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CODA

January 21, 2022 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

I am pretty difficult to please when it comes to films – though there are those that I love deeply. Back in the day – when one used to go to a ‘Video Store’ to rent a VHS movie for the night – I would find myself wandering round and round in despair, unable to find anything that appealed. These days, of course, one can achieve the same effect on Netflix without moving from the comfort of one’s sofa. Netflix – incidentally – apparently uses sophisticated Artificial Intelligence to determine what to push as recommendations to eager punters. With me it just gives up and offers any old rubbish!

Hmmm! Where was I?…

Oh yes…

Irregardless (definitely a word – first used in print in 1795!) I do sometimes encounter a film which completely restores my faith in the whole business of movie-making. Such was the case recently with one of last year’s Sundance Festival award-winning movies – ‘CODA’ – the which we discovered on Apple+.

Rotten Tomatoes offers this synopsis of the movie:

“Seventeen-year-old Ruby (Emilia Jones) is the sole hearing member of a deaf family — a CODA, child of deaf adults. Her life revolves around acting as interpreter for her parents (Marlee Matlin, Troy Kotsur) and working on the family’s struggling fishing boat every day before school with her father and older brother (Daniel Durant). But when Ruby joins her high school’s choir club, she discovers a gift for singing and soon finds herself drawn to her duet partner Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo). Encouraged by her enthusiastic, tough-love choirmaster (Eugenio Derbez) to apply to a prestigious music school, Ruby finds herself torn between the obligations she feels to her family and the pursuit of her own dreams”.

“Well“! – you may think – “that sounds like pretty much every coming-of-age movie that I have ever seen”… and you would be right. I don’t have to worry too much about spoilers because you could probably write the movie yourself without having seen it. In this instance – however – narrative suspense and unforeseen plot-twists are not the point.

What is the point is that CODA is beautifully written, hitting all the right notes – beautifully characterised and acted, particularly by Brit (you’d never know!) Emilia Jones and deaf actors Marlee Matlin, Troy Kotspur and Daniel Durant – beautifully shot, in the fishing village of Gloucester, Massachusetts – and beautifully judged, making you laugh, long and out loud, as well as blubbing like a baby!

The film brought home to me once again (not that I really needed it to) the vital importance of music – and, of course, of family!

Don’t take my word for it, however. I strongly urge you to seek CODA out and to watch it for yourself.

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Déjà vu – again!

November 3, 2021 in Life as we know it | Permalink

I had an odd experience this evening…

I had just returned – on a dismal and dank November Wednesday evening – from  three hours teaching on the trot at the College. It was almost dark when I reached home and I was the first one back.

I made myself a cup of coffee – as is my habit upon returning home – and settled down with my iDevice to scan the headlines, to bring myself up to date with the goings on in the world.

Now – I was pretty tired… which may explain some of this – and I am getting on a bit… which may explain more.

I was scrolling down through the BBC website and happened upon a list of the ‘Most Read‘ news stories of the day. One of the items was the announcement of the death of Sir Sean Connery. As I studied the tributes I was overcome by emotion and my eyes filled with tears. This was clearly the end of an era.

At this point The Girl arrived home and immediately recognised that something was troubling me. Worried that I had had some bad news she quizzed me gently. I hastened to explain and to reassure her.

It took me yet a while more before the – “Hold on a minute!” – moment struck. Sean Connery died last year. I wrote an entry to this journal at the time. What was I thinking?

I hastened back to the BBC. Sure enough – at number seven in the list of ‘Most Read‘ news stories today was the item from last year announcing Connery’s death.

At a time when the nations of the world are gathered at COP26 in Glasgow in a (perhaps hopeless) attempt to save the world from climate change… in a period when the global COVID-19 pandemic threatens to burst forth anew across the globe… on a day when the US electorate have apparently forgiven and forgotten the GOP’s appalling behaviour over the past five years – on a day when the tory party in the UK has brazenly declared open season for corruption and sleaze in UK politics…

…the seventh most read story of the day was about the death of a film icon a year ago!

Most interesting!

Mind you – given how the story managed to affect me all over again a year on, perhaps that should not come as such a surprise.

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Sir Thomas Sean Connery

November 1, 2020 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Sean Connery

1930 – 2020

RIP


Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/skeeze-272447/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=394756">skeeze</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=394756">Pixabay</a>There is very little that can be said in addition to all that has been and will be printed on the subject of the sad passing of Sir Sean Connery. To those of us who grew up in the 1960’s he was an icon – a legend – a larger than life character who somehow managed to encapsulate the dreams and ambitions of that age… almost certainly without any intention of so doing.

There will be many lists of favourite or best performances: my two top Connery films – “The Man Who Would be King” (an incomparable pairing with Michael Caine) and – unsurprisingly – “Goldfinger”.

