The Last Jedi

The Last Jedi is a beautiful empty thing that follows a similar template to its predecessor, The Force Awakens: a band of plucky rebels attempt to stymie a new imperial threat while old favourites from the original trilogy are added to warm the hearts of older fans.  But unlike TFA, this film lacks the brio and momentum provided by JJ Abrams’s direction as well as its surprise elements (the new villains, the new masks, the new lightsabres, the stormtrooper turned hero subplot, the Han and Leia family issues). The Last Jedi is a flabby affair that needed some ruthless editing – there is too much aerial footage of Skellig Michael; there’s a section set on an intergalactic version of Las Vegas that seems to have been included to show off CGI technology rather than advance the plot; and at least three endings. There is also too much Carrie Fisher, who really doesn’t seem match fit and too much Mark Hamill, the inclusion of whom feels like a victory for sentiment over storytelling: they are there to appease fans rather than advance the plot. Remove the film from the canon and you would wonder why any director would want to spend so much time lingering on these two characters. 

                As pretty as The Last Jedi inevitably looks, the villains seem more underpowered than ever before. Maybe it’s partly due to Po Dameron’s baiting of him in the opening scene, but Domhnall Gleeson is a watery, dweebish imperial commander and his accent and bearing are reminiscent of an antagonist in a school play. Adam Driver, so good in Paterson, is just too much like a sad sack bloodhound to be a convincing bad guy and why bother making Andy Serkis into dent-headed skull creature when there are few scarier actors than Andy Serkis himself? 

                Daisy Ridley and John Boyega put in solid turns but they are not given the scope they had in Force Awakens when they were allowed be funny and moving. Instead, the spotlight is turned on the veterans Hamill and Fisher, who were never much good in their roles.

                As ever with blockbusters, you are left wondering about the behind-the-scenes machinations, the compromises that billion-dollar franchises inevitably force film-makers to make to keep the fans happy, to secure marketing deals, to win over audiences across the world.  After all, this is as much about maintaining the integrity of a brand and selling merchandise as it is about telling a story, hence this slavishly conservative film that is aimed, like all of the Star Wars films, at children but is desperately trying to keep its nostalgic older viewers satisfied. 

                Watching The Last Jedi you always feel aware that it is one segment of an enormous business, a unit that is there is help keep the merchandising juggernaut ticking along.  

Review: Starman by Paul Trynka

More than any other rock star, David Bowie was intent on writing his own story, and fostering his legend, through his careful control of his musical output and image.  Starman, Paul Trynka’s unfussy 2011 biography gets behind the mystery and presents him as a cultural sponge whose lack of natural musical talent was compensated for by a genius for marrying styles and for coming up with grand concepts.

The book records a life packed with incident and activity, detailing the various false starts of the 1960s, his eventual ‘sudden’ emergence as icon and innovator in 1972, the frequently addled years of super-charged creativity that characterised the rest of that decade, the moribund eighties, the reinvigorated nineties, the more reclusive domestic years of the new millennium and the late creative and commercial resurgence in the three years prior to his final disappearance.

                There is a lot of fascinating  material in this compulsively readable book which creates a beguiling picture of an intellectually restless and ferociously driven individual who, in common with many great artists, was addicted to taking risks, to following impulses (and to taking the ‘contrary’ action) and who tended the get phenomenal results from his various collaborators.

 Trynka gives credit to Mick Ronson for fuelling the sound that made him a major star, to Tony Visconti’s production wizardry on his most daring records, to ex-wife Angie for helping a reluctant Bowie to go for broke with his extraordinary image in the early to mid-1970s. Brian Eno, Nile Rodgers, Carlos Alomar, Mike Garson, the other Spiders and manager Tony de Fries are also given their dues. While many musicians feel they were not properly acknowledged for their input into his greatest recordings, Trynka does make the fair observation that few of them produced anything as interesting without Bowie’s encouragement and the experimental atmosphere he created in studio. And there is much made of his successful role in helping to rehabilitate the careers of Lou Reed and especially Iggy Pop, whose chaotic 1980s provides an intriguing counterpoint to the carefully-planned and tightly-controlled world of Bowie at the same time.        

               His hunger for success and artistic experimentation is complemented by a hunger for physical gratification in the form of sex, cigarettes, coffee, cocaine and alcohol and like so many successful people, one is left marvelling at his physical strength. There are moments when he appears to teeter on the brink of mental collapse (a period spent holed up in L.A. with cocaine paranoia in 1975 is perhaps the nadir) but unlike many others is able to haul himself up and move onto the next project. 

                Like all human beings, he is a complex and it will take years before a genuinely definitive biography will be written about him, and Trynka gives him the benefit of the doubt whenever some contentious issue emerges such as his aunt’s accusation that he neglected his mentally unstable step-brother, his long-term falling out with Iggy Pop, his ex-wife Angie’s scornful remarks about his behaviour, his refusal to play at the Mick Ronson tribute concert, his sometimes cruel dismissal of musical partners (often attributed to drug problems),  and his early embrace of the type of security entourage that became de rigeur for  superstar musicians in the 1980s. It’s possible that Trynka, a working journalist, hoping someday for an interview with his reclusive subject, decided that it might be in his favour to be even-handed in his approach.  The last two chapters of the revised edition, written shortly after Bowie’s death, in which Trynka gives a brief account of his re-emergence from domestic semi-retirement with two acclaimed albums before dying, feel understandably rushed, – there will be much more to say about this extraordinary late period in which the artist embarked on one final act of self-mythologising.

