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bloggerblagger · 5 years ago

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90) Why aren’t the government listening to the one person who has been proved right? Me.

Robert Young, aka Marcus Welby MD, from whose mouth, the word’s ‘I’m not a doctor’ first came.

I am donning my white ‘lab’ coat to write this post, and I have a stethoscope hanging around my neck. I am wearing a reassuringly silvery toupé and a pair of half moon glasses over which I look benignly, a little condescendingly, yet with suitable gravity. In the best traditions of misleading advertising I am here to announce that yes, I am not a doctor.

Not only that, but I have no medical qualifications of any kind nor, indeed, beyond 5 O’levels’, any qualifications at all. (And none of those were for anything remotely connected with science.)

And yet.

Sometimes - actually most of the time - I think I may know better than THEY do. One thing, perhaps the only thing, that life has taught me, is that the prevailing wisdom is often total bollocks. (An alternative explanation of my habitual questioning of any authority might be that I am an arrogant, deluded twat. Guilty as charged, but that doesn’t mean I am not right, at least some of the time.)

And in the case of Corona virus, I already have one big win. On March 3rd I posted the following note on Facebook. Six weeks later most of the world agrees that I was right. (Not yet the perennially slow off the mark UK government but it’s only a matter of time and a few thousand more dead.)

Suitably emboldened by the successful slaying of that holy cow, I now ready to move onto another.

One day, at the very beginning of the Coronalamity, before we were locked up but when the tsunami was clearly visible on the horizon, I actually counted the number of contacts I had that day - which I took to be the number of people I spoke to.

This is what I did. (As you will soon see, the stuff of my daily life is not likely to inspire the next Netflix blockbuster, but please suffer the boredom if you can.) I chatted to Wilma, my lady wot does, before leaving the house to stop first at Gail’s ( 50 yards from front door) for my usual poison - an oat milk latté - where I spoke to the girl who took my money, to the barista who handed me my coffee, to a girl standing beside me waiting for hers.

Next I went across the road to drink my coffee whilst chatting to my friend Sid in his (highly recommended) optician’s shop and there I also exchanged ‘hellos’ with one of his assistants. After that I walked to the Virgin Active gym in Ladbroke Grove, on the way speaking to a man in corner shop from whom I bought a bottle of water. I spoke to the Virgin receptionist, to a chap with an adjacent locker, to someone on the next door treadmill, to the chap who made me my after-session coffee and to the different receptionist on duty as I left.

So far we are up to twelve people. The rest of my day was every bit as uneventful, possibly even duller, as I spoke to only another eleven. So, in all, I had face to face, words exchanged, contact with twenty three people that day, and, basically, I did fuck all. Tumbleweed blew through my diary - and I still spoke to twenty three people.

My (heretical) point is this:

We are told that testing, testing, testing is the answer, and, after that, contact tracing. But if I had Covid 19 that day - which I might well have done as a couple of weeks later I developed symptoms, although as I couldn’t get a test, I can’t be sure - how would all those contacts have been found? And would they have confined themselves for two weeks? Who would police that?

I could understand the tracing idea when there were a handful of cases, like that chap from Brighton, the first super-spreader who caught it on a skiing holiday, because there weren’t that many people to track down. But now, almost certainly millions of people have had it, and there are millions of other people who they will have infected who may or may not be symptomatic.

Presumably one is infectious for several days and even at my rate of 23 in a relatively empty day, that’s over 160 in a week. You see my point: the numbers now are so overwhelming that tracing and confining would seem to be a completely impossible task.

A Tracer Calls.

Here is an imaginary conversation between a government tracer (I wonder who and where they are by the way) and one of my twenty three contacts.

‘Hello, Gail’s Queens Park.’

‘I need to speak to the person on the till and the barista who served Richard Phillips.’

‘Who's he?’

‘- with an Oat Latte on - let’s see now - about Feb 28th.’

‘How on earth would we do that? We have lots of different people working on the tills and three or four baristas every day, and you don’t even know exactly which day.’

Etcetera.

Have I missed a trick? Is there some ingenious idea behind testing and contact tracing that I have missed, Well, helpfully, a day or so ago the Guardian published a guide to Testing and Tracing and the ratIonale seems no more complicated than I thought: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/coronavirus-contact-tracing-explained

I can sort of understand the point of testing in the sense that you would get a big enough sample of who is infected to extrapolate the overall infection rate. If immunity after infection is as likely as with most viruses, you might then get an idea of when the famous herd immunity might be a possibility. But otherwise, what is the point? That is my point. Will someone PLEASE explain whatever I am missing.

Ah yes, you say, I can explain. What you are missing is the App, the famous App that tracks your every move that they have in South Korea and China and can interact with other people’s phones so it knows who you are in contact with at every moment. But presumably the government would have to download this on to our phones without our knowledge and ensure it can not be removed. (An Orwellian world on steroids.) Otherwise, I would suggest, vast numbers of the population would not voluntarily download it for reasons of laziness or of principle, so it would be of partial help at best.

Anyway (exasperated harumph from author) whether I can see the point of it or not, Testing and Tracing is about to be restarted - as the Guardian reported. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/uk-to-start-coronavirus-contact-tracing-again

So, could this be the answer?

What I can see the point of is the anti-body test. (Also known as serology testing.) If you’ve possibly/probably had it - as I have - and assuming you do get immunity, as with most viruses, this is absolutely key. Because if you test positive and you have a very low risk of contracting it again then you can begin to resume some sort of sort of normal life. Only one problem: the government keeps telling us that none of the anti-body tests are reliable. (Although on Friday, Roche, the Swiss pharma giant announced that they had now developed a test. They presumably think it’s reliable but we wait to see.)

One key question, it seems to me, is in what way are they unreliable? If they are providing false positives they are obviously useless. If, on the other hand, they are providing false negatives - telling some people they haven’t had it when they have - then they are a lot better than nothing. Even if you got a false negative half of the time, 50% might be stuck indoors for no good reason but the 50% who tested positive would know that they’d had it and could move on with their lives. And the unlucky 50% could be retested as the test was improved.

Did I say only one problem? Silly me. It seems there are far more. Check this out. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/antibody-tests-wont-end-social-distancing-anytime-soon.html

Oh dear, and one more thing. The WHO has now told us there is no guarantee that you can’t get it again.

I am not also not a financial adviser - but....

Which brings me to the markets and the fact that having dropped by about 30% they have now recovered about half of that.

Nobody I know - and I regularly take expert advice over the fence from my next door neighbour - has got the faintest idea why things have bounced back,

Although yesterday, apparently, the 3% rise in the Dow was triggered by the overnight leaking of a report saying that the Remdesivir drug was successfully treating seriously ill Covid-19 patients at the University of Chicago. Shares in the company that makes it, Gilead, went up 11% even though this was not a proper randomised control study. (Something well dodgy about that leak. I’m not one for conspiracy theories but I’d bet somebody made a few bob out of that.)

For what its worth, and as my face-mask victory shows, its worth a lot, my guess is that the search for a ‘cure’ is, in the absence of a vaccine, the likeliest means of giving people the confidence to go out and start living again. Not sure any guff about testing - especially from this government - is going to get me in Gails anytime soon.

And here is my invaluable tip re: the markets. Buy, buy, buy. I say this because I have sold. Got rid of as many shares as I could without paying tax. Taken the losses, taken the pain. And the one inviolable rule, the ThickAsDick Principle as it is known in the highest circles of financial theorists, is that whatever decision I’ve made will always be the exact opposite of what you should do. Right about face masks, absolutely, but shit on shares.

You have been warned.

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bloggerblagger · 6 years ago

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89) You’re in a focus group: If Brexit were A or B or C, below, what would it be?

A) A Car

Back in my day - when they were just realising that if you tied the pointy flinty bit to the stick you had an axe - one of the most favoured questions by so-called market researchers was, ‘if such and such were a car, what would it be?’

Or sometimes it would be an animal. Or a sport. Or whatever. You get the idea - these were not very subtle attempts to crystalise the respondents’ otherwise hard to articulate feelings about the ‘such and such’ in question.

I was put in mind of this pre-Cambridge Analytica, pre-algorhthym, and doubtless, by today’s standards, prehistoric, research method when walking through leafy Twickenham the other day. There I came up this fabulous Rover 100. A gorgeous beast. All wood and leather, about to 18 to the gallon - no bally litres then - when a gallon was about 6s8d. If you need a translation you’re really too young to understand, but to help you that’s 33p in new money. And at 0.22 litres to the gallon that is as near as dammit to 7.25p to the litre. Those were the days eh.

Yep, what a beauty. Weighed a ton, road holding just about okay providing you were going dead straight, 50 years old and closer to a horse and cart than a 2019 car. Almost a museum piece, and completely removed from the modern world. If I could get by without satnav and a reversing camera and if I didn’t demand music playing like I was in the Albert Hall and if I didn’t care that I was taking my nearest and dearest out in a deathtrap, I’d love one of these.

It would bowl along gaily pumping lead fumes into the air (when gaily meant what gaily was meant to mean and hadn’t been hi jacked by the Tom Robinson* brigade) and blithely poisoning schoolchildren.

No crush proof zones on this old girl, no collapsible steering wheel, no air bags, not even a bloody safety belt. You could go out and drink yourself silly and then go out and kill yourself and your passengers and anyone who happened to get in the way without anyone or anything to stop you.

Yet, as out of date as it is, it quickens my pulse when I see it like no brand new Beemer or Lexus can. Nothing conjures up my childhood and youth like the sight of a motor car of the period. (‘Motor car’ - what a lovely, quaint old fashioned term that is.) I would love to sit in it, to feel the leather seats under me, to smell the Connolly hide as all cars like this were advertised as having. And mixed in with that, doubtless, the lingering pong of ashtrays stuffed full of stubbed out Rothmans and Dunhills. Cigar lighters and ashtrays - you didn’t get much in the way of extras then but every Rover had those.

It’s a magnet for my nostalgia. If I had a choice between this Rover !00 and a straight of the box Tesla…..

If Brexit were a car, this would be it.

* Tom Robinson from ‘The Tom Robinson Band’, of ‘Glad to Be Gay’ fame, as opposed to Tommy Robinson of nothing-to-boast-of-at-all infamy. Only just spotted the extraordinary similarity. Could the choice of that name have been conscious irony on Yaxley-Lennon’s part? I think not. In which case, it is fucking hilarious.

B) A type of entertainment or cultural event

A few days after my astonishingly brilliant Rover insight, I found myself glued to the Last NIght of the Proms. Yes, I know, I really should get out more but, corny as it is, I was completely swept along.

Rule Britannia, Jerusalem, Land of Hope And Glory - irrestible to a septuagenarian who once sat in history lessons in chalky classrooms being shown maps of the world a quarter of which were proudly picked out in pink. (By the way, does anyone* know why pink was the colour designated to mark the countries of the British Empire? Seems a strange choice in retrospect.)

And this wasn’t ancient history either. When I started my whatever-the-opposite-of-illustrious-is career at Brighton Grammar School in 1959 - no false modesty I assure you - the wind of change had yet to blow through Africa. Canada and Australia and New Zealand and the sub-continent had gone, dammit, but we - WE - as in US - as in other people and I - were, we were told, still a world power. 11 years old and a world power. Not bad!

In those days, there was no suggestion - at least not one that had seeped into the salty ether of Brighton Grammar - that empire was anything else but something to be jolly proud of.

And so it was that, for the second time in a few days, a dazzling lightbulb pinged above my head: the Last Night of the Proms was the precise cultural manifestation of what the Leavers had been voting for.

This was what they ached for: A world where the certainties of the fities were never to be questioned. When this was a Christian country and its people were white. (Take a close look at any picture of the Proms and try to sport the black faces. It’s like Where’s Wally but without Wally.) A world where no ungrateful Frog - have they forgotten that we saved them from the Hun! - would dare to tell us to straighten our cucumbers. Where Jews were kept out of our golf clubs and Muslims were called Mosselmen and were only seen in the Arabian Nights.

A world in which men were men and if they liked other men they went to prison and if they killed other men they were killed too and if they beat other men’s children with sticks that was perfectly okay. (Okay, a little exaggeration to claim that this is what Leavers were voting for, but its just to make a point. And anyway, it’s not that much of a stretch. Try reading the ‘Comments’ section after any article in the Daily Telegrafarage.)

And here’s the awful thing: I kind of got it. Because, as I said, here was I, carried gleefully along by The Last Night of the Proms too. And wallowing in the nostagia.

But then I spotted the fly in the ointment. Or the N word in the woodpile as they used to say before the PC crowd ruined Leaver lives. I could suddenly hear the cab driver’s voice in my head: ‘You’re not going bleedin’ Adam and Eve it - them fuckin’ traitor Remainers have only gorn and fucking ruined The Last Night of the Proms too! Did you see all them EU flags?!!! At the bleedin’ Proms!’

And then, whilst researching this piece, I saw this Tweet. Nice.

And then I thought about the People’s Vote demo that I had been to on Spetember 7th in Parliament Square - it’s the kind of thing we Traitor Remainer types do of a Saturday - and saw the for the first time that terribly English, awfully traditional social group, the Football Lads Alliance, who just happened to have turned up at the same time. (Whether impicitly or explicitly encouraged so to do by the D.Cummings tendancy I know not, but nothing would surprise me.)

it was from here that the Press Associatation reported that 'former Conservative and Brexit opposition MP Anna Soubry cancelled her speech to Parliament Square for fear of violence. "I am a member of Parliament and I have the right to express myself and I should not be scared, but it is very, very, very disturbing and, in fact, I am really scared," she said.’

Her and me both.

And all this was before the great debate - as if there needs to be one because it it is so fucking obvious - about whether Johnson and Cummings were making it deliberate Tory policy to use the language of war to inflame Leaver passions so they can win an election.

I don’t mean to be alarmist. No, actually I do. You’d think it was a long, long way from the Albert Hall to Charlottesville but it seems to me be perilously close.

*Two possible answers to the ‘Why is the British Empire coloured pink?’ question found on Google:

i) Pink was a printer's compromise for letters overprinted to be clearly read, as the colour that was traditionally associated with the British Empire is red.

ii) Pink is supposed to be the colour of the Tudor rose of the English monarchy. Goes back to the War of the Roses, Henry Tudor reunited the houses of York, symbolized by the white rose, and Lancaster, symbolized by the red rose. The new House of Tudor was symbolized by the combination of the two, a pink rose.

C) A fruit or vegetable

I really have to take it easy. First the Rover, then the Proms, and then, taking an autumnal stroll in Queens Park, I suddenly felt my heart heart quickening yet again. There at my feet lay another shiny vehicle guaranteed to instantly transport me back to my days in the Outlaws*. (See foot notes if under 60.)

Yes, the mighty conker. You may not think of it as a fruit, but technically (I think) it qualifies. And if a conker isn’t Brexit on a string, well I don’t know what is. Instantly evocative of grazed knees, and corned beef and the Billy Cotton Band Show and Ted Dexter and dwindling white dots in the middle of televisions and a world which was blessedly free of the dreaded health and safety and all the other absurd modern contrivances that get in the way of living of proper British lives. All of which, as the Sun, Mail and Telegraph have been relentlessly telling us for the past forty years are, unquestionably, the evil doings of BRUSSELS!!!

But.

No sooner had I settled on the conker as my super stonking answer to question C, than I caught a bit of a radio show in which they were interviewing a bloke from the British Sandwich Association or some such. He was reassuring us that, in the event of a no-deal Brexit causing a shortage of rocket - the salad not the Scud type - which, apparently, is produced in Italy and might get stuck on the M2 in a tailback to Taormina, they will reformulate their recipes and subsitute good old British lettuce.

(For a moment I thought he was going to get into the Leaver’s beloved wartime spirit and suggest we grow our own watercress and try that instead. I am sure that will be official government policy soon so here is how to do it: https://www.wikihow.com/Grow-Watercress )

I really can’t see why I should have to live without rocket just to please Fathead Francois but, to be honest, I can, so the letttuce substitution thing didn’t bother me unduly. But then the British Sandwich chap said something which made me gasp. There might be a shortage of some other foreign foods too such as - wait for it - avocado pears.

“AVOCADO FUCKING PEARS !!!” I screamed at the radio. ‘Foreign? What? No avocados? Are you fucking kidding?”

Avocados are a staple to me and the rest of the oatmilk crowd. Indeed, even the people who are still on semi-skimmed would get their danders up if they couldn’t get an avocado. Avocados might actually be grown in some corner of a foreign field but as far as we Waitrosers are concerned they are as British as curvy bananas.

But the thing is, and call me a metropolitan elitist if you like - in fact please do, because I find it really flattering - I have a sneaking suspicion that, in Macclesfield and Middlesbrough, avocados don’t get dropped into shoppers’trolleys quite as often as they do in Guildford and Wandsworth.

Okay, I could be being a patrnising Southern twat - yup, guilty as charged - and guacamole could be as popular as pigeon fancying oop North, but somehow I doubt it.

And then came a deep and meaningful insight so deep and so meaningful that it made my Rover and Last Night of the Proms insights look as shallow and as obvious as they clearly are, and made my conker theory shatter into a dozen pieces just as surely as if I had whacked it with a nicely baked sixer**. (If under 60 see footnotes again.)

Whereas all of those are the basic representations of the Brexit the Leavers voted for, the avocado is the fruitandvegification of Brexit in a much subtler way.

It’s the culture war made made yellowy green flesh. To us Remainers the avocado is an essential. We have adopted it as our own and have completely forgotten there was any other way and just can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t love avocados and would ever want to be without them. To the hardened Leavers, it’s still a foreign object. Continental and unneccessary. Southern and poncey. What’s the avocado ever done for us?

