So It Goes

I like the concept of serendipity. Sometimes things just come together. So it goes, indeed. Which brings me neatly to the two rather excellent films I have watched this week - Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time, and Nomadland. 

The Vonnegut documentary is a labour of love by its director Robert Weide but it never descends into unthinking hagiography, rather it is born of admiration and affection for its subject. I like Vonnegut's fiction and I will read more of it, having been provoked by this documentary. You can find it on Sky Arts. I recommend it strongly. 80/100.

A wise sentiment (one of many) that I picked up from my father was his admiration for the way that America, despite its manifest faults, was so good at washing its dirty laundry in public. He first said this to me as we watched The Candidate together. I have written of that before. I mention this because as Nomadland started to unfold, I had the feeling that I was about to witness another such piece of soul-searching. In fact the movie is more subtle than that. I will let you see the film for yourself and give no spoilers. Suffice to say it evokes the unexpected warmth and humanity you find in great texts such as The Grapes of Wrath (film and novel). As for Frances McDormand in the lead role, this is a superb actress giving her best performance. A film for the age. 90/100.

Bloody Hell, I Didn't Expect That!

Well I did say that I would eat humble pie, so I am. Wales -14, England - 68. No that is not an error - 14-68.

England did get much the more of the luck that was going, but bloody hell, this was a rout. Ruthless, quick, skilful. Dewi, my acquaintance here on the Island, was quite right. After the first match of the tournament (Wales got nilled by the French) I told him I thought there were some small reasons for optimism for the Welsh. Dewi countered by saying, 'No, we're shit'. I bow to his acerbity.    

Some Old Guff

Instead of going to Cheltenham this year I was actually earning, doing a welcome and interesting bit of consultancy work. I sometimes forget how much I can enjoy being a lawyer and the great thing is that these days I get to choose the nice bits. Confidentiality and your boredom threshold means that I won't burden you with any of the details.

I kept an occasional eye on the racing without having a bet but I did hear plenty of old guff about how the Festival can regain its old lustre. Too late. You can rip-off your core customers for only so long. So yet another great sporting occasion has gone - Twickenham is these days a braying corporate disgrace and, now that Cheltenham has prostituted itself, there is very little left. Roll on the European Rugby Finals in Cardiff. Now that is fun.

I am writing this before the final round of the Six Nations kicks off. France will, barring a miracle, win the championship. Ireland will win in Italy but nothing can expunge the memory of their evisceration by France last weekend. I have a mildly dread feeling that England will struggle against Wales. This is an England team that lacks a killer instinct and (yes it's a cliche) Wales will be really up for it. For the Welsh the model of what they must do can be taken from last night's U20 international in which hwyl completely submerged England. You can catch that match on iPlayer and I recommend that you see it. It was notable for a dangerously inept refereeing performance (a performance which I must emphasise disadvantaged Wales more that it did England) and for a Welsh passion that forced the favoured English into mute mediocrity. I hope I am wrong and that I will, humble pie duly eaten, be getting back to you about a famous Scottish victory in Paris and a stout England win in Cardiff.    

It's Still A Funny Old World

I've been away from these pages for a few weeks. Apologies to my regular readers - yes there are a few of them - a very few. I note that the last time I wrote, I was mildly despairing of the world at large but happy in my own skin. Well the world at large has got worse - who would have guessed that Trump's VP would turn out to be an even bigger **** than the Donald himself. Yale Law School must be so proud.

But enough of such whining - you don't need me to tell you that the United States has fallen under the spell of narcissistic sociopaths. Instead let's talk about some of the good stuff. The Six Nations has been fun and I apologise for those who look forward each year to my minute analysis and, in particular, to the bestowing of the Ronan O'Gara Memorial Gobshite Award. This particular decoration has become harder to award as the game more and more allows all and sundry to question the referee and demand rugby's equivalent of trial by television replay. Such is professionalism. The other symptom is the Bomb Squad problem - the ugly feature by which the bench is emptied of replacements and an all-but-complete new pack takes to the field. Anyone know how to put genies back in bottles? No matter, there has been plenty to admire: France's hubristic self-immolation against a gallant but out-gunned England; France's brilliant destruction of Italy; France's even better pricking of the bubble of Irish entitlement. As I say, all good stuff. As for the weekend just passed - Scotland at last showed up but only for two-thirds of a match; Wales only condescended to play once they were safely condemned to lose; I seem to be alone in the view that England were turgid against Italy. In Cheltenham week (not going - I'm afraid I'm getting old) my fun bet is not to do with the horses but a speculative wager on Wales to beat England in Cardiff. The Welsh are rather touchingly obsessed with beating the English and this England team are fragile.