               

Lifesaving Poems - A Review

Lifesaving Poems (edited by Antony Wilson, 2015, Bloodaxe Books)

This collection, edited by Anthony Wilson and containing his choice of favourites with a short essay after each one, has an unfortunate title.  It inevitably reminds one of those books that promote poetry as a form of self-help or therapy: poems to relax you, poems to inspire, poems that make men cry... Yes, poetry has been co-opted by the life coaching brigade, but I suppose anything that gets more people reading it can only be a good thing. And a good poem can stand up to any sort of treatment. 

                But following my recent experience of bereavement, I can see why people turn to poetry for help and consolation. When the odd bout of grief hits me, it’s a queasy, destabilising sensation that feels like someone has given a jar of water a shake and a layer of sediment has risen from the bottom and turned the water cloudy. Poetry, which often reminds me of what’s there in front of me, such as permanent features in nature and in our lives, has served to help me maintain some sense of equilibrium at a disturbing time.  

                In Lifesaving Poems, Wilson, a poet and a teacher, selects and comments on, poems that helped him become a poet, poems that stunned him and on poems that helped him through cancer. As he writes in the introduction, the book ‘is a thank you to the people who have shared a love of poetry with me.’ Despite the title and occasionally grim subject-matter, his choices are devoid of drama and sentimentality. Like all the best poems, they look at life in an unflinching manner, and they aren’t afraid to pick up the stone and observe what’s going on underneath. And that’s what the best poets do, I suppose: look hard at the things most of us turn away from or want to avoid thinking about.

                Wilson includes fantastic poems by the likes of Jo Shapcott, Raymond Carver and Sharon Olds and his short essays neatly balance analysis with personal reflection; his observations are always illuminating but they never steal the spotlight from the poems themselves.

                What’s most endearing about this book is the editor’s giddy enthusiasm for the poems and his championing of unknown or forgotten poets such as Stephen Berg, whose New and Selected Poems, Wilson writes, is available on Amazon for 13p.  Of Martin Stannard, he claims ‘had he come from New York or Zagreb, we would all be called him a genius by now.’  Poets need proselytisers and the ones included in this collection are lucky to have one like Wilson.

10 Rillington Place - Film Review

                The story of the killing of Beryl Evans by her landlord John Christie and his subsequent framing of her husband Timothy, Richard Fleisher’s 10 Rillington Place is a queasy masterpiece.  Murder apart, the depiction of Christie’s flea-pit of a boarding house is unpleasant enough in itself: ragged carpet lifts off the stairs, the cramped hallway is lit by a single dim lamp, he and his wife’s tiny quarters have barely enough room for a rope webbing deckchair and a medical cabinet containing the rubber tube he uses to gas his victims.

            The tenants are a sadly pathetic young couple, a feckless braggart played by John Hurt and his guileless wife (Judy Geeson) who are already struggling to support their baby daughter when they move into Christie’s house.  After discovering she is pregnant again, when Geeson decides to have an abortion, both she and Hurt show tragic naivete in putting their trust in the mild-mannered Christie, who assures them he has the medical experience to be able to help Beryl.

             The unsettling nature of the film has much to do with the realistic look of the production – there is nothing idealised in this portrayal of grimy post-war poverty – and the horribly inevitable manner in which the poor (and poorly educated) are exploited not only by Christie but also by the law.

              But the key element in making this such a disturbing experience is the chilling lead performance of Richard Attenbrough who moves soundlessly and half-whispers his way through the film. We often hear about the cold, calculating behaviour of psychopaths; as Christie, Attenbrough captures this perfectly. His calm and reasonable manner and apparent preoccupation with making tea is brilliantly complemented by the volatile, agitated Hurt, playing the perfect foil for his manipulative landlord.

                The BBC produced a second adaptation of the story, the three-part Rillington Place, in 2016.

Loving the Alien: Nemesis the Warlock

The fifth issue of 2000AD: The Ultimate Collection features the frankly mind-bending Nemesis the Warlock. When people talk about the subversive side of 2000AD, it’s this truly bizarre story that quickly springs to mind. Pat Mills’s future version of an earth where quasi-religious fanatic Torquemada demands the annihilation of all aliens (or ‘deviants’ as he calls them) is brought to life by Kevin O’Neill’s startlingly grotesque, Bosch-like visuals in which clothes and buildings have a medieval/sado-masochistic look and everything appears to be alive.

                 It’s a strip that pulsates with anger, the work of two former Catholic schoolboys gleefully giving the finger to rigid authoritarian figures and dogma of all kinds. It’s somewhat hard to believe that this stuff was first published in the early-1980s, in a weekly comic aimed at pre-teens, one that shared the same stable as Tiger and Roy of the Rovers but, as managing editors from the time have since explained, it would have been foolish to tamper with a winning formula. And at that point, 2000AD had become a huge success with a significant readership among teenagers and college students.   

The titular character is the leader of an alien resistance force dedicating to alleviating the lot of those suffering under the yoke of the intolerant humans of Termight. The joy of the tale is in how readers’ expectations are confounded as the frequently hideous aliens are presented as sympathetic victims of the Klan-like human mob.  Kevin O’Neill’s artwork is sometimes so surreally detailed and deliberately unpleasant, it can be hard to look at but there are many unforgettable images here such as Nemesis’s Great Uncle Baal’s study with its fantastic collection of oddities including a chair made from a human skeleton, the joust between armour-clad female warlocks and the dizzying chase through the travel tube.

