Word of the day: hecatomb
October 4th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
Say what you like about British Prime Minister Boris Johnson – and I’ve said a lot that is not complimentary – but his Oxford University education has given him an impressive vocabulary.
In an interview this week about shortages in the British marketplace, he commented: “If I may say so, the great hecatomb of pigs that you describe has not yet actually taken place. Let’s see what happens.” This is the Prime Minister, playing down fears of a mass culls of pigs at farms because of a lack of abattoir workers and doing so with a word not on the lips of every member of the electorate.
In ancient Greece or Rome, the term hecatomb referred to any great public sacrifice and feast, originally one in which 100 oxen were sacrificed.
Posted in British current affairs, Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Binge-watching the BBC series “Vigil”
October 4th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
I spent the evenings this weekend binge-watching the six hour-long episodes of the BBC television series “Vigil“, a murder mystery set substantially on a nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed submarine of Britain’s Royal Navy – an original and inventive plot device. I really enjoyed it and, if you did too, you might like to read this analysis of the finale from the “Guardian”.
The series has had its critics.
People say that a Vanguard-class submarine does not look like the boat depicted in the programme. Personally I’ve never been on a nuclear submarine, so I wouldn’t know. In any event, if the filming crews needed a bit more room and more visual impact for shooting the scenes aboard the vessel, I think that’s acceptable artistic licence.
Others insist that the plot was implausible and it did not reflect real life. Honestly, fiction television would be very boring if everything had to be totally plausible and reflect real life. The regular plot twists made the six episodes compulsive viewing.
I found the series entertaining and credible enough that, if offered a `tour of duty on a Vanguard submarine, I would politely decline.
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A review of the eagerly-awaited James Bond movie “No Time To Die”
October 3rd, 2021 by Roger Darlington
The release of this 25th feature in the official James Bond franchise was successively postponed for a total of a year and a half as a result of the global pandemic and it comes no less than six years after the last 007 film, so we’ve waited a long time for this.
For lovers of new action movies like me, the period since the coronavirus has been a lean time with really only “Tenet”, “Black Widow” and “Shang-Chi” easing the drought, therefore “No Time To Die” is so very welcome. I made a point of seeing it in IMAX on Britain’s largest screen and the audience applauded at start and finish.
At 2 hours 43 minutes, it’s the longest Bond film and could have done with a bit of trimming, but the risk of taking on director Cary Joji Fukunaga (after more experienced Danny Boyle pulled out) has really paid off. All the traditional ingredients are there.
The megalomanic villain: the not-so-subtly named Lyutsifer Safin played by Rami Malek (“Bohemian Rhapsody”) who plans to use nanobots to take over the world (I know …). The exotic locations: such as Matera in Italy and various parts of Norway. The chases: a high-powered motor bike and the formidable Aston Martin DB5.
Inevitably, after a franchise spanning half a century, there are echoes of other Bond films, most notably narrative, dialogue and music referencing one particular earlier 007 movie. What is different – and this has been developed over the recent Bond movies – is the updating of the British spy to a more caring, emotionally vulnerable man.
“No Time To Die” will not do as spectacularly well at the box office as “Skyfall” and “Spectre” but should exceed the takings of “Casino Royale” and “Quantum Of Solace” and the five movies together have been a tribute to Daniel Craig’s wonderful wearing of the 007 mantle with his final outing in the role a fitting finale to this joyous ride.
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“We’ve been waiting for you, Mr Bond”
September 26th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
Thanks to the global pandemic, the release of the new (25th) James Bond movie, “No Time To Die”, has been postponed again and again and there have been no less than three trailers.
But this week, the film finally has its cinema release. If you’d like to remind yourself what we’ve been missing, you can read my review of “Spectre” here.
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A review of the classic 1967 film “The Graduate”
September 25th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
In its day – I was an undergraduate when the film was released and I first viewed it – this was seen as something of a daring work depicting sex in the suburbs between different generations. It is a sharp piece of social commentary – a critical look at the American middle class – disguised as a kind of rom-com.
I say ‘a kind of’ because the central relationship is transactional rather than romantic (the romance comes rather later in the narrative) and the comedy is often somewhat surreal (the eponymous young man decked out in underwater gear or banishing a crucifix as a weapon). Based on a novel by Charles Webb, there is some memorable dialogue including my favourite lines: “I just want to say one word to you. Just one word … Are you listening? … Plastics”.