Enough of rugby (not something you would have heard me say in my wild youth) and back to the subject of Cheltenham. Tomorrow's card looks set to feature four odds -on favourites. Where is the fun in that? The dominance of the Irish (or more particularly of the brilliant Willy Mullins) is also a problem. I have no answer to these factors, nor to the increasing numbers of skinny-suited young men who do their betting on their phones even though they are but a step away from the most exciting betting ring in the sport. I'm just saying it's a pity.

Let me tell you of a good weekend, or rather a long weekend. My trip to Ynys Mon last week could only have been bettered if the Groupie had been with me. Work could not spare her. What her absence did mean is that having checked out the bricks and mortar of Plas Piggy (all sound), I was free to have a ridiculously self-indulgent few days. I watched five games of rugby (Six Nations and U20 Six Nations), I played golf on a gloriously sunny and calm afternoon on the deserted links at The Anglesey, and on Saturday evening I watched The Magnificent Ambersons. I reviewed this long ago (25 August 2010 when this blog was in its infancy) but was not at that time in the habit of giving a rating to pictures. I refer you to that early brief review but now add a rating of 90/100. That good. Even better when accompanied by a bottle of Barolo. I made myself a rather good cheese omelette for my tea. And to cap off the trip I had an unobstructed return journey and broke my PB for the route. There may be three steps to heaven but who knew that one of them takes only two hours and thirty-two minutes.   

 

It's a Funny Old World

On the macro-political side of things, it's been a bloody awful week. On the micro-personal side of things, I've had an absolute blinder of a week. It's a funny old world.

The bad stuff first. One really cannot get away from that bastard Trump and his shameless lies. He works on the principle that if you say a lie often and loud enough, it will mutate into a truth. Thus Ukraine 'started' the war and the embattled Zelensky is apparently nothing better than a dictator. Of course Trump neither wants nor cares to convince effete liberals like me that his sordid dissembling represents some new truth. He merely has to carry with him enough of his enablers to continue in power. I was wrong - his is not a policy of America First, rather closer it is America Only. Even that is wrong in the ultimate analysis - in this age of the unrestrained grifter, what we are witnessing is Trump First/Trump Only. 

To happier things. I have eaten well and sensibly this week. I feel good. Golf: on Tuesday, in partnership with MB, we posted a net 62 in the Winter Alliance. I think we might have won although I have not checked yet. Just nice to be in contention. I feel good. And best of all, yesterday I enjoyed a joyous lunch with eleven men with whom I had started at KEGS Aston back in 1971. To JRS, ICW, CDL, SH, MN, DC, SS, RGB, SW, TS, and NN, my heartfelt good wishes. Some of these I had not seen since the late 70s when we all left school. The years fell away. I feel good. I hope they all do as well. Particular chapeau to the good doctor, MN, who put it all together. 

Listening to the Moody Blues. I feel good.

The Death Of The Public Intellectual

For those of us with second-rate minds and of a certain age, the doings of public intellectuals used to be important. A.J.P. Taylor, Kenneth Clark, Jacob Bronowski et al had an impact on our ability to reason. I deliberately select three academic practitioners whose wider impact was televisual. That says much about how I imbibed my learning. 

Intellect has been privatised. And what brought all this to mind? Two missed opportunities that's what. Melvyn Bragg and Simon Schama are definitely public intellectuals. Lord Bragg (an entirely justified enoblememt by the way) brings us the staggering In Our Time every week on Radio 4 and his South Bank Show was a beacon of high-brow television. As for Schama, he has been bringing us provocative television for decades. All of which means that their recent offerings come as a disappointment. In Why Art Matters (Bragg), and The Story of Us (Schama) both men come across as weary - understandable maybe, but disappointing nonetheless.