One of the most overtly political strips ever to appear in 2000AD, with its extreme depiction of what fear of ‘the other’ can drive people to do, Nemesis the Warlock remains as relevant as on its first appearance.

Brexit and the Attempts to Shut Down Debate

                  I read an article recently in which the writer claimed that the U.K. was having a collective nervous breakdown.  It’s certainly felt like that for this blogger. I’ve watched BBC’s Question Time every week since the European Union referendum (usually on Youtube a couple of days after the live transmission) as I am fascinated by the persistent mood of anger and frustration among audience members and by the members of parliament who were Remainers but since the vote have become zealous Brexiters.  If that programme is an index to the general state of the nation, it seems a few springs have come loose.

                While I am sad about the impending departure of Britain from the E.U. (it’s bad for Ireland, where I live, and bad for Europe) what makes me sadder still are the attempts of some to stifle debate.  On Question Time, one regularly hears panellists and audience members admonishing those who complain about the decision to leave and demanding that those who are sceptical of the government’s approach stop criticising them and leave them to get on with it. Those who question the decision to leave the community are branded sore losers and remoaners and even traitors who are intent on ‘talking down’ Britain and weakening its bargaining position.

                For someone who has for years watched British democracy with a great deal of admiration, this is a sorry state of affairs.

     Having lived six months in Britain, and having spent much of my life watching British television and reading British newspapers, I have always been struck by how much complaining people do over there and this extends to the country's media. Reading the home news in any British newspaper and you would think the U.K. was teetering on the brink of collapse (failing schools, struggling health service, creaking infrastructure).  Unlike most people in Ireland, the British have long been highly critical of public services and government and this is partly due to a lingering notion that life on that island was better in the  decade or so after World War II. 

                But I think this propensity to complain and criticise is also linked to the fact that the U.K. is a mature, stable democracy where people know that the state can withstand scathing attacks. Complaint and criticism are expressions of freedom and confidence. Ireland is still an immature state where many people are afraid to ‘talk down’ the country by pointing out its flaws. During my lifetime, that has not been the case with the U.K….until now.

                I’ve always considered Britain to be a complex place but one in which reason and pragmatism were the chief values of its people and its parliament: many of the greatest Enlightenment thinkers were British, its political system has been remarkably stable for more than 350 years, and the U.K. has been in the vanguard of countries that have introduced progressive

policies for society at large.  Fascism has never put down strong roots in Britain partly because the people genuinely cherish freedom of expression.

                And that is why headlines like ‘Crush the saboteurs’ or the sight of columnists, politicians and members of the public telling dissenters to shut up and allow the government to do its work, are so depressing. Debate is the one essential component of a democracy and if this is dampened in one of the world’s most argumentative countries, it spells trouble for everyone.

Shades of 'Broken Britain' in the Scream! and Misty Special.

              ‘Not for the Nervous!’ was the warning the first Scream! comic carried on its cover. But the free gift of a set of plastic vampire teeth and the fact that it was printed on IPC’s standard toilet roll quality paper made it look a bit silly.  Like so much of that publisher’s output, it looked cheap, dowdy and even a little desperate.  I didn’t read it during its short run and only discovered it a few years later when a stack of unsold copies was being sold half-price in a suitably dusty old newsagent’s.

                By that time I had become a regular reader of 2000AD so the gothic humour of Scream! did appeal though it lacked the frequently mind-bending quality of the Galaxy’s Greatest. Despite its very short run (it was cancelled during a publisher’s strike after its fifteenth issue) Scream! attracted a band of hardcore devotees who helped the comic maintain an online presence and re-published some of the stories. More recently, Rebellion’s purchase of IPC’s stable of comic characters in 2015 led to the publication of collected editions of Scream! strips Monster, The Dracula Files with The Thirteenth Floor to receive the same treatment in 2018. It’s an impressive feat for a weekly that only lasted for four months.

               Scream!’s predecessor, the Pat Mills-created girls’ comic Misty (1978-1980) was an anthology of supernatural stories that also had an impact that belied its relatively short lifespan.  And some of its best stories have been reproduced in collected form too, beginning with last year’s pairing of Moonchild with The Four Faces of Eve.

                 As well as republishing old stories, Rebellion have been able to create new adventures for the old characters and their first attempt has led to the Scream! and Misty Special.  But this is much more than a nostalgia fest for those of us in the throes of a mid-life crisis…

                  What is particularly striking about this comic is the way in which the re-booted stories, like all good horror tales, reflect contemporary concerns. In the Special version of The Thirteenth Floor, in which Max, the deranged computer who controls a tower block, exacts punishment on wrongdoers by bringing them by lift to the mind-shattering location of the title, there are echoes of the Grenfell disaster when it is revealed that the building fell into ruin and was then cheaply restored.

                Unsavoury echoes of modern Britain are also apparent in The Sentinels, in which there are hints of the worst emissions released by the Brexit debate.  In a rundown area on the outskirts of the city (urban decay is a running theme) a cranky older man shouts racist abuse at a teenage boy wearing a turban.  Overlooking the scene is an abandoned tower block (again!) which functions as a portal into an alternative reality where the same man is the totalitarian leader of a Britain that was defeated in World War II.  

