Never Judge a Book by its Cover

There's a remarkably tedious article about the third Christopher Nolan Batman film in today's Guardian. Peter Owen squints at the teaser poster for far too long, and proceeds to tell us that the film is obviously going to be crap. The Dark Knight, he says, 'took itself far too seriously, most of all in its lumpen and simplistic attempts to comment on the war on terror,' and as for The Dark Knight Rises, well...

'The new poster suggests the next film will fall into some of the same traps. It hums with seriousness and portentousness, with its black and white colour scheme, hints of awful destruction, and depiction of an empty city totally devoid of people – never a promising sign. It's claustrophobic, joyless, and derivative, like the poster for Batman Begins or one of those for Nolan's Inception, which depicted buildings tumbling like cliffs into the sea while Leo, Juno and the rest stared upwards with sombre, blank stares as vacant as the film itself.

The Dark Knight ended with Batman on the run from the police, having nobly taken the blame for Two-Face's murders so that Gotham's citizens don't find out that their upright, morally impeccable district attorney Harvey Dent had turned evil. The new poster suggests a city literally falling to pieces without him, his bat symbol representing the only chink of light – or hope – in the gloom.'

Now, call me old-fashioned, but if you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, you certainly shouldn't prejudge a film by its trailer, let alone its poster. Frankly, the article's nonsense anyway. Owen grumbles that the film looks set to repeat the classic error of too many superhero films, that being an abundance of bad guys. Granted, as a general rule of thumb a variant of Occam's Razor would make a good maxim for superhero films, in that villains should not be multiplied beyond necessity. However, leaving aside that I'd trust Nolan with a whole brigade of nasties, Owen clearly doesn't know what he's talking about. Of Batman Begins, for which he has at least a sneering regard, he says:

'The only supervillain involved, the Scarecrow, an evil psychiatrist experimenting on asylum patients, was not too over the top, and his costume not too silly'

Whereas of The Dark Knight Rises, he proclaims:

'... judging from the cast list, Nolan has already booked in far too many villains, including Catwoman, Ra's al Ghul ("rumoured" on imdb.com) and Bane, an uninteresting, monosyllabic lunk who broke Batman's back in the comics a few years ago.'

Given that Ra's al Ghul was the principal villain -- there were three, the others being the Scarecrow and Carmine Falcone -- in Batman Begins, and that Owen appears not to have noticed, I think his witterings can be safely discarded. You remember, don't you? Played by Liam Neeson? Trained Bruce Wayne? Used the Scarecrow and Falcone as his pawns? Burned down Wayne Manor? Attempted to destroy Gotham City? No?

While the Guardian has been covering itself in glory over the last fortnight, it's useful to be reminded that even Homer nods sometimes, and that paper doesn't refuse ink.

Looking at Vermeer

I watched Girl with a Pearl Earring tonight, feeling a need to get away from the claustrophic mounds and stacks of books, articles, folders, refill pads, scraps of paper, printed pages, pens, pencils, and random bits of stationery that are currently cluttering and breeding on every horizontal surface in the house. It's a busy time.

I liked the film. It's beautifully shot, in a manner reminiscent of Vermeer's paintings, and is remarkably still, with Colin Firth, Scarlett Johansson, and Tom Wilkinson all being excellent. Not a lot happens in it, and that which happens tends to happen in a restrained Merchant-Ivory kind of way, but somehow that seems fitting. Sure, it's mostly made up -- or, at any rate, the book on which it's based is mostly made up -- but then, given how little we know of Vermeer's life, this is hardly surprising. I have three books about him upstairs -- Wheelock's Vermeer: The Complete Works, Bailey's Vermeer: A View of Delft, and Gowing's Vermeer, the latter being widely regarded as one of the most profound pieces of art criticism ever written and being included in the Modern Library's 1999 list of the twentieth century's hundred greatest non-fiction books in English -- and yet none of them really tell us much about the man himself. We know hardly anything about him.

To be honest, I kind of like that ignorance. Vermeer epitomises the ideal artist as described by James Joyce -- or at least his youthful fictional alter-ego Stephen Dedalus -- in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:

'The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.'

There's a distance and an anonymity in Vermeer's work, a serene perfection that doesn't lecture or lure; it merely invites us to watch, and to see the transcendent beauty in the ordinary.  I'm not sure there's even one painting out there, with the very possible exception of Seurat's Bathers at Asnieres, that I've spent as long looking at as Vermeer's Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid which is in Dublin, but I don't think I've ever spent as much time on one occasion just soaking up a single painting as I did back in March when I went to London's Dulwich Picture Gallery to see The Music Lesson.

Normally kept as part of the Queen's private collection, The Music Lesson was on loan to Dulwich as part of Dulwich's bicentennial celebrations. It's perfect, isn't it? The light, the shadows, the reflection, the detail, the colour, and perhaps above all that wonderfully geometric composition. I decided that day that I was going to try to see every Vermeer in the world before I die. I think I've only seen four so far, but I've plans for a fifth before the summer's out, and I'm already hoping to see at least another seven -- those in the Netherlands -- next year. 

With eight Vermeers in New York, and a further four in Washington, a trip to America will have to be on the agenda too. I guess I'd better start putting plans in motion.

The Tale of One Bad Rat, or, thoughts on teaching adults to read comics

 I was talking to my housemate last night about Watchmen, raving about it as I tend to do, and following Pádraig Ó Méalóid in scorning the Zach Snyder film based on the book. I'd not say the film is a travesty, but I think Pádraig was almost exactly right to have said:

'It looks a lot like the original Watchmen book, but has none of its grace, or beauty, or subtlety, or sinuously beautiful timing. Watchmen is the most perfect graphic novel there is, and a huge amount of work went into making it that way, and attempting to streamline that for the big screen was never going to work. Alan Moore said it was unfilmable, and I have seen that he was completely right.'

Anyway, I wittered away about why I felt the film didn't work -- how it had fundamentally missed the point of the book, misunderstood the nature of the book's characters as created by Moore, seemed oblivious in all but the most cosmetic of ways to the how the fabric of the world of Watchmen differs from that of our own world, and been unable to play to the book's strength. It has strengths, to be fair -- the credit sequence was funny and clever, the casting was excellent, and every so often the sets were spot-on, but in the main I thought it missed the point and substituted brashness, gore, and gratuitous violence and nudity where Moore and Gibbons had been elegant, subtle, and often just matter-of-fact. 

At this my housemate pulled me up, as someone who had liked the film and never read the book, saying that he'd liked it and didn't agree with me, so I went and got the book and tried as best I could in a hasty way to point out how the book works, panel by panel. I wished I'd Gibbons and Kidd's Watching the Watchmen to hand, but I did my best.

My housemate's intrigued now, and is tempted to buy the book for himself, but I'm a bit wary of him reading it just yet. Watchmen, to be frank, isn't a book to start a new comic-reader on. It's too complex, too sophisticated, to dependent on familiarity with the form and its grammar. 

Years ago I went to a talk by Bryan Talbot, back when he'd just written The Tale of One Bad Rat, where he talked of how he'd been amazed in the aftermath of his avant-garde The Adventures of Luther Arkwright to learn that there were people who couldn't read comics, who found them complex and hard to follow. How does one read a page? How does one read a panel? What do you read first -- the picture or the speech balloons or the captions or the thought bubbles or a combination of them all? It was with this in mind that he wrote and drew The Tale of One Bad Rat the way he did.

The Tale of One Bad Rat is about as legible, and sad, as beautiful, and as hopeful a comic as one could ever hope to read, and it's become one of a handful of comics I like to show people who don't read comics if I want to show them how good work can be done in the medium, work as valid as anything in film or prose. Originally intending the book as a story of a girl obsessed with Beatrix Potter who runs away to the Lake District, Talbot needed to explain why she ran away, came up with the idea that she'd been abused, and then decided that if he was going to involve child abuse in the story then he'd better do it properly.

