vendredi 27 août 2004

In a Factory corner, they're dismantling the 'Wall' The papers are tediously full of it. The September magazines are coming out. Sex is no longer the cover story. This weekend, France's roads and motorways will be full of it too, bumper to bumper crawling and cussin', children turned maddening brats the length of the traffic jams that stretch for kilometre after kilometre. Dreaded, bitter-sweet, here comes "La Rentrée". Last year, I wrote up this annual phenomenon, I won't repeat myself. But it's struck at the Factory too. Check the Beeb for Jessel. Three and a half years ago, he gave us 'Analysis: Trouble at the top'. Part of the French "leadership" has changed since, so -- but not much -- has the nature of the trouble, but this rentrée will bring more of it. Here begins the season of strikes and turbulence, dismal domestic disharmony. Cheekily I asked Stephen yesterday, "Would you mind if I blogged you as 'that s*** f***. b***'?" "Well, yes, I would," Jessel replied, "especially if you identify me by name." It doesn't stand for what you'd guess it might, but I won't. Instead, I'll wish him a fine Himalayan adventure! As for Barry 'Blackhorn' James, our second veteran and occasional object of great note here, he'd rather be 'Liquorice Stick'. That's his clarinet, one instrument for a defiant clarion call to the republican barricades. "And what do I call Donald?" I wondered aloud, "Mr Armour." Third fearless hack of the summer trio and the most gifted mimic of the bunch. "Hmm," somebody reflected. "The Laird of Curmudgeon?" "There you have it! Thanks." This grand trio deserves a tribute, an affectionate one for what I've been calling "The Wall". Almost as regularly as the 14 pigeons who wait on roofs near my bathroom window for their daily breakfast, but far more strong-willed, these gentlemen have for several weeks been ambling into AFP. They take up seats in a row across the midships of the English Desk, bang between the Command Deck and the Dark Stern: Africa, and other journalists who venture down sometimes into the bilge. Sometimes erudite to the point of obscurity, occasionally tetchy at how some younger sub-editor might nervously attempt to hack their copy, and entertaining and funny, masters of wordplay, this trio has helped to make it survivable: the summer that never was. Often after Karin's gone and I have followed with a happy sigh, it's been one or other of these guys who have picked up wherever we left off on Africa's Great Lakes (Relief Web), Darfur and the black tragi-comedy of Equatorial Guinea, suddenly of much more interest to the world because of the involvement of the Iron Lady's allegedly scheming son. Occasionally, they've dared to tell ironic truths that even I, in all my irreverence, just might think twice about revealing to the Kansas City Milkman. This past week, they and the wry evening editor, Denholm, spotted yet another plot afoot. It has been purported that across Africa, Factory hands, rebels and propaganda-mongering warlord leaders alike conspire like this: "KDZ and NB have left for the day. Now let's hit 'em." So, in Burundi, in Rwanda, from north and south, they commit their most devious deeds and make nigh-incomprehensible declarations between 8:00 and 10:00 pm, Paris time. "Was it all right?" one victim or another asks me the next day about the story. And usually, of course, it was "just fine". Sadly, la rentrée means the end of all that. When I'm back in the Factory after my last week of fragmented holiday, those particular veterans will be gone. And for the rest of us, it'll be "annual all change time", settling down after the summer shake-up that sees old faces starting in new posts around the AFP world. I'll miss the terrible trio, jibes in Latin and chats in Russian which lost me, look forward to seeing them again, but it won't be back to life as normal, because it never is. If I've learned anything from all the previous rentrées, it's that "normal life" is no more than a reassuring myth! What chance of an Indian summer? 11:39:51 AM  link   your views? []

mardi 24 août 2004

Chasing Cindy The steamy skipper says she's unshackled. "...shamelessly, without any reservations, you lay on my naked body... you sensed my indifference, so you applied your hungry mouth to me without any guilt or humiliation, and you drove me near crazy while you drained me." Yup. We can safely conclude that in 'Dusting My Brain', Cindy's getting over the hump. I take note of her latest moves and so does my blogroll. She's subsequently more discreet about the massage than some of us might have been. Cold in Paris tonight, I venture dedicate this brief share of Cindy's warmth to those who are having a harder time dealing with ... with burnout. 10:18:01 PM  link   your views? [] Sounds great (iii): With 'Ambio', friends can make listening easy It's tempting to wait for the "pros" to review ambio's first album, 'tentations'. My ears, after all, are unaccustomed to such barbaric electronic assaults! And I lack the required jargon. François the Netwiz once called some of it "cheese". No. I enjoy it, Mr Demeyer, and as you threatened, the CD is better still than the version I heard in the making several months ago. The music Olivier Aubin and François have made comes as welcome aural balm, especially after maddening workdays, when I have been simultaneously escaping into Alan Lomax's unrelated, gloriously ghost-written "autobiography" of 'Mr Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and [self-proclaimed] Inventor of Jazz'. Now Aubin and Demeyer have released Temptations, they've classified it "New Age" for the benefit of category makers, but 'ambio' is a good name for their team and a nod and a wink or two to Tangerine Dream and Pink Floyd are the most obvious tributes an "old" pair of ears hears in the music. In a relaxing début together -- was François joking when he hinted that one idea was to nurse the listener to sleep? -- this gifted pair borrowed from Baudelaire for the title track and offer new "atmosphère, atmosphère", very well recorded, and often warmth in music distant from some of the enjoyable "frenetronica" coming down the wires from a buzzing Berlin. You can sample it for yourself with the mp3 offerings on the 'ambio' website, which offers a broad idea of what they're about with names like 'bali beach' and 'gift to shiva', but my own current favourite is the sequence of 'cyclops', 'loungerine' and 'megapops' tracks that forms the backbone of the disc. Broad waves of colour and an astute treatment of minimalist rhythmic material are worked up particularly well here into climactic swells and splashes which sweep you elsewhere. But not to bed. Lounge music? Sometimes. Trance? if you like. Relaxing? Certainly, at least to the listener, if not always in the making, it would seem! I've previously mentioned Jehan Legac, the digital artist whose 'War is Over' -- minus the prominent balls -- served as the basis for the artwork totally appropriate to the music. The Kid didn't like the back cover juxtaposition of the 'ambio' green with candybar pink for the album title. Neither would I if it didn't reflect the humour evident in the easy listening, a humour insufficiently innocent to be completely childlike. An unpretentious, talented start for Aubin and Demeyer, 'tentations' is worth the diversion. Thanks, guys. 9:45:59 PM  link   your views? []

