westerns but I do like Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon so I figured there was a moderate to good chance that I would enjoy True Grit. And I really did, despite falling asleep for about five minutes during one of the biggest action sequences (this was an indication of my tiredness and not the quality of the film). Jeff Bridges was about 90% incomprehensible as the drunkard US marshal hired by a 14-year-old girl to hunt down the guy who killed her dad. Matt Damon plays a Texas ranger who comes along to help--but only because he gets his bounty if the aforementioned dad-killer is executed in Texas and not Arkansas.
The script was taut and there were plenty of funny lines, particularly when the marshal and the ranger were bantering back forth and--more frequently--when they were being bested by the smart-talking girl. True Grit tells a nice tale that is neatly wrapped up and without too many needlessly quirky deviations (there are a few more slapstick comedy moments as well as the ubiquitous oneupmanship). This remake could have gone so badly wrong and while I haven't seen the original, I give True Grit a hearty thumbs up. This means that I will almost certainly hate the next Coen brothers movie.
Christian Bale's acting in The Fighter is superb; he plays a former champion fighter who is now a bit of a ne'er do well (sleeps around, does crack, is generally unreliable) but also coaches his younger brother, Mark Wahlberg. With some good turns from Melissa Leo, playing the brothers' Mommie Dearest, and Amy Adams as the Mark Wahlberg character's tough girlfriend, it didn't even matter that I don't like boxing and don't really have any interest in finding out more. The movie trope about the two brothers and their relationship that proves more complex than a first glance might reveal is, by now, hackneyed but there was great chemistry between Bale and Wahlberg. This film is really Wahlberg's baby (he is also credited as a producer) but it's Bale who is strangely mesmerising as the painfully lean, tough-talking, screw up, who turns out to be surprisingly loyal--and three-dimensional.
I'm wary of Coen brothers films (I loved Fargo, quite liked The Big Lebowski, thought that No Country for Old Men and Burn after Reading were OK, and didn't enjoy Intolerable Cruelty, so I'm about evens) and I'm wary of Westerns but I do like Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon so I figured there was a moderate to good chance that I would enjoy True Grit. And I really did, despite falling asleep for about five minutes during one of the biggest action sequences (this was an indication of my tiredness and not the quality of the film). Jeff Bridges was about 90% incomprehensible as the drunkard US marshal hired by a 14-year-old girl to hunt down the guy who killed her dad. Matt Damon plays a Texas ranger who comes along to help--but only because he gets his bounty if the aforementioned dad-killer is executed in Texas and not Arkansas.
The script was taut and there were plenty of funny lines, particularly when the marshal and the ranger were bantering back forth and--more frequently--when they were being bested by the smart-talking girl. True Grit tells a nice tale that is neatly wrapped up and without too many needlessly quirky deviations (there are a few more slapstick comedy moments as well as the ubiquitous oneupmanship). This remake could have gone so badly wrong and while I haven't seen the original, I give True Grit a hearty thumbs up. This means that I will almost certainly hate the next Coen brothers movie.
17 January 2011
Linguists Find a New Voice
During the five-ish years since my graduation, I've tried to keep my love of linguistics alive via Language Log, my favourite spoof linguistics journal SpecGram and via the occasional vaguely related article published in the journal for which I work. Oh, and the odd British Library exhibition. Although I sometimes miss it, it's not like being a quantum physics student who has to go cold turkey because, hey, language is all around us (quantum physicists would try to convince me that you can't run away from physics either).
In a sense, all linguistics is popular--of the people--because almost all of us read, write and speak at least one language and so it is a universally relevant subject. Nonetheless anyone who has had to explain, on countless occasions, that studying linguistics doesn't mean learning languages can appreciate the need for something like the new online magazine, Popular Linguistics, which seeks to do for linguistics what ScciAm* did for, er, quantum entanglement. Perhaps eventually, they will bring to the masses the parts of linguistics I found really dull--syntax, mainly--as well as those that captured my interest (that said, I did perk up when I misread the intro to one of the articles in the Ling101 section as, "We hear from Cormac McCarthy, who explains morphology in Understanding Linguistic Theory").
You only need to search the BBC News website to see which kinds of language-related stories interest people:
Back when I was a linguistics student, I found my friends tended to like hearing about the same kinds of story: weird words, weird languages, weird psycholinguistics shit. Berlin and Kay's work on colour terms and how they vary cross-linguistically always went down well; my synecdoche banter, not so much. I did used to annoy my friends by crying out with glee every time they made a nice speech error that I could use as an example in my psycholinguistics exam.
With sections like "language and cognition" and "language and history" I'll definitely be checking out Popular Linguistics. Of course, if there were a Popular Linguists section, my vote would go to Steven Pinker...
