United

There was a centenary of W.H. Auden’s birth last week and the following are lines from his poem Musee des Beaux Arts:

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters…..
In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster, the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forlorn cry
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

He also commented: “In so far as poetry, or any of the arts, can be said to have an ulterior purpose it is, by telling the truth, to disenchant and disintoxicate”

Paul Greengrass’ United 93, recently released on DVD, is a powerful “disintoxicant”, it is something amazing in its depiction of a plane falling out of the sky on September 11, when the actions of the passengers forced the hijackers to crash into Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and is definitely not an important failure.

Maybe the ploughman would have reacted if he were closer to the centre because as the film so admirably illustrates, levels of courage are always greatest nearest the centre.

The director’s ten years with World in Action and his piece on Bloody Sunday have earned him enough confidence to direct a cinematic reconstruction of the “one act of heroism on a day of defeat and pain”. He has produced a masterpiece and his real time depiction of events earned him a BAFTA and a Best Director Oscar nomination.

The film, with its judicial editorial decisions and its knowledge that its power would be diminished by overly intimate fictionalised conversations, is perfectly complemented by the DVD’s supplementary interviews and it leaves an indelible impression.

In the film Deora Bodley, a young university student, sitting peacefully before the hijackers have acted, writes in her journal. The narrative does not reveal the content but in the interviews her mother reads a poem from her daughter’s diary and struggles to say “I didn’t know I was raising a girl like that”

One of the biggest questions at the development stage must have been “has enough time elapsed?” but the extensive consultation with the victims’ families enabled the filmmakers to convince the shattered households it was to be a sensitive production.

One mother remarks “it was never going to be soon enough”

Passengers and crew are depicted honestly by actors deliberately chosen for their ordinariness and the portrayal of events in air traffic control are given enhanced realism by the deployment of actual officers who worked through the tragedy of the day.

The reconstruction of the phone calls made by the passengers after they realised how the events were likely to unfold, and their need to express those three little words is, in the hands of Greengrass, an unsentimental, powerful, illuminating display of humanity.

Unlike Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, which focuses on two policeman trapped under the rubble of the towers, there are no jarring deployments of slow motion dream sequences, no badge-kissing evocations of bravery, just subtle visual poignancy, such as the slow closing of the passenger exit.

The heroism, when it comes, is practical rather than evangelical and it produces a harrowing final twenty-five minutes.

This is an exceptional piece of filmmaking as it forces us bystanders to stop blissfully whistling “Obla Di, Obla Da” and listen to the forlorn cry.

Michel Gondry

With his release The Science of Sleep just hitting the cinemas, it is a good time to take a look at this earlier piece of work from the director of Eternal Sunshine from back in the day when he was doing music videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5HOsnq_2j4

Great tune too.

Not With A Whimper

It is a shame the current series of The Sex Inspectors has just finished. It is the prima donna of reality makeover shows as it features images and conversations you can’t experience anywhere else on the box.

Tracy Cox, author of Supersex and poster girl for supporters of nominative determination, co-hosts with Michael Alvear, writer of Men Are Pigs, But We Like Bacon, a title that provides a clue to his orientation. Their combination is the masterstroke of hiring – men fancy her, and don’t feel threatened by him; women want to be her and feel comfortable talking in front of him.

The dilemmas chosen are commonplace. The punters are young, but in long-term relationships. The footage of their bedroom problems and solutions is frank, but the use of pixilation and vivid colour produce a visual that is a cross between a lava lamp and a comic, so it’s all reassuringly mid-shelf.

The participants are to be admired for their bravery and adaptability. In the climax of the season, the show revisited couples to see if, one series on, they had been blessed by the exposure.

Generally, they were all blissful, apart from the male of the last couple: Gary had problems with staying power. He was promptly advised to improve his pelvic muscles by plonking a towel on his todger and trying to perform one-organ vertical rises.

Suddenly, there was a swish of the camera and we were presented with a close up of a shrouded white steeple and it seemed like we were about to behold a mesmerising act of conjuring – but wait! With a further flourish of the camera, we suddenly saw Gary, the self-titled Three Minute Man. He was standing in the middle of the lounge, feet apart, hands on hips, looking like a forgetful superhero that is glad the evil Viennese Oyster will never see how he has misplaced the Cape Of Justice.

In practically two shakes of a lamb’s tail Gary's pelvic muscles improve, happiness ensues, the show ends, leaving a void in the schedules and a screwdriver in the towel rack.

Education Reforms

The government today announced that, by 2040, students will be tested on early twenty-first century domestic history.

Eleven year olds will be expected to know that the UK came bottom of a Unicef league table of child well-being across twenty one industrialised countries.