samedi 21 août 2004

Of pros & 'demented' deities at work Untimely clouds and cold are back, not I hope too low and bleak for friends and loves of mine who are out of town and deserve better on holidays in parts of France where the forecast is little more promising. Finding my own entertainment, it's been an interesting time to watch the pros at work. Sam Raimi the 'Spiderman' director is one such. So is Eleanor, the friend who let me in on that meal in the dark. I've sometimes been stood down of late in surprising ways and less unusual ones. The Hotel Losserand became prematurely peaceful when the last visitor, who had planned to stay until Friday morning, headed north on Tuesday answering a new imperative in a life forever on the move. Once a Wildcat, always a wildcat. May she go on writing well! A pro in the making, though I can't disclose what she's working on. The beautiful beast left me dreaming, though, of the fieriest and feistiest of hot dates later in the week, maybe even this weekend, with the Secret She from whom no kiss could ever go amiss. But as the Faithful Five ¾ -- most welcome back now that I am myself again -- are aware, Milady too is rarely around this summer, a very busy bee seen just enough to know how happy she makes me. Thus I was delighted when Eleanor, a widely travelled journalist who works at the Factory from time to time, told me of the assignment she had on Thursday and let me tag along. Literally tagging, for at the blacker than pitch eatery we visited you are led in holding the shoulder of the person in front of you. The reason I won't write it up in detail is that it really is Eleanor's story and was one of the most perfect opportunities for radio journalism imaginable. All I would say of the place -- apart from those food stains -- is that because I'm an "aural person", I found it fascinating. If later, Eleanor says I can link to the broadcast, which should be available on broadband Internet, I shall. Also interesting was to see how much radio work has moved on (and how much it hasn't really) since my BBC days in the late '70s, since my companion was doing a job there. Well. There's one other thing. After previous mention of the famous meal Albert Finney and Susannah York share in 'Tom Jones', it would be absurd to skip saying that goodness gracious me! while that film scene is very erotic, it doesn't hold a banned candle up to the idea of eating somewhere where everything is sound, touch, taste and smell. What a place that would be to invite my love, never mind the mess! The Susannah season on DVD has been pursued this week with two more superb films unseen for ages. Robert Aldrich's 'The Killing of Sister George' (1968) still holds up very well today as a brave drama about a lesbian couple, where TV soap opera filming scenes bore some, but not me. They're an accurate portrayal of the broadcasting corporation where my career began, ruthless in its hypocrisy but full of truly decent and courageous people. Beryl Reid, funny and tragic, acts brilliantly, giving the best of her emotional range. The scenes where she and York play Laurel and Hardy are among unforgettable episodes. Another classic, 'Battle of Britain' (1969), has this year been re-released as one of the best double-DVD special editions I own. The most realistic, dramatic and historically triple-checked account of the 1940 air war ever made, with a big dream cast including Laurence Olivier as Dowding (History Learning Site), it now even has William Walton's musical score as well as Ron Goodwin's, the one used at the time apart from the very best bit. The other extras are also exceptional and include making-of material with director Guy Hamilton -- who reveals the one enigma where the film couldn't be quite accurate because it was then still covered by the Official Secrets Act -- York and cinematographer Freddie Young. I have more films with my "screen goddess" in the pipeline, knowing that's not the best accolade for such a consummate talent, but I should also watch the budget. The more I learn about the hard work of movie-making, notably from such DVDs, the tougher it becomes to slag off a stinker without acknowledging its merits. When Francis urged me to buy Sam Raimi's 'Darkman' (1990) while he was selling it dirt cheap, I was reluctant, despite the surprising cast for a comic-book story: Liam Neeson, Frances McDormand, Larry Drake, Colin Friels... It is a stinker, so awful that it's a hugely entertaining, ridiculous superhero film, right over the top. Neeson, a pioneering scientist who gets horrendously burned but fights back with real style and some appalling lines, had the sense to get out before 'Darkman 2' and '3'. Maybe it's the perfect comic-book movie, beating 'Batman and Robin', but this comic book was never drawn anywhere but in Raimi's manic head. I'll even watch it again, but those who've praised it for its insight into our light and dark natures must have been raised on pap pulp psychology. The nastiness is fun without being gory. The special effects are spectacular. The attempts to make it all believable are laughable. What the hell. Most of the humour is even intentional. For being what it sets out to be, without pretension and sublimely silly, I'd give this piece of nonsense a 6/10. If you're intrigued enough to read the best-written of some surprisingly good reviews, take a gander at Chris Hick's article for 'Deseret Morning News'. 12:16:45 PM  link   your views? []

vendredi 20 août 2004

Wicked ways with water When somebody sweetly protested in the Factory today about one of many jibes made at the expense of others, I silenced them all with a reminder that they got more hell from me before I packed in the alleged "anti-depressant". Last night's astonishing meal, the first I have ever eaten in absolute darkness, may also have had something to do with it, but that's someone else's tale to tell, so long as she doesn't mention the three stains subsequently spotted on my shirt. I wouldn't joke at the expense of the Boscastle flood victims. The gods only know, the still leaking hole in my roof is bad enough. When 'The Grauniad' on Wednesday reported how a Cornish "seaside village was reduced to ruins" (Patrick Barkham's story), they illustrated it. We all have Karin to thank for noticing what bastards they were with their front-page juxtaposition in the international edition of photo and advertisement: 8:05:47 PM  link   your views? []

