A review of the new film “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”
February 8th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
On the face of it, this is not a story that would have seemed to have had sufficient appeal to succeed as a movie, since it is centred on two profoundly lonely souls, one of whom is a forger, the other of whom is a serial trickster, both of whom drink far too much and care for others far too little.
Set in New York in 1991, it is the true-life account of how author Lee Israel felt compelled to pay her bills by creating some 400 forgeries of letters from famous writers who, when her nefarious activities become too well-known to buyers of such artefacts, makes an unlikley alliance with the dissolute Jack Hock.
That the film works so well is in large measure due to director Marielle Heller (would a male direcctor have handled the material so sensitively?) and outstanding performances from Melissa McCarthy as Israel and Richard E Grant as Hock (in real lfe an American but portrayed here as quintessentially British), both of whom have been nominated for Academy Awards.
McCarthy made her name in comedic roles in work such as “Bridemaids” but we knew from “St Vincent” that she could do serious roles and here she manages to make a woman who is both louche and lush as someone to be pitied more than despised. For Grant, this is something of a return to his eponymous role in “Withnail And I”, but in this story we cannot help caring for his future while fearing that it is limited.
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At last, a short and simple explanation of the Brexit negotiations
February 7th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
David Cameron made a promise he didn’t think he’d have to keep to have a referendum he didn’t think he would lose. Boris Johnson decided to back the side he didn’t believe in because he didn’t think it would win. Then Gove, who said he wouldn’t run, did, and Boris who said he would run, said he wouldn’t, and Theresa May who didn’t vote for Brexit got the job of making it happen.
She called the election she said she wouldn’t and lost the majority David Cameron hadn’t expected to win in the first place. She triggered Article 50 when we didn’t need to and said we would talk about trade at the same time as the divorce deal and the EU said they wouldn’t so we didn’t. People thought she wouldn’t get the divorce settled but she did, but only by agreeing to separate arrangements for Northern Ireland when she had promised the DUP she wouldn’t.
Then the Cabinet agreed a deal but they hadn’t, and David Davis who was Brexit Secretary but wasn’t said it wasn’t what people had voted for and he couldn’t support what he had just supported and left. Boris Johnson who hadn’t left then wished that he had and did, but it was a bit late for that. Dominic Raab become the new Brexit secretary.
People thought Theresa May wouldn’t get a withdrawal agreement negotiated, but once she had they wished that she hadn’t, because hardly anybody liked it whether they wanted to leave or not. Jacob Rees-Mogg kept threatening a vote of no confidence in her but not enough people were confident enough people would not have confidence in her to confidently call a no confidence vote.
Dominic Raab said he hadn’t really been Brexit Secretary either and resigned, and somebody else took the job but it probably isn’t worth remembering who they are as they’re not really doing the job either as Olly Robbins is.
Then she said she would call a vote and didn’t, that she wouldn’t release some legal advice but had to, that she would get some concessions but didn’t, and got cross that Juncker was calling her nebulous when he wasn’t but probably should have been.
At some point Jacob Rees Mogg and others called a vote of no confidence in her, which she won by promising to leave, so she can stay. But they said she had really lost it and should go, at the same time as saying that people who voted Leave knew what they were voting for which they couldn’t possibly have because we still don’t know now, and that we should leave the vote to Leave vote alone but have no confidence in the no confidence vote which won by more.
The government also argued in court against us being able to say we didn’t want to leave after all but it turned out we could. She named a date for the vote on her agreement which nobody expected to pass, while pretending that no deal which nobody wants is still possible (even though we know we can just say we are not leaving), and that we can’t have a second referendum because having a democratic vote is undemocratic. And of course as expected she loses. Some people are talking about a managed no-deal which is not a deal but is not no-deal either.
Addendum to the Brexshit storm in a tea cup.
Time for some Tusk Love closer to home:
There’s a special place in hell for those who promote the poisonous promises of nationalism with little thought for its consequences.
Author unknown – like the outcome of this mess …
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (1)
A review of the historical novel “Munich” by Robert Harris
February 3rd, 2019 by Roger Darlington
This is the latest and twelfth historical novel from this acclaimed master storyteller and the sixth that I have enjoyed. Whereas the first, “Fatherland”, presented a counterfactual view of the end of the Second World War – Germany and Britain sign a peace treaty and Hitler lives to be 75 – “Munich” is an essentially factual account of the negotiation of the Munich Agreement which ‘postponed’ the outbreak of that war by a year.
