Nature Abhors A Vacuum

Great minds have debated this Greek nostrum, but don't worry I'm not going to suggest that I am qualified to add to the clamour. No, it just comes to mind when I try to summon up some optimism for the year that lies ahead of us and I see the moral and intellectual vacuums that so disfigure our public life.

Let's get Keir Starmer out of the way. I really don't care for this two-faced Mr Pasty but, bloody hell, he's a mile more convincing than Kemi Badenoch. Mind you what's really irking me about Starmer are not his policies (what policies?) but his predilection for having his photo taken jacketless and his sleeves rolled up. Here I am probably miles removed from the zetigeist but I like my statesmen to appear statesmanlike, not like some mealy-mouthed middle-manager.  

But let us talk of the far greater problem - the moral vacuum that emanates from America and threatens to pull us all into its nothingness. And I'm not (for today at least) concerned with that arch-shit Trump or his grifting British minion Farage. No, Elon Musk. Being the richest man in the world does not disqualify him from having opinions but the vile trash-talking he favours (much of it currently aimed, quite improperly, against Starmer) is an abuse of status. As Spiderman so often reminds us, with great power comes great responsibility. The Overgraduate does not, and never will, own a Tesla.

Twelve Films At Christmas - 12 & 13

Yes, yes, alright, I do know that thrteen is a number greater than twelve. However I have watched a couple more films as the holiday eked out its last few days and both are so good that they deserve some analysis. Ignore my heading and think 'A Baker's Dozen At Christmas'. 

Back in 2012 the delightful movie Sideways made its way into that year's Christmas dozen. It was directed by Alexander Payne and starred Paul Giamatti. That same director/actor combination is now seen to brilliant effect in The Holdovers. I strongly urge you to watch this film. It deserves to become a Christmas classic but will be superb whenever you consume it. Warm and funny without being saccharine this is one of the best films I have seen this year. 84/100. I will not say any more.

From the hinterland of teen stardom, Ron Howard has long since shaken off the dust of being Richie Cunningham in Happy Days, and has become one of Hollywood's most reliable directors. You imagine he would have thrived under the old studio system, churning out routinely engaging pictures. If you have doubts, watch Parenthood (1989) in which he draws out fine performances from his ensemble cast. Most notably he is well served (and they by him) by the juvenile actors. It is all about the trials of parenting and of being parented. It will make you smile. 79/100. 

Twelve Films At Christmas - 7 to 11

Another year is nearly done and I have been keeping up my diet of films. Just one more needed to complete the requisite dozen. We shall start with a good film of a very good book, Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men. The movie (1949) won the Best Picture Oscar and is undoubtedly very good as it comprehensively makes its point that all power tends to corrupt and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Not quite in the same league as the source novel, though probably more accessible. 76/100. Not to be confused with the 2006 remake which the critics hated.  

The industry engaged in attempting to make a tele-ready Christmas classic is a vast one - for evidence one need look no further than the dedicated Christmas film channels that pop up from September onwards. A Boy Called Christmas is thankfully a good few steps ahead of the general dross. It is captivatingly filmed and, a few limp attempts at liberal politics aside, it marches on rather nicely. It has Maggie Smith and Jim Broadbent in it, always reliable signifiers. Not a great film but miles from being a bad one. 62/100.

I was reluctant to watch the BBC's prize offering on Christmas Day, the final ever Gavin and Stacey. I had an uneasy feeling that it would not be up to the standards that had preceded it in this admirable comic sequence. I was wrong, it was superb. Anyway, the reason I mention this is that the other pillar of the Beeb's Christmas Day schedule was Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. This too transpired to be a joy. The patience of the stop-frame animating is awesome and the quiet wit at play in the script has you smiling throughout, that is when you are not plain laughing. 77/100. 

In amongst all this joy (my reviews thus far have been generally favourable, I think you would agree) a little rain must fall. Cromwell (1970) is a failure of a film. The source history certainly has potential for drama but what we get here is an austere plod through the Civil War and an awful lot of Richard Harris (Cromwell) being bad-tempered and Alec Guinness (Charles I) being effete. There is potential in both of these characters but these fine actors are ill-served by the pedestrian script. A pity. 54/100.   

Let us finish for today (indeed, unless a I get a sudden fit of imagination, let us finish for 2024) with the joyous interlude that is Field of Dreams. Unless you understand something of the American obsession with the poetry of baseball, you may find this picture slight and rather silly. It is not. All of us who obsess over silly games and couple that obsession with a love of literature will find something redeeming in this film. 77/100.

And now we shall leave it until 2025. Thank you for humouring me with your presence. Happy New Year.

Advent 24

Volume 24 (Index and Atlas)

This is where it all started when I had the idea for this year's calendar. And this is where it all ends. Page 63 of the atlas bears the disarming legend, 'Palestine showing the 1949 armistice boundaries between the Arab States and Israel'. A lot of water and too much blood has passed under the bridge since that time. 

My uneasy notion was to take Bethlehem as my key and there it is, slap bang in the middle of page 63.