jeudi 19 août 2004

A dance without exit 'Shiva's dance' (Fables of the Self, by C.S. Shah) World without end. Amen. What would you do if somebody hurt so very, irreparably badly they pleaded with you to end their life? Somebody with no other way out? Pursuing a personal season of films starring Susannah York, tonight I finally watched 'They Shoot Horses, Don't They?' (Rotten Tomatoes). York, as almost invariably, is first rate. So are Jane Fonda, Michael Sarrazin and virtually everybody else in this tragic tale of a marathon dance contest set in the Depression of the 1930s. The most gruelling film I've seen in a long time, it doesn't help answer the question for me but it makes an appalling kind of sense. I really don't give a damn how many Oscars Sydney Pollack's 1969 account of Horace McCoy's novel was nominated for or won and also wonder what those who find it dated use for "brains". Scores, prizes and the "when" of it all are completely beside the point once this movie's allegory, acting, artwork and music are done with you. Pollack and his screen-writers fleshed out a pulp novel to give us a broader vision of desparation, hope and despair. Jane Fonda commented that McCoy's hero "influenced Camus's 'The Stranger' ('L'Etranger')." 'They Shoot Horses, Don't They?' is terrifyingly brilliant. Relentless and very strongly recommended. 12:38:49 AM  link   your views? []

mardi 17 août 2004

Savagery in Burundi slows the blogging My restored sense of humour survived yesterday's Bible black sky, or so I like to think of it on the monthly day when new moon means none, and my return to the Factory. It could have frayed today, however, as the latest fracas in my least favourite part of Africa, the Great Lakes region, sparked by last Friday's foul massacre of refugees in Burundi (AFP-Yahoo), turned into the usual propaganda war. This has worried some "old hands" with prospects of yet another round of bloodletting in that accursed area, with some Rwandans and hardline Tutsis aching for a new excuse to invade eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. It's unlikely to come to that, but as copy poured in from correspondents writing in French all over the place, I felt the usual irritation at all the shit it's their job to transmit to us as news. Like everybody else in the trade, the handful of us dealing with this lot at the Factory reckon it's about time for another story to tell the Kansas city milkman exactly who Tutsis and Hutus and Banyamulenge Congolese Tutsis are. What makes all this more complicated to explain is that the usual labels of "ethnic group", "tribe" and "clan" are useful, especially the first, but remain a slightly inaccurate shortcut to get the news out. The traditional social structure in Rwanda and Burundi is far more akin to the Indian caste system. German and then Belgian colonists didn't help matters by making damned sure that the minority Tutsis stayed at the top of the heap, meaning that the nastiness began on independence. With massacres. There was more than enough on my plate today to explain all this in any depth, while our people on the ground were also working their butts off. Tomorrow, probably. The bad excuse for failing to do it today (unfortunately the story is going to run... and run) was that for reasons entirely my own, I had stuff to do here which kept me up until four in the morning. I am not making light of the massacre at the Gatumba refugee camp with a rather flip headline. This kind of event brings out the blackest humour at the Factory. Once there was propaganda mention of possible underhand Rwandan involvement, since agents of the Kigali government have their reasons to want to send troops back into eastern DRC, one possible, but of course not for publication option, was "Who helped the Hutus who-dunnit? Tutsi or not Tutsi?" How to get sacked in one easy lesson. But the serious point is that it's almost impossible to cover such insanity without feeling a bit of dark madness yourself. Whatever. If the workload stays like this for the next couple of weeks, there may have to be a return to sporadic blogging. Certainly there's life outside the Factory, especially for somebody who will never again consider his job the most important thing he does after last year's long leave-of-absence lesson. But if it's offline, please excuse me. 8:53:52 PM  link   your views? [] RealNetworks and your servant: two fingers to poke the Apple of our eyes The knives are out now that the Real people have launched an offensive against Apple in a recent development in the music download wars. "As Apple CEO Steve Jobs sits recovering from his recent cancer operation, RealNetworks has launched its most savage attack yet at iTunes Music Store market share. RealNetworks' campaign - dubbed 'Freedom of Choice' - offers US consumers song downloads from Real's music service at just 49 cents each. "Half the price of other stores, including Apple's", the company proclaims." The write-up is by Jonny Evans today for Macworld UK. I'm glad to see it myself. At the weekend, I got round to buying my first "iTune", just the one, a Harry Nilsson song to complete a collection the Kid has been making. Also I had the occasion, when a friend came on Saturday night to endure the chaos in Hotel Losserand, the smallest lodging house in the street, to be surprised by the high quality of the latest, free RealPlayer 10 for Mac OS X, which I'd installed at the end of June. She was raving on arrival about Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. I could see why when we watched such generously filthy and funny delights as 'Stagger Lee', putting the player through its paces. "Apple was shocked by Real's actions, saying: 'We are stunned that RealNetworks has adopted the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break into the iPod,' Evans writes for MacWorld. Apple is threatening legal action to block Harmony, and may change its iPod software to defend against the hack, which Real describes as following a 'tradition of innovation'." Hypocritical assholes. That pious Apple pie in the sky, I mean. When their chief executives in France are back at the end of summer, they'll get another onslaught from this corner, no longer a hotel but an arsenal. Last week, I installed Mac OS 10.3.5. After waiting three days to see what miseries others had endured. Already twice badly burned by rushing into an operating system upgrade as soon as it's out, I've learned better. This one went smoothly enough. Except that I yet again found that my excellent external DVD player was no longer accessible. By what right? Jobs, Defender of the Faith, now routinely breaks the law, certainly in this country, in what his company purports to be a bid to uphold it, by trying to prevent me from watching my very own DVDs with anything but his own software, in true Microsoft tradition. Yet again, I had to perform the hack required to get my DVD player back in action with the excellent TransLucy software, since Apple's doesn't work on my eMac, devoid of an internal player. The software people have had enough of this shit and have finally summed up how to deal with it on one TransLucy FAQ page, though they feel they have to add that "the information is offered as reference only... and is not supported by CE Software". It's supported by me. Others who have to go through the same tedious rigmarole, "downgrading" their "DVDPlayback.framework" to the one on the system install disk, with the help of the indispensable conscience-ware Pacifist, as recommended, will be relieved probably to find, as I did, that this alone does the trick. You can hack back the hack. It's unnecessary, at least with an external DVD drive from LaCie, to install the original Apple DVD player too. I guessed that it might be and didn't bother. Everything's working nicely again. On the music war, this is one of the rare occasions on which I will say, "More power to the real world!" If there are bad seeds in the Apple, out with them. And leave the poor lawyers alone. 8:07:42 PM  link   your views? []

