Young Montalbano

We began watching the crime series, The Young Montalbano tonight. I've mentioned the original series, Inspector Montalbano on a couple of occasions recently, and how we've enjoyed it. The Young Montalbano has a different cast, of course, though some of the characters from the others series gradually make their way into this one, a decade or so younger than before. Montalbano has plenty of hair at this point; his older persona is close to bald. Michele Riondino in no way plays under the shadow of his future self; he's as confident in his role as Luca Zingaretti is in his.

It's a little weird trying to match up a different set of actors in your head, but you find you quickly become attached to these ones too, because the series has been as well cast as the original, and the opening episode had plenty of verve and energy, along with the typical sharpness of mind that characterizes Montalbano; the delight in seafood; the craziness of Catarella (younger, but no less dense and no less frenetic); the bending of the rules to make sure justice prevails, and those wonderful old Italian faces that seem as true to their situation as if they were brought in off the street to play themselves.

Italian crime series

Back in December we started watching a series on DVD called Inspector Montalbano. I think we've managed to get through all that available now, and have a different set on hand called The Young Montalbano, which we haven't started yet, because we're still finishing off Fog and Crimes. More about that in a minute.

The Montalbano series was always worth watching, with intriguing characters - there are some marvellous well-aged Italian faces amongst the casts - and stories that kept your interest up throughout, even though there were often little by-paths that only minimally connected to the overall picture. Montalbano is a man of considerable integrity, amongst other things, but there's one curious element to his character which bothers me. He and his longstanding girlfriend, Livia, who live in separate cities most of the time, have an on-off relationship that never seems to quite come together enough for them to actually marry each other (and we're talking about a couple who are in their early forties when the series started).  Occasionally Montalbano has wound up with another woman in an episode, (wound up in the sense of being intimately involved) and while you can kind of understand that his true love is far away, it does seem to undercut the integrity of the character as otherwise seen. This is emphasized more because on a number of occasions, when one of the less savory characters in the stories is boasting of his/her love life and various women/men, Montalbano and his offsider, Fazio, frequently exchange glances of disapproval, and Fazio (whose home life is never mentioned) in particular seems to have a high moral sexual code.

When we started watching Montalbano we had also been watching Judge John Deed, a British series in which a maverick Judge deals to the law as he sees fit, much to the irritation of the other Judges. This series isn't a patch on Montalbano, but again there's this curious contrast between integrity on one hand and lack of it on another. Deed seldom makes it through an episode without having some sort of an affair with one woman or another, to the annoyance of the woman who is the regular in the cast. These women include his ex-wife.

Which brings us to Fogs and Crime (Nebbie e delitti), another Italian series. This also has a police inspector, Soneri, who's in his forties, and has a live-in girlfriend whom he can't quite make up his mind to marry. In the most recent episode, Soneri was sorely tempted to have a little affair with a young girl he met in the course of his investigations. Wisely he opted out, and turned around to make some repairs to his normal relationship. Let's hope he retains his integrity in this sphere, which will make him a better man than Montalbano or Deed.

Natasha Stefanenko,
the co-star of Fogs and Crimes

Montalbano is set in a fictitious town in Sicily, where the sun never stops blazing and where everything is light. It's so hot you seldom see anyone on the street - we're always wondering where all the extras are. There's an element of sophistication too, to Montalbano's lifestyle, and lots of eating of seafood. Fogs and Crimes is set in the real town of Ferrara, in the north of Italy, and lives up to its series title: there is an almost continual fog, heaps of rain and a dreariness about the place, the people, and the settings. Soneri spends a good deal of time in his favourite ristorante too. Ferrara is a World Heritage Site, and certainly the buildings are lovely, but you wouldn't want to live there if the weather is anything like the series presents. I imagine it's not, and probably the citizens of Ferrara get fed up of seeing their counterparts scurrying out of the rain or barely being able to see through the fog.

Though the two series have many similarities in characters: the helpful offsider; the bumptious lieutenant character who's good at his job but knows it; the annoying Chief of Police, always wanting things wound up; the wonderful blonde leading lady (a part Russian in Fogs and Crimes); the innumerable transients: Tunisians, Poles, Russians and so on.  But there are enough broad differences to make both series well worth engaging in.

A series of sentences on helmets of various kinds

From the (mostly) wonderful Kim Fabricius:
There are some churches that, for their παρρησία, [frankness] should have crash helmets in the pews – and others, for their bullshit, Wellington boots.

And from the equally wonderful Dave Pell:
There is no tantrum like a Put-Down-the-iPad Tantrum.
First I need to prepare. I put on my hazmat suit, helmet, and thick, dark goggles to make it less likely that I too will be pulled into the light. Any parent of an iPad-era child will be familiar with the other tools in my arsenal: Ear plugs, body padding, iron manacles, shock paddles, a straight jacket, an inflatable kayak (speaking in tongues while the head spins exorcist-like 360s can release a significant amount of saliva), WiFi jammers, tear gas, tasers; and for re-entry, candles, classical music, smelling salts, and several black and white paper printouts of familiar places and loved ones.
And even with all that, I give myself about a 50% shot of bringing my son’s attention back to the terrestrial world before the iPad battery runs out.

