Nice Truck

Captured in its natural habitat in rural Alberta last year, I was pleased with how close I was able to get to this one.

Le Conseguenze dell'amore ****

I spoke to someone about this film over the weekend. They said that they couldn't understand what motivated the main character to do what he did.

In the Scritti Politti song, the Sweetest Girl, there is the line "she left because she understood the value of defiance".

In this atmospheric and stylised but handsome film we learn about Titto, an immaculately dressed, middle-aged, lonely guy who lives in a smart hotel by a lake in Switzerland and is suffering from the consequences of decisions he has made and circumstances he has found himself in, which appear to have trapped him.

Much of the interpretation is left to the viewer but whilst decisions have consequences and whilst they may have a permanent impact, defiance does have an intrinsic value as does doing things for reasons of your own.

La Dolce Vita*****

From the opening shot of the helicopter with a statue of Jesus dangling from it crossing a sunlit and optimistic Rome, it is iconic and beautiful to look at. I could watch it again without the sound. Although in black and white and made in 1960, it has avoided attaching itself to an era or even a genre.

Stunning and beautiful imagery and players reside within a wandering and dreamlike but compelling narrative. We follow cosmopolitan Marcello, a writer, as he experiences an almost cartoon existence of partying interspersed with rediculous and sometimes horrendous events. We watch as he tries to make sense of it all.

Easy to gaze at for its two and three quarter hours, it is engaging, amazingly contemprorary and even very funny.

Rude awakenings

The head end of my bed is against a pretty Victorian (but blocked off) fireplace. I use the mantle as a shelf; typically I have my alarm clock there so I can simply reach up and turn it over to see what time it is. I have been a bit dry in the throat lately, this morning at what turned out to be 6.30 I poured a glass of water over my face, pillow and bed clothes.

p.s. For a split second I was quite shocked and actually wondered what the hell was up with the alarm clock.

The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford*****

I have tried to read this book three times now and have failed to finish it every time. Yet I would have to say that it is one of my all time favourites.
Beautifully written (I always want to take notes, maybe I will one day) it tells of the complications that exist beneath the surface of the aparently perfect lives of two wealthy couples who spend their time travelling from one posh hotel in Europe to another in the early 20th Century. Everything is not what it seems. I reckon that I have been unable to finish it for the same reason that I could not eat everything I was offered at Il Caldora restaurant in Pacentro (in Abruzzo); it was absolutley delicious but there is only so much you can eat.

Dancing

He knocked gently, the door opened a little. He tapped again and after a moment called the name of the person he was expecting to meet throught the gap. Nothing. He crossed the threshold, there was a strong dank smell, stale tobacco with a note of unwashed people in prolonged confinement. A hoover stood in the hallway looking sheepish, he passed it and found himself in the living room.

He wasn't that surprised to see the mess, nothing was in its place, furniture, clothes and bed linen were strewn everywhere and there were mugs and glasses and piles of loose change on any available flat surfaces. Cigarette ends were hunched up in nooks and against chair legs like little battle victims.

In the kitchen, everything was everywhere and everywhere was filthy. A baby's bottle with a solid green lump of mould occupying the bottom half, open cartons of milk, no crockery at all in the cupboards, instead it formed precarious towers perched on odd corners. More cigarette ends and the dead bodies of some suspiciously foreign looking bugs.

He stood and allowed himself to absorb the scene. He had been aware since the beginning, nine months ago, that this guy had problems. He had been relieved when they had agreed to terminate their agreement and had talked about arrangements for making sure all the loose ends were tied up. He had seen vans come and go over recent days, taking away various things.

Tucked into a cranny in the hoover he found two sets of keys (including a bent one) and a post-it note; "truly sorry about the mess, hope the money left covers it".

Post script:

I will need to be more careful about choosing my next tenant and less willing to take the gamble that I always knew it was, to give the flat to a guy who'd just arrived in the country from Uganda with a 6 month old baby and no job. (The baby had had the good sense to return to Uganda some time ago).

Strangely I was not so much annoyed as sad (and ofcourse relieved); but escaping from one mess by fleeing to another is not escaping at all.

That morning I lent him the hoover and whilst I was confident that there would be work to do after he had left, the idea that renting a carpet cleaner for a morning would deal with it, proved to be wishful thinking.

There was nearly £20 in loose change, over £5 of which was in one and two p's, lying about the place.

When the fridge was moved, a little clutch of those international insects woke up and dashed off in all directions. I think I would have impressed Mr Flatly.

The Pianist*****

If you want harrowing, might I suggest that you look no further. That said it is a stunning and in the end life affirming thing. The performances are brilliant and I also like the dignity of the various pianos which seem unfazed by all the bad behaviour going on around them.