In Afrikaans there are two words, ‘Verligte’ and ‘Verkrampte’. As I understand it, the former means ‘Open minded’ and the latter ‘Closed minded’. That, as a Remainer, is how the Brexit divide seems to me.

Can we ‘Verligte’ Remainers and those ‘Verkrampte’ Leavers ever be reconciled?

Can we all learn to love the avocado?

Or must I give the avocado up so that I can keep the Football Lads Alliance from smashing my face in.

*The Outlaws were William, Douglas, Henry and Ginger, a group of small boys in the ‘Just William’ novels by Richmal Crompton.

** A sixer. If a given conker was succesful in a number of battles it was referred to by the number of wins it had had. A sixer would have had six wins, a niner , nine etc. The ‘baked’ part refers to the practise of baking conkers in the oven for extra toughness and competitive advantage.

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bloggerblagger · 6 years ago

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88) Tarantino’s Latest: A dissenting voice. (Quelle surprise.)

A few years ago, I went to see a film called ‘Punch Drunk Love’. It was billed as a comedy. If memory serves me right I didn’t laugh once. But the young couple sitting behind me did. Constantly. And if there is one thing even more annoying than ....(at this point insert whatever winds you up to the point of wanting to commit multiple homicide with a flame thrower ) it is other people - young people in particular - who laugh at things which you find singularly unfunny. You, of course, may be more tolerant of da yoof (anyone under 5O in my book) than I am - indeed, I would say that is a racing certainty - but I am sure you get the general idea.

Usually - out of fear of being stabbed- I let such things pass, but on this occasion I was pissed off enough to risk a lie-down on a mortuary slab, so I turned around and demanded an answer.

“What were you laughing at?”

Actually I can’t remember their answer - just their little millennial snowflake faces crumpling in the face of my interrogation - and anyway what difference would it have made whatever they had said? No explanation of why something is funny is going to make it any funnier to the person who didn’t find it funny in the first place.

No, my question was really just a manifestation of my grumpy irritation at having sat through a film which I had only gone to see because someone called Paul Thomas Anderson had directed it and he was supposedly hot shit. (I hadn’t by then seen ‘Magnolia’ or ‘Boogie Nights’, the movies upon which his reputation for hot shitness was largely built . And I haven’t seen them since because I have seen ‘There Will Be Blood’ and ‘The Master’, both of which I thought were overrated and overwrought attempts to do what ‘Citizen Kane’ had done a 100 times better 70 odd years earlier. And I didn’t like ‘Inherent Vice’ much better.

I was, I will concede, quite impressed with ‘Phantom Thread’, but one out of four is not much of a strike rate, so PTA’s oeuvre, is, to my mind, a lot less than it is cracked up to be and his name on a film’s credits is an invitation to me to walk on by.

I am admittedly, not one who is wont to swim with the tide of received wisdom on any subject , not least because I am an habitually contrary sod. But still, I don’t just say Paul Thomas Anderson is no Frances Ford Coppola for the sake of it. I mean it because I genuinely believe it.

And he is not the only one of the supposed modern greats who doesn’t do it for me. I loved ‘Blood Simple’ and ‘Fargo’ but nothing I have seen since by the Coen Brothers - with the possible exception of ‘True Grit’ - has done that much of me. I did not like ‘A Serious Man’ at all, couldn’t see the point of ‘Inside Llewelyn Davis’ and I thought ‘No Country for Old Men’ was a bit of a wrist job. No strike that: a complete wrist job. And yes, I know ‘The Big Lebowski’ is everyone’s favourite film. But, quelle horreur, despite several attempts, I’ve never managed to get all the way through it.

The common objection I have to Anderson and the Coens’ stuff - and to a slightly lesser extent, that of David O. Russell (not to be confused with David J. Russell, the former professional golfer, who became David J. Russell to avoid being confused with plain David Russell, another former professional golfer, no idea what David O’s excuse is) is the way they draw attention so conspicuously to the style of direction and away from the story.

I do not want to know about the film director’s trademark cinematic fireworks anymore than I want to be distracted by a novelist’s glorious prose. What I want is to be so engrossed in the story that I suspend disbelief from first to last and hopefully, at the end, feel rewarded and uplifted and, if I am very lucky, enlightened by the experience. I want a well developed coherent plot with the right ingredients deftly folded into the mixture at the right time, and rounded characters, neither entirely bad nor utterly flawless, but nuanced as people really are. If I am super lucky, I hope to see some universal truth revealed to me that really makes me think about the way I see the world.

A film that, in recent times, ticked every box, was ‘Manchester By The Sea’, a sublime piece of film-making, deeply affecting and gut wrenchingly poignant. I offer this as exhibit A, m’lud, in support of my case that I am not some old fart whose taste is irrevocably stuck in the past and is thus incapable of seeing anything good in the new, but as someone who refuses to praise the emperor on the fineness of his new clothes just because practically everybody else is determined to claim to love the post modern irony of seeing a king with his dick out.

And, by the way, my idea of a good film isn’t just limited to a realistic contemporary drama. It can be historical - the version of ‘Journey’s End’ made a couple of years ago - or comedy, ‘Midnight in Paris’ - something highly stylistic, ‘Laurence Anyways’ - a heist movie, ‘American Animals’ - a musical, (okay the very best of those, ‘Cabaret’, ‘Singing in the Rain’, for instance, aren’t that recent but...) Lala Land’ worked for me - even a movie about trolls, ‘Border’ - magical realism. ‘The Shape of Water’ .All of those are reasonably recent - and this is the vital common denominator - all worked within their own terms. You are asked to willingly suspend disbelief - the critical first step if one is to engage with any book or film - and however absurd a proposition that may fundamentally be, as in the case of a musical, if it is done well enough you happily go along with it.

Which at last brings me to the original point of this piece, Quentin Tarantino’s latest, ‘Once Upon A Time in Hollywood’, which we are, for some reason, told at the beginning, is his 9th film.

Wow is all I can say. And for all the wrong reasons. Never mind, PTA, and DOJ and the CB - they all pale into self effacing insignificance compared to this fellow, the unrivalled leader of the hey-it’s -me-ME!-I did-it pack, who has certainly never done anything on the QT.

Okay, I did like ‘Pulp Fiction’. A lot. It was wild. It was different. It was sassy. It was outrageously, cartoonishly violent. But since then, what have we had but more of the same? Except that,by definition, all the rest differ in one crucial aspect. They are, paradoxically, NOT different. They are not original. The stories vary but the mode de telling is pretty much identical.

So it is with ‘Once Upon A Time All The So Called Professional Film Critics In The World Prostrated Themselves At The Feet of Quentin Tarantino Yet Again’. More of the predictably wacky same. But this time my critique comes with knobs on.

Never mind the bladder bursting excessive length, the unexplained jumping about between different bits of story, the customary unremitting gore, the comedy that isn’t quite comedy (mainly because it’s never quite funny) the drama that’s never quite dramatic because it’s simultaneously being undercut by the comedy that isn’t quite comedy, never mind any of that. I take that as a given in pretty much any Tarantino film. What particularly concerns me about no.9, is why?

Actually there are quite a few whys but let’s start with the big one: why has he taken the still shocking story of the Charles Manson murder of Sharon Tate and then riffed on it so that we are given a totally fictitious alternative version of events? What was the point of that? What was he trying to say? What, in doing this, did he mean to reveal to us, the audience? Surely, anyone would have realised that you can not do something so very odd without such questions being asked? (Unless of course you are an ‘auteur’ who has managed to create such an unchallenged worldwide rep for being a genius that no-one dares ask.)

Anyway, I haven’t got a fucking clue. I just didn’t - and don’t - geddit. And to anyone who says, ‘Who gives a shit about that kind of nitpicky pedantic bollocks if the audience is having fun?’, I say ‘Of course, it fucking matters! Otherwise it’s like a mathematical answer without the workings. There has to be a comprehensible rationale or it’s just bollocks’. (Or is it? a tiny voice in my head insists on saying. What about Chinese medicine? If it works, who cares why it works? But notwithstanding that last bloody irritating intervention, to which I concede I don’t have a completely fireproof answer, I continue to insist that, for me, there must be a reason for any idea to be valid.)

So here’s my next why? Why do the ‘critics’ love him so much? My guess is either

a) it is because most of them are twats who have seen a million films but still know fuck all about the subject and just go in whichever direction the rest of the lemmings are headed,

b) because he stuffs his films - particularly this one - with so many nods and winks tipped to other films and to Hollywood folk lore that only a person who had seen a million movies and immersed themselves in Hollyworld would recognise them and, realising and relishing the fact that they are part of a tiny select group and flattered that they have been so selected, they choose to believe that a poor film is a good one. (In other words it is my contention that Tarantino aims his films at critics and when was flattery not the best way to get somewhere with anybody?)

Of one thing I am reasonably certain: the audience members who crammed the cinema to capacity were way too young (my companion and I were the oldest people there by a couple of aeons) to have spotted more than one or two - if any - of the film buff references. (Perhaps I am doing them a disservice, but I’d bet a pony to a piece of popcorn that, moreover, nine tenths of them knew almost nothing - if anything at all - about the Manson murders before the publicity about this film drew them into the cinema.)

None of this stopped them laughing uproariously throughout, and annoying the fuck out of me for so doing. Yep, it was Punch Drunk Love all over again.

Except this time I got the flame thrower out and fried the bastards to death. It was so fucking SATISFYING!

(Actuary, sorry, no I didn’t. But there was a reason for me to invoke this image in this context - connected with the film - which you will understand should you have 2hrs 39mins of your precious time on this earth to waste. And that makes it different from most of the things that Quentin does which seem to me to have no raison d’etre at all, apart from the fact that he thinks it’s a good idea at the time.

And that’s not good enough for ME!!!!)

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bloggerblagger · 7 years ago

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87) Blank space. (And the profound questions deriving therefrom.)

I was there. ______________________________________________________________________

I am looking for a film.

I have hunted high and low and I can’t find it.

I don’t mean a roll of film - who has those these days? Unless you’re living in the dark ages. Or in Hackney or Stokie or Lewisham and have a beard, tatts, nose ring, possibly a lip disc - and that’s just the girls, tee hee. (Sorry, I meant cis gender women.) (And trans women too of course.) (Maybe I shouldn’t have started this.)

Anyway, no, I do not mean that kind of film, I mean a film as in a movie, a flick, a picture, a cinematic experience. I have lost one - no. 45 to be precise - and being a bit anal about these things, I am quite disturbed.

To explain: a few weeks ago we had the London Film Festival. As a one time titan of the airwaves, and now the the author of this estimable blog, I am, in exchange for an ever increasing fee - forty five quid this year - able to blag a press pass.

And very grateful I am. What better way to fill a retiree’s days as the autumn chill begins to bite.

The trouble with joy

Ah! If only simple pleasure were enough for me. I am, as Woody Allenonce described himself, ‘anhedonic’. As I understand it, that means incapable of having a good time for the sake of it.

Something - somewhere inside my amygdala or frontal lobe or wherever such impulses lurk - insists that I must have an aim, a goal of some kind. It’s as though standing before the Eiger, it would not be enough for me to admire its magisterial beauty. I would feel an irresistible compulsion to grab some crampons and leg it up the North face. (Okay, possibly a slight overclaim there but you get the idea.)

And thus it is that, each year, my principal purpose at the festival really has nothing to do with appreciating the glories of world cinema. As with the mountain that must be climbed because it is there, I hear an irresistible call to a completely pointless course of action.

My personal Eiger (it really should be Everest but I’m stuck with the Eiger now) is to pay an average price of less than £1 per screening that I enter.

Rules of the game

And lest you think that’s dead easy - and that all I have to do is walk in, get the person with the BFI badge and the little hand held recording doobery to record my press pass number, and then walk straight out again - you are most seriously mistaken.

Rule 27 subsection b, clearly states that I have to see enough to be able to write some kind of review for each and every film.(See below.) (And further below.) (And much further below.) Furthermore, although I am permitted to walk out if I think the film is really shite, I have to stay for at least half an hour.

It is a feat that I have, for one reason and another - typically, violent vomiting brought about by a surfeit of Gallic pretentiousness or a crippling attack of wobblycamitis - never previously managed to accomplish. And inflation makes it an ever more daunting prospect. It’s like the Eiger growing another couple of thousand feet every year. At the 2018 price, it would mean I had to see at least forty six films.

Reaching for the stars

The one thing that gave me a tiny shred of hope was that this year I would be in London with a more or less empty diary for the entire period of press previews, beginning Sept 24th, and for the actual festival, which ended October 21st. Forty six films in twenty nine days. Obviously tough, but at one and three fifths a day, it did seem just about doable.

In fact, a bit like Mo Farah, who is happy to ease himself into the race and hang about at the back of the field for the first lap, I saw only one film a day for the first week and gradually stepped it up so that by the beginning of the final week I still had twenty three films to see. Yes, as the bell sounded for the last lap, I still had an immense amount of ground to make up.

But I was honed, oiled (a steady diet of oatmilk lattés) and up for the challenge. Saw four films a day Mon to Fri, except Wed when I saw five - my first ever 5 a day! Saw two on the Sat - but, as much as it stuck in my craw, paid - PAID! - for a ticket for one of them (will explain later) so only one counted. And then three more on the final Sunday. Meaning I had seen forty eight films overall with forty seven eligible - forty seven for the price of my forty five pounds press pass. Average cost: 95.744 pence.

NINETY FIVE POINT SEVEN FOUR FOUR PENCE!!!! Cue tumultuous applause, wild cheering, caps being hurled into the air, my modest, slightly sheepish acceptance of bouquets thrown at my feet, headlines in the dailies, in depth analyses in the Sundays, a billion tweets, Facebook breaking down through worldwide overload, invitations to appear on Breakfast TV, The One Show - rejected - Graham Norton - maybe - James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke - okay - and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon - accepted if whole show is devoted to me.

Let the naysayers nay

Of course, I knew there would be doubters. Small minded types consumed with envy - very possibly like yourself - and conspiracy theorists who would insist that, like the landing on the moon, seeing forty eight films (forty seven eligible) in twenty nine days was simply beyond the reach of humankind and that the whole enterprise was some kind of epic confidence trick.

So I knew I would need proof. And so I kept notes. Contemporaneously. Each film I saw, I noted down on the yellow notebook thingy on my i-phone. From one to forty eight (forty seven eligible) they went in and were consecutively numbered. And then, at the end, it was my intention to review them. (Too busy resting in my bivouac - aka the cafe in the PIcturehouse Central - to write them as I saw them.)

That was the plan and the plan was put into effect. All went swimmingly, if several tads slowly - at the time of bloglication it’s already the thick end of a month since the Festival finished - until I reached no 45.

And then - disaster.

YIkes!

44 was clear enough: ‘Ollie and Stan.’ And 46 was there: ‘Girl’’. But beside the number 45, there was nothing. Just blank space. (And though Blank Space could easily have been a film, perhaps based on the song Blank Space by Taylor Swift - ‘I’ve got a blank space baby, And I’ll write your name’ - and there was actually a film called Blank Spaces made in 2010, the blank space in question was just in fact, no more than that, a blank space.)

The reader - if there still is one - will be easily able to imagine how distraught I was. I was - and I remain - convinced that I had seen forty eight movies (forty seven eligible) but I could only identify forty seven ( and therefore only forty six eligible.)

How could this have happened, I wept and beseeched the God in whom I do not believe? As expected, no answer, but retracing my fingers I concluded that in writing the reviews beside the numbers, I had unwittingly deleted the name of the film that had been beside the number 45.

An absence of proof

I grabbed my dog-eared copy of the Festival Programme and cross-checked all the gazillions of titles with those on my list, to see if there was one that I recognised that might have been no.45. But when you are as anal/OCD/idiotic as I am, you have to be punctiliously - obsessively - honest and I have to confess that I couldn’t find anything. I delved into the settings of my i-phone’s yellow notepad thingy several times to see, if I had by any chance, inadvertently made a copy of the original entries before I began the review, but nada.

Eventually I had to accept that, like Shergar, the name of the film that should have been beside no.45, would never be found. My only consolation was that this fascinating tale would be the basis for a fantastic movie, which I shall, one day, star in, write, direct, and produce: ‘And the winner of the Academy Award for Best Actor/Writer/Director/Motion Picture goes to: Richard Phillips, Richard Phillips, Richard Phillips, Blank Space!’)

Other than that, I am left with nothing but a terrible quandary. Do I insist, despite the missing movie, that I saw forty eight films (forty seven eligible) and that the price of 95.744 per film stands? Or do I say, since I cannot name film no.45, that, for the official record, I shall accept, albeit grudgingly and bitterly, that only forty seven films (forty six films eligible) can be counted, which increases the average price to 97.827pence per film. Yes, still inside £1 but unarguably by a substantially narrower squeak.

But that is not proof of absence.

As you will imagine, I have, before sending this blog post off into the e-ther, fought an epic battle with my conscience. I have tossed and turned in the night, spent days in a monastic retreat - well, sitting on the loo, as good as - before deciding that, one missing title notwithstanding, I did indeed see forty eight films (forty seven eligible) and will claim, until the moment I have taken my last breath that the average price per film was 95.744p. Indeed, given the importance this has assumed in my life, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that these will be my actual last words - though hopefully not right now.

However, my rigid insistence on complete honesty demands that I confess that there is another reason for choosing the 95.744 option.

It is this: There is another rule - 39, clause iv - that has to be obeyed. And to explain that properly, I need to go out of order and begin my reviews with no.22

Ignorance is not always bliss.