                 But the original Scream! never took itself too seriously and there is plenty of levity in these pages. Those old enough to remember IPC characters from the early to mid-1970s will doubtless get a kick out of seeing the revival of the tremendously eccentric Black Max (a perma-grinning World War I pilot assisted by an army of bats!) and the host of vintage characters who make up the supporting cast of Death Man, while the joint editorial team of the putrescent Ghastly McNasty and the ethereal Misty makes for a comical clash of styles.

                  What will perhaps be most gratifying for older readers (and the vast majority of readers will be older) is seeing these characters and stories at last in full colour, and on high quality paper, and seeing once again the jagged Scream! logo jumping out from the newsstands.  A worthy revival.  

Blade Runner 2049

A review of the new Blade Runner film? There can’t be too many of them on the internet… Yes, here I am adding to what must certainly be floods of opinion on Denis Villeneuve’s sequel to the much fetishised 1982 original.  Is it coldly beautiful? Yes. Is there an overwhelming sense of alienation and emptiness? Yes.  Is Ryan Gosling a convincing lead? Yes. 

                So why do I feel slightly non-plussed about the experience? Maybe it’s because the original worked so well on its own, with its riddles and mysteries generating so much debate among fans. Maybe it’s because the sequel doesn’t add much to the overall story of Decker, the replicants and the future L.A. –  the idea that replicants were made with the ability to become pregnant is intriguing but the virtual girlfriend feels a little passe and bland (the same idea was explored with greater success in Spike Jonzes’s Her). Whatever the sequel was saying, it felt like much of it had already been said in the original.

With its slow pace, waves of synthesisers on the soundtrack and faithful recreation of the dark and rainy, neon-lit sets, the film often feels like an homage to the original and I wondered if the director might have spent more time beyond the city limits (some of the best scenes were in San Diego's mega dump). I wondered whether the studio might have been better off investing in a brand new idea – Villeneuve’s own Arrival and Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin are much more interesting science fiction films that were not burdened by the heavyweight legacy of a famous predecessor, they cost a lot less to make but were infinitely more impressive.

After much musing, I came to the conclusion that my main criticism of the film (and I did actually enjoy it!) is strongly linked to what I know about the tortured production of the original. As wonderful as CGI animation can be, when you know about the restrictions and obstacles faced the crew on the 1982 film – having to film at night-time throughout the shoot with buckets of waters falling constantly, having to make a model the size of a large jigsaw puzzle ‘become’ the Los Angeles of 2019 – it’s hard to be really impressed modern-day special effects that can be created indoors, in all seasons, without even having to build anything, and can then be tinkered with later, in endless ways.

Blade Runner 2049 has some excellent moments but should perhaps be considered on its own terms rather than in close connection to its predecessor. It’s spectacular but most of the ‘wows’ feel re-heated. And there’s no replacing Rutger Hauer and Darryl Hannah.  

The Ballad of Halo Jones

2000AD: The Ultimate Collection:

The Ballad of Halo Jones

By Alan Moore and Ian Gibson

     

                2000AD’s enduring success has much to do with the fact that it ‘grew up’ with its readers in the mid to late 1980s. The seven to ten-year-olds who were thrilled by the ultra-violence and broad satire of the early progs would, in their late teens, be ready for more sophisticated and knowing stories of war psychosis and post-modern superheroes. I didn’t grow up with the comic. The increasingly ‘mature’ storytelling left me cold and Grant Morrison’s Zenith with its references to the nascent acid house scene and to British politics was the first story I’d read in the comic which felt like it hadn’t been written for me.  So I lost interest in the weekly and retreated into the simpler classics being reprinted in the Best of 2000AD monthly.

                The Ballad of Halo Jones, which has just been reprinted and issued in hardback form as part of Hachette’s 2000AD: The Ultimate Collection, was an earlier attempt to move the comic away from the ‘grim guys with guns’ formula of most of the strips and with its nearly all-female cast of characters and its focus on the life of an ordinary woman seeking to escape from a life in a monotonous urban district of the future, it did move into brand new territory.

                I don’t remember disliking the story when I read it in its original form in the weekly prog but I was certainly more intrigued than entertained by it. Reading it now, over thirty years later, I can see why. The 50^th century is presented as a world in which finding work is a hideous struggle, where dolphins are on an equal footing to human beings, where slender, delicate women are soldiers in horrific interplanetary wars. Alan Moore’s scripts are endlessly inventive but always plausible and his characters are at times heart-breakingly realistic while Ian Gibson’s art becomes more beautiful and striking with each episode. By the time of the third book, Gibson draws his heroine’s face with a level of subtlety and sensitivity that had never been seen before in 2000AD. 

                I was tickled to read on the inside of the front cover that this collected edition of the story is not recommended to readers under 15. My ten-year-old self, who first encountered Halo Jones when he bought 2000AD prog 382 in his local newsagents, would find that pretty amusing.

The Clear-Out

                Last year, I read and acted upon, the advice given by Marie Kondo in her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying.  This involved learning how to fold clothes so that it was easier to store and access them and disposing of a lot of things that I had been hanging onto for no good reason. Though there has been a slackening in my tidying routine, I still know the whereabouts of everything I own. Ask me for a pack of cards or a paperclip and I will find it for you next to immediately. This time last year I would have been pawing my way through a drawer full of wires, coins, pens and post-its for up to five minutes before I found either of the above items. 

