As one news reporter described the Heathrow chaos "the queue, for the queue, for the queue, for the queue, for the queue". How very British!
Or read the ever reliable Simon Calder in The Independent (he really does pay his own way!)
Oh, and last night there was a trespasser on the Victoria line and a car (if you can believe what the announcement said)on the westbound District line.
And if you're really desperately poor and want to use Westminster Library's free internet service to send a quick greeting, don't bother. It's not working today either. No trains on Christmas Day in England (and there never have been)....and on, and on, and on, and on...Didn't a certain King Lear use similiar semantic structure over Cordelia's dead body?
Saturday, 23 December 2006
Tuesday, 19 December 2006
Moo cow Christmas
Oh what fun it is still to ride London transport! It's even more fun being told you have to wait 30 minutes for your next train as I was this morning for the Hammersmith and City line. Excuse: staff shortage. Bollocks to that! And there were minor delays on most other lines. Those Olympic Games in 2012 really will be fun won't they! On another train, Transport for London had the audacity to have revenue inspectors. When asked to produce their ticket, I think commuters should calculate the amount of their time Transport for London has wasted of their day due to its inefficiency and force those inspectors to wait the same amount of time. Seems pretty fair to me. Oh, and don't forget the power failure Friday night that seemed to have closed central London Piccadilly line stations. I shan't bother to contact their press office. How long would I have to wait for their response?
Politicians should be made to use the services they cock up at least twice a week. Go with your minders, put on a disguise or they'll be lynched, well, not in London. Too much apathy. Moo - did I hear a heard of docile cows trying to board an overcrowded train? Don't forget, studies showed that the temporatures on the underground in summer would not be legal to transpot cattle. And now we have a new game. Suspect packages on the underground. Both the Richmond and central London district line were delayed because of this today. You don't need bombs any more do you? Leaves and staff shortages are always a good excuse too. Oh, and more Fascist revenue inspectors on the Piccadillly line this afternoon. Get a life!
Politicians should be made to use the services they cock up at least twice a week. Go with your minders, put on a disguise or they'll be lynched, well, not in London. Too much apathy. Moo - did I hear a heard of docile cows trying to board an overcrowded train? Don't forget, studies showed that the temporatures on the underground in summer would not be legal to transpot cattle. And now we have a new game. Suspect packages on the underground. Both the Richmond and central London district line were delayed because of this today. You don't need bombs any more do you? Leaves and staff shortages are always a good excuse too. Oh, and more Fascist revenue inspectors on the Piccadillly line this afternoon. Get a life!
Monday, 18 December 2006
LOVE IS NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOU'RE SORRY...
Mirabile dictu! Lingua Latina superavit!
Mea culpa...and speaking of forgiveness, who'd have thought a double-bill review of the penguin animation film Happy Feet and the monk documentary Into the Great Silence was possible. Well... let me start by suggesting some Christmas reading to you. In fact, you don't have to be Christian at all to appreciate this as the author Simone Weil was an agnostic. That's before she was born into a rich Jewish family, supported Communism at the Sorbonne University in Paris - nicknamed "the red virgin"- and fought against Franco in Spain. She died in a sanatorium in Ashford, Kent in England. Extracts from her writings are in bold:
To forgive. We cannot do this. When we are harmed by someone, reactions are set up within us. The desire for vengeance is a desire for essential equilibrium. We must seek equilibrium on another plane. We have to go as far as this limit by ourselves. There we reach the void.
It is an act of cowardice to seek from (or wish to give) the people we love any other consolation than that which works of art give us, which help us through the mere fact that they exist.... If there are grounds for wishing to be understood, it is not for ourselves but for the other, in order that we may exist for him.