From my book, Grimhilda! - when I picked up on this paragraph I realised it had a typo in it! Now fixed...
The Sergeant Major marched out accompanied by two of his corporals. His uniform was a resplendent red, with gold braiding - unlike the drab combat kit of his Yankee counterparts. He wore a shiny gold helmet shaped rather like an old-fashioned policeman’s hat, except this one had a spike on top, with a white plume. Under his arm, he carried a pace-stick, which he used to prod people when necessary.

From an essay by Andre Dubus:
Because he and his father could not really talk to each other, this test of manual labour passes between them as a kind of spiritual gift from father to son. The gift is the opportunity to attain manhood, and the older Dubus reflects that "it is time to thank my father for wanting me to work and telling me I had to work and getting the job for me and buying me lunch and a pith helmet instead of taking me home to my mother and sister." If he had quit, Dubus writes, "he would have spent the summer at home, nestled in the love of two women, peering at my father's face, and yearning to be someone I respected, a varsity second baseman, a halfback . . . yearning to be a man among men, and that is where my father sent me with a helmet on my head." "Going home" to the women would have been to settle for passivity, to consign oneself to a world of yearning instead of a world of action.

And lastly, and most recently, a paragraph from an article on the Skully P-1, an upgraded motorcycle helmet that incorporates a digital head-up display, projecting a live feed from a 180-degree rear-facing camera, which eliminates the blind spots that affect other enclosing helmets.  The system can also broadcast turn-by-turn directions and pair with a smartphone to read back text messages, so the rider’s eyes can stay glued to the road.  It could get to be the driver's own cosy little world inside there.

Tyrannosaur

We watched the harrowing movie, Tyrannosaur, on DVD tonight. It's one of those remarkable movies where no one puts a foot wrong, not the actors, not the production team. It's also so tension-filled (but not in a thriller kind of way) that you feel at times as though you're barely breathing.

Joseph, played with extraordinary depth by Peter Mullan, is a violent man who can't bear to be crossed. At least at the start of the movie, where the opening scene has him saying almost nothing but swear words, and then giving his loved dog such a vicious kick that the poor animal dies that same night. Next we see him smashing a shop window because the shop-owner dared to tell him not to shop there again (with good reason).  But Joseph knows he's all wrong somehow, even though he seems to revel in the violence.

Something happens in his head after a drinking session, and, as though something is chasing him, he runs into a charity shop (NZ: op shop) and hides himself amongst the clothing. The woman running the shop (Olivia Colman) tentatively offers him a cup of tea, offers to pray for him...and does. This is the beginning of an odd relationship in which ultimately he will be protecting her (within his limits) as she hides from her abusive husband (Eddie Marsan, at his nastiest).

In spite of the Christian tone in that early scene, and some more genuine praying a bit later on, God doesn't turn up and rescue everyone. There is change, and there is a breakthrough, though it's hardly the sort that most Christians might recommend. God isn't seen as the answer to the prayers in any straightforward way. He does seem to be at work, though he plainly finds it hard to keep some idiots from being their own worst enemies. Whether Paddy Considine, the writer and director of the film (his first feature, incidentally) intends us to believe in God or not is a moot point. No doubt other darker readings of the film are perfectly possible.

Colman's character, Hannah, in spite of her genuine praying, is almost as mixed up as Joseph. She has good reason to be, given her husband's violence towards her, and her inability to change it. She's the character who brings the most surprises to the story.  On the other hand Joseph seems to be easily read by us as viewers from early on, but Considine never writes according to any routine script-line. Joseph has subtleties that are explored in due course, and though he's probably not entirely trustworthy, because he struggles to trust himself, he still has some integrity left.

At first it seems as though we're never going to get past the foul language (which for once is appropriate to the situation), but the film goes deeper and deeper with every scene. It's like sliding down into muck in order to find something of value at the bottom.

Wallander

We watched the first episode of Wallander last night, and felt distinctly underwhelmed. I'd read about the series some while back - it stars Kenneth Branagh as the main character - and it sounded as though it was not only a top quality production, but that it had enthralled viewers.

I think the issue was the feeling of things being underpaced. Lines that really didn't warrant several seconds pause got several seconds pause before being spoken, and everyone in the cast seemed to have been told that to make the thing feel more Scandinavian they should all talk slightly slower than normal and fill their lines with a kind of Ingmar Bergman-like subtext. Regrettably there wasn't that much subtext.  The mystery itself was plain as day to the viewer - I very rarely guess who the villain is in a mystery but he was obvious from his second scene. And the overall plot was clear from much too early in the piece. There were four deaths within a quarter of an hour or less until it was beginning to feel like some Grand Guignol CSI, not helped by having a serial killer profiler who seemed to know less than the viewers and less than Wallander himself.

