PUBLIC TRANSPORT: WORDS WRITTEN LATE ONE EVENING WHILE DRUNK

Public transport, specifically the bus service. Everyone knows what a vile and overpriced thing it is. Buses stop at inconvenient places, at inconvenient times, and infrequently. Everyone knows this is true.

(um, sorry I did know what I was going to say next but I'm drunk and I've forgotten. why am I drunk? is this normal for me? questions, questions, questions.)

I arrived home about 9.15pm and the first thing I did was clean up cat and kitten poo. (See my other blog: http://catrescuesunderland.blogspot.co.uk/  for details.)  Then I put the kettle on, heaped coffee into a mug, rebooted my computer and watched Holby City on BBC Iplayer. Fell asleep somewhere over halfway through, woke up for the last five minutes and realised I'd never made my coffee.. 

Went to the pub to meet Barry. I intended to get there a little earlier as he's always waiting for me. The vagaries of public transport, you understand. But I didn't; get there earlier that is, arriving at 6.58pm. And he wasn't there. The pub was crowded as Sunderland were playing an evening match at home. I sat down at a table in the meals section -only two were unoccupied- and rang his home number which proved to be engaged. Okay, went to the bar with the intention of getting a drink but Barry had just arrived so I let him get his first. He was late because the buses went over the bridge to the north side of Sunderland where the Stadium of Light is located and where Barry lives. They just don't seem to come back, hence him being late.

So: Barry seated, I bought a half pint of Ruddles and we talked for a little while as the pub gradually emptied. My drink finished, I went back to the bar, ordered our meals (including included glass of wine -it was grill night, we take turns paying for the meal), and a bottle of house red (for me; Barry doesn't drink much these days, partly because of a medical condition; I do because I like cheap Australian plonk and the house red is Hardy's Shiraz at £5.98 a bottle).

A couple of minutes shy of 9.00pm I put the bottle of house red (containing one decent glass full which I'm drinking now -11.02pm) and we went outside to wait for my bus.

Which brings me back to the point. Sunderland City council have been changing the flow of traffic in the city centre changing established one way systems into two way. The effect on me has been to enable me to walk out of the side door of the pub (a few feet from where we sit) to the bus stop outside where, after 6.00pm I can get a bus every fifteen minutes (during the day it's more frequent) to within (at most) three minutes walking distance of my house. 

Isn't public transport just awful?

Post Script.

Reading this in the cold light of day tells me one thing: Never write a blog post late in the evening while under the influence of an excess of alcohol. 

I should delete it but I won't, instead leaving it here as a salutary reminder in case I'm ever tempted to do it again. My apologies to those who wasted a  minute or two of their lives reading it.

Normal service will be resumed.

BOOK REVIEW: THE CUCKOO'S CALLING by ROBERT GALBRAITH (2013)

Yes, I confess that I was one of the many thousands of suckers who, on learning that an obscure novice crime writer who had written a decent first novel was actually none other than the legend in her own lifetime J. K. Rowling, went out and ordered it. Alas not quickly enough to get a last copy of the first edition but instead the reprint which acknowledged the author's true identity.

And now I've read it. 

And if anyone comes up to me and says that Rowling is a crap writer who got lucky I will be tempted to punch them in their stupid face. This novel proves beyond all doubt that Joanne Rowling is a very good writer who got lucky. I bought her previous post-Potter novel but it's sitting on the shelf albeit not for much longer than it takes to write this review.

I don't really want to regurgitate a plot summary which you can easily find elsewhere (like Amazon) so I won't. I'll tell you what Rowling does instead. Her characters are vivid and interesting and if at first sometimes appearing as stereotypes are gradually revealed as having hidden depths and as fully believable people. The protagonist in particular is a vividly realised creation. Her descriptive abilities are superb as she creates a particular milieu and involves the reader in it. Rowling writes in a very dense style by crime novel standards -a fast and racy read this isn't- but her prose is so good that you can't stop reading.

This has to be one of the best crime novels of the year and it's definitely one of the best I've read in some considerable time. Another in the series is completed for publication next year and I hope there'll be more after that.

DVD REVIEWS: JACK REACHER (2012), OBLIVION (2013)

(And the connection between the two is...?)

