Are Brilliant ... Mark XXVI

 It's been a while since the last 'Are Brilliant' so I thought I'd better revive it. Besides a change being as good as a rest it has been one of those good to be alive holiday weekends so the revival is timely.

Are brilliant: 

the Groupie. I'm here at the old country residence with her and that always makes me feel blessed.

Ynys Mon: we walked yesterday on the Menai Straits (well not actually on them but you know what I mean) and I marvelled at the perfect fusion of man and nature that is the sea and the two Menai bridges.

The Anglesey Coast Path - one hundred and twenty-five miles of grandeur.

Gregory's Girl, watched yesterday night and which is every bit as charming and downright funny as I had remembered.Out of the top draw. 88/100.

Sausages. Good sausages.

Malbec.

Welsh Chilli Chutney, a jar of which one of our visitors left in the fridge. Spicy, nice with cheddar.

Pig On A Bike. No Crashes. Another Two Films

It's been another mildly troubled week for the Pig. Out running on Monday when the right calf twinged again. He finished his half hour and then strapped on the ice packs. He hasn't been running since but managed a seesion on the cross-trainer and then this morning lasted the full two and a half hours on the precious bike, including four substantial (Pig standard) climbs. His porcine legs are very stiff.

Those films. DN2 and I viewed The Imitation Game on Friday. It's goes without saying that Benedict Cumberbatch is excellent as the tragic genius Alan Turing but it perhaps comes as more of a surprise to add that Keira Knightley is also very good. The cracking of the Enigma codes has become the stuff of legend but Turing himself remains, well, something of an enigma. This film relates a very British tragedy unfussily. A solid 2:1 - I'm thinking of films in degree terms I've decided. 69/100. 

Very different but another solid 2:1 is Bridesmaids. It contains some of the features of the gross-out comedy but has a tender heart and is well played by its ensemble cast. Makes you laugh out loud and also makes you smile without getting too lachrymose. 68/100.

I've just been thinking about that 2:1 analogy and it occurs to me that I have, by this new standard, probably been over-marking certain films in the past. Well what can I say  - I'm not a bloody machine, though perhaps I am an enigma. Is that a good thing?

A Two Film Weekend

Daughter Number One has been home for the week and we've watched a couple of films with her this weekend. One is newish and recommended, the other one of the all-time greats.

Bad Education is an HBO production which premiered on television during the lockdown. I'm not sure whether that disqualifies it from consideration for the major cinematic awards - a pity if it does because there is top-grade work on dislay from Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney. It is that most necessary and rewarding of things - an American morality tale. Good stuff. 76/100. 

The all-time great? A movie that pushed the cinematic horizon and remains to this day a thing of beauty to look at. Two million sketches were produced in the making of the film and a quarter of a million final paintings. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. 96/100.

DN1 will be heading back to that London tonight. I will miss her, just as I miss DN2 who is hunkered down in locked-down Manchester. The Two Man Idiot Show is out of town but there is always a welcome for it here at Casa Piggy.

Suite Francaise

 I haven't read Irene Nemirovsky's novel but have now seen the film of Suite Francaise. It is a quiet film about desperate times and rather beautiful. Its cast includes the reliably excellent Kristin Scott Thomas. The end seems hurried but perhaps that is inevitable when the source is an unfinished novel. No matter. 70/100.

 

What else has the Pig been up to? He's been a very good boy exercise-wise. When last he reported to you he had taken his first tentative run after the calf strain. Since then he has been for another thirty minute run in broiling heat and then, yesterday morning, in more conducive (though humid) weather he surprised himself by staying out for ninety minutes. His weight is down and today he is going to test his refound golf game at Harborne. He is maintaining a mood of quiet pessimism although the temptation to be positive is lurking. Watching CNN soon dulls any positivity: Trump gets worse by the day and Biden is tragically limited. 

Pig Gets All Cultural

 The Tempest has always bothered me. It is lazily described as Shakespeare's 'late masterpiece' but I've never really got it. I studied it for A level and my version of events has always been that it was badly taught, unlike our other Shakespeare text Hamlet which the great J.G. Smith made sing. I'm still sort of sticking to this self-exculpatory version of personal ancient history but I do now have to admit that the play has more to offer than I have been willing to admit.