He did the work, and the result is a masterpiece, utterly nailing the distrust, the difficulty in forming relationships, the hatred of being touched, and the obsessional imagery that can so often haunt abuse survivors, while nonetheless showing paths to healing and being a beautiful and gentle ode to Beatrix Potter, the Lake District, art, and rats.

As a primer in what comics can be and what comics can do, it has very few rivals. I rather wish I had my copy here. It's something I'd like to show people so they can understand.

Fifteen Movies

My friend Denise has done one of those Facebook meme things, where you list 'fifteen movies that have influenced you and that will always stick with you', challenging her mates to do likewise. It didn't take me long to hammer out a list of my own, resisting the urge merely to list my favourite films, but having done that I felt an urge to say why I picked these. I did a similar thing last year with books. So, here goes...

1. Seven Samurai

My favourite film, bar none. It's intelligent and beautiful and humane, and there's not a wasted frame in it. I couldn't come close to picking a favourite moment - that opening silhouette of the horses against the sky, the shot of the village from above, old Gisaku's grimacing face, Kambei's haircut, Gorobei's chuckling, Kyuzo's duel, the flower, Kikuchiyo at the waterwheel, the horse in the rain... It's surely no coincidence that my favourite film as a child was, for a while, The Magnificent Seven, or that even now I'm a big fan of A Bug's Life. This was also, as it happens, the first subtitled film that I ever watched from beginning to end.

2. Star Wars: A New Hope

Look, I'm a bloke, what do you expect? I'm not sure any film has ever brought me as much joy. Unlike 'Seven Samurai', this isn't a film that could ever be on a pedestal; it has faults galore, and I can see them all, and I still love it. Sure, it'd be a better film without them, but it'd be a different one. I love it as it is. Sometimes our cracks are part of who we are. And I still think its opening sequence is superb.

3. Casablanca

Like 'Star Wars', the cliches really do have a ball in this film, and Pauline Kael had a point when she said that this is the classic instance of how entertaining a bad film can be. Still, it's sparklingly witty, has perhaps the most exhilarating scene in the history of cinema, and for me stands out as the classic modern take on the Arthurian love triangle. And, of course, it underpins both When Harry Met Sally and Deep Space Nine. Of course.

4. The Maltese Falcon

I like quest stories, and I especially like futile quests. John Huston did them better than anyone, whether in Treasure of the Sierra Madre or The Man Who Would Be King, or in this early masterpiece. I'm not convinced that the film's quite as deliciously dark as Hammett's novel, but it has the great Peter Lorre in it, which more than makes up for that, and there's something awe-inspiring about how Sidney Greenstreet fills the screen!

5. Scaramouche

Yeah, I can't defend this. Even hardcore swashbuckler lovers get embarrassed by this one. So what? My younger brother has said that my love for even ropey swashbucklers is my curse, but I don't care. Scaramouche may not be The Adventures of Robin Hood or The Mark of Zorro, but I've loved it since I was a small boy, and I love it now. The colours are gorgeous, the dialogue is hilarious, Janet Leigh is stunning, the long swordfight is breathtaking, and the final scene is wonderful if you don't think about it for too

6. The Birds

Sure, it's not Hitchcock's best film, or even my favourite of his films - that'd surely be either Rear Window or Vertigo - but it was the gateway drug for me, to a point where I now have almost two dozen Hitchcock gilms on my shelves! I saw it when I was about ten, and to this day find it one of the most weirdly unnerving films I've ever seen.

7. The Silence of the Lambs

This was the first film I ever saw in the cinema more than once, and the first time I saw it my knees hurt for hours afterwards, as they'd been tensed so tightly during the film. I've since read and loved the book, and think this well deserved its Oscar Royal Flush; as adaptations go, it rivals To Kill a Mockingbird, and though this film lacks an Atticus Finch, it does at least have a Clarice Starling. For all that Hopkins gets the plaudits for this one, and for all that I've ruined the film for others by reading Agony Aunt columns in his voice, I still think this is Jodie Foster's film.

8. Reservoir Dogs

I saw 'Silence of the Lambs' more than once in the cinema, but the following year I saw 'Reservoir Dogs' four times. I've not seen it in years, and it's a conspicuous gap in my dvd collection, and it's not even one I'm in a hurry to fill, but its impact on me at the time was undeniable. The dialogue astounded me, the claustrophobic staginess of it thrilled me, and above all I was fascinated by the fact that the film was almost - though not quite - in real time. Real-time films like High Noon and Before Sunset have delighted me ever since.

9. Beauty and the Beast

Yes, I know it might seem odd picking this ahead of the Cocteau masterpiece, but let's face it, for all the silvery magic of the 1946 classic (and wasn't that a great year for fantasy films, with A Matter of Life and Death and It's a Wonderful Life all appearing at the same time?), it doesn't have a sleazy candlestick with a comedy French accent, or that expression the Beast pulls when Belle unreasonably refuses to join him for dinner. I love redemption stories anyway, and I have always liked this story of how a thing must be loved before it is able to love. And, of course, it's about an intelligent, sensitive, beautiful girl who loves a clumsy, hairy, awkward man with a lot of books. One can always hope.

10. Stand by Me

It's probably not even Rob Reiner's best film, but Stephen King is a master of conveying small town American life - or so it has always seemed, anyway - and Reiner brought King's strengths to the screen perfectly here. It's funny and thrilling and gross and sad, and is deathly serious when it needs to be. What's more, as a study in boyhood friendship, it's pretty much perfect.

11. Dead Poets Society

For all that he can be too sentimental and twee, I like Robin Williams in this one, and I've come to like Ethan Hawke too. I still cherish watching it in Dave's living room, and at Nayra's going away night, and in Becky's room in halls. Its carpei diem motto still resounds with me, and I always picture the film's final scenes when I hear the story of Laura and Rose and the microphone. Thank you, girls.

12. The Searchers

Its iconic images of Monument Valley, of Wayne's Ethan Edwards silhouetted in the doorway, and of the burning homestead are part of cinema history, of course, but the film has layers and layers below and beyond its visual magnificence. Astonishingly beautiful and painfully bleak, The Searchers is, aside from being probably the finest western ever, a profoundly mythic study in how frighteningly lonely and psychologically insupportable it would be to be the type of man that John Wayne plays in so many of his films. Even the comic scenes, which can look like a frivolous distraction, serve, like the Olympus episodes in the Iliad, to heighten the darkness in Wayne's own character.

13. Dangerous Liaisons

If Beauty and the Beast and the Star Wars films are stories of how a man becomes a monster and then finds himself again, Dangerous Liaisons shows us a monster who realises he is becoming a man and who destroys the only person he loves in an attempt to remain otherwise. Devastatingly intelligent, there's nothing about this film that I don't like. The script, based on Christopher Hampton's play, is as brilliant and cold as the hardest of diamonds, as good an adaptation of Laclos' novel as one might hope for, and the cast is exactly right. Even young Keanu Reeves is good as the gormless Danceny, though he's nothing to Uma Thurman, let alone John Malkovich, Glenn Close, and the luminous Michelle Pfeiffer.

14. Magnolia

I like non-linear storytelling a lot. Citizen Kane is great, Pulp Fiction fascinated me for years, and Short Cuts, when I saw it back in the day, was a revelation. Of all these complex cinematic tapestries, though, Magnolia, for me,  is the one I'm most likely to think of. I know: it's messy, and it's often ugly, and not all of the characters are particularly likeable, but for all the horror it shows us, for all the loneliness, and inadequacy, and guilt, and shame, it's ultimate a deeply compassionate and hopeful film, as profound as it is profane, drinking from the same thematic wells as Krzysztof Kieślowski's tripartite study of liberty, equality, and fraternity, but doing so in an intoxicatingly different and utterly inspiring way. I'm a sucker for films about redemption, and they don't come much better than this.

