The Correct Opinion
Sunday, February 29, 2004
I'm very tired. I have no quality control mechanism at the moment. Expect this posting to be heavily re-edited/deleted tomorrow.
Why the second best bit in film history occurs in Psycho. And it's not the shower scene.
Psycho contains several iconic and remarkable moments, but with all the (justified) attention the shower scene gets, it is too easy to overlook them. The second greatest moment in cinema occurs when we are still in shock after the first murder. Norman Bates has entered the cabin, and witnessing the bloody corpse begins to clear up the mess. Erasing all signs that there was ever anyone in the room, he wraps Marion Crane's body in the shower curtain, puts her in the boot of the car and takes it to the swamp. He pushes the car into the water and it begins to sink. And then it stops. There! There is the second greatest bit in film history! We start in our seats and hold our breath... After an eternity the car again starts to be pulled down into the mud and we can exhale. Incredible. We have been played like so many cheap violins. After following and identifying with Marion Crane, sympathazing with her flight with the stolen money and being stunned by her brutal demise, our sympathies have somehow been transferred to a man who, at the very least, is trying to erase any traces of her which could lead to justice being served. Why are we relieved that the body is being hidden? Surely we should be shouting at the screen, "No! No car, stay! Where is this marsh anyway? Police! Police!" But we don't. We have been made complicit in this ghastly crime. Bravo, Hitch. Quite remarkable. You devious, lecherous old bastard... you got us.
Friday, February 27, 2004
But she was beautiful, so I asked her, “Could you bring a sister for me?” And she did. Sister Maria Theresa. It was a slow night.
Many people (myself included) have a problem with Woody Allen. Manhattan and Annie Hall are high points, although the latter is a little busy for my taste. His early, apparently, funnier films are frantic and exhausting, and more recently there’s been little of note since Bullets Over Broadway (1994). It’s a mistake to characterise them as all the same though, he does have a director’s eye and they contain moments of visual flair and invention. It’s just that he often seems a little… phoney in them. His collected prose is clunky and clever-clever and can only be enjoyed in extremely limited doses.
However, say it loud and proud, Woody Allen is a comic genius.
Woody Allen Stand Up Comic is simply some of the greatest comedy performances ever recorded. I must have listened to it more than any other spoken word CD I own. Made up of three shows from the 1960s, it hasn’t dated as has Lenny Bruce. (Although "How To Relax Your Colored Friends At Parties" is, unfortunately, still pertinent.) No swear words, not much in the way of “blue” humour, it remains utterly charming. Even the flights into the surreal (a favourite bug bear of mine, coming soon) are well handled and hilarious. Surprisingly, given how much he hated doing it, this is a perfect marriage of material and performer. He is engaging, likeable and seemingly comfortable. I would not change so much as an intake of breath in his bit, “The Moose”, and am now close to knowing it off by heart. (“I shot a moose once. I was hunting in upstate New York…”) Unfortunately he has bought into the idea of film as a greater art, and himself as the auteur supreme. His development in that area seems to have ground to a halt, and his unexpected appearance at the Oscars in 2002 was worth more than The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Small Time Crooks and Celebrity put together. Woody, put away the Bergman and the clarinet and get back to what you can do better than anyone else. Get on the stage and communicate with us directly, you’ve shown you can make films, now it’s time to remind us that you can make us laugh too.
Before commencing engagement, each front row must be in a crouched position with heads and shoulders no lower than their hips and so that they are not more than one arm's length from the opponents' shoulders.
It should be possible to explain the fundamentals of any decent sport in one sentence (boxing – two men hit each other with their hands until one of them falls over), or even better, with sign language. Any equipment should be easily approximated with a couple of newspapers. Using these criteria, it becomes simple to separate the wheat from the chaff. Football? Brilliant. Rugby? Rubbish. Tennis? OK (although it’s the sport for people who don’t like sport). Badminton? Ludicrous. High jump – ace. Triple jump – dire.