Actually, I'm pissed off with Jack Reacher. Not because it's a bad film but because the day after I'd ordered it from Amazon Marketplace about a week ago I learned that it was to be shown on Sky Movies tonight.

And there's the question: can Tom Cruise convincingly play a character who, in the books, is about a foot taller? I'll answer that with this question: Can six foot something Hugh Jackman convincingly play Wolverine who, in the comics, is only five feet three inches tall? The answer to both questions is: that it doesn't matter because both of them are very good actors who are skilled at playing physical roles. So, yes, Cruise can play a character who is physically very tough. Partly because, as the extras in Oblivion show, he is very physically fit.

The film itself is a very entertaining thriller with a good cast and not much more needs to be said. Cruise has a good eye for a good action movie -check out the Mission Impossibles for further proof. It may not be one of his best films but it is an enjoyable time passer which I wish I'd seen on Sky Movies.

Oblivion is a different kettle of fish. As regular readers are aware I'm a bit of a science fiction buff. Recently I bought a book called Sci-Fi Movie Freak. Despite the title, the reviews were generally considered and thoughtful rather than gosh-wow. However, out of over a hundred entries there were only about five I hadn't seen which, for different reasons, I hadn't wanted to see. Mind you, there were more than that in the book that I wish I hadn't seen.

Unlike the recent heavily panned Will Smith & Son SF flick which I will avoid like the plague (unless it's on Sky Movies and I'm bored), Oblivion got mixed reviews generally in the well done but feels like its been done before and now having seen it those comments aren't entirely inaccurate. There are images which could have come from films like Planet of the Apes and there's a plot device which did come from Independence Day. Morgan Freeman is featured on the DVD cover along with Cruise when his screentime is low, especially compared to Andrea Riseborough and Olga Kurylenko. 

If you can ignore the borrowings which, with the exception of the dumb one from Independence Day, is easy enough to do, you get quite a nice little movie which I mostly enjoyed. Earth has been devastated following an alien invasion which the humans won but ended up moving to Titan; Cruise and Riseborough (who live in a beautiful house in the sky) are an efficient team repairing drones which monitor massive machines that convert sea water to energy which is transferred to Titan (eh?) and attack the surviving aliens on the surface; our two protagonists have been memory-wiped as to concentrate on their mission (something fishy there); Cruise has dreams of being in a New York which was destroyed before he was born (like, really really fishy); and then things start to go wrong which you can find out for yourself as I'm not going to spoil it.

It's extremely well made with terrific and convincing special effects. The sky house and Cruise's sort of copter are beautiful pieces of design which contrast admirably with the shattered earth below. The various convolutions of said shattered Earth I find as convincing as though in the just finished TV series Defiance. Though I should add that the scenes shot in Iceland are magnificent which made it worth getting the blu-ray. The three leads (and I'm not counting an overacting Freeman) are all good. Throw in a decent making off and deleted scenes and I can give a considered judgment of not bad at all.

CULT DVD: FORBIDDEN ZONE (1982, BLU-RAY)

This is what you get when a band called The Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo make a film.

Danny Elfman & friends

Oingo Boingo were a surrealist theatrical avant-garde 30's jazz-blues revivalists. The film was produced, directed and co-written by their then-leader Richard Elfman (brother of soon to be famous film music composer and also key member of the band who also scored and appeared in the film) Danny Elfman. Starring Herve Villechaize as the King of the 6th Dimension and Susan Tyrell as his wife (who had been until not that long since his actual wife), Richard Elfman's newly acquired French wife dancer Marie-Pascal as Frenchy, and most of the members of the band. Sets are made from paper and cardboard and make no attempt to hide it. The loose plot concerns the King wanting Frenchy to be his new Queen and his old one trying to stop it but that's often just an excuse for musical numbers as this is really a musical (sort of). There is some miming to old songs but most of it is new albeit in old styles.

Frenchy, speaking with a French accent

Most people will probably run away screaming after a few minutes (if they last that long) but give it a chance and you could well warm to this bizarre theatrical piece of musical-comedy surrealism. If you can accept the weirdness of its world it really is actually quite charming.