Philip Gröning's doco Into Great Silence is released by the same enterprising Soda Pictures who gave us the fab vampire film Frostbite. It's 162 min, mostly silent, of the Grande Chartreuse French alps monastery - Cathusian order. George Miller's Happy Feet is based on the doco March of the Penguins about the trials and tribulations of talking Emperor penguins. The protagonists in both films, the monks and Mumble the penguin sprog (Elijah Wood), are searching for enlightenment. Mumble is born feet first, can't sing (i.e. has no ‘heart-song’ essential for a penguin’s mating) but dances like a cross between Fred Astaire, Ben Vereen and Ricky Martin. The monks, on the other hand don't dance but aren't allowed any musical instruments only Gregorian chant. But Mumble and the monks do share a love of snow surfing. Maybe they're grappling with Simone Weil:
All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception.
Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.
To love truth means to endure the void and, as a result, to accept death. Truth is on the side of death.
We must continually suspend the work of the imagination in filling the void within ourselves.
If we accept no matter what void, what stroke of fate can prevent us from loving the universe?
We have the assurance that, come what may, the universe is full.
We can obey the force of gravity or we can obey the relationship of things. In the first case, we do what we are driven to by the imagination which fills up empty spaces.... If we suspend the filling-up activity of the imagination and fix our attention on the relationship of things, a necessity becomes apparent which we cannot help obeying.... Obedience is the only pure motive.... The obedience must however, be obedience to necessity and not to force.
The trouble with Happy Feet is nobody seems to die from the cruel winds of fate so artfully conjured by the computer animation, unlike the March of the Penguins doco. Not that they do in Silence on camera, although an old monk speaks of his blindness. The only trouble I had with Silence was the dozen captions of devotional Biblical text during the film. These tend to break our contemplation in a rather Brechtian way, not something I think the director intended. Gröning wanted to create “a film like a cloud” and evoke the rigidity and rhythm of the monks’ daily life. Happy Feet’s rhythm really started so well. Like Weil, Mumble does not believe in the animistic conventional wisdom of Noah and the Elders: that the fish shortage is caused by "the great wind". He is the only one to doubt the ring-pull evangelism of Robin Williams' Lovelace, entertain the possibility of aliens and search for enlightenment with his new Chicano pengpals. Nobody coerces him into this. And though March of the Penguins had a tendency to fall into cutesy narrative it wonderfully evoked the rhythm of their life. Happy Feet's ending plunges the film back into Christmas card carol territory. Did you know that in the Coptic scriptures there were about 40 wise-men not just three? I wish director George Miller had created an ending more akin to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey hallucinatory sequence or Hitchcock's Spellbound and Mumble had discovered the vow of silence. And a bit more South Park to scuff the immaculate CGI might have helped. But that would be my film and not George Miller's. Silence, is mostly shot on digital High Definition and is brilliant for it. The nature of HD craves light sources (and the director wasn’t allowed any artificial light) but there are snatches of Super 8 film that, though beautiful, seem present only for atmospheric effect, scuffing HD in the way the captions do. I leave the last word to Simone Weil:
He who believes in God is in danger of a still greater illusion, that of attributing to grace what is simply an essentially mechanical effect of nature.
We have to believe in a God who is like the true God in everything, except that he does not exist, since we have not reached the point where God exists.
Mea culpa...and speaking of forgiveness, who'd have thought a double-bill review of the penguin animation film Happy Feet and the monk documentary Into the Great Silence was possible. Well... let me start by suggesting some Christmas reading to you. In fact, you don't have to be Christian at all to appreciate this as the author Simone Weil was an agnostic. That's before she was born into a rich Jewish family, supported Communism at the Sorbonne University in Paris - nicknamed "the red virgin"- and fought against Franco in Spain. She died in a sanatorium in Ashford, Kent in England. Extracts from her writings are in bold:
To forgive. We cannot do this. When we are harmed by someone, reactions are set up within us. The desire for vengeance is a desire for essential equilibrium. We must seek equilibrium on another plane. We have to go as far as this limit by ourselves. There we reach the void.
It is an act of cowardice to seek from (or wish to give) the people we love any other consolation than that which works of art give us, which help us through the mere fact that they exist.... If there are grounds for wishing to be understood, it is not for ourselves but for the other, in order that we may exist for him.
