I met Beryl Bainbridge last night. Was at a party quaffing expensive booze and smelly cheese and was introduced to the chain-smoking whiskey-guzzling great Dame.
As mad as a hatter.
Clare “I used to be a pirate” Francis was also there. And suddenly they proceed to have a very public spat. No fisticuffs, of course, not these dignified ladies, and certainly no ground-to-air fountain pens were in evidence; just a few choice blue words hurled back and forth across a crowded room.
As I understood it, Beryl referred to Clare as “that sailor bird…” to which that sailor bird took great offence. Clare’s gripe seemed to be that the being-a-sailor-bird days were long behind her, and now she’s a best-selling author she felt she should be referred to as such. But Beryl seemed to be of the opinion that the title “sailor bird” was more appropriate. It was all rather interesting and definitely a timely diversion from the peculiar couple from Perth who were spitting bits of Stilton into my Rioja.
So then I get introduced to this tall, rather peculiar chap. Long unruly hair, tweed suit, tweed waistcoat, tweed hat, round glasses as thick as submarine windows (I reckon he can spot astronauts waving back at him), long flappy shoes, a flower in his button-hole and teeth so long they reminded me of garden patio decking. So, we get chatting. And he tells me he is a hermit.
He said he became so inspired after reading about a Russian hermit, that he proceeded to read all the books he could find on being a hermit, then procured a caravan (that he refers to as 'she' and references boat-speak all the time) and located a vast empty wasteland in South London and ‘moored’ his 'ship' there. And in doing so achieved his goal of becoming a hermit. Brilliant.
But I met him at a party?
Surely that's something of a lifestyle anachronism, or at least a not-quite-right-ism? I met a hermit at a party. How do you meet a hermit at a party? That’s like meeting a penguin in a sauna. And then it gets worse... he starts telling me about all these other famous hermits around the world. Exactly how does a hermit become famous? How does that work? As I stood amongst this group of well-heeled individuals, all desperately fascinated with this tweedy hermit and his tales of other hermits, my slightly sozzled brain started malfunctioning under the weight of these hermitry revelations,. It was ridiculous. But no one else was laughing. I was trying so desperately hard to not spray red wine over everyone that I kept making silly little gargling noises, no doubt prompting them to think that I was the odd one. Furthermore, Hermit sounds too much like Kermit. That really wasn’t helping.
And then he mentions, to this enthralled wide-eyed audience, that he has a most fascinating tale to tell about the most famous hermit of them all. Cue drum roll… This hermit was so famous and so great, that, wait for it… loads of other hermits went to visit him. Yep. And because there were now so many of them in one place, Mr. I’m-the-best-hermit-in-the-world decides to build a huge house so they could all live in it.
Together.
As hermits.
Living together.
Lots of them.
Got that?
Okay.
Thursday, 30 October 2008
Monday, 25 August 2008
The Dark Knight at BFI IMAX
Watching The Dark Knight on a screen that's the height of five double-decker buses with a 11,600-watt digital surround-sound system was the equivalent of being run over by five double-decker buses, peeled off the road by screaming baboons, stuffed into a canon and fired head first into a brick wall.
As a viewing experience, it has to go down as the most painfully dumb, excessive and utterly pointless battering of the senses I have ever experienced in a cinema, although I would hesitate to label the IMAX a cinema, as the general effect is more in keeping with a rollercoaster ride that… just… doesn’t… end… leaving me feeling like I’d been subjected to some pointless human foie gras experiment and force fed four thousand cream cakes then ordered, at gun point, to trampoline for two and half hours whilst someone told me a really shit story that… just… wouldn’t… end.
Talking and telling. There’s so much talking and telling in this film. With his ridiculous 80-a-day voice (we’re talking cigars, here, Marlboro Man’s a pussy compared to this bloke) and a mask that obscures all but his mouth, it’s only natural that Batman's teeth become the focal point of attention, especially as he’s constantly spouting endless soul destroying bat wisdom (what is it with all the endless ridiculous philosophizing? Is there a Batman bible I don’t know about? The Book of Bat? Bat Zen: the art of sucking the life from an audience via their ears?) and so it quickly becomes apparent that his mouth and teeth bare a striking resemblance to those of David Beckham’s, which further highlights how utterly ludicrous his more-gravel-than-a-footballer’s-driveway voice is. It is ridiculous. Then comical. Then annoying. Really annoying. To the point I started fantasizing about headbutting the chair in front of me until my skull caved in rather than sit through one more minute of endless bat babbling from what sounds like an asthmatic mountain gorilla who’s just eaten a maxi-tub of crunchy peanut butter at high altitude.