Colin Morgan as Ariel

 

What has provoked this Damascene conversion? Well, it's the cultural offering on iPlayer that's what. I was beguiled by the recent transmission of the 2013 Globe production. Roger Allam (Peter Mannion to all Thick of It fans and, let's face it, that should be all of us) is a brilliant Prospero and there has to special praise for Colin Morgan's balletic Ariel. Brave new world indeed. 

Le Pig Sportif

 An interesting couple of weeks for Big Fat Pig and his fitness drive. You may recall that the Pig was for several years plagued by calf injuries. The purchase of some expensive made-to-measure insoles for the running shoes seemed to have cured this blight. But a fortnight ago the Pig was twelve minutes and fifty seconds into his first plod of the week when the right calf pinged in protest. A regime of ice, compression and elevation thus followed and the Pig made his comeback this morning. Thirty-one minutes and no damage done. Le Pig est retourne.

Despite the troublesome calf the Pig has not been completely idle. The cross-trainer has been dusted off and the golf has continued. Monday nights with the lads at Pype Hayes and an additional outing last week at Hatchford Brook where the Pig had his best round of the year (of several years in fact) such that the handicap is inching back towards respectability. On a different golfing front the Pig backed Paul Casey at 80/1 for last week's PGA and the each-way pickup was a healthy return on investment. Le Pig - il est genius. 

I've just finished reading a real curiosity of a book. Caesar was the first published work of Patrick O'Brian - a seriously good author whose Aubrey/Maturin novel sequence everyone should try. Caesar was written when O'Brian was only twelve and published when he was fourteen. It is concise and elegant. Remarkable. 

The sun is shining, the garden is looking good and it is almost too tempting for the Pig to break his midweek alcohol ban. Almost. Le Pig est mentally fort. He's going to make a sandwich and eat it outside. Le Pig est faim.

A Move Away From Emotionless Aplomb

I remember reading some Martin Amis when at university (second time around) and thinking myself moderately smart when I described him as easier to admire than to like. His early stock in trade was, putting it mildly, the world weary.

When his tenth novel Night Train was published in 1997 (I have only just read this one) the Guardian reviewer mentioned Amis's history of 'emotionless aplomb' (wish I'd said that) but only to distinguish Night Train from its cynically arid predecessors. Because this one is not without feeeling. Nor is it without faults but it reads easily enough and leaves you with an oddly gratifying sensation of sadness. Clever. It also succinctly (the best way) shows an understanding of my own illness;

There goes out clear blue sky. Because lithium is used in the treatment of what I have heard described as the Mike Tyson of mental disorders: Manic depression.

That capital letter after the colon is not a transcription error - it reflects a typographical affectation that punctuates the novel. It's probably me being silly but I have to admit that vexed me.  We are nothing without our prejudices I suppose.

Billy Elliot

Some things surprise you when you come back to them. Such transpires to be the case with Billy Elliot, a film I have seen several times but which I now suspect I was taking for granted. I paid proper attention this afternoon and can say this - it is a beautiful thing, affecting and  just on the sensible side of cloying. Fine acting all over the piece but particular credit goes to Gary Lewis as Billy's beleaguered father. Not a wasted frame in view. 86/100.

Now for something a deal removed from ballet but possessed (to certain of us) of a beauty of its own. It is the Pig's recurring nemesis - golf. First of all a positive note - played at Stonebridge with the rugby lads last week and, praise where praise is due, encountered greens as fine as I've played and, despite rumours to the contrary, I have played at some nice courses.

But that, I'm afraid, is enough of the positivity because someone in golf has got my goat - enter stage left Bryson DeChambeau. Great name, very fine golfer but more than a bit of a plonker. It is not his scientific approach to the game that I dislike though I find his method inelegant. No, it is his demanour that grates. During the first round of the WGC currently being played in Memphis he sought the connivance of a rules official in deeming a single red ant a burrowing animal. The official quite properly stood his ground though fell short of employing the language the Pig would have deployed, namely 'Play it as it lies you spoilt brat'.

The Overgraduate has been known for his pithy golf commentary in the past, indeed the purple prose of 'Tiger Woods is a knob' still attracts hits on Google. Don't get me wrong I do not question the athleticism that Woods brought to the game, nor do I object to DeChambeau bringing sheer power to bear on the game. However until Bryson mends his manners I will not be rooting for him. Grow up you knob. You play a game for a (very healthy) living and some humility would not go amiss.