h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Women in Love.

Novel by DH Lawrence, directed by Ken Russell, Glenda Jackson winning an Oscar, almost everyone getting their kit off, Oliver Reed and Alan Bates wrestling naked in front of a roaring fire, and Eleanor Bron being... magnificent.

It's been a long time since I last watched what was once one of my favourite films. I first saw it on television, probably in my (impressionable) late teens and I so wanted to be Alan Bates' character - yearning for a life that's deep, philosophical, intense... all the things I wasn't, and things that, now, I think of as rather bourgeois and pretentious.

I've never actually read the book, which I downloaded from the Gutenberg Project a good while ago. It's hard to read a book on a PC monitor. Not hard, as in difficult to, more... not quite right.

Hmmm. I can't find it anywhere in my documents folder, but I did find a pdf I downloaded from Google Books of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, which I also haven't yet read, although I did read (most of) the book... it must have been in the early 80s, because I remember who I borrowed it from, and not long afterwards I went to see a production of it.

Better download it again.

Ah, Oliver Reed and Ken Russell. I remember seeing The Devils (with Vanessa Redgrave also) when I was a teen. I believe my experience of it could be best described as "indulgent".

He, er, had his own style, that's for sure, and his own company of actors, a bit like Mike Leigh, in that you often see the same names in both starring and minor roles. Oliver Reed is bound, um, shall we say, enrich any film he's in.

Gravity

I hardly have words for how awful that film is. It won Oscars? Why? Okay, visual effects. They were very good. I thought the sound was nicely done too.

Aside from that it was tedious, predictable and so full of clichés. Slow. So slow. Long periods of nothing happening. And at the end (here be spoilers) the hauling of herself out of the lake, the grabbing handfuls of soil and laughing, the slow stand-up, then the camera pan up the body like it's a statue, the swelling triumphal music and the staggering off into... wherever.

Pierrepoint

Full disclosure - I'm a big fan of Timothy Spall, have been ever since Auf Wiedersehen Pet, so I'm almost always biased in favour of any film or TV he's in.

His performance in this film, about Britain's most well known hangman Albert Pierrepoint, is chillingly good, although the artistic and factual licence is heavily played with. It really does bring home, at least to me, the importance of keeping some things quiet instead of pandering the braying hordes who constantly shout for transparency and a lack of any secrets. Whatever I might think about capital punishment, it was a fact of life in Britain until the 1960s, and if someone has to do it then that person's identity should really not be in the public record, particularly now that so many people have lost all sense of proportion over anything they disagree with and will go to extreme lengths to impose their will and beliefs.

Apart from one or two scenes I found hard to swallow, I thought this was a bloody good film.

Added to my queue.


On the subject of execution, I now stand firmly in the against crowd.

I joined Amnesty International in high school, but back then, I supported execution. Hell, I was a kid in Texas. We execute more people annually than every other country besides China executes per year. And back then, there was no option for life without parole. That's what drove our astounding numbers. If a jury saw a defendant that they felt should never walk the streets again, they had no choice but to execute. In those days, a life sentence usually ran only 9 years before parole. A death sentence usually took 13 years through the appeals process.

I left Amnesty International when I was going to college in Huntsville, TX, the home of Death Row.

I've since changed my mind and rejoined AI.

I don't begrudge those that support execution, because I understand their feelings. But execution just doesn't make good sense. Economically, it's more expensive than life in prison. It has been proven that it doesn't act as a disinsentive. There is far too many cases of death row inmates being found innocent and therefore we know that there have been many innocent men executed in Texas of crimes they didn't commit. But most importantly, it's just morally wrong. When the state executes a person, every taxpayer is implicitly supporting it.

I'm an atheist. I am convinced we all have only one life. While there are many criminals I want to never walk our streets again. I just can't justify ending their lives.

The folks who say that both prison and execution are a deterrent must be deluding themselves because the overflowing jails and the people on death row are clear evidence that it isn't, at least up to a point. I for one wouldn't want to go to prison, but nor do I want to commit any crime that would send me there in the first place.

