I have been told that breaking up
Is like being bereaved,
One half of you is torn with grief,
The other half relieved.
I’m not sure that this holds much weight,
Bereavement’s far more fair –
Dead bodies don’t live down the road
Pretending you’re not there.
I went to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe thinking it was going to be a workmanlike attempt to cash in on Lord of the Rings (but with less cash). So I’m pleased to say that it turned out to be a rather lovely film.
Some of the storytelling is a bit hurried – there’s scarcely any time to draw characters such as Mr and Mrs Beaver or even Aslan, and it’s only the quality of the acting that makes it possible (Ralph Feinnes’ voice is phenomenal). The kids aren’t bad either – Peter and Susan have a slightly odd relationship and appear to have been cast more for their fullsome lips than acting skills, but Edmund has a depth that makes his nastiness and eventual redemption completely believable, and Lucy is adorable.
The script is not inappropriately revisionist as it might have been, but subtley updates some of the clunkier aspects of C. S. Lewis’ dialogue with a gentle humour that is entirely in keeping with the style of the original book (there’s a lovely joke about the prophecy of the end of the White Witch’s Reign not rhyming properly).
But the aspect that most impressed me is the one that I was dreading – the big action sequences. These are never blown out of proportion at the expense of the story, and are directed with a skill that I unpopularly believe Peter Jackson lacks. The climactic final battle achieves an epic sense of scale but still keeps its attention on the characters and plot elements we’re interested in. There are no cheap comedy cutaway shots to lovable dwarves going “ooh my golly me” like we get in those interminable Tolkien films, or reliance on ridiculous spectacle to try and make it look horrific – instead the action has a brutal simplicity that makes it feel much more dangerous. When the two armies first clash it is done without any music – no Howard Shore school of subtlety here. And except for a silly shot of Peter with blurry characters running past him in fast motion, the direction is equally subtle; it’s consistently well-crafted, with some great cuts, but importantly never screams out for attention. For a family blockbuster it’s unusually unpretentious, the antithesis of Peter Jackson’s trilogy which is so far up its own preverbial arse that it doesn’t realise how boring it is.
Yes. It’s a better film than Lord of the Rings. I shall continue to declare this until the day I die, even though most people will disagree with me and call me a fool.
For people still uncertain of which Christmas film to go to, I should point out that it’s also better than Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, for the simple reason that it is a much better story.
Oh, and bollocks to the people who say it’s all Christian propaganda. Most people don’t even notice the Christian parallels until they’re pointed out.
Last night it was The Friday Project’s Christmas drinks, and having just about recovered from their last party I went along to throw myself into the yuletide fun. And also to try and persuade them to publish more of my stuff.
Never a good idea. As their launch party proved, although at the height of a party Paul Carr will agree to publish my whole life, the next day he won’t have any recollection of our verbal contract.
This time round I was in the exciting position of having an opera to go to, so I was able to pop in for a few glasses of champagne with various assorted writers, then pop back after three hours of Puccini to view the carnage through relatively sober eyes.
But even watching Madame Butterfly stabbing herself to death hadn’t prepared me for what I beheld. Some people were conscious, few of them standing. Paul Carr stared at me with a glazed expression, then recognised me, threw his arms around me with a cry of “Lark!” and threw my scarf over the bar. The barman was not impressed.
Paul then told me I needed a drink, grabbed from the bar a glass of what looked like vodka and coke (neatly lined up with two others) and thrust it into my hand. I asked him who it belonged to. He said he wasn’t sure, then gestured in the direction of three huge, tough, suited men who were almost certainly in the mafia and said “I think they ordered them”.
I put the drink back.
I decided to escape in the direction of Clare Christian, who I felt was less likely to throw my scarf over a bar because she is, in fairness, less of a pisshead than Paul Carr.
Clare greeted me like Mary Magdalene greeting Jesus – I’m sure she was seconds away from breaking an expensive jar of oil over my head – and continued to cling to me while she struggled to explain to another writer who I was. Having essentially attributed me to every book in their output, she went on to ask me if I would accept £10,000 from a different publisher if they offered to publish a book I’d written.