The story occupies a mere four days in September 1938 and it is told from the points of view of two fictional characters: Hugh Legatt, a member of the British Diplomatic Service, and Paul von Hartmann, an official in the German Foreign Ministry, who studied together at Oxford University in 1930-1933 but have not been in contact between then and the negotiations at Munich. For just over half the novel, the chapters oscillate between Legatt and Hartmann, between London and Berlin. As the pace of events accelerates and the tension rises, each chapter flips regularly between the two officials as they interact with the negotiators of Munich.
At the heart of the narrative is the notion that maybe something could have persuaded British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain not to sign an agreement which savagely dismembered democratic Czechoslovakia that was not even represented at the negotiations. Even though we know how things will work out, Harris creates a wonderful sense of time and place and tells a compelling story.
In fact, the seeds of the Munich Agreement were set over many years before the conference and Chamberlain had given up on the major issues long before flying to the German city. While Harris’s work is very well-researched, I feel that it is overly sympathetic to Chamberlain and rather harsh on French Prime Minister Daladier. While Chamberlain was no doubt well-intentioned and certainly energetic in seeking peace, in the years running up to the conference he and his government were guilty of much duplicty and deceit, not least to our French allies who had far more at stake.
Posted in Cultural issues, History | Comments (0)
Dutch historian Rutger Bregman berates billionaires at World Economic Forum
February 2nd, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
A review of the Dick Cheney bio-pic “Vice”
February 2nd, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Adam McKay stunned us with the “The Big Short” in which, as co-writer and director, he endeavoured to tell the complicated story of the sub-prime crisis in the USA economy in a virtuoso style. Now, as sole writer and director, he attempts the tell the incredible account of how Dick Cheney somehow became the most powerful Vice-President in American history with devastating consequences for the US and the world.
Again McKay deploys an idiosyncratic style in which he uses a whole panoply of cinematic tricks, including breaking the fourth wall, a false ending, and a narrator whose identity is only slowly revealed and really shouldn’t be any part of the movie. Such a scatter-gun approach does not always work, but it hits the target often enough to be both entertaining and informative in a manner which is both comedic and scary. By the time I saw it, the film had attracted 8 Academy Awards nominations.
There is a large cast with some terrific performances. None is better than an almost unrecognisable Christian Bale as the eponymous dark lord. It is not just that he looks utterly convincing, thanks to piling on 40 lb and having loads of prosthetics, but he even sounds like the guy with his gravelly voice and trademark pauses.
Other excellent portrayals include Amy Adams (Cheney’s wife Lynne), Sam Rockwell (George W Bush), and Steve Carrell (Donald Rumsfeld), while Alfred Molina has a delicious cameo role as a waiter offering Cheney and his chums a whole menu of devices to usurp power.
We even have a discussion of something called unitary executive theory which basically means that a US president can do just about anything he wants. A legal opinion asserting the validity of this principle is still in the records – but please don’t tell Donald Trump.
So “Vice” is uneven and not quite up there with “The Big Short” but, more seriously as a criticism, is it simply too polemical in the style of Michael Moore? At the end, McKay anticipates this charge and, in a brief scene visiting a focus group, he has a liberal arguing that it is all true. Don’t expect Cheney or anyone else to take McKay to the courts.
Posted in Cultural issues, History | Comments (0)
What was the American civil war really about?
January 30th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
I have now viewed the second segment of BBC Four’s series “American History’s Biggest Fibs With Lucy Worsley” which dealt with the American Civil War.
Too many people think that the war was about the abolition of slavery. In fact, as Worseley reminds us, the war started when the Northern states insisted that new states should not be allowed to institute slavery, but the Southern states would have been allowed to continue with slavery.
Early in his political career, even President Abraham Lincoln was “morally ambivalent” about slavery, but he made his Emancipation Declaration of 1863 as a means of galvanising the North’s war effort.
The war did not actually abolish slavery outright because the Thirteenth Amendment allowed convicts to be classed as slaves. And, of course, if slavery was the most egregious manifestation of racial discrimination, discrimination continued which is why there was the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Worsley finishes up in Charlottesville to underline that the ultimate objective of the civil war – emancipation – is still far from realised.