Furthermore Wallander's father was plainly in the first stages of dementia. Did Wallander realise this? Nope. It had to be spelled out for him by the old man (played by a grizzled, long-haired David Warner).  'Gosh, Dad, you've got Alzheimer's - I never realised,' might as well have been Branagh's line, but of course it wasn't. Everyone around Wallander (apart from the serial killer profiler) seems more clued up to things than the man himself, so it's a bit difficult to understand what his charisma is supposed to be.

The series is beautifully filmed, and the locations in Sweden are magnificent. I'm just not sure what all the fuss is about. And I'm not alone, it seems. Tom Sutcliffe praised Branagh's acting but felt the Wallander character was "shallower than the performance, the disaffection and Weltschmerz just another detective gimmick.

And plainly things don't improve: John Beresford wrote about the second episode that it "went quickly downhill" from the murder of the taxi driver in the opening minutes; "Pedestrian plots, characters that wander aimlessly about with next to nothing to do or say, and a format that seems better fitted for radio than it is for television. By that I mean the endless shots where there's a someone on the left of the screen, someone on the right, and they stand there for hours tal...king...verrrry...slow...ly to each other with absolutely nothing else happening.

Pretty much my feeling. A bunch of fine actors wasted on a script that doesn't really say very much. Disappointing.

Illustrious Energy

Just caught up with the movie, Illustrious Energy, after not having seen it since it first came out in 1988. I'm not alone in not having seen it. Apparently the production company went bust about the time the movie came out, and it was seized by the receivers, and sold to a company in Los Angeles. It was re-sold and retitled, and then the master negative was lost. It looked as though it would be the end of the movie, apart from random copies on video and such that still existed. Finally, as recently as 2011, the negative was discovered in West London, and restored. I've just seen it on DVD, and the beauty of the photography is one of its marvels.

The cast is a bit variable. Shaun Bao, a Chinese actor, is very good, though his English isn't always as clear as it might be - he was in NZ learning English when the film was being cast. Harry Ip from Hong Kong plays his father-in-law, and since a good deal of his dialogue consists of shouting at some 'white devil' or other, it's not important that we can't always understand him. Peter Chin, of Dunedin, later to be its Mayor for a number of years (and a friend of mine for decades, through accompanying him when he was singing), is the third main Chinese character. His normal NZ accent appears occasionally; otherwise he sounds a bit stilted in trying to be a Chinese for whom English is a second language. There are a few other familiar Dunedin Chinese faces too.

The Chinese aren't the only ones having trouble with accents: two women are supposed to be Irish. Their accents are surprisingly weak. 

The white members of the cast mostly play villains, or people who might be villains. They're all a bit stereotyped, which isn't the fault of the actors. Peter Hayden plays the Christian minister Alexander Don, an actual historical person who had a real heart for the Chinese 'lost' in the goldfields, both literally and spiritually. Here he's presented as bumptious, know-it-all and pushy in his evangelism; he's seen from a typically secular point of view, and given no credit for the work that he actually did.

The story is a typically gloomy NZ one: Bao and his father-in-law are trying to get gold in Central from a claim that's probably already played out. They owe money to Chin's character, as well as lacking cash to get back to China, where Bao has a wife, and a son he's never seen. Unexpectedly they strike gold, and do very well, but through a series of unfortunate incidents, the gold is hidden by Ip, who dies before he can reveal where it is.

There are scenes in a small Central goldfields town, a circus, some calls to Bao to change from digging for gold to actually making a real living. And the tragedy.  These are all small-scale events, but what makes the movie is the grandeur and oddity of the scenery (shot in Alexander and other places close by), the brightness and harshness of the landscape - especially where the two Chinese have their claim - and the way things are placed in front of the camera: there are a great number of evocative shots, mood shots, that have Leon Narby's hand all over them. He was actually the director, but plainly he had a great deal to do with how things were filmed.

Probably not a film you'd watch over and over for the story or acting, but certainly that appeals to the eye. And the ear: the music is superb.

Maybe multitasking

Sometimes the things you write about have a kind of surreal lack of sense, such as the following item:
good zoom h4n at Guitar Center.

The individual words seem clear enough, but combined together they're strange. And unfortunately clicking on the link doesn't seem to help much either. Maybe I've been doing too much gardening today, in the heat, and my brain has lost its capacity to think clearly.  Or maybe it's because I've spent the week working on my next book, which is about prostate issues and their complications, and I've lost my ability to focus on anything else.

Or maybe it's because my wife is speaking Italian at me and I'm trying to think in two languages at once.  Or, as she's now doing, reading some ridiculous maths problem on Facebook out to me. How many things does she think I can cope with at once? Plainly she reckons I'm much more capable of multitasking than I thought.  Except that I had to ask her to remind me of the word multitasking anyway.

Lincoln

We watched Spielberg's Lincoln last night. I fast-forwarded through the opening battle scene, thinking I was going to be subjected to another opening like that in Saving Private Ryan. In fact, the battle scene is relatively short, and is the only one in the whole movie. Spielberg eschews physical battle in favour of battles of words, and what magnificent ones they are. A wide range of characters orate and mock and insult within the House of Representatives, and use a quality of language seldom heard in movies these days. (Surprisingly there are a few four-letter words scattered about, which seem out of place in this world of men who speak top quality English.)