Bragg's lament (I was going to call it a rant, but it is too quiet for that) at the dying of the artistic light in  modern Britain preaches to the choir. His Lordship interviews a succession of creatives and asks them to agree with his proposition that the arts are in crisis. All agree. Duh! Dissenting voices would have been interesting - maybe there aren't any. An opportunity missed. As I write this it occurs to me that I am being ungenerous - this may be so and perhaps Bragg is fully entitled to be exhausted after a working lifetime spent carrying the torch for the arts. Nonetheless, a disappointment.

Schama's The Story of Us, purports to be a modern cultural history of the United Kingdom. Schama too comes across as tired of carrying that torch. The three part series (the shortness of the series says much about the poverty of BBC commissioning) only really comes alive in its final portion when it considers Northern Ireland. Of all people it is Bono (I know, bloody Bono) who, interviewed by Schama, sheds a discerning light on the interaction of culture and politics. 

I feel mean writing this since both Bragg and Schama have plenty of credit in the cultural bank. They have more than done their bit.   

The Great Dictator

If pressed for an opinion (well, in fact, I rarely need pressing - I accept this) I would profess a preference for the silent works of Buster Keaton over those of Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin is too cloying, too mawkish. And this prejudice makes assessment of The Great Dictator difficult because what is an important piece of cinema descends into mush at its conclusion. Thus the film is condemned to be more important than it is good. 

Despite this final disappointment, this is a movie with much good in it. Taking the piss out of Hitler (Chaplin's character is the pathetic Adenoid Hynkel) and out of Mussolini (an outstanding performance from Jack Oakie - Trump should be made to watch it) is manifestly a good thing and it should be granted to Chapiln that it was a brave thing to do at a time when 'America First' was a loud siren cry,

Despite its faults, 76/100.

The Casting Of Doubt Upon Manifest Destiny

Despite my troubles with a lecturer who didn't take to me (in his defence I have to say that I reciprocated) I enjoyed the Film Studies module I took as part of my second degree. Within that module I enjoyed the theory of genres in film and my topic today (are you sitting comfortably?) is a sub-genre, the Revisionist Western. 

I have hinted at this recently with my rating of Shane and I am brought back to the subject by contemplation of The Man from Laramie (1955), directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart. We mustn't get carried away by the attraction of the topic - this is not remotely as eminent a movie as Shane although it shares some of its cinematic grandeur. It is however a very good one and (this is where the sub-genre bit comes in) it subverts the philosophy of your bog-standard western. The classic western is driven unquestioningly by the assumed beneficial operation of Manifest Destiny, itself the engine of the American project. The Man from Laramie has goodies and baddies (and some characters who float realistically between the extremes) but not a one is a Native American. 

Manifest Destiny is the impulse that feeds the wretched warped morality of MAGA, so expertly coralled by the odious Trump and the chilling Vance. Like Shane the Mann/Stewart film posits that bullies must be confronted. The Man from Laramie, 70/100.  

Self-Corroboration

I recall from my dim and distant past that there is, within the Law of Evidence, a rule against self-corroboration. Well, that rule does not have sovereignty in the realm of the OG.

I mention this merely because I yesterday came across a quotation from eminent sociologist Erving Goffman, itself quoted within Alan Bennett's Writing Home. Anyway, being as self-involved as anyone who writes a blog I lighted on Goffman's remarks as adding weight to what I said about Keir Starmer on 7 January.

Young psychiatrists in state mental hospitals who are sympathetic to the plight of the patients sometimes express distance from their administrative medical role by affecting shirts open at the collar, much as do socialists in their legislative offices .. What we have in these cases is a special kind of status symbol - a disidentifier ... telling others not what he is but what he isn't quite.

I see this appliance of the disidentifier in the dressing habits of my successors in the legal profession. As I write this I realise, of course, that Starmer is one such successor.

