A Year in Leaps

I have now officially given up on the idea of compiling a list of my favourite five songs of the year. In 2011, I added about 50 new songs to iTunes, of which only ten were released in 2011. For what it's worth, my favourite was, by a long shot, This Ain't No Hymn by Saint Saviour, which I've played over 60 times since October.

Far more worthwhile is for me to rank my top five leaps of the year. 2011 has been a great year for leaping and although I managed to whittle down my favourite leap photos down to a list of 12 fairly easily, the final cull was harder. Some of the leaps that didn't make the top five included: my current blog header, taken on Christmas Eve in Cannes; my leap-in-a-birdcage in London (best use of a supposed art installation); and my reconstruction of the original leap outside the Louvre in Paris. Now, here are the top five:

1. Highest leap — Atlas Mountains, Morocco. This was definitely my highest leap — in terms of altitude, anyway. Our tour guide was highly amused by the fact that I would insist of jumping for the camera at every available opportunity, despite having a horrible cold.

2. Highest leap II — New York City, USA. This photo, taken on the High Line in June, made good use of one of the benches to give me some extra height. Bonus points for retaining some of my modesty.

3. Earliest leap — Nowheresville, UK. Not bad for six-thirty in the morning! This was taken at the very end of my college's May Ball in June. St John's famous bridge was all decked out in college colours so it was too cool a photo opportunity to pass up.

4. Coldest leap — Cannes, France. Cannes was actually very sunny and fairly warm this Christmas. However, this leap was taken shortly after a very cold and extremely brief swim in the Med, so it was lucky we got the photo in one take.

5. Narrowest leap — Stockholm, Sweden. Mårten Trotzigs Gränd, the narrowest alley in Stockholm, provided the setting for this leap. It was quite hard to jump safely (hence the spirit fingers) but I liked the way the perspective came out.

I considered taking a leaping photo every day in this leap year but leaps are quite hard to capture well using a self-timer so I decided to can that idea but I may still highlight one leap per month. In the meantime, happy leap year, everyone!

My Top 5 Movies of 2011

I broke the 100 barrier again this year, movie-wise, watching a total of 109 films in 2011, a few more than last year's 95. It was easy to narrow down my top three but ordering the movies proved more difficult. In any case, here are my top five:

1. We Need To Talk About Kevin. It seems like the 2012 Academy Award for best actress will fiercely contested but Tilda Swinton, playing the mother of the eponymous Kevin, definitely stands a good chance. We Need To Talk About Kevin is bleak and uncomfortable to watch. It's also a brilliant film, although definitely not good first-date (or any date) material.

2. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. As with last year's list, my #2 film is the only one I saw twice, enjoying it just as much — if not more — second time around. With great performances from Gary Oldman, Colin Firth and the rest of the ensemble cast (even if there were too many blonde-ish mullets), beautiful cinematography and a plot filled with plenty of complicated espionage and betrayal. 

The only disappointment was that a few of the lines from the 1979 TV series that my father recorded onto one of his many audio-compilation-of-TV-shows-and-movies tapes and played ad nauseam, ad infinitum throughout my youth didn't appear in the script (you can watch them here, starting at 1:35; "Officially, you're absent without leave...").

3. The Skin I Live in. I was hooked on this one as soon as I saw the trailer and although it isn't perfect, Almodóvar's film is dark, twisted and compelling, with Antonio Banderas starring as Robert Ledgard, the charismatic but troubled plastic surgeon who, among other things, is trying to create an extremely resilient synthetic skin without pissing off "the scientific community." 

(I work for a scientific publisher — which is thanked in the credits for providing journals for Ledgard's office, incidentally — and was amused by the characters' main concern about Ledgard's more ethically dubious research was what "the scientific community" would think, rather than, say, the police.) Almodóvar is definitely at his bonkers best in The Skin I Live in.

4. The Descendants. Sure, part of the fun of watching Alexander Payne's latest film was spotting George Clooney on the red carpet and watching him, Payne and the young co-star Shailene Woodley (who was great) talking about the movie on stage at the London Film Festival. But The Descendants is an interesting film in its own right and it's always fun to see Clooney acting against type (this time playing the family man).

5. The Artist. It's a little unfair for me to include this film in my top five over  The King's Speech, when I only saw the former this afternoon and I watched the latter almost a year ago. But The Artist definitely lived up to the hype and engaged even me — a real stickler for good dialogue — despite having almost no dialogue and very little sounds at all, apart from the musical score. I'd recommend The Artist for cinéphiles and lovers of early cinema in particular but the sweet, if sometimes a little melodramatic (intentionally so) story of a silent movie actor who refuses to adapt to the arrival of the talkies. A longer review will follow.