Philip Gröning's doco Into Great Silence is released by the same enterprising Soda Pictures who gave us the fab vampire film Frostbite. It's 162 min, mostly silent, of the Grande Chartreuse French alps monastery - Cathusian order. George Miller's Happy Feet is based on the doco March of the Penguins about the trials and tribulations of talking Emperor penguins. The protagonists in both films, the monks and Mumble the penguin sprog (Elijah Wood), are searching for enlightenment. Mumble is born feet first, can't sing (i.e. has no ‘heart-song’ essential for a penguin’s mating) but dances like a cross between Fred Astaire, Ben Vereen and Ricky Martin. The monks, on the other hand don't dance but aren't allowed any musical instruments only Gregorian chant. But Mumble and the monks do share a love of snow surfing. Maybe they're grappling with Simone Weil:
All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception.
Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.
To love truth means to endure the void and, as a result, to accept death. Truth is on the side of death.
We must continually suspend the work of the imagination in filling the void within ourselves.
If we accept no matter what void, what stroke of fate can prevent us from loving the universe?
We have the assurance that, come what may, the universe is full.
We can obey the force of gravity or we can obey the relationship of things. In the first case, we do what we are driven to by the imagination which fills up empty spaces.... If we suspend the filling-up activity of the imagination and fix our attention on the relationship of things, a necessity becomes apparent which we cannot help obeying.... Obedience is the only pure motive.... The obedience must however, be obedience to necessity and not to force.
The trouble with Happy Feet is nobody seems to die from the cruel winds of fate so artfully conjured by the computer animation, unlike the March of the Penguins doco. Not that they do in Silence on camera, although an old monk speaks of his blindness. The only trouble I had with Silence was the dozen captions of devotional Biblical text during the film. These tend to break our contemplation in a rather Brechtian way, not something I think the director intended. Gröning wanted to create “a film like a cloud” and evoke the rigidity and rhythm of the monks’ daily life. Happy Feet’s rhythm really started so well. Like Weil, Mumble does not believe in the animistic conventional wisdom of Noah and the Elders: that the fish shortage is caused by "the great wind". He is the only one to doubt the ring-pull evangelism of Robin Williams' Lovelace, entertain the possibility of aliens and search for enlightenment with his new Chicano pengpals. Nobody coerces him into this. And though March of the Penguins had a tendency to fall into cutesy narrative it wonderfully evoked the rhythm of their life. Happy Feet's ending plunges the film back into Christmas card carol territory. Did you know that in the Coptic scriptures there were about 40 wise-men not just three? I wish director George Miller had created an ending more akin to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey hallucinatory sequence or Hitchcock's Spellbound and Mumble had discovered the vow of silence. And a bit more South Park to scuff the immaculate CGI might have helped. But that would be my film and not George Miller's. Silence, is mostly shot on digital High Definition and is brilliant for it. The nature of HD craves light sources (and the director wasn’t allowed any artificial light) but there are snatches of Super 8 film that, though beautiful, seem present only for atmospheric effect, scuffing HD in the way the captions do. I leave the last word to Simone Weil:
He who believes in God is in danger of a still greater illusion, that of attributing to grace what is simply an essentially mechanical effect of nature.
We have to believe in a God who is like the true God in everything, except that he does not exist, since we have not reached the point where God exists.
Saturday, 16 December 2006
Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh
Thursday, 14 December 2006
Just in case my readership was about to desert me after admitting I enjoyed The Holiday, may I recommend an Australian radio programme to you,
Late Night Live.
Wish I had more time to listen to this. They've got some funky new Christmas intro music too. And one week to listen to this:
The Picadilly line turns 100
And, as the Piccadilly tube line celebrates its 100th birthday, Night Waves goes underground to uncover the cultural effects of the recruitment drive from the Caribbean that brought thousands over to the UK to work on London's transport system 50 years ago.
Don't forget there's a great Swedish vampire movie Frostbite released 15 December in London. Think Aki Kaurismäki with fangs. Kids (well, at heart)and adults will love this and it's up there with the best of gore, complete with Hollywood score. (Please don't remake this, guys) Anyone who likes a film where vampirised mortals fight it out in a snowy gnome garden can definitely join me for Christmas.