There's an excellent making of in which Richard Elfman interviews key members of the film including his brother, his ex-wife, and Susan Tyrell who says something so hilarious and so outrageous your jaw will bounce off the floor. Discussing her relationship with Villechaize, she says casually but no doubt very deliberately, "I always wanted to fuck a dwarf."

Really, you've got to see it to believe it.

Note.

Monochrome and colour versions are also on the DVD. I watched the latter.

This review is the same as appeared on Amazon, minus grammatical errors and spelling mistakes,  but with one added sentence. Can you guess what it is?

Also I forgot to use the phrase which would clearly mark me as an intellectual: Theatre of the Absurd. I'd write it in French (with a French accent) but don't want to sound pretentious.

Another Note.

The movie has been accused by simple minded people of being racist* and anti-semitic. Which amused the Jewish director Richard Elfman.

* In part it's also a tribute to black musicians like Cab Calloway. One of the extras includes a clip of the band with Danny Elfman (wearing his devil's horns) playing trumpet and singing St. Louis Blues.

Money was so tight that many of the cast, including Villechaize, would help with building and painting the sets.

Okay, I'm done now.

No I'm not. Forgot to mention that despite the cover stating the rating of the DVD is 18, on release it was only 15.

TECHNOLOGY: ME AND MY NEW IPAD, A PRELIMINARY REPORT

Every Wednesday morning I go to Starbucks (Americano grande, steamed milk, in, please) to meet my three, retired like me, friends from Sunderland City Library. Quite often we'd see people at other tables with, at first (we've been doing this for five years now), their laptops but more recently their cool Ipads. "I'm going to get one of those," I'd say from time to time, "so I could come in here and sit and look cool." But I was only joking, being quite happy with my desktopfor all my computing needs. But desktops get old and things stop working or working as well as they should and so, when mine frequently started only letting me access some websites in HTML and limiting what I could do on them, I got irritated and one evening a couple of weeks ago I ordered an Ipad 2 16GB from Amazon. In the morning, after reading a bit more about it, I cancelled that order and replaced it with the latest model the Ipad 4 Retina 32GB Wifi Black as it only cost about hundred quid more.

Shiny!

Then I had to learn how to use it which proved harder than I expected, partly because I didn't realise my ITunes ID was the same as my email address and I spent hours going round in circles unnecessarily changing my password numerous times. One thing I hadn't really thought about was that this is an Apple machine and I've been working on Windows for nearly 20 years which involved and involves quite a bit readjustment on my part.

I then had to get to grip with apps which again involved entering my email address and password as the Ipad seemed incapable of remembering it. Even then, when I'd downloaded an app for a site I was familiar with (like BBC News Online) it didn't work the way I was familiar with. 

Luckily the day after it arrived a couple came to pick up a kitten which they'd gotten from me but then went on holiday for a couple of weeks while I looked after it again. Colin has had Ipad for a while and although they couldn't say very long he did give me some useful tips so that I could at least use the camera and even do video on it and the results were very good (in terms of technical quality, as evidence of my own photographic skills -meh).

I downloaded Amazon's Kindle app which in turn downloaded from the Cloud a few books I'd bought over a year ago. Today I bought a couple of books about horror movies which were much cheaper as Kindle editions than print. The size of the Ipad screen (9.7inches) makes reading ebooks better than on the much smaller Kindle reader itself. I haven't figured out how to bookmark pages yet but I'm sure I shall.

I do quite like sitting on my settee watching trailers and other videos and stuff to being upright on a computer chair but there is no substitute when you need to type more than password for a decent keyboard.

It's early days but I've moved on from frustration and irritation to falling in like with it. If I learn how to do anything interesting with it other than take videos of kittens I'll let you know.

DVD: DANGER DIABOLIK (1968)

Director Mario Bava and I go back a long way, back to 1962 when I was 14 and going to see my first horror film at the Royal Cinema, a local fleapit. The film happened to be Caltiki The Immortal Monster (reviewed elsewhere on this blog) which Bava finished (and photographed) when the original director (and not for the first time with Bava). I didn't last past the still-unnerving titles before impressionable immature little me walked out much to the amusement next day of my classmates. For the record, this never happened again.