Sloppy logic, I know. This is not really self-corroboration. But you get what I'm driving at - these are my prejudices and I'm sticking to them, it's taken years to acquire them.

 

Days Of Wonder

I am here on the island, my ostensible reason being to see a roofer about the leaky chimney, but, in truth, mainly because I love it here. The only downside is that the Groupie has not been able to join me on this occasion. It has been a notable break.

For journeys up here I have abandoned the M6 even though it is potentially the quickest route - the expense of the M6 Toll cannot be justified and, besides, if you get held up on the motorway, you really do get held up. The shortest route is the old A5, also the most scenic. However I favour the A458/A55 - quickish (exactly three hours on Thursday) and scenicish. 

A very productive meeting with the roofer, RJE, on Friday. Like all the tradesmen on the island (in my experience) he is friendly, reasonable and charming. So far , so good then, but it was yesterday (Saturday) that turned into one of those days of wonder. Up early and drove to Anglesey Golf Club where I maintain country membership (ludicrously cheap compared to Birmingham) and I had bitten the bullet and entered a Stableford. Now playing with strangers can be daunting but not at The Anglesey. I was warmly greeted and paired with AJ, a Mancunian who served with the RAF at Valley and married a local girl and stayed here after he left the forces. The course was wet but eminently playable and there was a strong wind that made the back nine very challenging. We were round in three hours. The course won but I had a lovely time. If you see me, remind me to tell you about my birdie on the fourth. 

And as if that was not enough, as I drove back across Mon, Snowdonia (sorry, Eryri) glared at me, sun-kissed and snow lying on the northern slopes. Beautiful. 

I was back in plenty of time to open a bottle of Rioja (Gran Reserva naturally) and watch England subside to defeat to Ireland in the Six Nations. This much was predicatable and I won't bore you with another lecture on the problems besetting the grand old game in England. I then watched the recording of the Scotland v Italy match without knowing the result. Isn't Blair Kinghorn a good player!

Anchovies on brown toast for supper. 

You will notice that I have drawn a sensitive veil over the demolition of Wales by France on Friday evening. I find it best not to intrude on private grief. Mind you, DH the greenkeeper was kind enough to remember that I had been a player and elicited my opinion. I comforted him by saying that England would lose and that Wales have unearthed another quality player in their captain, Jac Morgan.

Slept like a baby. Days of wonder.

A Brief Illustrated Treatise On Morality

AMORAL: lacking a moral sense

IMMORAL: a person or behaviour that consciously goes against accepted morals.

Compare And Contrast

I am put in mind of the way examination questions used to be framed - compare contrast the treatments of villainy in George Roy Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting. 

Both of these pictures were box-office successes, garnered awards, and the second, The Sting, reunited the two stars of the first with director George Roy Hill. The four year wait was worth it. Those stars, Paul Newman and Robert Redford, are, to this hetero eye, two of the best-looking men ever to have graced the screen. But beyond that quality (in fact well ahead of it) each is confident enough in his own presence not to go in search of scenes to steal - instead they play off each other beautifully.

Why do I mention villainy in my pretended exam question? Because beneath the wit and charm (and there is a lot of both) both characters in both films are unreconstituted crooks. The attractiveness of criminals is hardly a novel feature but rarely can it have been put in the hands of such reliable charm. You like Butch and Sundance; you pull for the grifters in The Sting. This ought (wearing a moralist's hat) to be a problem. that it is not, is commentary on the skill of the film-making and (getting all philosophical) on human nature. 

As I review my rabbiting on, I realise that I have not distinguished the treatments of villainy in the two films. And here's the clever answer - there is no difference when push comes to shove and moral relativism is a dangerous game to play, particularly for someone who made his living as a lawyer. So I'll shut up and merely recommend both movies - I can't split them - 76/100 each.  

Differentiating The Great From The Merely Good

Not a peep from me about Trump pardoning violent criminals. Res ipsa loquitur.

