A review of the 1944 classic “Double Indemnity”
January 25th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Based on James Cain’s novel of the same name, this classic film noir was written by Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder and directed by Wilder. The term ‘double indemnity’ refers to a clause in certain life insurance policies that doubles the payout when the death is accidental.
This invitation to murder is seized upon by a femme fatale played by Barbara Stanwyck, who was nominated for an Academy Award, and an insurance salesman portrayed by Fred MacMurray, who took on a rare serious role, while Edward G Robinson was the claims adjuster at the salesman’s company.
A memorable leitmotif in the action is the lighting of cigarettes and cigars. This is a wonderfully plotted movie with shifting interactions between the three main players and the production received no less than seven Academy Award nominations (but won none).
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Have you ever heard of Mardin in Turkey?
January 24th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
I hadn’t until last night when I had dinner in a Turkish restaurant called “Sumak” (the name of a spice) in the Crouch End district of north London.
The walls of the restaurant are adorned with four large pictures of different cities: Paris, Rome, London, and one I did not recognise.
I was told that it is Mardin, a city in the south-east of Turkey close to the border with Syria. It has a majority Kurdish population and special architectural features.
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A review of the 2016 film “The Take”
January 22nd, 2022 by Roger Darlington
This heist movie looks a bit like a French film: it is set in Paris with some great shooting of the city, many of the subsidiary characters are French actors playing French characters, and there is even a fair bit of French spoken – all of which won it French funding.
Or it might be taken for an American film because the two leading roles are American: a maverick member of the CIA with the skills of a Jason Bourne and an accomplished pickpocket who finds himself an unlikely partner of the action hero.
But, in fact, it’s a British work: the director and co-writer James Watkins and the two lead actors Idris Elba and Richard Madden are all British. The plotting is pretty ridiculous but the action sequences are well-done and it’s all watchable enough.
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Joe Biden has now served a year as US President, so how’s it going?
January 20th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
I’m massively interested in American politics and regularly attend relevant courses and lectures – currently online – provided by London’s City Literary Institute and delivered by the college principal Mark Malcolmson. Today marks the first anniversary of Joe Biden’s tenure as U S President and this evening’s lecture reviewed the events of the last year and the prospects for this year.
Let’s start with Biden’s achievements.
Above all, he has restored stability and dignity to the White House. In the face of the pandemic, he achieved a rapid roll-out of vaccines and a substantial revival of the economy with the passage of a huge stimulus bill. Also vital to the economic health of the nation, he has won Congressional support for a massive infrastructure bill. Employment levels are high.
Internationally, Biden has recognised the climate emergency and taken the US back into the Paris climate treaty. He has ended US troop deployment in Afghanistan, reopened talks with Iran on the nuclear deal, and stood firm in defence of Ukraine and Taiwan.
But there have been many disappointments.
The manner in which the US left Afghanistan was disastrous and marked a major fall in his popularity ratings which are now very low. While his approach to the pandemic has been so much more active than that of Trump. testing for covid has been inadequate and infections have hit a record high. While the economy is doing well, inflation has soared and people are worried about the cost of living.
His legislative agenda in Congress is now stalled with his Build Back Better Bill and Voting Rights Bill both blocked. The fundamental problem for Biden is that Democrats have a very small majority in the House and are tied in the Senate with two Democratic Senators refusing to support some of his legislative proposals and to restrict use of the filibuster.
Things are not looking good for Biden and the Democrats for the mid-term elections in November when Republicans could take back control of both chambers.
Thea again Donald Trump has his own problems. The House inquiry into the insurrection of 6 January 2021 could yet lead to him being barred from future office, while the New York Attorney General is closing in on the financial irregularities at the Trump Organisation.
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A review of the new art house film “The Souvenir Part II”
January 18th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Writer and director Joanna Hogg always intended her story to be in two parts and originally wanted to film both segments back-to-back. However, there were funding issues, so the first film was released in late 2019 but we had to wait until early 2022 for the second.
While the first part was an account of the toxic relationship between film student Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne in her first acting role) and her boyfriend Anthony, a drug addict who eventually dies from an overdose, the second is an examination of how Julie processes her grief, which in large part is through the making of a graduation film about the relationship.
This film-within-a-film structure means that viewers are sometimes unsure whether they are watching Joanna’s film or Julie’s film, but essentially both are just different ways of looking at the same thing and both are deeply personal and substantially autobiographical.