* misspelling intentional.
In a sense, all linguistics is popular--of the people--because almost all of us read, write and speak at least one language and so it is a universally relevant subject. Nonetheless anyone who has had to explain, on countless occasions, that studying linguistics doesn't mean learning languages can appreciate the need for something like the new online magazine, Popular Linguistics, which seeks to do for linguistics what ScciAm* did for, er, quantum entanglement. Perhaps eventually, they will bring to the masses the parts of linguistics I found really dull--syntax, mainly--as well as those that captured my interest (that said, I did perk up when I misread the intro to one of the articles in the Ling101 section as, "We hear from Cormac McCarthy, who explains morphology in Understanding Linguistic Theory").
You only need to search the BBC News website to see which kinds of language-related stories interest people:
- Weird words: quirky etymologies, Words of the Year, slang, regional variations, jargon
- Language change: language death, the rise of txt spk, accents
- Discoveries of new languages or dialects (especially those with crazy-ass features like no words for numbers)
- Animal communication (preferably cute animals)
- Why are English people so crap at learning languages?
Back when I was a linguistics student, I found my friends tended to like hearing about the same kinds of story: weird words, weird languages, weird psycholinguistics shit. Berlin and Kay's work on colour terms and how they vary cross-linguistically always went down well; my synecdoche banter, not so much. I did used to annoy my friends by crying out with glee every time they made a nice speech error that I could use as an example in my psycholinguistics exam.
With sections like "language and cognition" and "language and history" I'll definitely be checking out Popular Linguistics. Of course, if there were a Popular Linguists section, my vote would go to Steven Pinker...
* misspelling intentional.
His Gravity Leavens the Silliness of Morning Glory
Most of the movies I watch are Serious Films. Death: check; doom: check; general sadness: check. From time to time, though, I like to try something a little silly and a little predictable. Morning Glory is plenty silly and utterly predictable but it's also rather charming. I wanted to hate it but somehow, Rachel McAdams's earnestness and Harrison Ford's incessant grumpy deadpan won me over, very much à contre-cœur.
McAdams plays Becky Fuller, a producer for a New Jersey morning TV show who loses her job and manages to talk her way into a job in the (relatively) big leagues: she's going to produce Daybreak, the fourth best morning TV show (out of four) in New York. The network boss (a dour and underused Jeff Goldblum) doesn't think she'll be any good but the turnover of producers for the show is so high that he doesn't have much choice. Her female anchor (Diane Keaton) is a prima donna but tolerable; the male is a feckless foot fetishist and Becky soon fires him. There is no budget to hire a replacement but luckily Becky's hero Mike Pomeroy (Ford), a Pulitzer Prize winning, Serious Reporter, is on two years of gardening leave after getting fired from the evening news and so she manages to convince him he has to do Daybreak if he wants the rest of his payoff. But that doesn't mean he has to do it gracefully.
Spoilers follow but to be fair, the plot is perfectly obvious to anyone who has seen the first 10 minutes of the film. Girl gets new job; girl fails to convince arrogant anchor to play nice on air; girl's boss threatens to axe the show; girl wins over arrogant anchor; arrogant anchor manages to talk girl out of taking her dream job at NBC so they can make Daybreak even better. Meanwhile... Girl meets cute, rich guy who works on another show (played by one or other of the Wilsons); girl likes boy; boy likes girl; girl thinks she has scared boy off with her manicness and with her work obsession; girl realises she can go out with cute boy and keep her job. Yays!
The whole film is about balance and compromise, of course. If Becky lets Pomeroy do a little bit of ace reporting from time to time, he'll show America how to make a frittata; he might even use the word "fluffy." A combination of her sizzle and his sausage (so to speak) make great morning TV! Meanwhile, if Becky puts her BlackBerry in the fridge for a few hours each evening, cute, rich guy might not run away screaming. I really should have been irritated by all of this silliness but somehow, it only started to grate towards the end. As one of the rave reviews of the "new and improved" Daybreak says of Pomeroy, "His gravity leavens the silliness of morning TV." Or, indeed, of Morning Glory.
McAdams plays Becky Fuller, a producer for a New Jersey morning TV show who loses her job and manages to talk her way into a job in the (relatively) big leagues: she's going to produce Daybreak, the fourth best morning TV show (out of four) in New York. The network boss (a dour and underused Jeff Goldblum) doesn't think she'll be any good but the turnover of producers for the show is so high that he doesn't have much choice. Her female anchor (Diane Keaton) is a prima donna but tolerable; the male is a feckless foot fetishist and Becky soon fires him. There is no budget to hire a replacement but luckily Becky's hero Mike Pomeroy (Ford), a Pulitzer Prize winning, Serious Reporter, is on two years of gardening leave after getting fired from the evening news and so she manages to convince him he has to do Daybreak if he wants the rest of his payoff. But that doesn't mean he has to do it gracefully.