Students who pass will be deemed “winners”, given stars and groomed to be captains of commerce.

Students who fail will be branded “losers”, given drugs and pressurised to join a street gang.

This is to be an equal opportunities policy because, although the children will follow different paths, both fields offer the most successful students a great chance for the brief media and TV exposure necessary to validate their lives.

The Man Who Mistook a Hat For A Wife

A spokesman in the Paris Chamber of Commerce, when responding to a tourist survey, famously said: “The overall impression from the British and the Germans is that they love France but would rather the French weren’t there.”

It appears they may have to add the Japanese.

Apparently, every year, a dozen or so Japanese visitors to the French capital have to be repatriated with a condition labelled “Paris syndrome”. For some, it is close to a psychiatric breakdown: the Japanese embassy often has to supply a nurse and a doctor to accompany the sufferer on the plane home.

A stereotypical victim is in her early thirties, on her first trip abroad with high expectations of life in Paris – the sensation of walking on historic cobbled streets, the anticipation of high culture, the art of the Louvre: their minds race away and conjure a chateau in the sky. It's a vision that causes the heart to accelerate, the breath to shorten and soon their giddiness enforces a lie down with hallucinations.

The first hint that the bubble may not be impervious might be the rude taxi driver at the airport but this is too easily dismissed as an out of town coincidence

At the hotel there could be the discovery the manager has a whiff of unexpected sarcasm or the bellboy has a touch of surliness. The bubble is clearly vulnerable and there are the first symptoms of mild anxiety.

After a few weeks, this has developed into a persecution complex and the sufferer is not spending so much time in restaurants. After two months, they are on the verge of full-blown despair and struggle to shrug off the duvet.

Three months? Weeping down the twenty-four hour hotline to the embassy, prepared to accept a racehorse as long as it scoots them out of Paris and starts their journey home.

I have never been to Paris but, as I was on my snow-crunching constitutional today, I realised that, should I visit, I could potentially start a diplomatic incident. I could imagine bleating down the phone line, curled in a foetal ball, fist thumping the carpet, desperate for a Japanese Chargé to extricate an English bloke from a French city.

Therefore I decided, as another attractive young mother walked past me in her bobble, I shall never go, as it is my theory – and I need not for science to back me up here – that hats are very popular with French ladies.

Women wearing hats and the French language drive me wild. It is hard to rationalise but my Damascene moment came in my mid twenties when I was Christmas shopping with a mate’s then girlfriend.

We were in the M&S lingerie department, having a bit of a laugh, when she leaned her plush, hatted bonce over and said “That one is very French”, laughed and then proceeded to pour her silky, fluent French into my ear while I stared, glassy-eyed, at a mannequin sporting Illusion knickers.

She laughed heartily, performed a Gallic flick of her head and strode off into the Misty area.

I was a hormonal mess. We left M&S but there were hats everywhere. I mumbled something about needing to buy toys for my nephews and bumbled her into The Early Learning Centre, anything to be away from the infestation of hats. I couldn’t get sex off my mind and when paying for a multi coloured xylophone I noticed Daniel, the name-tagged teenage shop assistant, was wearing jingle bells on his wrist.

“Ha, ha, do they make you wear those for Christmas?” said my mate’s girlfriend, loudly.

Daniel nodded, glumly.

“I thought they were aversion therapy for excessive masturbation”, I said.

“You can fuck off” he jingled, as he summoned his supervisor and I was bustled out of the toy shop for immature behaviour by a determined Mrs. Pepperpot. Thankfully, she flaunted a reassuringly visible bun hairstyle and therefore did not make an impression on my sexual psyche.

It helped the moment pass but ever since I have been projecting fantasies onto unsuspecting chin straps wherever I go. I don’t know if there was an adolescent flashbulb moment but I fear a part might have been played by an episode of The Good Life depicting Felicity Kendall in a snow ball fight

As long as they are in a certain age range, I cannot help myself handing them massive quantities of mystique, style and, bizarrely, artistic credibility.

Every time, the hat provides a starting point for a personal adventure into wonderland and my normal, rational poker playing personality parachutes out of my body as it senses the first kindling in my ears. Within seconds, my nostrils are flaring like a Derby runner and my legs buckle on an internal camber: it’s the sight of the framed face with hidden, probably luxuriant hair and the presence of a pair of brave earlobes.

The woman then passes, ambling on her probably highly mundane mission, unaware, as my castle comes crashing down, of the melting presence behind her.