Thursday, February 26, 2004
Television then…
I’m not going to affect the opinion that television is universally wonderful and we should all watch as much as possible. Clearly nights are wasted in front of the set, the schedules are full of rubbish and it wouldn’t do any of us any harm to skip much of what we normally watch when we can’t be bothered thinking of anything better to do. However, I just can’t get that worked up with the “television is bad in and of itself” argument.
What exactly is wrong with the way we experience television? That it is in one’s own home? You can listen to the radio in your bedroom, and no one seems to have a problem with that. Is it because it is a visual medium, allowing less room for the brain to conjure up its own images? It seems to me that argument could be just as easily used against the cinema, plays and even art galleries. In this case, maybe paintings are the worst of all, not even having words to play with in one’s head.
Is television mindless? Well, yes, a lot of it is. Lifestyle shows are probably the worst offenders. This is moving wall paper, and similar knowledge could probably be gained through magasines. I’m no fan of game shows and light entertainment, but I would never look down on people for watching them. Why should everyone’s leisure time be spent in a way I consider “profitable”. If you’ve had a shitty day at work, the five hundredth one in a row, I’m not going to say you should spend your precious evenings at organ recitals. You sit back and let yourself relax, you deserve it. Watch a soap opera, enjoy that football game, not as good as going to the ground perhaps, but at least you get replays. (That people shouldn’t be so exhausted all the time is a completely different issue, and one which I won’t be dealing with here.)
There is thought provoking programming out there though, and more to the point, there are works which suit the medium more than any other. The World at War is remarkable, and although the field of Second World War history books is hardly barren, and a lot of the information could be gained from reading, the combination of historical analysis, Laurence Olivier’s sonorous narration and archive footage makes for an immediate and powerful experience. All the imagining in the world would not shake me as much as the first time I saw bulldozers piling bodies into mass graves. It is this immediacy which is TV’s great strength. Idling in one’s house, images can prove more shocking, invading as they do one’s living space. Current affairs programming provides shared information with everyone at once. Without television, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tiannamen Square massacre would have left a much smaller dent on the collective consciousness. Had it not been for Michael Buerk’s Ethiopian reports there would have been no Live Aid.
The drama serial is also a valid art form. Dismissing Dennis Potter, Alan Clark or the Sopranos seems snobbery of the highest order. A writer may choose to work in television because of the opportunities the medium offers, not due to the lack of chances elsewhere. A story can be told over nine hours, allowing a depth that the theatre cannot afford, as well as reaching an enormous audience. Personally, I dislike costume dramas. I find that the words of an Austin or Dickens summons up the atmosphere of a time better than does the BBC costume department. However, if they lead people into reading the originals then I fail to see a problem. There need not be an either/or choice here.
I was going to reference one of Julie Burchill’s recent articles, but I don’t think it’s necessary. She claimed that “he who hates reality TV hates the human race, hates freedom, hates life.” I think there might be something in that, but it’s for another post, if at all. Reality TV is pure television, and can’t work in any other format. But once again, that’s for another time.
Television does some things very well, but fails utterly at others. To some extent this is due to the restrictions of the medium, but there is also no doubt that broadcasting executives are amongst the laziest and most unimaginative human beings in existence. If you want to make a difference to your life, just turn off the pap they’re spoon-feeding you. We’re talking here about a way of expressing ideas: don’t shoot the messenger, shoot the feckless Oxbridge arsehole who holds us in such contempt.
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
The Greatest?
After the innumerable hagiographic books, films and documentaries about the man born Cassius Clay in Louisville, Kentucky, January 17 1942, there is only one justifiable opinion you can have on the man: that he is a braggart, a blockhead and a scoundrel.
This should be obvious really, so I’ll be brief. Sanctified by Parkinson’s and writers too young to remember his fights first hand, Muhammad Ali has become an untouchable figure, worshipped all over the world for his supposed courage. First a word about this heroism. Until the bar was lowered Ali was too stupid to be accepted into that august institution, the US army. When he was eventually called up, he refused to fight not through a conscientious objection to the war, but because he demanded an exemption as a minister in the Nation of Islam. There’s really no need to even go into how ridiculous and corrupt that body was, do the research if you feel you need to.