This is an epic story without the casts of thousands (even though to begin with it seems we're inundated with new politicians in every scene), or the huge set-pieces. It focuses for more on real people speaking real thoughts, expressing deep emotions and seen in many small-scale scenes.

The cast is full of well-known faces, but Daniel Day Lewis trumps them all with a performance that's magnificent in its understatement. Only occasionally does he get to shout, or orate, and it's all the more impressive for it. He also gets all the best lines, with some wonderful scenes in which he tells stories of considerable humour and wit. Sally Field turns out a wonderful performance too as his wife, a woman whose turmoil and grief isn't easily switched off, and who is as capable as her husband of speaking forthrightly. In fact, the women in the cast, though they're few, have excellently written roles, and aren't merely treated as adjuncts to the vocal men.

Tommy Lee Jones plays Tommy Lee Jones, as always, but his character is rich in verbosity and he revels in the chance to speak lines that are short and succinct, as he's had to do in many of his better-known movies. Picking out anyone else in the cast is difficult; everyone makes a top-notch contribution, no matter how big or small his or her role.

It's interesting to see how things have changed in the White House, or its 19th century equivalent. Plenty of staff, but none of that checking at every door as to who is who, and security creeping around everywhere, and people struggling to treat other people as ordinary human beings. Lincoln's young son Tad (who is the one we see when we hear that Lincoln has been shot - offstage, as it were) breezes around the house, in and out of offices, without so much as a flicker of concern from anyone. The servants are friends, and the staff are known by name and touched on the shoulder by Lincoln in an affectionate manner. Compare this to the controlled chaos of the White House in The West Wing series...

I didn't think I'd enjoy Lincoln, and it does take a while to get to grips with the debates and arguments that are going on, but this film has a clever and thoughtful script (by Tony Kushner, the third of three scriptwriters to work on the film), and has been directed impeccably by Spielberg.

Writers, illustrators, and photographers

I received this as an email this morning. There may be others who'd be interested who haven't received a copy. 

 

An invitation to an information evening for writers, illustrators, and photographers

Where: Vodafone conference centre, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, 55 Cable Street, Wellington 6011

When: Monday evening, March 3, 6.00–9.00 pm

Do you contribute to the Ministry of Education’s teaching and learning resources? Are you interested in doing so? The Ministry of Education publishes an extensive range of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, short plays, teacher support material, illustrations, and photographs within the Instructional Series (Ready to Read, the Junior Journal, the School Journal, the School Journal Story Library, and Connected).

This is an opportunity to find out more about content needs, the Ministry of Education’s preferred suppliers for resource development and design services, and the commissioning of content.

With the closing of Learning Media Limited as a Government-owned educational publishing company in 2013, the Ministry of Education welcomes this opportunity to provide writers, illustrators, and photographers – and the agents and organisations that represent them – with up-to-date information about contributing to the Ministry’s Instructional Series publishing programme.

Virtual attendance through a live webcast will be available to anyone who cannot attend in person. Wellington-based writers, illustrators, photographers, course tutors, agents, and organisations are encouraged to attend in person.

By attending the presentation in person, you accept the possibility you may be filmed, with the understanding that this will be used in the live and recorded webcast and may be used for further Ministry of Education informational purposes at a later date.

Parking is available at Te Papa in the evening from 5.00 pm for $6.00.

Handouts will be provided on March 3 and will be downloadable from the Ministry of Education’s website (http://www.minedu.govt.nz/) afterwards. The event will be recorded for edited playback afterwards.

RSVP: By February 15 to Peggy Nesbitt (peggy@lifteducation.com). Please let Peggy know whether you would like to attend in person or virtually. If you are only able to attend virtually, you will be sent a weblink and a password when you RSVP.

Questions: Participants attending in person are encouraged to submit questions by February 15 but may also ask questions on the night. People attending virtually must ask questions by email by February 15 to ensure that they are addressed on March 3. 

Forward this invitation: The Ministry wishes to encourage new contributors – including Māori and Pasifika contributors – to become involved in its publications and online resources and would like to broaden its contributor base. Please forward this invitation to other writers, illustrators, and photographers that you are in touch with.

For further information: Contact Peggy Nesbitt (peggy@lifteducation.com, phone 04 381 2251)

Holiday's over, guys!

We've been privileged this January to be hosts to a bunch of smallish flies (not tiny ones) who apparently think they're spending their holiday break either in our kitchen or lounge, or sometimes in the bathroom and sometimes in the laundry. There are only ever about half a dozen at any one time, but they lazily float around the centre of the room, refusing to go anywhere near windows or doors, and consequently not only get in your way whenever you move, but also make it irritating watching TV, because there's this subtle movement constantly being caught in your peripheral vision.

Blowflies have the sense to make a great fuss about the fact that they've somehow got themselves trapped indoors, and are eternally grateful if you open a window for them that they can actually find their way out of. Although they do seem a little lacking in brain: open a window and they'll fly smack into the closed one next to it, or sit on the glass in the open window wondering where the breeze is coming from. But at least they generally leave when requested. And they plainly have places to go and things to do, if the speed of their departure is anything to go by.