Ledger’s performance was all right; it does stand out, but only because of a distinct lack of competition combined with an “I’ve just shit myself” geriatric shuffle. The Joker, expectation-wise, surely has to be one of the easiest characters for an actor to play, and Ledger strolls through this on auto-pilot with no surprises. Easy money. It's just that everything about the Joker is predictable, from how Ledger plays him, to how he is first introduced, to how he acts/reacts throughout the film, and the only real surprise is that he doesn’t figure in the finale. Go figure. Or not as the case may be. Bizarre really. The finale is gifted to Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent, Mr. Two-Face to his enemies, who turns overacting into an artform and screams and shouts a lot about a lot of stuff we really don’t care about; a performance that will surely be the envy of Nicolas Cage. Oscar-worthy performance from Ledger? Not if he was in last year's category, but then he’s gone and done that dead thing so watch this space.
In summary: the movie was an assault on the senses, yet still felt ponderous. It was long at two and half hours, yet felt considerably longer. Although based on a comic book, it took itself much too seriously, and because it took itself too seriously it subsequently failed in opting for caricature over character and cliché over invention. Overall the film displayed little grasp of the subtleties involved in good storytelling with only limited effort aimed at making dramatic sense. It was all about the spectacle.
The only thing that might have improved The Dark Knight would have been opium-dipped popcorn. And possibly a gun. On my way home that night there were tube delays due to a person under a train. I reckon a quick rummage through bloodstained pockets would have revealed a ticket stub for the IMAX.
As a viewing experience, it has to go down as the most painfully dumb, excessive and utterly pointless battering of the senses I have ever experienced in a cinema, although I would hesitate to label the IMAX a cinema, as the general effect is more in keeping with a rollercoaster ride that… just… doesn’t… end… leaving me feeling like I’d been subjected to some pointless human foie gras experiment and force fed four thousand cream cakes then ordered, at gun point, to trampoline for two and half hours whilst someone told me a really shit story that… just… wouldn’t… end.
Talking and telling. There’s so much talking and telling in this film. With his ridiculous 80-a-day voice (we’re talking cigars, here, Marlboro Man’s a pussy compared to this bloke) and a mask that obscures all but his mouth, it’s only natural that Batman's teeth become the focal point of attention, especially as he’s constantly spouting endless soul destroying bat wisdom (what is it with all the endless ridiculous philosophizing? Is there a Batman bible I don’t know about? The Book of Bat? Bat Zen: the art of sucking the life from an audience via their ears?) and so it quickly becomes apparent that his mouth and teeth bare a striking resemblance to those of David Beckham’s, which further highlights how utterly ludicrous his more-gravel-than-a-footballer’s-driveway voice is. It is ridiculous. Then comical. Then annoying. Really annoying. To the point I started fantasizing about headbutting the chair in front of me until my skull caved in rather than sit through one more minute of endless bat babbling from what sounds like an asthmatic mountain gorilla who’s just eaten a maxi-tub of crunchy peanut butter at high altitude.
Ledger’s performance was all right; it does stand out, but only because of a distinct lack of competition combined with an “I’ve just shit myself” geriatric shuffle. The Joker, expectation-wise, surely has to be one of the easiest characters for an actor to play, and Ledger strolls through this on auto-pilot with no surprises. Easy money. It's just that everything about the Joker is predictable, from how Ledger plays him, to how he is first introduced, to how he acts/reacts throughout the film, and the only real surprise is that he doesn’t figure in the finale. Go figure. Or not as the case may be. Bizarre really. The finale is gifted to Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent, Mr. Two-Face to his enemies, who turns overacting into an artform and screams and shouts a lot about a lot of stuff we really don’t care about; a performance that will surely be the envy of Nicolas Cage. Oscar-worthy performance from Ledger? Not if he was in last year's category, but then he’s gone and done that dead thing so watch this space.