                A recent holiday prompted another clear-out but this time it was my head that I tidied up.  While I was away, I realised that one of the main reasons I find breaks so relaxing and stimulating is that as well as a change of scene, I have a change of routine.  As I was abroad, I wasn’t able to buy my preferred national newspaper and as there was so much to see in my new surroundings, I didn’t feel the need to look at the news websites I usually checked twice or three times a day. I didn’t listen to talk radio either, save for some programmes on BBC Radio 4 while driving but none of those shows were discursive or centred on current affairs.  They were gardening programmes and documentaries.

                Those hours I usually spent perusing newspapers and websites and listening to people talk about politics, I devoted to reading books and when I wasn’t reading books I talked to my wife or looked around me. I noticed that reading books was easier without the temptation of the internet, that I was finding it easier to settle into a book, and that I was listening more closely to my wife and noticing more of what was going on in front of me or around me.  

This was still the case when we got home and I continued the same regime. Sitting at the kitchen table, with the radio off for once and no newspaper or i-pad in front of me, I noticed how the petunias in the pot in the corner looked like old-fashioned hard-boiled ribbon sweets. I also stared long and hard at the dog’s noble greyhound face. Walking in the park, I saw a heron fighting with two seagulls.

 As my thoughts were no longer as swamped with sparkly bits of information, I started to think about my friends more often and started to text and to ring them.  I found myself staring out the window or at the wall and thinking more than ever about myself and my life, my family, my friends, and what was close to me.  My sense of my priorities sharpened: I started to do thing I had been putting off: booking a check-up with the doctor, inviting friends over for dinner.  I had a series of epiphanies and, for the first time in years, I wrote a poem. I read books but more deeply than in years because they weren’t competing with the fast food of the net with their accompanying illustrative photographs and video clips.

I started to enjoy that feeling of being ‘almost bored’, just looking and listening in silence without the endless talk, the burbling adverts, the scrolling screen, the dyspeptic opinion pieces and repetitive sports journalism. And I realised how hooked I had become on ephemera, how I had got to know the names of famous people despite never having heard their music or seen them on television.

                It’s now two months since I reduced my media intake and though the initial excitement of the new regime has ebbed away, my sense of serenity has remained.  

                 

Future Shock! The Story of 2000AD DVD Review

Future Shock! The Story of 2000AD

Directed by Paul Goodwin (2014)

                Just released on DVD with a plethora of extras including extended interviews with creators such as Pat Mills, Dave Gibbons and Grant Morrison plus mini documentaries about the appeal of comics, Alex Garland’s Dredd film and the comic’s fractious relationship with the U.S.A., this is a worthwhile purchase for anyone interested in the hothouse of mind-warping talent that is 2000AD.

                Much of the film uses the creators’ memories to explore the groundbreaking nature of the comic. This was the first British comic to publish the creators’ names on their stories, the comic where creators were allowed to indulge their subversive sides and develop hard-edged, satirical stories such as Judge Dredd and Nemesis the Warlock that would help prepare the ground for the revolutionary Watchmen and DC’s Vertigo line.

                In the staid, deferential world of publishing in the 1970s, 2000AD needed strong personalities to steer it through troubled waters and a media that was hostile to what were still being referred to as ‘penny dreadfuls’ and it was lucky to have such creators as tenacious as Pat Mills, Kevin O’Neill and John Wagner on board.  Unsurprisingly, of all the interviewees, their contributions are the most revealing and entertaining, though David Bishop’s self-effacing comments about his time as editor during the comic’s dark period in the 1990s are also fascinating.

Anyone who stopped buying 2000AD in the 1980s will be interested to see the depths to which it appeared to plunge during its subsequent identity crisis.

Included among the extras is a candid half-hour interview with ex-editor Steve MacManus, who had declined to participate on the original documentary. Judging by his mild manner and obvious respect for the various creators who worked on the comic during its 1980s heyday, it’s easy to see why he was so successful as the middleman between a conservative and often hostile management at IPC and a group of sensitive and often feisty creators.

                This is an illuminating addition to a refreshingly zippy, no-nonsense documentary that is true to the spirit of the galaxy’s greatest comic. Zarjaz!

Rugby Is Lucky To Have New Zealand

Though New Zealand team’s permanently one-eyed defence of their players can be tiresome – in his otherwise fine autobiography, Richie McCaw claims that the spear tackle on Brian O’Driscoll in the first Lions test in 2005 was purely accidental and that he was disappointed when BOD complained - rugby is lucky to have a standard-bearer like New Zealand. The sport benefits hugely from having a team that equates ‘footy’ with national honour, that is so desperate to win every single match.  As a result, matches involving the All Blacks, together with the haka (which at least gets people into their seats early) are always genuine occasions.      

Last year some commentators felt that Ireland’s victory against New Zealand in Chicago was of less value because it was a match played outside of the world cup. But most teams would give their eye teeth for a win against the All Blacks regardless of the status of the test and that is because they are so resolutely hard to beat. The knock-on effect is that it is always worth going to see New Zealand play as they never truly flop – certain things may go awry which may lead to a rare loss but there is never a complete systems failure. And so, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, we get the best players playing the best rugby as though their lives depended on it.  

I’ve been to a lot of the autumn friendlies between Ireland and the Southern Hemisphere teams down the years and at times Australia, and especially South Africa, have looked a little uninterested, unprepared or even tired (these matches take place at the very end of their season). But that is never the case with New Zealand. It is unlikely that any other team would have scored that last minute try to deny Ireland in 2013. They are the team that respects their opposition more than any other.