Honourable mention: Senna. This is my token documentary entry and although it didn't quite make my top five, I really enjoyed it, despite knowing little and caring less about motor racing.

• The Next Three Days
• Paranormal Activity (DVD)
• The Killer Inside Me (DVD)
• The Children's Hour
• 127 Hours
• The Young Victoria (TV)
• The Boat That Rocked (TV)
• The King's Speech
• Morning Glory
• The Fighter
• Ocean's Eleven (1960; TV)
• The Mechanic
• Rabbit Hole
• Hereafter
• Primal Fear (DVD)
• Jagged Edge (DVD)
• The Adjustment Bureau
• A Few Good Men (DVD)
• Archipelago
• The Rainmaker (DVD)
• Another Year (DVD)
• Fair Game
• Route Irish
• The Lincoln Lawyer
• Source Code
• Submarine
• Scream 4
• Oranges and Sunshine
• The Color of Money (DVD)
• Rosemary's Baby (DVD)
• Let the Right One in (DVD)
• Water for Elephants
• Let's Scare Jessica to Death
• Thor
• Badlands (DVD)
• Hanna
• Along Came a Spider (TV)
• Kiss the Girls (TV)
• The Caine Mutiny
• Les Ojos de Julia
• The Contender (DVD)
• Unforgiven (DVD)
• Gli Angeli del Male
• Senna
• Killing Bono (TV)
• Potiche
• The Messenger
• Taken (TV)
• Incendies
• Bridesmaids
• Date Night (DVD)
• Gone Baby Gone (DVD)
• A Separation
• Trust
• La Princesse de Montpensier
• The Philadelphia Story (DVD)
• The Big Picture
• Beginners
• Witness for the Prosecution (DVD)
• All the President's Men (DVD)
• The Tree of Life
• Mr Nice (DVD)
• Project Nim
• Sarah's Key
• Rise of the Planet of the Apes
• TRON Legacy (DVD)
• One Day
• The Skin I Live In
• Limitless (DVD)
• Planet of the Apes (1968; DVD)
• X-Men (TV)
• Jane Eyre
• Kill List
• Last Night (plane)
• Midnight in Paris (plane)
• Super 8 (plane)
• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
• Drive
• Warrior
• Red State
• The Men Who Stare at Goats (DVD)
• The Help
• Like Crazy
• The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
• The Ides of March
• The Descendants
• We Need to Talk About Kevin
• Damsels in Distress
• Anonymous
• Contagion
• Miss Bala
• The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn
• The Name of the Rose (TV)
• Tabloid
• The Weather Man (TV)
• The Awakening
• The Deep Blue Sea
• My Week with Marilyn
• The Other Man (TV)
• In Time (DVD)
• Ponyo (TV)
• Margaret
• Shame
• Defiance (TV)
• Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
• A Dangerous Method
• Hugo (sadly in 2D, thanks to the Cannes cinema)
• The General's Daughter (DVD)
• The Artist

My Top 5 Books of 2011

Despite my valiant attempts to read on my short bus journey to work, I still only managed to read 121 books this year—about the same as last year. Technically, I haven't finished Steven Pinker's new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, but a) it is nearly 700 pages long and b) I should have finished it by the end of tomorrow. I found it relatively easy to narrow down my top five but less so to put them in order. In any case, here they are:

1. Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks. Yes, that's right: my favourite book of the year is found in the science-fiction section. I reviewed the book more fully here, but the reason it got the top spot was because even though I read it nearly a year ago, it has really stayed with me all year long, more so than any other on my list. Tragic, complex and witty, Surface Detail is easily my favourite Iain M. Banks novel.

2. Restless by William Boyd. I almost excluded this book because I felt sure I had included Any Human Heart, by the same author, in my top five last year or the last year. However, a quick check of my 2010 and 2009 lists indicates that somehow, AHH never made it onto one of my lists (I'm pretty sure I read it last year). I liked AHH a lot more than Restless, but the latter has the same haunting tone and generation-spanning, if not quite epic, plot. To atone for my error, I'm making Restless #2. 

In brief, a middle-aged woman living in the countryside in the 1970s slowly reveals to her daughter her past life as a Russian spy by sharing with her chapters from her memoir. The set-up is clever, allowing for those little earthquakes of realisation that I enjoyed so much about Never Let Me Go, and Boyd is a seriously engaging writer.

3. Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan. I read this novel because I was having trouble tracking down Sullivan's latest novel, Maine, which I still haven't read. Again, my full review of Commencement can be found here, but this story of four very different girls as they enter, pass through and graduate from a prestigious girls' college, rang very true (and is a lot less cheesy than I have just made it sound!).