Like the Japanese in Paris, I would suffer terribly if exposed to beret-clad beauties, spouting mellifluous French at me, which is made all the more sexy by the fact I can’t understand a word of it. My body could not prolong the state of agitation. I would start to nestle in my boudoir, terrified by the possibility that one of creations might turn out to have hairy armpits or, worse, not have read all of À la recherché du temps perdu and guffaw at my suggestion.

Alternatively, and rather more devastatingly, a stay in Paris might serve to desensitise me to the day-making potential of a glimpse of a little felt number turning a corner on a bright February in Covent Garden.

For sufferers of Paris syndrome it is said the only permanent cure is to go back to Japan and never return to Paris.

I wonder, as the sufferer is trolleyed off at Haneda airport, do they allow the first triggers of an acceptable external reality to seep into their consciousness? Does the architecture match their own constructs of a pragmatic habitat? do they begin the process, possibly stealing a side glance at the international departure board, of constructing another fantasy? Maybe this time it is based on, say, Rome and it will become another internal Duomo, one they will have the self knowledge never to tarnish with actual physical experience?

I hope so as I need my hats.

Sometimes there has to be a bit more than another windswept tatty head and there is nothing wrong with building the occasional castle in the sky, the problem lies in residing in them.

Assignment Battles

The following is a transcript of a meeting of development heads that took place in a boardroom of a studio, somewhere in California, sometime in 2003.

Exec 1: So, we’ve all read the script. Thoughts?

Exec 2: Funny, original, a neat concept, great, hip dialogue. Original. I liked it.

Exec 3: Whoa! Original? It’s a coast-to-coast road movie featuring diametrically opposed characters that gradually learn something from each other over the course of the trip. You saw The Mexican. You can’t do that anymore. Half the audience was in a state of open-mouthed catatonia and the other half looked like they were on barbiturates!

Exec 4: (stirring) Catatonia and Barbiturates…. Now there’s a title….. It could be Tango and Cash meets Trainspotting! (tails off into some wistful mumblings)

Exec 2: Ah yes, but this has transport hi-jinks….

Exec3: I see what you mean about originality. I’m sure no one has seen Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Shall we just greenlight any screenplay that feature a skateboard with a dodgy rear axle?

Exec 2: What about the contrasting habits and speech patterns?

Exec 3: I weep for Midnight Run.

Exec 2: Ok, what about the originality of the Ellis Island moment?

Exec 3: You’ve got me there. They go from east to west. Don’t even recall it featuring Ellis Island.

Exec 2: Every journey has an Ellis Island moment. The characters are close to the end and suddenly see a symbol of their new destination. They know they will be tested, even separated……This is what makes this screenplay a winner…..The test…The threshold…Instead of an inspection for glaucoma…..We have an exploration of genitalia!

Exec 3: Christ, give me strength

Exec 4: An exploration of genitalia…..now there’s a tagline..

Exec 2: And how many screenplays have lines mentioning “vaginal dilators”!

Exec 1: Sold! We’re doing it!

Exec 4: Vaginal dilators….. (more wistful mumblings)

Thus maybe, just maybe, was Duncan Tucker granted studio backing to direct his screenplay, Transamerica, a story based on his surprise when he discovered his female housemate had been raised as a male. We should be grateful for the enthusiasm of Exec 2 as it is a thoroughly enjoyable film with first-rate performances.

Felicity Huffman was deservedly nominated for an Oscar and received a Golden Globe for her role as Bree, a pre-op male to female transsexual living in California who is summoned to bail out her teenage son, Toby, played by Kevin Zegers, fathered, forgotten and now a suspiciously well maintained rent boy on the streets of New York.

They head back to California together, Bree to be in surgery, he to be in pornography. Toby is unaware of the pre cut gender and biological connection to his female travelling companion.

Although some of the set pieces are predictable, it remains watchable as it is witty, candid and knows when to exit the highway. It is also playful about character assumptions. The role development is gradual and confidently handled without every straying to sentimentality.

How often are you going to see an American film with a transsexual, a rent boy and an Oscar nominated song performed by Dolly Parton?

Catatonia and Barbiturates can wait.

Greed Is Good And It Is Sanctioned By The Government

In King Size Homer, a Simpsons’ episode first broadcast on November 5th 1995, our hero embarks on a quest to reach 300lb so he can be declared legally disabled and thus work from home.

(I think the writers were KLF fans as there is a scene featuring Homer driving an ice cream van whilst wearing a muumuu.)

While he’s on his quest to destination diabetes he garners some valuable advice from Dr Riviera, Springfield’s two buck quack – “Be creative. Instead of eating sandwiches with bread, use pop tarts. Instead of chewing gum, chew bacon.”

In Somerset, on a similar mission, is Sig Lonegren, 67, but he is unlikely to be bolstered by the support of Glastonbury’s Dr Nick.