15. Withnail and I

You know what Paul McGann does when faced with the bull? That works. A friend of mine did a few months back, when he and his wife were confronted with an angry one. You can talk about the poignancy and the quotability of this film all you like, but me, I have two friends who escaped being violently gored thanks to having watched this.

Riding Through the Glen

I've always been a sucker for the whole Robin Hood malarkey. I'd say 'mythos', but that's obviously the wrong word, though a passable holiday beer. But yeah, when I was small one of my prize possessions was a hefty Robin Hood comic, bought at a fete in Celbridge if I remember rightly, and I followed it up by reading Robin Hood books by Enid Blyton, of all people, and by the wonderful Roger Lancelyn Green.

Robin of Sherwood was on the telly, of course, with the peerless Judi Trott playing Marion, being almost as foxy as the heroine of the Disney version of the tale.

I'm afraid my weakness for the legends didn't die with my childhood; over the years, for very different reasons and in very different ways, I've been deeply fond of the gritty Patrick Bergin take on the story, the swashbuckling Errol Flynn version of the tale, and the beautiful, tender, and heartbreaking Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn version.

I'm afraid, however, that I've not been won over by the current BBC attempt at the legend, and not just because of how one of the cast was once mean to someone very dear to me when she was four. No, I just think it's naff.

Not as naff, mind, as the Kevin Costner absurdity that was Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Oh dear me, no. Not as naff as that.

All of which is a clunky way of saying that earlier today, chatter here in El Casa led me to discover the Guardian's hilarious Reel History series, which comically shreds various pseudo-historical films. The piece on Prince of Thieves has some gems:

'Before you know it, Robin of Loxley has escaped a Turkish (or possibly Saracen) jail, along with improbable Moorish sidekick Azeem. They arrive back at Dover, where Robin cheerfully proclaims that it will only take them until nightfall to walk to his father's castle. Even if you had a car, from Dover to Loxley would take you five hours. Robin and Azeem only have feet. Worse still, Robin takes the scenic route, via Hadrian's Wall – a diversion of another 300 miles...

Having bonded over anachronistic swearing, Robin and his band build a sort of Ewok village in a bosky glade, complete with rope ladders, engineered lifts, mood lighting, canopy-level walkways, and a mosque for Azeem. If medieval peasants, with nothing but the natural resources of the forest around them, could build this sort of thing, why did they mostly live in filthy huts made of sticks and manure?

... The Sheriff's scribe frets about the cost of Robin's larceny: "We reckon he's nicked three to four million in the last five months, sire." Bearing in mind that the exchequer receipts for all of England in 1194 came to £25,000, this is impressive thievery. Even if the scribe is counting in pre-decimalisation pennies, Robin has managed to steal more than the entire crown revenue for five months, notionally equivalent to around £250bn today. Admittedly, with that sort of cash, Robin probably could have had as many canopy-level walkways as he wanted. Still, you'd think people would stop driving money carts through Sherwood Forest after the first billion or so.'

And so forth. To be fair, the cliffs at the start aren't those of Dover in Kent, but are the Seven Sisters in Sussex, but the point stands, I think: you'd have to be a hell of a walker to make it from Sussex to Hadrian's Wall and back to south Yorkshire in under a day. Read it and snigger.

Randall Munroe is a Genius

In the mountain range of comic brilliance, XKCD regularly leaps from pinnacle to pinnacle, but I think today's a particularly dazzling summit. The Lord of the Rings diagram is particularly clever, with up and down loosely corresponding to northwest and southeast, and there are a couple of nice touches with the Star Wars one, with the dotted line to represent the Special Edition, and with Luke's time with Yoda rightly summed up as 'Luke's Entire Jedi Training'. I mentioned this to my housemates the other day, saying Yoda's presumably spent the last twenty years in his swamp figuring out how to concentrate a couple of decades of Jedi training into just a couple of days.*

Anyway, I think Edward Tufte would approve of this, and wonder how Randall would cope trying to map out Bleak House or The Count of Monte Cristo.
_____________________________________________________
* Or a month. Or a few weeks. Or half an hour. It's basically impossible to tell how long Luke spent with Yoda, and attempts to correlate it in a terrifyingly nerdy way with how long it'd have taken Han and Leia to reach Bespin from Hoth without the Millennium Falcon's hyperdrive are surely not the way to go. Star Wars is a fairy tale, after all.

Outstaring the Gorgon

One of the things that keeps amusing me is how appalled -- and amused, it must be said -- my friends tend to be when faced with the uncomfortable plot summaries that are so crucial to the creepy parlour game of Name That Film. And for what it's worth, of yesterday's 22 plots, I've already been contacted with correct answers to thirteen of them, which is pretty good for less than a day.

But the odd thing is that if you try this with Greek myth, say, people just shrug, because such horror is entirely normal there. If I say to you something like 'Jilted wife murders husband's new wife and own children in act of vengeance, Gods approve,' you'd just think, 'Yes, it's obviously Medea, what's your point, Thirsty G?' Likewise if I go 'Man stubbornly insists on primacy of letter over spirit of law, son and wife kill themselves, locals chalk it up to experience,' you don't even blink and say, 'Antigone,' wondering what all the fuss is about, as you have probably always wondered why Sophocles didn't name the play Creon.

So here are ten more Classical plots for you to play with. If you're a Classicist and don't get them within about three seconds, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. If you're not, a lower and slower strike rate is forgiveable, in this philistine age. Give it a shot in the comment box, if you like.

1. Poor loser takes out anger on livestock, commits suicide.
2. Townspeople pay token respect to handicapped transsexual, but frequently disregard his advice.
3. Traumatised veteran returns home and butchers wife's guests.
4. Bisexual man kills perfect husband and mutilates corpse to avenge death of gay lover.
5. Musician has difficulty accepting wife's death, is assaulted and murdered by drunken gang.
6. Exotic dancer helps new lover murder her deformed half-brother.
7. Beautiful young wife trapped in unsatisfying daily routine, having to get up early for work while decrepit husband invariably stays in bed, muttering to himself.
8. Man keeps daughter captive, and is horrified when girl becomes pregnant after golden shower; daughter's son later kills man at sports event.
9. Scientist attempts murder of nephew, builds sex toy and dungeon, causes death of son.
10. Woman's brother kidnaps and rapes her daughter, woman develops eating disorder.

Ah, the things that every educated Westerner used to be expected to know. I wonder how Bible stories would work when written this way.

Name that Film... again

Right, so, here's a fresh challenge for you, just to flex your brains. I'd meant to post this this morning, but I was just too deeply immersed in the auld books to drag myself away. You know how it is...

So, the rules are the same as last time, in that all you have to do is think about the plot description and identify the films. Two rounds, so a general one with all plots described by me, and a specialist one, where some plots are my own, but most are sourced from Dorian & Co, though I've tweaked them a bit.

Here goes.

Round One

1. Insecure woman, threatened by technological advances at work and besotted by workmate, is publicly humiliated by workmate to impress his new girlfriend.
2. Macho racist, obsessed with brother's wife, mutilates corpses and spends years plotting niece's murder.
3. After suspected advances from open-minded politician, homophobic man befriends but is killed by politician's enemy, who the politician subsequently kills.
4. Vegetarian begins cycle of repeated clashes with authorities after being thrown off train.
5. Escaped Muslim convict helps embittered veteran in campaign of civil disobedience.
6. Artist's wife is romanced by old schoolfriend and finds pregnancy isn't the worst of life's complications.
7. Lonely woman experiences sequence of traumatic events and enters into relationship with sociopath.
8. Writer cheats on wife and enjoys watching lover sleep with teenage boys, is threatened by lover's father.
   