Execution is final. Once it's done there's no way to bring back someone who might later be found innocent, the way that the same person can have their conviction quashed and be released, and Albert Pierrepoint did indeed execute at least one person later found innocent in a famous case, which is included in the film.

I should add by the way, that the scenes I found hard to take in the film weren't for any reasons of... does the word 'squeam' exist? If not, it ought to. Anyway, it wasn't squeamishness, it was over-dramatisation that spoiled those parts of the film for me.

The Dresser

This has become one of my favourite films, not just for the exceptional performances from Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay and Eileen Atkins, but for the way it envelops me, draws me in and makes me feel part of the action. I think it's a damn shame that Albert Finney didn't win an Oscar for that part, although both he and Courtenay were up for best lead actor at the Oscars, the Baftas and the Golden Globes (Courtenay won the Globe and Finney won best actor at the Berlin International Film Festival).

It was also up for best film and best director at the Oscars that year. And which film won both?

Terms of Endearment

The thing that drew me to The Dresser in the first place was the idea of Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay in the same film. They both came to fore at about the same time, and both in film adaptations of Alan Sillitoe books - Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner respectively. Both of which are well worth reading, I might add. Loneliness also features a very early appearance by John Thaw, and Saturday Night has Bryan Pringle in an uncharacteristically subservient role.

After that, the rest is history. Finney's next role was as Tom Jones, and a role or two later Tom Courtenay was wooing Julie Christie in Billy Liar

And lo! Fifteen years after The Dresser, Finney and Courtenay were at it again in a very, very different film - A Rather English Marriage

Only Two Can Play
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056308/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_Two_Can_Play

I haven't seen this film for a very long time, and it's always been one that I enjoyed, not just for Peter Sellers, of course, but for the very real feeling of provincial working class life it conjures, and particularly for the supporting role that Kenneth Griffith plays: "What is your full name?" "Ieuan Yslwyn Owen Dafydd Ap Jenkins." "You are Welsh?" "Yes, yes I am, thank you Sir"

He and Leo McKern were by far the two most memorable Number Twos in The Prisoner, and he was perfect as Tafardel in Clochemerle. Full of Republican fervour and hatred of the church, privilege and the aristocracy

Being a Peter Sellers film, naturally there's an appearance by Graham Stark. Virginia Maskell does a superb job as Sellers' hard done by and put-upon wife.

I'd completely forgotten, and it's something of a coincidence considering the last entry but one in 'Closing the book', that Richard Attenborough had a cameo in it.

And a Bryan Forbes screenplay too. What's not to like.

Apart from having just worked my way through all eight Harry Potter films, one each Sunday, for the past couple of months, and watched The Ipcress File on Christmas Day, this afternoon I watched a charming film called Mediterraneo. It's about a small band of Italian soldiers who are sent to a Greek island in the Aegean Sea during World War Two to set up a base of some kind. They find the island deserted at first, but after a short while the villagers come out of hiding and explain that the Germans had arrived some time earlier, taken away all the younger men and destroyed many of the buildings. The villagers thought the Italians might be more Germans, but when they find out they're not only not German, but pretty harmless, they emerge from hiding.

From that point on the Italians start to become part of the island and the village. The lieutenant turns out to be a bit of an artist, so the local priest asks him to repaint the frescos in the church. There are a few romantic liaisons.

I won't give too much more of the plot away, but it's essentially a film about getting away from modern life and living stress-free and largely carefree. One or two of the soldiers want to get back to Italy, back home, back to the war, but most don't, and after a while even the ones who wanted to leave find themselves content to stay and become part of village life. At one point, one of them says, as an event that happens in the film is winding down, "Know what this reminds me of? When the vacation was over. That's when we went back to school. Vacation was over and we headed home. This atmosphere here reminds me of that moment. I wonder if it's right? The world changes and we're here."