4. The Submission by Amy Waldman. Widely tipped for a range of literary prizes, The Submission is another American novel for which I had to wait an unduly long time to read. A jury is convening to select the design of for 9/11 memorial and, soon after a winner has been chosen, the jury chair discovers that the winning architect is Muslim, whose minimalist memorial garden shares certain features with Islamic gardens. The decision as to whether he should be named as the winner is taken from the jury's hands as the press gets wind of the news. 

Focusing on the implications for the architect, several of the jury members (one of whom lost her husband on 9/11), a journalist and others whose lives were touched by the attacks, The Submission is a rich and often witty portrait of the political and social mores so common in our post-9/11 world.

5. Difficult Daughters by Manju Kapur. Set in the 1940s, during the time of the Partition of India, and is a story both of this liberation and the attempts of Virmati, the eldest of 11 children in a Punjabi family, to liberate herself from the expectations of society and family, first through her university studies and then through a burgeoning relationship with one of her professors, who is already married. Similar to Restless, this story is told through the eyes of Virmati's daughter, Ida, as she tries to find out more about her mother's life and her parents' marriage.

Meanwhile, here's the full list of the books I read this year:

• Sunset Park — Paul Auster
• The Tudor Queens of England — David Loades
• This Bleeding City — Alex Preston
• The Hell of It All — Charlie Brooker
• Surface Detail — Iain M Banks
• Palo Alto— James Franco
• What You See Is What You Get — Alan Sugar
• The Mind's Eye — Oliver Sacks
• Germania— Simon Wilder
• The Snowman — Jo Nesbo
• Redbreast — Jo Nesbo
• The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories
• Nemesis — Jo Nesbo
• The Devil's Star — Jo Nesbo
• Death and the Virgin — Chris Skidmore
• The Unnamed — Joshua Ferris
• Meeting Mr Kim — Jennifer Barclay
• Restless — William Boyd
• Berlin Game — Len Deighton
• The Oxford Murders — Guillermo Martinez
• Difficult Daughters — Manju Kapur
• The Lincoln Lawyer — Michael Connelly
• Proust and the Squid — Maryanne Wolf
• The Leopard — Jo Nesbo
• The King's Speech — Mark Logue and Peter Conradi
• Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother — Amy Chua
• All We Wanted Was Everything — Janelle Brown
• Sweet Valley Confidential — Francine Pascal
• The Bonesetter's Daughter — Amy Tan
• Killing Bono — Neil McCormick
• The Nine — Jeffrey Toobin
• The Great Perhaps — Joe Meno
• A Favourite of the Gods — Sybille Bedford
• Winning Arguments — Jay Heinrichs
• Girls Like Us — Sheila Weller
• Charly 9 — Jean Teulé
• Room — Emma Donaghue
• If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This — Robin Black
• The Winter Queen — Boris Akunin
• Case Histories — Kate Atkinson
• 127 Hours — Aron Ralston
• The Shipping News — E Annie Proulx
• The Report — Jessica Francis Kane
• Kingpin — Kevin Poulsen
• Sing You Home — Jodi Picoult
• The Spoiler — Annalena McAfee
• Daughters—in—Law — Joanna Trollope
• A Secret Kept — Tatiana de Rosnay
• One False Move — Harlan Coben
• We Need To Talk about Kevin — Lionel Shriver
• Only Time Will Tell — Jeffrey Archer
• The Postmistress — Sarah Blake
• Lucky Break — Esther Freud
• Sister — Rosamund Lupton
• Afterwards — Rosamund Lupton
• Everything We Ever Wanted — Sara Shepard
• Started Early, Took My Dog — Kate Atkinson
• The Godfather — Mario Puzo
• Moonlight Mile — Dennis Lehane
• Gone with the Wind — Margaret Mitchell
• Water for Elephants — Sara Gruen
• Double Fault — Lionel Shriver
• Commencement — J Courtney Sullivan
• Girl from the South — Joanna Trollope
• The Blind Assassin — Margaret Atwood
• The Third Angel — Alice Hoffman
• Caleb's Crossing — Geraldine Brooks
• Brother and Sister — Joanna Trollope
• The Confession of Katherine Howard — Suzannah Dunn
• True Grit — Charles Portis
• I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 — Douglas Edwards
• Witness the Night — Kishwar Desai
• The Sea House — Esther Freud
• Moonwalking with Einstein — Joshua Foer
• Law and Disorder — Tim Kevan
• The Drowning People — Richard Mason
• The Good Daughters — Joyce Maynard
• What the Nanny Saw — Fiona Neill
• Joanna — Nancy Goldstone
• Best Friends — Joanna Trollope
• Second Honeymoon — Joanna Trollope
• A Passionate Man — Joanna Trollope
• Palladio — Jonathan Dee
• Our Kind of Traitor — John Le Carré
• Submarine — Joe Dunthorne
• Is That a Fish in Your Ear? — David Bellos
• American Weather — Charles McLeod
• Behind the Scenes at the Museum — Kate Atkinson
• Adapt — Tim Harford
• The First Wife — Emily Barr
• Wild Swans — Jung Chang
• The Lady of the Rivers — Philippa Gregory
• The Submission — Amy Waldman
• The Book of Lies — Mary Horlock
• Player One — Douglas Coupland
• By Nightfall — Michael Cunningham
• The Fear Index — Robert Harris
• The Sense of an Ending — Julian Barnes
• Live Wire — Harlan Coben
• The Marriage Plot — Jeffrey Eugenides
• The Traitor's Wife — Kathleen Kent
• The Unfixed Stars — Michael Byers
• A Fool's Alphabet — Sebastian Faulks
• blueeyedboy — Joanne Harris
• Transition — Iain Banks
• The Diary of the Lady — Rachel Johnson
• The Donor — Helen Fitzgerald
• The Deadly Touch of the Tigress — Ian Hamilton
• Mary Boleyn — Alison Weir
• The Litigators — John Grisham
• Sarah's Key — Tatiana De Rosnay
• A Long Lunch — Simon Hoggart
• Sex on the Moon — Ben Mezrich
• Gang Member for a Day — Sudhir Venkatesh
• The Fifth Witness — Michael Connelly
• All the Things We Never Said — Sara Shepard
• The Post—Birthday World — Lionel Shriver
• The Good, the Bad and the Multiplex  — Mark Kermode
• The Remake  — Clive James
• Thinks  — David Lodge
• The Better Angels of Our Nature  — Steven Pinker