9. Radiantly healthy prostitute is threatened by doctor and embarks on love affair with drug-addict cop.
10. Teenager murders women and children and is sentenced to death, but escapes and marries older woman.
11. Fat jealous man persecutes schizophrenic follower of Atkins diet while on road trip.
12. Vegetarian celebrates birthday and gets married, dog dies.

Confused yet? Don't worry, you'll surely have seen most of them.

Round Two

1. Handicapped mass murderer kills old man, religious extremist terrorists destroy government installation, killing thousands.
2. Barbaric terrorists destroy major government construction project, killing thousands of contract labourers, handicapped mass murderer kills old man.
3. The United States provides arms, equipment and training to violent Islamic fundamentalists.
4. Alcoholic suicide bomber destroys valuable technology and kills thousands in deluded act of vengeance.
5. Rag-tag group of underdogs succeed at a massive undertaking despite overwhelming odds, credit success with faith in God.
6. British civil servant conspires with Islamic fundamentalists in terrorist campaign, plants bomb on plane, kills American general.
7. Politician arranges for assassination of terrorist leader who had orchestrated murders of civil servants and anachronistic killing of policemen.
8. Alcoholic and bereaved religious fanatic attempt suicide bombing, survive and find love.
9. In clandestine operation, gay masochist trains savage tribesmen in terrorist warfare.
10. Terrorists fight government, die.

Okay, so the last one's an old TV series. Off you go now, while I get back to work.

Foiled by Grace Kelly

On the subject of films, by the way, any of you who've been pondering my March post on my vastly superior mental reworking of A Beautiful Mind can't fail to have noticed the most superficially implausible aspect of my Hitchcockian fantasy, which is that the age gap between Gregory Peck and Grace Kelly wasn't utterly ludicrous. Gregory P would have been 40 in 1956, whereas her Serene Highness the Princess of Monaco, as Grace Kelly became that year, was a flawless 27. Only thirteen or so years between them.

You might think that's a lot, though I'd beg to differ, but given Grace's history with leading men, what can't disputed is that this age gap is negligible!

Look at her career, rounding things off a bit. In High Noon she was 23 to Gary Cooper's 51, and in Mogambo she was 24 while Clark Gable was 52. In Dial M for Murder, she was 25 to her husband Ray Milland's 49 and her lover Robert Cummings's 44. 25 again in Rear Window, her fiancee Jimmy Stewart was 46, and still 25 in The Country Girl and Green Fire, Bing Crosby and Stewart Granger were 51 and a sprightly 41 respectively. The Bridges of Toko Ri, from 1954 again, saw her 25-year-old self in a reasonably normal relationship with the 36-year-old William Holden, who she'd also been drawn to in The Country Girl, but she returned to form the following year, a ravishing 26-year-old seducing the 51-year-old Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief.

And then there's High Society, in which 41-year old Frank Sinatra vied with 53-year-old Bing Crosby and 45-year-old John Lund to win her 27-year-old hand.

So it seems that of all her leading men, only William Holden was closer to her in age than Gregory Peck, who, as I've sadly noted, never acted with her. The league table of age gaps runs something like this: William Holden a meagre 11, Frank Sinatra 14, Stewart Granger 16, John Lund 18, Robert Cummings 19, Jimmy Stewart 21, Ray Milland 24, Cary Grant 25, Bing Crosby 26, and Gary Cooper and Clark Gable both having a positively indecent 28 years on her peerless self, Clark Gable reigning supreme with a magnificent 28 years, 10 months, and 11 days!

Yes, I know, I've left out The Swan, but I haven't seen it and it doesn't seem to be available on DVD in this neck of the woods. This one looks to have a 42-year-old Alec Guinness perplexingly indifferent to the infinite charms of the Twentieth Century's most elegant woman. I know, it makes no sense.

Still, absurd though the premise of the film may be, I'm rather keen to see it, not least because it features this scene:

I know. Grace Kelly and fencing in one film. Can such perfection really exist in this fallen world?

I suspect the plot is rubbish.

And the Answers to Thursday's Quiz...

Well, that was fun. Thank you for emails - unsurpurprisingly, Dr M did the best of you. The answers, should you be interested, are as follows for the film round:
1. 300, 2. Beauty and the Beast, 3. Breakfast at Tiffanys, 4. Ferris Bueller's Day Off, 5. Ghostbusters, 6. Leon, 7. The Lord of the Rings, 8. Red Dawn, 9. Taxi Driver, and 10. Vertigo.

Meanwhile, for the television round, the answers are:
1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 2. Doctor Who, 3. Firefly, 4. Star Trek, and 5. Batman.

And finally, answers to the bonus round are, as you surely guessed:
1. Coraline, 2. Mirrormask, 3. Neverwhere, and 4. Stardust, with all four having been penned by the one and only Neil Gaiman.

I may just try this again next week, as some light Monday morning entertainment to help you deal with the start of another working week. I'm hoping you'll not have gone straight to the source by then.

Brevity at the Expense of Clarity

It occasionally astonishes me how few films some of my closest friends have seen, though the truth is probably just that I've seen a ludicrous number of good ones; I was very lucky to become an ardent filmgoer at a time when cinema was celebrating its centenary so television and Dublin's cinemas were awash with reissued classics and modern masterpieces.

I tend to forget this, though, which is why I tend to be baffled when my friends look at me blankly when I casually allude to films that mean nothing to them; people have looked at me blankly when confronted with my fifty quotes from a couple of months back. It probably goes without saying that I have a weakness for playing 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon'.*

Still, I can't help but look at things like Dorian Wright's list of Uncomfortable Plot Summaries and think what a marvellous parlour game lies within.

How about challenging people to guess the film, based on the plot description?

1. Gays kill blacks.
2. Peasant girl develops Stockholm Syndrome.
3. Pretty redneck girl fools socialites, flirts with gay gigolo.
4. Amoral narcissist makes world dance for his amusement.
5. Unemployed college professors destroy hotel with nuclear weapons.
6. Hired murderer sleeps with little girl.
7. Midget destroys stolen property.
8. Despite shock-and-awe tactics, a superior occupying force is no match for a tenacious sect of terrorist insurgents.
9. Modern dating proves challenging for working class man.
10. Stalker drives woman to suicide.

And there are more than a hundred more. No, I'm not telling you the answers, not till tomorrow anyway. Work them out for yourselves, or look it up if you can't be bothered thinking.

Actually, not all the plots are from movies; try these TV shows:

1. Teenage serial killer destroys town in fit of semi-religious fervor.
2. Elderly man serially abducts young women.
3. In an analogue of the post-Civil War west, a white man on the losing side bosses around a black woman.
4. Over-sexed officer routinely places crew in danger.
5. Wealthy man assaults the mentally ill.

And then, for a final bonus round, try identifying the following, and figuring out just what -- or who -- they have in common:

1. Misfit discovers she is special person in a secret world just beside our own.
2. Misfit discovers she is special person in secret world just beside our own.
3. Misfit discovers he is special person in secret world just beside our own.
4. Misfit discovers he is special person in secret world just beside our own.

As a hint, they're in alphabetical order and number 3 isn't a film, at least not yet...


*And I'm sure you'll be glad to know that according to the Oracle of Bacon, I have a Bacon Rating of 3.

If Only Hitchcock had made 'A Beautiful Mind'...

The Brother and I watched A Beautiful Mind the other night, with him commenting on how strange it is watching it a second time. He's right: I saw it when it came out in the cinema a few years back, but hadn't seen it since, and it's a very different film when you really just how much of it is simply meant to be John Nash imagining stuff. Basically, ninety per cent of the film is him being mad, with the maddest thing of all being the film's suggestion that you can basically sort out schizophrenia through sheer willpower.

