Twelve Films at Christmas - 7 & 8

'He didn't know a wahwah from Akira Kurosawa'. So goes one of Clive James' brilliant lyrics in Pete Atkin's song The Man Who Walked Towards the Music.  This is not strictly relevant to my review of Kurosawa's Rashomon but I'm always game for a bit of soi-disant intellectualism. Anyway, onwards with the review. Rashomon (1950) comes with all the critical baggage of any modern viewing of a Kurosawa movie - the inescapability of assertions of genius. It survives that burden. It is the storytelling equivalent of cubism - a highly influential (take for example The Usual Suspects) exercise in multiple perspectives. 77/100. 

From the monochrome of Rashomon to the garish cartoon tones of Moana. Great animation and catchy tunes allied to a winning narrative make this great fun. Cleverest of its tricks is to make the sea itself a charcter in the plot. Modern animation is a crowded field but this stands up without being a great film. 69/100. 

Advent 24

'BDR, Loule, 1990' is the simple legend on this picture that hangs in our front room. It was painted by my father, a self-portrait of the great man sitting, signature pipe in his mouth, in the sunshine in the Algarve on the Aston Old Edwardians centenary rugby tour. The picture used to hang in Holly Lane but Mum gave it to me last Christmas.

I cannot tell you how much I loved and admired the man. His dying years were blighted by the evil that is dementia, but he had packed in a mountain of living before that cruelty.

So that is it. Happy Christmas and may your god go with you. 

Advent 23

Tomorrow we will have a picture that touches my soul for very personal reasons but today we have the painting that would be my answer if you were daft enough to ask me, 'What is the most important picture of the twentieth century?' As I say, the question would be daft and only a man as impertinent as the Overgraduate would offer an answer from quite such a position of ignorance. Oh well.

Guernica (1937) is Pablo Picasso's gutteral response to the bombing of Guernica by the Nazis at the behest of Franco. It is executed on a massive scale (close to 24 square metres). I'm sticking with my answer.

Advent 22

Another National Trust exhibit today. Plas Newydd on Anglesey is the seat of the Marquess of Anglesey. In the dining room you will find Rex Whistler's extravagant Italianate-styled mural, almost ten metres in length. As a guest at the Marquess's table you would either be facing the mural or, your back to it, the Menai Strait and Snowdonia. No losers there - perhaps they used to swap round after each course.

Whistler (born 1905) died on active service in Normandy in 1944. The flanking panel of the mural (not shown here) includes a modest self-portrait of Whistler sweeping the floor.

Advent 21

Georges Braque (1882 - 1963) seems to have been the quiet man of cubism, his more staid life standing in stark contrast to that of his colleague Picasso.

Of all the pictures so far highlighted in this exercise, I think Braque's 1911 painting, Bottle and Fishes, is the one I would most like to have on my wall. It is a brilliant exercise in simultaneous perspectives and I find the geometric technicalities it deploys endlessly beguiling.

Advent 20

As proof of just how middle-class (and middle-minded) I am, I have to confess that The Groupie and the Pig are members of the National Trust. Enough said.

Rembrandt (1606 - 1669) painted a vast number of self-portraits and this one (1635) hangs at the Trust property, Buckland Abbey. I offer it as an unbeatable example of technical excellence in verisimilitude. I also put it up as a useful point of departure towards the very different painting I want to highlight tomorrow.

Advent 19

Whilst the urgent noise in American art was abstraction, Edward Hopper (1882 - 1967) offered an atmospheric antidote. His pictures shout of a realism that understands the peculiar loneliness of company. Here is his most famous painting - Nighthawks (1942) - a picture that launched a million posters.  

Advent 18

David Hockney (1937 -) is a national treasure - witness the recent and joyous documentaries with Melvyn Bragg on Sky Arts. His art is as happy as the artist and and narratives are suggested by his profuse revisiting of themes. Here I have selected 1967's A Bigger Splash. Technically pure with an attention-grabbing command of colour and Californian light.

Advent 17

It seems to me that almost every stately home has a Canaletto. His pictures of Venice are glowingly identifiable - often brought back to England as souvenirs of the Grand Tour. Better than postcards I think you'd have to agree. However my chosen Canaletto is his own souvenir of his trip to London - Westminster Bridge (1750).