Comparing Part II with Part I, this latter film is lighter in tone (indeed there is a good deal of quiet humour) and easier to follow (it is one film nested in another although Julie’s film is surreal in taking us into a dream-like rabbit hole). In a captivating treatment, Honor Swinton Byrne is beguiling in the central role, although her character clearly confuses and irritates fellow members of the film crew because – like Joanna Hogg herself – she does not work through a detailed script but a general treatment which invites and indeed requires improvisation.
So this naturalistic art house work will not be to everyone’s taste, but the critics adore Hogg’s work and it has grown on me over the last three years.
Note: I saw Part II at the British Film Institute in a preview screening a few weeks before general release. At the conclusion, the audience gave it a rapturous applause. There was then an interview with 61 year old Hogg whose answers were somewhat meandering and unclear. At one point, she confessed: “Really, I don’t know what I’m doing”. So we need to make allowances – after all, this is art.
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That time when I almost went to work at 10 Downing Street …
January 17th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
All this talk of activity in 10 Downing Street reminds me that, following the appointment of Jim Callaghan as Labour Prime Minister in 1976, I was offered a position in his Political Office at No 10.
Since it was a political post, it could not be paid by public funds and sufficient funding from trade unions was not forthcoming. So I remained a Special Adviser (or SpAd) to Merlyn Rees who soon moved from being Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to Home Secretary.
During my four years service with the Wilson/Callaghan Government, I never saw a single case of excessive drinking in Whitehall.
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A review of the new coming-of-age movie “Licorice Pizza”
January 16th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Paul Thomas Anderson has both written and directed a film set in California’s San Fernando Valley in the early 1970s and everything about the work – the clothes, the decor, the music, the television, the politics, even the style of the graphics – is redolent of the period.
At its heart – and the movie does have real heart – is an unlikely relationship between a 15 year old kid actor and entrepreneur called Gary and a 25 year old photographer’s assistant called Alana, but there are a variety of side stories that sometimes seem a little forced into the main narrative.
The casting is eclectic. On the one hand, the two leads are in their first feature film: Cooper Hoffman, the son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman who was a frequent collaborator with Anderson, and Alana Haim, a singer who has had a number of music videos shot by Anderson. On the other hand, there are some heavy hitters with Sean Penn and Bradley Cooper giving strong performances in cameo roles. To add to the thespian mix, Alana’s parents and sisters are all portrayed by Haim’s real life family. It’s that kind of personal movie.
Indeed the film is full of characters and events and even castings inspired by Anderson’s early life and most viewers will have no idea of most of these allusions. Even the title will be a mystery (it is slang for a vinyl record). Therefore, although the lead characters are charming and the story often funny, one can’t help feeling that the work is uneven and somewhat self-indulgent.
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What are the assets of the Cayman Islands?
January 14th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
As you might of guessed, this is trick question.
Currently I am reading “Seven Ways To Change The World: How To Fix The Most Pressing Problems We Face” by Gordon Brown. In the chapter on tax havens, he reveals that the the territory’s foreign assets are valued at an astonishing 1,500 times the size of its domestic economy.
These is because corporations are locating their assets in the Caribbean in order to evade taxation in the countries where they actually provide their products and services, earn their revenues, and make their profits. .
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How many passport holders are there on St Kitts and Nevis?
January 14th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
As you might of guessed, this is trick question.
Currently I am reading “Seven Ways To Change The World: How To Fix The Most Pressing Problems We Face” by Gordon Brown. In the chapter on tax havens, he reveals that the population of St Kitts and Nevis is a mere 50,000 or so, but that around 25,000 – that is, half as many again – hold passports but do not reside there.
These 25,000 individuals are, course, seeking to evade tax and on a huge scale.
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Three-fold increase of abuse imagery of 7-10-year-olds as IWF detects more child sexual abuse material online than ever before
January 13th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) is the UK body established by industry to combat child abuse images online. It has just published its annual report and the headline messages are:
- Record amount of child sexual abuse material taken down after action by IWF.
- More reports investigated in 2021 than in the whole first 15 years of IWF’s existence.
- Three-fold increase in imagery showing 7–10-year-olds who have been targeted and groomed by internet predators.
- UK Government launching new campaign to help parents and carers spot the signs of online abuse and grooming.
- Warning that devices can be an “open door” for sex predators to access children alone in their bedrooms.
From 2000-2005, I served as the first independent Chair of the IWF and I know what excellent work is carried out by the dedicated team there.
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