Spoilers follow but to be fair, the plot is perfectly obvious to anyone who has seen the first 10 minutes of the film. Girl gets new job; girl fails to convince arrogant anchor to play nice on air; girl's boss threatens to axe the show; girl wins over arrogant anchor; arrogant anchor manages to talk girl out of taking her dream job at NBC so they can make Daybreak even better. Meanwhile... Girl meets cute, rich guy who works on another show (played by one or other of the Wilsons); girl likes boy; boy likes girl; girl thinks she has scared boy off with her manicness and with her work obsession; girl realises she can go out with cute boy and keep her job. Yays!
The whole film is about balance and compromise, of course. If Becky lets Pomeroy do a little bit of ace reporting from time to time, he'll show America how to make a frittata; he might even use the word "fluffy." A combination of her sizzle and his sausage (so to speak) make great morning TV! Meanwhile, if Becky puts her BlackBerry in the fridge for a few hours each evening, cute, rich guy might not run away screaming. I really should have been irritated by all of this silliness but somehow, it only started to grate towards the end. As one of the rave reviews of the "new and improved" Daybreak says of Pomeroy, "His gravity leavens the silliness of morning TV." Or, indeed, of Morning Glory.
11 January 2011
Myriad Movies
I don't really care much about TV (well, apart from Mad Men and The Apprentice; oh, and Gossip Girl) but I do care about movies. As such, I'm quite pleased that I now have access to Sky Player, Sky's online catch-up and live streaming service for their customers, each of whom gets to pick one computer for full access to all their content. I don't have Sky, of course (I don't even have a TV), but Papa has selected the laptop he keeps in my flat as the Über-Computer.
Not that I've forgiven Rupert Murdoch for buying Mad Men and taking it away from BBC 4, either, but it does mean I have access to quite a large database of movies, many of which I would like to watch. The trouble is, where to start? The original Ocean's 11? Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? The Young Victoria? Being me, I'll probably just go through the A-Z, pick out all the films I want to see and put an asterisk next to those I most want to see and then work through my list.
The archive may only include films that have been shown on TV within the past X days, which means some will disappear from the archive, complicating matters, but it will still be cool to be able to watch a decent movie any time I feel like it, just like my Skyful teenage years.
Not that I've forgiven Rupert Murdoch for buying Mad Men and taking it away from BBC 4, either, but it does mean I have access to quite a large database of movies, many of which I would like to watch. The trouble is, where to start? The original Ocean's 11? Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? The Young Victoria? Being me, I'll probably just go through the A-Z, pick out all the films I want to see and put an asterisk next to those I most want to see and then work through my list.
The archive may only include films that have been shown on TV within the past X days, which means some will disappear from the archive, complicating matters, but it will still be cool to be able to watch a decent movie any time I feel like it, just like my Skyful teenage years.
Deux Mille Onze
This week's email from Grammar Girl, my weekly source of grammar tips, had the subject line, "How Do You Pronounce 2011?" Bearing in mind my sort-of New Year's resolution to pronounce the year "twenty eleven" and not "two-thousand-and-eleven," I thought this mailing was perfect for me. On opening the email, however, I soon realised that GG was resolving the issue of whether to pronounce it "two-thousand-and-eleven" or "two-thousand-eleven." She says either way is correct, incidentally, although the former is much more common in Britain and the latter in the US (I'd say the former is near ubiquitous in the UK).
It seems she tackled the issue that interests me last year and goes on to say:
It seems she tackled the issue that interests me last year and goes on to say:
Last year people argued about how to pronounce 2010, and I expect the controversy to continue in 2011. One linguist thinks the difficulty of pronouncing "and eleven" will drive people to say "twenty eleven."Indeed, I also hoped that the additional syllables in "eleven" would encourage me to stick to the "twenty eleven" pronunciation but I'm glad I'm not alone. So far, I haven't had many opportunities to say 2011 but I think I've managed to make most of them syllable-lite. Hopefully, I'll have it nailed by the end of the year; bring on twenty twelve. At the moment it's so much easier in France where they say, "deux mille onze"; not so much in 1999, where the year was pronounced, "mille-neuf-cent-quatre-vingt-dix-neuf."
10 January 2011
Whose Hell Are We Going into, Exactly?