These other little flies, however, have long since outstayed their welcome - though at least they don't make any noise. Finally we made up a mix of vinegar and water to spray at them, because I don't like using normal fly sprays, especially in the kitchen. All that happened was they got wet and carried on swinging back and forth across the room drying themselves. My daughter's comment was that the only way they would die was if they drowned from excess water. This didn't seem to happen.

Last night we resorted to using a proper fly spray. There was a sudden emptiness in the middle of the room after I'd sprayed it at them, and I was sure they'd all been sent to the place where all flies go (not somewhere I'm keen to follow, incidentally). Obviously one or two missed the blast, because this morning I notice that distinct movement out of the corner of my eye. Hopefully however, they'll have the sense to realise that the Summer holidays are over and they need to go back to wherever they came from.

Update: 22.2.21

We've moved to Oamaru since I wrote this post. Oamaru is a town about an hour and half's drive from Dunedin, our former home. Here we have an ongoing problem with small flies, and in fact we got a fly net to cover the back door which is where the bulk of them were coming in from. As in Dunedin, the big blowflies, the noisy ones, will happily go out a window if you open it for them. Not the little fellows: they love to hang round making no noise, floating across the room, or landing somewhere you think you can swipe them and then whistling off at great speed...only to linger in the air again once the danger has passed. My wife is not fond of them, and even though we've used fly spray on them, it seems you have to get them dead on for it to have any effect. 

The Phantom

The phantom power mentioned in a Nady Phantom power supply is a mystery to me...or at least it was until I found a very useful page telling me exactly what phantom power is. Read the page: he does it much better than I could, and manages to make it comprehensible.

For those who don't get around to reading the page, I can tell you that phantom power has nothing to do with the paranormal (although some singing that goes into the mics using phantom power might well be considered abnormal).

That aside, it reminded me of that old comic strip, The Phantom, a character who doesn't seem to have been taken up by Hollywood in its current rash of super heroes. Admittedly The Phantom - or The Ghost Who Walks - didn't seem to have any particular powers - his abilities were mostly fairly easily explained if you thought about it. Perhaps his peculiar power of being able to wander through the jungle in a tight suit and mask without ever getting it torn was something special, but otherwise he was a pretty ordinary bloke, I think.

I thought The Phantom had long since departed the syndicated comics scene, but though his creator, Lee Falk (who first introduced him in 1936) died twenty-one years ago, the series continues. It's been drawn by several artists over the period, though only one other writer, Tony DePaul, seems to have been involved since Lee Falk died.

The Phantom was the first hero to wander around in a skin-tight suit (thus setting a trend for all the later super heroes) and also the first to wear a mask that somehow hid his pupils. This idea of having no visible pupils apparently came from sculptured Greek statues, many of which were eyeless.

When I say that Hollywood hasn't recently worked with The Phantom, that's not to say it never has. There was a successful serial way back in the forties, and there was a feature film in 1996 (starring Billy Zane), which I can't say I remember seeing advertised. A more recent version was to have been filmed, but seems to have gone down the plughole. Sam Worthington was at one time being touted as the lead.

There have been at least three Phantom musicals, two of them originating in Scandinavia, an area of the world with which the Phantom has long had an association through Fantomen, the Swedish version of the character, which dates from 1950, Fantomet in Norway, and Mustanaamio in Finland.

Well, there you go. Plainly The Phantom/Fantomen/Fantomet/Mustanaamio is alive and well, and looking forward to being around much longer than any of his creators. It helps, of course, that us ordinary mortals can't distinguish Phantom number 21 from number 20 and so on.

Post-Grimhilda!

Now that Grimhilda! is online, I can move onto the next project. Some will no doubt think this will be the sequel to Grimhilda! and originally that was my intention.  However, I've had another writing project sitting on the backburner for some time, and since it's mainly a matter of editing and editing (and perhaps editing again) I've gone on to do that.  I'm planning on getting the book online by April.

It concerns a time in late 2008 when I had a biopsy for possible prostate cancer. The biopsy itself was unpleasant, but the aftermath was much worse. You'll have to wait until the book comes out to find out why.

Suffice to say I didn't go on to have prostate cancer, for which I'm very grateful, but at the time I was going through a painful period, and I wrote a number of blog posts about it on WorkReport, a blog I used - as you might infer by its name - mainly for work-related posts. It had started when I was looking for work in late 2006 and I'm still running it today, though, since I'm now retired, it's changed its focus considerably. That's one of the great boons of blogs: you can move them on as your situation changes.

Anyway, the book is obviously non-fiction, so that'll be something of a shift from Grimhilda!  But for those who are wondering when the sequel to the musical is going to arrive, I can tell you that I had a meeting today with my co-writer, and we threw some ideas around. It may not be quite the sequel you'll expect - it may not be what we expect - but it will be a musical and of course it'll be great fun to be involved in. So put your name down now!  :)

Don't stop too soon

While looking through my Evernote clippings for references to guitars (and there were a distractingly large number of them) I came across this quote by recording artist, John Mayer (who may or may not use a good Telefunken M80 - I only discovered that a Telefunken M80 is a mic a few minutes ago).

