British film director Anthony Minghella died yesterday morning. As we all know you don’t have to be a beautiful person to make enduring art but if you are, as in Minghella’s case, it certainly helps those involved in the process soldier on against inevitable adversity and attempt to make better futures. Juliet Stevenson speaking on BBC's Front Row last night said that Minghella understood ‘the rhythms of the heart’. More than just a lover of music he thought as a composer. (He was to have done a Bach St Matthew Passion staging for the ENO (English National Opera) this year following on the success of his Madame Butterfly Puccini staging). This is the quality that made multi-Oscar winning The English Patient more than just an adaptation. Novelist Michael Ondaatje was essentially a poet and though the film wasn’t ‘the book’, no film could ever be that. What Minghella found was a mainstream cinematic equivalent to the novel’s ‘rhythms of the heart’. And if millions of people around the world were touched by that movie and were moved to struggle on, then slightly transgressing a few ‘poetic’ liberties was worth it. Remember the truly beautiful scene with Juliette Binoche and the Piero Della Francesca frescos (Bacci Chapel in Arezzo) scored by Gabriel Yared in ‘late-night Bach awe’? And Minghella introduced the world to Márta Sebestyén. Alan Parker's tribute amongst others on BBC Nightwaves. His The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency airs on BBC TV Sunday night.
NPR radio interview (in the States, thanks to GreenCine for link)
Exclusive Sunday Times interview with Alexander McCall Smith
Precious Ramotswe: a very special investigator (written by Minghella himself)
On set report

Another film that steers well clear of the ‘worthy, well-intentioned’ view of Africa is the small independent pic Bunny Chow directed by John Barker with comics and a would-be comic playing themselves in an improvised script that the director terms “retro-scripting”. Is this South African ‘mumblecore’, Film Comment article? The director made South Africa’s first music mockumentary Blu Cheez before this first feature. Bunny Chow is a local ‘hangover’ dish of bread, meat and vegetables consumed in Johannesburg and the appeal of the film is that its local detail is also quite universal in its mundanity. A ‘fair trade’ movie without the habitual lecture.

(By the way, the Mike Newell directed film of Gabriel García Márquez's novel Love in the Time of Cholera is a huge disappointment lacking the magic of ‘magical realism’. Start reading the book and you’ll never be able to stop until the heartbreaking end. Shows how difficult is literary adaptation.)

[Addition- see next blog]

As in the case of Heath Ledger, did he die because he couldn't bear the strain of what he knew, or was he put out of his misery? Or maybe it was 'just one of those crazy old things'. And if you think that's shit, wouldn't it be great if Philip Dodd came out on BBC's Nightwaves and told the story of the shabby politics of the his ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts) ousting. Or maybe I missed it all as I was being bashed over the head myself. I even turned up on the doorstep of Conservative Party HQ with photographers outside and nobody even raised an eyebrow. They're used to bleeding heart politicians not bleeding head constituents I guess. That's Britain for you. (Actually the researcher who saw me was very considerate.) Oh, and while we're on the conspiracy theory bandwagon (mine make Mr Al Fayed’s claims seem like an entire solar system) why did the lovely non-conformist 'much more than just a Riverside Studios programmer' (see 1987) Ed Lewis die in his Notting Hill Housing Trust hallway some years ago without even a by your leave? Can't even find his obit on the internet, [just found one], but I know that I read one back in 2002, wasn't it? Our life may be "rounded by a little sleep" but Shakespeare had his enemies, too. (BBC's Front Row, Fri 21/3). Personally I've had it with the selfish Brit socialists and the equally selfish Establishment, not to mention the nouveau Labour petit bourgeois. More on't in future blogs.

And sci-fi writer Arthur C Clarke died. Good Front Row discussion on his life including Doris Lessing. All agreed that Childhood's End was his 'best'.New York Times obit.

In the same Front Row prog, interesting piece on nearly completed renewal of the historic St Martin-In-The-Fields church (off Trafalgar Square)and the specially commissioned window created by Turner prize nominated Iranian artist Shirazeh Houshiary. St Martin-In-The-Fields had the first free lending library in the 1680's and the first religious broadcast in the 1920's. Avoid the selfish (or some hidden agenda) socialists (maybe they’re just sheep in fake wolves’ fur) at the Westminster Reference Library around the corner (and Marylebone too). Their internet facilities are full of viruses too, but like everything else, no-one really cares. I should know, I've watched them for over 20 years. There are, as always, exceptions. I don't think Minghella was very fond of those kind of people either. Check Jon Stewart's Daily Show (March 19): Jon goes to the Advent map to give us "today’s gubernatorial sexual perversion". Larry Wilmore and Jon on 'blackness', the 'pinkies' ousting the marines in Berkely, and John Hodgman uses a time helmet to see if we're currently in a recession. I told you about the recession last year. Don't you listen! :) He's funnier this week than I am. I'll make up for it Jon with my forthcoming 'New Labour' video blogs. Monty Python meets Marxism.

One of Britain’s greatest-ever actors Paul Scofield also died this week. I only ever saw two great Brit thesps on stage- Sir John Gielgud and Paul Schofield. I marvelled at Gielgud’s vocal technique to reach me, seemingly effortlessly, up in my seat ‘in the Gods’ when he performed with Rosemary Harris on the West End. But with Schofield in Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman at the National Theatre in 1996 (recorded on video for the archive), his performance was like a field of energy wrapping itself around the entire theatre. The voice and the body were as one. He was well matched by Vanessa Redgrave’s unpredictable fire (my first acting job in London able to watch her work every night, that was ‘dying and going to heaven’,and whatever one thinks of her politics, Vanessa could never be accused of being a hypocrite or a selfish socialist - one of the most generous humans you are ever likely to meet). BBC’s Nightwaves has a spot on Schofield, and there’s an excellent, inspiring one on BBC’s Front Row (Thurs 20/3), with RSC voice coach legend Cicily Berry on his vocal technique, playwright/director Christopher Hampton, and Richard Eyre’s fun anecdote on directing him in Borkman. His reading of T.S Eliot’s The Wasteland and The Four Quartets lives on. What with that and musical theatre no wonder I became a late ‘Donnie Darko’ teenager. Rappers could learn a lot from listening to Schofield’s Eliot. Also in the same Front Row is a spot on Howard Brenton’s new play Never So Good at the Royal National Theatre on Conservative PM Harold Macmillan. A socialist (well, humanist really, well whatever he is, at least he doesn’t wear moth-eaten fake howling fuzz) becoming enthralled by a Conservative. Now that’s sounds interesting.

Postmaster wants his losing PO business closed but is tied
Two very different postal stories in the Royal Mail row.

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