And now look at him
Thursday, May 29th, 2008
Archive for May, 2008
I am a feminist
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008I have never written that down before. Inspired by this and this (do add your name).
I couldn’t take a bigger bite of you
Monday, May 19th, 2008
Nina, originally uploaded by grange85.
I’m not a big concert goer partly because the experience of being at a gig is generally poor for a woman of average height, partly because not everyone is there to listen with the same devotion as I am and partly because they often don’t offer me anything more than I get from the music at home.
However, I was happy enough to go to Brighton for Andy’s birthday for a Fatcat night at the Theatre Royal (particularly since they were circle seats). Silje Nes was excellent but she didn’t have the same stage presence to go with her amazing music. Frightened Rabbit were a huge contrast and not quite my thing. However, when The Twilight Sad came on with their angsty singer (angsty about what though? I didn’t understand a word) who didn’t need that microphone stand I wanted the Rabbits back. Apologies to all fans but…they ain’t no Nina.
Nina Nastasia came on and I’m pretty sure she gave the best live performance that I have ever seen. At first, with the acoustic guitar and no sign of an accompanist and no sign of foot operated technical wizardry as Silje Nes had demonstrated I was fearful of a performance I would fall asleep to. She asked for requests and I, unbelievably, shouted out (for “Stormy Weather”) and she didn’t hear me so I had to pluck up my courage and do it again. Then she started and got a bit unravelled on the guitar playing and swore and it just didn’t seem promising. However, she then proceeded to sing and play guitar almost impeccably for the rest of a very long but magical night. She was only supposed to play for forty minutes but an hour and a half later (or more) she had to definitely come to a halt when the theatre staff put the house lights up permanently.
I’m rubbish at titles (except “Stormy Weather” obviously) but she definitely sung that, “This Is What It Is”, “Oh My Stars”, “Brad Haunts A Party”, and “You Her and Me” and many, many others in a truly mesmerising, absorbing way.
I’m not nobody
Thursday, May 15th, 2008Taken down for now. It seems that the various Dollhouse trailers are being removed from YouTube for copyright infringement. That’s right, free advertising is being removed for copyright infringement. It is rather stupid. However, thirty seconds after writing the previous three sentences I found the Fox YouTube channel and it all makes sense.
But you’re helping yourself now. Fixing things to your liking. Including me.
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008Tabula Rasa (Rebecca Rand Kirshner)
“I hate Willow now” – Adam.
I’m sad that a character who was so lovable and delightful in high school grew up so wonky. Willow’s behaviour up until now has been consistent with her development over the years (she has always been a fixer: “I can fix it. I know a spell”) but knowing it is all going to be reduced to a drugs metaphor makes it sadder. However, I am getting ahead of myself and “Tabula Rasa” is a great episode.
This is the episode that marked my obsession with BtVS but more importantly with Amber Benson. This is when I became a fan(atic). If BtVS had ended with “The Gift” then it would have been a favourite series like The X-Files was or Battlestar Galactica is now but I would have put it aside as I did with The X-Files and moved on. So why? What happened? Tara happened. A character who I had just liked suddenly become not just Willow’s girlfriend but a person in her own right. The heartbreaking conversation about betrayal and violation and her anger and sadness made me feel so bad for her and I realised I totally loved her and that she had inched her way into my heart.
Tara gets a backbone and tells Willow that she knows what she did and that it’s all too much and she should leave her. It is a tremendous scene from the Birkenstocks to the cut to Buffy and Giles.
Giles’s leaving is less satisfactory. We know that ASH wanted to cut his hours but the reason Giles gives knowing that Buffy was in heaven and is struggling with her mission and her need – big need – for guidance it just makes no sense for him to leave. And if you add in his fears about Willow then it is even more inexplicable.
I just adore that Anya and Tara are thumb wrestling and when Anya gives Tara a sympathetic look when Willow arrives, I find myself once again appreciating Emma Caulfield’s performance.
“Tabula Rasa” is an episode of BtVS that encapsulates the writers’ ability to mix laughter and tears because the next twenty minutes are hilarious. I could pick out all the great bits (like “Oh God, I’m English”, “A vampire with a soul? Oh my God, how lame is that?” and “Oh, bugger off, you brolly.”), but I’ll stick with emphasising two of my favourite BtVS lines and delivery thereof: Buffy’s “I don’t know but it was cool!” followed by “I think I know why Joan’s the boss. I’m like a superhero or something!”