samedi 14 août 2004

Ask a silly question What inspired this post was a Thought. Something I overheard at the Canteen. And by a film I hadn't seen since 1973, but which arrived from Amazon in the middle of the week. I'm not even going to write (much) about 'Don't Look Now', starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. Except to say that it was strange how the very first image immediately brought the whole tale vividly back to mind when I watched it again last night. That it was made by another Nicholas (Roeg), most of whose work I deeply admire. That as one of the plenty of people who have written volumes about it remarked, it's a film that works on your subconscious. And that a lot of complete idiots who have reviewed it fully many, many years after it was made complain that the sex in it is tame by today's standards. One, who shall be nameless, even objected to the hot shots of the couple in bed being cut and spliced with scenes where they get dressed, thus "ruining it for me". This is worse than absurd. It is crass stupidity. To make that scene, Roeg, Christie and Sutherland had so much trust in one another that the actors didn't pretend. What they did was not merely sex, they made love on screen. And it works. Brilliantly. It's probably still one of the most genuinely erotic and intimate acts ever filmed. Which takes me to what I overheard a girl say to her friend in the Canteen, a line I've heard often enough but never thought about before. "My tits," she complained, "are far too small." And the other one, instead of laughing, commiserated. Yes. Women say this. That many women worry that their bust has become less firm than it was, to the extent of creating an industry, I can kind of understand. That starved breasts in obscenely poor countries can't feed starving kids I understand. But what on earth does "too small" mean? If you're going to come up with banal answers based on some of the many episodes the sex act can include, that's fine, unnecessary and totally beside the point. Those you can send me on the back of a postcard from a glitzy overcrowded beach on the Riviera. Julie Christie happens to have very small breasts and so what? She was a beautiful woman and still is a beautiful woman. Now the Kid's reached the age where some girls start to wonder if their boobs will be big enough. I'm lost. Unlike the Kid... 8:32:45 PM  link   your views? []

vendredi 13 août 2004

'Spider': a web worth the shivers (Contributed to 'Blogcritics' as well.) It can be very rewarding to come to a movie with no knowledge of what it's about and few preconceptions apart from an admiration for previous work by the same director. Especially when the film is far more challenging than you'd expected, needing to be seen twice before the tale unravels with a sinister beauty. Until the opening scene of 'Spider' (2002)*, though the very promising cast list was a huge clue, I wasn't sure that one of David Cronenberg's finest achievements would be set in England; a story told in a London rarely brought to the screen but immediately recognisable, particularly in the extensive part of the film that takes place in drab streets I often visited in my childhood. For a while, the plot foxed me completely . I found 'Spider' on the science fiction and horror shelves, but Dominique, the guy of intriguing and eclectic tastes who runs the video store, agreed that it belongs among the psychological dramas. A mumbling, shuffling Ralph Fiennes turns in an outstanding performance, from the moment he's the last man off the train, confused and half lost, as a schizophrenic released from a mental institution into a boarding hostel which serves as a halfway house for those who stand a chance of being reintegrated back into society. In the man's flashbacks, which don't take long to begin, Miranda Richardson is equally superb as his beloved mother, as an ageing, loud-mouthed tart in the pub down the corner, and -- sometimes -- as the stern woman who runs the hostel, mainly played by Lynn Redgrave. 'Spider' is a relentlessly grim murder mystery and the childhood (Bradley Hall, as good as the rest of the cast) nickname for the disturbed Dennis Cleg, who sees his father (Gabrielle Byrne) split his mother's skull with a spade when she finds him having sex at the allotments by the railway with Yvonne. The boy's mind is right off the rails when dad then brings home the tart who had drunkenly tormented the timid, quiet and friendless Spider by flashing a bare tit in the boy's face when he was sent to the pub by his mum to fetch his dad back for dinner. "I can't believe she done that!" shrieks one of Yvonne's girlfriends amid raucous laughter. That's an easy bit of the constantly colloquial English that would seem, understandably, to have bewildered a number of the Americans whose reviews I found at the IMDb when I had a look this morning. But why is the released Dennis so obsessed with the monstrous gasworks tank which is about all he can see out of the window from his grubby, crudely furnished room in the hostel? What is the code, if any, to the strange script Spider painstakingly uses with a pencil as he mumbles his memories, slowly and unreliably coming back to him, into his hidden notebook. To spare people who know no more than I did about 'Spider', the helpless voyeur fly on the wall throughout almost every recollected scene in the movie, I'll write nothing else of the character study. Watching this late at night left me saying to myself, "Uggh! That was good, but I don't want to see it again." But after lying in the dark for a while and absorbing it, before my mind maybe went to work while I slept on it, I did. Now I knew what happens at the end, a second viewing was the only way fully to appreciate the skill Cronenberg exercised in filming a novelist's revision of his work. In an article at 'eye WEEKLY', without spoilers but with insight, Jason Anderson writes that unlike Cronenberg's "controversial adaptations of Crash and Naked Lunch, this movie had a screenwriter (Patrick McGrath, who adapted his 1990 novel) and an actor (Ralph Fiennes) long before it had a director." It took Anderson's piece (and a sensible word from a Québecois writer, 'man-man-dot-org,' who notes that "the regular IMDB approach of watch-a-movie-write-a-review has done Spider a grave disservice") to remind me to look twice before leaping in. 'Spider' is one of the Canadian director's slowest, darkest and saddest films, much more mature than 'The Dead Zone', which took me by surprise given an unpromising premise. I would guess, however, that much of the credit for the detailed rightness in Cronenberg's vision of the unhappier parts of the Britain I grew up in -- those dreary clothes, the dads with their allotments and sheds, the language and life of the poorer London streets -- goes to McGrath and to Fiennes and others in the adult cast. I'm glad I was in a cheerful mood when 'Spider' went into the DVD player last night. It's a demanding film, close to exhausting first time round, before it starts to work on you, making a different contribution to your perceptions of "reality" from 'eXistenZ' but one which is richly worthwhile. ____________ *My version of the European zone 2 DVD linked here lacked the extras featured on the zone 1 version available in the United States and Canada. People who can tweak their DVD players appropriately might be interested to check that one out (as with other films), if they plan to spend cash on them. It scarcely matters regarding bonuses, but I've had occasion to note elsewhere that DVD reviewers on opposite sides of the Pond are occasionally almost writing about two different movies because of the cuts and other changes sometimes inflicted by distributors. 5:13:15 PM  link   your views? []