Advent 16

After yesterday's diversion into the troubled imagination of Jackson Pollock, today we have something more figurative. We have several signed prints by William Selwyn (1933 -) dotted around Casa Piggy. His pictures of Welsh farmers are fabulous but I choose a ravaged landscape, Pont-Y-Gromlech. For me, Selwyn best captures the atmosphere of my beloved North Wales.

Advent 15

After yesterday's lapse into the naive, today we venture into the murky waters of abstract expressionism. Jackson Pollock (1912 - 1956) died young at the wheel of his car and with alcohol at the wheel of his senses. A mess. And there are plenty who think his later paintings nothing more than meaningless messes. They don't look like anything we can relate to and a frequent criticism is that 'I could have done that'. But could you really? Pollock's best stuff reaches into the intestines of human imagination and gives expression to the bloody mess. Here we have Untitled from 1949. 

Twelve Films At Christmas - 5 & 6

In my random wanderings through cinema, it is rare that two such excellent movies cross my path in succession. The second of them was already known to me and I am surprised to note that I have not previously reviewed it here. I'm getting old and there can seem to be no time before I gave life to the Overgraduate. As for the first film now under the spotlight, well this was an altogether pleasant surprise. 

Hell and High Water (2016) is a beautifully poignant film evoking the moral and literal deserts of West Texas. Its principal protagonists are two small-time bandits (Chris Pine and Ben Foster) and two Texas Rangers (Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham). To be clear, this is not a Western but, with its nods to that important genre, it provides a modern coda to the format. By the conclusion of the film, two of these four characters will be dead. I will not spoil it by naming them (it's available on Netflix). Beautifully acted by all, this film is succinct and barely wastes a frame. Highly recommended. 86/100.

 Chinatown (1974) is cited by some as film noir. It certainly borrows many of the tics of that genre but for this amateur critic, the running time is too long and there are too many sunlit exteriors to fit the bill. That does not make it anything less than a very fine picture. Jack Nicholson's detective, Jake Gittes, is possibly his finest role in a career not empty of highlights. Faye Dunnaway is a suitable femme fatale. The conclusion is as dark as its street location is glaringly sunlit. That is rather the point of this excellent film. 84/100. 

Advent 14

I doubt that I had ever beguiled you into thinking otherwise but today I betray the Overgraduate as nothing more than a sentimental vulgarian.

Charles Wysocki (1928-2002) was an unashamedly commercial artist, his rather twee primitive (decried as faux naive) pictures launching record-breaking jigsaw sales. He celebrates an America which no longer exists, indeed may never have existed at all. I detect an optimism that confirms the America I love and admire - as far from the vile post-Trump world as can be conceived. This is Hickory Haven Canal. Corny I know. Tomorrow, something altogether more challenging.

Advent 13

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was, towards the end of his life, hampered in painting due to the after-effects of an operation for abdominal cancer. In response to his infirmity he returned to a medium he had occasionally used in his early life -collage or cut-out. He would sculpt pre-painted sheets of paper and lay them out to stunning effect. He started with small compositions in this medium but graduated to much larger pieces.

Blue Nude III is from 1952's production of four studies in the cut-out method. By my count this picture is made from just six cuts of painted paper. It is what we art critics call bloody clever.  

Advent 12

Tintoretto was by all accounts something of an opereator in Venice - undercutting other artists to obtain important commissions and generally making himself unpopular with his peers. He claimed to have been apprenticed to Titian but that master seems to have denied the connection. Whatever, Tintoretto could paint. In this Last Supper he defies classical perspective and looks upon the scene on the diagonal, giving prominence to servient underlings instead of Christ and the apostles. He was playing the same manner of tricks that Orson Welles would bring to bear in cinema four and a half centuries later.

Advent 11

After two offerings from sculptor/artists which play tricks with form, today's picture is straight out of the top drawer of classicism - indeed some might argue that Titian has the top drawer to himself.

Where Hepworth and, to an even greater degree, Boccione, respond to light and structure, Titian lets his full representational talent loose on a biblical theme, The Assumption of the Virgin (1516-18). The colours are stunning and the technique brilliant. As I have assembled this list, I have had to confront my own prejudices and I have been struck by my taste for the relatively modern. This sort of devotional art is, though, quite thrilling.

Tomorrow another Venetian. 

Advent 10

Umberto Boccioni was, like Barbara Hepworth (see Advent 9), both painter and sculptor. He was also one of the founders of the Italian Futurist movement. Out of Head+Light+Surroundings (which at first glance seems an abstract blur of colours) a human face and other represenatations emerge. The whole effect of this 1912 picture is provocative and satisfying, demanding some effort of attention from the viewer.  