I've seen a few of the highly acclaimed and influential cinematographer/director Bava's movies in recent years, though not exhaustively so, including Bay of Blood (aka Twitch of the Death Nerve) a seminal proto-slasher, Hercules In The Haunted World, Black Sabbath, Black Sunday, Baron Blood, Planet of the Vampires, and just ordered Shock his last completed film which he co-directed with son Lamberto.

Danger: Diabolik is taken from a popular fumetti (comic book to you, squires) which started in the 60s. Diabolik is a ruthless supervillain, a kind of anti-Batman with his own anti-Batcave, a lavish underground lair. He is, as portrayed by American actor John Philip Law, devilishly handsome and charismatic but suffers from one fatal flaw -he actually loves his beautiful girlfriend (played by the beautiful Marisa Mell). He is our hero whom we want to win. At this point I should insert one caveat which stopped me worshipping at the feet of hero -his willingness to casually murder policemen who get in his way.

Not that the film is meant to be taken seriously. It's a gaudy tongue in cheek romp as our hero gets away with one amazing crime after another, humiliating authority at every turn. In one scene he rolls naked in bed with his girlfriend covered by a quilt of stolen banknotes. It's filmed in primary colours and is just oh so late 60s psychedelic. A decadent den of dope takers will have modern viewers howling with laughter, though you can't rule out that this was also Bava's original intention, man.

In one of the extras, comic artist Stephen Bissette points out that Bava paid tribute to its fumetti origins by often having characters appear in natural frames like the rolled down window of a car or seen through modern free standing shelves (conveniently lacking in either books or ornaments).

One of the earliest comic books into movies (bar the likes of Superman, Batman, and Captain America) it still stands out through the bravura skill of Bava's direction as one of the best.

DVD: ONE FOR THE MONEY (2012)

Until I retired from the library, I regular read lots of crime novels with the light weight Stephanie Plum novels being particular favourites. Now I would never have thought this possible as from the age of 7 to 60, either as a customer or member of staff, I couldn't keep away from libraries but since I retired, and after a handful of visits in the first year, I haven't been back since. Not that I've stopped reading, I've just got plenty of books from other sources including the ones that previously piled up unread. 

A few weeks ago I picked up a couple of Plum books that came out since I retired at the Animal Krackers charity shop, read them, enjoyed them and ordered four more I hadn't read from Amazon for the grand cost of 1p each (plus £2.80 postage.) This might have been a mistake as while reading one a year or so was fine, they tend to lose their impact when reading two a week.

I knew a movie of the first in the series came out a couple of years ago and to less than adulatory reviews but when I found it cheap on Amazon, and as many of the reviews there were quite positive, I decided to give it a try and watched it last night.

And damned if it wasn't rather likable. Importantly, alas with one exception, it was extremely well cast.

Connie, Stephanie, Lula

Grandma Mazur (Debbie Reynolds!)

Morelli and Ranger

Not shown but also fine are Stephanie's parents and Vinnie. Jason O'Mara may not look like the character of Morelli from the books (but then I never imagined the nutty Grandma Mazur as Debbie Reynolds) but he does the character perfectly and the chemistry with Katherine Heigl is just spot on. While not fatally sinking the film, Daniel Sunjata, the charisma free actor who plays Ranger, should be darkly drop-dead handsome, charismatic, and drily witty, none of which is on show here.

Katherine Heigl is not an actress I've had any interest in but she is absolutely perfect as Stephanie -smart, sassy, sweetly sexy, brave and foolish, good natured, and much more.  I just loved her in this. And so does author Janet Evanovich who knows a thing or two about Stephanie Plum.

So why was this movie a flop? It didn't recoup its budget of 40 million bucks, got widely panned, and Heigl was nominated for a Razzie for worst leading actress. Excuse me, but is there a similar film going around to the one I saw? It gets the flavour of the books almost perfectly and is a highly enjoyable time-passer. In no sense of the word is it a bad movie or Heigl a bad actor in it.

But what it should have been, with the same script and smaller budget, is the pilot for a TV series on Alibi where it would have fitted into the niche occupied by Castle, Bones, Rizzoli & Isles, and Body of Proof -all bar Castle are taken from series of crime  novels.

Put it down to one of life's strange mysteries.