The other thing that's troubling about A Beautiful Mind is how it bears about as little relationship to the reality of the tale it purports to tell as the cinematic John Nash's delusions do to his on-screen life. To say it takes liberties is putting it mildly. Granted, there is indeed a hugely influential mathematician called John Nash who suffers from schizophrenia, was married to a woman called Alicia, and shared in the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, but that's about as far as it goes. The rest of the film is pretty much made up. Yes, even the Princeton pen ceremony, that Dead Poets Society tear-jerking climax of the film. It's not that that never happened to him; it never happens at all.

So as we nattered, dismantling it away to our hearts' content, I mused that Alfred Hitchcock would have had great fun with a story like this, especially given that the film as it stands is hardly ten per cent factual anyway. Why not drop that ten per cent down to three per cent and really have fun?


The pivotal scene in the film, as far as I can see, is the bit when John Nash is giving a lecture and panics when he sees some mysterious men in black standing at the doors to the lecture theatre he's in. He quits his lecture and runs from the platform, scurrying out of the building and running down some stairs, being pursued by an aged Christopher Plummer, who cries out something to the effect of, 'John, John, stop, I'm a psychiatrist, I'm here to help you!' Professor Nash is tackled to the ground and sedated, waking in shackles some time later in Christopher Plummer's opulent office, where he is told that he's a very sick man, that he's been imagining everything, and that even his crucial government work is all an illusion. While he sits trying to take this in, Christopher Plummer goes and tells Mrs Nash the bad news.

So, hand that material over to Alfred Hitchcock, circa 1956, making the film he should surely have made, starring Gregory Peck and Grace Kelly, who never acted together, in what always strikes me as the greatest of the Twentieth Century's cinematic tragedies . . .

Just imagine . . . Gregory Peck is John Nash, a promising young professor of mathematics in Princeton, who's as socially awkward as he is intellectually dazzling. A charming young student of his, Alicia, played by Grace Kelly, asks him out, and witty banter ensues. Around the same time, his old college roommate, played by Cary Grant, shows up and recruits him to do some top secret work for the government. John courts and marries the glamorous Alicia, all the while conducting clandestine work of national importance. One night he's pursued by mysterious armed men, and grows increasingly distraught, but he can't tell his wife what's bothering him. She starts to worry, and wonders to whom she can turn for help . . .

And then, a few weeks later, he gives a prestigious lecture and panics when he notices several men in black stationed around the lecture theatre. He breaks and runs, darting through a fire door, bounding down some stairs, being pursued across the grounds of the college by an aged Claude Rains, who cries something along the lines of, 'John, John, stop, I'm a psychiatrist, I'm here to help you!'

John is bundled to the ground by the men in black, sedated, and wakes in shackles in Claude Rains's opulent office, all leather and mahogany, where Claude Rains patiently explains to him that he's a very sick man, that all his government work is an illusion, that he's imagined it all. And then Claude goes and talks to Alicia, telling her just how sick her husband is, asking her whether she'd ever wondered why she'd never met Cary Grant, and saying that she needs to keep a close eye on John, to check through his files to see what he's writing, and to bring copies of them to Claude so he can help her husband . . .

Because of course, this is just a gaslighting operation, an attempt to convince a sane man and his wife that he's going mad, so that these sinister Cold War era baddies can get their nasty communist hands on military secrets crucial to America's defence!

I know, it sounds far fetched, but it's not much more so than the film as it stands, and in Hitch's hands it'd definitely work.

If only . . .

Student for Four Pounds Fifty Please

I went to see Seven Pounds on Friday with a friend of mine; I'd known nothing at all about the film, but she'd heard good things, and really wanted to see it, so I was content to run with that. I'd heard nothing bad, after all, and don't see enough of her, so I was more than happy to take chance on a film I knew nothing about. It's a funny time to be going to the cinema, really: what with Doubt, Slumdog Millionaire, Milk, The Reader, Revolutionary Road, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon which I have difficulty believing is still on, perhaps Gran Torino, maybe Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and quite possibly The Wrestler if it's still on anywhere, there's simply too much on that's at least worth seeing, if not quite worth going to see. And of course, I'm more broke now than I've ever been in my life, so most of these films will just pass me by.

But anyway, off we went to see the film, since that'd been my friend's choice and I had no objections. It's rare I'm so trusting. Normally I'd scour online and then reply by saying something like Seven Pounds? The film the Guardian gave a mere one star to, calling it 'supremely annoying'? The film the Times likewise graced with one star, calling it 'a profoundly irritating mystery about a profoundly silly man'. I've never seen either paper give anything one star! And then there was the New York Times which wondered whether the film was 'among the most transcendently, eye-poppingly, call-your-friend-ranting-in-the-middle-of-the-night-just-to-go-over-it-one-more-time crazily awful motion pictures ever made'.

Surprisingly, you might think, despite this critical damnation, I have to say that my friend and I were evidently among the 76% of IMDB voters who didn't hate the film, rather than the 74% of critics who did, according to Rotten Tomatoes. I quite liked it, in fact. Sure, it was schmaltzy, and Will Smith seemed to spend the film wearing a permanent grimace, and I had serious doubts about the manner in which he was effectively playing God with people's lives, but I found it both engaging and thought-provoking, thought that Rosario Dawson was excellent in it, and felt that it was extremely well scored. Muse's version of 'Feeling Good' is a cracker, after all, and Bird York's 'Have No Fear' is heartwrenching. On top of that there's the simple fact that I'm a sucker for redemption stories - however flawed.

Given the redemption theme, and the manner by which that redemption is effected at the climax of the film, I'm still trying to figure out if the film's Catholic imagery helped or hindered it. It certainly got me thinking, it must be said, though there are people out there who think I do that too much anyway. . .

On getting home I decided to have a gander online to find out where the film's title came from, and it seems that it's a play on the pound of flesh demanded as repayment in The Merchant of Venice. Seven debts, seven pounds - that's the thinking.

And it was while I was looking that up that I discovered that a contract signed under a pseudonym is not legally valid, that corneas are the only parts of eyes that can be transplanted and that irises most certainly can't, and that box jellyfish poison is a neurotoxin that spreads through the entire body rendering every organ in the body unsuitable for donation. I think I understand now why the critics reckoned the film didn't make sense.

On the other hand, it's a powerful advert for safe driving, especially if it's preceded by a disturbing advert making a similar point. Ah, those canny nightmare-inducing advertising types.

Fifty Quotes

The other week I did one of those meme things on Facebook, where I posted fifteen quotes I liked a lot from fifteen films I liked a lot, to see if people could identify them. Amazingly -- to me at any rate -- nobody recognised lines from Seven Samurai, Rear Window, The Searchers, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and Cinema Paradiso.

This tells me that my friends don't really know films, or that they don't know me, or that they can't be bothered with meme nonsense of this sort. I'm hoping for the latter.

While thinking of my fifteen films and looking up the relevant memorable lines on IMDB, I couldn't help but think of how many films I wanted to quote from. In an ideal world, aside from the fifteen films I chose, I'd have picked fifty others for people to try to spot. Mind, I reckon people would have gotten confused.

Still, if you're bored, have fun looking at these and trying to see you if you recognise any of the lines. You know the way it works. Do it from memory or deduction or intuition -- don't go looking for answers online! I'll post them in a couple of weeks anyway. Enjoy...

1.
"Well, what do you think of it?"
"Well, the grammar is appalling. On the first page you've doubled two negatives, split an infinitive and missed out three commas.
Negatives, infinitives, commas... he prattles punctuation while France is in agony!"

2.
"Reckon I'm right popular. You a bounty hunter?"
"A man's got to do something for a living these days."
"Dyin' ain't much of a living, boy."

3.
"Don't tell me, it's a flat tire."
"I can't understand it. This car hasn't given me a lick of trouble in nearly 6 hours."

4.
"Have you ever seen any of your victims?"
"You know, I never feel comfortable on these sort of things. Victims? Don't be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax - the only way you can save money nowadays."

5.
"Why not be a teacher? You'd be a fine teacher; perhaps a great one."
"If I was, who would know it?"
"You; your pupils; your friends; God. Not a bad public, that."