Twelve Films At Christmas - 3 & 4

An Inspector Calls is a 1954 screen adaptation of J.B. Priestley's 1945 stage play. I suppose I should declare an interest - I played Arthur Birling on the stage. A fascinating role - an industrialist caught up in his own importance and blind to the terrors about to be unleashed on the world (the play is set in 1912). The play is masterful and, Midsummer Night's Dream aside, the best in which I appeared in my limited am-dram career.  

The play is designedly claustrophobic - befitting the enclosed and comfortable world of the Birling family. A frequent problem with movie adaptations is that they feel duty-bound to open up the world of the play. An Inspector Calls is no exception to this problem. The flash-back technique takes the place of the play's taut, almost confessional, exposition of the flaws of the assembled characters. As the inspector (for no reason that is discernible to me, renamed Poole in place of the play's Goole) Alastair Sim is excellent. This is a perfectly decent movie but if the chance presents itself you should see the play. 61/100. 

When We Were Kings is a curiosity. It is a time capsule of a film. It assembles documentary footage surrounding the 1974 Foreman v Ali heavyweight title fight in Zaire. The film itself had originally been projected as a record of the 'Black Woodstock' concert held at the same time as the fight (the fight was delayed due to an injury to Foreman). It ran into problems of copyright and the film never saw the light of day until 1997. The stunning result of the fight is correctly part of the lore of the twentieth century. Ali and (to a necessarily smaller degree) Foreman are titanic figures. The film gives us insight into the articulate warrior Ali. We see the emergence of the malign influence of promoter Don King. An important record of a moment in history. 70/100. 

Advent 9

The Hepworth Sculpture Garden in St. Ives is small and a charming space in which to take in the smooth atmospheres induced by Barbara Hepworth's sculpture. Hepworth's pictures are much less well known but they capture the same sense of civilised structure. This is Winter Solstice (1971), a print of which adorns our bedroon wall. Less is more.

Advent 8

 

Henri Rousseau was an untrained amateur artist. His arresting paintings have the quality of perfect cartoon. Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised) (1891) is another picture that I discovered in the National Gallery and returned to time and again when I might have been  better employed in the college library. Oh well, it all turned out alright in the end.

Advent 7

I don't promise not to return to the genre but for now I will leave it at a trio of pop art pieces. My choices may not be other than obvious but cliches are cliches for reason. So, yes you guessed it, we have to have some Andy Warhol. Nothing can be better than to consider one icon's representation of another - Liz (1964).

Twelve Films At Christmas - 1 & 2

Sometimes you watch a film and find it perfectly pleasing in a passing and impermanent sort of a way, and then you find yourself wondering why they bothered. I'm afraid that is how I feel about the 2016 reboot of Swallows and Amazons. The books on which it is (loosely) based are precious to me. Arthur Ransome may well have been a funny sort of a cove (certainly his toleration of communist Russia doesn't read too well in retrospect - mind you 20/20 hindsight is a cheap virtue) but he was a damned fine writer of children's fiction and operated in an innocent age. The books warrant adult re-reading. There already exists a perfectly serviceable 1974 film version which sticks to the source novel. So why shoe-horn into this more recent offering a hokey plot involving muderous Russian spies? Daft and a disservice to the source text. 56/100.

And now for something altogether grander. Realised on a thrilling scale and, yes I'm going to say it, up there in discusssions as to the greatest films ever made (quite certainly amongst the greatest ever made in Britain) we have A Matter of Life and Death. No doubt you have seen it already but, if not, watch out for it at Christmas (it's usually on) and treat yourself. Fast-paced, brilliantly played, romantic, clever and, in its colour sequences, sumptuous. A genuinely great movie. 93/100.

Advent 6

If anything can perfectly capture a mood of volcanic consumerism and bare emotions, it is the work of Roy Lichtenstein. His blow-ups of cartoon drama are initially arresting but also have the power to retain your interest. The image scalds onto your mind and stays there. It is clean-lined and universally comprehensible. Shown is Crying Girl from 1963.

Advent 5

This, arguably the most widely influential piece of pop art, was created by Jann Haworth and Peter Blake. It is the cover from arguably (there's that word again - utilised to camouflage my own adamantine opinions) the most important album of all time, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. 

The pop art flavour will continue tomorrow. OG is so down with the kids. Or more accurately he is down with those who were kids when he was himself a juvenile. Uber-pseud.