Mr Lonegren’s Body Mass Index is currently 37. Somerset’s Primary Care Trust has decided that a minimum BMI of 45 is required before they will pay for gastric banding. In other regions, a score of 35 is sufficient to obtain a NHS theatre pass.

Mr Lonegren is outraged at this latest example of postcode lottery. He has decided to embrace positive inaction and has embarked on a sit down food fest in a brave effort to gain that crucial 7.7.

Upon the initial reading, I was a Staffordshire Bull Terrier trying to catch a bluebottle. I was right wing: all the symptoms were there – the surrender to the initial emotional response, the disinclination to pursue the story further and the flashback to the crucial worldview forming moment in the schoolyard that first illustrated that life could be unfair.

But wait. Blustering is the handmaiden to prejudice so let us probe deeper.

At first, it is difficult to feel a lot of sympathy for Mr Lonegren. Although he has tried twenty diets, has diabetes, blood pressure problems and high cholesterol, there is a belligerent tone to his words when he outlines his plans for expansion – “My only option is Mc Donald’s and Ice Cream – pay up or pig out.” In the words of the Somerset PCT spokesperson, it is dangerous and misguided.

Somerset PCT also denied it made the lower limit 45 to save money.

A BMI of 45 is the upper limit of the “morbidly obese” band. The National Institute for Clinical Excellence has published guidelines stating surgery should be recommended in cases when BMI has reached 40 – or, when it is over 35 and the patient has obesity related diseases, criteria that apply to our man in training. Crucially, however, the government did not allocate a specific chunk of change to cover the costs of the surgery or set up a national network of surgeons.

It’s the economising, stupid

The NICE guidelines also stipulate the patient should be strongly motivated to undergo the surgery and be mentally prepared for the lifestyle changes that will ensue – one could possibly argue that would be a stumbling block for Mr Lonegren – however, he deserves a proper assessment.

In King Size Homer a wise guy remarks “I heard that guy’s ass has its own congressman.”

Back in Blighty it seems precious few MPs are supporting the case of Mr Lonegren. Indeed, there is a growing movement for a debate about whether certain, expensive surgeries, should be funded by the NHS at all, especially in case when individuals have been reckless or unlawful. This is a discussion worth having but why the sudden emergence of New Labour MPs keen to seek precious airtime on this topic?

In 2003, the government negotiated a new contract with the British Medical Association to ease tensions in the NHS, to prevent staff losses and to make conditions more bearable but, in the words of Dr Hamish Meldrum of the BMA, “There were areas of the package where big concessions were made”.

In poker parlance, the Government overplayed their hand, dumped their chips on the table and chortling GPs were left to rake it in.

For GPs to opt out of seven-day patient care cost only 6% of their contract: they were expecting to lose 50%.

They thought the contract “was a bit of a laugh”.

This signed the death sentence of out of hours care to the extent that only eight of London’s surgeries are available for Saturday appointments. It is just not worth the GPs’ time.

It is now common to bus in weekend doctors from other parts of the EU and pay them three times the hourly rate they earn in their own country. At the height of this haemorrhage, one doctor earned £10,000 for agreeing to work over the Easter weekend. Suddenly criticisms of Mr Lonegren’s goal oriented face stuffing, for surgery that costs an average of £9,000, look a bit misplaced. According to Professor Alan Maynard, a health economics expert at York University, “These pay increases are creating deficits, undermining patient care and the financial performance of the NHS.”

The first year of the renegotiated contract cost the NHS an estimated £70 million but don’t blame the GPs – like Mr Lonegren, they are simply working towards a goal as they now have performance, if not patient, related pay with the Quality and Outcomes Framework.

There is a computer registrar of QOF points. These have translated to cash, the growth of healthcare IT consultancies outlining ways for surgeries to up their income, and the decline of doctor patient relationships. Even without expert advice GPs outperformed government expectations - wonks thought surgeries would hit only 70% of the targets – in fact, they hit 90%.

Target setting clearly works according to Gill Morgan, the Chief Executive of the NHS “We were aiming to give a 30% pay rise over three years. It was 30% in one year. Every pound that goes somewhere you don’t intend it to go is a pound not spent on patient care.”

The combined cost of QOF and paying for doctors to staff out of hours surgeries last year was £250 million. That is half of the NHS deficit.

There are ten Homer Simpson characters currently noshing through nosebags as they attempt to hit their own magic targets, bravely foraging for excess without the aid of consultancies and with only snack food advertising to keep them focused. The combined cost of their gastric banding is £150,000, a fraction of the new bill for surgery administration.

