It's A Hard Job But Someone's Got To Do It

Just for your benefit (you can thank me later) I have watched  a lot of international rugby over the past few weeks. The coverage on Amazon was well up to scratch and Channel 4 did a respectable job with the matches they carried. Meanwhile the poor old BBC had to content themselves with the women's internationals in which England's professionals trounced a succession of part-timers, including the normally formidable New Zealanders. I will concentrate on the men's matches.

Having said that the Amazon coverage was fine, I do just have to wonder about the marketing wisdom of playing to such a limited televisual crowd. That's modernity for you.

These are (Italy excepted) exciting times for the Six Nations. Scotland are a slick and professional outfit even if it must be frustrating to play with a player as gifted and yet daft as Finn Russell. He is taken from the mould out of which they cast his coach, Gregor Townsend. I am a fan of both. Just.

Wales have an injury list as long as a lock's arm but come out of the month just about even - they got ripped apart by the All Blacks but were otherwise creditable. Their depth in the back-row is admirable.

Ireland, like Wales, have four professional provincial teams but the Irish versions are a force to be reckoned with whereas Welsh domestic rugby manages to lurch from self-inflicted wound to internecine pig-headedness. The Irish game against New Zealnd was a magnificent test match. Ireland pummelled The All Blacks  remorselessly and yet still the All Blacks stayed in the game. Andy Farrell may just be the best English coach currently operating - Ireland's gain.

simply a great game

France ought to be grateful to the Irish for softening up New Zealand but let us take nothing away from the French victory - a massive psycholgical boost in the continued growth of this French side. I have been saying for two years that France are the value bet for the next RWC. Well, the value has all gone now. However check out the 12/1 available on Ireland in some places. Certainly better value than England at a skinny 4/1.

generational talent - a flanker

Which leaves us with England. England, bloody England. There's no requirement for me to redeploy my anti-Jones opinions. They remain valid but, praise where praise is due, his players demonstrated Herculean resolve to oulast South Africa. Let us bask in the glory whilst we try to forget the eviscerated scrums and the almost suicidal penalty count. A win is a win. In Steward England have unearthed a coin of rare value. Magnificent. Marcus Smith kicked every goal offered to him on Saturday, potentially answering my own reservations about ditching Owen Farrell altogether. Now for some name-dropping. Jeff Probyn once said to me (I've only met him once) that for all but the very greatest, you don't retire from international rugby, it retires you. It's called test rugby for a reason - it's not supposed to be easy.

So, England have much promise and enviable resources. But one last (and I accept repeated) question - if you have a generational player like Tom Curry, why would you play him out of position?

A Good Day On The Island

Mon being the island in question, Plas Piggy being the country residence of course. Today new flooring has been fitted in the front bedroom. Top notch. I have been here for three days waiting for the work to be done - there was a hitch with delivery of the materials but all's well etc.

I have watched three films today and abandoned a fourth because it gave every indication of being rather crap. In the gap left by the abandonment I rewatched an episode of the excellent BBC Watergate. You couldn't make it up.

First up was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Martial arts films are not really my bag but I enjoyed this. The fighting is hypnotically balletic and the plot has a tidy confection of love, honour and destiny. I could see what all the fuss was about. 76/100.

Rather different but also well worth the effort is the small but beautifully put together 1932 adaptation of A Farewell to Arms. Assiduous readers will recall that I recently reviewed the source novel in these pages. This movie takes considerable liberties with the plot but still manages to cram the romance and sardonic horror of conflict into its seventy-five minutes of drama. 72/100.  

The third and, by a small margin, best of these films was Munich, Steven Spielberg's worthy rumination on the state of Israel. The peg on which the picture hangs its questions is the massacre at the 1972 Olympics and a ruthless and clandestine Israeli response to it. It is a violent tale, of course it is, but the violence is never gratuitous and the overall effect is one of beneficial provocation. 80/100.

The crap film? I'm afraid that was The Eiger Sanction. I'm generally an admirer of Clint Eastwood but this is not his finest hour. No mark awarded.

 

Silence Is Golden

But not so golden when you are a blogger.Writers Write.

I am ever grateful for the company of good men. Winter golf can be a tad disspiriting, apart from all else, it gets your precious white shoes dirty - I have to wear white shoes. Not sure why but have almost invariably done so. To counter this desecration of my summer shoes, I have taken to wearing my old shoes - these look fine (also white) but my sodden feet remind me why I replaced them earlier this year - there'a substantial hole. No part of this small personal drama dims the lustrous company of BH, JRS, CL, MS and RW at Royal Pype Hayes. 

More good company: the Aston Old Edwardian Reunion Dinner at School on Saturday, an event which seemed to have been crawling to a sad oblivion, transpired as a resurgent iteration. This was the first time that our new Head had heard the School Song being sung. Silly but brilliant. Long live the good old schoolboys, God bless the brave old school. 