Rule 39, clause iv, states that I must see every film ‘completely cold’ - by which I mean, knowing as little as conceivably possible about what I am about to see. I make a point/fetish of never reading the Festival programme blurb before I go in. When going to the cinema in the ordinary way, that is to say paying a proper price, I do everything I can to avoid seeing a trailer, usually by timing my entrance so I miss them, but if not, I cover my eyes and stick my fingers in my ears, and I would go ‘la la la la la’ except I would be bombarded by popcorn and soggy nachos.

And I never, ever so much as glance at a review until after I've seen the film, and not just because I think all reviewers - except me - are tossers. I want to make a judgement of my own, uninfluenced by the half baked opinions of others. I want to witness the story unfold exactly as the director intended that it should. Of course my determination to be so pure has its drawbacks occasionally, and never more so than in this case.

Thus:

22 Little Drummer Girl

I went in with high hopes as the director Park Chan Wook, who made the astonishing Korean and Korean-ised version of Sarah Waters’ fantastic (I thought) novel Fingersmith. (His film was called The Handmaiden, not to be confused with The Handmaid's Tale.)

TLDG started intriguingly and then, after about an hour, the end credits rolled, seemingly half way through the film. I sat there thinking, ‘how very odd’, but, given my admiration for this director’s previous film, I decided this must be some uber cool directorial device and carried on watching regardless. Then an hour later the same credits rolled again, this time, as it turned out, at the conclusion of the performance. Even odder, for there seemed to have been no clue - at least none that I’d picked up - as to why the credits had been run the first time.

So whatever uber cool trick the director was trying to bring off, it was clearly way too cool for me. Moreover the story was left completely unresolved. It seemed as though there was a lot more to be said and the audience had been left high and dry. The whole thing was completely baffling. Until, that is, I finally referred to the programme blurb and discovered this wasn’t a film at all but the first two episodes of a new BBC series. (Now showing.)

Why should this be shown at a Film Festival, especially when the TV series is to be broadcast only two weeks later? Answers on a postcard please.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.0* (Not a film.)

So, you can see the problem. This wasn’t strictly a film - as in a movie that you might see in a regular cinema - at all. So should it count? If the Rules Committee (me, myself and I) took a really strict view, they might not allow The Little Drummer Girl through even though I had thought it would be a proper film when I went in.

You can see where I am going with this. If I had not refused to back down on the missing no.45, I could have been in serious trouble. Because If I hadn’t and the Committee put their black caps on in regard to no.22, I would be down to forty six films viewed and only forty five eligible, meaning the average price of entry would be £1 exactly.

Still a formidable achievement but, whichever way you look at it, £1 cannot be simultaneously less than £1. I would my miss target for yet another year.

Agonisingly close but no cigar. And you can’t really plant the flag unless you’ve reached the summit.

Let the record show

As I have said, I am not a believer but sometimes one simply has to invoke the name of the so-called creator because it is the only word that will do. So thank God that after long, and sometimes hotly contested deliberations, the committee voted by a majority of two to one (myself and I for the motion, me dissenting) to take a lenient view and admit no 22. What’s more they didn’t even raise the subject of the missing no.45.

So, all’s well that ends well. Will 95.744p ever beaten? One never knows, but my guess this is a Bob Beamon Plus Plus Plus sort of record.

One final note before I get to the other forty six reviews. I am the reviewer who is absolutely, positively guaranteed never to give the game away. No plot spoilers, no tedious Kermodian descriptions of every tiny thing. In fact, sod all apart from the odd detail such as the title, occasionally who might be in it, its country of origin and the briefest reference to the skeleton of the story.

Reading one of my reviews you will never learn who dunnit. You won’t even know wot they dun.

The rest of the reviews:

1 Asako 1&2 (numbers are part of the title)

Japanese romance with a clever plot twist. Inoffensive, watchable - a slightly different slant (shamefully politically incorrect pun but impossible to resist) on familiar themes. 3*

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

2 Petra

An incoherent Spanish film about a young woman and a small daughter in search of something or other. Complex plot which asked too much of this audience. (By which I mean me.) Tiresome.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.1.5*

3 The Guilty

Highly unusual and thought provoking thriller of sorts. Although nothing remotely like it, except in its ‘message’, it reminded me of the celebrated Guardian commercial - celebrated if you lived in the advertising bubble, that is - which showed one scene from different points of view, each one altering your assumptions about what was going on.

A lot of concentration required for ‘The Guilty’ - slightly more than I had. A few irritating plot flaws but worth your time.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4*

4 Wildlife

Thanks to British Rail’s time honoured uselessness, I was 10 minutes late but I don’t think I missed anything crucial. This was the very first film I saw but I can still just about remember it which says quite a lot for it I suppose. Carey Mulligan who I usually don’t like is very good in this 50s Americanadrama. Ed Oxenbould as the teenage son in the midst of a family crisis is impressive.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

5 Crystal Swan

The lesson to be learned here is that under no circumstances choose Belorussia for your next holiday unless unremitting bleakness turns you on. But the story of a rebellious young woman desperate to get a visa to America is intriguing and persuasive.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

6 Shadow

Another of those Chinese warrior films which involves all sorts of leaping about and balletic sword twirling. Not my cup of Lapsang Souchong but if it’s yours, go for it.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

7. Arctic.

Icelandic. Very snowy. A man lost and hungry and not a happy bunny (not that any bunny would be) in the eponymous frozen somewhere. In short, All Is Lost on Ice. (A brilliant line if I say so myself. If you haven’t seen All Is Lost, you should because it’s better and also because you will then appreciate the brilliance of the line which will otherwise be wasted on you )

On the other hand if you don’t see it, Arctic will probably seem more original and interesting than it did to me.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

8 Jinn

Awful, unlikely story about a black Californian teenager who wants to shake her booty and her controlling TV weatherwoman mother who discovers Islam.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.1*

9 Manto

Worthy but tedious biopic about a famous writer caught up in the cross border chaos of Indian/Pakistani independence. I lasted for about 3/4 of it, then decided to get a sandwich instead.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.1*

10 After the Screaming Stops

Where else but at a press screening at the London film Festival would you find yourself watching a documentary about a Bros reunion? Interesting in that it showed what an incredible jerk Matt Goss is. And sometimes funny in the laughing-at as opposed to laughing-with sense.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

11 May the Devil Take You

Walked out. Hated it. Apart from that I can’t remember anything.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.0.5*

12 Mandy

Never got all this cult film bollocks. Never liked Russ Meyer or got George Romero or John Waters and this film which appears to be in this ‘cult’ category was , as far, as I was concerned, simply unbearable. Left after an hour. Yes, I know it’s had fantastic reviews from all and sundry but then remember, fengshui proves that a billion Chinese can be wrong.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating. - (minus) 200*

13 Ash Is Purest White

A Chinese melodrama about low level gangster life centred on the life of the moll. (I mean morr- ha ha ha.) (Is it racist to make pathetically obvious jokes, if you can call them that, about Chinese/ Japanese pronunciation issues? Probably yes, so why do I keep doing it? Discuss.)

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.2.5*

14.Widows

The gushing reviews it seems to have received (judging by the number of stars on the posters on the underground) baffle me. It was nothing more than a highly polished turd. The original television serious was completely implausible and this film is no improvement. In the trailer that I advertently failed to miss, ‘12 Years a Slave’ director and, in another life, Turner prize winner, Steve McQueen - the new one not the dead one - appears himself to claim this is the film he always wanted to make.

Personally I think it might have been about the money.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.2*

15 Thunder Road

A curious piece, written and directed and starring the same person, all about the disintegrating life of an American policeman. Tonally it was partly black comedy and partly unalloyed tragedy. A tour de force of sorts creatively, but not quite sure what to make of it.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

16 Border

A love story with knobs on - but not necessarily in the usual places - this is a quite brilliant piece of filmmaking which questions the very nature of attraction. ‘Border’ has a very contemporary story but one which is drawn, apparently, from Nordic mythology. One of the two or three best films I saw in the festival. Highly recommended.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4.5*

17 Colette

I started by being irritated by Collette. Keira Knightley has had a bit too much onscreen rumps pumpy to be a convincing teenager in plaits skipping through the grass. And there was early dialogue referencing toothpaste and the top line on an optician’s charts. In 1892? Did they have those in 1892? (The answer it turns out is yes - toothpaste invented in the 1850s, Colgate producing it in jars in 1873 and in tubes in the 1890s, and opticians have been around since earlier than that - so one in the eye for me. And one in the mouth.)

But all this became quickly irrelevant anyway. Because I stopped being picky and submitted to the charm of this film, seduced by the bravura performance of Dominic West - who seemed made for his twinkly eyed, moustache twirling part and by the surprisingly nuanced Keira Knightley - never been a fan but I am now. As it turned out, after that first slightly jarring note, she was perfectly cast as the country school girl who goes on to be a revolutionary in the fin de siecle culture war in Paris.. But above all it was the astonishing, and very well told, story of Collette - nothing of which I knew - which fascinated. In short, a damn good night at the cinema.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4.5*

18 Beautiful Boy

Film about parental angst over teenage son’s descent into drugs hell. I found it interesting, if for no other reason than it made me realise the blindingly obvious fact that each viewer sees a film through the prism of their own life experience and that must affect their appreciation of it. In this case, as a father I couldn’t help but see things from the father’s point of view but if you you were in the first flush of youth you would, I think see it from the son’s.

The casting of Timothy Hutton as the expert to whom we see Steve Carell talking caught my eye because he was, about 40 years ago, the Timothy Chalomet of his day - remember ‘Ordinary People’?- and then looked a little like him.

And here’s another curious little factoid about Timothy Hutton - perhaps something to thrill the table with if Christmas lunch is flagging. He also appeared in a 1996 film called Beautiful Girls.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

19 Sometimes. Always.Never

Light, low budget British comedy with Bill Nighy; painstakingly made and clearly a labour of love. A little twee at times but very well played and with something semi-profound to say - though at a distance of a few days, having seen so many films since, I can’t remember exactly what it was.

It had a particular appeal for me because the hero had spent a life in the menswear business, as my father did, and the title refers to how one should button a three button jacket, from top button downwards - something I learned at an early age and have never forgotten.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

20. Roma

I would say that Roma was a faultless recreation of 1970s Mexico City except that I wasn’t in Mexico City in the 1970s so how could I know? It did however ring completely true to me - apart from a shower head which looked suspiciously modern - pedantic? moi? - and demonstrated the astonishing versatility of the director, Adolpho Cuaron, who also made ‘Y Mama Tu Tambien’ 'Children of God' and ‘Gravity’ - that’s some CV - films which could not be more different to this. ‘Roma’ is a sort of upstairs downstairs story and has wonderful performances from all the actors but most particularly from the main character, the young servant girl.

If I have one caveat it is that it didn’t quite ‘speak to me’, apart from making me queasily guilty that I have a cleaning lady.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4*

21 Non Fiction

One of those literary French films purporting to be profoundly intellectual (even if, in this case, also supposed to be ironically amusing.) All about writers and publishers and their existential angst in the digital world. But then aren’t all French films like this about existential angst - whatever it means? This is the sort of thing I viscerally loathe and after about half an hour, je sort, and gave ‘Non Fiction’, the General de Gaulle - ‘Non! Non! Non!’

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.1*

23 Life Itself

Not everybody loves this film; in fact, the reviews have generally had the whiff of a blocked drain, but I claim my right to vigorously demur - up to a point. Directed and written by Dan Fogelman (the guy who does ‘This Is Us’ on Netflix or somewhere) it begins with a story about familiar Noo Yorker angst but approaches it from a surprising angle - at least to me. ‘Life Itself’, comes in four labelled acts, something I don’t like in movies usually but the first three worked for me. The last seemed like a rather - make that very - tired cliché.

My main issue with the film was that, whereas with Roma I couldn’t quite understand what it was trying to say, here the message was triple underlined in upper case bold. Not yet quite at the stage of jibbering senescence where I need to be spoon-fed.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

24 Wild Rose

Have to declare an interest here. The film’s star, Jessie Buckley, is someone I know a little, and whose career I have watched with interest since she was about 18 when she appeared on a TV talent show and after which I interviewed her. I am a massive fan. She is an astonishingly gifted singer and a damn good actor. (Brilliant in her earlier non-singing role in last year’s ‘Beast’, which I thought was an exceptional movie, better than this to be honest, and which may yet prove to be a bit of a sleeper.)

‘Wild Rose’ is about a single mother from the badlands of a Scottish estate who has a yen to be a Nashville diva. (A bit like Lady Gaga in ‘A Star is Born’. C&W seems all the rage at the mo.) ‘Wild Rose’ has a few credulity stretching moments but the feel good peaks make you want to ignore those. It will make the Saturday night popcorn go down with a tear and a cheer. And it is a wonderful showcase for Jesse, who, If there is any justice, is destined for Hollywood mega stardom.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

25 Sunset

Lazló Némes, who made last year’s wincingly convincing Auschwitz film ‘Son of Saul’, now comes up with a wobbly cam evocation of verge-of-World War One Budapest called ‘Sunset’. By a complete but happy coincidence the person sitting next to me turned out to be an old pal, Saul Metzstein, who is a movie director himself.

I was gratified to learn that he was as mystified by this film as I was. No idea what the point of it was - went straight over my head. (Which, admittedly does not require much intellectual elevation.)

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.2*

26 Dogman

Loved this. One of my Festival top three or four and likely, I read, to be a runner in the Oscar Foreign Film race. It’s a modern tale of the little man in a hostile world and takes place in one of those seedy parts of Italy that you find everywhere if you stray very far from the tourist trail. It is already on release - in fact, by the time I get around to posting this blog, it may already be finished, but try to catch it if you can. (Beware of violence though, if that bothers you.)

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4.5*

27 The Kindergarten Teacher

Never been much of a Maggie Gyllenhaal fan - always seems a bit cold and distant to me - but she is exceptional in this unusual contemporary New York drama about a thoroughly decent middle aged woman who, for reasons which may or may not be valid, finds herself out of step with those about her. Intriguing and thought provoking and better the more I think about it.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4*

28 They Shall Not Grow Old

Everyone is raving about Peter Jackson’s colour and 3-D reincarnation of genuine old World War One footage but it left me pretty cold.

It may be - no doubt is - an astonishing technical feat but after so many books and plays and films and so much TV and radio devoted to the subject I am afraid to say that I have a touch of World War One fatigue and this didn’t relieve my symptoms.

Last year’s wonderful remake of RC Sherriff’s ‘Journey’s End’ packed far more emotional punch, for me at least. Yes, the colour pictures of corpses and lice and rats and trenchfoot were ghastly but I wasn’t shocked and I wasn’t surprised. Who doesn’t know that World War I was unspeakably awful? Or rather, who amongst those who might go to see a film like this, doesn’t know? (‘Venom’ fans, I would have thought, are unlikely customers.)

My biggest complaint, though, is about the soundtrack: I found the unrelenting stream of voices irritating and soon switched off and stopped listening to what they had to say. Easily the most powerful piece of sound in the film was, I thought, the accompaniment to the end title, the marching troops singing ‘Mademoiselle from Armentiers’. (Sung of course, as Ah-men-tears’.) Nothing seemed to me to sum up the pathos and suicidal naivety of the cannon fodder as much as this.

Perhaps more music of the same intensity and fewer quotes might have made them more memorable.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.2.5*

29 Rosie

An Irish version of a Ken Loachy sort of film about decent people caught in the poverty trap. Persuasive and faultlessly done. But I am not sure what it told me that I would prefer not to know but unfortunately do.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

30 El Angel

A highly original and sometimes very funny, blood soaked, true story about a teenage boy with decent, law abiding parents and a head of blonde curls which is set in Argentina (where, typically, people are swarthy with black hair) in the 70s, and who determinedly but very merrily sets about pursuing his ambition to become a ruthless murdering gangster. If there seem to be a few contradictions there, that is the joy of this film.

Remember to search for it on Amazon or Netflix in a few months if it doesn’t get a release.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4*

31 Florianopolis Dream

Was really struggling to remember anything at all about this film and, until I checked, I thought it was more of the seedy Italian seaside and the story of two women battling it out to claim maternal rights over a small child. But now I realise that was another film entirely, which was....

32, Daughter of Mine.

Okay but in the unlikely event of it ever getting a release, I wouldn’t worry about FOMO if you can’t manage to see it.

And, now that I do remember it, likewise Florianopolis Dream, a Brazilian effort about a family’s seaside holiday in a place where it seemed to be perpetually cloudy. (Just to be clear, the cloudiness was nothing to do with the plot, which was largely non-existent, but the obviously very low budget. I am sure the director would have preferred the sun but couldn’t afford to wait.)

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.

Florianopolis Dream 1.5*,

Daughter of Mine 2.5*

33 Capharnaum

A close second, that well might have been first had I not seen the winner afterwards in the race to be my top pick of the festival. Timing is everything.. This is the heartbreaking yet ultimately uplifting story of a boy of about twelve brought up in abject poverty in the slums of what I presume was Beirut.

The performance of the boy is magical and though a two hour journey through the world of the Lebanese dispossessed (or rather, the would’ve been dispossessed if they had ever possessed anything in the first place) may not sound like a fun Saturday night at the pictures, do not be put off. Whilst not so much pricking your conscience as repeatedly firing a Kalashnikov at it, it somehow manages to be a feel-good movie at the same time.

My only quibble was that the editing around the clever device upon which the plot is built, slightly confused me at the end. Oh, and also, what’s with the title? Could they have found anything more obscure? Or maybe there was a clue in the film but, if so, I didn’t pick it up.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4.5*

34 Birds of Passage

Think of this as a pre-prequel to Narcos. Drugs and grisly murders mixed in with a bit of ancient dream interpretation in Colombia in the sixties, when it was the Native Americans (or one of the 87 tribes of Pueblos lndigenas as they call them in Colombia - isn’t Google marvellous?) and not the Sicarios who were cashing in on the medical benefits of the local cash crop.