In later life even a minor cameo in some otherwise mediocre picture would almost inevitably imbue the project with an added sheen, a sparkle that it might not otherwise have deserved at all. And should you think this mere hyperbole – well, you may be right – but there was a world in which Sean Connery was alive… and now there is not.

A sad day…

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Bizarre gardening accident

April 22, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Those of us of a certain age – and in particular those of us who played in bands ‘back in the day’ – will be familiar with Rob Reiner’s ‘mockumentary’ (the very first of its kind) – “This is Spinal Tap“. It was obligatory in the mid 80s for us to have seen the film (often many times) – to know it sufficiently well that we could quote chunks of it by heart – and to claim that it must somehow have been based on our own band’s experiences (usually completely missing the point that it was a satire… Yup – we took ourselves pretty seriously!).

Now – I must confess that, though I have certainly seen the whole film, I have a feeling that I have not ever done so in one sitting. I also have a feeling that I may not be alone in this. No matter!

Why am I bringing this up now?

Well – though the main characters in the spoof band were played by talented actor/musicians Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer (who went on to voice a number of key characters in ‘The Simpsons’) – one of the jokes was that Spinal Tap had worked its way through an infeasible number of drummers – most of whom had died in unusual circumstances (two from spontaneous human combustion onstage and one from choking on “someone else’s vomit”). Yet another had died in a “bizarre gardening accident” which was supposedly described by the police afterwards as a mystery “best left unsolved.”

Yes – you’ve guessed it! I was on the InterWebNet looking up unusual gardening accidents. There are – of course – many ways to injure oneself whilst tending to one’s estate (pretentious? moi?) and most of them do not bear thinking about. Some – however – just hurt a lot and make one feel particularly stupid. Such was the minor incident in which I was involved the other day.

I was mowing the lawn – which I am obliged to do with sufficient frequency that I should by now have achieved ‘black-belt’ status in the noble art of grass cutting. I should certainly know well enough what I am about that the following should not have taken place.

I stopped the mower to empty the clipping bag. Having done so I set things up again and gave a vigorous tug on the starter cord. Unfortunately I had not noticed that I was positioned rather too close to the corner of our garden tool-shed (Canadian: shop) and as I jerked my arm back the point of my elbow impacted with the corner of the building.

“Ouch!” (That is – of course – not the word that I used at the time…)

What a numpty!

 

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All we are saying…

September 27, 2017 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

A couple of weeks back The Girl and I went to a movie.

Long term followers of these scribblings will know that I am not entirely enamoured of the cinema (confusingly called the ‘theater’ in Canada) experience. In our new Victorian life, however, things have been improved no end by the fact that – being retired (or semi-retired) – we can attend early showings in virtually empty cinemas. The provision of huge reclining loungers which enable one (with a little effort) to imagine that one is in the comfort of one’s own home also helps to ease the pain!

But I digress!

Now – I have actually forgotten the title and indeed much of the detail of the movie that we went to see, but this matters not a jot as the subject of this post is another matter entirely.

Waiting for the film to start we sat through the usual face-punching trailers for other movies – the which seemed as ever to comprise all of the ‘good’ bits smashed into one brief package. As I cowered on my recliner I became aware that the music track for one such was unexpectedly familiar. It took a moment in the unaccustomed setting but I eventually recognised it as the end of the ‘Your Move‘ section of ‘I’ve Seen All Good People‘ by the 70s progressive rock band – Yes.

I say 70s, but Yes are actually still going (those who have survived) in two competing incarnations. Though I was a massive fan of Yes back in the day I have to say that I don’t care much for the complex saga of their recent doings.

For me the very apex of the band’s achievement – capturing the boldness and excitement of their stage performances – was the 1973 triple live album – ‘Yessongs‘. My brother had a copy (he had a record deck, which I did not!) and I would badger him to play it at every opportunity. What I liked particularly about Yes live was the sense that they were always straining for something that was just out of reach. Sometimes they would hit the mark and the hairs would stand up on the back of my neck. Sometimes they would fall just short – like a surfer wiping out or a downhill skier crashing in a cloud of snow and ice – but the result was usually spectacular none the less. They certainly had a huge influence on me as a musician and writer.

Naturally, on our return from the cinema I engaged the InterWebNet to revisit the ‘The Yes Album’ version of ‘I’ve Seen All Good People‘. I must have listened to this track dozens of times over the decades, but this time I noticed something of which I had not previously been aware. Toward the end of ‘Your Move‘ the backing vocalists (Chris Squire and Steve Howe) are faintly but unmistakably to be heard singing:

“All we are saying – is give peace a chance”

A tribute to John and Yoko mayhap?

So – although this little homage has always been on the track I only just now heard it!

How weird is that?