jeudi 12 août 2004

Mysteries of the attic Her royal majesty, Queen Marianne, freaked out this morning when her eyes opened. At 6:45 I blew her a kiss, she blew one back, turned round to look out of the window and that was it: "Oh Daddy, we're deep in such shit!" Clouds, rain and the extreme temperature change we'll all have to start regarding as normal with global warming and all. "It's not the end of the world, love." "But is is. The picnic, everything." "Darling, not at this time in the morning!" "Then you'll just have to wake up after I'm finished, because I haven't yet." You've got it. She was off again to the Gare du Nord to meet the Boyfriend and had been counting on their second day out on the town to be out. "We can't spend the whole day in the cinema!" she bleated, and I didn't tell her that after her last film with him and the failure even to look at the books and CDs in the FNAC I thought that what they did could be done anywhere, but probably preferably in. She clambered down from her bunk looking as if a 19-hour maths lesson awaited her and curled up on the sofa pulling increasingly dismal faces. "Love, you've got the whole of Paris at your feet. Improvise." "How d'you want us to improvise?" she squawked, giving me her classic you're-such-a-moron look. "Don't flip!" "But of course I'm flipping, where do you think I get that from?" "Not from me." "You flip!" "Only after the event. Never before. But your mother flips." "No she doesn't." "She used to. She did her flipping by getting insanely angry." (Those days are long since gone, dear reader.) "Take the map. Buy 'Pariscope'. There are a hundred things you can do, both of you." "Like what?" "If you shout at me, I'm not going to help you." Anyway, she left 50 minutes later in the sunniest of moods. In the neighbourhood, people have begun to ask after her because they never see her. We've had some great weather, but the Kid has only gone out with me for brief excursions. If ever I'd forgotten what it's like to be a teenager who's discovering the other sex, I need no more reminding. I might regret buying her a superb Mac PowerBook last year. But I don't. With cable and a router, what she does with it is far cheaper than the 'phone bills we used to run up and -- on the rare occasions I'm allowed to see anything -- there are signs of much commendably creative activity, not just idle chat. Since she won't even come to the Canteen any more, though, and has emptied the fridge and the cupboards (we had a "firm and frank exchange" yesterday about mess and about who does the shopping to fill them again), for Sam at the pizzeria and the shopkeepers who are still here, the Kid has become ... the mystery of the attic. Her mum, Catherine, jestingly warned me on the 'phone that "they'll soon be sending round the DASS" (Fr., social security). Well, I hope the Kid isn't going to prove as susceptible to the weather and the phases of the moon as your friendly Jekyll and Hyde correspondent, but I doubt it. Normally, she doesn't give a damn. However, since I've not forgotten the people who drop in here for a bit of good news and bad about the Condition and my cyclothymia (that usually much more tolerable, lower-key version of the brutal blues Francesca -- "Why?" -- writes about sometimes) I'll tell you of a decision I made last week. For once, I've completely ignored medical advice from both the workplace doctor, who unfortunately had nothing helpful to say early last week, and even from Bloghero Yang, who didn't agree with my own "why" of what had begun to -- excuse me -- mindfuck me badly. Far more than the petty hassles of being madly in love. Each morning, I take a tried, tested and long-established drug which does no more, but happily no less, than regulate my serotonin (Wikipedia) production level. Having previously written at length about this neurotransmitter, I'll spare you more, but now I'll say that every evening, around 9:00 pm and no later to avoid being totally wiped in the morning, I'm also supposed to take Anafranil (PSYWeb), the only anti-depressant the medical establishment has given me that I found acceptable. This was until I went potty and began having horrible nausea attacks and started seeing two stories on the screen at the Factory when there was only one, if I could see anything because the words were a blur. I told Dr Yang that this and other symptoms I'd got felt very much like some of the side-effects of Anafranil. He wasn't having it and blamed overwork, fatigue and emotional stress, asking me at least to go on taking it until I'd seen a mind pro. For two days I did. Then I stopped, on Wednesday last week. For good, as it turns out. By Sunday, I felt much better and it wasn't just the prospect of another week off. By the time this week got well under way, I could even sometimes think straight within half an hour of getting out of bed. I will see the psychotherapist, eventually. Like lots of other people, she's decided that August is the month to go away and stop being a Parisian, member of that species so detested elsewhere in France (though I find most of them likeable and some loveable). But I've decided, much as I did with alcohol in 1997, that during the first part of my life, my battered system has absorbed and rejected enough of the stuff to last me the rest of my days. Until further notice, no anti-depressants. None. It's not true for everybody, I know, it can't be -- that's a pity, and that's life -- but there are quite enough mysteries in my attic as it is without doubling the vision of them with chemical benders. If I can do this throughout the hated, miserable winter as well, I'm going to settle for Seropram (Info on Depression) to do what my system doesn't because that's something I inherited. And royal jelly. I feel a bit like Ethan Hawke in Andrew Niccol's superb 'Gattaca' (1998). And I won't tell you who I'm reminded of by Uma Thurman, except to note that She who shall never again be mentioned here is prettier. The second big wash of the morning is doing its thing in the bathroom, but contains none of the Kid's clothes. Despite my offers, she preferred to wash them herself, by hand, and hang them out to dry her way. Now. Is that "normal" teenage behaviour? Please say "Yes". I have no worries about the state of her attic. That reminds me of something I never did tell Zoe, who has also, coincidentally, been on about daughters' first boyfriends (not, so far, twats) this week. Her photographic evidence of the state of teenage bedrooms went down a treat at the Factory. Except that everybody competed to explain how much worse their own kids are. You know what's wrong with this kind of blogging, Zoe? It makes for widening the generation gap. No wonder the not-so-little sweethearts rant on about being unable to trust us. They're right. 10:33:12 AM  link   your views? []