Iain M. Banks's new book, Surface Detail, is a bit like Inception meets Dante's Inferno; oh, with a bit of 127 Hours thrown in for good measure. The crux of the subject matter deals with virtual reality worlds that some civilisations in Banks's universe are able to create. In some, you can back up your personality (and soul) on a regular basis, which means you can be "revented" or brought back to life should you die or undergo other unfortunate events. In others, after you die, you can live on in a nice virtual afterlife (although often the inhabitants of these afterlife-worlds end up demanding a second death to relieve their ennui). In others still, virtual hells have been created, where people can be sent for an infinity of torture and pain. In effect, religion has been created in post-god (or perhaps pre-god) societies.
The Hells are causing most problems because some civilisations (including the Culture, of course) think they are horrible, terrible places that should be abolished immediately. Others don't see the harm and don't like to have self-righteous interference in their running of their own affairs. As such, there is a war going on between the pro-Hell and the anti-Hell contingents. The war is being conducted in virtual worlds, at least at first.
Two lovers, sort of anthropologists, have agreed to visit one of the Hells so that they can report back how, er, hellish it is. They've been given one cleverly disguised piece of code each that will allow them to escape but only one of them makes it back to the "Real," while Hell's demons try to ramp up the torture of the remaining lover, attempting to raise and then dash hopes over a prolonged period (more than a lifetime of Hell years). To put it mildly, those who enter are strongly advised to abandon all hope on entering as it makes them harder to punish. The anthropologist becomes like the pilgrim in Dante and has to descend deeper and deeper to truly know Hell so that when she emerges, she reaches true enlightenment.
The description of this Hell made me wince a lot more than 127 Hours, although the punishment in the latter was very Dantean (or Aquinan)--for Aron Ralston, the perfect contrapasso for his self-centred life is putting him in a situation where he can't get out alive without the help of others. L'enfer, c'est les autres. Meanwhile, another Surface Detail character has experienced quite a different hell at the hands of others in real life. She is the slave of the richest man of her civilisation and, like all indentured servants, has skin (and teeth and organs) that are patterned with a beautiful tattoo. Her master has raped her repeatedly and after he goes one step too far, she is seeking revenge.
I often find Iain M. Banks novels tricky to get into, mainly because the names of the characters are so complicated and do encode the gender or race of the character. Surface Detail was particularly tricky what with the virtual worlds and reincarnations; like in Inception, you often have to ask exactly whose subconscious/Hell you are in (and whether an individual's death is actually a final death or just a temporary obstacle to overcome). I was gripped even by the first fifty pages, though, and persevered on. Unusually for me, I'm writing this post two thirds of the way through the book. This is partly because I think it might result in philosophy/theology overload and partly because I'm worried that by the end, I might have overthought it all so much that I understand it less. Good stuff, though.
The Hells are causing most problems because some civilisations (including the Culture, of course) think they are horrible, terrible places that should be abolished immediately. Others don't see the harm and don't like to have self-righteous interference in their running of their own affairs. As such, there is a war going on between the pro-Hell and the anti-Hell contingents. The war is being conducted in virtual worlds, at least at first.
Two lovers, sort of anthropologists, have agreed to visit one of the Hells so that they can report back how, er, hellish it is. They've been given one cleverly disguised piece of code each that will allow them to escape but only one of them makes it back to the "Real," while Hell's demons try to ramp up the torture of the remaining lover, attempting to raise and then dash hopes over a prolonged period (more than a lifetime of Hell years). To put it mildly, those who enter are strongly advised to abandon all hope on entering as it makes them harder to punish. The anthropologist becomes like the pilgrim in Dante and has to descend deeper and deeper to truly know Hell so that when she emerges, she reaches true enlightenment.
The description of this Hell made me wince a lot more than 127 Hours, although the punishment in the latter was very Dantean (or Aquinan)--for Aron Ralston, the perfect contrapasso for his self-centred life is putting him in a situation where he can't get out alive without the help of others. L'enfer, c'est les autres. Meanwhile, another Surface Detail character has experienced quite a different hell at the hands of others in real life. She is the slave of the richest man of her civilisation and, like all indentured servants, has skin (and teeth and organs) that are patterned with a beautiful tattoo. Her master has raped her repeatedly and after he goes one step too far, she is seeking revenge.
I often find Iain M. Banks novels tricky to get into, mainly because the names of the characters are so complicated and do encode the gender or race of the character. Surface Detail was particularly tricky what with the virtual worlds and reincarnations; like in Inception, you often have to ask exactly whose subconscious/Hell you are in (and whether an individual's death is actually a final death or just a temporary obstacle to overcome). I was gripped even by the first fifty pages, though, and persevered on. Unusually for me, I'm writing this post two thirds of the way through the book. This is partly because I think it might result in philosophy/theology overload and partly because I'm worried that by the end, I might have overthought it all so much that I understand it less. Good stuff, though.