“I can’t stress enough how important it is to write bad songs. There’s a lot of people who don’t want to finish songs because they don’t think they’re any good. Well they’re not good enough. Write it! I want you to write me the worst songs you could possible write me because you won’t write bad songs. You’re thinking they’re bad so you don’t have to finish it. That’s what I really think it is. Well it’s all right. Well, how do you know? It’s not done!”

The paragraph's a bit cluttered - it may have been taken down verbatim, of course - but it has a kind of truth in it. You can't write good songs unless you've written bad songs, and even bad songs have to be finished in order to prove for all time that they're too bad to be bothered further with. Over the Christmas/New Year period I wrote three or four, or maybe five songs. At least two of them breezed off the page without looking back and proved their worth from day one. The other three...? Well, they've got potential but they're not quite sorted yet. I could abandon them but that might mean that good material gets dumped because it isn't quite right yet.

Equally, when you write a scene for a play or a novel and say, 'That's so bad I can't even go further with it,' you may not have got to the nut of the thing.  Yup, you may be right about its badness, but more to the point, you'll do two things: you'll have decided on the badness of the scene before you've finished it, which may mean you won't discover something good that's still to come, and, you'll begin to tell yourself I'm not very good, so why should I bother? Once again the internal critic will have got you by the short and curlies and another possible writer may bite the dust.

I can remember trying to write a scene for the musical Grimhilda! We had a rough idea of what the scene had to do within the overall structure of the story, but the characters that were needed just weren't there. I sat and thought about it, and thought about it, and thought about it, and never quite got to starting to write it. (I can procrastinate like nobody's business.) Finally I took my co-writer's advice and just wrote, anything, something, just to get started. The scene took off, characters turned up, and we were away. I haven't gone back to look, but I doubt if that first draft is anything like what was eventually performed on stage. I know however that in the midst of the 'stuff' that the scene eventually came out of there will be some things that stayed, that were the true elements of that particular scene.

I've got a book amongst the innumerable books on writing that I possess by a guy called Peter Elbow. It's entitled, Writing without Teachers.  I don't think I've ever read more than the first chapter, but I keep the book because in that first chapter (or at least very early in the book) he makes the valuable point. When you don't know what to write, just start writing - anything, the most utter drivel on the face of the earth, stuff that you wouldn't let your mother see, stuff you wouldn't give the dog to eat. (This is my paraphrase; it's not what Mr Elbow actually says.)  And this is all you can do. Writing requires you to write. Of course there's thinking to be done, but sometimes that comes after you've started writing. I remember starting a story - I think there were about thirty pages - and realising that two or three vivid characters had turned up out of nowhere, and were determined to stay. Eventually, of course, they were changed and the story was changed and little of that original thirty pages survived, but the fire had been lit and was burning in that stretch of just writing.

Anne Lamott calls this kind of writing shitty first drafts. Yup, that's what they are, but out of the manure grows something that's beautiful and edible. Don't stop too soon.

The Sunset Limited

Some spoilers in the post. 

Two men in a room. A long conversation between the two, lasting nearly 90 minutes of screen time. One is a black man (Samuel L Jackson), a poor railway worker, with a major criminal conviction behind him. The other is a white man, a Professor, (Tommy Lee Jones) worn out and world-weary, who's just attempted to commit suicide on the tracks in front of the Sunset Limited train. Somehow, and most unexpectedly, the black man has saved him and brought him back to his two-room apartment.  The door is locked with four or five different locks; outside the sounds of a major railway station go on intermittently: someone playing a trumpet badly, a sudden fight, shouting, trains stopping and starting. Our focus, however, is on the discussion these two men are having: life and death, belief and unbelief, God or not God.

This movie is based solidly on Cormac McCarthy's play - which isn't officially a play, but a 'novel in dramatic form (the playscript has minimal stage directions - the focus is on the dialogue). However, it's been presented frequently on stage, and works very well there, in spite of almost no 'action' (a coffee is made, some soup is cooked). The version I've just seen is the HBO version, directed by Tommy Lee Jones.

Both the stars revel in their parts, though Jackson's is much more the flamboyant one. Jones plays his very close to the bone: already looking like death warmed up in most of his movies, here he virtually has a mask of a face, with two dreadfully tired eyes peering out. I sometimes felt you could have done with more passion from Jones, but he saves it till the end, when he produces a tirade that shows he isn't going to change his position, no matter what. If anything he's more entrenched than ever. The much more 'fussy' Austin Pendleton played the same part on the stage - he may have been better cast, in fact, than Jones, since the latter doesn't come across as an academic in most of his films, but rather a man educated on the streets. I didn't quite feel that Jones had that self-preening that the part requires to be there in some measure. Nevertheless, he plays it in his own way, reinterpreting it so that what he does with it is effective. 