His character then. He was unfaithful to every woman who ever cared for him. He could be cruel, his destruction of Ernie Terrell for continuing to call him Clay was particularly shocking. There was also a particularly nasty streak of racism in him, describing African women as “ugly” as they didn’t have “enough white blood in them” being one example. His relentless (and groundless) taunting of Joe Frazier as an “Uncle Tom” led to the shunning of Frazier by the black community and psychologically scarred him his whole life.
Bizarrely described by America’s foremost poet, all his ad libs were scripted. “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” has a ring to it, but it’s hardly William Blake. Is this a case of Doctor Johnson’s dog? Were the white intellectuals more impressed with what he was saying, or that he could put words together at all? At the end of “When We Were Kings”, the usually excellent George Plimpton gushes over a speech Ali gave at Harvard University. When asked to recite a poem, Ali paused, looked around and said, “Me… We…” Plimpton describes this as the shortest poem in the English language. Personally I think that, “I… My…” may be more appropriate. (Hey George! That’s shorter and more apposite. I must be a greater genius than Ali!)
What do we have left? There’s no point arguing about his ability, he was clearly supremely talented, even if connoisseurs would say that “Sugar” Ray Robinson had a better claim to the title, “The Greatest”. But if you have a poster of him up on your wall, I’d think about taking it down. This man is no hero.
From Prolific to Profligate - The Artist Formerly Known as Very Good Indeed
How to put this then? Take a deep breath and just say it… OK. This must be understood, Prince was the most important and revolutionary force to hit popular music since the Beatles. Phew. That wasn’t so hard, now it’s out there it seems self evident. Now for the easy part - proving it.
Never before or since has a megastar refused to play by the rules as much as Prince Rogers Nelson. Breaking out of the R & B ghetto in the early 1980s, with Purple Rain he was at number one in the film, single and album charts simultaneously. The first time since, well, you know who. The world at his feet he could have done anything, and he just about did. Around the World in a Day was next, a ‘60s flavoured psychedelic masterpiece, containing Raspberry Beret, the greatest song about youthful lust yet recorded. (And yes, I am including Teenage Kicks.) For a while he could do no wrong, with classic records tumbling out of Paisley Park, each pushing the boundaries of what we like to call, “pop music”. I’m not going to give a rundown of his career, that information is available elsewhere, suffice to say that everything from this period shimmers with the alien light of his strange genius. The roots of his famous dispute with Warner Brothers start here, his frustration that the public just couldn’t keep up with his remarkable work rate. Seemingly shitting out classics at this time (the vaults still contain unreleased work), he farmed out work to protegés (The Time, The Family, Sheila E) and simply gave away songs like “Nothing Compares to You” (can't quite bring myself to write "2 U") and “Manic Monday” (which hit number 2 in the Billboard Charts in April 1986. What kept it off? Kiss.) to bring down his surplus. Before I make him sound too much like a mad professor, there is a sense of humour there. His winks to the camera in the video to Get Off, his “Well, maybe not the ride” aside in Adore show someone who has a sense of his own ridiculousness, and in a preening little man with an impeccably neat beard, this is heartening and not a little relieving.
But it’s not just the length, feel the quality. His innovation was extraordinary. Straddling pop, soul, rock and funk like some multi-instrumentalist colossus, he fused genre and sounds to create something new, but always unmistakably “Prince”. (I am currently listening to “Do U Lie?” A fake cockney accent, an accordian and the use of the word “boudoir”.) Like an ‘80s Sly and the Family Stone, his band, the Revolution, contained men and women, black and white. This was the future, nearly twenty years ago. It is interesting to compare him with Madonna and Michael Jackson, the other members of that Pepsi triptych. Crossing boundaries and markets, they too made up new rules, paying an extraordinary amount of attention to their images and how the changing of them could propel their careers. But turn once again to the Purple One. He seemed to always be forcing his way out of the constraints of his tiny frame. The changes in look, identity and voice were constant and dizzying. It reached its logical conclusion in the renouncing of his own name, presumably feeling that the alphabet should not and would not contain him. The gender politics are fascinating too. I have heard people say with straight faces that Prince is gay. There is certainly more than an element of camp about him, but listen to the songs, please. This randy little monkey has created some of the most intensely sexual music the mass market has ever heard. It’s all part of his constant toying with our expectations and role reversal. It is impossible to imagine that remarkable plea for intimacy, “If I was your girlfriend”, coming from anyone else. That it came from one of the biggest stars in the world is now scarcely believable. Being able to play and do everything himself has let him create extremely personal music. Coming one after the other on Sign O’ The Times, “If I was your girlfriend”, “Strange Relationship” and “I could never take the place of your man”, takes us to places rarely visited on MTV.