09 January 2011
A Farewell to Arm
This post's title may be a pun too far but a) the title of the autobiography, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, on which Danny Boyle's new film 127 Hours is based is also playful and b) the arm amputation scene seems to have been the main talking point of the film. The movie is topped and tailed with bright, colouful, loud scenes of frenetic crowds rushing through subways and cheering in stadia. The hyper-reality of it all contrasts dramatically with much of the rest of the film, which is spent in a mostly dark, monochromatic canyon in Colorado.
Aron Ralston (played by James Franco) is a cocky, carefree adrenaline junkie. He doesn't really have time for people in his life because he's too busy getting his kicks from rock climbing, mountain biking and other high-energy pursuits. At the beginning of 127 Hours, he meets a couple of cute girl hikers, who are lost, and shows them a short-cut--and a good time. The "short-cut" entails the three of them edging their way through a very tight crevasse in the rock and then letting go and plummeting into an underground plunge pool, a hundred feet below. Before they drop, one of the hiker chicks says, "But these rocks would never move." Ralston replies, "Well, actually sometimes they do. Let's just hope not today." This would be prophetic if everyone who went to see this film didn't already know what was going to happen.
Later, Ralston bids farewell to the girls, who invite him to a party the following night, although they figure he'll never turn up. Later still, while Aron is scaling his way through another narrow crevasse, the camera focuses on a boulder--much smaller than I expected but clearly heavy enough--which he tests to see if it can hold his weight (affirmative). Of course, this is the boulder that ends up trapping his right arm for the eponymous 127 hours. After exhausting all possible ways of moving the boulder, his food, water and much of his sanity, he eventually comes to the conclusion he will have to cut his arm off if he is to escape. Actually, he tried this a few days earlier but because he couldn't find his Swiss Army knife (we see his fingers not quite manage to grasp it in his cupboard), he only has some crappy, blunt old knife, which barely scratches the surface of his arm. When he first seizes this tool, he starts chipping at the boulder--I assumed he was trying to sharpen the knife (which might have been a good idea) but he was trying to erode it enough to free himself.
During the time in which he is trapped, Ralston records messages on his camera for his family and an ex girlfriend. He apologises for being a shit. He hallucinates and daydreams about experiences past and potential. He regrets all the things about his life that have brought him to this point ("this rock's been waiting for me my whole life," he says). Franco is, of course, very, very good. His facial expressions are exquisitely painful and he does a great job of creating sympathy for a character who, in the opening scenes, hasn't been particularly likable.
Eventually, though, the arm scene arrives and it's not as gruesome as I was anticipating. Maybe it's because after years of Casualty and 999 as a kid (I can just imagine Michael Buerk's grave voiceover, "Aron didn't tell anyone what his plans for the weekend were..."), I've become somewhat immune to such gore. That said, I am particularly squeamish about knees and feet and had Ralston got his leg trapped instead, I might have joined many of the audience members who were covering their face. After the amputation, the rest of the film is a bit of an exhalation even though Ralston still had to get out of the crevasse, abseil down a cliff and walk until he found some other people who could get help before he was safe. And then we see the colourful crowd scenes again, interspersed with Ralston swimming, climbing and hanging out with his wife (who he met three years later) and their child.
Yes, 127 Hours is a good film but I suspect that when the Oscar nominations come out, I won't be backing it as my choice for "best film."
Aron Ralston (played by James Franco) is a cocky, carefree adrenaline junkie. He doesn't really have time for people in his life because he's too busy getting his kicks from rock climbing, mountain biking and other high-energy pursuits. At the beginning of 127 Hours, he meets a couple of cute girl hikers, who are lost, and shows them a short-cut--and a good time. The "short-cut" entails the three of them edging their way through a very tight crevasse in the rock and then letting go and plummeting into an underground plunge pool, a hundred feet below. Before they drop, one of the hiker chicks says, "But these rocks would never move." Ralston replies, "Well, actually sometimes they do. Let's just hope not today." This would be prophetic if everyone who went to see this film didn't already know what was going to happen.
Later, Ralston bids farewell to the girls, who invite him to a party the following night, although they figure he'll never turn up. Later still, while Aron is scaling his way through another narrow crevasse, the camera focuses on a boulder--much smaller than I expected but clearly heavy enough--which he tests to see if it can hold his weight (affirmative). Of course, this is the boulder that ends up trapping his right arm for the eponymous 127 hours. After exhausting all possible ways of moving the boulder, his food, water and much of his sanity, he eventually comes to the conclusion he will have to cut his arm off if he is to escape. Actually, he tried this a few days earlier but because he couldn't find his Swiss Army knife (we see his fingers not quite manage to grasp it in his cupboard), he only has some crappy, blunt old knife, which barely scratches the surface of his arm. When he first seizes this tool, he starts chipping at the boulder--I assumed he was trying to sharpen the knife (which might have been a good idea) but he was trying to erode it enough to free himself.