Advent 4

I spoke yesterday of my pseudo-intellectual posturing as a young undergraduate. Well the fact is that I soon discovered that many of my fellow pseuds had Bosch posters on their walls as well. Making matters worse it was clear that even more of them had Dali posters to match mine. No matter, Salvador Dali may have been an old rascal but he was a man of huge technical skills and a provocative imagination. Today's picture is the very one that hung next to my Bosch poster - Impression of Africa. 

Advent 3

There were giants in the land. I was taught by a collection of learned and interesting men and women. It was their intellectual hinterland that made the very greatest teachers. One such was Andrew Pargeter who taught Physics, the only science that I took at O level. He was a good teacher but a greater impression was made on me by his collection of outside skills - magician, brilliant guitarist, man of letters. For General Studies lessons in the sixth form the teachers were given their head and allowed to range over their outside interests. It was in that spirit that Andy introduced us to Surrealism. And it was in that spirit that he offered us Hieronymus Bosch as the great fifteenth century progenitor of that twentieth century disruptive school. 

I mentioned yesterday my time as a very lazy student in London. On my wall in my room at King's College Hall was the poster of this Bosch painting. I thought it made me an intellectual. Pseud more like it. Great picture though.

Advent 2

Today's picture takes me back to my time reading Law at KCL, for the very good reason that rather than spend time at my studies I would instead wander down the Strand and pass my time in the National Gallery. Seurat's Bathers at Asnieres is painting on an heoroic scale. I do like a big canvas - is that another signifier of vulgarity? I would love to own a wall big enough to do justice to this picture.

Advent 1

I loved my father very much. He was a great man. And so it is that we start the walk through my imaginary gallery with the work of a man whose genius was pointed out to me by Dad. I couldn't actually let you pin me down as to my favourite Turner. Other more renowned paintings of his have been featured on this blog before but for today I will settle upon Snow Storm. Original hangs in Tate London. You need to get up close and be drawn into the elemental drama.

Pictures At An Exhibition

Apologies to Mussgorsky. Apologies to Emerson, Lake and Palmer (I suspect you have to be a certain age to get that allusion). Apologies to all serious art lovers. This year's Overgraduate Advent Calendar is going to be the OG's meander through an imaginary gallery of his favourite art. Actually that oversells it because there are always rules - there have to be rules. And they are these: no more than one image per artist and they have to be man-made pictures - no photography. That still leaves plenty of room for you to be stunned by OG's decidedly tired and depressingly middle-brow taste in art. I wish it was otherwise but I am a prisoner of my lack of effort when it comes to art. I love galleries but, as with books, such is the mass of stuff out there that a second-class (lower-second-class if we are being scrupulous) mind rather tends to give up the fight.

My paternal grandmother and my aunt were both substantially talented artists. My father was a talented and prolific amateur (to add to his other copious skills) and both of my daughters are blessed with the artistic gene that skipped their father - Daughter Number Two is an illustration graduate and demonstrably has an eye, as I believe they say in certain circles.

Eclectic, that is the word. All over the place might be a less generous summation of my taste. Anyway, enjoy.   

The Variegated Beauty Of Film

As you will have gathered I watch quite a lot of films and am not shy of giving an opinion on them. Most recently I was giving forth on the qualities of John Ford. Today's trio of movies come from very different bands of the filmic spectrum - one Ealing comedy, one rip-roaring swashbuckler, and one seminal Spaghetti Western. Variety is the spice of life.

Ealing comedy. I've reviewed this one before (Christmas 2016 to be precise) but Passport to Pimlico merits revisiting. I watched it with my mater a couple of weeks ago after we had enjoyed a very fine (Tyburn chippy) fish and chip luncheon - out of the paper you understand, OG's mama has standards even if he does not. Mum reckoned she hadn't seen this film since its cinematic run. It proved worth the wait. Funny, acute, and altogether charming with its repertory company of British comedic talent, it may perhaps be the very peak of Ealing's output. I repeat my 2016 rating - 80/100.

Next, a film of even greater vintage, 1938 to be precise. Rarely, if at all, has a swash been so thoroughly buckled as in The Adventures of Robin Hood. The history is, of course, entirely dodgy. No matter. There is no grey area between goodies and baddies. No matter. Sherwood Forest (reimagined on the Hollywood back-lot) is impossibly luminous. The stunts (and remember no CGI) are breathtaking and the whole thing speeds along at all times. Not an edge of cynicism to be found anywhere in this the first Warner Brothers picture to be filmed in Technicolor. If this can't raise a smile then you have no soul. 80/100. 