It’s not all good though. His prolificacy and control freakery is unfortunately matched by a severe lack of quality control. The best albums don’t contain dud tracks as such, but there are certainly a few songs you could live without, interesting though they invariably are. Plus, a few less mentions of “horny ponies” would be welcome. And he’s crazy of course, but not in a Michael Jackson creepy way. Besides, I want my pop stars odd. I want them calling themselves Camille, wearing gauze over their faces, coming within an angel’s sigh of playing on Anneka Rice’s charity nursery rhymes album, joining the Jehova’s Witnesses. Around the turn of the nineties his Midas touch seemed to desert him. There are good moments on Diamonds and Pearls and a few highlights on Gold, but for now the party seems to be over. But what a back catalogue he’s left - such a rich and varied legacy can only be found in one other place. Yes, The Beatles. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t be surprised if the man Miles Davies called “the Duke Ellington of our times” (he could just as easily have said James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone…) has some surprises for us yet. There’s no doubt that he has more music left in him. It won’t all be good, much of it will be dire, but there’ll be some diamonds there. Just don’t expect him to be able to tell the difference.
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
Never Trust a Man Who Doesn't Like Country Music
To my generation Country music means Country and Western – Garth Brooks, Achey Breaky Heart, the Red Nex – all that. In truth, Country is the music of death, heartbreak and loss (with a few laughs along the way), not the soundtrack to a line-dancing lesson. It has kept old songs from the British Isles alive, and so provides a link to our shared heritage. It is George Jones, Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson. It is beautiful.
People’s resistance can be explained in various ways. It is seen as redneck and right wing, unsophisticated and crude. To a large extent this criticism is justified. Much of what is played on American Country and Western stations is dreadful, but (and remember this, this is important) to dismiss a genre due to the crimes of its worst exponents is a major folly. Secondly, the sound can take some getting used to. Rock and Roll has created a bridge with the Blues, and so is less challenging to the new listener. However, once you get over the twang, pedal steel and fiddle, there is no going back. If it’s too much for you then you may well be a blinkered fool, and possibly beyond redemption.
There has been some breakthrough into the (hip) mainstream. Possibly the most famous Country song, Crazy, by Willie Nelson and sung by Patsy Cline, is known everywhere, but simply as a great song, although the themes it covers are completely typical of the tradition. Johnny Cash has made considerable inroads amongst the young, his surly demeanor and black clothes easy to understand for a generation raised on rock. The cult of Gram Parsons is growing too. It is probably best to avoid these two latter artists as there is little cultural cachet to be gained in listening to them. Instead, go deeper, to Dolly Parton and Jimmy Rogers, Lefty Frizzel and Bill Monroe. The king of them all, of course, is Hank Williams Snr. One yearning, aching cry from him is worth more than everything produced by Garth Brooks, Billy Ray Cyrus and all the others who demean the good, pure name of Country music.
The New Sincerity
or
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Boss
Why is it OK to enjoy non-credible pop music as long as you’re not in its target market? A young man can wax lyrical about manufactured pop and know that there is no risk of ridicule. Irony and post-whatever has allowed it acceptable. However, if I admitted to liking the Stereophonics, a band aimed squarely at young men, I would be tarred and feathered by a mob of enraged hipsters. (Please, no Girls-Aloud-good-pop-versus-Toploader-shite protestations. Think about what I’m saying.) And the same goes for Bruce Springsteen.