I once read an excellent book on the American Civil War, from which I learned a lot, and you can read my review here.
Posted in History | Comments (0)
How would a universal basic income actually work?
January 29th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
A new report published today by the Carnegie UK Trust sets out the key questions to be addressed to pave the way for a successful basic income pilot in Scotland.
A basic income is the concept of regular, unconditional payments made to all citizens, regardless of whether they are employed or seeking work. The report, written by the Scottish Basic Income Steering Group, highlights learning from basic income pilots underway or in planning in Finland, Ontario and the Netherlands, compiled from discussions with representatives at the Basic Income Earth Network 2018 World Congress.
The report concludes that there is no ‘one size fits all,’ approach to piloting basic income. It makes a series of recommendations around pilot framing, design, implementation, evaluation and communication, in order for a pilot to be delivered successfully within Scotland’s political and institutional context.
The Carnegie UK Trust is supportive of efforts to undertake a basic income pilot in Scotland in order to understand the potential positive and negative effects of the policy. As part of their ongoing feasibility study designed to scope out how a successful pilot could be undertaken in Scotland, Carnegie UK Trust funding has enabled the Scottish Basic Income Steering Group to produce this international learning report.
Posted in Social policy | Comments (0)
Are you sometimes confused by text or online chat abbreviations? np
January 28th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
From A3 to ZZZ, this guide lists 1,500 text message and online chat abbreviations to help you translate and understand today’s texting lingo. The guide starts with a top ten.
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A review of the new film “Colette”
January 27th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
“I’ve been a fan of Keira Knightley since “Bend It Like Beckham” in 2002. She’s had her critics but she’s maturely nicely as an actress and, in the eponymous role, this is among her best work, together with films like “Atonement” and “The Duchess”.
Here she plays real-life writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette in late 19th century/early 20th century France who became a sensation once she broke free of the control of her older husband Henri Gauthier-Villars whose pen name was Willy (Dominic West in fine form). As a strong woman overtaking the lesser talent of her husband, the work echoes themes in recent movies “The Wife” and “A Star Is Born”, while this is a good time for lesbian relationships in mainstream films coming – forgive the pun – at about the same time as “Disobedience” and “The Favourite”.
Colette may be a French story but the director and co-writer is the British Wash Westmoreland who dedicated the film to his late partner Richard Glatzer who also worked on the script. Also much of what passes for France is in fact location shooting in Britain and Hungary. But then the British are rather good at making costume dramas and all round this is an enjoyable work that captures the modern zeitgeist of female empowerment.
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A review of the Oscar favourite film “The Favourite”
January 26th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
By the time I went to see this film, it had already received 10 Acadeny Award nominations, so there was an incredible buzz around the work. Is this deserved? Well, it is an exceptional work but an odd one too.
Losely based on actual events, this is a (very) black comedy set at the English court in the early 18th century but directed by a Greek, Yorgos Lanthimos, who throws in some modern interpretations (notably in one dance sequence).
As well as being co-written by a woman, all three leading roles are female: Olivia Colman as the lonely and gout-ridden Queen Anne, Rachel Weisz as her aide and lover Lady Sarah, and American Emma Stone, sporting a fine English accent, as Abigail, the new rival for the Queen’s attention and affection. All three are superb and Colman is simply outstanding. The narrative is very cruel and very sexual and both language and behaviour are dirty in this gritty representation of a time of coarseness and struggle.
There is much to admire in the film. As well as the splendid acting, we have a sharply acerbic script, wonderful costumes and wigs, deliberate use of natural lighting, and magnificent locations (mainly Hampton Court Palace and Hartfield House).
But it is a weirdly disorientating and discordant work: all use of text (in the credits and 18 chapter titles) is in an almost unreadable spread-out lettering; there is regular use of loud, repetitive noises which really grind on one’s nerves; and the camerawork is kenetic with much use of wide-angle shots and other shots swinging round 180 degrees.
None of the human characters is appealling – the rabbits and ducks are cute – and most of them are utterly vain and manipulative, although motives may vary, with Lady Sarah influenced by a kind of love and Abigail spurred by her desire for status. I had some sympathy for Sarah, while my female companion identified more with Abigail. So, while this a film that I found ambitious and impressive, I cannot honestly say that I warmed to it.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (2)