During the time in which he is trapped, Ralston records messages on his camera for his family and an ex girlfriend. He apologises for being a shit. He hallucinates and daydreams about experiences past and potential. He regrets all the things about his life that have brought him to this point ("this rock's been waiting for me my whole life," he says). Franco is, of course, very, very good. His facial expressions are exquisitely painful and he does a great job of creating sympathy for a character who, in the opening scenes, hasn't been particularly likable.
Eventually, though, the arm scene arrives and it's not as gruesome as I was anticipating. Maybe it's because after years of Casualty and 999 as a kid (I can just imagine Michael Buerk's grave voiceover, "Aron didn't tell anyone what his plans for the weekend were..."), I've become somewhat immune to such gore. That said, I am particularly squeamish about knees and feet and had Ralston got his leg trapped instead, I might have joined many of the audience members who were covering their face. After the amputation, the rest of the film is a bit of an exhalation even though Ralston still had to get out of the crevasse, abseil down a cliff and walk until he found some other people who could get help before he was safe. And then we see the colourful crowd scenes again, interspersed with Ralston swimming, climbing and hanging out with his wife (who he met three years later) and their child.
Yes, 127 Hours is a good film but I suspect that when the Oscar nominations come out, I won't be backing it as my choice for "best film."
08 January 2011
Wicked Whispers
It's Audrey season at the BFI at the moment and I thought I ought to see at least one new (to me) film of hers so I picked The Children's Hour. I hadn't even heard of it until recently when I read that it would be Keira Knightley's next West End role, alongside Elisabeth Moss (Peggy from Mad Men). The news story doesn't say but I'm fairly certain Knightley will be playing Audrey's character and Moss that of Shirley MacLaine (how could it be otherwise?).
The programme notes from the BFI include Arthur Knight's Saturday Review for the film on its original release in 1962 and include the comment, "[w]hat was considered too daring for 1936 is almost too tame for 1962." It will therefore be interesting to see how the 2011 stage production fares--and in which year it is set. I can't see that it would work with a contemporary setting, unless they made some serious changes to the script, but perhaps they will shift it back to 1934, when it first appeared in Broadway.
Karen Wright (Hepburn) and Martha Dobie (MacLaine) are teachers at the small boarding school they run for nice (rich) young girls. They enjoy their work, are the best of friends and everything is great. Well, apart from the fact that Karen's charismatic fiancé Joe has a habit of hanging around and killing Martha's buzz. One of their charges is the odious Mary who scweams and scweams until she's sick (or, at least, until she "faints" or "has a heart attack"). Mary is a spoiled little madam, raised by her stern grandmother, who is perhaps having issues because of her absent (dead?) parents. She deals with this by blackmailing and threatening her fellow pupils to make them go along with her wicked ways and when Karen tries to tell her off for stealing a bunch of flowers and for not owning up, it's clear that Mary wants revenge.
Luckily for Mary, some of her minions overhear an argument between Martha and Martha's aunt, which hints that there might be something "unnatural" about the relationship between Karen and Martha. Mary runs away, tells granny, who is, at first, disbelieving but when Mary whispers in granny's ear some of the things she says she's heard, where else could Mary have found out about such "awful things" (the contraband books she reads, mainly)? Granny removes Mary from the school and encourages the other parents to do the same and soon the school is empty, despite Karen and Martha's attempts to try to convince people that nothing has happened between them. Karen can't even be sure that Joe (who is also Mary's cousin or uncle) really believes them. Things then take a tragic turn; hopefully, Mary receives more than the much-needed slap she gets from Joe earlier in the film as punishment for what she started.
MacLaine's performance is very moving--a number of people in the cinema were in tears at the end, although you kind of see the ending coming--and Hepburn is good at looking very sad and very beautiful. Certainly, it will be interesting to see Elisabeth Moss, now an expert on the position of women in the 1960s, will make of the role of Martha. Perhaps, though, the play won't have so much resonance with a 2011 audience (I'm sure that Ms Knightley's presence will ensure there are plenty of bums on seats nonetheless).
The programme notes from the BFI include Arthur Knight's Saturday Review for the film on its original release in 1962 and include the comment, "[w]hat was considered too daring for 1936 is almost too tame for 1962." It will therefore be interesting to see how the 2011 stage production fares--and in which year it is set. I can't see that it would work with a contemporary setting, unless they made some serious changes to the script, but perhaps they will shift it back to 1934, when it first appeared in Broadway.