Finally we jump forward to 1964 and Fistful of Dollars. A very different kettle of fish. Cynicism drips from every pore of this movie. Eastwood is brilliantly sombre. Morricone's music is arresting. The violence is so stylised as to be worryingly amusing. This is clever and exploitative film-making. When this timbre falls into the wrong hands it can produce worthless pap. Sergio Leone is, though, a masterful director. Clever stuff. 78/100.   

 

The State Of Rugby Union

You may have noticed that I left the Rugby World Cup alone after my highly enjoyable trip to Marseille for its early stages. Here are a few of the Big Fat Pig's thoughts on where RWC has left us. In reaching these conclusions I also take account of some club rugby I have watched at my beloved Aston Old Edwardians and some Gallagher Premiership rugby courtesy of the good old telly box.

England progressed further and less humiliatingly than any of us might have wished given their dire form prior to RWC. Their rugby was turgid but lion-hearted. Marcus Smith must be given his head and Owen Farrell must be pensioned off with resounding thanks echoing in his ears. He has been a stalwart leader but he has never learned how to tackle efficiently - witness two embarrassing hand-offs aimed at his body in otherwise notable recent performances for Saracens.

The objective of the game is to score more points than your opponent. South Africa have a confrontational and muscular way of addressing this obective. No purpose is served in belly-aching about their success. Be better.

RWC lasted far too long and the seedings were settled laughably early. Groups of four would answer one point and a tad of common sense the other. Don't hold your breath.

We do not have a crisis in the laws of the game. We have a crisis of bad coaching. The methodology of modern tackiling best exemplifies this.

Grumpy Old Pig out.    

The State Of Our Union

Symbolic or what? My journey to Anglesey on Friday evening took the best part of six hours. A wicked combination of pot-holes, road works, chaotic driving (not by me you understand), and sheer bad luck. Symbolic of what? The state of the country that's what. Broken Britain. We have a government incapable of governing, a Loyal Opposition scared shitless of professing any plausible policies and, just to cap it all, David (now Lord) Cameron is back in the cabinet. Actually I don't mind the Cameron appointment - he does at least have gravitas and must have plenty of political energy left after doing basically sod-all in his time as Prime Minister. 

What have I done to deserve this? Mind you, could be worse - I could be American, a native of a great country that seems determined to waste all of its manifest advantages. Please surprise me.

I think I've got a wart developing on my finger. Bloody hell, I repeat - what have I done to deserve this?

And Goodbye To All That

Alongside this text will appear rather inadequte pictures (yes, taken on my antediluvian telephonic implement) of the two books I returned last week to the university library. Their subject matter (evident from their forbidding titles) will tell you where OG was felt to be lacking in his first submission of his doctoral thesis Shakespeare and Bagehot: a Study in Drama and Politics. 

Having now kicked over the traces of the opinions of my learned examiners, I am more than happy to concede that they had a point. So what is this all leading up to? Well, I will mention this just once (not entirely sure that I will keep this promise) but my formal studies are at an end. On October 11 2023 I received an email (no snail mail I'm afraid) addressed to 'Dr David Roberts'. It took me bloody years and no small amount of doubt and panic but I got there. No more examinations for Dr. Dave. 

About those two books. After I had consigned them to the returns bin, I instinctively turned left to go to the literature shelves to seek more obscure tomes for my studies, only to pull myself up short - I didn't know what next to read. The necessity had gone. There was a mild tinge of regret, followed by a knowing grin. It is over. I hope I never stop learning, but there are no more badges to be won. In 1978 I failed to do myself justice in my A Levels. I think I have now, and only now, atoned. To all who kept me going and put up with me, thank you. The Nobel laureate Bob Dylan sums up my state of mind best: 'I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now'.    

The Cavalry Trilogy

John Ford made monumental pictures - clever pun there from your correspondent, you know because Ford so often shot his films in Monument Valley. No? Oh well, a man's got to try.

