Marlowe Returns

Sky's production of Marlowe describes itself as a 'neo noir'. There is a problem - it's not nearly noir enough. Yes you can cavil at the profanities littered across the dialogue and can justly complain that it lacks (doesn't everything) Chandleresque sharpness. You can also take issue with Liam Neeson's world-weary portrayal of the eponymous detective, although I had no problem with that. No, in my highly inexpert opinion, this would have been a far better picture if it had been shot in a gloomy monochrome. The Californian sunlight is simply too sharp and the film is at its best when it moves into the night. This is a miss - nowhere near the chiaroscuro bravado of, say, The Big Heat or Touch of Evil. An opportunity misssed but not unwatchable. 59/100.

Funeral In Berlin

I am an admirer of Len Deighton's fiction, particularly his Game/Set/Match/Hook/Line/Sinker/Faith/Hope/Charity roman fleuve. These represent professional writing at its best.

Funeral in Berlin is the second of the trilogy of Harry Palmer cinematic adaptations. Its star is another master of his trade, the cinematic giant that is Michael Caine. It is very sixties - no real hero, a plot that disappears up its own behind but staying just on the right side of being alienating. Enjoyable. 66/100.

On Cheltenham, On Not Having Covid, On Harriet and Boris

I was on the lash last week - not noisily or obnoxiously so but nonetheless I was consumed by gambling and alcohol for the final three days of the Cheltenham Festival. I was in profit on the gambling front, again not obnoxiously so but enough for my self-respect. Which was nice.

Our group of cheerful punters was at the course itself only on the Wednesday. On Thursday we took up residence in the Gate public house in Sutton Codfield. Not least of the advantages of this arangement (never mind the numerous screens showing the sport) was that a round of beers was only slightly more than the cost of a single pint on-course. Similarly advantageous was the attendance at Aston Manor Cricket Club for Gold Cup Day on Friday. 

Still crowded. Still expensive

It was actually with some trepidation that I headed to Cheltenham on the Wednesday. Don't get me wrong, it is, notwithstanding the dilution of the quality consequent upon the addition of a fourth day (and yes I know that ship has sailed, but please don't get me started on the possibility of a fifth day), a fine day's racing but the course has gradually become a less congenial place. Too crowded, too expensive (£7.50 for a pint - really) and thronged with overdressed men and underdressed women. And you pay more than a hundred of your English pounds for the privilege. I went in full expectation of declaring this my last visit to the Festival. Well, I must say I was pleasantly surprised. It was still crowded and expensive but it felt mildly less oppressive than of late. The official attendance figures confirm that the attendance was down on last year so perhaps our ruined economy is a cloud with a silver lining for elderly drunken gamblers. Will I be back next year? The jury's out.  

A much cheaper place to back winners (and losers)

As for the Gate. Proper old boozer. Proper old drinkers. Bring your own food. Good beer. Not crowded. Cheap. Will we be back? Yes.

Not salubrious. Answers the needs of the day

I have always found Gold Cup Day a hard card from which to pick winners - and that's saying quite something for a serial loser like me. The annual bash at Aston Manor (very busy but you can lean on the bar - not an option at the course) is as congenial a way of doing your bollocks (as we like to put it) as can be imagined. £5 in which included a top-grade buffet (excellent samosas), beer not as good as the Gate but way cheaper than the course. Will we be back? Yes.

I came away from my exposure to beer and betting with a cold. Covid? No - for reasons I won't bore you with, I've done a test.

That braggadocious grifter Boris Johnson was yesterday offering his pathetic evidence to the Commons Privileges Committee. I won't bore you with the details because I've been over this ground before. Suffice to say that this expensively educated and bright man asks us to believe that he learned nothing from the briefings he himself led during the Covid crisis. As I say, pathetic. That his inquisition was chaired by the catastrophically pious Harriet Harman might have made me lean in favour of any other witness but, and you won't hear me say this again I suspect, I'm on Harriet's side for once.

    

Sun And Strewn Seaweed

I thought maybe you'd like to be kept up-to-date with the weather and associated matters here on the island. And while I'm at it, yes thank you I'm getting to grips with poor old Walter Bagehot's alleged scientific racism. One should not, of course, minimise these things but I can honestly bring myself to forgive him and not lose any more sleep over it. I hope you will believe me when I say that I really did have some misgivings.