Judging by the gore in ‘Birds of Passage’, they could have taught Pablo Escobar a thing or two about effective persuasion - blowpipes were out and sub machine guns deffo in. Clear and solid storyline, good pace, convincing acting, and lots of ketchup - what’s not to like? Another probable Oscar Foreign Film contender.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

35 Carmen and Lola

Good late Sunday night on BBC4 type film in which two young gypsy women in modern day Spain confront the fixed ideas of their incurably misogynistic families. One fascinating side effect of seeing this film was noticing in the sub-titles that the Roma in Spain (who are not shown as travellers but living in permanent homes) refer to the wider Spanish community as white people.

To me, the man and woman in the Spanish Street and the Roma all looked pretty much the same - dark haired and sallow skinned, and hard to differentiate from each other. I mentioned this in the Q&A afterwards and Spanish members of the audience - and remember, film festival goers are usually predictably right-on - seemed a bit put out. Perhaps I was being tactless and/or naive. Prejudice runs deeper than you might think.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

36 The Quake

I correctly interpreted the title as heralding a thriller about an earthquake and looked forward to some light relief from the intense social commentaries that are the bread and butter of the festival. I have rarely seen a bad Norwegian film but I did this time. Ludicrous plot, wildly overdone CGI including a slowly toppling, and clearly named Radisson hotel - very odd product placement. Avoid.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 1*

37 Girls of The Sun

A no punches pulled war film from a French woman director about Yazidi girls fighting in the Kurdish army in Iraq. Couldn’t help but be struck by the casting of far and away the prettiest girl as the group leader and main character. A curious - commercial? - decision in such a feminist piece.

A decent enough effort otherwise but I feel that Henry Naylor’s plays which have done so well at Edinburgh and in New York in recent years (Borders, Angel etc, a couple of which are on at the Arcola, Dec 4-22) and which deal with similar themes do so much more effectively. A rare case - for me- of the cinema being inferior to the theatre.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 3*

38 The White Crow

Quite nteresting without being competely fascinating, watchable without being riveting, this is a tale of the early days of Nureyev directed by Ralph Fiennes, who also appears, thankfully not as Rudy, but as his teacher, giving a performance which I found somewhat distracting as he strongly reminded me of Paul Whitehouse. Nureyev Is portrayed as an unsympathetic character, driven and selfish, which could well have been true, so ‘The White Crow’ ticked the ‘seems authentic’ box, although his chilliness doesn’t help you love the film.

I would semi-enthusiastically recommend it, but I doubt it will be shown very widely since I can’t see it doing brilliantly at the box office - not sure that the world of ballet is a place the Saturday night popcorn crowd want to visit. And who under 50 will know much - or indeed anything - about Rudolph Nureyev and his place in the sixties zeitgeist? But then who cares? It wasn’t my money.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 3.5*

39 Burning

There seemed to to be a bit of a buzz about this film amongst the so called press (aka the vast number of liggers who, like me, and with no less right, had managed to blag a press pass) but I have no idea why. It’s a strange story about the homecoming of a rather disorientated young Japanese chap with a father in gaol and another contrastingly self assured young fellow who is doing jolly nicely thankyou. Plus, for some reason, there are burning glasshouses. Utterly mystifying - to me at least - and so slow it made the average glacier seem like Usain Bolt.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 2*

40 Yommedine

A road movie about an Egyptian leper and a runaway orphan. (One of the many surprisingly good things about this film is that there it unlikely to be a Hollywood remake.)

An astonishing achievement to have made such a simultaneously upbeat and yet deeply moving film about people one would normally think of as being at the very bottom of the heap if, that is, one gave them any thought to them at all. Brilliant performances that take us beneath the skin that so many are terrified to touch.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

41.Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Stands a pretty good chance of coming to a cinema near you and I don’t you think will begrudge the price of a ticket. Melissa McCarthy gives a masterful - if that’s the right word to use - performance in the true story of surly, lonely, habitually rude 51-year-old biographer and lesbian Lee Israel and her extraordinary and ingenious attempts to make money in 90s New York.

Richard E. Grant plays her camp hoppo with all the Richard E. Grantness that you’d expect and Dolly Wells does a nice little turn as a guileless bookshop owner. (To be frank I might not have mentioned her, but coincidentally her mother was my Airbnb guest on the day I went to see this film, so I thought it was only fair to give her a shout out, and I did think she was pretty good.) Amusing, touching and very watchable.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

42 The Hate U Give

Based on a ‘young adult novel, this is the story of a young black girl living in a rundown, violent, gang ridden district because her father, whilst allowing her to be sent to a private white school doesn’t want to make the move into a middle-class world. (Sounds fairly unlikely but on this occasion, I wasn’t in one of my usual hole picking moods so I went with it.)

A series of regrettable incidents force her to come to terms with the conflicting aspects of her identity. Not quite sure if this film was actually intended for my demographic group, but, despite it’s improbable plot turns, I thought it had something useful to say. And hear.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

42 The Sisters Brothers

Saw this on the day that I actually managed to attend five screenings. A notable achievement but knackering and while I was supposed to be watching this - I think it was my fourth of the day - I have to admit I nodded off more than once. I have a strong feeling it was probably rather good - featured Joaquin Pheonix, Jake Gylenhal, John C.Reilly, so a promising cast - but I’m not really sure. Anyway, it’s cowboy film with a slightly Coen Brothers tone of voice, but isn’t one of theirs.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 3.5*

43 A Private War

Like Maggie Gyllenhaal - see The Kindergarten Teacher, above - Rosamond Pike has never been a favourite of mine. and for similar reasons. I’ve always found her ice queen manner slightly off putting. Here she is playing legendary war journalist Marie Colvin but I never believed her. Lots of actoring with cigarettes and an eyepatch and her unruly wig flapping about but it just seemed like dressing up to me. I kept wanting to scream at the screen, ‘Put a bloody helmet on!’.

For all that, I can’t deny that ‘A Private War’ held my attention and had the odd moment.The sort of thing that might not seem a complete waste of time when it makes its inevitable appearance on BBC2 late on some future Sunday night. Otherwise not really recommended.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 2.5*

44 Stan and Ollie

As a child in the er ah ahem um er nineteen whatevers I use to love Laurel and Hardy and here John C. Reilly and the make up artists do a great job of recreating Oliver Hardy on screen and Steve Coogan is more than passable if less impressive as Stan laurel.

A fascinating story of their later years but for me, let down by the stagey, artificial representation of fifties England. Also very odd casting and playing of legendary impresario Bernard Delfont. Was Lew Grade’s brother really like that? No idea but not how I imagined the man who brought us Sunday Night At the London Palladium. Still, all in all, a pretty decent night out at the flicks.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 3.5*

45. (As previously discussed.)

46 GIRL

On the final Saturday I went with some friends to see the announcement of the result and the screening of the film which had won the best first feature award and I had to pay so I could sit with my pals. A little bit of a gamble as there was a chance I had already seen the winning movie,.

The winner turned out to be Girl, a story about a Belgian boy of 15 who wanted to be a ballerina. (Note: Not another Billy Elliott - he wanted to be a real ballerina.) When the announcement of the award was made, the good news was that it was a film I hadn’t already seen but the bad, I glumly thought, was that I had consciously decided not to see it earlier in the week because, to be honest, I have grown a little weary of the entire LGBTQ I XYZ trans-gender, cis gender, gender fluidity, gender whatever, what? WTF!, what-do-THEY-do? thing.

Only it didn’t turn out to be bad news at all. Girl is an absolutely extraordinary film, deeply touching with an astonishing performance by the young boy playing the young boy who wanted to be a girl. Not only was it riveting viewing but it made me completely rethink my attitude to the whole transgender thing. Whereas previously my attitude might have been summed up as ‘all these boys wanting to be boys and girls wanting to be boys - perlease!’ I felt afterwards that I had at least a small but sympathetic understanding of the predicament that Victor/Lara and his family faced. And by extension, others like them. A really good film can do that - open your eyes and mind to a different world.

So, from being a movie that I hadn’t wanted to to see, Girl became my personal pick of the festival and recipient of the Palme d’bloggerblagger

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 5*

46 Blaze

Went to see this because I noticed that Ethan Hawke was the director and I am a bit of a fan of his work both as an actor and as a writer - he once wrote a very good novel, the name of which now escapes me. Unfortunately this film, a story, supposedly true, of a singer and songwriter in the sixties - I think - failed to stop me from making short but frequent visits to the land of nod.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 2.5*

47 The Fight

The very last film I saw, A low budget British film about a fortyish woman in a racially mixed marriage with a bullied child and a dark secret and a bad relationship with her own mother and who, for some reason that I never quite got to grips with, takes up boxing. I might have appreciated this film more had my hearing been better. I discovered in post movie conversation (with one of the other members of the press/ liggers ) that I had mistaken the spoken number 30 for 13 and that had a significant bearing on my misunderstanding of the story, and consequent confusion and mild dissatisfaction.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 2.5*

PS Anyone with so much time on their hands that they have waded through this nonsense until the end will have noticed, as I have only just done, that there were, in fact, two no 42s. Which I take to mean that, joy of joys, we have found the missing no 45. (Something obviously went awry with the numbering system in my i-phone’s yellow notebook thingie. Or possibly, though obviously improbably, it was my fault.)

Delighted to have been vindicated in my claim that I did indeed see 48 films (47 eligible.) Or, if there were an appeal against the present ‘Little Drummer Girl’ decision (unlikely but you never know) and it were to be upheld by the Rules Committee (even unlikelier) I would have seen 47 films (46 eligible.) And in even that remote eventuality I would still have officially reached the summit of my personal Eiger (Everest).

But it also means 80% of the first 1500 words of this post are completely redundant.

I could start again, I suppose. And I probably should. And yet….really?

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bloggerblagger · 7 years ago

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86) Jeremy Corbyn would make a fine prime minister. (Irony: a type of usually humorous expression in which you say the opposite of what you intend.)

If it doesn't look like a duck - not remotely - but it quacks like a duck and it acts like a duck, is it a duck?

Let’s face it. If it didn’t come with the traditional webbed feet and beak, you’d have serious difficulty in accepting it was a duck even if laid perfect duck eggs and towed a line of pretty little ducklings along behind it. And that, I believe, is one of the principal reasons why, despite the well founded charges of anti-Semitism made against Jeremy Corbyn, and all the attention they have received, he still seems to sail serenely on.

What makes it so hard for so many to believe that Corbyn is an anti-Semite is that it seems counter-intuitive. One may think he is completely misguided but his quiet reasonableness and ‘beard and sandals’ appearance and his do-gooder earnestness and his bloody allotment always make him seem so well intentioned. How could such a man be an anti-Semite? Has he not been fighting racism and equality all his life?

Tough to see beyond that. And yet, if you were a foreign power - the Islamic Republic of Iran for instance - who thought it would be useful to get a virulent anti-Israeli and anti-Semite into office here, rather than put him in a brown shirt and jackboots, would you not produce someone just like Jezza? What better disguise would there be?

I am not actually suggesting he is an Iranian agent - although he’d been doing a damn good job if he were - but I am saying, just to thoroughly mix my animal metaphors, that it is very possible to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing if the disguise is good enough.

Labour, the party that cares, doesn’t.

As I say, that’s one of the reasons that the sainted Jezza has got clean away with such outrageous, blatantly anti-Semitic behaviour.

Oh - you don’t think it’s really been all that bad? You don’t?

That’s another reason.

And the rest of the current Labour leadership seems to agree.

I, and most other Jews too, I believe, have reached the depressing conclusion, that, frankly, they don't give a shit about anti-Semitism. (I am sure it is has not escaped Seumas Milne, Labour’s Director of Strategy, that with only 300,000 Jews in the country and, at a guess, a quarter of those children, we really don’t count electorally.)

That would certainly explain the official Labour response to any of these charges, which has been to lock His Corbyness away in a closet and to send out attack dogs like Chris Williamson MP and Owen Jones to rubbish the people speaking out, to flatly avoid answering any direct questions, and to repeat the mantra that Corbyn has always been a man of peace, and couldn't possibly be anti-Semitic.

L: Our Dear leader, man of peace. R:ChrisWilliamson MP, piece of work.

Probably futile but...

It has reached the point where one feels it almost pointless to try to explain why, amongst Jews, there is such profound distrust of Corbyn and why they simply do not accept his blandishments. But I will try one more time by dealing with the most grievous example of the profound offence he has given.

He has been caught on film saying that the Zionists in the room, despite perhaps having lived in Britain all their lives, did not understand English irony and needed a history lesson.

As he will perfectly well have known, Zionists are overwhelmingly Jews. To argue, as he has, that he didn't know they were Jews or that he was using the term in the political sense - whatever the hell that means - may be enough for Ken and Seumus but it won't wash with me or 99% of British Jews.

To say that we don’t understand something ‘English’ clearly implies that we Jews, no matter how deep are roots here, are not fully English - that we don't quite get what it is to be English. It is one of the oldest tropes about Jews and it is was unambiguous anti-Semitism.

And let’s not pretend, as Shami Chakrarbarti did the other day on Radio 4, that these remarks were taken out of context. Utter bollocks. The Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition said exactly what he was reported to have said. And he clearly meant to say it. There was nothing in the ‘context’ that made the slightest difference to the meaning. Here is the film of his entire speech. Judge for yourself.

(Click on the link below but since the sound quality is poor, click also on the subtitle symbol. That’s the litte square with ‘cc’ on it, on the bottom right.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xf1hwfo2W0

This time it’s personal

I feel I cannot adequately convey just how angry I am about this.

It wouldn’t make a jot of difference if my parents had been recent immigrants but, as it happens, I have ancestors who were in this country ten generations back.

While Jeremy’s father was not in the Army, Navy or RAF in the second world war - but doing a Pike in the Home Guard - my father (older than his) spent six years as a private in the Eighth Army in Egypt, Italy and Greece. And he felt obliged to change his name. Jerome Abraham Phillips had to become Jerome Arthur Phillips because of the fear of anti-Semitism. (Anti-Semitism in the British Army that is.)

How fucking dare Jeremy Corby accuse me - because he was, by association, accusing me - of not being fully English.

Jeremy Corbyn’s father served in Dad’s Army at the age of 24

Despite a lack of irony my father was allowed to serve in the Eighth Army.

Enter an establishment Jew

For the ex-chief rabbi, Lord Sacks to have intervened when this video came to light and charge Corbyn with being an anti-Semite was a very, very big deal. It was unprecedented. Rightly or wrongly, Sacks is the Jew most venerated by the British media and the establishment. ( As if to prove the point he is currently hosting a Radio 4 series on Morality.) Yet his words have been dismissed by the Labour leadership out of hand. The fact that he unwisely mentioned Enoch Powell in the same breath gave them an excuse to blithely shrug off the substance of his complaint.

But let's, for a moment, take Corbyn at his word, and assume he is so insensitive he didn't realise what the effect his words would have. What has his response been? To apologise? To meet with Lord Sacks? Or to make up completely unbelievable explanations and then avoid the press and cameras himself and send out his emissaries with their pugnacious, unyielding messages of denial.

What if it hadn’t been about Jews?

If he had made similar remarks about any other minority group he would have been forced to resign immediately. Imagine if he said that those who advocate the wearing of a burka might have been born in this country, but didn’t understand English irony or know English history.

Those who advocate wearing a burka may not necessarily be Muslims, but almost certainly are, in the way that Zionists are almost certainly Jews. It would certainly be something you might expect the leader of the English Defence League to say, but the leader of the Labour Party? Do you honestly think Corbyn would still be in a job if he’d said something so Islamaphobic?

But Jews don't matter to Labour. That is the message that Corbyn and his supporters have sent us.

Don’t just blame poor Jeremy

Jezza and his acolytes are not alone amongst public figures on the Left in their supposedly unwitting ant-Semitism. Steve Bell, the cartoonist in the Guardian is another culprit. In two recent cartoons he has been profoundly offensive. He has been accused of anti-Semitism before so he can’t make the excuse that he couldn’t have known the risk he was running. Here’s the first.

What can this mean but that the people caricatured are not sincere in their complaints about Labour anti-Semitism? One of those ‘sanctimonious humbugs’ (front row L) is clearly Lord Sacks and another, also in the front row, is Margaret Hodge, the MP and Jewess (to use a nice, old fashioned term) who called Corby an anti-Semite to his face.

And here’s his other recent intended witticism on the subject.

What can this mean but that these Labour grandees led by Margaret Hodge, who, since she is holding the weapon is implicitly the executioner in chief, are being wholly unreasonable in asking Corbyn to apologise and recant?

I was frankly shocked when I saw these cartoons, and probably should have complained but I didn’t. Shocked perhaps but not all that surprised. Katherine Viner, the editor, is the co-author of the 2009 play, ‘My Name is Rachel Corrie’, which a writer in The Spectator called an ‘unapologetically pro-Palestinian drama’.

I wouldn’t accuse her of being anti-Semitic but neither can we expect the Guardian under her stewardship to be entirely even handed on the subject of the Israeli/Palestinian situation.

Which brings me on to the subject of anti-Zionism. And anti-Semitism. And why the two so closely intertwined as to be effectively indistinguishable.