Ford's alleged Cavalry Trilogy may very well have been regarded as nothing of the sort by this most reluctant of auteurs. He and his frequent star, John Wayne, have both been reconsidered by their critics in the decades since their artistic primes. Quite right too. Wayne, whatever one might make of his unpleasant politics (perhaps best judged from the laughable The Green Berets), remains a great presence on screen, monumental in fact. As for Ford, he is a major figure - how could one say anything different about the man responsible for both The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

The three films that comprise the after-designated Cavalry Trilogy were made in 1948, 1949, and 1950 respectively. They share no common characters (though manifestly they share character types) but do all deal with the morality and mores of the U.S. Cavalry. These films are a sympathetic and mildly regretful take on the realities of Manifest Destiny. 

Fort Apache is the first and best of the three movies. For collectors of film trivia there is a rare appearance from the adult Shirley Temple, but more seriously there is a nicely nuanced conflict between Wayne's pragmatic cavalry officer and his martinet commanding officer, played by Henry Fonda. The ending is particularly good and foreshadows the conclusion that Ford would hammer home even more tellingly in Liberty Valance some fourteen years later. There is also perhaps a veiled condemnation of the flawed heroism of a difficult American icon, George Armstrong Custer, not that Custer is naned and not that Ford would be anything other than subtle when treading such ground. 70/100.

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is the only clour film of the three. It is shot in fabulous Technicolor and won its sole Oscar for cinematography. Ravishing to look at but rather more sentimental than Fort Apache, it does nevertheless pick-up on the themes of battle-ravaged machismo that Wayne's features were best deployed in tracing. 68/100. 

Last of all comes Rio Grande. Again lighter in tone than Fort Apache, this might be described as a romantic Western with Maureen O'Hara warming-up nicely for her more famous stint alongside Wayne (again under Ford's direction) in 1952's The Quiet Man. Away from the romance and some comedy the questions of male stubbornness and unpremeditated heroism are never forgotten. 69/100.

That Ford could make three such films in as many years is telling. He may not have recognised himself as auteur but he was unquestionably  a master craftsman who wrung every ounce of filmic virtue from his cast and material.

An Important Primer On A Degraded Profession

Before I became a lawyer I had failed in my initial desire to be a hard-bitten, truth-searching, investigative journalist. My heroes were Woodward and Bernstein. You might think that there is something wrong with a boy/man who had successive ambitions in the loathed professions of journalism and the law. You would be wrong. I will argue the toss with anyone about the social value of ethical lawyering and I hope you would agree that good journalism is as important now as it has ever been. This latter sentiment is all the more important in the age of that loathsome toad Donald Trump.

All of which leads me in a roundabout sort of a way to a good film that makes a hero of the objective journalist. Mr. Jones is not up there with All the President's Men but it is a worthy bit of cinema all the same. It tells the story of Gareth Jones and his heroic exposing of Stalin's Holodomor, the deliberate starving of millions of Ukrainians, sacrificed on the altar of Communist orthodoxy. In addition to a fine central performance from James Norton there is a nicely chilling portrayal by Peter Sarsgaard of the real-life villain (he won a Pullitzer on the back of untruthful reporting of Stalin's 'miracle') Walter Duranty. Look Duranty up if you want to get a measure of this particular creep. Fake news is not new.

 Back to the film - it has a slightly clumsy framing device that brings George Orwell into the picture and it wanders around thematically on occasions but, overall, this is godd film-making. 69/100.  

The Rest Of The South-Western Odyssey

I abandoned you, I admit it. I was having such a good time in Cornwall last week that I could find neither time nor inclination to give my usual tiresome running commentary. Well, I'll just list a few more highlights in support of my conclusion - that Cornwall is bloody brilliant.

First up. Stein's Seafood Restaurant - the place where the benevolent capitalism of Padstein has its roots. Top draw. The Groupie was perhaps not bowled-over by her turbot but Big Fat Pig was a very happy camper with the Fruits de Mer. Picture of the actual portion below -and bear in mind that the Pig had eaten a load of it before this was taken.

A final word on the restaurant. It has no pretensions about Michelin stars - it obeys Stein's own mantra, fresh fish well cooked. It's good.

We weren't yet finished with the Stein empire. On Friday we attended (yes both of us) the Cookery School to learn how to prepare fish dishes. I was a tad worried that I wouldn't enjoy this but, pleased to say, that this was, I repeat myself, bloody brilliant. We filleted fish, we fried, grilled and cured any number of species. We got to eat what we prepared and were kept full to the gills with wine. Try it - most excellent. You could become, as BFP now is, a bore about the value of good kitchen knives.

However, the true beauty of Cornwall lies not in the culinary delights of Padstein but in its scenery. Camel Trail - excellent. Even better, Trevose Head. Breath-taking. Good for the soul.  