I’d always assumed that Springsteen was awful, the kind of pop star your Dad would like. Somewhere near Dire Straits in credibility and not too far from Phil Collins in nauseating false sincerity. The jeans, the bellow, the dancing with Courtney Cox videos… but most of all the cover of Born in the USA and the song itself. But little by little I started hearing good things about him. So eventually I bought that album, played it a few times and forgot about it. After a while I went back to it. And back to it. And back to it. Then I got it.
A major problem comes with the production. If he’d been born ten years earlier, and had sounded more like the Band or the Stones, we’d be talking about him in hushed tones. The synthesisers and drum sounds on Born in the USA are resolutely ‘80s and take some getting used to. Most of his famous songs are from this behemoth, and so have coloured expectations of the rest of his work.
Here though is the main hurdle: Springsteen is not ironic. His sincerity and earnestness seem out of place in a world where everything else is lazily cloaked with irony. Such honesty can make one uncomfortable. Unlike most white rock stars, he tries to foster community, focusing on the us rather than the me. His passion brings people together, but we find this difficult to deal with, accustomed as we are to worshiping some remote and playful star on a distant stage. More “4 Real” that Richie Manic ever was. He is also defiantly American, and this is a concern for British indie kids. If he was bohemian and metropolitan than maybe we would let him off. But to be American *and* proudly working class? That takes a lot of forgiving.
One thing he is not is the “Bryan Adams it’s ok to like.” Instead he comes from the American populist tradition of Walt Whitman, John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie. Intensely political, his concerns are with the oppressed, the migrants and those suffering in the desolation of deindustrialised Reagan America: your tired; your poor; your huddled masses. Reagan hilariously misunderstood Born in the USA, and possibly should have checked the words before he claimed, “America’s future… rests in the message of hope in songs so many young Americans admire: New Jersey’s own Bruce Springsteen.”
His lyrics are Carveresque - Nebraska is eleven short stories. He captures the petty frustrations of daily fights against The Man and the boredom of most people’s lives. I may not be American, and I sure can’t drive, but I know what it’s like growing up in a town full of losers, and I guess I pulled out to win.
So then... Bruce Springsteen: born out of both black and white music traditions; master of the gospel and blues impulses; gritty realist; intensely romantic; social commentator and creator of euphoric anthems which tap into universal experiences.
And he fucking rocks. And that’s the main thing. It’s OK, you can like him.
Universities should ignore all A-Levels except General Studies
"General Studies is a joke, we had loads of crappy lessons about books and rivers and that. Pointless." No. You're wrong. General Studies is the best indicator of ability (depending on exam board). It's strengths are precisely those characteristics which are often most criticised.
1) You can't revise for it. - It doesn't test short term memory and so doesn't favour cramming.
2) It's not fair, there's too much maths. I do arts. - Yeah. Then you don't have a good general education. Your abilities are limited.
3) There's loads of useless stuff you have to learn. I don't care about books/rivers/cities. - Well, you fucking should. Bad luck, you're penalised for being a moron.
And yes, I did get an A. I got an A in everything else though, I have no particular axe needing grinding. (Note to self: idea for future post on A levels being a more accurate measure of ability than degree results.)
I'll be writing about Muhammed Ali later. (Looking forward to that one.) If there's a topic on which you would like to know the correct opinion, then leave a comment or e-mail me.
No Pride in Ignorance
The title says it all really. I’m not saying that the purpose of life is a quest for “truth”, or whatever, I’m not laying some heavy trip on you, just that one shouldn’t be happy with one’s own ignorance. Not being able to cook/sew/generally look after yourself is not charming, it’s a deficiency. Similarly, people who consider themselves artistic and are disdainful of scientists for getting their hands dirty can fuck off. So can scientists who dismiss art and poetry as "airy-fairy" and consider themselves superior. Synthesise my friends, share approaches and you may get closer to wherever you think you’re headed.
Led Zeppelin
There is a time and a place for Led Zeppelin, and that is turned up very loudly in your bedroom or car when you’re feeling like you just can’t fight the rock. It took me a while to get over my initial aversion, but they do have a certain something. You must tread extremely carefully though - “Skip” must be hit at the first sign of an acoustic guitar or mention of a hobbit.