6.
"Now listen to me you benighted muckers. We're going to teach you soldiering. The world's noblest profession. When we're done with you, you'll be able to slaughter your enemies like civilized men."

7.
"I saw a strange thing today. Some rebels were being arrested. One of them pulled the pin on a grenade. He took himself and the captain of the command with him. Now, soldiers are paid to fight; the rebels aren't."
"What does that tell you?"
"It means they could win."

8.
"I have to leave you now. I'm going to that corner there and turn. You must stay in the car and drive away. Promise not to watch me go beyond the corner. Just drive away and leave me as I leave you."
"All right."
"I don't know how to say goodbye. I can't think of any words."
"Don't try."

9.
"Do you like our owl?"
"It's artificial?"
"Of course it is."
"Must be expensive."
"Very."

10.
"Okay, let's handle this thing logically. What exactly have you sworn?"
"I have sworn with my life's blood, none shall pass this way without my permission!"
"Well... May we have your permission?"
"Well I, uh... I... that is, uh... hm... Yes?"

11.
"The moment I meet an attractive woman, I have to start pretending I have no desire to make love to her."
"What makes you think you have to conceal it?"
"She might find the idea objectionable."
"Then again, she might not."

12.
"Why Albania?"
"Why not?"
"What have they done to us?"
"What have they done FOR us? What do you know about them?"
"Nothing."
"See? They keep to themselves. Shifty. Untrustable."

13.
"Do you think I'm weird?"
"Definitely."
"No man, seriously. Am I weird?"
"Yeah, but so what? Everybody's weird."

14.
"It's very pretty."
"Yeah, I've been fooling around with it for a few months."
"It's a bit of a departure from what you normally play."
"It's part of a trilogy, a musical trilogy I'm working on in D minor which is the saddest of all keys, I find. People weep instantly when they hear it, and I don't know why."
"It's very nice."
"You know, just simple lines intertwining, you know, very much like - I'm really influenced by Mozart and Bach, and it's sort of in between those, really. It's like a Mach piece, really. It's sort of..."
"What do you call this?"
"Well, this piece is called 'Lick My Love Pump'."

15.
"Do you think the Welsh can do better than that, Owen?"
"Well, they've got a very good bass section, mind, but no top tenors, that's for sure."

16.
"I can put you in Queens on the night of the hijacking."
"Really? I live in Queens, did you put that together yourself, Einstein? Got a team of monkeys working around the clock on this?"

17.
"Sit down. What do you see here?"
"Bunkers, sir."
"What's in them?"
"Stuff they stole from Kuwait."
"Bullshit. I'm talking about millions in Kuwaiti bullion."
"You mean them little cubes you put in hot water to make soup?"
"No, not the little cubes you put in hot water to make soup."

18.
"What do I want? I'll tell you what I want! I want Ken Railings to walk in here right now, and say 'Pam Shortt's broken both her legs, and I wanna dance with YOU!' "
"Pam Shortt's broken both her legs, and I wanna dance with you."
"That was unexpected."

19.
"The Carthaginians defending the city were attacked by three Roman legions. The Carthaginians were proud and brave but they couldn't hold. They were massacred. Arab women stripped them of their tunics and their swords and lances. The soldiers lay naked in the sun. Two thousand years ago. I was here."

20.
"You've just got to tell them."
"That we lost Apollo 11?"
"Well, I wouldn't say that first."
"What would you say first?"
"How about 'hey, you'll never guess what happened...'"

21.
"No! I tell you no! I won't have you bringing some young girl in for supper! By candlelight, I suppose, in the cheap, erotic fashion of young men with cheap, erotic minds!"
"Mother, please...!"
"And then what? After supper? Music? Whispers?"
"Mother, she's just a stranger. She's hungry, and it's raining out!"
"'Mother, she's just a stranger'! As if men don't desire strangers! As if... ohh, I refuse to speak of disgusting things, because they disgust me! You understand, boy? Go on, go tell her she'll not be appeasing her ugly appetite with MY food... or my son! Or do I have tell her because you don't have the guts! Huh, boy? You have the guts, boy?"

22.
"You are in for a surprise."
"Am I?"
"Havin' a kid changes everything. There's burping, the midnight feeding, and the changing."
"You do any of that?"
"No. But I hear it's terrible. Then you spend years trying to corrupt and mislead this child, fill his head with nonsense, and still it turns out perfectly fine."
"You think I'm up for it?"
"You learned from the best."

23.
"Temper, temper. If I wanted nagging, I'd go back with my wife. I'm out. Who wants food?"
"What do you got?"
"I got, uh, brown sandwiches and, uh, green sandwiches. Which one do you want?"
"What's the green?"
"It's either very new cheese or very old meat."
"I'll take the brown."

24.
"What do you do for recreation?"
"Oh, the usual. I bowl. Drive around. The occasional acid flashback."

25.
"And you know, when you think about it, that's exactly what happens to us when we're born. We're dropped down a random chimney and we have to get on with the strangers we find there. Typical Chesterton there to describe a chimney as a kind of uterus."

26.
"Why do you doubt your senses?"
"Because a little thing can effect them. A slight disorder of the stomach can make them cheat. You may be a bit of undigested beef, a blob of mustard, a crumb of cheese. Yes. There's more gravy than of grave about you."
"More gravy than of grave?"
"What a terrible pun. Where'd you get those jokes?"
"Leave comedy to the bears, Ebenezer."

27.
"You claim you love her."
"I do love her!"
"Can you prove it?"
"Well give me time, sir. Fifty years will do."
"But can you prove it?"
"Well, can a starving man prove he's hungry except by eating?"
"Would you die for her?"
"I would, but, er, I'd rather live."

28.
"My mum always said: 'It's a dog-eat-dog world, son. You get them before they get you. Eat your greens. Stop embarrassing me in front of the neighbors. Maybe it would best if you leave home and never come back!' She wasn't even my real mum. She bought me from a man."

29.
"Sounds like a subdural hematoma to me."
"Oh, it does, does it? Well, it's not your job to diagnose."
"But I thought..."
"You thought, you thought. Just go. Three years of nursery school and you think you know it all. Well, you're still wet behind the ears. It's not a subdural hematoma. It's epidural. Ha."

30.
"But surely you must have some suspicion. Who work the heist rackets in this territory?"
"Beg your pardon, lady?"
"Oh really! I can't make myself much plainer. Which hoodlums around here specialize in toby jobs?"

31.
"Shall we let bygones be bygones?"
"Of course, mon ami. I told you she would break the spell!"
"I beg your pardon, old friend, but I believe I told you."
"No, you didn't. I told you!"
"You most certainly did not, you pompous, paraffin-headed peabrain!"
"En garde, you... you overgrown pocket watch!"

32.
"This will take brains, not brawn."
"You better believe it, and I'm loaded with both."

33.
"Judgment of any system, or a priori relationship or phenomenon exists in an irrational, or metaphysical, or at least epistemological contradiction to an abstract empirical concept such as being, or to be, or to occur in the thing itself, or of the thing itself."
"Yes, I've said that many times."

34.
"If I'm gonna front the band, I like the sound of 'Deco.'"
"Deco the bus conductor. Is that 'top-Deco' or 'bottom-Deco'?"

35.
"Do you eat oysters?"
"When I have them, master."
"Do you eat snails?"
"No, master."
"Do you consider the eating of oysters to be moral and the eating of snails to be immoral?"
"No, master."
"Of course not. It is all a matter of taste, isn't it?"
"Yes, master."
"And taste is not the same as appetite, and therefore not a question of morals."
"It could be argued so, master."
"My robe, Antoninus. My taste includes both snails and oysters."

36.
"Sir, have you read Don Quixote?"
"I've practically lived it!"