In his break-out role, young Dustin Hoffman plays 21 year old Benjamin Braddock and this proved to be just the start of an illustrious movie career. His temptress is Anne Bancroft who makes the most of some wonderful lines as Mrs Robinson. The young daughter of Mrs Robinson is portrayed by newcomer Katherine Ross whose later career was mostly in television.
The movie was only the second directorial outing for Mike Nicholls but he impresses with a variety of of cinematic tricks, perhaps the most memorable being a shot of Ben framed by the raised naked leg of Mrs Robinson. Another distinguishing feature of this enjoyable film is the use of songs by Simon & Garfunkel including the catchy “Mrs Robinson”. So all the elements of a classic.
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Why is it called the Green Room? Here’s seven possibilities.
September 23rd, 2021 by Roger Darlington
This week, I had dinner with my son in a restaurant called “The Green Room”. I guess that it is called that because it is opposite a theatre.
But why do theatres have a location called the green room? I’ve seen many explanations including:
1) It is a room close to the stage (that is, the green) for actors to meet before going on stage.
2) The waiting room for actors has traditionally been painted green, perhaps because the colour is seen as calming or the colour relieves the actors’ eyes from the glare of the stage.
3) It is a room where understudies to major players would wait and these are the green or inexperienced actors.
4) It is a room where the shrubbery used onstage was stored and the plants made it a cool and comfortable place.
5) It is named after the room behind the scenes at the Blackfriars Theatre in London which happened to be painted green.
6) Before modern make-up was invented, when make-up was first applied by actors it looked greenish.
7) The term might be a corruption of ‘scene room’, the room where scenery was stored and where actors waited to go on stage.
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My latest short story: the Covid-themed “The Great Mall Of China”
September 21st, 2021 by Roger Darlington
A decade or so ago, I decided to try my hand at writing short stories and, over a period of a few years, I completed 31. I recently (self) published these stories in a book titled “The Rooms In My Mind”.
As I prepared the stories for publication, I wondered if I could revive my short story writing endeavours and decided to start with a Covid-themed piece which I’ve titled “The Great Mall Of China”.
You can read my latest short story here. Comments are welcome.
If you like what you read, please consider buying my book here.
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A review of the documentary “Three Identical Strangers”
September 20th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
We live in a golden age of the documentary when such a work can attract the resources of a small film and be made at the length of a movie and then obtain a cinematic release. This 2018 documentary film, directed by Tim Wardle, tells the incredible story of three Americans, Edward Galland, David Kellman, and Robert Shafran, a set of identical triplets adopted as infants by separate families.
Only when they are 19 do the three learn that they have brothers and unite with them in a joy verging on rapture. But, as the narrative develops, it becomes darker and darker as we learn why the babies were separated without the knowledge of the adoptive parents – a covert experiment to address the perennial question of what most shapes our lives: nature or nurture? By the end the viewer can but share the anger and sadness revealed by the men and their relatives.
Powerful but poignant.
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A review of the novel “Conversations With Friends” by Sally Rooney
September 17th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
I so admired Rooney’s second novel “Normal People” (and the television adaptation) that I later went on to read her first novel “Conversations With Friends” (which is itself to be adapted for television). This initial work was written while Rooney was still studying for her Masters in Dublin and the point of view is that of Frances, a 21 year old nearing the end of her literature degree in the same city. Her best friend Bobbi is a fellow student and fellow poet and, while at school together, they had a relationship.
In the first sentence of the novel, the two young students meet Melissa who is 37 and a photographer. Later they meet Melissa’s 32 year old husband Nick, an actor with mental health issues. The narrative spans less than a year and is overwhelmingly about the inter-relationships between these four characters.
The events are pretty commonplace – friendships, relationships, illness, nobody dies – and Rooney’s style of writing is sparse, without flamboyance, but I really enjoyed the novel.
And Frances herself is an interesting, not always likeable, character: “I thought of myself as an independent person, so independent that the opinions of others were irrelevant to me”, “I felt that I was a damaged person who deserved nothing”, and “The world was like a crumpled ball of newspaper to me, something to kick around”.
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What does it take to stop a US President going rogue?
September 16th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
So now we learn that the United States Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had to reassure the Chinese that America was not about to launch a pre-emptive attack on them. This is an astonishing story to emerge about the last days of the presidency of Donald Trump.
It reminds me a a novel I read four years ago called “To Kill The President” [my review here] written by Sam Bourne (aka the “Guardian” correspondent Jonathan Freeland). The book begins with a demagogic US president threatening to launch a nuclear attack on North Korea.
It seems that these days the dividing line between fact and fiction is frighteningly blurry.
Posted in American current affairs, Cultural issues | Comments (0)