Zionists v Anti-Zionists

To be a Zionist is to believe that Israel should be a homeland for Jews. And that is all it means. It does not mean you support the policies of Netanyahu and his government. Not the annexation of East Jerusalem. Not the building of settlements on the West Bank. Not the ridiculously provocative, recently passed, ‘nation state’ law. I, and almost all the Jews I speak to, are vehemently opposed to all of these things,

But I, like most Jews, am a Zionist. (Some, a very few, aren’t, but then again, too few to mention.)

So what is an anti-Zionist? Clearly someone who takes the opposite view; who does not believe that Israel should be a homeland for Jews. That the Israeli state should cease to exist. An anti-Zionist hopes that that one day, we would wake up and find Israel was no longer there.

In such an eventuality, if you weren’t a Jew you might be a bit concerned, even alarmed, but you’d get over it.

For me, it is a simply terrifying prospect. Quite literally, an existential threat to my own life and that of my daughter. I don’t want to rehearse all the arguments why that is the case here, because I’ve been through them all in a previous post. https://bloggerblagger.tumblr.com/post/143854734827/62-anti-zionism-anti-semitism-an-expert-explains (If you have the stamina click on the link and go back and read it.)

But the bottom line is this: anti-Zionism is plainly inimical to the interests of Jews, as hostile as crude old fashioned ‘you’re not really English’ anti-Semitism.

A history lesson for Jeremy.

There are always different versions of history.

It is said that the winners write the history and while I can’t help but admire Hamas’, Hizbollah’s and Al Fatah’s pretty successful attempts to buck the trend, I do feel the need to point out a few things in Corbyn Minor’s textbook that are factually incorrect.

1) Israel is not, as anti-Zionists insist on calling it, an ‘apartheid state’. I lived in South Africa at the height of apartheid so I have the advantage of some direct experience. The 21% of Israeli citizens - those living in Israel proper - who are Israeli Arabs or Israeli Palestinians or just plain Palestinians (however they prefer to self identify) have the full rights of citizenship. They can vote, stand for parliament (the Knesset) own property, demonstrate against the government. None of these rights were available to non-whites (as they were officially called in South Africa) under apartheid - which was the doctrine of separate development.

That is not to say that there is no racism amongst Israelis and Jews generally. Sickening bigotry can be found in every country, amongst every ethnic group. Jews have no claim to be any better. Why should they be expected to be?

Today I heard an astonishing story which both proves that there is sometimes, official racism in Israel and, simultaneously and seemingly impossibly, that there isn’t.

A friend of mine working in London, a Muslim with a family home in Nazareth, who self identifies as an Israeli Arab, travels frequently between London and Tel Aviv. Whenever he goes through Tel Aviv airport, despite having been through all the security checks that every passenger does, he is asked to do more. As soon as he hands in his passport, it flags that he is an Arab and he has to go off to have all the contents of his luggage checked piece by piece. What is that but racial profiling and what is racial profiling but racism?

But here’s the twist. In order to satisfy Israeli legal requirements that this is not racial profiling, whoever is unfortunate enough to be standing next to him in the queue is dragged off to suffer exactly the same irritating bullshit. The last time it happened it was a black hatted, ultra orthodox Hassidic Jew.

Apartheid? Not exactly.

2) Is it often said that Israel flouts UN resolutions, most notably ‘242′, passed half a century ago, which calls on Israel to withdraw behind the 1967 borders. But there’s another part to that resolution which its critics conveniently ignore. Namely, that in return, all parties should recognise the right of every country in the region - including Israel - to exist in peace and security. So far, after 50 years, only four out of twenty two Arab countries have done so.

As for the other 64 UN resolutions, do you think it is possible that at least some of them have been passed because there are 50 Muslim majority countries and most, if not all, routinely vote against Israel on any and every issue?

3) Which brings me to Gaza. We constantly hear of the Israeli blockade. But it isn’t just an Israeli blockade. It is, at the western end, also an Egyptian blockade. Have you ever heard Corbyn Minor mention that? Perhaps he was sleeping through that part of the lesson,

Gaza was territory taken in 1967 in the Six Day War by Israel and voluntarily given up to Palestinian sovereignty - as Sinai was earlier given back to Egypt - and that involved the forcible removal of thousands of Israelis who, wisely or not, had made their homes there.

Within months the people of Gaza had rewarded Israel for this act of peace by electing an Hamas government which was, and still is, sworn to the elimination of Israel. If they were to recognise Israel’s right to exist, then Netanyahu would have lost his best excuse for maintaining the blockade and not actively pursuing peace. They could shoot his fox tomorrow but they prefer to fire rockets.

It’s true that they wouldn’t get everything they want in a negotiated peace settlement but nobody ever does. It takes two to make peace on earth Jeremy, and they have to want it more than eternity in paradise.

Exactly who are the real racists here?

Then we have the charge that the very concept of Israel as a Jewish homeland is inherently racist; that it was when it was created in 1948, and that it still is.

It’s a point. As least, it is in the precisely the same way that Pakistan was always inherently racist and still is. Pakistan, created just a year earlier than Israel, came into being for the specific reason of being a nation for Muslims and is still the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

There are differences of course. In Israel all religions are free to practise exactly as they wish, people are not murdered for blasphemy, and LGBTQI (and whatever else) rights are fully respected.

it is different too from the Islamic Republic of Iran where the religious minority, the Baha’ai are not permitted to go to university and where gays are hung from cranes.

In fact, Islam is the official state religion in many countries, of which more than a few discriminate against other religions and where anything but heterosexual sex is illegal.

In Egypt a bill was recently introduced to outlaw atheism. That would put it in line with the thirteen countries where atheism is punishable by death: Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

Why is it that Corbyn and his gang are so obsessed with Israel and never seem to notice the racism of others? Isn’t the act of charging one nation with racism while ignoring all the others, racism in itself?

We, in the United Kingdom, shouldn’t feel too superior by the way. We have a state religion and all others are discriminated against. The Church of England is the Established Church and followers of any other religion, even other Christians, are proscribed by law from landing the top job in the country. No Muslim, no Jew, no Hindu, no Roman Catholic, and I believe, not even a Presbyterian can be our Head of State.

Even post apartheid South Africa is racist. It was openly discussed in the South African press that the mixed race Trevor Manuel, the much praised Minister of Finance in the noughties could never be President because he wasn’t black enough.

Trevor Manuel. Not black enough to be South African President

It would, of course, be marvellous if group identity - tribalism if you will - was outmoded and eliminated and ‘content of character’ was the only thing that mattered. But the truth is that almost every country in the world is dominated by one ethno-religious group or another. And it doesn’t seem remotely likely that any of them would tolerate the possibility of their ongoing majority being challenged.

About 5-10% of the UK’s electorate are Muslims. Can you imagine the reaction if they became 25%, never mind a majority? And would it not be the same in France, Germany, Sweden, Russia, the US and in most of the countries in the non-Muslim world.

And Jeremy, ask your Mexican wife what she thinks the reaction in Mexico would be if the hegemony of Roman Catholics was ever under threat.

Calling a Jew a Jew

No Jew would ever argue that there isn’t anti-Semitism on the political right. Or indeed anywhere in British society. There is always a low level buzz, probably not picked up by by the antennae of non-Jews, but Nazi death camps, Russian pogroms, Spanish inquisitions and yes, English expulsions (oddly enough, Corby, we really do know our history) have left Jews super attuned to anti-Semitism and it is always there in the background for us.

I will give you one simple example of endemic anti-Semitism that flies so low below most people’s radar that even Jews unwittingly accept it. It is the use of the word ‘Jew’.

How often do you hear even the most ardent supporter of Jews refer to us by the actual word? Christians can be referred to as Christians and Muslims as Muslims, Hindus as Hindus, Janes as Janes, but Jews are never called Jews. They must be referred to as ’Jewish people’. Why? To soften the effect. Because the word Jew is still, after all these years, somehow, unconsciously perhaps, regarded as pejorative.

To be a Christian is to be kind, to be generous, to be virtuous. To be a Jew is to be tight, to be clever - too clever by half - to be cunning, to be manipulative, sneaky. So even our friends and usually, even we ourselves- would rather say we are Jewish.

To call us Jews is deemed to be too strong, too brutal, too, too, too… well, Jewish.

Outing myself

Another example: whenever I meet new people who are not Jewish, I let them know almost immediately that I am, and I know that I am not alone in doing this. The purpose is to try to ensure that no careless remark - no Jewish joke about money, no casual mention of ‘front wheelers’ - is going to be made in my presence. Because I don’t want to be put in the position of either cravenly saying nothing, or calling them out and then feeling I’m responsible for the embarrassment, the awkward silence that would follow.

And yet it still happens, and shamefully, more often than not, I follow the example of another well known Jew, and turn the other cheek.

I know that these remarks are not made out of any deliberate attempt to give offence, but the moment you draw attention to someone’s otherness you take the risk that you will. So I try to draw any potential sting by identifying my otherness before you can.

Who could possibly have been the inspiration for these posters?

On Wednesday September 5th 2018 these posters were flyposted over other advertisements at several different locations across London. Less than 24 hours after the infamous meeting of the Labour Party National Executive meeting at which, late in the afternoon, it was finally agreed to adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism in full, along with the caveat that ‘it will not in any way undermine freedom of expression on Israel or the rights of the Palestinians.’ (Quite why they did this is a mystery to me as there is nothing in the IHRA definition to prevent either.)

That wasn’t enough for JC though. He wanted to include a clause that said, “it should not be considered antisemitic to describe, Israel, its policies or the circumstances around its foundation as racist because of their discriminatory impact, or to support another settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict”

This suggestion was apparently defeated, but why exactly was Corbyn pressing a case for this, when he knew that, had it been adopted, it was bound to pour a tanker of oil on the flames of the dispute between the Labour Party and the Jewish community?

Why should he want to appear the most antagonistic and unyielding member of this now very left wing, Momentum-heavy body?

How and why was the news of this leaked when all the phones were supposedly taken off all the participants on the way in?

And how was it that these posters could suddenly have appeared, pushing the very same specious bollocks that Corbyn has been trying to get adopted the evening before?

They were obviously professionally designed, printed and posted in what must have been a highly coordinated operation involving a number of people with different skill sets. And all in less than 24 hours. Really?

Here’s a conspiracy theory for you: the people who did the poster - the London Palestine Action group apparently - had advance warning of what their guru was going to say and had the posters ready to go. It was Jeremy himself or one of his acolytes who sprung the leak. And it was all part of the same orchestrated publicity campaign.

Yes, I grant you, it seems pretty fanciful. Why would the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition risk getting involved in such a crazy scheme? if it were exposed wouldn’t even he be seriously, even fatally, damaged politically?

Crazy perhaps, but I have a very nearly plausible answer: Corbyn is a lifelong idealogical purist. A ceaseless campaigner for anti-establishment causes. A zealot. A rebel to the marrow of his bones. Would he really mind if he crashed and burned and became a hero and a martyr? Wouldn’t that be more attractive to a chap like him than having to deal with the quotidian mundanity of having to read the boring contents of dispatch boxes and deal with Sir Humphrey?

Even if he didn’t have anything directly to with those posters, the timing tells you he was, at the very least, the inspiration.

And for all the reasons I have outlined here, those posters were unarguably anti-Semitic.

And Jeremy Corbyn is a duck.

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bloggerblagger · 7 years ago

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bloggerblagger · 7 years ago

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85) Hashtag Strap-on. Edinburgh Fringe 2018, explored, explained, and reviewed.

If you have a spare few days left in August, drop everything and take advantage of my top holiday tip. Take the high road or the low road, the plane or even the train (provided you’re prepared to stand for four or five hours) and hightail it to the Athens of the North.

The Edinburgh Fringe is truly a once in a lifetime experience. And that’s an understatement. Because once you get the bug you may very well find yourself - like me - going back year after year.

Never mind that the weather is often, inevitably, dreich. (Dictionary definition: Scottish dialect for ‘Bleak, miserable, dismal, cheerless, dreary.’ And pronounced and meaning almost exactly the same as ‘dreck’ which is Yiddish for lousy. How curious.)

Worry not that the restaurant prices are ludicrous - in a bad way. Nor that you’ll be lucky to get a room you could swing a kitten with dwarfism in, no matter how much you’re willing to pay - ‘how much?!!!’. Nor even that the pavements are so crowded - ‘OMG, will you just get out of the fucking way?!’ - you have to walk in the road if you want to travel above sub sloth pace.

Because, really, who gives a shit? What’s the occasional near death experience compared to the non stop adrenaline rush of the Fringe.

If there is a better legal high available, answers on a postcard please.

Do mind the quality and still feel the width.

It is said there are 3000 shows on during the Fringe and that, during August, the population of Edinburgh doubles. Frankly when you’re there it feels like these are gross under estimates.

Every lecture hall, every room - very possibly every broom cupboard - in the University campus becomes a theatre. Every basement in every pub and every loft above every bar seems to have a mic and a makeshift stage. And every doorway in every street seems to lead to a stand up comedian, or a sketch show, or a play, or to music or magic or mime.

The standard length - and it rarely varies - of any performance is one hour and shows begin at 9a.m and go on to 1 or 2 the following morning. If you had the stamina and could survive the sensory overload, you could, theoretically, do ten shows a day. But even if you did, you would still see less than 10% of what is available.

And the standard is astonishing. True, every so often you come across a dud but, in my experience - three years now - for a show even to be average it has to be pretty damn good.

Essential Fringe primer.

Eight super-cunning tips (in no particular order).

1) If you want to know the best things to see, find a friend who has been and ask them. LIKE ME! My reviews are below and as regular followers of my blog know, I am never wrong. Failing that, Google the recommendations from The Guardian, the Beeb and The Scotsman.

2) It’s useful to understand the basic ‘architecture’ of the event because there are several events going on in parallel in Edinburgh.

First, the original Edinburgh Festival festival which takes place in proper venues and is sort of proper culcher and proper expensive.

Second, the Edinburgh Fringe which, as it name suggests, exists outside the Festival proper, began nearly 50 years ago, has grown like the Beanstalk on steroids, and in which, shows, generally speaking, charge £10-12 for entrance.

Third, there is the Free Fringe, in which you find acts, so far as I can tell, that are not in the actual Fringe and for which you can get a separate programme, and which, as the name suggests, don’t charge.

(There are also lots of other things going on - like the Edinburgh Book Festival - but I am not sure where they fit into the scheme of things. Might be part of the actual Festival, but not really relevant.)

3) Download and use the Edinburgh Fringe App. It’s really cleverly designed and once you’ve worked it out, it’s a great way to narrow down the insane choice, to find out what tickets are available, and offers an easy way to buy them. (I didn’t even bother getting the hard copy brochure/guide. Who wants to schlep a telephone directory around?)

4) There are lots of shows you can take children and young teens to, but if you want to avoid a lot of the kids, go on August 15th or afterwards. Because, as odd as it seems to us non-Scots, Scottish schools return for the autumn term in mid-August. I am inclined to think that is the best time to go anyway. After a couple of weeks the shows will be properly grooved.

5) If you are part of a couple try it to make sure you are there on a Monday and Tuesday. There are lots of two for one offers available to all on those days.

6) Couples going for a few days or more, should get a Friend of the Fringe membership. Costs £35, and there lots of other ‘two for one’ offers available every day to FOFs.

Otherwise, to see 3 or 4 shows a day (the right level, for a serious and hardy Fringe goer, I would say) you need to budget about £40 per day per person for entertainment before costs of food, drinks, accom etc. Well, I never said it was cheap. ((By the way, my max fringe binge this year was five shows in one day.)

7) Build your schedule around the plays at the Traverse theatre. The Traverse, known as one of Britain’s leading centres of new writing, is not strictly part of the Fringe nor part of the Festival but hovers somewhere in between. HOWEVER, its programme is included in the Fringe. (No, I don’t quite understand either, but that’s what I was told.)

Anyway, notwithstanding that, they put on about half a dozen plays of about 60-90 mins length - why aren’t all plays that short? - cuts out nine tenths of the snoring - and they rotate them so they play at different times every day. Invariably brilliant stuff and probably all sold out this year. But they do get RETURNS. Call them on 0131 228 1404 to find out how to get one.

8) My strong advice is to book accommodation as far in advance in possible - like right now for next year - even if you are not 100 per cent sure you are going. You can always cancel. I stay 20 miles out of town with friends - lucky me! - and this year, hired a car and every day drove into a Park n’ Ride (50p per day) and caught the train in for the last 5 miles. Inexpensive and just about manageable, although it took some organising. So if you have some mates in striking distance, blag a room.

If you have a ‘winibago’, you could do as a few enterprising Fringe goers do and take your leviathan and park in a Park ’n Ride. (There are quite a few situated all around the borders of Edinburgh.) Not sure I would want to stay in the Hotel Park n’ Ride but I saw people who did it.

This year’s BloggerBlagger reviews.

I went to twenty three things in all. (22 performances of one kind or another plus 1 something else.)

These comprised, again in no particular order:

Five straight plays.

Games. A two hander based upon the story of two Jewish women at the time of the Berlin Olympics and simply stunning, as were Borders and Angels, the last two fringe offerings written by former comedian Henry Naylor. Henry, (who I am pleased to call a friend from the time I directed him in a Direct Line campaign 20 years ago - yes, funny old world) was bracketed by one reviewer with Athol Fugard after the recent off-Broadway production of ‘Angels’.

His standard does not drop. ‘Games’ is gripping from first to last and subtly draws chilling parallels with the era of Trump. Commit murder to get a ticket. (You may have to.) Five Bloggerblaggerstars.

Freeman. Half a dozen actors, with no scenery, constantly switch between different roles and different centuries to produce a riveting commentary on the sins of slavery and it’s rippling effect into the present day. Wonderful performances. Great imagination. Utterly compelling. Not on any account to be missed. Five Bloggerblaggerstars.