Jackson has never looked more at home on the screen. He's played some very oddball roles over the years (one of the Jedi in the second Star Wars trilogy, and that strange breakable character in Unbreakable) but here he's suited to the part completely. For much of the film his character seems to have the upper hand - the Christian apologist-cum-evangelist he might be seen as - but towards the end he realises that nothing he says will stop the other man attempting suicide again. He's knocked down, but not knocked out; he's done his level best, and that's all he could have done. God doesn't force his way into a person's life; if that person (White) doesn't want him, he'll let him be. And White doesn't want God
, come what may. Much of White's problem is a self-loathing, but he also gradually reveals that he loathes everyone else too (though he manages to tolerate Black long enough to stay and have a meal with him), and this hatred of his 'brother' (as Black calls other people) is perhaps his downfall.

But the film can be read in more than one way. As a Christian I can hear the old apologetic arguments skilfully framed by White. For some of the movie, Black's counter-arguments seem weak, and lacking in conviction. It's only at the end that he shows passion for his own belief. But an agnostic or atheist coming to the movie may well see it from the other side, and find White's Christian arguments the weaker ones. McCarthy leaves it open for both to chew over their viewpoints. McCarthy is quoted as not being a fan of writers who do not 'deal with issues of life and death,' and there's no doubt what this film is about.

C&W Pill-popper

When I'm popping my pills
to alleviate my ills, I use the
Online Drugstore Canada.

When I'm running down low
and I'm likely to blow, I use the
Online Drugstore Canada.

Oh, the Online Drugstore Canada,
is the place that I call home;
every pill I need
it will quickly speed -
relieve the pressure on my rising pressure dome.

If I'm trying to start
my recalcitrant heart, I use the
Online Drugstore Canada.

If I'm easing my gout
or I'm starting to shout, I use the
Online Drugstore Canada.

Oh, the Online Drugstore Canada,
is the place that I call home;
every pill I need
it will quickly speed -
relieve the pressure on my rising pressure dome.

Will 'ganderflanking' take off?

The BBC reports that a campaign has been launched to try to get the old English word ganderflanking into the Oxford English Dictionary. It's not a new word, having its origins in Wiltshire, in the UK, apparently. It means "aimless messing around." 

My wrist watch has started ganderflanking since I got it a new battery about a week ago. There was no cleaning done, although the watchmaker claimed that it really needed it - but I'd bought the thing for £15 in Norwich in 2007, and the last thing it needs is any more money spent on it. If it goes, it goes.

But the ganderflanking aspect is that in spite of having nothing more done to it than the replacement of  a battery, it's now decided that every twenty-five minutes to the hour it should beep at me. And at twenty-five to three in the afternoon it should pretend it's reminding me of something by playing its alarm. In order to stop it giving me its alarm warning, I have to push in the button that officially is supposed to be only for setting the time on the watch. It's a sad day when a wristwatch decides it should join a campaign to revive something in the English language.

Back to the actual ganderflanking campaign.  Mervin Grist, Conservator at the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre - he's also an artist, writer and performer - originally mentioned the word on the radio in December, and the presenter, Sim Courtie, was much taken with it, so much so that he immediately began campaigning to get the word into the Oxford English Dictionary. A week later it was used in the House of Commons by the South Swindon MP, Robert Buckland.

Whether it gets its rightful place in the OED is a moot point, but in the meantime, it seems a shame that such a delightful word should be lost, and I for one am already doing my bit to give it a new life. 

Making a sow's ear out of a silk purse

Though visually-impaired I am,
I'm not a Bushnell Trophy Cam.

It takes its photos in the dark,
of moose and deer and brush and bark,

but this is not it's bestest feature;
it's not a true nocturnal creature.

Its up-close photos blurry are -
with this it's almost on a par

with me, whose focus right up close
is poor and makes me quite morose

when reading crossword clues
or trying to re-wire a fuse,

or threading a needle, removing a splinter,
or reading some tiny print cursing the printer!

The Bushnell's small, compact and neat -
it won't get caught beneath your feet;

combines its audio and video
in one impregnable presidio

where, though there is great battery life,
the batteries (unless you use a knife)

are virtually impossible to change
and this is something rather strange,

a kind of ill-disposed ludology
with true time lapse technology.

Stray turkeys and nomadic deer
are caught on Bushnell's camera clear;

it's pensive tree-appended stare
will catch the odd meandering bear.

Though if the bear should see it there,
then Bushnell's Trophy Cam, beware!