                This need to win every match is coupled with an exceptional ruthlessness. If there is an imbalance in quality between two teams the stronger side usually takes an early lead and then eases off later in the match, maybe even leaking a couple of tries. Or the weaker side drags the stronger one down to their level by playing tight, defensive rugby. The above situations rarely happen when New Zealand play. If the opposition is weak, they exploit that weakness with breath-taking ruthlessness. Mistakes are crucified. And there is no let up, no relaxing of standards. Regardless of the paucity of opposition, New Zealand will continue to play at a high level and rack up scorelines that reflect the gulf in class. The same cannot be said of any of the other teams in the top ten. Ireland have been the victims of a number of absolute hidings from NZ teams that maintained their focus while the men in green wilted.   

                The importance of NZ to rugby was highlighted this summer when the Lions played their ten-match tour on the islands. When the fixture list was announced there were various predictions of doom for the tourists. How could they survive so many games against the best Super Rugby teams in the world before facing the number one international side? It was described by some as a suicidal itinerary.

                But the tough games against fully committed opposition were exactly what the Lions needed to gel the squad and bring out the best in the players and galvanise their supporters. It also reflected well on New Zealand. The idea of having games that were glorified training sessions (such as on the previous tours to Australia and South Africa) was anathema to them. To let a foreign team win comfortably on New Zealand soil was unthinkable. The result of this was a series of engrossing non-test matches played in cauldron-like conditions in various stadia.

                   Their need to be the best team at all times has also worked to the advantage of the world game as they have been the ones most willing to experiment and develop new strategies that are then adopted by the other nations.  In the past, they have introduced new types of players (most notably in the second row, back row, and at centre) and all of the frontline players have subtle handling skills.  New Zealand provide a template for the rest of the world.

                 Players from other countries talk about the importance of treating the All Blacks like any other team, of ignoring the mystique surrounding the black jersey, but it’s easy to see why such an aura has developed around New Zealand rugby.

Some Thoughts on Re-Reading Shakespeare's Four Major Tragedies

I went back to Shakespeare recently and re-read his four major tragedies – Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth – one after the other, in that order. They are plays I know well but reading them straight through over the course of a day made me see them in a different light. Here are a few thoughts that came to me as I read:

HAMLET

Polonius is badly served by productions of Hamlet. In the ones I have seen, he has almost always been reduced to a figure of fun, a comic foil for Hamlet. Hamlet’s description of him as a ‘tedious old fool’ and Gertrude’s impatience with his long-windedness also serve to make him seem like a buffoon. But the same character’s advice to Laertes – ‘And these few precepts in thy memory / See thou character…’ is one of the best speeches that Shakespeare ever wrote – full of wisdom born of harsh experience and as practical today as it would have been four hundred years ago. It also features one of the greatest couplets Shakespeare ever wrote: ‘Those friends thou hast and their adoption tried / Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.’  This same ‘old fool’ is a domineering father who bullies daughter and sends Reynaldo to spy on Laertes using subtle, cruel methods.

Hamlet’s attitude towards Ophelia and the dead Polonius is still very puzzling. In the last act, when he realises that the corpse of the suicide being buried is that of Desdemona, Hamlet claims he loved Desdemona more than ‘twenty thousand brothers’.  But when he accidentally kills Polonius, whose death triggers Ophelia’s madness, he shows no remorse and only calls him a ‘wretched, rash, intruding fool’. I would have thought that if he really did love Ophelia, his first thoughts would be about the impact of the killing on her.

OTHELLO  

Iago is disturbingly familiar. Though his soliloquies that frame events in the play, Iago succeeds in involving the audience in the gulling of Othello and drags the audience down to the gutter with him. He is a tremendously unpleasant character who haunts literature and is a reminder of the human capacity to store up massive reserves of secret hatred, like the people who vomit their fury in chatrooms, on message boards and on comments sections on the internet. He does this literally in the first scene when he shouts up to Brabantio’s window filthy, racist comments about Othello and Desdemona.

KING LEAR

Of the four plays, King Lear is the most enjoyable to read. Hamlet is the most dazzling and perplexing of the four plays. Othello is the most immediately accessible, the one that has at its centre a love story that is poisoned and corrupted. King Lear has the best balance of characters and is the most consistently exciting of the plays. It is the most action-packed one with plenty of violence (beating, kicking, stocking, eye-gouging, stabbing, duelling), stormy weather, angry confrontations (Lear v Cordelia, Kent v Lear, Lear v Oswald, Kent v Oswald, Lear v Goneril, Kent v Oswald again, Regan and Cornwall v Kent, Lear v Goneril and Regan, Regan and Cornwall v Gloucester, Cornwall’s servant v Cornwall, Albany v Goneril, Oswald v Edgar, the French army v the British army, Goneril v Regan, Albany v Edmund, Edgar v Edmund, Albany v Goneril) and plenty of deaths (Cornwall’s servant, Cornwall, Oswald, Regan, Goneril, Edmund, Gloucester, Cordelia, Lear and possibly the Fool). And a lot less thinking than the other three.

However, Lear is also the play that requires the greatest leap of imagination. The sceptical need to accept several moments that feel implausible. How can Gloucester and Edgar be so gullible, so willing to accept Edmund’s phony suspicions and bogus warnings?  Does Edgar need to play the filthy, blabbering mad beggar with such manic volubility?  Does Gloucester really believe he is at the edge of a cliff? Wouldn’t he put his hands over the edge to feel the sharp decline?  Would Lear really be able to kill the man who hanged Cordelia? Like ‘The Winter’s Tale’ and Friar Laurence’s potion in ‘Romeo and Juliet’, King Lear requires a good dose of ‘a willing suspension of disbelief.’