Well, I wish I knew who to attribute the following thought to but I can’t remember where, when, who made the point that Tara without a memory is a “take charge” Tara. She insists they ought to go to the hospital (I’m not entirely sure why though) and she is the one that leads them through the spacious sewers. It’s as if she has forgotten she is shy and retiring and a bit of a sheep. She has forgotten her ill-treatment from her youth (fill in back-story as per favourite fan fiction) and leads by example. You could also add she has forgotten the literal way she pursued Willow in “Hush” but since that was the only time she was ever “forward” then that was a blip in her character akin to Spike once being evil.
There is one line (“…King Ralph…”) that I so wish had been omitted or rewritten because it is just awful and comes close to breaking the spell cast by the spell being broken. The last few minutes with Tara and Willow’s relationship coming to an end, Giles’s leaving and Buffy succumbing to her unhealthy attraction to Spike (who is evil despite how much we are made to love him) is superbly put together.
For me this is the last great BtVS episode though I am looking forward to re-watching “Normal Again” in an attempt to refute that statement.
But after all he’s a cripple
Friday, May 2nd, 2008Leave Her to Heaven
This is one of those films that end and you turn to your partner (or to yourself) and say “is that it?” and “what a waste of two hours”. Luscious cinematography and fabulous locations couldn’t make up for a plot that was so low-key that for the first hour almost literally nothing happened. The cinematography was so wonderful that when there was an obvious backdrop it felt almost like an insult.
Obviously the argument is that the film subtly builds up to the various evils that the possessive Ellen does but it needed to be totally over-wrought like Duel in the Sun and not so restrained. There were glimpses of the required madness in the awesome I-must-rewind-that-bit when Ellen (Gene Tierney) is scattering her father’s ashes with a peculiar jerky sideways action followed by a long shot of her galloping and flinging the urn away. I admit the scene when she watches Danny drown was creepy and maybe if I never seen Bette Davis do the same in The Little Foxes it would have been more effective.
Gene Tierney and Cornel Wilde don’t click for me as performers. I have probably seen him in something else but I don’t recall while she was insufficiently interesting for me in Laura.
Additionally, Dick, Ruth and Mrs Berent behave so passively for most of the film that if any of them had done something instead of hiding or running away then it might have been more plausible. I concede that plausibility is not likely in a drama like this.
Gene Tierney’s life was more interesting than her acting: the documentary A Shattered Life is a tasteful enough biography.
PS: I was chatting to Andy at lunchtime about our disappointment with this film and we were so animated about it that we realised we had appreciated it rather than enjoyed it.
PPS: Looking for images on the Internet has sucked me into reading several analyses of the film and I think I have been harsh and a re-view is in order. Just look at Gene Tierney’s hands in the following screencap – she is a touch tense.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Charles Laughton was an amazing actor and his Quasimodo is a splendid creation completely on the right side of grotesque caricature. Cedric Hardwicke was chilling as Frollo (even if I did spend the film erroneously thinking he was Henry Daniell). Edmond O’Brien was a sweetheart as Gringoire. Maureen O’Hara was a mix of the spirited and the inadequate.
The story is a mess and I think it makes more sense if you have read the book (in which it resembles Wuthering Heights in its lack of comprehensiveness). As it is at the climax Quasimodo is enterprisingly killing people who are trying to rescue Esmeralda who is in danger but not from him.
The silent seconds when Quasimodo swings in to sweep Esmeralda away is rightly one of cinema’s classic moments. The sets were enormous (and apparently and unsurprisingly very expensive) and the crowd scenes were so busy and exciting and real in a way that a bit of CGI just can’t match.
CGI reminds me of the The Matrix Reloaded of which I could only stomach an hour or so because it was simply terrible. The Wachowski Brothers should be congratulated for their multi-racial casting but not for their under use of Carrie-Anne Moss and for the worse fight scene ever when Neo fights multiple Smiths and it looks just like a computer game and what is the point of that?
The Cat’s Meow
The casting of this was tremendous with Eddie Izzard a surprising good Chaplin and with Kirsten Dunst and Edward Herrmann excellent choices as Marion Davies and WR Hearst. The black and white costuming worked very well in colour and I’m glad they didn’t make it in black and white because the bit at the beginning that was in B&W looked bland rather than ravishingly silver. Poor Thomas H. Ince, his reputation ruined by the conspiracy theory disease, and played by the dull Cary Elwes in this.
Sweet Smell of Success
The problem with films like this that they are totally unpleasant to watch. I sat through the first hour utterly tense and so while I can appreciate that Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster were quite frankly brilliant (and neither Oscar nominated) and that the direction and photography were intense and atmospheric but I can’t love it or want to ever see it again. The men were all creeps (except Steve) while the women were literally “things” to use and abuse and possess.
Page 48 on 
Georgia, USA on 