A Separation

Two years ago, Asghar Farhadi wrote and directed the extraordinary movie A Separation.  It's a deeply moving film about a couple in Iran: she wants to leave the country with her young pre-teenage daughter to have a better life; he wants to stay because his father has Alzheimer's, and lives with the couple. She asks for a divorce from the court; the court doesn't think she has sufficient cause because there's nothing wrong with the man and it isn't as if she doesn't love him. From this somewhat unusual starting point the film wends its way through increasing complications as the husband tries to find someone to look after his father during the day, and winds up before the court again on a very different charge. To say how it all pans out in any detail would be to thoroughly spoil the movie if you haven't seen it.
There are lies at every hand, all seemingly small, but all causing further trouble for the liars. The trouble is, the truth is difficult, and sometimes it seems easier to lie in order to get yourself out of a difficult situation. Almost no one in the story is immune from this difficulty, though some try harder than others to avoid the lies.
The Iran in this movie is a very different one from that we generally see on TV in the news. Yes, there are issues over sin, and the women have their heads covered all the time, and the Quran is used as a tool to swear by on several occasions. But beyond that, these are ordinary human beings living in a modern society that has everything any Western society has. For me it was an eye-opener in these terms.
The justice system is different: the plaintiffs and defendants can shift place at the drop of a hat, and there is only one harried, though authoritative, man dealing with each case. No lawyers, and only one or two other court staff in each small room. Dozens of complaints are being heard throughout a large building simultaneously. This was also intriguing, though somewhat scary. The judge has power to condemn to death, and almost does. But he can be pleaded with too, and that's the amazing thing. None of this nit-picking over the minutia of the law. You have to speak for yourself and speak well, and may be interrupted by the person in opposition to you.
The large cast is uniformly good, from the older actors to the children. There isn't a performance out of place here. Camera work, intentionally, isn't always steady - it's right in the middle of all the action at all times, but that unsteadiness is never obtrusive. Catch up on this movie on DVD.

Cupmounts

What I could really do with on my computer desk is a cup mount, to hold my cups of tea or coffee that I usually have sitting to one side. A cup mount - like you have in your car.  You know?

Except that cupmounts, which sound as though they ought to be the same thing, appear to be a different thing.  Cupmounts here are things used to protect both electrical and mechanical equipment from impact shock and vibration.  Fitting one of these on your computer desk or in your car might be a bit tricky, since they're intended to sustain weights up to 2,800 lbs - which in kilos is quite a lot 1270 or so (or, if you want to get a better idea of what that is, think of the fact that I'm around 70 kilos in weight - that leaves a lot of kilos hanging around doing nothing.)

I'm sure we're all familiar with these kinds of cupmounts, but we probably never notice them because they're so good at doing their jobs and being modest at the same time.

Tosh times two

I've mentioned before that we've been getting quite a few DVDs from the Public Library, and that often we turn up a gem that's not previously been known. Not always.

I was in a bit of a hurry the other day , so I grabbed two films that seemed to hold some hope of being worth watching. Piffle. Both of them were twaddle. The first was a 1989 TV movie called The Shell Seekers, which was based on the very popular book of the same name. Angela Lansbury starred as an older woman who'd just had a minor heart attack and wanted to get back on with life while two of her three adult children seemed to think it was about time she sold off her prized possessions and gave the dosh to them. Lansbury, who was hardly old at the time the film was made (63 or 64), was at least twice given the line, "I'm sixty-three years old...etc" as though this was something of importance. So what, was the audience reaction. The film was otherwise notable for some weakish acting, particularly from the girl playing the teenage having her first love affair; she wasn't helped by the young man playing her opposite - he was required to be as dull as ditchwater by the script, it seemed. The character motivations were suspect throughout - poor Patricia Hodge, now playing the manic mother in Miranda, was the middle child of the family, the one supposedly loved more than the others. She was written as a sympathetic character throughout, until the final scene in which she suddenly seemed to have a change of heart and became almost as grasping as her brother and sister.  More than enough said.

The second film was such a piece of nonsense that it's not surprising it took five scriptwriters to try and cobble it into some sort of shape. Cowboys and Aliens concerns a man (Daniel Craig) in the Wild West who wakes up with a solid metal cuff around his wrist that does strange things when he's least expecting it. He's lost his memory, for the most part, so he can't explain where the thing came from. Arriving in the nearest town he and the townsfolk, including Harrison Ford as the local bully rancher, are attacked from the skies by some weird flying things which lasso various characters and haul them off behind their planes. Surprisingly this doesn't kill any of them, though it does leave them a little stunned. The remaining townsfolk go after the aliens who are eventually found holed up in a massive rocket-like ship in the middle of the desert. They're pulling ground out of the ground, literally.

The humans include Craig and Ford, but also a strange woman who seems to know more than she lets on (she turns out to be some sort of alien too, though rather more friendly than nasty, animal-like ones). There's the obligatory 'Doc' who can't shoot a gun, but learns to; the boy who has to become a 'man'; the preacher, who plainly never went near any decent seminary, if what he spouts as Christianity is anything to go by; the half-breed who hero-worships Ford from afar, as it were, and turns out be more of a son than Ford's real boy (his opening stunt is to shoot the windows out of the saloon). Then there are a band of rustlers/hold-up men, and a band of Indians. Somehow they all come together for the big piece at the end, by which time we're laughing our heads off at the absurdity of it all.

Craig plays 007 with a Wild West accent, and a terrible hat, and burning eyes. Ford chaunters around the place barking at everyone, getting particularly annoying when he won't wait for the half-breed to translate from Indian into English, and consequently having to have stuff repeated to him. Olivia Wilde plays the helpful alien, and a bunch of other well-known faces have appearances of various lengths. Total Tosh.