Mad, Bad and Sad

A Dangerous Method isn't out in the UK until February so I took the opportunity to see it in Cannes today (fortunately in version originale rather than dubbed into French). This makes the second film this month in which I have seen Michael Fassbender play a sex addict, although as Carl Jung in A Dangerous Method, his obsession is often, if not always, an academic one.

A Dangerous Method opens in 1904, as the troubled Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) is brought, kicking and screaming, to a hospital in Zürich where Jung intends to treat her using a controversial new technique of one Signund Freud (Viggo Mortensen), known as psychoanalysis or, as Jung puts it, "talking to the patient." Spielrein, it turns out, was abused by her father from a young age but what is really causing her "episodes" is a build-up of the shame of having derived sexual pleasure from the abuse. Yes, thinks Jung, this is very Freudian indeed.

We follow the growing relationship between Jung and Spielrein, the latter becoming the former's lover and muse and, after she recovers, a psychologist herself. Jung loves his fertile wife Emma but she is only the foundations of his house, he says, while Spielrein is the love of his life (another lover is "the perfume in the air").

The movie also examines the relationship between Freud and Jung, Jung initially seeing Freud as a father-figure and mentor and Freud seeing Jung as the son and heir who will continue promoting psychoanalysis after his own demise. But they disagree over the way forward for their field and the dispute is heightened when Freud finds out that Jung has misled him as to the nature of his affair with Spielrein.

There were good performances from the three leads, including Keira, who managed a solid Russian accent and was just hysterical enough for Spielrein's earlier years, toning it down nicely as her character recovers, matures and suffers from a broken heart. Christopher Hampton's screenplay was tight and engaging, even if the time jumps, often of several years, felt a little too frequent, rushing the character and plot development. 

I can't remember if this film has been suggested as possible Oscar nomination fodder; I suspect it will lose out to bigger and better productions but A Dangerous Method remains a thoughtful and enjoyable story about the relationships between three notable historical figures.

Christmas Eve, Cannes-Style

With apologies to all those who woke up to a cold, grey or rainy Christmas Eve, the weather here was gorgeous again today. Dad and I went for a sunrise run and then we all went down to the market to buy food supplies. I was in charge of the bûche (Yule log) but finding one that wasn't excessively creamy and covered with accoutrements proved a little tricky so we settled for Paul's bûchettes.

We had lunch on the beach at Bijou Plage, but not before a quick dip in the sea — very brief in my case and only achieved by sprinting in at full speed and then falling over, submerging myself shoulder-deep. After lunch, a strong breeze materialised, forcing us to move on, but not before I managed a few leaps.

I then went to the cinema (of which more to follow later) and had a wander back home via the shops. Cannes at Christmas really isn't all that bad...