 

And, as if we had not already been blessed, the M5 was clear for our return journey.
  

Big Fat Pig Gets Bigger And Fatter But Only After Feeling Younger

BFP is late-middle-aged. At least. However he and the Groupie have been indulging in the activity best suited to making you feel young again - visiting National Trust properties. On Monday it was Trerice and yesterday Lanhydrock. Both are excellent, Trerice a smallish Elizabethan manor house, Lanhydrock a grand Victorian estate which manages to feel liveable. In case you have missed the point, one feels younger when visiting such sites because of the general decrepitude of the other visitors. Works for me.

Trerice

 

 

  

Lanhydrock

As for getting bigger and fatter, well last night we went to Padstow's oldest pub, The Golden Lion. Beer was top draw - Doom Bar. The food was excellent and gargantuan. See below my plate of gammon, egg, pineapple (a seared wedge not some tinned crap), mushrooms, tomatoes, and onion rings (best ever - and when it comes to onion rings I'm a professional) - you can't even see the chips which came in a side dish. Highly recommended.

Today we are going to do some walking on the Camel Trail before resuming the weight-gain programme at Rick Stein's Seafood Restaurant tonight.  

The Trouble With Running Downhill

The trouble with running downhill is that, on the assumption that you are returning to your base, there is always a compensating uphill stretch. Back at Casa Piggy we are at the top of a hill so I always finish with an incline. Well we have decamped (Groupie and I) to drizzly (the forecast has it getting better as the week progresses) Cornwall, Padstow to be precise. And, what do you know, our accommodation (very nice) is at the top of the bloody great descent to the harbour. The think is that when you are on your hols and want to go running, you have to get down to the sea. There is no fun to be had in meandering around the sunlit uplands. Thus Big Fat Pig made his way down to the harbour this morning at his usual slow pace. That final push back up the hill was murderous and my thighs are protesting now. Do I feel righteous? Too bloody right. I view the whole process as generating an excuse to fill my face at every opportunity. It's my life, as Bon Jovi so rightly puts it.

Was Elizabeth Taylor the twentieth century's most attractive woman? Ava Gardner and Vivian Leigh might have something to say about that. And, yes, I do do know that the question itself betrays a shallowness on my part. It's my life. Anyway, the reason I raise the point is that I recently watched (for the umpteenth time) Cleopatra, a film that has long exercised a fascination for me, in fact ever since I read in my Christmas Guiness Book of Records about its status (long-since superseded) as the most costly movie ever made. As a spectacle it works. As serious art it does not. But who cares. Never mind Burton and Taylor, the best performance comes from Roddy McDowall as that mealiest-mouthed of mealy-mouthed pragmatists, Octavius. Best viewed at Christmas on the biggest screen you can find. 68/100. I eschew my usual  editorial practice and afford space for a larger edition of the film poster. 

In all seriousness, Taylor's physical allure raises a mildly interetsing academic point. Although the film owes nothing to Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, the Taylor effect does have an effect on how a modern audience receives the play. The expectation of arresting looks (matching Shakespeare's poetry) is not a burden that Jacobean audiences would have to bear, the part of the matchless queen being played by a boy. I know, I know, I'm being all shallow again, But scratch back that shallow surface and there is a point that bears on reception theory. OK, I'll stop digging now. 

The Age Of Chivalry Is Not Dead

So this is what happened. The Groupie and I went to that London for the day to see Daughter Number One and her fiance (I know, exciting isn't it) and we did what environmentally responsible people do - we caught the train. On the way down we were an early enough stop to get seats but on the return journey Jean-Paul Sartre was again proved right - hell is other people, or to be precise, l'enfer, c'est les autres. A headlong dash to the train served to get us seats but the crowds kept on coming. I gave up my seat to an elderly lady. The age of chivalry is not dead (though clearly dying to judge by the unusualness of my gesture) but the age of manners may well be - miserable sod didn't even say than you. Oh well, Big Fat Pig will perhaps get his reward in heaven (stop laughing at the back).

All in all it was impossible not to compare the experience to my other recent experience of a long-distance train. Marseille to Paris was also very busy but everyone had a designated seat. Flexible tickets do have something to answer for.