37.
"Why if I had half a chance, I could make an entire movie using this stock footage. The story opens on these mysterious explosions. Nobody knows what's causing them, but it's upsetting all the buffalo. So, the military are called in to solve the mystery."
"You forgot the octopus."
"No, no, I'm saving that for my big underwater climax."

38.
"You're not afraid?"
"I wonder what I'd do in their place. The same thing."
"You'd throw stones?"
"In their place? Of course. And that goes for everyone I judged. Given their lives, I would steal, I'd kill, I'd lie. Of course I would. All that because I wasn't in their shoes, but mine."

39.
"I think the important thing is not to make it look like we're panicking."
"See, and I think the important thing is actually not to BE panicking."

40.
"Couldn't you like me, just me the way I am? When we first started out, it was so good; w-we had fun. And... and then you started in on the clothes. Well, I'll wear the darn clothes if you want me to, if, if you'll just, just like me."
"The color of your hair..."
"Oh, no!"
"Judy, please, it can't matter to you."

41.
"Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing. But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless distinguishable, postwar environments: one where you got twenty million people killed, and the other where you got a hundred and fifty million people killed."
"You're talking about mass murder, General, not war!"
"Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks."

42.
"I sure do miss my bed."
"You said that last night."
"No, last night I said I missed my wife, tonight I just miss my goddamn bed."

43.
"I don't like your manners."
"And I'm not crazy about yours. I didn't ask to see you. I don't mind if you don't like my manners, I don't like them myself. They are pretty bad. I grieve over them on long winter evenings. I don't mind your ritzing me drinking your lunch out of a bottle. But don't waste your time trying to cross-examine me."

44.
"Well, the little guy was kinda funny-lookin'."
"In what way?"
"I dunno... just funny-lookin'."
"Can you be any more specific?"
"I couldn't really say... He wasn't circumcised."

45.
"This place is uninhabitable."
"Give it a chance. It's got to warm up."
"Warm up? We may as well sit round this cigarette. This is ridiculous. We'll be found dead in here next spring."

46.
"I had to kill him."
"Oh, yeah. He's as dead as Julius Caesar... Would you rather it was you?"
"No, I would not."
"Well, then, you've done your job. Go home and sleep well tonight."

47.
"Verewolf!"
"Werewolf?"
"There."
"What?"
"There, wolf. There, castle."
"Why are you talking that way?"
"I thought you wanted to."
"No, I don't want to."
"Suit yourself. I'm easy."

48.
"I can't make out whether you're bloody bad-mannered or just half-witted."
"I have the same problem, sir."


49.
"Here, you look like a very happy couple, um, are you?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah? So, so, how do you account for it?"
"Uh, I'm very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say."
"And I'm exactly the same way."
"I see. Wow. That's very interesting. So you've managed to work out something?"

50.
"Lieutenant, in the next 15 minutes we have to create enough confusion to get out of here alive."
"Major, right now you got me about as confused as I ever hope to be."

Yeah, I know, but it should keep you thinking for a while, anyway.

Bond Thwarts the Bad Guy's plans for Global Domination...

So it seems that Devil May Care, the new James Bond novel by Sebastian Faulks, was officially launched yesterday at the expense of the British taxpayer, much to the frustration of the Daily Mail.

Tuuli Shipster, the model whose shapely form adorns the book's cover, brought seven copies of the book from the printers in a samsonite case, carrying the case down the Thames in a Pacific 24, a Rigid Inflatable-hulled speedboat, escorted by a couple of Lynx helicopters. Rendezvousing with the HMS Exeter at the Pool of London, she carried on down the Thames aboard the Exeter, still escorted by the Lynx helicopters, finally brought ashore, and then escorted to Waterstone's Piccadilly by a cavalcade of Bentleys.

Bond supposedly served as an intelligence officer on some incarnation of the HMS Exeter, so I suppose it must have seemed fitting to someone that such a crucial role in this publicity stunt should have been played by the current HMS Exeter, a Type 42 destroyer that served in the Falklands War and which must surely be due for decommissioning any day now, considering that most British ships have a service span of twenty-five years or so.

The Mail is up in arms because, of course, they say that this was at taxpayers' expense, though I'm sure the publishers must have coughed up something. Still, though, you have to wonder whether the Royal Navy might have better things to be doing with its time. Mind, it is recruiting season, isn't it . . .

My favourite part of this whole charade, though, is the bit where the Mail reports that 'The book, which coincides with the 100th anniversary of the birth of Bond creator Ian Fleming, is published today and the details of the plot have been kept secret. All that has been revealed is that the story is set in 1967 during the Cold War and sees 007 travelling to London, Paris and the Middle East.'

The plot has been kept secret? A 007 plot has been kept secret? Why? In case people might guess what it's about, and have their fun spoiled? They're all the same!

Years ago, in UCD, I was amused to see how Filmsoc had advertised their 'Bond Week'. Beneath every film's title was a summary of the plot, and all the plots were identical: 'Bond thwarts the bad guy's plans for global domination and shags loads of chicks.' Well, almost all. Goldeneye tried to present a more sensitive take on Her Majesty's pet thug, and so was described with the rather disappointing 'Bond thwarts the bad guy's plans for global domination, and shags just one chick.'

Mind, it was Izabella Scorupco . . .

Caped Crusaders and Dark Knights

I was chatting away last night, and the Batman came up, as he has a habit of so doing, even when I'm not passing on recently garnered lore about his auburn adviser.

'I'm going back tomorrow,' said my friend, 'and we're watching Batman.'
'The old one,' I asked, 'with the bat shark-repellant? Or Christopher Bale being moody? Or in between?'
'Tim Burton? No, it's the Adam West bat shark-repellant. Why re-make? We've just got it on DVD.'
'It's a fine film,' I grinned, 'though I've liked Batman in most cinematic incarnations, other than Val Kilmer and George Clooney. They were wrong. Oh! Speaking of Batman -- have I ever told you about Superdickery?'
'Nope.'
Well brace yourself, for I am about to. This alone almost explains it all --'

'Superdickery started by showing old comic panels and covers where Superman was being a dick,' I explained. 'Other galleries have been added. This gallery is, I think, the most troubling.'

'Hehehe,' giggled my friend, 'Whoever decided he would be a good person to take care of Robin?'
'D'you know,' I remarked, 'you're not the first person who's wondered that.'

Lessons in Loyalty

There's a marvellous interview with Roy Keane in today's Irish Times, conducted by Tom Humphries, who I tend not to think of as one of Ireland's best sports journalists, but rather as one of Ireland's best journalists, and one who just happens to write about sport. He has quite a history with Keane, of course, having conducted the interview that precipitated the whole Homeric Saipan affair -- thus ultimately inspiring I, Keano -- and seems to be rather good at getting Keane to open up.

I never liked Keane as a player -- for all his talent and industry, I felt he was basically a thug. Sure, when he was in green he was our thug, but a thug nonetheless. As a manager though, I keep being impressed, being struck by his intelligence, his freshness, his openness, and indeed his humility. This little detail is very telling.

Things are changing with him anyway. Sunderland has infected him. For instance he pays some attention now to the wisdom of crowds. A few weeks ago against Everton in the Black Cats' own backyard he heard a voice behind him having a pop. He swivelled around and caught the end of the it. "Playing for 75 minutes with one up front and it isn't effin working ya . . ."

His face darkened and then.

"Do you know what? He was spot on. We had five in the middle and one up front and it wasn't working. It's like that. He was right. I don't always agree but a lot of time fans are spot on. Sometimes we get nasty letters. Sue in the office, well I don't think she shows me many, just the odd one when she thinks I should know what is going on. She gave me one last week. This man was having a go at the way we played (pause). So I rang him up."