My DVD included a "making of" extra. Mr Polanski reminds me of someone I used to do a lot of business with, I have often wondered how come I had not encountered another Terry, so it added a little something to the experience for me to be comparing these two larger than life characters with their powerful energy, still faces and steely, sometimes intimidating demeanour. Cheeky and funny too though (certainly my friend is and I would guess so is Mr Polanski).

Peripatetic

Two or three weeks ago on a Tuesday, I headed off for Scotland. As I left Brighton I slotted my recently purchased Simple Minds Greatest Hits CD into the player and "Don't you forget about me" sprang into the car. I was immediately transported to the Odeon in Leeds. You may know that that song features in the film The Breakfast Club, it always reminds me of going to see it and knowing throughout that I was going to be dumped by my girlfriend of the time, on the way home. I wasn't that depressed about it and could see that there was a certain art in the whole thing; I reckon the film inspired her to ditch me and it helped me to understand why.

By early evening I was sitting in the reception of a BT building in the centre of Leeds. From there Dominic and I drove to Harrogate, passing the previously mentioned cinema on the way, for a rendez-vous with Guy and his 42 inch TV which (until Dominic changed a setting) produced a picture in which everything and everyone had a green hue. The following morning after having enjoyed a very amusing evening in the Hotel du Vin and the Drum and Monkey, I had a poached egg on smoked haddock at the increasingly Stepford Wives Betty's. They have aparently refurbished again, the designer incorporating a mildly discomforting level of perfection. I felt out of place next to a table of two elderly couples; both the men wore matching silver hair and blue v necks and both the old ladies could have been confused for each other except that one was slightly more stooped. My mobile rang and this exacerbated the situation, an employee was immediately dispatched with a "no mobile phone policy" message for me. Their Full English Breakfast is £9.95.

I had some errands to run in Glasgow before I checked into the airport Travelodge. It was not busy but most of the rest of the guests seemed to be teenagers with plastic bags full of bottles of booze; whilst I checked-in the receptionist was telling a girl that she had had her vodka delivered to her room. That evening I had haggis at the bar in Rogano's.

Next morning I thought I'd just drive about a bit and see where I ended up. Entirely without intention, I found my self at the Kelvin Hall and so parked up and wandered about, ultimately reaching the recently refurbished Kelvin Gallery and Museum. I enjoyed a half hour in there, it made me realise that when I miss London sometimes, it is actually cities that I need a fix of, not neccessarily that particular one. Glasgow is quite unusual. The grid pattern streets, the handsom architecture, the optimism and grit and the culture define it quite distinctly. I didn't like the look of the cafe in the Gallery and went across the road for a brew before continuing my tour and then heading through the dark and the rain to Lochgilphead to stay at my mum's for a couple of nights.














A highly dangerous room in the Kelvin Museum & Gallery

All that driving can leave space in your head which is readily filled up by all sorts of notions. I find it a bit surreal that all these roads are occupied by people sliding along, their bottoms just above the surface, at ninety miles an hour. In order for me to get about I have arranged for myself to be accompanied by a tonne and a half of metal, leather, glass, rubber and carpet. This and many other similar devices hurtling about, in the control of variously affected beings seems inefficient at least and probably quite funny to the children of three or four generations from now; if they can forgive our profligacy.

Speeding along the A74, bright sky, occasional fluffy cloud, lines of pylons threading across those ancient hills, I couldn't help feeling that the days of enjoying Scotch Pie, baked beans and Scooby Doo are not just gone from my life due to the passage of time, but I felt like I'd rubbed my eyes and the reality of what it has and will all cost was starting to reveal itself to my imagination. I wondered about the liklihood of us all looking a bit like we were on Guy's TV quite soon.

Then last week I had a good couple of busy days at work and I have aparently drifted quite happily back into worrying about things like whether to go to my usual Indian or to try something different. (They gave us free drinks at the Indian; so feeling good about that one).

Bare faced cheek

For some time I have been in the market for a manual beard trimming type device. On Jermyn Street this week, after a certain amount of traipsing around, I procured one of those old fashioned clipper/scissor hybrid things that used to be evident in barber shops when I was young. I was concerned that they wouldn't work well when the operator was trying to cut his own hairs but that concern proved to be unfounded. This morning, Gemma commented that my facial hair appeared to be much longer than yesterday, (when I had used the machine that looks a bit like a prop from a film about Victorian surgery, for the first time). "Yes,I think it's stubbled in length", I replied. Sharp would seem to be the word of the moment.

Manon des Sources *****

Doctor: So how have you been feeling?