Unlike the other heroes, Lear is never alone. This may have been the norm for kings, who would have been constantly surrounded by courtiers. And thus, all his pronouncements are public – at no point does he make a soliloquy, unlike the tortured Hamlet, Othello and Macbeth. Lear does not plot or connive – the moment he swears revenge on his daughters is famously pathetic. 

MACBETH

Macbeth is shockingly short, less than half the length of Hamlet and Lear and substantially slimmer than Othello. The scene set in England where Malcolm tests Macduff’s loyalty feels long when you see it in performance but it only seems like that because the other scenes in Macbeth are so rapid.

There is a marked lack of goodness in Macbeth. Unlike the other plays, where there are some acts of decency and moments to mitigate the floods of cruelty, almost everyone seems flawed or tainted by Macbeth’s tyranny. The hero Macduff leaves his family to be slaughtered; though he suspects Macbeth of having killed Duncan, Banquo’s self-interest inhibits him, the other thanes are weak and beaten down, full of self-pity and the would-be king Malcolm is suspicious and manipulative. There are no shining beacons of compassion like Desdemona or Cordelia and no loyal friends like Horatio in this world of brutal realpolitik. The only characters who appear genuinely innocent (besides Fleance) are Macduff’s wife and son who berate their protector’s disappearance, and the treachery of all men, before they are murdered by Macbeth’s henchmen.

Wonder Woman - Triumph of the Dumb (Spoiler Alert).

I know it’s customary for critics to give superhero films the free pass denied to other ‘more serious’ flicks. ‘It’s just a movie!’ people say. ‘It’s a spectacle, escapism, pure entertainment!’ Generally speaking, I would agree, but if  such a film attempts to realistically depict events on the Western Front, complete with gas attacks, maimed soldiers, and bereaved non-combatants, my expectations rise.  After all, a film that takes such a daring approach is asking to be taken seriously.

            The makers of  Wonder Woman do all of the above  but when they then show their heroine acting as a human shield in No Man’s Land, bullets and shells bouncing off her cuffs, they trivialise a situation with few equals in history for its levels of horror and inhumanity. What makes it even  more egregious is that Diana then dances in the snow with jubilant survivors from the local village. It's not far removed from Wonder Woman  being greeted by cheering inmates at the gates of a concentration camp.

                Despite the presence of the excellent Gal Gadot in the title role, Wonder Woman is a troubling film, a clumsy mess of a movie that strives to be apolitical but ultimately feels like old-fashioned U.S. propaganda.  The Germans speak to each other in English with German accents (In a film made in 2017? Really?), love interest Steve explains the geopolitical situation to his Amazonian rescuer in terms reminiscent of the current president: ‘They’re the bad guys. I’m a good guy.’  And even though Steve admits that the human race is terribly flawed, it’s still he, the only white American man in the film, who destroys the consignments of poison gas created to extend and worsen the conflict. While he is sacrificing himself, Gadot is having one of those superbattles with a fellow god where electricity comes out of their fingers.

            Attempts to diversify the cast are cack-handed: the smooth Moroccan, drunken Scotsman and stoic native American are onscreen for too little time to enable them to rise beyond stereotypes – and much of the dialogue sounds like Friends rather than what a person living in London in 1918 might say.   

 It’s all a bit unfortunate, as Gadot’s Diana has a nobility and decency reminiscent of Christopher Reeves’s Superman and it is refreshing to see such a strong female action hero who is never in need of a man’s assistance.  Hopefully, next time, the studio will keep her away from the real world with its boring complications.

P.S. If the producers are looking for a superior plotline for the sequel, they might consider using this one from the 1970s TV series:

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

  

             Though Dodie Smith was fifty-two-years-old when she completed I Capture the Castle (1949), in Cassandra Mortmain she created one of the most convincing teenage voices in literature, a protagonist who is as true and compelling as Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield.  Cassandra’s opening sentences immediately bring us into the rustic, cluttered world of the impoverished castle where she lives with her unproductive family.  ‘I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.  That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board, which I have padded with our dog’s blanket and the tea cosy.’  An aspiring writer with a romantic attachment to her castle home and to the surrounding countryside, Cassandra’s journals chart the eventful six months that follow the arrival of two half-Americans, Simon and Neil Cotton, the heirs to the castle, and their mother.

                Cassandra’s heightened feelings of joy, excitement and despair never cloy because they feel like the authentic emotions of a seventeen-year-old for whom the world of adult relationships and journeys away from home are shockingly new and exotic. ‘I leaned back and closed my eyes – and instantly the whole day danced before me. I wasn’t merely remembering, it seemed to be trapped inside my eyelids; the City, the traffic, the shops were all there, shimmering, merging. Then my brain began to pick out the bits I wanted to think about and I realised how the day made a pattern of clothes – first our white dresses in the early morning, then the consciousness of what people were wearing in London, then Aunt Millicent’s poor dead clothes, then all the exquisite things in the shop, then our furs.’

                And apart from the fluency of the prose and the wit of the narrator (like Waugh without the jaundiced eye) it is perhaps the pure freshness of these impressions that are key to the novel’s continued popularity. Like Cassandra’s memories of that day in London, this is a novel that dances before the reader’s eyes.  