The T20 World Cup has come and gone. Good riddance. Australia winning anything is a little tiresome but this is, after all, only pub cricket. The height of the tournament was the ignominious exit of India - the nation who have stolen the soul of first class cricket. Ha ha.

You may recall me concluding some months ago that Eddie Jones has outstayed his welcome as England rugby coach. I stand by this. Apart from the fact of his fondness for acting the charmless nerk, forgivable when winning perhaps, he just does plain stupid things - he plays his best player (Tom Curry) out of position in a specialist position for example. I could go on. But won't. 

Royal St. David's

Some, possibly most, golf courses can seem an affront to nature - they are imposed on the landscape. However the very best courses foster the illusion that they just happened. Such a course is Royal St. David's in Harlech which I had the great pleasure of playing last week with one of its newest members, my mate Big Willy, latterly of Cavendish Golf Club (another, though lesser, gem) though now beginning a new life in North Wales.

A golf course overlooked by a castle, flanked by a railway, sitting amongst rumpled dune land. Beautiful. Oh and thanks to the miracle of the handicap system, I actually won our match with an improbable par from the bunker on the eighteenth. Wainwright's Bitter in the clubhouse.

What The Old Know But The Young Do Not Guess

Let me do something unusual - I will defer to my betters. The Groupie and I watched the Life and Death of Colonel Blimp at the weekend - you can find it on iPlayer. This is a genuinely great film, all the more admirable for having been produced in the middle of World War II. As great a man as Winston Churchill objected to its premiss. Churchill was wrong. It laments the passing of chivalry. I won't spoil it by divulging the plot but will quote Roger Ebert (that better I was referring to) whose eloquence nails it:

It is said that the child is father to the man. 'Colonel Blimp' makes poetry out of what the old know but the young do not guess. The man contains both the father, and the child.

93/100. Nuff said. And now for something completely different. Ron Howard is a proficient director who would have made a tidy living and earned repute back in the old studio days. If you want to see his handiwork at its best, take Apollo 13, a movie that communicates tension even though we cannot but know the happy ending. But consider also his Inferno - the third instalment of the Dan Brown toshathon. The plot is absurd to the nth degree, just as its precursors, The Da Vinci Code, and Angels and Demons. In Inferno, Howard again has the services of the master actor, Tom Hanks. What they together fashion is a diverting piece of hokum, well-suited to a Sunday afternoon when you don't want to tax the old grey matter too much. It is product rather than art. 59/100.

The Two Funniest Scenes Of All Time

Don't say I never spoil you. I have mentioned both scenes before but I was put in mind of the topic last weekend when the Groupie and I revisited that glorious comedy The Philadelphia Story. To po-faced moderns the sexual politics of this film are no doubt unacceptable, but those with broader minds will see this for what it is - a truly great movie. And the scene from it that I cherish above all others? Virginia Weidler, of course, as the juvenile Dinah Lord plonking herself at the grand piano and singing Lydia the Tattoed Lady - 'On her back is the Battle of Waterloo / Beside it the wreck of the Hesperus too'. Priceless. As for the film itself - 95/100.

'The other scene', I hear you cry. Well it comes from a far coarser age but is equally sde-splitting. It is of course the 'dead box' scene from the first series of Green Wing. Also priceless. 

The Washing Of Dirty Linen

I seem to recall raising this point before, I think in the context of the Robert Redford movie, The Candidate. A good film but one most memorable to me because I have a teenage memory of having watched it with my Dad. My father (an exceptional and wise man) commented that he admired the American ability to wash its national dirty linen in public. Well, the two films under consideration today are about two lots of dirty societal linen, one primarily Irish (though it has wider implications), the other American.

Philomena is, on one level, an unlikely buddy movie - Judi Dench's warm-hearted and genuine Irishwoman and Steve Coogan's cynical and world-weary journalist turned disgraced spin doctor. But at its best, it is so much more than a mixture of sound leading performances and a skilfully tear-jerking script. It is an airing of the catholic church's scandalously dirty linen. I won't spoil the plot for you because I want you to see this film. Suffice to say that for anyone who cannot help getting misty-eyed about Irish catholicism (and I, a convert to that faith, stand guilty on that count) this is essential viewing. 79/100.  

My go-to source of cinematic critical wisdom is the Ebert website which continues the work of the great and now deceased Roger Ebert. In a bizarre twist it can be reassuring on the rare occasions when I find myself disagreeing with the Ebert view. This provides a small measure of validation - I am something more than a purveyor of second-hand postures. Which brings me to a movie that the good people at Ebert find 'dull'. The Report may be dry and highly verbose but it is vital stuff, conveying measured outrage at the shaming use by the CIA of torture. It is held together by a compelling leading performance from Adam Driver, As the posters said, 'Truth Matters'. Though not quite of the same supreme quality as All the President's Men, nevertheless The Report desreves to be mentioned in the same context. 82/100.