So, enough with the Latin and back to my pre-occupation with films. The marks I award to films are guided by the marking of exam scripts and essays. That is to say that anything seventy or above indicates a first, sixty an upper second, fifty a lower second, and downwards to odium. And please don't think that I have any bias against the good old honourable gentleman's 2:2 - we have rather made a speciality of these in our family. The art (and I'm sticking to this) is in setting out to get a lower second and effortlessly achieving it. This I managed from my accustomed position in the bar of The Zetland public house in South Kensington. Golden days.

This musing on the rating of movies has been prompted by the three films I consider today, in ascending order of merit. The first is Heaven Can Wait, which The Groupie and I saw when we were courting strong. It is a slick piece of film-making and the leads, Warren Beatty (who co-directed) and Julie Christie are attractive and strong. Audiences liked it, quite possibly a pleasant distraction from the cares of the age (1978). The Groupie has the best descrition of it - 'a nice Sunday afternoon film'. 67/100.  

I have written before about the merit of the films of Christopher Nolan. Today's subject is, however, from just below his top drawer. As with any Nolan picture, the visuals are stunning but Interstellar tips into sentimentality at its end and thereby does itself down. Still a first-class offering and, as science fiction goes, a massive step up from the pretentious piffle that is 2001. And, as an aside, the sentient computers in Interstellar are a comforting alternative to the predations of HAL in 2001. 72/100. First class but not quite a great film.

Which leaves the best to last. Shane is George Stevens' 1953 masterpiece western. As with many of the best of this genre (think The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance), Shane ponders on its own obsolescence. The enigmatic hero wanders out of the frame at the conclusion, a man who is out of his time. The Wyoming mountains leer over much of the action. All is superbly done. Alan Ladd was never better and Jack Palance barely says a word but manages to ooze menace. Also notable and important is one of the great juvenile performances (as young Joey) from Brandon deWilde. A great film. 87/100. 

 

Am I Getting Old And Reactionary?

Of course I am. Indeed my friends will tell you that I used to be young and reactionary. No matter, I'm still going to go off on one about the state of three of my favourite sports, most particularly the way that they seem to think they can attract a 'new audience'.

These three sporting passions of mine may be on their way out, certainly in the satisfying manifestations that have enraptured me for most of my life. Let's start with cricket, the state of which I have lamented many times before. I watch the tedious Big Bash from Australia. The commentary is odious. Shouting does not make something more notable. This noise is rubbish.

Next, the sport nearest to my heart, rugby union football. The RFU thinks it advisable to pay its Chief Executive Officer over a million pounds per annum as he signs-off on a year in which the organistaion culled a load of staff and in which the grass-roots game is dying on its feet. The game struggles to make viable a top league which has only ten solvent teams. It denies itself, when fielding a team to represent our country, the services of anyone who has the audacity to ply his trade outside England. This too is rubbish.

And the game I play (very badly) these days - golf. I watched the utter drivel of the TGL indoor game that is being used to line the pockets of Woods and McIlroy. Professional golfers hitting a ball into a screen linked to a computer that traces where the ball would have gone. All the time the commentators roar at us and attempt the impossible of making golfers sound interesting. Good golf is plenty interesting, its practitioners have no need to be. This too is rubbish. 

Test match cricket. Well-coached top-level rugby. Proper golf played under pressure of terrain and climate. Mark my words, we will miss these when they have gone.       

Novella No. 1:4

There is a long path from his school to the gate on Home Lane. The path gets shorter with age. His age. Ice cream vans cram there parasitically. His first intimations of love and death live here. He cannot remember her name, much less her face, but his nine-year-old self held her hand as they negotiated the then-long path. He felt that tender fibrillation and knew he liked it.

He has twice been close to death. He once fell asleep at the wheel on the M5. He shudders that memory away. The car rolled. He walked away. The ice cream vans were the cause of the earlier, more tactable passing of the shadow. A dizzying game of tig. Flattered to be included in the game, the fat little boy evades over-keenly and runs behind the last van. Stop me and buy one. A lorry bears down on him, horn blaring. He can still see the driver's terrified face - it is that close. He is not hit. Nor is he tigged. Good at games.  

A god who looks over drunks? Could he/she/it tell even then that the fat little boy would become an unfat drunk. An early shift? Thank God.