In summary: the movie was an assault on the senses, yet still felt ponderous. It was long at two and half hours, yet felt considerably longer. Although based on a comic book, it took itself much too seriously, and because it took itself too seriously it subsequently failed in opting for caricature over character and cliché over invention. Overall the film displayed little grasp of the subtleties involved in good storytelling with only limited effort aimed at making dramatic sense. It was all about the spectacle.
The only thing that might have improved The Dark Knight would have been opium-dipped popcorn. And possibly a gun. On my way home that night there were tube delays due to a person under a train. I reckon a quick rummage through bloodstained pockets would have revealed a ticket stub for the IMAX.
Sunday, 8 June 2008
"It seems to me...
... that the most important of all the rules is to please, and that if a play has achieved this goal, it has followed the right path." Molière
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
Mexican stand-offs gone wrong, suitcases of abandoned drug money, a bad-ass killer on the trail of a likeable desperado, a smooth-talking bounty hunter on the trail of the bad-ass killer, and a policeman who talks a lot about a lot of stuff a lot of the time – for ages.
It fails to deliver on a set-up that is driven down our throats with each gruesome murder. An unstoppable killer closes in on his prey, an intuitive and very capable Vietnam veteran, whilst a wise old philosophizing policeman tracks both of them. That's the set-up, and we sit back in expectation as these three hurtle towards each other and… well… nothing really.
So we're left with a psychotic Spaniard sporting a Beatles haircut on a big face, lugging what looks like a scuba diving tank around a desert, laying waste to all and sundry in his pursuit of a Vietnam vet who doesn't quite understand the concept of running away (1974 anyone?); all whilst being investigated – and I use the word in its loosest sense - by a walking drawling scrotum in a sheriff's uniform prone to a soliloquy or ten.
There were some scenes that were just, well, I don't know what they were or where they were going or why they even existed; I suspect simply to give McCarthy's prose a voice, and Woody Harrelson's character didn't really bring anything to the equation other than another corpse for el big face to scuba to death. As I sat there watching this film whimper to its conclusion, the bone marrow in my legs started itching, and when Tommy Lee Jones started getting all Hamlet on the motherfucker, I could actually feel my teeth growing. Jesus. I couldn't get to the pub fast enough.
I understand why they did it. McCarthy’s book is all about how things aren’t what they used to be and how things don’t always turn out how they are supposed to and the unpredictability of life (a bit like football, really) and so we are accordingly gifted a lesson in keeping with that theme: a chase thriller that ends, wait for it.... not.... how.... it's.... supposed to. Brilliant. They subverted the genre to establish the narrative theme of a piece of literature and shock us all with the revelation… BIG FUCKING DRUM ROLL… that real life doesn’t always turn out the way you want or expect it to. Gee, thanks dad, but can you lay off with the life lessons I’m trying to watch an imitation of real life through the medium of drama. What? This is the film? Oh. How silly of me.
Drama isn’t just something that exists in this world because people write it; it’s pretty much the reverse that’s true, and dramatists exist in this world because human beings have an inherent need for drama. Writers exist to feed that need, and their role is, or should be, defined by those needs. Writers who fail to take an interest in the public perception of drama (what the audience wants/expects) can end up all too easily misunderstood or inaccessible. A writer who finds, to his surprise and frustration, that his audience fails to connect with him is a world apart from a writer who is inaccessible by design. The former is a learning curve, the latter is unforgivable, and shares much in common with the much-maligned artist who claims his work is first and foremost for himself and not others
MAN
What the fuck is that?
ARTIST
My painting
MAN
It’s shit.
ARTIST
I paint for myself. I follow no rules, other than what my heart and soul dictate.
MAN
It’s shit.
ARTIST
What you see is from my soul.
MAN
It’s shit. My cat could do better.
ARTIST
I wouldn’t expect you to understand it. I paint for me; no one else but me.
MAN
Thank fuck for that.