mardi 10 août 2004

A severe shock to the system So what d'you want first? I'm speaking to the half a reader still left out there. The bad news? Or the even worse news? Well, the bad news is obviously that I'm back. For how long I don't know, because I make no guarantees to be predictable any more, but I hope the sudden resurrection of taliesin's log with a bumper crop of film reviews hasn't sent you back to sleep tout de suite... The worse news is that after a bloody awful week in the Factory, apart from the days I was out of it in more senses than one, I have -- at least for the time being -- miraculously recovered my sense of humour. Before you get any half-witted notions into your half a brain, Marianne's mother Catherine's cat Kytie is still alive. She was returned to what people still absurdly describe as her "owner" on Sunday. Being telepathic, the messy creature dropped in on a serious conversation about a possible terminal trip to the vet on July 29. From that day onwards, her behaviour improved overnight. Only twice did I have to clean vile-smelling excrement off the floor (and one or two other things safely out of range of the cat litter) from then onwards. The Kid, who arrived at the beginning of last week to add her own contribution to the appalling state of the flat, swears blind that during the night Kytie not only slept next to me on top of my bed in the heat but even purred for hours on end. I decided last weekend to keep Marianne for another week. Yesterday, while I was "working" and cheerfully forgetting to save my efforts before the Power Cut, the delightful young monster was up before dawn. And thus so was I. A little later, she was off by herself to the Gare du Nord on the far side of Paris to meet somebody. That's how the Kid, armed only with a picnic and my cinema card, began her very first long day out on the town with her very first real Boyfriend. It would seem that her carefully prepared sandwiches were execrable, which doesn't surprise me since the best baker is closed for August and the ones she lovingly prepared spent the night in a fridge which has only just recovered from a timely high summer accident. It would seem that they did indeed go to the FNAC, as planned, to buy a book or two and a CD, but "forgot" to do so once they were lost together among the high shelves. It would seem that they also went to see 'King Arthur' as planned. However, when I troubled Marianne this morning for a verdict on the film, I was informed that it was hard to tell, apart from the opinion that there were too many battles, no magic and very little emotion. The remainder of Hollywood's latest legendary blockbuster went largely unnoticed. But the Kid did a very nice thing yesterday. During the course of their travels, she briefly came home for a few minutes to introduce me to the Boyfriend. I took a liking to him at once, but soon scared the young fellow by forgetting to address Marianne in the language of Molière. With that, they left. All this so indiscreetly revealed here, as is the duty of a proud father, if what's left of you thinks there is going to be a single further word on this blog about my own love life, then you've got another think coming. I am not suddenly cheerful again because She who will decidedly no longer be mentioned here until further notice has made a sudden re-entry into my sorry existence. On the contrary, with immaculate planning, she has yet again made undeniably good arrangements to be out of town and far away for the duration of my latest fragmented stint of broken holiday. Her absence, a prolonged lack of inspiration and an arduous time in and out of the Factory were not the only reasons, however, that I stopped blogging for so long. I also decided, some time last month, that I had written far more than enough for a while and begun to find myself direly repetitive and painfully boring, irrespective of the fact that one or two of what then remained of you sent me well-meaning e-mails to tell me this was nonsense. When I haven't "got it", I am not going to do it. And for a good while, I lost it. This called for a radical rethink and a total overdue overhaul of my neuron. My neuron is what the Kid famously described as the pea that falls out of my ear every night and needs finding on the floor in the morning. That was a singularly difficult task when sometimes it rolled sufficiently far away to get stuck in the cat's mess. But today the Kid says I appear to have found the pea again and it has had another batch of children to make almost a tinful. She can hear them bouncing against the walls of the vast emptiness in my cranium now that the traffic noise has considerably diminished with the arrival of August and the departure of most of the Parisians. We can sleep with the street windows wide open.* And if I've had a rough time and was particularly cross at myself for losing so much copy during the Power Cut, life could have been -- as ever -- a darned sight worse. During that brief electricity outage, I heard a ferocious screech of brakes and curses outside and hastened to the window. All I lost was a few hundred words. But the traffic lights had stopped working too. And a chap on a bicycle came within an ace of kissing his life goodbye at the hands of a fairly typical August driver. _______ *Having the crass insolence to read over my shoulder as I type, which I am never allowed to do with her Mac, the Kid insists on adding a few words all of her own: "Will you tell the truth just for once? You snore so damned (look how properly my Dad has raised me!) loudly that only one of us ever gets any sleep." 7:45:45 PM  link   your views? [] Six of the best (films) and a delicious bonus to pick I spent hours yesterday writing about seven films which were among the many reasons I've been doing other things of late rather than blogging. For once, I forgot the cardinal rule of computing: SAVE! This is Version Two. The series of expletives I yelled on switching the Mac back on after the first total power blackout in the district in years didn't enrich the Kid's vocabulary since she's learned all of them ages ago. Such filthy language is, for some, one of the more irritating features of 'Human Traffic', John Kerrigan's film-making debut. Like the second of the movies I'm going to write up more briefly now, it includes a lot of drug-taking. Like nearly all the others discussed here, the film has aroused as much hostility as it has acclaim. Kerrigan was 25 when he in 1999 used a largely unknown cast to portray a wild weekend in the lives of five mates in Cardiff who live for Friday night. Billed in France as the "trash comedy of the year" but mauled by the people who distributed a cut and "translated" version in the United States, Kerrigan's semi-autobiographical film seems to be adored and echoed as the story of their own lives by almost everybody who was into the British club scene and extended raves of the 1990s. I wasn't so unreservedly ecstatic. I've never dropped ecstacy, since I did my "experimenting" with drugs like LSD in the early 70s and haven't smoked dope since a few years later, but I much enjoyed both the already dated music and the movie. Kerrigan's foes review 'Human Traffic' as a pointless and plotless trip by people who haven't mustered a decent set of exam results between them and escape into drugs, cheap booze and trance-inducing music because they have nothing less boring to do. Not me. Almost every funny and sometimes sad aspect of this story about a bunch of close friends kicked my memory circuits into action: the lengthy preparations for a manic good time, the highs and the hangovers, the adolescent hang-ups about sex, the rows and the warmth. My own such days -- except that my weekends were spent in jazz pubs and clubs -- are over, but this film brought