Stanley Kubrick - Advertisement Director without Portfolio
Not having seen 2001 or A Clockwork Orange, I am eminently unqualified to spout forth this opinion. However, that’s never stopped me before, so I’ll crack on. Kubrick makes imperfect and frustrating films. He is a director of moments - of apes throwing bones into the air, of Steadicam shots of a child riding a tricycle, of sergeant majors dressing down new recruits. But he can’t put a film together. His work is generally cold and distant, with an obsessive attention to mis en scene and technical matters, but an indifference to character and story. Spartacus is good, but he cannot take full credit, having to suffer the indignities of cooperation. Doctor Strangelove is a brilliant film, precisely because it is so unlike everything else he did. There is a sense of spontaneity, of life, in it which brings to mind Hawks, but is entirely absent from the rest of his work. I hear good things about The Killing and Paths of Glory, so perhaps he did have something once, but by the mid-sixties his success seems to have brought him too much control. (See also: George Lucas) Of course, his legend was fed by his famous reclusiveness, yet another instance of a man playing the mad genius and so being accepted as such.
Ring a Ding Don’t.
“…It was sauce and vinegar and eau de cologne and sour mash whiskey and gin and smoke and perfume and silk and neon and skinny lapels and tail fins and rockets to the sky.”
The introduction to Shawn Levy’s Rat Pack Confidential used to excite me. The camaraderie between men, the gang-mentality, the excitement, the power, doing whatever they felt like, the connections to Kennedy, the glamour… Not anymore. Cutting through the hype, this was four men (Joey Bishop never really counted) having a midlife crisis in the desert. Men with families fucking everything they could, acting like teenagers and behaving with extraordinary cruelty to anyone who dared cross them. For a band in their twenties this behaviour is understandable, but these are grown-ups. Now it all seems just a bit… distasteful. Their characters, then: Peter Lawford was cowardly but not unlikeable, his trajectory from talentless pretty-boy to drugged-up wretch strangely inevitable; Sammy Davis Jnr was the most heroic; Dean Martin was charming, his career dragged forward through the ambition of his friends and Sinatra was petulant, vengeful and monstrous. What then of the work? They left a film, Ocean’s 11, which whilst not as bad as Steven Soderbergh would have you believe, is only worth watching for the iconic final shot; some shambolic and faux-spontaneous live performances and a few jaunty tunes. Sammy’s singing is exciting but ultimately hollow, and although when he can be bothered Dean’s voice possesses a pleasing vulnerability, you’d struggle to find even six songs in his back catalogue that are truly essential – cabaret singers propelled by their considerable force of personality. However, the group did contain one true artist – Frank Sinatra. Around the time of the Summit he produced a couple of good albums, Ring A Ding Ding and Sinatra’s Swinging Session, which are well worth owning even if the sound seems a bit forced compared to his work in ’56/’57. Indeed, it wouldn’t be until his fantastic (and criminally underrated) collaborations with Antonio Carlos Jobim and Duke Ellington in the late 1960s that he truly (if briefly) rediscovered his touch. All this aside, the fact remains that no one captures the exuberance and exhilaration of being newly in love like him, and no one can match his portrayal of the anguish and emptiness when out of it.
No one.
Monday, February 23, 2004
"What's your favourite Beatles album? ... I'd have
to say, The Best Of The Beatles."
When used in "I'm Alan Partridge", we're supposed to laugh at Alan for his ignorance and lack of sophistication. However, he has a point. The Beatles never produced an album which is truly satisfying all the way through. The high points in their career are many and vertiginous, but the filler is too easily forgotten. Having the Lennon/McCartney stamp on a song makes it exempt from negative criticism - it's by the Beatles after all, and they are sacrosanct. A group which could produce She Loves You, Ticket to Ride, Strawberry Fields, A Day in the Life and You Never Give Me Your Money must be incapable of wrong, no? I must be missing something in Doctor Robert. It must be my fault. It's not. At least half of The Beatles' oeuvre is padding, it's just that the rest is so good you coast over the mediocre bits. And their best stuff taken together is still better than everyone else.