That sort of sums up the feeling of the film. The island is a holiday, a respite from everyday life and its, often unnecessary, triviality and noise. A kind of Utopia. The islanders are largely uninterested in what goes on in the outside world and are seemingly quite happy, and better off, for it. Life there is like one long holiday, and to leave it, if you're going back to your other life, is like when you have to go back to work after a couple of weeks in The Algarve, or when Christmas comes to an end. When you're on holiday you often don't bother to check the news, and you can come back to find some big story has happened while you were away. At the very beginning, before any of the credits start to come up, there's a quote by Henri Laborit: "In times like these, escape is the only way to stay alive and to keep dreaming.".

You know that at some point they're going to have to make a choice whether to stay or to go back, or they might be forced to go back - after all, they're soldiers, although you'd hardly believe it at first.

It reminds me in some ways of Shirley Valentine, and not just because they both involve a Greek island. It won the Oscar for best foreign language film in 1991.

I'm suddenly reminded of Takeshi Kitano's _Sonatine_ (1993). http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/sonatine-1998

Instead of soldiers on vacation, it's yakuza hanging out at a beach house in Okinawa. Great flick.

Added to Netflix queue

Alfie

It's funny, but all I seem to look for these days in older British films is blue boxes And there is one

A bit disappointed to find that this was the US version (and why wouldn't it be, seeing as how I got it from US Netflix), and the theme song at the end is sung by Cher instead of Cilla Black.

Oh well, we can always watch Cilla recording it at Abbey Road, with Burt Bacharach and George Martin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDF_taQnoXk

Sends shivers down the spine

I know I'm wasting my money as I watch only, maybe a disc a week, and occasionally stream something on a night after the pub where it runs through a whole season of shows with me sleeping on the couch, but I still pay for both discs and streaming so I can watch either the Jude Law version on streaming or the Michael Caine version on disc.

I hadn't realised until today that play Alfie was based on was written by Bill Naughton, who also wrote the play one of my favourite films was also based on. The film is The Family Way, with John Mills, Hayley Mills, Marjorie Rhodes and Hywel Bennett, and a host of old school British actors and actresses like Fanny Carby, Wilfred Pickles and Avril Angers. That one you definitely can't get on US Netflix because I had to order a region 2 copy from a British website.

The first film scored by Paul McCartney.

The Wikipedia article for the film gives away a key - and very poignant - element in the plot

A little taster http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ALk0Mwu5nE

In fact I've a mind to watch it right now

Mr Turner.

I've been following the career of Mike Leigh almost since the very beginning. The first TV play of his that I remember seeing is Nuts in May, then Abigail's Party and The Kiss of Death, although I wasn't aware of his MO (getting the actors to develop their character and then improvising the action around a framework he provides), but a year or two later when I saw Grown-Ups I'd heard more about him and the way he made his films. After that I remember seeing Meantime, and by the time he stopped making plays for television and returned to film with High Hopes, I'd become a fan.

I've found some of his films and plays incredibly difficult to watch. I don't think I could sit through Abigail's party again now, nor Nuts in May, and definitely not Naked. Very bleak. Meantime, although a depressing play, is worth seeing for Gary Oldman's skinhead and Tim Roth's performance as Phil Daniels' younger brother.

The same actors and actresses often show up in his productions, I guess because they fit in with his unique way of working. Jim Broadbent's one of those, and so is Timothy Spall which, finally, brings me around to Mr Turner.

It would be difficult for me to be anything but enthralled by Mr Turner, being in awe of Mike Leigh, Timothy Spall *and* JMW Turner, but there are other aspects to the film that add to all that. The actress who plays the maid, for instance. What a fine performance. And Turner's father. Another terrific portrayal.

It's one of those films I think I'll come back to again and again with eager anticipation, like A Man For All Seasons, Monsieur Hulot's Holiday, Mon Oncle, and Hobson's Choice, and leave feeling completely satiated.

Cloverfield

A while back I decided to add a handful of disaster movies to my queue. Pacific Rim was one, which I watched last week, I think, and wasn't bad. This was another, which I watched today.

I don't think I've ever wanted to slap so many people so hard so many times. The only good thing I have to say about it is that it's not even an hour and a half, and I had the first 20 minutes or so on 4x speed. Rotten Tomatoes says "economically paced". If by economically they mean parsimoniously, then I'll go along with that.