Late Night Live.
Wish I had more time to listen to this. They've got some funky new Christmas intro music too. And one week to listen to this:
The Picadilly line turns 100
And, as the Piccadilly tube line celebrates its 100th birthday, Night Waves goes underground to uncover the cultural effects of the recruitment drive from the Caribbean that brought thousands over to the UK to work on London's transport system 50 years ago.
Don't forget there's a great Swedish vampire movie Frostbite released 15 December in London. Think Aki Kaurismäki with fangs. Kids (well, at heart)and adults will love this and it's up there with the best of gore, complete with Hollywood score. (Please don't remake this, guys) Anyone who likes a film where vampirised mortals fight it out in a snowy gnome garden can definitely join me for Christmas.
Tuesday, 12 December 2006
Monday, 11 December 2006
Supurr challis flagellistic expect me alitosis
Americans really aren't that popular in England these days. Were they ever? It's their go-getting nature that gets the Brits I think. The Bush administration having done little to illuminate what was always a tainted image. I thought seeing The Holiday last night would cheer me up. And to the horror, I'm sure, of the Brit intelligentsia, it did! The critics lambasted it for its lack of reality and everything else. And as any self-respecting comedy writer knows, comedy don't work if it aint based on experience. That's not to say The Holiday is a great movie. Far from it. But unlike the critics, I actually paid for my ticket. There still resides among the critical fraternity in Britain a desire for flagellistic social realism. I won't bore you with the The Holiday's story that you can get elsewhere. Cute kids, cute dog, cute and conspicuously consumed houses abound in this movie. But they really do exist in the world, like it or not. I have met women pretty much the ilk of Cameron Diaz's character, though the bra on after an evening's sex with Jude Law is pure Republican Americana. Or maybe she was just a shy gal! The Guardian called it a "train-wreck of a film". Well, let me tell you. The number of people I have met who'll tell you that transport in England isn't that bad and is improving is astonishing. This morning the excuses for tube delays were people falling ill on the trains. Hard to verify that one isn't it? Talk about sugar coating a cyanide pill! Vote Walt Disney for Prime Minister! Would I, in a fit of Noel whimsy and despair, swap my deluxe LA pad for a Beatrix Potter rabbit hutch in Surrey? Probably, yes. And I'd certainly go the other way if I were Kate Winslet (as she did in fact in real life but to NYC and a great deal wealthier than her character). And neither Jude Law nor Jack Black seems like the axe-murderers critics make them out to be. And maybe a few of the young audiences will wonder who the hell is Eli Wallach and what did he go through? Sure beats reality TV or doing Christmas shopping in the battle ground of central London!
In the same time it takes the Hollywoodettes to get re-hung (5 minutes less in fact at 133 min) you could learn an artist’s secrets of painting a quince tree in Victor Erice’s The Quince Tree Sun [1992, and alas not yet available on DVD through distributorArtificial Eye]. In a free for all screening yesterday at the National Gallery, it was a strangely engrossing movie where you end up feeling like Peter Sellers in Being There. Perfect if you’ve smoked too much salmon over Christmas.
The 'to be championed' 3 year-old indie distributor Dogwoof Pictures have the Bosnian Berlin Fest. Silver Bear winner Esma's Secret on XMas release. As dedicated and finely done as it is it seems a strange time of year to release this film. Maybe those Guardian readers will be flocking to see it after their morally debauched New Year.
In the same time it takes the Hollywoodettes to get re-hung (5 minutes less in fact at 133 min) you could learn an artist’s secrets of painting a quince tree in Victor Erice’s The Quince Tree Sun [1992, and alas not yet available on DVD through distributorArtificial Eye]. In a free for all screening yesterday at the National Gallery, it was a strangely engrossing movie where you end up feeling like Peter Sellers in Being There. Perfect if you’ve smoked too much salmon over Christmas.