Apropos of nothing at all, I will confess to a wry smile crossing my lips as I watched Eddie Jones's discomfiture at the hand of Warren Gatland's Wales. I like Gatland almost as little as I like Jones, but you have to say that he has galvanised Wales even if he did need Matthew Carly's barely moral refereeing against Fiji. England meanwhile lunber their way forward with Farrell seemingly re-established at fly-half. It will end in tears. 

A Shrinking Translation

Film versions of successful television shows often fail to expand into the big screen. For no reason of personal preference (I was with my Mum who had just had a cataract operation) I last week watched the second Downton movie - we ignored the first which was hidden behind a pay-wall. Downton Abbey: a New Era was in no manner displeasing but Julian Fellowes had obviously mailed it in. For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they will like. Of no note in cinema history. 50/100.

And wouldn't you know it, just like London buses, no sooner had one spin-off crossed my screen than along came another. We chose to view Luther: the Fallen Sun for the very good reason that the Luther television series had been one of the best things on the box in the past decade - dark, gory and carried by two central performers (Idris Elba and Ruth Wilson) from the top drawer. Instead of expanding Elba's character into the corners of cinematic possibility, the film shrinks into cliche and wild improbability. It perhaps best serves as Elba's screen-test to be the next Bond (a development I would not find unjustified). A missed opportunity. 51/100.

Les Petites Vacances

Rugby World Cup 2023 is well and truly underway and the Overgraduate was in the South of France for an extended weekend of sport and general jollity. Before anything else is said I must thank AO, JRS, AW, AS, and BH for their company on the trip, most particularly to those of them who had a hand in the organisation. OG steered well clear of taking any responsibility in that regard - my role was to pay up when asked and to make as good a pass as possible at being acceptable company. A brilliant trip.

OG's chosen reading - quel poseur

We travelled by train - Eurostar to Paris and then on to Marseille by TGV. These trips were a reminder of just how awesome train travel can be. Reserved seats, no over-selling and clean toilets. On the outward leg I read Private Eye - is it my imagination or did this used to be much funnier? On the return I did my faux intellectual bit and tried to make sense of a copy of Cahiers du Cinema. A barely-scraped French A level more than four decades ago is not the best equipment for this task. Fun though. 

We stayed in the stunning La Ciotat, twenty miles outside Marseille. AO had harnessed AirB'n'B and come up with a ridiculously luxurious apartment. On arrival the suave owner told us we could use any of the building's three pools. As for La Ciotat, well what a nice place. This is a mild understatement.

La Ciotat Vieux Port

Even the moments of mild trauma that inevitably accompany such a trip turned to our benefit. On Saturday under the blameless, burning skies we walked to La Ciotat's quaint railway station (where the Lumiere Brothers filmed their famous steam-train arriving and ushered in the age of cinema) only to receive the news that there was a local train strike. How were the intrepid half dozen to get into Marseille for England's opening match against Argentina? Here that shitty A level finally came into its own. A fractured call to our property manager, Sarah (whose English was on a par with my French), somehow managed to convey that we needed a taxi for six to the Stade Marseille. Sarah came up trumps and we all crammed into a Skoda for the trip. Our driver even arranged our return trip with his mate Phillipe. This proved a turning point in the weekend - Phillipe and his absurdly luxurious Tesla (I take back all I have ever said about Elon Musk) became our transport of choice - he took us back into Marseille for the Scotland v South Africa match on Sunday, took us home that evening and carried us to the station at La Ciotat on our Monday departure. Bravo Phillipe. From this near-disaster it transpired that we had avoided all manner of tribulations with local public transport.  

France had been a joyous host, boosted into a good mood by their team's dismantling of New Zealand in the opening match of the tournament. I should however point out that the stradium authorities in Marseille got it badly wrong for the England v Argentina match. The arrangements for entry into the stadium were dire and dangerous. The goodwill of rugby fans rescued the situation as boisterous Argentinians and wary Englishmen (most of them expecting an Argentinian victory) demonstrated admirable restraint. Enough will have been written elsewhere about England's short-handed victory - they spent almost the entire match reduced to fourteen men after Tom Curry's dimissal. Suffice to say this was a spirited, stoic, professional performance.

I will finish on a vaguely sour note. Phillipe got us back to the apartment on Sunday in time to watch the thunderous game between Wales and Fiji. The sour note? Matthew Carley's refereeing. I had hoped we might have got past the institutional elitism that sees the mistreatment of the 'tier 2' rugby nations. Sadly we have not. Just ask yourself this - would the All Blacks have been as mistreated as were Fiji? No they would not.