Advent: The Rules Of Engagement

It is only one day away, the day you look forward to so much. Big Fat Pig's Advent calendar starts tomorrow. It is therefore time to explain the rules for this year's list. Bet you can't wait.

This year we have songs, individual songs, not albums. The further wrinkle is that any track from my previous Advent list cannot be included and indeed no artist from that former list can appear - there is a slight caveat to that second rule but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

So make sure you tune in tomorrow for a seasonal and cheesy start. Yo ho ho.

An Afternoon Of Great Films

The very apex of the yuletide season is fast upon us - the Roberts Christmas party. Today was advance planning day, which means bags of work for the Groupie and a little for Big Fat Pig. The Pig's most onerous task is to choose the wines - he will march on Majestic Wine and taste his way to a decision. It's a hard life.

As the planning was going on around him the Pig happened upon the 1946 version (by a mile the best) of Great Expectations. This is David Lean living up to his surname (his later works are a tad monumental) and directing a pacy affectionate piece of Dickens. 8.5/10.

And while that was going on the Pig was recording Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for later consumption - he has told you before what he thinks of that masterpiece.

The State Of The Polls

My second alma mater (yes I have two undergraduate degrees, hence the massively witty title of this blog) today played host to the launch of the Labour Party Manifesto. It is Birmingham City University of which I speak. A couple of days ago all post-graduate students (of which I am one) were warned that access to certain buildings would be denied today and that memo seemed to relish informing us that the nature of the event causing such closure could not be revealed 'for security reasons'. What a load of old bollocks - I immediately guessed what it was going to be. After all the Lib Dems had already sounded their pootling fanfare and the Tories presumably have more sense than to show up on a modern university campus. Anyway I just hope we charged Labour through the nose for the privilege.

I've been reading said manifesto this afternoon. It is, on balance, a dire document born of Old Labour shibboleths and bearing the imprimatur not so much of the dreadful Corbyn (or Magic Grandpa as Rod Liddle so aptly styles him) but of the gimlet eyed Most Dangerous Man in Britain, John McDonnell. McDonnell is deadly serious and deadly clever. He hates enterprise with a passion - for him it is the immoral extraction of surplus value created by and belonging to the proletariat. Many years ago I had and kept a copy of the 1983 Labour Manifesto, 'the longest suicide note in political history' as it was described. We could afford to laugh about it because there never was a hope of Michael Foot (another clever man - though more decent than McDonnell) becoming Prime Minister. It is harder to laugh these days because Labour can win. McDonnell's acuity is ranged against a tired Conservative Party led by a dilettante with no moral anchor.

You pays your money and you takes your chance. Last one out, switch the lights off.

The Omen

Why remake a perfectly adequate film? There is I suppose some warped sense in having another go at a perfectly inadequate film, but having watched both the 1976 and 2006 iterations of The Omen, I find myself wondering at the thinking behind the revamp. The second faithfully apes the first and cannot, so far as this limited critic can tell, add anything of substance to the first. I am at least relieved to observe that the later version does not try to up the ante on the gore front - the decapitation scene is perhaps more graphically done but that's about it.

But the similarities between the two pictures at least mean that only one editorial comment is needed. This is an enjoyably portentous, souped-up dip into the world of religion and evil possession. Better (by some degree in fact) than The Da Vinci Code and its daft sibling Angels and Demons, I wouldn't put you off either serving of this diabolical fare but wouldn't recommend that you go out of your way to test either. 6/10 apiece.

It has come to me that I can answer the question I posed at my start above - check out the two versions of True Grit and you'll see where I'm going.

Manchester By The Sea

Manchester by the Sea is not simply one of those worthy but forgettable films that garner awards (Casey Affleck won the Best Actor Oscar), it is not merely a good film, it is a very good one, perhaps on the cusp of greatness. Its subject matter is potentially ruinous dealing as it does with the daunting emotional baggage of Affleck's central character. But in among the tragedy there is a gentle almost painful comic spirit at play and an overriding sense of the possibility of redemption. Ther is no sugar-coated ending but the human spirit remains alive to fight another day and that alone is to be wondered at. Search this film out. 9/10. 

Our Kind Of Traitor

I haven't read this particular le Carre novel but it belongs to his post Cold War oeuvre, a category I find less satisfactory than the classic Smiley texts. But, no matter, the filmed version is effectively done and hammers home the author's disdain for the English governing class.

The title might be taken to refer to the Russian money-launderer who betrays his overlord but can also be taken to refer to the largely unseen British politician who endorses the scam. In the new world order that le Carre so despises such men have become our kinds of traitor. Ewan McGregor is good as the English academic sucked into the murky world of intelligence but the film belongs to Stellan Scarsgard as the charming and vulgar Russian traitor. 6.5/10. 

The Last Jedi - Reappraisal

I watched The Last Jedi for a second time last night (first viewing was over a year ago) and I think I was a tad parsimonious when I gave it 7.5/10 on first encounter. No, it's better than that - perhaps fifteen minutes overlong but with plenty of action and attendant depth. 8/10.

RWC19.7

It may all have been my fault. I should have watched the match from the exact same position as I occupied for the dismantling of New Zealand. Instead I abandoned the right hand side of the sofa in what we rather tweely call the snug and imposed myself upon the hospitality of TW and SW in Milton Keynes. Their hosting was faultless but I still have to live with the fact that I caused England to lose the World Cup final. Sorry.

More realistically we have to acknowledge a good old-fashioned Springbok shellacking, a brutal evisceration of the shell-shocked English based upon a ferociously dominant scrummage. I have my reservations about the modern vogue which referees the scrummage so that the weaker side automatically concedes a penalty once in retreat, but England have benefited plentifully from this perverse jurisprudence in the past, so no complaints from this commentator.

Overall probably the best RWC thus far - organised with flair and dignity by the host nation, whose progress to the quarter-final was the best news to come out of the tournament.