There has been a far from cogent thread of spirituality in these calendar entries. That is good as it gets with me I am afraid. It is not for the want of trying that my ideas are still unformed, or perhaps I should more accuarately say are re-formed on a daily basis. I am of an age when the impermanence of existence weighs heavy. 

What can be said is that Bethlehem is where the greatest story ever told has its near beginnings. And as evidence of my agnostic eclecticism I will, despite my voluntary attachement to the Catholic church, quote, not from an accepted catholic scripture but from the King James Bible (a 'Proddy' bible if ever there was one) since that is a beautiful deployment of the English language. One might say that I am guilty of having my communion wafer and eating it. All of this, in its grandeur and its silliness, proclaims for me the mystery of faith.

And Joseph also went up from Galileee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (Luke 2:4)

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. / For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. (Luke 2:10-11)

 And this encapsulates my meagre faith:

For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. / No man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. (John 1:17-18)

That's all folks. Thank you for reading. I will leave you with words of those two sages, John Lydon and Dave Allen: may the road rise with you; may your god go with you.

 

 

 

 

Advent 23

Volume 23 (Vase to Zygo): Venice.

And so we reach the end of the text entries in Dave's Big Book of Knowledge. Tomorrow we have only the Index and Atlas to work from. Don't worry it will all come together seamlessly. Have I ever let you down?

I have never been to Venice but it's on my list this, 'city and seaport of Italy, occupying one of the most remarkable sites in the world'. If the pundits are to be believed I will need to get my skates on as the place is drowning under the twin burdens of climate change and tourism.

the mind of a cad and the pen of an angel

The appearance on page 63 of Venice gives me the opportunity to return you to quite possibly my favourite author, Simon Raven. Evelyn Waugh is demonstrably a better writer but we are talking about my middle-brow prejudices and so Raven gets the prize. He was a dilettante spendthrift who plied his authorial gifts in the service of earning money and his later works betray haste and some laziness. However his ten novel sequence Alms for Oblivion is an underrated and massive fictive achievement. Had my doctorate not been about Shakespeare, I would have chosen Raven as my subject. Anyway in the tenth and final instalment of that roman fleuve, The Survivors, Raven deploys Venice as a magnificent extended metaphor for the dying world of elegance. I was going to quote the final paragraph of the novel here but I will leave it for you to read the entire sequence yourself. You will thank me. Instead I will give you an extract from the brilliant and acerbic Introduction that Raven himself contributed to the 1998 reprint of Alms for Oblivion. I have quoted these lines before in these pages, but, hey ho, it is my blog after all.

The cry, 'If I can't, you mustn't', had some trace of justification, however sullen and unlovely the sound of it. Nowadays we hear instead an even less lovely cry, 'If I don't want to, you mustn't': i.e. 'It is just possible that I am, after all, missing out on something of value which you have been shrewd enought to detect and I haven't, and that wouldn't be fair and equal, now would it?' Once upon a time, however strong and righteous you considered your message, you scorned to become a pest: in 1998, however trivial your grievance, you find yourself encouraged and even 'morally obliged' to become not just a pest but a pestilence.     

Advent 22

Volume 22 (Textile to Vasc): Theology.

Another day, another giant topic for the Overgraduate to sink his inadequate teeth into. My overtaxed grey matter does wonder at the wisdom of the task I have set myself. Has anyone ever gone on Mastermind with the specialist subject of pages 63 of the volumes of the 1959 Britannica?

Theology is that branch of philosophy that is concerned with the explanation of the world in the terms of a supreme mind or spirit. The study of theology is not therefore, as I comprehend it, the same thing as religious experience but the study of religious experience is a legitimate (in fact, one might argue, essential) constituent of theological study.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church invites us to distinguish between theology (theologia) and economy (oikonomia), the former being the mystery of God's innermost life, the latter the works by which God reveals himself. I understand this as the contrast between the spiritual and the temporal and it is in the space between those elements that my own unequal and impertinent negotiation with God takes place. Heavy man!. Page 63 has much to answer for.

Advent 21

Volume 21 (Sord to Texas): South Africa.

This page 63 game has a nasty way of serving up a philosophical minefield for the Overgraduate to negotiate. Not content with Advent 13 lobbing the grenade of Zionism to me (there I go again, mixing my metaphors and bringing them home to roost) the equally troubling entity of South Africa now hoves into view. Well, I'm going to dodge the trickiness if you will permit me and move onto something I do know about - South African rugby. 

The Springboks have won the last two World Cups so whatever they are doing is obviously working. Furthermore their deployment (perfectly legally and intelligently) of the so-called bomb-squad has been less successfully aped by other sides and, also predictably, has provoked calls to change the laws, most particularly so far as they relate to the numbers of tactical replacements. Now here's the news boys and girls - putting genies back in bottles is notoriously difficult and you can almost sense the lawyers getting revved-up in readiness for any new dictates that mandate medical certification of departing players. 

As it happens I think the laws as they have been framed for professional rugby are doing a bloody good job of murdering the game at the recereational level I loved, the playing of which I still miss on a daily basis. But that is not the Boks' fault. And here's another piece of news - England should not be trying to play in the style of South Africa. Law of averages, they won't be as good at it as  those they mimic. You can run around walls just as well as you run through them.