Anyway, the weather. Reports from back in Brum confirm that they have had a shit-load of snow (that's a climatological term - I've got Geography A Level you know) but, despite some flurries, nothing has settled here on the coast. I did however pull back the curtains this morning to the stunning sight of the Great Orme snow-clad on the horizon. I took myself down to the beach where things were a deal calmer than yesterday - one could actually get down to the beach-front. I took a photo, intending to put it up as a comparator to yesterday's but unfortunately I find that a quarter of the picture is taken up by my unfocused finger. Sorry. I was going to take a further picture of the piles of seaweed that had been cast onto the road in the storm but by the time I came out of the cafe (Americano and a nice piece of carrot cake) some efficient soul had cleared it away. Such efficiency might even make me feel sanguine about the licensed larceny that is our penal Council Tax, assuming always that it was a public servant who had done the cleaning-up.

Another film a - very good one. The Killing Fields relates a true story within the context of America's dubious history in Cambodia. The structure of the film is risky - the first narrative arc concerns the build-up to the shambolic vacating of the country by the West. The second arc largely (and you might think riskily) abandons its American and European protagonists in favour of a chilling depiction of the Khmer Rouge regime that filled the power vacuum. Powerful and important. 83/100.       

Ooooo, Big Waves

 

I'm no photographer but I snapped this image this morning down at the seafront in Benllech. Pretty cool eh? The prevailing winds mean that Benllech is generally a sheltered bay, but not today. I was half-way down the steps to the front and could venture no further - I even got an uplifting dousing in the sea-spray when a particulrly large wave crashed over the wall. Delicious.

As you will have gathered, I am here in Ynys Mon. I study best here and have been trying to get to grips with  the notion that Walter Bagehot was a nasty old racist. I won't bore you with the story but someone brighter than I am, put this notion in my head so it has to be tested. It troubles me, most notably in the context of Bagehot's Physics and Politics. I am reading a contentious tome that glories in the title, The Victorian Reinvention of Race: New Racisms and the Problem of Grouping in the Human Sciences, by Edward Beasley. He really has it in for my boy Walter. We all do it I know but Beasley ends up being reductivist. He is a better and more elegant writer than the Big Fat Pig but The Pig is nonetheless trying to mount a defence of the Boy Bagehot and, in the process, to rescue his doctoral thesis from the flames of redundancy. This is not simple when you are facing an opening paragraph as lucid (and thereby attractive) as Beasley's:

To classify the peoples of the world, we sometimes invent races. What I mean is that we cut the human continuum into discrete groups, each with a bilogical identity that we think of as passed down from one generation to the next.

Beasley goes on to throw Bagehot into the circle of Hell occupied by the French brute Gobineau. Check him out if you have a minute. Walter deserves better. 

Let us move to a more comfortable environment. I've been watching films again. This time it was something of a curiosity - The Sisters Brothers (available on iPlayer if you fancy it) - a beautifully mounted Western set in mid 1850s Oregon and California. I say it is a curious film because it has a lot going for it but somehow it fails to fire. Three of its four principal characters are played by Hollywood heavyweights. John C. Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix, and Jake Gyllenhaal are all excellent and matched by the not quite so stellar Riz Ahmed. All well and good. But somehow the movie can't make up its mind whether it is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or Unforgiven. The truth, I'm sure, is that it wants to be neither but to be itself. It is good but, in the end, the weight of the venerable genre pulls it down and it manages to be a good film from which a great one wants to escape. Its wistful ending is worth the effort. 66/100. Interesting to note that it attracted good reviews but bombed at the box office. 

 

A Film You First Saw Way Back When

Kramer v Kramer is a film from those days when the Groupie and I were unencumbered by children (that sounds cruel but you know what I mean) and therefore regular visitors to the cinema. Those, also, were the days before streaming services so if you wanted to see a film, you went to the cinema or waited years for it to be shown (cropped and mangled) on terrestrial television. Kramer v Kramer seemed important and well-made back in those days and I am pleased to tell you that it still holds up now. It is carried by its acting - everyone is pitch perect, Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman had got previous but Justin Henry as the fought-over child is stunning. He remains the youngest ever Oscar nominee. Touching, heart-warming, moving, funny, sad, provocative. All of the above. 82/100.