MUSIC: NINA SIMONE

For some reason, a few weeks ago I decided I needed a Nina Simone compilation in my collection. I can't remember why, though something must have sparked it off, but be that as it may I went on to Amazon and trawled through the many collections to find one which balanced price with range and finally settled on a Music Club collection. I've had Music Club CDs before and they've generally been cheap but good and so I obtained the 39-track 2-CD set-

There's a brief but informative booklet by Paolo Hewitt which is, as informative booklets always are, a good start. The selection covers a wide range of styles and includes 13 live tracks -Simone was noted for her live performances, many of which have been released as albums. What there isn't, however, and is the collection's one bad mark against it, is any indication of which albums the tracks are taken from which might have been very useful had I wanted to pursue investigating Simone further (though there's always AMG -All-Music Guide- for that).

I'm 65 years old so obviously I've heard and seen Nina Simone before but never to the extent of buying an album but I was obviously aware of her ferocious talent. What I hadn't realised before was that she's is simply amazing. Her voice, while not possessed of an enormous range, does have profound depth. I know it's a cliche but Simone does indeed inhabit, live in a song, possessing it complete. She knows exactly what she is doing with every note and every word, phrasing them with complete precision to obtain the effect she wants no matter whether it's a song she's interpreting or has written, no matter what the genre of the song -jazz, blues, pop, folk, contemporary, show tunes, or whatever. She takes your breath away. She can be playful, romantic, profound, wistful, displaying a rainbow of emotions and convincing in every one.

Her voice is matched, and possibly bettered, by her skill on the piano. (Now I am not a fan of the piano as a lead instrument, possibly as a result of several literally painful piano lessons when I was about seven which ended when I ran out of the piano teacher's house in tears and vowing never to go back, which I didn't.) However, Simone's playing is the closest anyone has ever come to converting me to the instrument.  Trained as classical pianist but after being rejected by a major academy, allegedly on racial grounds, despite apparently trashing the other leading candidate, she started playing clubs and bars to make money which is when she started singing professionally and one thing led to another. Her playing is as precise and effective as her singing, one complementing the other.

I'm not inclined, however, to look further, though I am very glad I bought this, simply because Simone's range is so broad and I'm just not into some of the genres she utilisises. On the other hand if I ever came across a collection of her darker themed songs with folk and blues prominently on display then that would be a different matter.

Now, as a member of Amazon Vine I regularly get a limited amount of stuff offered free for review. Not long after listening to album above, the following audiobook came up. Coincidence or some hidden design? Well coincidence obviously. I don't believe the universe would be so ordered just for me to get my hands on an audiobook about Simone shortly after listening to a compilation of hers and anyone who believes otherwise is...

 

Passing swiftly onwards, this is a 2-part BBC radio documentary put together on one disc. It's introduced and narrated by Simone's daughter, herself a star of stage musicals, who confusingly has the stage name of Simone (just Simone). The first part focuses more on her life, the second on her music though there's inevitably some overlap. The various contributors include relatives, friends, musicians, agents, etc. One of them is a well-spoken British drummer who was with Nina for the last 18 years of her professional life. Overall it pulls together the story of a amazingly accomplished singer and pianist with a volatile and contradictory nature and who from her early days wouldn't take shit from anyone; latterly she was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder.

This is hardly a definitive account but it is interesting and has sparked me to read more about Nina Simone who is in my not-particularly humble opinion, and without hyperbole, one of the greatest musical artistes of the 20th century.

JOSS WHEDON AND FIFI: A RELATIONSHIP REVEALED

My cat Fifi has an intimate relationship with Joss Whedon and his creative output. This has never before been revealed to the world but I feel it's time to reveal the complete truth. You may be surprised. You may be shocked. But I assure you that the amazing image below has not been altered in any way.

You may feel sorry for Mr Whedon. You may even feel pity for Fifi. Quite possibly you could despise me for encouraging this odd and obscure relationship. Nevertheless, it can no longer be hidden for the unvarnished truth is this.

Fifi likes to sit on top of DVDs in which Joss Whedon has played a major creative role.

(The fact that I was 65 three days ago and I'm in a funny mood has absolutely nothing to do with it.)