Review: Lost in France (Edge City Films, 2016)

Lost In France (Edge City Films, 2016)

Directed by Niall McCann

Produced by Nicky Gogan and Paul Welsh

               

           An affectionate tribute to Chemikal Underground, an independent record label that was home to Mogwai and The Delgados, this documentary is not quite as breezy as the colourful and kinetic opening minutes might suggest.  Director Niall McCann elicits from his interviewees some poignant reflections on the life of a musician: RM Hubbert tells of how playing live is the form of communication that best helps him to deal with his depression, ex-Delgado Emma Pollock admits that because of her love of music, her adult life has always been and will always be, about keeping herself afloat for six months at a time.

 Lost in France is not a good advertisement for music as a potentially lucrative career (Stewart Henderson laments the lack of opportunities and support for young musicians in the fragmented, profit-obsessed industry of today) but it is an excellent one for music as a vocation. There is plenty of evidence of a hearty camaraderie between the bands and their audience, and footage of joyful performances in stadiums, clubs and in a small pub in rural Brittany (see the title).  This is a warm-hearted celebration of creative collaboration and friendship.        

Bath-time: prepare for the unexpected.

               

                   With its long rows of graceful Georgian townhouses and neatly landscaped parks, it would be easy to dismiss Bath as a rather stuffy and patrician place. Unlike its near neighbour, Bristol, there is little sign of urban decay or ill-fitting post-war construction - at first sight, the city looks like it has been preserved in aspic, Disneyland for Jane Austen enthusiasts.

              Most of its major attractions – the Roman baths, the Crescent and Circle, the Assembly rooms, the museum of Bath architecture, the fashion museum – invite you to see how life was at a time when the city was awash with money and inhabited by scene-setting aristocrats like its most famous inhabitant, Beau Nash.

                But on further inspection, one quickly realises that Bath, while never gritty, is a vibrant, friendly place and a perfect location for ‘pottering about’.  As well as a wide variety of cafes that don’t just sell cream teas, there is a plethora of excellent charity shops, the best of which, Dorothy House Hospice, has a stack of records and a blue-tiled ‘listening booth’ with record player, armchair and curtain. On a similarly quirky note, there are good photo ops to be had at the display window of Broad Street Studio tattoo parlour, where two knit-hatted skeletons wave at passers-by from a vintage Volkswagen camper van.  Just up the road is Topping and Co., a warm and welcoming shop stuffed with books and staffed by enthusiastic people; regular author visits are advertised  on a blackboard outside.  

                 A short walk from the centre will take you to two richly atmospheric pubs – The Star Inn on Vineyards with its little dark wooden rooms, ale served from a barrel and resident cat, and the somewhat cooler and more rustic Bell Inn on Walcot Street.  Famous for its status as a cooperative owned by  518 customers (including Van Morrison and Robert Plant), The Bell is worth visiting for its excellent music alone. There was some brilliant sixties reggae in the main bar on the Thursday I visited, while the back room was taken over by The Smoking Duck playgroup, a highly entertaining open mic event hosted by the very funny Laurie Duckworth.  

People whose visits to England rarely get past chilly London may be surprised by the friendliness of the locals and the easy pace of this small city (and the large number of homeless people) and Salisbury, Stonehenge and Bristol are all less than hour away (though I wouldn’t recommend travelling to Bristol by car – the greater area is choked with traffic).  Like the Bath cake itself (a bun with a sugar cube in the middle of it) this city is full of surprises.   

The Pink and Fuzzy side of Stonehenge

                Stonehenge. One of the great pre-Christian sites, a mysterious collection of monumental blocks carried from afar and laid out in a fashion that is utterly beguiling. Shuffling along the path that surrounded the stones, I was surprised by the shivers that ran down my back when I saw a crow light on one of the carved lintels, an action that served to highlight the enormous size and strangeness of the stones.   

                But just as memorable as the stones themselves were some of the gifts available in the very busy shop in the visitor centre.  Standing near the back of a long queue, I saw a shelf with products aimed at pre-teen girls that included tubes of lipgloss and bags covered with pink love hearts and glitter and the word ‘Stonehenge’ written in the kind of jazzy, jagged script I associate with the late 1980s.

              I liked this blending of the ancient and unknowable with the light and sparkly, and it reminded me of watching girls walking to the St Patrick’s Day parade wearing bright green tights, shamrock earrings and cowboy hats, totally unburdened by the baggage of history and identity and just embracing the event as nothing more than a fun day out.        

                The Stonehenge/love hearts mismatch also brought to my mind another, less successful mixture of the old and the new I experienced on a tour of the Dunbrody famine ship, an immaculately restored vessel that sits in the harbour in New Ross. I was prepared for something deeply sobering but the hyper-enthusiastic guide and the actor-passengers wailing in the thickest local accents over the sick baby dolls in their arms managed to make crossing the Atlantic in a boat plagued by death and disease seem like a pantomime.   As much as I enjoyed the unintentional comedy of the tour, I felt a little sorry for those who had taken such pains to recondition the ship – I doubt they imagined they were preparing it for ‘Mrs Brown gets Cholera’. 

               But it’s weirdly refreshing that years after my visit, the words ‘famine ship’ make me smile and I’ve no doubt that when I think ‘stonehenge’ in the future, the vast stones will compete in my memory with electric pink bags. It’s funny what memory latches onto.