I Can Do the Cannes-Cannes

After last year's Christmas trip to Cannes was snowed off, I was relieved to see the forecast of much milder climes this year. Cannes was 16 degrees and sunny today, perfect for a little afternoon stroll along the Croisette and a little light (window) shopping on the rue d'Antibes.

 

Bex's 2011 London Food and Drink Awards

It's that time of the year when I usually start to compile lists of my favourite movies, books and music of the year but this year, I've also decided to do a round-up of some of my favourite new places to eat and drink in London. These places aren't necessarily new to London but I first visited them all in 2011 and being me, I've prioritised caffeine, burgers and gin.

1. Best new macchiato: Tapped & Packed (Fitzrovia) [CLOSED]
Tapped & Packed has been around on Rathbone Place for a while but I only got around to checking it out when they opened a branch on ToCoRo. There is no sign outside--just a suspended bicycle--and the sugar comes in old Tate & Lyle tins. The decor is very minimalist and natural and it's a great place to relax and recaffeinate, away from the bustle of ToCoRo. Most importantly, though, their macchiatos are rich, smooth and delicious.
Runner up: Store Street Espresso

Tapped & Packed's macchiato

2. Best new brunch: St Ali (Clerkenwell) [CLOSED]
If I had done a best new borough of 2011, it would probably be Clerkenwell. Although I work relatively close, Clerkenwell always felt a little too far to go at lunchtime. Nonetheless, I've been to St Ali a couple of times now. They roast their own coffee, which is gorgeous, but they also have a great brunch menu--French toast with sweet-cure bacon and syrup really hit the spot but most of the other options on the menu also sounded tempting.
I'm actually quite boring when it comes to brunch and I felt I couldn't nominate the Riding House Cafe again, so there is no runner up in this category.

3. Best new street food: eat.st (King's Cross)
Lunchtime at King's Cross used to be a rather boring affair. It was usually a choice between the not-exactly-cheap gastropubs and sandwich-type fodder. Now, we have our own food stalls on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, tucked away near the building site between the back of King's Cross and St Pancras. The stalls change from day to day, but my favourites include Homeslice (delicious wood-fired pizza), The Red Herring Smokehouse's posh bacon sarnies, and The Ribman's pork rolls.
Runner up: Exmouth Market

4. Best new cocktail: Experimental Cocktail Club (Soho)
I still haven't managed to visit the two cocktail joints at the top of my to-drink list (Callooh Callay and 69 Colebrooke Row), but I did make it to London's snooty sister of the Parisian Experimental Cocktail Club. I've complained before about the service in the London ECC, but this category is best cocktail, not best bar, hence the ECC's victory, its signature St Germain drink being the best cocktail I've had this side of the Atlantic this year. London still needs to take a cue from New York on the secret speakeasy front...
Runner up: Purl (Marylebone finally gets itself a cocktail bar!)

5. Best new burger: Meat Liquor (Marylebone)
I first read about Marylebone burger-and-booze newbie, Meat Liquor, in Time Out shortly before it opened last month but because it is closed on Sundays and Mondays and because I've been so busy over the past month, I haven't been able to test out the claims of faultless burgers and fab, boozy cocktails. Meat Liquor doesn't take bookings and the queue can get pretty intense. 

Luckily, we got there at around six this evening and didn't have to wait long. By the time we left, at about seven-thirty, the queue was halfway up Welbeck Street. The music was loud (metal, mainly) and the decor was very cool: angry red and black graffiti scrawled over the walls, including the surprising central cupola, and very little lighting. Meat Liquor definitely gets bonus points for bringing some much-needed coolness to Marylebone. 

More importantly, though, my bacon cheese burger was, as promised, superb, and the fries ("not chips") and onion rings were also tasty. An interesting cocktail list fulfilled the "liquor" component; I opted for something fruity and with a hint of Absinthe.
Runner up: Riding House Cafe (see below)

Meat Liquor and its central cupola

6. Best new restaurant: The Riding House Cafe (Fitzrovia)
This was a very easy category for me to award. I've been to The Riding House Cafe five or six times since it opened in the spring and every time has been great. I love the concept of all-day dining — visiting a place first thing for coffee and some brunch, turning up for an afternoon pudding, or coming for cocktails and/or dinner — and the RHC does it very well. 

On most of my visits, I've ordered the following: a small selection of the sharing plates as a starter, the cheese burger (perfectly medium rare), and, if I have room, one of the chocolatey puddings. Oh, and the cocktails are great too; my favourite is the raspberry and elderflower Collins.
Runner up: Spuntino (it wouldn't be Bex London restaurant round-up without a Russell Norman component).