Or if you prefer, The Beatles, the best singles band until Madness.
Stephen Fry
I can never improve on Kelvin's damning indictment of Fry as a "fat, fraudulent jester", but I shall try to at least expand the argument. The problem with Stephen Fry is that he is universally lionised as a genius and national treasure without ever seeming to have done anything to deserve it. His prodigious bulk and nice speaking voice together with a way with an epigram have fooled people into thinking that this is a particularly special man rather than a posh Stuart Maconie. As for his artistic achievements, these are thin on the ground. His novels are weak and clearly rushed. I do think that he is talented, and perhaps he does have something great inside him, but his easy eloquence has led to lazy and boring work. His Jeeves is good, although he is too young for the role, but he seems fake beside Hugh Laurie's terrific performance. He is a raconteur, a young Ned Sherrin, a more talented Tony Hawks. "Born to play Wilde", I couldn't agree more. One pompous, insufferable windbag could hardly fail to do justice to another.
Diego Maradona
It is a good thing that Diego Maradona was not sent off for his "hand of God" malfeasance in the 1986 World Cup. Had he been dismissed we would have been deprived of one of the greatest goals ever seen. Each player he passes is worth more than the half dozen tap-ins and goal mouth scrambles that could have taken England into the final. Winning the bauble at the end is worth nothing. The ballet is all.
Al Pacino
The part of Michael Corleone in the Godfather films is *the* male role of American cinema. Impossible now to imagine anyone else doing it, Pacino faced incredible resistance from the Studio heads as Coppola's first choice. The story of the troubled coming together of this overblown masterpiece has been told a thousand times, and so I won't go over it again here. Brando, of course, won an Academy Award for his terrible, hammy Vito Corleone, and DeNiro managed the same for his impersonation in Part II. Throughout though, it is Pacino that holds our attention. We are shocked when his youthful beauty is spoiled by the violence of a corrupt policeman, the marks on his face still there when he is in Sicily, much later on. It is too difficult to describe his performance in Part II without referring to his "dead eyed menace", so I won't even try. However, the flashback at the end, from this icy, alone but all powerful figure to the youthful innocent just returned from joining the marines makes our jaws drop as we recognise how much he has changed. When you realise that these two scenes must have been filmed within a few weeks of each other, our astonishment is even greater. The films are far from perfect, of which more later, but they contain at least one truly remarkable performance.
I need to go and do some work now, but soon I will tell you more about why Pacino is great, why DeNiro is the most overrated actor in cinema, why the Godfather is inferior to Goodfellas and why Goodfellas is Scorsese's best film. Not Raging Bull like you thought.
Martin Amis
Amis fils is a brilliant writer but a deeply flawed novelist. Money is good, London Fields is frustrating and The Rachel Papers is a (shockingly) young and talented man showing off. However, The War Against Cliché, a collection of his criticism, is remarkable. Penetrating to the heart of everything he talks about, his coruscating prose is remarkably engaging and often hilariously funny. I must have read his reviews of the Guide to World Literature and the Guiness Book of Records a dozen times, and I still giggle like an awestruck schoolgirl.
NB: this post is likely to become more detailed when I get home and have the books in front of me.
Saturday, February 21, 2004
Not liking things because they are popular is commonplace. It can make one feel superior, as if one has more sophisticated tastes. However, it is also fraught with difficulties. Dismissing the following will make it seem as if you are trying to be interesting, and you could make yourself look foolish.
- Ant and Dec
- David Beckham
- The Beatles
These are good things. Now this should be self-evident, but I'm taking this slowly. Don't worry if you're with me so far, I will take you further than you can possibly imagine.
This world is a confusing place. Never before have we been assaulted by so much information. At times one can feel lost. Truth is subjective, morals are relative, there is no right or wrong. Irony disguises true taste and opinion has become aspirational. Where to turn in this maelstrom? You're there already. Let me tell you what you should think. I work all this out so that you don't have to. It's ok, you don't need to worry anymore. You're safe now. You need never make a judgement call again.
Exhale, relax, and prepare to learn.