She seemed genuinely distressed by my predictable response, and somehow I couldn’t make her understand that, like most other people, I’m essentially a mercenary man and wouldn’t even turn down £10,000 from Paul Daniels if he wanted me to appear on his magic show. (Except that he doesn’t have one any more – ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha)
Having achieved all that, I left. A grand evening, all in all.
The opera was nice, too.
Can anybody spot what’s amiss in the Borders music section?
An entertaining incident in the House of Commons today when Labour MP Dennis Skinner was thrown out for talking about the 1980s in the following terms: “The only thing that was growing then was the lines of coke in front of Boy George over there…”
When speaker Michael Martin asked Skinner to withdraw his comment, Skinner declared “I won’t withdraw it, it was in the News of the World.”
I can’t help wondering if he could possibly have found a less convincing justification for his comment. Even “I won’t withdraw it, I’m a bit senile so I’m allowed to say what I like” might have earned him a little support, or a simple “I won’t withdraw it, it sounded better in my head”. Or “I won’t withdraw it, this is an opportunity to get chucked out of the House of Commons again and spend the rest of the day in the pub.”
After all, the people of Bolsover were already aware that their MP is slightly senile, talks without thinking and probably spends a lot of his time in the pub. They now have to live with the fact that their MP gets his opinions from the News of the World, which is rather less palatable.
Somebody should at least have been generous enough to point out that the person he was gesturing to was not Boy George at all, but David Cameron. I see very little resemblance between the two, but Dennis Skinner is an old man and was seated far enough away from the new Tory leader for such a mistake to at least be understandable. Perhaps he’ll be terribly disappointed when he learns that the new Tory leader is not actually the androgynous singer from Culture Club – but in fairness, Boy George did indeed have growing lines of coke in front of him throughout the 1980s, so perhaps it was just a horrible misunderstanding.
When Michael Jackson was on trial there was a (rather crappy) televised dramatisation of the whole thing.
But Michael Jackson’s trial was boring. Even when he wasn’t too upset by it to put his face on and turn up, it was pretty tame entertainment – unless you get off on stories about grown men sharing beds with children, which you wouldn’t unless you were Michael Jackson, who I presume didn’t tune in to the dramatisation for personal reasons.
On the other hand, Saddam Hussein’s trial has been FANTASTIC. Great entertainment every day combining comedy and tragedy and a character we all know and love. (It surely can’t just be me who sort of loves Saddam? I mean, I know he’s an evil dictator and all that, but not in the league of Hitler or Stalin – let’s face it, Tony Blair’s killed a lot of people in Iraq as well, but we haven’t put him on trial yet – and now that he has a beard he looks like Santa Claus, which I think is rather endearing – Saddam that is, not Tony.)
All sorts of entertaining leaping up and shouting and people denouncing everybody else on a daily basis… So why oh why hasn’t somebody decided to dramatise this trial?
Why is it, that however little you use, however restrained you are, however much you remember the disasters of dinners past and hold back from putting in what looks like the right amount but instead use but a few grains that look insufficient to feed a fieldmouse, you still always end up with too much rice???
Praying out loud around the house is only really a good idea if you’re absolutely sure the house is empty.
A highlight from this morning’s breakfast show on Radio Cambs, during a traffic news bulletin…
Newsreader: Apparently a car’s hit a dyke at Langstoft.
Presenter: Is she alright?
I put on a couple of episodes of the 1966 Dr Who story The War Machines last night. I was thinking what a frankly ridiculous story it is when my housemate suddenly said “It’s very adult compared to the recent series, isn’t it?” I muttered something about it being a bit silly, and he replied “but it’s really building up the tension!”
I hadn’t even noticed. I’d spent most of it worrying because I couldn’t remember which story was the last one to feature companions Ben and Polly (I know, I know, it’s The Faceless Ones) and thinking how poorly structured the script was and how William Hartnell couldn’t remember any of it anyway.
It made me wonder if being a Doctor Who fan just takes all the enjoyment out of watching it.
Talk To Rex 