Karen Wright (Hepburn) and Martha Dobie (MacLaine) are teachers at the small boarding school they run for nice (rich) young girls. They enjoy their work, are the best of friends and everything is great. Well, apart from the fact that Karen's charismatic fiancé Joe has a habit of hanging around and killing Martha's buzz. One of their charges is the odious Mary who scweams and scweams until she's sick (or, at least, until she "faints" or "has a heart attack"). Mary is a spoiled little madam, raised by her stern grandmother, who is perhaps having issues because of her absent (dead?) parents. She deals with this by blackmailing and threatening her fellow pupils to make them go along with her wicked ways and when Karen tries to tell her off for stealing a bunch of flowers and for not owning up, it's clear that Mary wants revenge.
Luckily for Mary, some of her minions overhear an argument between Martha and Martha's aunt, which hints that there might be something "unnatural" about the relationship between Karen and Martha. Mary runs away, tells granny, who is, at first, disbelieving but when Mary whispers in granny's ear some of the things she says she's heard, where else could Mary have found out about such "awful things" (the contraband books she reads, mainly)? Granny removes Mary from the school and encourages the other parents to do the same and soon the school is empty, despite Karen and Martha's attempts to try to convince people that nothing has happened between them. Karen can't even be sure that Joe (who is also Mary's cousin or uncle) really believes them. Things then take a tragic turn; hopefully, Mary receives more than the much-needed slap she gets from Joe earlier in the film as punishment for what she started.
MacLaine's performance is very moving--a number of people in the cinema were in tears at the end, although you kind of see the ending coming--and Hepburn is good at looking very sad and very beautiful. Certainly, it will be interesting to see Elisabeth Moss, now an expert on the position of women in the 1960s, will make of the role of Martha. Perhaps, though, the play won't have so much resonance with a 2011 audience (I'm sure that Ms Knightley's presence will ensure there are plenty of bums on seats nonetheless).
06 January 2011
"If You Can Spell, You Can't Possibly Be 'Creative'"
As a linguist and pedant, who, as a child who used to read the OED for fun, I've often considered that I would be well suited to a career in sub-editing. In my current job, my writing is run past our sub-editors and it always makes me very happy when my text doesn't need any edits but I have never been sure whether I would take pleasure from perfecting (or, at least, standardising) other people's language or whether it would be torture to see so many mistakes and inconsistencies in the spelling and grammar.
Recently, I discovered a blog written by a sub-editor who likes to rant and while cruising through the archives, I read about a play called Subs, which is, funnily enough, about a team of three sub-editors at the magazine Gentlemen Prefer... As the play was on last summer and in a small theatre in Kilburn, I assumed I had missed out but coincidentally, it re-opened this week for a second run and I trekked up the Bakerloo Line this evening to see it.
Although the sub-editors at Gentlemen Prefer... ("the only magazine with a three-point ellipsis in its title") don't exactly exist in perfect harmony, they get along OK. There's the chief sub, Derek, who likes putting his deputy, Finch, in his place. Derek is smug and cocky but feels his manic-depressive wife and their children are holding him back from being promoted. Finch, meanwhile, is an obnoxious, self-deprecating Welshman, who is jealous of James--the bright young junior sub, who is favoured by Derek and loved by everyone else. In anticipation of his potential promotion, Derek hires Anna, a young, pretty freelancer, who may become permanent if Derek gets his way. Even Finch cheers up after Anna's arrival, although he's sure she'll never be interested in him. But men's magazine publishing is a dog-eat-dog world and we're left to wonder who is betraying whom.
I expected a lot of in-jokes but Subs is as much a play about the state of the publishing industry in general as about sub-editors. Some of the things that happen at Gentlemen Prefer... wouldn't be out of place in my office, although I work for quite a different publication. But there were some good lines ("What's the house style on G string?" is the opener) and Michael Cusick was particularly good as the irascible Finch. Whoever was in charge of props should have kitted out the subs with Macs, though; they would never use such crappy-looking PCs at Gentlemen Prefer...
Recently, I discovered a blog written by a sub-editor who likes to rant and while cruising through the archives, I read about a play called Subs, which is, funnily enough, about a team of three sub-editors at the magazine Gentlemen Prefer... As the play was on last summer and in a small theatre in Kilburn, I assumed I had missed out but coincidentally, it re-opened this week for a second run and I trekked up the Bakerloo Line this evening to see it.