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On the beaches

August 5, 2017 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Photo by Beata May on Wikimedia CommonsEvery so often comes a film that finds itself the subject of much earnest discussion – not with regard to the subject matter nor to any particular individual performance, nor even because of the use of some dazzling new studio trickery – but rather because it represents a significant advance in the film-maker’s art.

Such a beast is Christopher Nolan’s film of the miraculous evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk in 1940.

‘Dunkirk’ has caused much comment and in the case of the critics this has been overwhelmingly favourable – the great majority being of the view that this is a noteworthy piece of film-making that lends new perspective to an historical event.

In this case I am with the critics. I think that ‘Dunkirk’ is a brave piece of film-making.

Consider:

Nolan determined to make an epic film about this major historical event which featured some 400,000 troops on the allied side alone, along with in excess of 800 vessels, without resorting to the use of CGI. The film also lacks entirely the uber-realistic blood and gore that has become a staple of modern war films; it features very little dialogue and no backstories for any of the characters; it has no scenes showing those in command on either side directing the engagement and no enemy combatants are seen at all until the very final scene.

Bear in mind also that this is a Hollywood film about a battle that not only featured no Americans (Nolan also insisted that the cast be entirely British), but which was actually an epic defeat!

As though all of this were not enough, Nolan’s script is also divided into three elements – the action on land, the evacuation on water and the aerial battle over the beaches. These elements – each of which flows across the entire film – take place in three different time-frames. The land action encompasses a week – the naval component covers one day in the evacuation – and the aerial action takes a mere hour. The three strands overlap at the climax of the piece, which of course means that the viewer sees the same action from multiple points of view.

The effect of the decisions taken by the director is that the film captures in a visceral manner just a little of what the experience of being on the beaches at Dunkirk might have been like. No individual’s story is more important than any other. No-one on the beaches knows what is going on, and nor can they imagine the wider picture. All that they know is that if they are to survive this calamity – for which no training can possibly have prepared them – they must fight against all the odds. The film has been described as ‘immersive’ – and that perhaps best sums it up.

The commentarists on the InterWebNet – those driven to add their voice and opinion to any and every matter –  have been less generous. Complaints include a lack of historical accuracy; an inadequacy of scale; the omission of important characters, events or even themes (including gripes concerning the under-representation of nationalities, races and genders!); the incomprehensibility of the narrative to those not familiar with the history and the supposed incompetence of writing which does not indulge in the usual tropes – well defined characters with revealing backstories and emotionally engaging story and character arcs.

We are all of us entitled to our views – of course – as we are to express the same. It does seem to me a little perverse – however – to apparently willfully miss the point in quite such a manner. To sit through Nolan’s impressionistic work and then to cavil that it is not the film that one wishes the director had made is perhaps – and only a little facetiously – somewhat akin to wishing that Van Gogh had possessed a camera with which he could have taken a few snaps of some sunflowers!

Exaggeration – naturally – entirely for effect!

Anyway – five stars in my book…

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Lovefilm – Hatecinema!

April 2, 2013 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

film-70638_640Regular readers of this blog will know that the Kickass Canada Girl is a huge film buff. More than that she is also a great enthusiast for the whole cinema-going experience – VIP seats – buttered popcorn – the whole shebang! Before moving to the UK she was a frequent and regular visitor to her local multiplex and it didn’t much matter (within limits, naturally) what was showing. She just loved the whole adventure.

When the Girl arrived in the UK she hoped to replicate the experience here, but her efforts to that end were hampered by two discongruous factors. The first – that cinema-going in the UK is simply not on a par with its North American counterpart – might just have been overcome had it not been for the second – which is that I am quite the lousiest person with whom to share a visit to the palace of dreams.

It’s not that I don’t like films. I do – though I am, it must be admitted, what might be considered a ‘picky customer’. I would claim rather that I have high standards – but let’s not fall out over such niceties.

No – the problem is that I don’t much like going to the cinema. To be precise – and at the risk of coming over as exactly the sort of irritable old f*rt that I indubitably am – the real issue is that I don’t much like other cinema-goers. There’s more to it than that – of course – but a visit to the movie house rarely leaves me with a warm glow where my fellow man is concerned.

The Girl and I visited the cinema over the Easter weekend – to see ‘Side Effects’ as it happens (not bad at all – picks up appreciably in the third act – but I still don’t care much myself for Soderbergh’s signature ‘distance’). I pretty much missed the first twenty minutes or so, however, because I was struggling to get over the effects of the ‘pre-film’ to the point that I could achieve the requisite suspension of disbelief.