Which raises the question: does a work of art exist (as a work of art) if it has been created without regard for the spectator? An argument, I accept, that could be debatable with regards to the above painting, but one that is wholly indefensible with regards to drama. A work of drama exists for an audience.
My problem with No Country For Old Men is that they ignored a fundamental principle of drama to preach reality to thousands of people who paid hard-earned money to leave the real world behind for a few hours.
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
Mexican stand-offs gone wrong, suitcases of abandoned drug money, a bad-ass killer on the trail of a likeable desperado, a smooth-talking bounty hunter on the trail of the bad-ass killer, and a policeman who talks a lot about a lot of stuff a lot of the time – for ages.
It fails to deliver on a set-up that is driven down our throats with each gruesome murder. An unstoppable killer closes in on his prey, an intuitive and very capable Vietnam veteran, whilst a wise old philosophizing policeman tracks both of them. That's the set-up, and we sit back in expectation as these three hurtle towards each other and… well… nothing really.
So we're left with a psychotic Spaniard sporting a Beatles haircut on a big face, lugging what looks like a scuba diving tank around a desert, laying waste to all and sundry in his pursuit of a Vietnam vet who doesn't quite understand the concept of running away (1974 anyone?); all whilst being investigated – and I use the word in its loosest sense - by a walking drawling scrotum in a sheriff's uniform prone to a soliloquy or ten.
There were some scenes that were just, well, I don't know what they were or where they were going or why they even existed; I suspect simply to give McCarthy's prose a voice, and Woody Harrelson's character didn't really bring anything to the equation other than another corpse for el big face to scuba to death. As I sat there watching this film whimper to its conclusion, the bone marrow in my legs started itching, and when Tommy Lee Jones started getting all Hamlet on the motherfucker, I could actually feel my teeth growing. Jesus. I couldn't get to the pub fast enough.
I understand why they did it. McCarthy’s book is all about how things aren’t what they used to be and how things don’t always turn out how they are supposed to and the unpredictability of life (a bit like football, really) and so we are accordingly gifted a lesson in keeping with that theme: a chase thriller that ends, wait for it.... not.... how.... it's.... supposed to. Brilliant. They subverted the genre to establish the narrative theme of a piece of literature and shock us all with the revelation… BIG FUCKING DRUM ROLL… that real life doesn’t always turn out the way you want or expect it to. Gee, thanks dad, but can you lay off with the life lessons I’m trying to watch an imitation of real life through the medium of drama. What? This is the film? Oh. How silly of me.
Drama isn’t just something that exists in this world because people write it; it’s pretty much the reverse that’s true, and dramatists exist in this world because human beings have an inherent need for drama. Writers exist to feed that need, and their role is, or should be, defined by those needs. Writers who fail to take an interest in the public perception of drama (what the audience wants/expects) can end up all too easily misunderstood or inaccessible. A writer who finds, to his surprise and frustration, that his audience fails to connect with him is a world apart from a writer who is inaccessible by design. The former is a learning curve, the latter is unforgivable, and shares much in common with the much-maligned artist who claims his work is first and foremost for himself and not others
MAN
What the fuck is that?
ARTIST
My painting
MAN
It’s shit.
ARTIST
I paint for myself. I follow no rules, other than what my heart and soul dictate.
MAN
It’s shit.
ARTIST
What you see is from my soul.
MAN
It’s shit. My cat could do better.
ARTIST
I wouldn’t expect you to understand it. I paint for me; no one else but me.
MAN
Thank fuck for that.
Which raises the question: does a work of art exist (as a work of art) if it has been created without regard for the spectator? An argument, I accept, that could be debatable with regards to the above painting, but one that is wholly indefensible with regards to drama. A work of drama exists for an audience.
My problem with No Country For Old Men is that they ignored a fundamental principle of drama to preach reality to thousands of people who paid hard-earned money to leave the real world behind for a few hours.
Wednesday, 28 May 2008
Congratulations Harold
In 2005 Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Apart from a few predictable pieces, the media silence was deafening. I wrote a small piece on the subject and posted it on my MySpace page, titled: Congratulations Harold. It was both a celebration of the great man and a damning assault on the lack of media coverage the event received.