Revenants. A more conventional piece of theatre set in 1942 in which Queen Mary (widow of George V) is portrayed as a game old bird with a touch more brain power than the Royal Family are usually said to have. Surprisingly this too, turns out to be a story about race.

Had its moments but didn’t quite do it for me.Three Bloggerblaggerstars.

Underground Railroad Game. A theatrical experience like no other I have ever experienced. Once again this is about slavery, a mesmerising two hander at the Traverse presented in a constantly shifting context and style. Sometimes comedic, sometimes tragic, and sometimes explicitly and, even for a man of the world like me, shockingly sexual, it never stops surprising.

Two wonderful performances, particularly by Jennifer Kidwell, an actor of astonishing power. You may have to commit a murder for this one too, but well worth a lifetime in prison so go for it.

My joint pick of the week.Five Bloggerblaggerstars Plus.

Chihuahua. A clever one woman performance that switches between the life of a character in an Edith Wharton novel and that of a waitress in a coffee shop in Scotland; two women who are linked in a not very defined way by chihuahuas. This was presented in a much smaller venue than the other plays I saw, and also unlike those, it was only half full.

I thought the actress and writer, whose name I didn’t write down and now can’t locate on the internet, was heroic in the face of such a small audience. I think the title might be the problem. I am sure there must be something that would grab a passer-by or a flicker-through with much more grip. Three and a bit BloggerBlaggerStars.

Two plays with music.

What are Girls Made Of?. Another Traverse presentation, this one with four excellent actors, three of whom were obviously at least as gifted as musicians, and the fourth of whom sang wonderfully. Apparently she would have danced too had she not suffered a nasty injury at some previous performance, a misfortune that the disembodied voice of the artistic director of the Traverse told us about at the outset, before apologising for the show’s relative shortcomings and begging the audience’s indulgence. She needn’t have bothered her invisible head.

Cora Bissett, the injured singer, was so assured in this tale of the sudden rise and precipitous fall of a young rock star, told as she approaches forty, that neither she nor we missed a step. She was completely convincing in the role, unsurprisingly in a sense, since it was her own true life story she was telling, and, of course, she wrote it. Five Bloggerblaggerstars.

Vulvarine. Much more authentically Fringe in that it was conceived and performed by five fresh faced performers with great verve and obvious talent but with the odd rough edge still to be professionally smoothed. ‘Vulverine’ is a more than creditable attempt at a musical comedy with a sort of ironic feminist theme and has some quite decent tunes and lyrics and more than a few genuinely funny bits.

Allie Munro, plays the lead part of boring Brony Buckle who is transformed into Superheroine Vulvarine, and she was, I thought, terrific. Likewise the rest of the cast with one obvious exception. But given the youthful gusto that made this show so much fun, it would seem mean to name the culprit so, should you go, you can decide for yourself who I meant. Four Bloggerblaggerstars.

Four other musical shows.

21st Century Speakeasy Andrea Carlson and the Love Police. Andrea Carlson, who, I would guess, is comfortably north of fifty, has a sweet voice, vaguely reminiscent of Blossom Dearie if you are old enough to know who that is or maybe Maria Muldaur if you’re a little bit younger.

Sadly she had a rather faded quality - her costume seemed a little contrived and dated - and I don’t think it was intentional. The tunes were, by and large, pleasant enough and she and her rather elderly backing musicians performed faultlessly, but the whole thing felt slightly tragic to me, an impression not helped by the only half-filled room. Two Bloggerblaggerstars.

Jess Robinson - No filter. This was not a name I knew but she played to a packed audience in a relatively large venue so evidently a lot of people knew what I had been missing. Jess Robinson seems to be not just a singer, but an impressionist and has, according to Wikipedia, been on the telly quite a bit, in Dead Ringers amongst other things. (She also nearly made the final of Britain’s Got Talent, seventh series.)

Regrettably I didn’t know many of the people she was impersonating as her cast of characters didn’t include Vera Lynn or Gracie Fields or Marie Lloyd or Mrs.Patrick Campbell. My companion on the night described it as a bit ‘low rent’ which I thought was a tad harsh, but I knew what she meant. Two and a half Bloggerblaggerstars.

Johnny Woo’s Brexit Cabaret. Not a terribly clever musical revue with nothing very original to say about you know what. I didn’t realise Johnny Woo was a drag artist and I probably wouldn’t have gone if I had. (More fool me for not perusing the blurb closely enough.)

I have never understood the point of drag - never got panto dames or Danny LaRue - although I suppose I do remember liking the film of La Cage Aux Folles. And in the modern world, where, happily, everyone in enlightened countries has the opportunity (theoretically anyway) to be what they want to be - drag seems to me to be somehow redundant. Slick but shallow is about the best I can say of this effort. Two Bloggerblaggerstars.

Frau Welt. Another drag show, though this time, I had a better excuse as it was the only show on in the place where I was, at the time I was there, and I was determined to see something, anything. This one was full-on screaming camp and I found the first ten minutes spectacularly unamusing. One word kept coming to mind: WHY? Then I left. Zero Bloggerblaggerstars.

Five stand ups.

All the stand-ups I saw this year, apart from the polished old stager, Fred MacAulay - whom I caught in the second half of The Best of Scottish Comedy, which a friend smuggled me into after I had fled the horrendous Frau Welt - were just a little disappointing. None were remotely bad, but none got me guffawing uncontrollably.

They were all watchable and, every so often, amusing and applaudable but, apart from Maisie Adams, none seemed to me to have any stardust sprinkled on them. She has a routine in which she discusses her own epilepsy, and at 24 - she told us that - is clearly a natural performer. But she wound up by telling us how she had overcome her disability, and being the ancient curmudgeon that I am, I found that bit a touch self-congratulatory.

AAA (Batteries Not Included) with ChrisTurner

Gràinne Maguire

Jan Lafferty: Wheesht!

All two point six seven three ( why not?) Bloggerblaggerstars.

Maisie Adams Three and a tad Bloggerblaggerstars.

The Best of Scottish comedy: Fred MacAulay. Four Bloggerblaggerstars.

Three other comic turns (I think you would classify them as ‘absurdist’)

Siblings. This two girl comedy duo is made up of the Bye sisters, who, as the ultracognoscenti know, are the real life daughters of Ruby Wax. (And Ed Bye - poor bloke, never gets a mention.) I saw them last year and thought they were hilarious, but, as I remember it, their routine was slightly more conventional, in that there was a logical thread that you could just about follow.

This year it seemed to have a larger element of out and out bonkersness which didn’t really work for a couple of the people I had insisted accompany me. “You will LOVE them” I had said, but it was quickly evident they were just baffled. I would say (the) Siblings probably weren’t quite as funny as last year but I really can’t be sure because all I could think about were the fingers of blame that would be jabbed at me afterwards.“You said we’d love them.Love WHAT?”

Three Bloggerblaggerstars. (My friends are superannuated old gits, so what would they know.)

The Kagools. Another female duo, Aussies Claire Ford and Nicky Wilkinson, who have a completely word-free act that is simply ingenious. They interact with a film of themselves so that they are live on stage one moment and the next vanishing behind the screen to reappear in the film. It is clearly rehearsed to the millisecond because the timing is absolutely perfect - a moving arm is half live and half on film at one point, seemingly without a join.

The really impressive thing though is that, despite the precision, it all seems completely spontaneous. The technique never gets in the way of the comedy and The Kagools are simultaneously wonderfully silly and completely charming. An absolute delight, they are the other half of my joint pick of the week. Five Bloggerblaggerstars Plus.

Claire Sullivan, I wish I owned a hotel for dogs. Another Aussie, Claire takes absurdist comedy to new heights - or to new records of excess in whichever dimension absurdism exists. Think Vic and Bob on acid. And then some. Quite honestly, I didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on at any time, but she has a winning way which can’t but help force a smile. I did like her but I really don’t know why. Two and a half Bloggerblaggerstars.

One acrobaticky sort of show.

360 All Stars. Five blokes in baseball caps worn at various angles doing tricks on BMX’s and with basketballs and breakdancing mentally and doing somersaults and all that sort of thing. Probably great for the ten and unders and not too bad for the rest of us. But I wouldn’t be falling over myself to go again. Seen better Circusy things at the Fringe.Two and a half Bloggerblaggerstars.

Two ‘well known names’ shows.

Maureen Lipman. As those with knowledge of my murky advertising past will know, Maureen and I go a long way back, so in aiming for proper objectivity, I might have to have be more critical than I normally would be. In which case, she was even better than I thought, and that was very, very good indeed.

Her show was a splendid mixture, of comedy monologues, jolly good jokes and some excellent music supplied by Jackie Dankworth (Cleo and Johnny’s daughter I assume), a fine pianist and, extraordinarily, on guitar, Harry Shearer, legendary Simpsons’ voice and co-writer and co-star of Spinal Tap.

At 72 - don’t think I’m giving away secrets there - and now in Coronation Street, Maureen has, despite achieving national treasure status, most definitely not run out of creative steam. Sadly you can’t get tickets for this show no matter who you kill, because her run has finished. Five Bloggerblaggerstars.

Nina Conti. *And now, at last, to the explanation of ‘hashtag strap-on’. Nina Conti’s show began with another pre-performance announcement, this time to tell us that there was a Tourettes sufferer in the audience and to ask for our understanding. She turned out to be sitting a few rows behind my seat and began to randomly pepper the show with lots of very audible ‘biscuits’ and suchlike. I can’t say this wasn’t slightly off-putting while at the same time provoking an occasionally guilty giggle, and it would have been a fearsome challenge for most performers.

Fortunately much of Nina Conti’s incredibly clever ventriloquist’s act - I was in the front row and never saw her lips move once - is ad-libbed and she somehow contrived to incorporate one or two of the Tourettisms into the show, notably ‘tortoises’. (Really can’t explain but it was both utterly surreal and bloody funny.) The highpoint came when Nina, who uses volunteers from the audience as her dummies by fitting pigs’ masks on their faces, and operating the lips with a hand control, was fiddling about with one of the velcro ties that holds each mask in place. ‘Hashtag Strap-On’ shouted out the Tourettes lady and almost literally stopped the show. Five Bloggerblaggerstars.

One participation game-show (no audience)

Werewolves. A parlour game with twenty participants paying a tenner each, played at midnight every night, masterminded by an Australian (they’re everywhere in Edinburgh) called Nick who sports a long beard, a topper and full Edwardian costume including an ankle length fur coat that must be a fraction too warm even in a Scottish summer.

The rules are a bit too complex to explain but think of it as a sort of super de luxe, infinitely wittier version of the game where you wink at people to kill them. I warn you. It is addictive. Having made my debut last year, I played three times last week- meaning I was still up at two on three mornings! - and loved it. (Also a winner - twice! Not that I’m one to brag.) Totally recommended.

Twenty Five Bloggerblaggerstars at least.

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84) Achtrump! Achtrump! Achtrump!

I have been off-blog (cousin to off-air) for a while.

No excuse but sound reasons. Trips abroad. Decent weather back here. Reading a bit. (Finally got around to ‘Sapiens’ by Yuval Harari - worth it.) World Cup. Lots on Netflix. (Where are you on the owl-theory? If you don’t know what I’m talking about give yourself zero for Zeitgeistiness. And immediately cancel all engagements for the next few days and immerse yourself in ‘The Staircase’ on Netfix and the BBC podcast, ‘Beyond Reasonable Doubt’ - in that order.)

But mainly it has been sheer laziness underpinning my loafing. The torpor of the geriatric.

Back in the saddle e-gain.

So what has suddenly blown the cobwebs of the keyboard? Why, the Donald of course. Cadet Bonespurs as he is known to those of who inhabit the echo chamber of the Washington Post comments columns. (Despite my bloglessness I still find the odd moment to fire off blanks to whichever newspaper is raising my tired old hackles at the time. At least I can still get those up.)

Yes, it is he, POTUS, 45, the pussy grabber, liar numero uno, the capo di tutti crappi, the demagogue in chief, who has forced my arthritic fingers back into action. Or more precisely, it is his flying visit to this Brexit blighted, currently not so green and not so pleasant land.

To belittle or not to belittle

There has been a war of words on Facebook - to which I have felt forced to occasionally contribute - about the wisdom of flying the Trump baby blimp during his cuntship’s visit. Apologies to the ladies, but sometimes there is only one word that will do.

(Though it will, one day, I predict, be replaced by‘Trump’ itself, and not just as the ultimate obscenity in English, but in any language.

“Vous êtes, Monsieur, un Trump!”

“Mon dieu! Je demande la satisfaction immediatement!”

SFX : thwack of glove on cheek.)

Some of my Facebook pals have taken the view that we should remember he is a democratically elected POTUS and that, as such, it is both the proper behaviour of a serious country and in the national interest to treat him with the respect his office deserves. A protest with the deliberately humiliating baby is both infantile and self defeating.

I could see their point but begged to differ. I don’t think they have fully appreciated what a force for bad, Trump is. How potentially, frighteningly dangerous he is. Whilst recognising the risks of poking fun at a powerful man whose capacity for vanity and spite seems to know no bounds, I still think we need to stop pretending that flattery and flummery will disarm him.

And we owe it to the majority of Americans who didn’t vote for him to show that we support them, and that we won’t meekly accept that we have to kowtow to his brand of bullying proto fascism. It may seem absurdly melodramatic to compare him to Hitler but the parallels are many. A preening, big mouthed egotist laughed off as a cranky irrelevance in the early days, then elected democratically after carefully exploiting populist discontent.

And then, a few short years later….

When should you start sewing the diamonds in the lining of your coat?

So, could his really be the thirties all over again? Alarmist it may be, even far fetched, but not impossible. (For most of the thirties they didn’t think it was possible then either.)

Remember that America, led by such heavyweight public figures as Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford, has very nearly been down the fascist sympathising road before. (Required reading: Madeleine Albright’s interview in The Guardian. www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/08/madeleine-albright-fascism-is-not-an-ideology-its-a-method-interview-fascism-a-warning )

And, what above all, is the lesson of the thirties? Appeasing bullies doesn’t work.

Just in case, you’re not really persuaded that Trumpolini - the jutting chin, the cruel mouth, the swagger, are scarily similar - is all that dangerous really, take a close look at this list of links, which I have lifted direct from the Washington Post reader comments page.

Each one will lead you to a recent public performances by Trump or a critique of him. Watch as many of them as you can before you start screaming.

Go on. Click if you dare.

From a comment by Paul Cohen to the Washington Post. The words in italics are his.

Watch Trump perform unscripted—he’s ignorant, incoherent, unhinged—literally, a jabbering idiot! (only 1:32) http://bit.ly/2Gdlbrl Even the audience of deplorables appears bewildered …

Highlights from Trump’s Phoenix “brownshirt” rally, 22 August 2017—the most mendacious, divisive display by Trump, put on for his adoring “poorly educated” rubes, that you are ever likely to witness—copied straight out of Hitler’s Nuremberg rally handbook—demonstrably, Trump is a dangerous psychopath … http://bit.ly/2N6hf0n (13:29)

Trump’s Great Falls, Montana rally (5 July 2018), in three minutes: http://bit.ly/2lUQkbv (2:52). Another psychopathic display …

“Billy, look, look, you just tell them [anything] and they [the rubes] believe it. That’s it, you just tell them and they believe it. They just do.”—Donald Trump, talking, off camera, to Billy Bush:

http://bit.ly/2lD6dTP(8:39)

An insightful—and scathingly critical—analysis of Trump (then the Republican presidential nominee) by David Cay Johnston (August 2016)—the shortest 60 minutes you will ever experience: http://bit.ly/2xeosaXUpdate (29 Jan 2018): http://bit.ly/2kzVCIH

Oxford Union, 4 Nov 2016: “The Truth About Trump”: http://bit.ly/2NsJsyN (56:28). Another insightful analysis of the then presidential nominee from the real author of Trump’s book, “The Art of the Deal”, Tony Schwartz, who knows Dump better than most, having spent 18 months with him on an almost daily basis—We should all be afraid—you too, deplorables …

Ex-Fox News contributor Col. Ralph Peters comments critically on Trump and Fox News:

http://bit.ly/2ySCEqO (9:58)

The Steaming Pile of Trump: https://medium.com/p/c336a28ca6d5

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83) And the winner almost certainly isn’t .....

In about three hours - as I write - the 2018 Oscars will be announced. And having made a determined effort to see all nine of the ‘outstanding motion picture nominees’, I feel the necessity to get my retaliation in first, and give my verdict on which should win and which most certainly should not.

But before I get to the films, a brief note.

Woody Allen famously refused to be present at the ceremony to collect his Oscar for ‘Annie Hall’, preferring to play clarinet in his jazz band in New York, and by so doing, showing his contempt for the whole Oscar farrago.

He was dead right. The Oscars and all such awards, from the Nobel Prize for Literature onwards and down, are always, inevitably, a committee vote, and, as we all know, committees very, very rarely vote for the best and the bravest. The members of the Academy, the people who vote for the Oscars, are, effectively, just a very large committee.

Moreover, any award for something which can not be objectively measured - like a running race or a football match - involves comparing apples with pears, oranges, cauliflower and kale, and is self evidently meaningless in any sense beyond its commercial value.

All that said, I still can’t bring myself to ignore the Oscars - I might even stay up to watch - and I shall be extremely miffed if my choices don’t turn out to be the names in the envelopes. Bricks might - probably will - be metaphorically chucked at my telly.

But why should I care? Pathetically, I suppose, it’s just my insecurity. It comforts me if my opinions are endorsed by others who are supposed to know what they are talking about even if I rarely agree with professional critics, and by the awarding of Oscars even if, as I have said, I hold the whole system in contempt. In my private battle between insecurity and reason, it seems reason loses.