If successful they will have to endure the side effects of bloating and copious gas, so if they can then just learn how to dump cash, Camp Westminster beckons.

Kandahar

In deciding whether or not to view this 2001 Iranian film, consideration should be made as to how much the lack of a narrative will be an irritant, as the plot of a Canadian Muslim trekking to Kandahar to find her suicidal sister is simply a device to allow Westerners an opportunity to gawp upon Afghanistan under the Taliban.

If treated as a documentary, the mostly strong, eye-opening visuals effectively convey a slice of life but problems arise when director Moshen Makhmaliber attempts to engage the audience’s emotions as it has poor acting, minimal drama and the voiceover feels like an afterthought.

As the viewing experience will be unique to most westerners, it is frustrating that, like the burqa-clad women, it is unable to project a stronger sense of identity.

Once Upon A Time In The West

One of the many joys of Leone’s 1968 classic is the casting of Henry Fonda as the blue eyed killer Frank, as his menace is even more unsettling given the actor’s previous, more morally upstanding, roles.

If you add the harmonica playing Charles Bronson; a superb score by Ennio Morricone; a pouting, hard working-widow with attitude; supporting gun-toters with the fatalism of a football deprived Mark Lawrenson, and shoot it all with a hint of political context, you have the perfect post “head ‘em off at the pass” western. It even has some amusing lip synch failures, made even more enjoyable by the minimalist dialogue.

It is slow but you will know whether you can handle the languid pace after the bravura opening. Stay with it and you will discover a picture with depth, character and a solid sense of structure, enhanced by its pacing. Like the best cinema, it leaves the viewer enriched with an indelible sense of time and place.

Orson Welles’ Othello

This 1952 print was discovered in New Jersey and has been restored by Welles’ daughter Beatrice.

The original was beset by problems. Financial issues produced a nomadic cast and the actor playing Desdemona changed three times. Consequently, the performances, with the exception of Welles, resemble an am-dram group putting on a tribute to stoicism.

Many beautifully framed scenes have their emotional impact devastated by the presence of an under varnished actor and unfortunately the worst offender, Michael MacLiammoir, has plenty of face time as he is playing Iago. At times, the dubbing is dubious and the piece veers close to satire.

Factor in the plot gaps and the experience is largely disappointing, watchable for its central performance and cinematography.

Coming Soon

Channel Four last night unveiled its new reality show, outlined for the difficult ratings period between versions of Big Brother.

An executive for the company said “It is Big Brother meets The Last Supper. Er, the movie, not the painting, or any of that other stuff”

KlanDestine Kitchen will feature twelve celebrities, dressed in white hoods and sheets, entering a house to attend a dinner party. Gordon Ramsey will cook the food and there will be 12 successive meals.

For each meal, they will be given a topic to discuss and plied with alcohol.

Topics for the first week are:

Do you, like, really, feel English?

Climate Change – Is it time to limit flights for your entourage?

Gay People – Is there more to them than just people who get the party started?

Would you perform in Iraq right now?

Should we post troops to secure the Channel Tunnel?

The Sound of God – What is on His iPod?

Viewers will be invited to vote for the celebrity with the most PC opinions and the diner with the least number of votes will be ceremoniously disrobed at the end of each broadcast.

They will then be led to single rooms and locked in until the next meal. Their only contact will be the voice of Russell Brand repeating - “They are Evil”

The next day the disrobed person will be forced to wait on the diners and work in the kitchen with Gordon Ramsey. This process will continue until there is only one remaining diner who will be crowned Grand Wizard and will have all of the disrobed celebrities as servants.

The executive concluded “This should provide the kind of debate we would prefer not to think about."

Spanglish

The last time the talented James L Brooks was writer and director he offered us As Good As It Gets and his screenplay won an Oscar nomination. Seven years later, he returns with Spanglish and it appears that he has taken a script and removed reason and accountability. If Helen Hunt was the reason why cavemen chiselled on walls, this helps explain why they coughed loudly, left the cave and grappled with sharp fanged beasts.

A seemingly sedated Adam Sandler plays an emotionally literate chef whose neurotic nut job of a wife is on the verge of a breakdown, for reasons best not considered. When a Mexican housekeeper enters with her daughter, faster than you can say “culture clash” everyone is forced to re-assess their values. Throw in an alcoholic granny and a teenager in braces and the mixture is complete for a Californian angst comedy based on communication.

It’s all a bit of a mess. Every time people start emoting, the dialogue dips and one has to fight the urge to hide behind the sofa. It becomes better halfway through but it’s hard to escape the thought that Mr Brooks is operating on auto pilot and is best when he creates some evil, sarcastic characters to help offset the sentimentality.