At this point he allows a moment for you to picture the stricken features of the poor soul who hastily committed his frustrations to the vellum and sent them off confident perhaps that Sue in the office would either include the epistle in the bundle for the days shredding or hand it over in a sheaf heavy with disgruntlement. And here now was Roy Keane on the other end of the telephone. The thump, thump, thump of that vein in his temple audible down the line.

And?

"Ah, we had a chat. I said to him I knew what he was saying but it isn't time yet. In a few years hopefully we will have five maybe six players capable of getting forward but for now we have to survive. We need to play the way we do to stay in the division. Not to be a yo-yo club."

Patience is a virtue, after all, and realism matters. It's the kind of thing I wish legions of posters on Toffeeweb would keep in mind, that construction schedules for eternal cities are perhaps of their nature not so speedy as we might wish. It's interesting to see him cast a cold eye on loyalty in professional sport, too.

United. It's a surprise to hear him say he feels no affinity with any of his former professional clubs. Everything is changing though. He goes to clubs now as a manager where he remembers being booed, and fighting tooth and nail with the locals and hating the sight of their jerseys and they are wonderfully courteous and friendly to him. Good people. Arsenal couldn't be more decent. Arsene Wenger and Pat Rice. Rafa. Great. David Moyes. Excellent. He spent some time with Martin O'Neill after the Villa game and he could have sat listening to him all night. Everywhere he goes he soaks things up, looks for evidence of values and the right way to do things.

And affinity? It is with Rockmount AFC. Where he was made. The lads come over regularly. A couple of his old mates manage the team now and they talk about the old days and management. They were all over for the Villa game. Len Downey and Damien Martin are coming over for Middlesbrough.

The older he gets and the more he sees, the greater his appreciation of the innocence and the loyalties he saw at Rockmount. He went to Rockmount when he was eight and stayed till he was 16 or 17. That he believes now is what football is all about . He has seen the business side of the game and people suddenly begrudging you when you cease to be of use.

It still hurts. Forest tried to milk him for money he was owed when he was sold to Manchester United. The postscript to his playing career at Celtic was a mistake he feels. United still feel the sting of his venom. Their betrayal still hurts.

Having statements ready like United when you have served a certain amount of time for them and they don't even get the years you were there right in the statement. You think "Ah well, there you go".

"The day I left United, in hindsight, I should have stopped playing really. I lost the love of the game that Friday morning. I thought football is cruel, life is cruel. It takes two to tango also. I am fully responsible for my own actions but some things are wrong. I left on a Friday and they told me certain things before I left that day. I was told the following week I couldn't sign for another club. I had been led to believe I could. There were certain things I was told at certain meetings that were basic lies.

"That was part of the exit plans, I am convinced. Especially with my pride, I wasn't going to accept that. They had a statement prepared and they were thanking me for 11 and a half years of service. I had to remind the manager and (Manchester United chief executive) David Gill I had been there 12 and a half years. I think that might have been part of the plan. Then financial stuff was mentioned. I was thinking, my God. I am happy to leave. I won't go down that road. A week later they announced £70 or £80 million profit after telling me I hadn't played for six weeks and so they weren't prepared to do this and that. I told David Gill I had broken my foot playing for Manchester United against Liverpool. Pretty sad.

"I look back and think I should have said this and I should have said that. It is like Mick McCarthy at the World Cup. I always think when he said if you don't have respect for me you can't play for me, I should have said to him what I felt. I am not playing for you I am playing for Ireland. It is easy to be wise afterwards."

He talks for a long time about loyalty. Its meaning in his life. United hurts and Saipan hurts. They were times when he expected some loyalty back but he realises now when you outlive your usefulness to some people loyalty is too much to expect.

It's a telling point, really: loyalty to clubs is for fans, more than anything. Players can be fans and so too can owners, but ultimately players tend to play for money, for glory, and for fun; they're mercenaries, and owners are businessmen or moneylaunderers. But loyalty to teams? That's a fans' preserve.


I can't help wondering, when I think of this, whether fidelity in sport is related to fidelity in life; is it the case that people who are loyal in one thing are more likely to be loyal in other things? Are people who stick by teams through bad patches the kind of people who'll stick by friends and lovers through hard times? That's the real test: celebrating success is easy; it's enduring failure that's hard.

Chesterton wrote a fine essay on Kipling once, where he remarked that Kipling, ultimately, was a man who understood nothing of patriotism, as he lacked the faculty of absolutely attaching himself to any cause or community.

He admires England, but he does not love her; for we admire things with reasons, but love them without reasons. He admires England because she is strong, not because she is English.

It's when success ebbs away that the true measure of the sports fan is shown. Whether this applies to other aspects of life is a different matter. Are Everton supporters less likely to cheat on their spouses than Chelsea ones, say? I reckon there'd be a Sociology PhD in that if someone wanted to give it a shot - Marital Infidelity and Football Fanaticism: A Study in Correspondence.


Just to wrap up, regarding the Keane interview, it's good to see that he's not quite as dour and earnest as he can sometimes seem.

Last year going for promotion everyone was getting uptight and the pressure was starting to tell. They were playing Wolves at home, a big game on the verge of the play-offs. They players were called in to their pre-game video analysis of Wolves. Instead they got that wonderful segment of Ken Loach's 1969 movie Kes where Brian Glover plays a teacher with a Bobby Charlton fixation. They just had a good laugh together. They never mentioned Wolves once. Then they went out and won.

You've not seen it? No, well, it'd been years since I did too, but don't worry, I've dug it out just for you. The Brother reckons it's one of the best passages in any film ever. Enjoy.

'You; your pupils; your friends; God. Not a bad public, that..'

I find it very peculiar that, in drawing up its list of what its members regarded as the top movie heroes of all time, the American Film Institute somehow overlooked St Thomas More, as unforgettably played in A Man for All Seasons by Paul Scofield, who died on Wednesday.

Too easily dismissed as 'dull but worthy', A Man for All Seasons is genuinely worthy, but it's anything but dull. On the contrary, it's as compelling a study of heroic integrity as has ever been committed to celluloid, even more inspiring than Atticus Finch and Will Kane by virtue of being true.

Steven Greydanus sums it up well:

A Man for All Seasons is the story of a man who knows who he is. The 1966 film, which won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor, is brilliant and compelling, steely with conviction, luminous with genuine wisdom and wit. The screenplay, well adapted by Robert Bolt from his own stage play, is fiercely intelligent, deeply affecting, resonant with verbal beauty and grace. Scofield, who for years starred in the stage play before making the film, gives an effortlessly rich and layered performance as Sir Thomas More, saint and martyr, the man whose determined silence spoke more forcefully than words, and who then spoke even more forcefully by breaking it.

The film's superbly acted throughout, with Orson Welles suitably imperious as Cardinal Wolsey, Nigel Davenport hilarious as the Duke of Norfolk, and Wendy Hiller stubbornly defiant as More's wife Alice. John Hurt steals many a scene as Richard Rich, a gifted but vulnerable and vain young man who loses his soul for worldly success, having ignored More's early advice that she should put himself out of the way of temptation.

'Why not be a teacher?' More asks him, 'You'd be a fine teacher; perhaps a great one.'
'If I was, who would know it? '
'You; your pupils; your friends; God. Not a bad public, that.'

Rich's rise in the world is marvellously -- if none too subtly -- conveyed in his increasingly opulent garb, but his face never loses the worried expression we first see upon it, and if anything he wears an increasingly hunted look. It seems apt that the film's last words refer to his fate here on earth.

I do not know if this is indeed -- as Greydanus opines -- the most profound cinematic depiction of the life of any saint, though I'd not be surprised if it were. Certainly, Greydanus is right to call it a great film, and that's due in no small part to Scofield's delicate yet powerful performance through exchanges like this, after More has allowed the untrustworthy Rich to leave his home unmolested, much to the horror of More's family who insist that he arrest him.

Sir Thomas More: And go he should, why if he were the Devil himself, until he broke the law!
William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

There are lessons there.