A week or so later I received an email from the MySpace admin team asking me to edit or remove my post. The admin said they had been receiving a lot of “traffic” expressing concern at the content of my post and questioned what I hoped to achieve by publicizing such views. I said I wasn't trying to achieve anything, I was simply venting, voicing my opinion, plus I hadn't received one single complaint. They then suggested it might be in everyone's interest if I simply removed the post, as they were sure I wouldn't want to offend anyone.
Okay, I replied to them, so let me get this straight. MySpace happily promotes:
Smut? Yes.
Expressions of Violence? Yes.
Horrible music, in every sense? Sure.
Political campaigning? Yep.
Religious dogma? Disturbingly in greater quantities.
Adultery? Yes, and we made it easier.
Online Predators? Yes, and we made it way easier.
Exploitation? The site runs on it actually.
Ignorance? More the merrier.
Free exchange of ideas? Sure. Oh wait, you mean intelligent ideas? Then no.
British Playwrights? Heavens No!
I ended by asking if this kind of censorship would have happened before Murdoch took ownership of MySpace. Their response was short and to the point. “It's our policy not to discuss Mr. Murdoch with the public." It was then I suggested theirs was a rather bizarre policy, considering they seemed more than happy to suck his dick in public.
It was around that time I discovered myself and my account had parted company.
Below is the offending article.
CONGRATULATIONS HAROLD
Last week, the finest living British playwright recorded, from his wheelchair, an acceptance speech for the greatest literary prize on earth. And yet anyone who wished or hoped to see an allusion to that talk would have searched the mainstream television schedules in vain.
He received no mention on any of the BBC’s main television news programmes. The BBC flagship news and culture programme, ‘Newsnight’, carried absolutely nothing; there was not a single mention of the fact that a British writer had, this month, been awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize for literature. Harold Pinter's acceptance speech was restricted to the satellite channel, More4, with a late night repeat on Channel 4. And that, quite simply, was that.
What about our newspapers, did they all celebrate this fantastic achievement? Or did many of them choose to ignore literary history in favour of a farcical assault on a dying man’s political beliefs? Long admired for his dramatic work, Harold Pinter has been equally reviled for his political activism. His crime, according to the media, is voicing strong concerns about others’ crimes; those being crimes against humanity. For his 'crime', one of the world’s greatest living writers suffers the fate of so many writers before him; censorship. Except this isn’t nineteenth century Russia; this is twenty-first century Britain.
Powerful interests with plenty at stake drive the brutal truth of modern media and politics - that honesty and sincerity are heavily punished rather than rewarded. It does not matter how often the likes of Harold Pinter are shown to be right. It does not matter how often the likes of Bush and Blair are shown to have lied in the cause of power and profits. The job of mainstream journalism is to learn nothing from the past, to treat rare individuals motivated by compassion as rare fools deserving contempt. The benefits are clear enough: if even high-profile dissidents can be painted as wretched, sickly fools, then which reader or viewer would want to be associated with dissent? As such, ‘normal’ (conforming, consuming, looking after number one) can be made to seem healthy, balanced, sensible and sane.
Journalists everywhere deferred to Les Roberts (one of the world’s leading epidemiologists) when he estimated millions of deaths in the Congo in 2000 and 2001. Yet he was publicly humiliated and judged a fool, guilty of schoolboy errors, when estimating 100,000 civilian deaths since the March 2003 US-UK invasion of Iraq. That is nothing less than disgusting - both his treatment and the grim reality of those figures. Realism is seductive because once you have accepted the reasonable notion that you should base your actions on reality, you are too often led to accept, without much questioning, someone else’s version of what that reality is. It is a crucial act of independent thinking to be sceptical of someone else’s description of reality.
The great task of propaganda is to make dissent seem unrealistic, embarrassing, and absurd. And unfortunately, in this very real crime against a wonderfully brilliant man, it’s done just that.
“The theatre is what the British have always been good at. And nobody has so come to represent the theatre’s strengths, its rigours, and its glories, as Harold Pinter.” (David Hare, December 10, 2005)
The 2005 Nobel Prize for literature belongs to Harold Pinter.
Congratulations Harold. I’m proud of you.