back that life and came as a reminder that though the politics and social values change, each generation has its own heaven and hell. One of the silliest attacks levelled at 'Human Traffic' is that it isn't 'Trainspotting' and could be an incitement to drug abuse. In fact, Kerrigan and a likeable and gifted cast get the isolation and paranoia of "coming down" as exactly right as he does an amusing twist on being high, and the script is as full of truths as it is of the crap everybody talks when they're stoned out of their brains. This film isn't about the big risks of recreational drug-taking and addiction to hard drugs any more than 'Saving Grace' (2000) is a serious film about drug dealing. On its release, Marianne thoroughly enjoyed this film about the mayhem wreaked in a Cornish village when a green-fingered, middle-aged Grace (Brenda Blethyn) turns to the industrial production of marijuana in her greenhouse, with help from her Scottish gardener (Craig Ferguson), to avoid losing her home and everything in it. I liked it too. Nigel Cole's comedy is completely potty and, on the whole, just about credible and all too human until the end goes right over the top. By then it's too late to care. No British film has made me laugh quite so much since Monty Python. The versatile Tcheky Karyo puts in a fun performance as Jacques, the French drug dealer Grace manages in her inimitable way to track down in London. None of the other films which get an honourable mention or more are comedies and they are quite different one from another. However, during last night's outage it occurred to me that all of them are about life-and-death confrontations. Three are already classics and both the others deserve to be. All five are as near perfect by my exacting standards as they can be. In 'Laissez-Passer' (2002), the always challenging French director Bertrand Tavernier nailed a widespread myth started notably in an essay by the late, great film-maker François Truffaut. The conventional history of French cinema, which was encouraged by the revisionist job on the Resistance the country's Communists began doing even before World War II was over, holds that it became no more than a propaganda machine for the Nazis during the occupation in the 1940s. Redemption from the doldrums came only, this story goes, with the "new wave" Jean-Luc Godard set rolling through the industry in 1959 with 'A Bout de Souffle' ('Breathless'). If Godard, a young Jean-Paul Belmondo at his best when he started, and an even younger and gorgeous Jean Seberg hadn't been among those to ignite scandal and innovation in a head-on clash with the conformist film industry values of the time, Truffaut's own career might never have been as remarkable as it was. It took a Tavernier to return to source in the memoirs of wartime assistant director Jean Devaivre and screen-writer Jean Aurenche and kill the myth about the death of French film at the hands of the Gestapo and the Vichy regime. It may have taken more than half a century, but 'Laissez-Passer' tells the story of these men and others who fought their own wars against the Nazis. Aurenche (Denis Podalydès) used all the tortuous means he could to avoid any collaboration with the occupying power, obtaining backdated contracts from friends to bluff his way out of working for Continental, the main German-backed production firm. He stayed a step ahead of the police by regularly packing his bags and moving in briefly with one girlfriend or another. His inability to keep his mouth shut almost costs him a one-way trip to the labour camps in Germany when he becomes so drunkenly reckless in his defence of the Jews and castigation of collaborators at a bourgeois dinner party that one of these women bravely manages to silence him by knocking him out. His friend Devaivre (Jacques Gamblin) reluctantly ends up in the lion's den working on feature films at Continental's studios, reconstructed by Tavernier for a detailed account of endless material hassles -- wood meant for building sets is requisitioned overnight, for instance, to make coffins for troops on the Russian front -- which the Germans imposed along with tight production schedules. The film-makers, on the surface, have a surprisingly free hand in the entertainment they provide, but in the hidden threats behind the censors I saw a Hays Commission -- the "self-regulating body" that long kept the lid on American cinema -- with the powers of judge, jury ... and executioner. Most of the violence in 'Laissez-Passer', after the death and havoc wreaked on civilians in a routine bombing raid by Britain's Royal Air Force at the opening of the film, is implicit but omnipresent. However, Devaivre remained an active member of the Resistance throughout his career under occupation. One day, he is sent home by the Continental's doctor to rest up with a very bad bout of the 'flu. But seriously ill, he winds up a long way from Paris and ordered by his resistance superiors to cross the Channel on an RAF Lysander's night flight with some important photos he has taken. By the time he gets back to his apartment and an absolutely terrified brother who has covered for him by answering the 'phone with sneezes and a handkerchief over his mouth, he is half dead and falls on to the bed shortly before the doctor returns with the thought police. "If I told you what happened," he briefly informs his brother before passing out, "you would never believe me." Tavernier's finest achievement throughout this nightmare episode is to plunge us into the depths of the incomprehension between Devaivre, with his double life and moral dilemmas in an occupied country, and the RAF and intelligence officers who interrogate him repeatedly before packing him off back to France with a parachute. The most remarkable aspect of this masterpiece of a movie is that it's all as close to the truth as anybody can get. Born 10 years after the Second World War, I was regaled by two of my favourite relatives with their experiences as RAF and army officers in a different "theatre" -- Asia and the Pacific. However, their war left one of these brothers with a lifelong hatred of "the Japs. Barbarians!" Like everybody else, I saw and was bowled over by 'The Bridge on the River Kwai' (iMDB), but Japan was the only country in Asia I was long left regarding as incomprehensible. It was not until 1984, in France, that I saw 'Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence,' released here as 'Furyo'. Director Nagisa Oshima chose two very unlikely people, David Bowie and Japanese pop star Ryuichi Sakamoto, to give outstanding performances in his own story set in a prisoner-of-war camp, which made an indelible and very deep impression on me. Until I saw it again last week, it was not merely the musical score by Sakamoto that stuck forever in my head, but the confrontation that helped to change my whole outlook to Japan. When Major Jack Celliers is brought to the camp run by the iron-disciplined Captain Yonoi, the two men begin a largely silent fight to the death. With his unbending, implacable hostility during a court martial and in the PoW camp, Celliers (Bowie) slowly wins the respect of his psychological and military foe (Sakamoto). The main theme of this underrated marvel of a movie is the head-on clash of two cultures rooted in different religious traditions, opposed social structures and codes of honour and ethics which leave little room one for the other. The character of the title, another superb performance from Tom Conti, is Colonel John Lawrence, who lived in Japan before the war and has become the interpreter between the PoWs and their captors in matters where the language barrier is only the beginning. He is thus treated by both sides with all the ambiguity his position entails, but wins out because of