The 'to be championed' 3 year-old indie distributor Dogwoof Pictures have the Bosnian Berlin Fest. Silver Bear winner Esma's Secret on XMas release. As dedicated and finely done as it is it seems a strange time of year to release this film. Maybe those Guardian readers will be flocking to see it after their morally debauched New Year.
Thursday, 7 December 2006
Rude health
Every single day there are 3 or 4 tube lines with delays. How wonderful it is to get up in the morning and be greeted by such chaos. Good service on all other lines they say. Well, there aren't many lines of good service left after the sick list is announced. Surely that couldn't affect the city's productivity! So many people just don't care in this city. That's the trouble. As decorators crowded my hall this morning (completely unannounced as they were 2 days ago - I complained, nobody took any notice), I tried to rescue my mail from the postman who I don't know from Adam. I explained this as he trundled up the street and upon reaching my door he just blithely handed over the mail for the building. Don't you ask for any identification I said? He looked at me as if I were from Mars and then accused me of being rude. I guess it's not as bad as that Jonathan (The Corrections) Franzen true story about the Chicago post office.
Wednesday, 6 December 2006
Vampires
De Menezes family in High Court bid
This is one of the most unbelievable, disgraceful incidents in this city. And the powers that be are just hoping that it will all blow over. Not on your life!
Great title for a lecture huh, but only 8 in the audience last night and I didn't even get a snog!: Becoming-public, or kissing on park benches
At least London's not like this:
Bollywood heartthrobs accused of obscenity for on-screen kiss
Dhoom 2's a fun movie. Check out those production values but don't go looking for much depth of character. Why don't those Mission Impossible films have dance sequences? I bet Tom Cruise would love doing that, and I could be the weird side-kick somewhere. And speaking of films, there's a great Swedish vampire movie Frostbite released 15 December in London. Think Aki Kaurismäki with fangs. Kids and adults will love this and it's up there with the best of gore, complete with Hollywood score. (Please don't remake this, guys) Anyone who likes a film where vampirised mortals fight it out in a snowy gnome garden can definitely join me for Christmas.
This is one of the most unbelievable, disgraceful incidents in this city. And the powers that be are just hoping that it will all blow over. Not on your life!
Great title for a lecture huh, but only 8 in the audience last night and I didn't even get a snog!: Becoming-public, or kissing on park benches
At least London's not like this:
Bollywood heartthrobs accused of obscenity for on-screen kiss
Dhoom 2's a fun movie. Check out those production values but don't go looking for much depth of character. Why don't those Mission Impossible films have dance sequences? I bet Tom Cruise would love doing that, and I could be the weird side-kick somewhere. And speaking of films, there's a great Swedish vampire movie Frostbite released 15 December in London. Think Aki Kaurismäki with fangs. Kids and adults will love this and it's up there with the best of gore, complete with Hollywood score. (Please don't remake this, guys) Anyone who likes a film where vampirised mortals fight it out in a snowy gnome garden can definitely join me for Christmas.
Friday, 1 December 2006
Dance to the music of time
I saw Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks Yesterday. And though I don't ever like praising any particular critic, Nicholas de Jongh is as good as they get. He gave a rave review to a show I was in and had produced many a moon ago, but moreover, he was one of the few critics who actually understood the play. I draw your attention to the last paragraph of his Six Lessons review in particular. Can't say fairer than that. (I do like Claire Bloom though.)
What is the difference between a minor delay on the tube and a major one? The District line to Richmond 2 days ago they termed minor: running every 15-20 minutes, that's 2-3 times the scheduled frequency. Hmmm...
Fancy a different beverage for XMas and becoming a character out of Chaucer?
Ministers to blame for excessive profits from train leases
And now for a people that could get something right...
Ancient Greek artefact was an 'astronomical computer'
What is the difference between a minor delay on the tube and a major one? The District line to Richmond 2 days ago they termed minor: running every 15-20 minutes, that's 2-3 times the scheduled frequency. Hmmm...
Fancy a different beverage for XMas and becoming a character out of Chaucer?
Ministers to blame for excessive profits from train leases
And now for a people that could get something right...
Ancient Greek artefact was an 'astronomical computer'
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