A week or so later I received an email from the MySpace admin team asking me to edit or remove my post. The admin said they had been receiving a lot of “traffic” expressing concern at the content of my post and questioned what I hoped to achieve by publicizing such views. I said I wasn't trying to achieve anything, I was simply venting, voicing my opinion, plus I hadn't received one single complaint. They then suggested it might be in everyone's interest if I simply removed the post, as they were sure I wouldn't want to offend anyone.
Okay, I replied to them, so let me get this straight. MySpace happily promotes:
Smut? Yes.
Expressions of Violence? Yes.
Horrible music, in every sense? Sure.
Political campaigning? Yep.
Religious dogma? Disturbingly in greater quantities.
Adultery? Yes, and we made it easier.
Online Predators? Yes, and we made it way easier.
Exploitation? The site runs on it actually.
Ignorance? More the merrier.
Free exchange of ideas? Sure. Oh wait, you mean intelligent ideas? Then no.
British Playwrights? Heavens No!
I ended by asking if this kind of censorship would have happened before Murdoch took ownership of MySpace. Their response was short and to the point. “It's our policy not to discuss Mr. Murdoch with the public." It was then I suggested theirs was a rather bizarre policy, considering they seemed more than happy to suck his dick in public.
It was around that time I discovered myself and my account had parted company.
Below is the offending article.
CONGRATULATIONS HAROLD
Last week, the finest living British playwright recorded, from his wheelchair, an acceptance speech for the greatest literary prize on earth. And yet anyone who wished or hoped to see an allusion to that talk would have searched the mainstream television schedules in vain.
He received no mention on any of the BBC’s main television news programmes. The BBC flagship news and culture programme, ‘Newsnight’, carried absolutely nothing; there was not a single mention of the fact that a British writer had, this month, been awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize for literature. Harold Pinter's acceptance speech was restricted to the satellite channel, More4, with a late night repeat on Channel 4. And that, quite simply, was that.
What about our newspapers, did they all celebrate this fantastic achievement? Or did many of them choose to ignore literary history in favour of a farcical assault on a dying man’s political beliefs? Long admired for his dramatic work, Harold Pinter has been equally reviled for his political activism. His crime, according to the media, is voicing strong concerns about others’ crimes; those being crimes against humanity. For his 'crime', one of the world’s greatest living writers suffers the fate of so many writers before him; censorship. Except this isn’t nineteenth century Russia; this is twenty-first century Britain.
Powerful interests with plenty at stake drive the brutal truth of modern media and politics - that honesty and sincerity are heavily punished rather than rewarded. It does not matter how often the likes of Harold Pinter are shown to be right. It does not matter how often the likes of Bush and Blair are shown to have lied in the cause of power and profits. The job of mainstream journalism is to learn nothing from the past, to treat rare individuals motivated by compassion as rare fools deserving contempt. The benefits are clear enough: if even high-profile dissidents can be painted as wretched, sickly fools, then which reader or viewer would want to be associated with dissent? As such, ‘normal’ (conforming, consuming, looking after number one) can be made to seem healthy, balanced, sensible and sane.
Journalists everywhere deferred to Les Roberts (one of the world’s leading epidemiologists) when he estimated millions of deaths in the Congo in 2000 and 2001. Yet he was publicly humiliated and judged a fool, guilty of schoolboy errors, when estimating 100,000 civilian deaths since the March 2003 US-UK invasion of Iraq. That is nothing less than disgusting - both his treatment and the grim reality of those figures. Realism is seductive because once you have accepted the reasonable notion that you should base your actions on reality, you are too often led to accept, without much questioning, someone else’s version of what that reality is. It is a crucial act of independent thinking to be sceptical of someone else’s description of reality.
The great task of propaganda is to make dissent seem unrealistic, embarrassing, and absurd. And unfortunately, in this very real crime against a wonderfully brilliant man, it’s done just that.
“The theatre is what the British have always been good at. And nobody has so come to represent the theatre’s strengths, its rigours, and its glories, as Harold Pinter.” (David Hare, December 10, 2005)
The 2005 Nobel Prize for literature belongs to Harold Pinter.
Congratulations Harold. I’m proud of you.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