On that long path, one of the cool boys (he was in the football team) shows him a pornographic magazine purloined from an older brother. It makes no sense, inspires no curiosity. Sex should be a practical matter, not theoretical. It is just like falling through a hedge - anyone can do it. The art is doing it well. Sex, that is.

In Defence Of The Meta-Text: Two British Examples

You have to give it to the BBC, its iPlayer streaming service is a treasure trove. I have just finished watching two Le Carre adaptations with quiet enjoyment: Smiley's People (better as television than as a novel); and A Perfect Spy (a notably good novel and a less satisfactory, though stil meritorious, television series). But that is not what I want to talk about. My main concern today is two films that can be found on iPlayer.

You won't (or at least shouldn't) need telling that the Beatles are brilliant. I use the present tense because their music remains as fresh as the proverbial daisy. I'm listening to it now. Their first venture into film, A Hard Day's Night (1964), is a stylish, bordering on brilliant, film about a band called the Beatles, played by (and credited as playing - that point is important - pay attention at the back) John, Paul, George and Ringo. The meta-text - it's about their trials and tribulations on their way to making a television show. It is consistently good-natured and Richard Lester's direction is superb. A real treat and, oh, that music. 75/100. 

An even more self-aware piece of meta-text is presented by A Cock and Bull Story. This is a film about the making of a film of a famously unfilmable metatextual novel, Sterne's Tristram Shandy. If this was done with anything other than a very deft touch, it would be in danger of disappearing up ts own fundament. It doesn't. It is very, very clever without being alienating. There is a great line (delivered by the excellent Steve Coogan) about Shandy being a postmodern novel written two hundred years before there was any modernism to be post of. Also 75/100. 

 

Nature Abhors A Vacuum

Great minds have debated this Greek nostrum, but don't worry I'm not going to suggest that I am qualified to add to the clamour. No, it just comes to mind when I try to summon up some optimism for the year that lies ahead of us and I see the moral and intellectual vacuums that so disfigure our public life.

Let's get Keir Starmer out of the way. I really don't care for this two-faced Mr Pasty but, bloody hell, he's a mile more convincing than Kemi Badenoch. Mind you what's really irking me about Starmer are not his policies (what policies?) but his predilection for having his photo taken jacketless and his sleeves rolled up. Here I am probably miles removed from the zetigeist but I like my statesmen to appear statesmanlike, not like some mealy-mouthed middle-manager.  

But let us talk of the far greater problem - the moral vacuum that emanates from America and threatens to pull us all into its nothingness. And I'm not (for today at least) concerned with that arch-shit Trump or his grifting British minion Farage. No, Elon Musk. Being the richest man in the world does not disqualify him from having opinions but the vile trash-talking he favours (much of it currently aimed, quite improperly, against Starmer) is an abuse of status. As Spiderman so often reminds us, with great power comes great responsibility. The Overgraduate does not, and never will, own a Tesla.

Twelve Films At Christmas - 12 & 13

Yes, yes, alright, I do know that thrteen is a number greater than twelve. However I have watched a couple more films as the holiday eked out its last few days and both are so good that they deserve some analysis. Ignore my heading and think 'A Baker's Dozen At Christmas'. 

Back in 2012 the delightful movie Sideways made its way into that year's Christmas dozen. It was directed by Alexander Payne and starred Paul Giamatti. That same director/actor combination is now seen to brilliant effect in The Holdovers. I strongly urge you to watch this film. It deserves to become a Christmas classic but will be superb whenever you consume it. Warm and funny without being saccharine this is one of the best films I have seen this year. 84/100. I will not say any more.

From the hinterland of teen stardom, Ron Howard has long since shaken off the dust of being Richie Cunningham in Happy Days, and has become one of Hollywood's most reliable directors. You imagine he would have thrived under the old studio system, churning out routinely engaging pictures. If you have doubts, watch Parenthood (1989) in which he draws out fine performances from his ensemble cast. Most notably he is well served (and they by him) by the juvenile actors. It is all about the trials of parenting and of being parented. It will make you smile. 79/100.