Although the sub-editors at Gentlemen Prefer... ("the only magazine with a three-point ellipsis in its title") don't exactly exist in perfect harmony, they get along OK. There's the chief sub, Derek, who likes putting his deputy, Finch, in his place. Derek is smug and cocky but feels his manic-depressive wife and their children are holding him back from being promoted. Finch, meanwhile, is an obnoxious, self-deprecating Welshman, who is jealous of James--the bright young junior sub, who is favoured by Derek and loved by everyone else. In anticipation of his potential promotion, Derek hires Anna, a young, pretty freelancer, who may become permanent if Derek gets his way. Even Finch cheers up after Anna's arrival, although he's sure she'll never be interested in him. But men's magazine publishing is a dog-eat-dog world and we're left to wonder who is betraying whom.
I expected a lot of in-jokes but Subs is as much a play about the state of the publishing industry in general as about sub-editors. Some of the things that happen at Gentlemen Prefer... wouldn't be out of place in my office, although I work for quite a different publication. But there were some good lines ("What's the house style on G string?" is the opener) and Michael Cusick was particularly good as the irascible Finch. Whoever was in charge of props should have kitted out the subs with Macs, though; they would never use such crappy-looking PCs at Gentlemen Prefer...
02 January 2011
The Same Three Days
I had to rush back to the Big Smoke from the Shire this morning to get to a preview screening of a film called The Next Three Days, a thriller in which Russell Crowe plays a college teacher, John, who has the perfect life with his wife Lara and their young son--until Lara is arrested for the murder of her boss, that is. Things, understandably go downhill for them after that, with their son refusing to talk to his mother on his prison visits, until it gets to the point where Lara attempts suicide. Having exhausted the appeals process, John decides that the only option is to bust Lara out of prison. He solicits the advice of a guy who has written a book about how he managed to escape from jail seven times (as you do), and begins to work on the world's most meticulous plan to get Lara out of prison, but we all know what happens to the best-laid plans...
Now, this film was a perfectly acceptable thriller but it didn't need to be made at all as it was pretty much a take-by-take remake of a French film I saw last year called Pour Elle (Anything for Her), with Vincent Lindon and Diane Kruger playing the lead roles. I knew The Next Three Days was a remake but I'd hoped that with Paul Haggis at the helm, it might be a little more interesting. Instead, most of the dialogue felt like a direct translation of the French script and while I quite like Russell Crowe in thriller mode, he and Elizabeth Banks, who plays Lara, were both out-acted by their counterparts in the French film. The constant Apple product placements were irritating too, although you'd think Apple might be less than happy that its iPhone apps and Macs were often shown to facilitate the attempted prison break.
On the plus side, I did really like the soundtrack with a score by Danny Elfman and a couple of cool tracks by Moby (including Mistake). It's not that The Next Three Days was boring; on the contrary, it was still very gripping, even though I knew what was going to happen at pretty much every point. However, it has been 18 months since I saw Pour Elle and I think that if I'd seen the original more recently, I might not have tolerated the remake so much. I'd recommend the film to people who want to see a solid thriller--but only if they really want to see it in the cinema; otherwise, buy the DVD of Pour Elle.
Now, this film was a perfectly acceptable thriller but it didn't need to be made at all as it was pretty much a take-by-take remake of a French film I saw last year called Pour Elle (Anything for Her), with Vincent Lindon and Diane Kruger playing the lead roles. I knew The Next Three Days was a remake but I'd hoped that with Paul Haggis at the helm, it might be a little more interesting. Instead, most of the dialogue felt like a direct translation of the French script and while I quite like Russell Crowe in thriller mode, he and Elizabeth Banks, who plays Lara, were both out-acted by their counterparts in the French film. The constant Apple product placements were irritating too, although you'd think Apple might be less than happy that its iPhone apps and Macs were often shown to facilitate the attempted prison break.
On the plus side, I did really like the soundtrack with a score by Danny Elfman and a couple of cool tracks by Moby (including Mistake). It's not that The Next Three Days was boring; on the contrary, it was still very gripping, even though I knew what was going to happen at pretty much every point. However, it has been 18 months since I saw Pour Elle and I think that if I'd seen the original more recently, I might not have tolerated the remake so much. I'd recommend the film to people who want to see a solid thriller--but only if they really want to see it in the cinema; otherwise, buy the DVD of Pour Elle.
Leap Year
It isn't really a leap year this year, of course, but in some senses, every year is a leap year for me. I managed to get another year of leaps off to a good start yesterday when on a walk through some of the Oxford colleges, I spotted some cloisters that would make a great backdrop for a leap. Fortunately, as we were a group of ten, Papa managed to capture the leap perfectly in one take.
Here's hoping for plenty more leaping opportunities in 2011!
Here's hoping for plenty more leaping opportunities in 2011!