So to the nominees:

‘Darkest Hour’.

A Brexiteer’s wet dream. A nostalgic look back at good old Winnie’s finest hour. Lots of risible dialogue and one utterly ludicrously improbable (and entirely fictitious) scene of the Conservative (but ex-Liberal and almost leader of the Kings Party) Prime Minister taking a trip on the Tube where he met some luvverly, salt of the earth types who knuckled their proletarian foreheads in appropriate awe of the great man. Gary Oldman’s make-up and prosthetics were seamless though and Kazuhiro Tsuji ,who was responsible, thoroughly deserves to win the Make Up prize.

‘Phantom Thread’.

I hated previous Paul Thomas Anderson films, ‘There Will Be Blood’ (about an oil tycoon) and ‘The Master’ (about the leader of a fanatical religious movement) which both seemed to me to be wildly over ‘actored’ and just risible attempts to remake ‘Citizen Kane’ ( about a press baron, as you may recall.) From the blurb I had read, I thought ‘Phantom Thread’ would be another of these - this time about a great fashion designer. But I was wrong. It is a very unusual, exquisitely made love story about a man who makes exquisite clothes.

‘Dunkirk’.

Another thrill-a-minute joyride for Brexiteers; a look back at the heroic retreat across the channel in 1940 with Mark Rylance reprising his barely-moving-a-muscle, never-raising-his-voice performance as Thomas Cromwell in ‘Wolf Hall’ but this time playing a stoic civilian with the misfortune to own a small boat which he then feels obliged to take to Dunkirk as part of the rescue fleet. The stiffness of his upper lip is something to behold, and the lower quivers almost as infrequently.

Meanwhile Kenneth Branagh gives a passable imitation of Kenneth More as a high ranking naval officer striding up and down a jetty in a French port for a reason I can’t remember, and saying things like ‘I say!’ and ‘Good show!’ (Or maybe not exactly those words but they might just as well have been.)

‘Get Out’

This is a kind of horror film with a message which I’ve now forgotten because it’s so long since I saw it. But in a nutshell it’s a kind of ‘Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner’ with a horror twist - or several of them. I remember thinking it was quite brave and very different. but at the time I certainly didn’t think it was Oscar nominee material. Which just goes to show how wrong I can be.

‘Ladybird’

A rite of passage movie about a teenage girl who hails - in her own words, and as it turns out, literally - from the wrong side of the tracks in Sacramento. (I never thought Sacramento sounded like the kind of place that had a wrong side of the tracks, but it seems California is not always as sunny as I’d imagined.)

The heroine, Christine, or Ladybird as she has retitled herself, cannot wait to escape from her hyper critical and unforgiving mother and go to college as far away as she can get. It is apparently the sort-of-life story of Greta Gerwig, the writer director and has the delightful Saoirse (pronounced Sorsha I think) Ronan in the title role complete with make-up-free teenage skin blemishes which she apparently got for the first time in her life in the year before shooting - despite, in real life, being twenty three.

Apart from the rather feeble end, Ladybird makes for a very pleasant couple of hours in the cinema. But is ‘very pleasant’ enough to deserve an Oscar?

‘The Post’

Owing to the fact that I hate trailers - because they give so much away - I always try to time my entrance into the cinema just before the main feature. Unfortunately I cocked it up in the case of ‘The Post’, was about ten minutes late, and can’t discount the possibility that I missed something crucial.

Even so I got the general drift and wasn’t excited enough by the remainder to pay good money to see the bit I missed.

‘The Post’ is a piece of safe, solid Spielberg film making about the pre-Watergate scandal involving the stealing of the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg - a cause celebre at the time. The film centres on the dilemma of the Post’s woman owner, Katherine Graham, as to whether she should publish and be damned or follow the cautious advice she receives from her male flunkies. The theme is certainly au courant in that it is all about a woman being determined to exercise her power in a man’s world, but, paradoxically, the movie felt a tad old fashioned to me.

‘Call Me By Your Name’

…is a story of a New Yorker in his late twenties (a guess) who, in the summer of ’83 comes to assist an American professor of antiquities (or something like that) at his idyllic home in Italy where he lives with his wife and seventeen year old musical prodigy son. The visitor and the son (both of whom are Jewish though this seems entirely incidental to the story) then embark on a gay affair with the apparent encouragement of the uber-liberal parents. The certificate at the front says it contains ‘strong sex’ but apart from a scene in which the boy attempts to fornicate with a peach, not much seemed to go on. I fell asleep two or three times and didn’t seem to miss much. Timothee Chalamet who plays the boy is astonishingly good and certainly deserves something for his troubles. The peach might pick up an award too if they decide to give a special Oscar for best supporting piece of fruit.

‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri’

Having already swept the board at the BAFTAS and receiving so much publicity, there can barely be a person alive who doesn’t know that Frances McDormand gives a bravura performance as the mother of a daughter who was raped and murdered and is so crazed with grief that she will stop at nothing to force the police to do their jobs and find the culprit. Doesn’t sound like a comedy does it? And that was my problem. The film doesn’t have a consistent tone of voice - one minute it is the bleakest tragedy, the next it is played for laughs - and although I found much to admire in it, I just didn’t quite understand what the director was trying to say.

And so to ‘The Shape of Water’. And if that isn’t the name in the winner’s envelope, I shall be screaming “Fix!” (and a lot worse) at the telly.

I absolutely loved this film. It’s basically an old fashioned B movie sci-fi story about a mute girl who falls in love with a creature from the deep, which asks you to believe, in the face of all probability, that, for its two hours in on the screen, such a world is possible. And it is so captivatingly done, that you do. Or at least, I did. For me ‘The Shape of Water’ is pure movie magic - stunning performances, sumptuous styling, luscious music, and a truly moving love story.

And on top of all that, the best narrator’s voice - Richard Jenkins - that I can ever remember hearing. If you want an American V/O for a commercial, he’s your man.

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bloggerblagger · 8 years ago

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Butt Kapinski in the spotlight.

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bloggerblagger · 8 years ago

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82) Obession. Futility. Joy. (Late summer notes from home and abroad.)

Sitting in a café in a village called Lisle near Perigourd in the Dordogne.

Probably sounds a lot better than it is. The weather has been awful and is still very iffy. As I write I am listening to ‘Talksport’ through my laptop - I am only in this particular café because it has ‘weefee’ as they say ici. I am glued to Jim White on transfer deadline day. Only football victims will understand why. It would be impossible for any sane person to imagine a bigger waste of the diminishing time I have left. (No, nothing to get alarmed about. Just a general observation about the eventually inevitable.)

Apparently the Ox has gone to Liverpool for sixty thousand a week more than he was offered at the Emirates. (Don’t know who the Ox is? Or think that the Emirates are somewhere near the Persian gulf? Count yourself lucky.)

It always make me smile grimly when gaziliionaire footballer salaries are talked about in terms of ‘wages’ of so much a week. I have a vision of one of those cashier’s offices they used to have in offices and factories where, every week, staff queued up to collect their money which was dispensed in small, top-pocket-shaped manilla envelopes through a tiny sliding window. I see hundreds of thousands of pounds stuffed into a suitcase size version of one of those, being squeezed through by some old gorgon who barks out, ‘Mbappe! Sign here.’

Time wasting, continued.

Last week,as keen readers of my Facebook page will know, I was up in Edinburgh for the Fringe. (Not sure that ‘keen’ is really the word. Very bitter that I am not getting the number of likes that I deserve. I’m taking it personally.)

I started off by writing potted reviews of the first few shows I’d seen, and pasting them on Facebook. As I suffer - or masochistically enjoy - take your pick - from a mild but very definite case of OCD, I was then compelled by my inner demons to finish as I’d started. So I reviewed them all - each day’s reviews getting a little less potted than the last.

Regardless of the degree of potting, writing these reviews was a pretty pointless exercise, as it was the last week of the fringe. Even if someone was daft enough to take any notice of what I thought, how much use could they be when all the final curtains were about to come down? (Not content with that, I have now taken pointlessness to whole a new level by reproducing all these reviews a few paragraphs below, a week after the Fringe finished.)

Purpose discovered.

However what would most definitely not be pointless would be going to the Edinburgh fringe next year. This was the second year I have been and I have to report that it is a better mood improver than any amount of Prozac. If you need a swift uptake of serotonin, go north young man/woman/non binary whatever.

Wait. I need to qualify that. It could equally be a terrible downer if you fancied yourself as a comedian, actor, dancer, singer, magician, acrobat or any other kind of performer. For, at the Edinburgh fringe, the bar is set dizzyingly high.

I was told that during the four weeks of the festival there are three thousand - THREE THOUSAND!!! - different shows to see, and if the twenty three that I saw were anything to go by, about 80% are three star good or better, and about 15-20%, five star stunning. The competition must be terrifying.

You will probably never have heard of the vast majority of performers and given how few opportunities there are for them to make it to the big-time - however talented, you’d still need a supersized slice of luck - chances are you never will again. But in that in no way diminishes their genius, just the opportunity to appreciate it.

Best in show.

Of all the many delights that I witnessed, there is just one that I will single out. ‘Butt Kapinski’ is the persona adopted by an American comic called Deanna Fleyscher, and Butt is a Sam Spade-ish private eye with a sort of bendy desk-lamp sticking out of the back of his mac and over his invisible trilby. It is the only light source in the show and the key prop in setting the scene of an impromptu film noir, the cast of which is Butt and everyone in the audience. If that doesn’t sound barmy enough, all the men in the audience are cast as women and the women as men.

Oh and Butt’s voice is another thing; sort of wildly exaggerated Noo Yoyick mixed up with a childish lisp. Why? I haven’t a clue. Why was any of it funny? I really couldn`t say. I am someone who normally likes his comedy to make sense, to be able to trace the path of the gag, and understand the lateral jump that allows two and two to make five. Butt Kapinski is anything but that. Yet I found it as LOL as LOL gets and l was not alone. Pythonesque? Possibly but not quite. Milliganesque? In a way, I suppose. Perhaps more Marty Feldman with shades of Stanley Unwin, You have to be my age to get those references but any age will get Butt Kapinski. I really hope Deanna Fleysher is one of the happy few who does manage to break through.

Roll up, roll up.

I have a suspicion that she may be back next year at Edinburgh, because lots of these artistes travel from one Festival to another. There is a worldwide circuit apparently - Adelaide in Feb/March is another considered to be up there with the best. A little far but a lot warmer than Edinburgh.

Yes, the weather is ordinary at best, and the streets are packed - the population is said to double during the Fringe - but Edinburgh is a magnificent city, and worth a visit in its own right. Not that you will see that much of it, if you go for the Fringe. You’ll be dashing from play to comedian to magician to dancers to improv to musicians to acrobats and back again.

Do yourself a favour. Next year, skip the beach for a week and try a bit of funbathing in Edinburgh instead.

Five point three days at the Fringe 2017. Twenty four reviews of shows it’s too late for you to see. Plus a thrilling personal highpoint midway through Thursday that had nothing to do with anything I saw. (Skip the rest by all means but do not miss that bit.)

Tuesday.

Arrived in Edinburgh about 6pm on Monday night to see stuff from last week at the Fringe. So far seen 5 shows. If you too are up in Edinburgh, here, for what they are worth, are my potted crits. (Just my opinions - I claim nothing more.)

TWO shows get 5 stars from me and are very highly recommended. ‘Woke’ a one woman drama with the magnetic, totally convincing Apphia Campell. And the astonishing ‘Butt Kapinski’, comedy as you have never, ever seen it. (At least I hadn’t.) Completely crackers but captivating. I give 4 stars to Kai Humphreys a charming Geordie comedian with a refreshing angle on the world. And a measly 2.5 stars to Tiff Stevenson, who has been well reviewed and had some good material but she took aim at what I thought were some pretty easy targets and her relenless de-ermination to ge down with the people by omi-ing every T really eed me off. Finally a black hole to 'Would You Adam and Eve It.’ Enough said.

Four more to see tomorrow.

Wednesday.

Today saw 4 more shows.

1. 'Tutu’ - see photo - all male French comedy ballet troupe. By turns breathtakingly brilliant (the dancing) and completely incomprehensible (the comedy). But I have been to enough Club Med shows to know that what passes for humour en France est très bloody étrange. 4 stars.

2. Gavin Webster, my second Geordie comic of the week. Playing in a tiny space which wasn’t full which was a great pity because this guy deserves an audience. Great delivery and lots of good stuff with one really clever running gag that alone made it money well spent. Very nearly 5 stars and certainly 4 and a bit.

3. 'The Joni Mitchell Story’. A young woman with a beautiful voice and a dowdy dress and lank hair and no make-up and bunions on her bare feet sings Joni Mitchell songs whilst a male voice-over whining in best Estuary tells us the strange story of Joni’s early life as accompanying slides are shown above the stage. Great songs well sung, interesting tidbits, effortless - as in no effort made - presentation. I feel a bit guilty saying this because she seemed very pleasant, but honestly, music apart, it was so half arsed. Average audience age about 170. 2.5 stars.

4. 'We are Ian’. Using dance and mime and a video backdrop (and a lot of neo-gurning) three twenty something girls tell the true life tale of a Mancunian dj called Ian living through the halcyon (apparently) House Music days of 1989. (Ancient history to them and much too late for me to relate to the story.) It was as odd as it sounds and I started off wanting to hate it as I was three time as old (literally) as 95% of the audience. But in the end I was forced to admit they had something and the audience absolutely loved it, just about all bar one - me - finishing up dancing manically on stage. 4 stars.

Thursday.

Seven - SEVEN - shows today!

1. A man sits on stage completely naked playing with his dick which he refers to as his pussy. No idea what he was on about, nor when he started prancing about giving incomprehensible little monologues as a bitter Glaswegian husband and wife (both parts) and a prancing old queen, in between further sessions of dick handling. The audience nervously tittered occasionally though I doubt they had any idea what they were laughing about. Was it art? Or was it pretentious shit?I went for the latter and left after 20 minutes. Show was called ‘This is Not Culturally Significant’ - and the title was the one thing you couldn’t argue with. No stars but another Black Hole. (Of the astronomical metaphorical variety. Happily I didn’t to stay long enough to see if the audience were ever exposed to the literally anatomical kind.)

2. Not a show but a game called 'Werewolves’, in which twenty people take part under the aegis of a ringmaster with a silvery beard and a voice so quiet I might almost have thought I was a bit mutton jeff. (I am.) The idea is that the villagers have to kill off the werewolves and vice versa. Lots of fun. 4 stars.

Just been asked for my senior’s ID at the box office! Yesss! GET IN!!!

3. A comic and a chef called George Egg cooks breakfast lunch, and dinner using DIY tools from his shed.You even get to sample the food at the end. Ingenious and jolly. 4 stars and a bit of an extra star because George comes from Brighton.

4. ’Notflix’. Six young women make an impromptu musical out of a non-musical film title that they have picked from a hat filled with suggestions from the audience. The title they got was ‘Wardogs’ which was about big biz and oil and the CIA in the Iraq war. Not promising material but they made a decent if not dazzling fist of it. 3 stars.

5.’Ben Hart’ is a magician who left me seriously impressed. At one point he took rings from three different people in the audience and rubbed them until they interlinked. How on earth was that possible unless they were trick rings that were swapped for the originals - and back again when he separated them - or the audience members were plants? Neither seemed likely but what other explanation could there be? I love a good magic show. Who doesn’t? (Well, I suppose some people don’t.) Four stars comfortably.

6. Sarah Kendall, an Aussie comedian - I presume comedienne is no longer PC - produced a cleverly structured hour which had a bit more depth and tad more polish than your average turn. She touched on some tricky family issues and some quite profound ones and smoothly managed the tonal changes required as she went from outright gag making to being thought provoking. Very nearly 5 stars.

7. Denim is a 5 person drag act. I have never quite understood the appeal of drag - Danny La Rue never did it for me. Quite liked La Cage Aux Folles but that was about it. And, in the era of LGBTQ etc when the closet door is so wide open, I wonder whether the outrageousness of drag is really necessary? Is there that much to be outraged about? Notwithstanding all that, they were brilliant singers and performers and gave rousing renditions of a lot old favourites of the ‘I will survive’ variety. 4 stars.

Friday.

Five more shows.

Should have seen ‘Trashed’ first, a play that had been highly recommended to me but for which I contrived to be 6 minutes late, and was consequently refused admission. They kept me out but kept my money. Fuck them.

1. 'Not for Prophet’ a stand-up routine by half Pakistani, half Bangladeshi, ex-banker and lapsed Muslim, Eshaan Akbaar, who had a winning, easy charm but too few really good jokes to be worth more than 3 of my hard to earned stars

2. ‘These Trees the Autumn Leaves Alone’. First of two shows with blokes with long curly red hair and beards. This one was a 'story telling’, or so Curly Ginge no.1 explained. This seems to be some sort of new (or really, I suppose, a revival of a very old) niche art form in which someone reads and semi-acts out a story they have written. A sort of prose version of performance poetry. I started off wanting to hate it, not least because his occasional and rather pointless musical accompanists, a smug male guitarist and a simpering woman singer, were each, at the outset, the subjects of a declaration of love from Curly Ginge no.1, delivered without any noticeable irony. On top of that he was barefoot. However, I have to say that in the end my entirely understandable prejudices - not against red hair by the way, I am absolutely not gingerist - were overcome by the charm of his story. Three and a bit stars.