These are just some of the things that set my teeth on edge:

  • The 40 minutes through which one has to sit of adverts and trailers for films that one is never going to want to see – all edited using the sort of strobe-like effects that could induce seizures, whilst being played at ear-drum piercing volume…
  • Having then to put up with all those who chose not to sit through the above fighting their way through to their seats in the darkness – just as the main feature is starting…
  • Those who then – having thus entered late and forced their way through to their seats – spend a couple of minutes standing up in front of other people – taking off coats, hats, scarves etc – before finally settling…
  • Those who – having been responsible for the above – then hold a barely whispered conversation for the first 10 minutes of the film until someone ‘politely’ invites them to shut the f*ck up…
  • Those who see nothing wrong with being responsible for the seemingly endless cacophony of coughs, sniffs, indelicate mastication, crunkled confectionery wrappers and so forth…
  • Those who insist on purchasing industrial sized containers of popcorn which they then – 1) eat a third of noisily over an extended period whilst alternately slurping indiscriminately at vast vats of ‘coke’ flavoured ice – 2) spread another third over the floor to be trodden into the carpet – 3) finally abandon the remainder in a veritable wasteland of personal detritus for some other poor sap to clear up…
  • Youths who – 1) put their feet on the seat in front and keep kicking one in the back – 2) go to the washrooms en mass every 20 minutes or so – 3) purchase wholesale quantities of confectionery to throw at other people in the dark – 4) leave noisily 10 minutes before the film ends…
  • Those most irritating people who insist on getting up, putting on their coats, talking noisily, pushing their way along the rows and leaving the auditorium the very second the film ends – regardless of the fact that some of us want to sit in the dark watching the credits and absorbing what we have just seen…

I could go on – but I feel the Girl’s eyes on the back of my head (metaphorically) giving me a disapproving glare – so I will quit whilst I am (notionally) ahead.

 

When we lived in Buckinghamshire we belonged to a rather splendid film club which rented the screening cinema at Pinewood Studios on weekend evenings. There was a bar – large comfy seats with loads of legroom – an absence of commercials and trailers – an audience with a certain demographic – and an atmosphere most conducive to the celebration of celluloidal confections.

Sadly – since we left we have heard that the studio has terminated the film club’s lease. Really most short-sighted of them…

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Remake/Remodel

October 18, 2012 in Flotsam and Jetsam | 4 comments

For English chaps of a certain age – those who were in their mid-teens at the turn of the decade from the 60s to the 70s – memories of those inevitable teenage romantic ‘crushes’ on the unobtainable will more than likely number amongst them some such pertaining to that most English of actresses – Jenny Agutter.

I was sixteen in 1970 when Lionel Jeffries’ adaption of E. Nesbit’s classic – ‘The Railway Children’ – premiered before Christmas and I and countless others fell immediately in love with this luminous young lady. The following year’s ‘Walkabout’ (actually filmed before ‘The Railway Children’) showed us Ms Agutter in an altogether different light and we were smitten afresh – though this time in an markedly more adult manner!

‘The Railway Children’ is one of those films that I am happy to watch time and time again, admiring not just the radiant Ms Agutter but also the beautiful evocation of Haworth, the Yorkshire village whose parsonage was home to the Bronte sisters. The film’s ending still packs the same emotion punch as ever and I – naturally – still dissolve in time-honoured fashion. The film was shown again last weekend on one of the myriad Freesat stations by which we are routinely teased with the illusory prospect of there being something worth watching on TV. I stopped – I sat – I watched – I blubbed!

It was not, however, my intention that this post should be merely a eulogy for the lady. As it happened I had thought that I would catch another showing of the film a couple of months before, only to find – once so engaged – that I was watching a wholly different movie. It seems that ‘The Railway Children’ was ‘remade’ in 2000. This new version also featured Ms Agutter, but this time playing the mother of the character that she played in the original.

What interested me about the remake was that though much of the script was almost exactly as before – not surprising given that a significant proportion had been extracted directly from the dialogue of the novel – this film was no-where near as good. Familiar scenes seemed to lack the sparkle – the detail – of the original, and even Ms Agutter had lost some of the quality that shone through in Jeffries’ version. I fell to wondering why they had gone to the trouble – and expense – of remaking a film for which a perfectly good rendition already existed.

This, naturally, set me thinking about remakes in general. I know why they are made, of course – for the money! – but it seems to me a great shame to produce an inferior remake of a much loved – even iconic – film rather than trying something fresh. How many remakes can you think of that could complete with – let alone better – the originals? Yes there are a few – but then again…

Please do feel free to nominate remakes of your choosing, either as complete turkeys or – perhaps rather more rare – the occasional hit. For what its worth I consider the remake of ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’ to at least be able to hold up its head in the presence of the McQueen/Dunaway version, but when it comes to ‘The Italian Job’ – I shudder! What were they thinking? The original is nothing if not a tongue in cheek examination of the death of deference in the swinging sixties. The remake is – well – nothing!

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