Patient: Well, to be honest I do seem to be under pressure a lot, my job is hard work, I think I am stressed, not sleeping well, I'm bloated all the time, even though I take Yakult.

Doctor: Mm.....I'm going to recommend that you look at this DVD. It is available without prescription but I will warn you, it is nevertheless, very powerful. Don't expect there to be much reaction at first but after a while you will start to feel the effects; you might feel a little unsettled but it should help you to see things in a clearer perspective.

Patient: Are there any side effects?

Doctor: You may feel quite sick and emotional for a while, you would be best to avoid taking any other drugs at the same time.

A week later.

Doctor: So how did you get on with the medication?

Patient: It was quite difficult to swallow, but I can see now that my condition is self inflicted and that the consequences of going along with things that I don't believe in could be be tragic and permanent, what should I do?

Doctor: Good question.

Jean de Florette *****

I had a vague memory of seeing this film in the 80's but sitting down to watch it again this weekend I didn't recall anything about it, which made it all the more enjoyable. Set in a poor part of Provence it describes how people can behave when they want something badly and how they can readily lose sight of what is important; you might call that greed but it could just as well be a metaphor for the world in general.

You want to hug Gerard Depardieu who plays the ex tax collector who inherits a farm with no water supply and brings his young family to the country, committed to enjoying an idyllic pastoral existence. Daniel Auteuil is brilliantly abhorent in this film as the flawed young peasant, Ugolin. With his uncle "Papet", Yves Montand, the brains behind the scheme, he conspires to get hold of the land that Jean de Florette has inherited. He has conceiled the source, the spring which is the one thing that will make the land viable; which for Ugolin, unlike Jean, is not necessary for his survival. Every time that Ugolin thinks that Jean has given up the ghost because of some new obstacle or other, his opportunity to snatch the land is taken away by a new idea or the renewed enthusiasm of Jean.

This film is a work of art, the visual beauty, the build up of tension, the reality created by the the film makers and the performances of the actors, particularly Daniel Auteuil.

The climax sets up the sequel Manon des Source in a compelling way; I can't wait for it to arrive from Love Film.

White knuckle

At odds with the lyric in that Stranglers' song, the clouds are interesting here today (and not just in Sweden). From my study I have been watching various showers and other meteoroligical phenomena chasing each other across the sea. I can also see the Palace Pier and its various "rides". On a day like this I wonder why anyone would want to have themselves hurled about and blood draining levels of "g" inflicted upon themselves. As I contemplated that big arm that spins round in a vertical plane with a pod full of nausea at each end I found myself thinking about my first trip on a big wheel. When I was about 5 or 6 I lived in Glasgow. Around Chirstmas time there would be a fair and circus at the Kelvin Hall, maybe there still is. Only recently did I realize that that absolute temperature scale and the conference venue were linked. Lord Kelvin must have been quite someone, scientist, businessman, benefactor and so on. Anyway, his hall is big enough to fit a fair and a circus in it at the same time. The only problem with this event was that my mother would try to persuade my brother and me to have a sleep in the afternoon so we had enough energy to stay up late; this, in my opinion was not a successful strategy and inevitably lead to angst. The best example of this was in 1974 when we had a holiday in Ibiza; there was to be a firework display in the town which would be visible from our apartment roof. I was ten and my brother seven, as the pyratechnics would be happening later than we would usually go to bed, we were despatched for one of those (albeit rare) afternoon naps which, in this particular intance, I remember escalating into a great deal of waling and gnashing of teeth. Later I met a girl from the next door apartment who had been waterskiing earlier in the day. When I asked her "how was your water-ski"? She replied to my utter embarrassment, "how was your sleep?" Anyway, back in the Kelvin Hall and this particular year the clowns, the undoubted highlight of the whole show, arrived with a car which they drove about the ring and sytematically destroyed. Entertainment that for this young person, could not be improved upon. Consequently, every subsequent visit to a circus anywhere was a disappointment as there was never another vehicle. I am not sure if it was the clown car year, but I agreed on one occasion, to go on the big wheel with my Dad, actually, I must have persuaded him to take me on it as I don't reckon he was that excited about it himself. Up until then, the most daring thing I had attempted had been the all too ephemeral experience of a ride down the helter skelter sitting in a folded-up front door mat; ten seconds wondering if the end was just round the corner, and then a grazed leg. Not brilliant compared with the likes of "Oblivion" at Alton Towers or better still the roller coaster that is entwined around and through the New York New York Hotel in Las Vegas (properly violent). So, once on board the big wheel, despite the fact that is was relatively slow, indoors and not in a force ten gale, I buried my face in my dad's tweedy coat and cried the entire time.