his profound humanity. We last see Conti when the British have briefly won back their mastery over much of south Asia, the judges and defendants in the war crimes trials have changed sides and he visits another survivor, the almost illiterate Sergeant Gengo Hara (Takeshi Kitano) in his jail cell. Between them, Lawrence and Oshima helped me to begin to see just how much the British and the Japanese have in common. Both were long culturally isolated, proud peoples living on small islands, often at war with their immediate neighbours for centuries and eventually at the heart of empires each nation was to lose in the wake of World War II. The social psychology of these two countries on opposite sides of the planet is indeed different, but its roots and the reasons for it are far from as alien as it is comfortable to believe. In the end, Lawrence lacks the pretentiousness to give Hara a definitive answer to any of his questions about what happened and his fate. But he tries to help, particularly with an observation that has lingered in my mind since I first saw the film and is part of my complex attitude to today's imperialism exercised by the United States. In going to war, he suggests, the Japanese nation was possessed by a kind of "collective madness". When Lars von Trier made 'Dogville' 20 years later, he infuriated a batch of US critics and much of a public who roundly condemned a European director for daring to set a film in a small US town at the height of the Depression and making it so "anti-American"! Which it isn't. It takes an absurdly self-defensive outlook to read anything as simple as that into a dramatic, three-hour moral fable which grabs you from the outset and doesn't have a boring moment. Despite all the friends who urged me to see it months ago, I came to 'Dogville' knowing nothing about it and was thus astonished by the sparse stage-props that leave everything up to the fabulous cast and the obvious debt to Brecht (Wikipedia). The changes Nicole Kidman brings to a tiny, close-knit town as a girl on the run from gangsters who wins its protection, in exchange for services rendered, form a timeless and "could happen anywhere" story of what can happen when something or somebody is seen as a threat to civilised human beings who wouldn't dream of behaving like animals. If I had just one word for this provocative film, which doesn't pull any punches, it would be "Terrific!" ... and days later, I'm still wondering what I would have done in the end if I had been in Kidman's shoes. I'll do no more than pass over Billy Wilder's very funny 'The Seven Year Itch', which I had miraculously failed to see from the time it was made the year I was born until this week. My only reason for mentioning it and linking, bizarrely at first sight, to Amazon France, is that you can't get the "zone 2" DVD on Amazon UK. The best thing about this re-release, apart from Marilyn Monroe, Tom Ewell and George Axelrod's play is one of the bonuses. Hence my unannounced promotional bonus here. The documentary about the battle Wilder and Axelrod waged with the Hays Commission and Roman Catholic censors before they finally managed to get the film on the screen -- but divested of two moments dug up in Fox archives and available on the DVD and also of all explicit reference to ... God-fearing America forbid! ... adultery -- is fascinating. I also knew little of the host of difficulties, which can't have been hilarious at the time, surrounding the single most famous scene of Monroe's career and involving an air vent, two pairs of knickers, a divorce and half of New York's gawpers. My own first really aroused bit of jaw-dropped gawping in a cinema came when I was still young and impressionable and the most talented, gorgeous and sensual actress in my whole world, Susannah York, finally took all her clothes off before my eyes and even let John Hurt live out one of my many fantasies by getting into the bath with her. The jammy sod! That was the English of the time for "lucky bastard". But this was about as far as luck went. In Jerzy Skolimowski's 'The Shout' (1978), Hurt and his marriage to my personal screen goddess run into mortal danger. In what's still one of the best movies ever wrongly pigeon-holed as "horror", the often surprising Polish film-maker (iMDB) opens the story by Robert Graves with a cricket match in a mental hospital. It's in the wooden cabin for the pair who keep score that Alan Bates begins his strange tale for the visitor from the away team and for us. Hurt is an experimental composer and church organist who lives with York in an isolated cottage a good walk from the nearest North Devon village. After one morning service, the musician is pumping up a deflated bicycle tyre when an imposing man in an old greatcoat launches into a chat about the sermon and the soul. Soon, Bates has managed to invite himself to Sunday lunch. He begins to recount the 18 years he spent in Australia living with nobody but the aborigines. Once he describes certain powers he claims to have been taught in the Outback, Hurt is as fascinated as he is sceptical. York is swiftly repelled and unnerved by the stranger. Bates is a man of unconventional morals, but he shares your modest critic's impeccable taste in women. In short, he wants Susannah York. The multiple confrontation in 'The Shout' -- ethical, cultural and sexual -- hinges mainly on the unimagined power of sound, which Skolimowski, composer Rupert Hine and two musical colleagues, and a sound department headed by Alan Bell harness to literally devastating effect. The acting is strong, the photography splendid and the plot solid and sinister, but if this film remains as powerful and disturbing today as when it was released, it's in part because the soundtrack remains exceptional. Skolimowksi's second lasting achievement is to bring "primitive" beliefs and practices conventionally reserved for those interested in comparative religion and anthropology straight into the heart of "modern" civilisation with a challenging immediacy. Since I'm unfamiliar with Graves's original, published in a 1929 collection, I don't know whether he or the director are responsible for the masterstroke of adding to doubts by setting the start and the end of the story in a lunatic asylum. And that's all, folks, for now. Except for a footnote, again to commend the Amazon people. Discovering this film anew reminded me of two others, along with 'Battle of Britain', I've long wanted to see again: 'The Killing of Sister George' and 'They Shoot Horses, Don't They?' That Susannah York, generally in possession of her clothes as well as her faculties, is a luscious star in all these first-rate movies, along with the unforgettable 'Tom Jones', in which she and Albert Finney famously make sharing a meal almost the same thing as sharing a bed, has absolutely nothing to do with it. Blithely forgetting again to do so via this log of mine, which would have earned me a couple of bob under our partnership arrangement, I ordered the first three of those films from Amazon UK on Sunday night. The Kid still wasn't dressed when she called me to the door to take delivery of the package before it was even Tuesday lunchtime. 6:02:47 PM  link   your views? []

dimanche 1 août 2004

What absence makes the heart do August 2. It may not be "done" in the blogosphere, but then I've never been good where rules are concerned. This was better left unsaid. Not because of what I wrote yesterday, but because it evoked a response in this morning's mail, rather than in the comments, which I'd rather not take issue with in public. If that makes any sense. Lesson learnt. Certain emotions are best kept to oneself, even on this experiment. Misunderstandings are legion enough without adding to them unnecessarily. 7:02:14 PM  link   your views? []