3. 'Double Feature’. Two comedians or possibly actors called Andy Gray and Grant Stott, who are apparently well known in Scotland but not to me, perform a rather stagey show in which they are supposed to be tradesmen of some sort - they wear overalls, that’s the clue - working in an old cinema being converted into flats. Having often come to this cinema when they were childhood friends they reminisce about the old days and act out passages from famous films they once saw. No, it doesn’t sound like a very good idea and it wasn’t. Not even two stars.

4. 'Letters to Morrisey’. Started off wanting to hate this too - default position of card-carrying curmudgeons comme moi - but beardy Curly Ginge no.2 (Gary McNair) gives an electrifying performance in a one man play about a boy with teenage angst and a heavily weighing secret who feels that only Morrisey (lead singer of eighties Indie band, the Smiths, if you didn’t know*) will understand. Four stars and almost five. (*Don’t be too embarrassed if you didn’t. I barely did and certainly couldn’t name a single one of their waxings.)

5.’Siblings’. Had I known more about these two girls (not quite as young as they look in the pic) I would have wanted to hate this too - bloody privileged showbiz kids grrrr - but I have only just discovered on the internet that they are Maddy and Marina Bye, real life sisters, which I would never have guessed as they look nothing like each other, and, more to the point, turn out to be Ruby Wax’s daughters. Not knowing that at the time, and as neither had curly hair and a beard, I was prepared to give them the benefit off the doubt. But even if I had been my usual misanthropic self, I would have been easily won over. They put on a completely barmy sort of sketch show, some of which made sense and was hilarious and some of which made none but which still kept the audience in fits because they radiated such good humour and effervescence. Two stars to each of them. (For the benefit of anyone under forty, get your calculator out and you’ll find that makes four.)

Saturday.

Went to twenty one shows earlier in the week - in four full days and one evening only. (Well, walked out of two, but I walked into twenty one.) Three more today, although one of them is not actually in the fringe. So that’ll be 24 in all!

1.‘Borders’. A harrowing, thought provoking, cleverly worked two handed play about the world of the refugee, unflinchingly and unsentimentally told both from the point of view of the refugee and the people behind the camera lens through which the refugee’s story is brought to us. I thought it was gripping and unsettling and I shower five stars at least upon it. However, i should say that I am possibly biased. Its author, Henry Naylor, a former comedian who, with his comedy partner of the time, once had a BBC radio show, 'Parsons and Naylor’, is someone I have thought of as a friend since he featured in a series of commercials that I *helmed for Direct Line about 200 years ago. (*Never used the word 'helmed’ before but I keep hearing it in film reviews and I rather like thinking of myself as ‘helming’ something. Sounds rather dashing, a bit Jack Aubrey.) Last year, by the way, another of Henry’s plays called ‘Angel’ played to rave reviews - and not just mine - at Edinburgh, and is finally coming to London in the very near future. if you haven’t seen it, look out for it.

2. Cirkopolis. After my conscience had been given a right old prod by ‘Borders’ it was off to the circus. Well almost. Against a dazzling, constantly evolving projected backdrop, French Canadian dance, juggling and acrobatic troupe 'Cirque Éloize’ gave a fantastic demonstration of breathtaking, body bending, gravity defying, ooh-and-aah provoking trickery and dare-devilry in a show loosely themed around Fritz Laing’s legendary silent film,’Metropolis’. All sorts of gravity defying feats but the act that really did my head in was the chap with the diabolo. (See the illustration if you, like me, didn’t know that a diabolo is called a diabolo.) Such whirling, catching, pirouetting, juggling as you have never seen. Unless you’ve seen him of course. Five stars.

3. Finally, the long slow climb to the very top and 32nd row (officially designated row FF. That’s FF as in For Fucks sake, how much further?) Up and up we climbed to the summit of the monster three sided stadium set into the side of the steep granite hill (or whatever it is) that Edinburgh Castle is built upon, there to see - along with 8,799 others - the Edinburgh Tattoo. Easy to be sniffy and cynical about it, and nobody does cynicism with more sniffiness than your reviewer, and yes, there is something faintly comical about military marching bands constantly evolving into new and ever more pointless formations as they play - columns that become circles which become windmills and then back into lines, but why? (A sort of mass group dressage but without horses.) Despite all that, and the Scottish dancing - curiously I am sure there was just one bloke amongst about sixty girls - and the corny voice over (Ken Bruce?) booming through the speakers and the guest dancers from India to mark the 70th anniversary of independence - where were the Pakistanis you might well ask? - and the nippy mid-August chill, I did, in the end, buy into it. It is a staggering feat of organisation and the music - particularly the drumming - is impressive. And when the lone piper stood way up on the castle parapet to play the final piece, I found it really quite moving. If you are going to Edinburgh you have to go. Five stars.

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bloggerblagger · 8 years ago

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bloggerblagger · 8 years ago

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81) To my old, impressionable friends who are falling for Corbynonsense.

Remember Barbara Follett? Blair babe and MP. Wife of seriously wedged-up best selling author Ken Follett. She was queen of the champagne socialists.

I mention her because champagne socialist seems an outdated term to me these days. As outdated as Blair Babes. Or Blair anything come to that. To begin with, it’s perfectly respectable to pitch up at a party with a lesser bubbly these days - champagne even seems a tad vulgar, a bit footballer. And with the sharp leftward swerve of Corby’s Labour Party, well, ‘socialist’ hardly seems to cover it. That’s why, in a recent Facebook spat I had with some old advertising pals who have decided that Jezza is the new messiah, I called them Prosecco Marxists.

One of them objected. Not to the Marxist bit. He told me he was strictly teetotal these days. So I tried a bit harder, and always liking a bit of alliteration I offered up Perrier Pol Pottist. Then I thought a bit more and came up with Eau Chi Minnist. All a bit seventies I agree, but that seems to fit in quite well with Jezza’s policies.

For those still on the booze, how about Cava Commie? Or if you really are a footballer you could make that Cristal Commie?

Raw nerves touched.

Anyway, my central and not terribly well received point was that there was something faintly ridiculous about people who had spent their lives in the engine room of capitalism, and living very comfortably as a result, deciding that the Islington Hugo Chavez was the answer to their prayers. When I suggested that whatever the problem, Jezza was most emphatically not the answer, and that, should he ever actually manage to fly the Red Flag outside no.10, they would be the first ones dispatched to the gulag, I received back some impassioned replies.

One said, “….you would rather vote for a morally & fiscally bankrupt bunch of murderous bastards? Seriously? Purely on the basis of ‘what might be’? Crikey. I’m sorry but I’m genuinely surprised by that. It’s an interesting inversion of the ‘it was all better in the old days’ thinking that led to your generation voting overwhelmingly to Leave. Now the same generation is voting AGAINST a return to the past. Jesus. Make your minds up!! (I appreciate you’re a remainer but you are unusual in your generation) And try looking forward at the world you’d like to create rather than running from one you fear will be recreated.

Come on Richard, where’s that youthful idealism? Where’s the belief we can make the world a better place? A fairer, more just, more equal one? To want that isn’t to want a return to the 70s, it’s just to want a world in which human beings are more important than lining your own pockets. A world with some principles, some humanity, some hope. A world in which the prevailing orthodoxy isn’t that the free market is the answer to all ills.”

Selfish? Moi?

As this particular correspondent admitted to being 54 himself, I thought the ‘my generation’ bit was a bit rich. And as for the whereabouts of ‘my youthful idealism’, well, pretty obviously you’ll find that in the locked and barred cupboard of my youth along with the Beatle jacket and the “Make Love Not War’ badge and the flower that I never wore in my hair even when I had some.

Actually, I wouldn’t rather vote for a morally and fiscally bankrupt bunch of murderous bastards. Although I probably would work on their advertising business if I got the chance. I’d draw the line at Golden Dawn and ISIS but I’d sell my soul for pretty much anything in between as I am pretty sure most advertising people would; very possibly including my friend who wants the world where human beings are more important than lining your own pockets. ( I really objected to that; when I worked in advertising, it wasn’t just about the money. It was also the company pension, the six week hols, the trips to Cannes, the business class plane tickets….)

It is not that I am pro Tory, at least not pro this lot. The fact that the only one of the present bunch that I have any time for is Spreadsheet Phil clearly underlines my total disillusionment with the Conservatives. It is just that I genuinely believe that Jezza and Johnny Mac and Big Di represent an existential danger. To the country. To the public services. To the poor and needy. And, lastly, to me.

Actually, this is one of those cases where the last shall be first. Because what I really mean to say is, not, lastly, to me, but firstly to me.

My heartlessness explained.

If I have one central guiding precept by which I make sense of the world, it is this: self interest rules. At the epicentre of my world is me, as it must be because it is through my eyes that I see it, and through my mind that I make sense of it, and when I cease to exist, for me the world will do likewise.

Similarly the epicentre of your world is you, and the epicentre of anybody else’s world is their's and their's alone. I concede that if there were a God we would all be equal but only in that God’s eyes. It is an immutable law of life; me and mine first, you and yours second, them and their's last. (Me and mine rather than just me, because I see our children are an extension of ourselves, our immortality.)

It is this order of value of which explains why, when tens of thousands of people die in Syria it rates less British column inches than when 129 people die in an attack on a nightclub in Paris, and why that in turn gets less coverage in this country than when one soldier is beheaded in Greenwich. It is that which is closest to us which always gets our attention first.

It’s all me, me, me. Even for you.

However I also realise that for every other person it is their self interest that rules and for us all to coexist we each have to allow for that.

As you may know, I am not the first to have happened upon this revelation. Moses may have got there first. The Ten Commandments, it seems to me, are not so much a matter of morality as a matter of self preservation.

Thou does not kill because thou would much prefer not to be killed. Thou honours thy mother and father in the hope that thine own little dears won’t ship thou off to the nearest nursing home.

This, I would say, is enlightened self interest. It mean giving careful thought to what my medium and long term interest might be,and in doing that, sometimes sacrificing my short term interest as a result. I might have an almost irresistible urge to jump over the garden fence and nick next door’s ox, but, unless I want to start the next war of the oxen, I had better keep a lid on it. Peace between neighbours is more in my medium and long term self interest than the brief pleasure of slurping down a nice bowl of oxtail soup.

A tiny cog in the great machine of commerce.

Thinking in terms of self-interest, even enlightened self interest, might not give one the lofty views of others that one gets from believing one is occupying the moral high ground. But it just makes more sense to me. Amongst other benefits, it allows me to have worked and profited from a career in advertising, without the queasy feeling - most of the time - that I was doing something fundamentally wrong. (Which is how I am sure Jezza would see it.)

Being in advertising often involves attempting to persuade people to part with money they often have to borrow, to pay for things they often don’t need, and which they wouldn’t otherwise want. If ‘belief that we can make the world a better place’ is what is driving you it is hard to see how that squares with a life spent working in advertising. (Although, if that were your point of view, you could, if pushed, just about, make an argument that advertising increases demand and that is to the general economic good. But somehow I think I would find that more of a comfort than you would.)

So what would Jezza do for me?

I would hazard a guess that as soon as he was elected the pound would fall through the floor, the credit agencies would slash our credit rating, the interest on government’s borrowings would rise inexorably, inflation would soar, and interest rates would have to follow.

The property market - already falling in London - would fall further and faster, leaving some owners (grown used to the low interest rates of the last years) in negative equity and no longer able to afford their increased mortgage payments that would follow interest rate rises. Overseas investors would be withdrawing their money before you could say Viva La Revolucion.

Unfazed by any of the aforementioned, Jezza and his dedicated disciples would whack up income taxes and inheritance tax and corporate taxes and lots of companies would up sticks and bugger off to Ireland or somewhere. If corporation tax rose by the 40% (from 19% to 26%) promised in the Labour manifesto, what would be the consequences of the resultant hole in profits? Either, less money for investment in plant or people or R and D, and less for dividends on shares - which means pension funds suffer - or cost cutting, meaning possible loss of jobs, or a combination of all of the above.

So far, so bad

And then we come to the wealth tax that John McDonnell has always been a proponent of but which was conveniently downplayed during the election. Any sort of wealth tax - and John McDonnell has previously proposed one on the wealthiest 10% - would obviously be heavily biased towards London and the South East. They mentioned a Land Tax in the manifesto but we have no idea of the details.

So, what I see is a doctrinaire Marxist-ish Labour government steadfastly hanging on to its outmoded ideas while the economy tips into serious decline, with the payment of lots of extra taxes being requested of me while the value of my house, pension and other assets falls precipitously.

No, Jezza wouldn’t be too good for my short term self interest. And neither would he be good for my medium and long term self interest - my enlightened self interest - as I don’t see how his policies would ultimately benefit anyone else either. In the words of the unfashionable Tony Blair earlier this week, they would leave the country ‘flat on its back’,

And it gets worse.

Then there is Jezza’s position on the EU, which is the polar opposite of mine as I am a staunch, unrepentant Remoaner. Whatever he claims to think, however much he tries to face both ways, it is absolutely obvious from his lukewarm campaigning during the referendum - so inferior to his full-blooded performance during the election - that he is a Brexiteer. His parliamentary voting record on every matter from 1975 onwards has been steadfastly anti-EU. Many of his and McDonnell’s cherished plans for state intervention in the economy, would, it is believed, run foul of EU competition laws.

And I have another fundamental problem with him: his supposed integrity and authenticity. Far from believing in it, I think he is, in a sense, the most duplicitous of politicians. I think he could teach even Boris a thing or two. For whereas we know brazen Boris is completely two faced, he at least makes no real effort to disguise the fact, whereas Jezza unashamedly trades on his entirely fictitious image of being a straight-talking anti-politician.

His refuses to be honest about his positions on the EU, on nuclear weapons, and on the monarchy, none of which he believes in. As it happens I agree with him on the Royals and I am half in sympathy on the Trident issue, but he thinks these views might be electorally damaging so he prevaricates and obfuscates like any other politician does.

Last - for the moment - but not least for the enlightened self-interest of a Jew like me, there is his half-arsed, unconvincing, lack of action on anti-Semitism in the Labour party despite his proclaimed determination to root it out. (You might have misgivings about the Sun as a source of reference but this time they were bang on : https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1558035/jeremy-corbyn-faces-backlash-for-nominating-shami-chakrabarti-for-peerage-after-she-led-partys-anti-semitism-investigation/ )

Oh Jeremy Cor-byn (as his adoring fans like to sing) - whatever happened to all that refreshing honesty?

And yet…

What I do accept is that the NHS and social services need a drastic rethink and will need more money. Likewise schools, and very probably the police and fire and prison services too. I don’t see how councils can fix the roads and sweep the streets and empty the bins and do all the other things they have to do if government subsidies are constantly being cut. And I can’t help feeling university tuition fees of nine grand a year are way too high, and that charging interest of 6.1% on the loans for them is outrageous.

Just as worrying, the constant whittling away of legal aid is profoundly wrong. It makes our legal system fundamentally unjust.

Perhaps most important of all, we need a radical and imaginative building programme that gives young people a chance to buy a home of their own. If bits of the green belt have to go, if the toes of the constituents of Tory MPs have to be trodden on, then so be it.

Buying a house is the route by which - certainly since the war - have-nots in this country have become haves. That’s how I, once a have-not, became a have and if ‘me and mine’ and the rest of the haves are not to become an ever shrinking minority, and thus politically marginalised and vulnerable, then we need a constant stream of new blood.

(Young people who yearn to own a home of their own please note: Helping people to buy houses will never be a priority for Jezza and Co. They do not stand for an aspiring, burgeoning, upwardly mobile middle class.

If not publicly opposed to the ownership of property, which, ideologically, at bottom, they surely are, then you can be certain that their housing policy is, and will continue to be, focussed on increasing social housing and not on private ownership.)

Money, money, money - my money.

How is all of that to be paid for? One way or another by higher taxation I reluctantly suppose. (And by a reduction to my perks - the pension triple lock and my winter fuel allowance will have to go of course, although Jezza wouldn’t agree because, for the far left, the holy cow of universal benefits must never be slain, no matter how much sense it makes. )

As I believe it to be in my medium and long term self interest - my enlightened self interest - I am prepared to settle the bigger claims that will be made of me.

I don’t say I am enthusiastic about paying more tax - never yet met the person who pays more tax than she or he has to - but I regard tax as a sort of protection money. It is what I have to pay to keep the ravening hordes from my door and demanding everything.

It’s become clear to me that the heavies are now putting the squeeze on me so I’d better slip them a bit more or face the unpleasant consequences. Some call this the price we pay for a civilised society. Put it whichever way you like, it adds up to the same thing.

Thou can be holier than me.

What I refuse to do is pretend that what impels me is anything other than what is good for me and mine. I do object to those who insist on claiming the moral high ground, but more than that, I laugh at them. I don’t doubt their sincerity but I think they are as self-interested as I am. It’s just that they insist on looking through the wrong end of the telescope.

Personal reward is everything. Sometimes materially. Sometimes, for want of a better word, spiritually. (Or as I, who make no claim to any kind of spirituality, prefer to think of it, sometimes it is the reward of making yourself - your self - feel better.) You don’t give money to a beggar because it makes you feel worse, or tend a sick friend, or rescue a mangy dog. Virtue is it’s own reward, as the saying goes. Even the idea of empathy is rooted in self-interest. It means to put oneself - one’s self - in another’s place.

For me, this is the only way to square the circle: of being competitive, of wanting to do well - in an egg and spoon race or in a career - which inevitably means judging yourself by the yardstick of others’ relative lack of success, and yet squaring that with the innate sense of fairness and justice which we all feel almost as soon as we can speak - “it’s not fair, Mummy!” Both positions, it seems to me, are undeniably essential to the human condition.

So to the Mōet Tendancy, I say this. Call me a selfish bastard if you want. I cheerfully plead guilty. And so are you.

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