J Edgar

I really liked this film, and am disappointed to see it panned elsewhere. I must admit, the aging makeup was very hammy, and the aching violins at the emotional scenes were typically Eastwood, however I love any film with Di Caprio in it, he is such a gooood actor, and all the other actors were brilliant too. Very well played.

Similar to the Iron Lady, it didn't get into the vileness of the politics, but it did get into empathy for a person in power. I was surprised afterwards to hear that J Edgar was one of the most powerful people int he US at the time, because this didn't really come across in the film, somehow the film didn't portray him so much as a charismatic person, as an emotionally repressed person, which is why I think the 'power' didn't shine through as much as the vulnerability. In the Iron Lady, however, Thatcher's power does come through a lot more, and her charisma with other people both personally and publicly.

I think the difference in J Edgar is that the focus is on a single relationship - with Torson - rather than specific instances. Or rather, the specific instances of his power - like when he is arresting those 'gangstas' - are two dimensional (we find out why later) - and also, in the interactions between him and his minor staff, he is shown to be somewhat of an a****hole (eg the moustache incident) and it is difficult to respect that kind of authority. The parts where he DOES have authority - in the courtrooms etc - he is shown to have an amazingly persuasive persona, but this only happens a couple of times, it could have been emphasised more to increase his sense of public power.

It wasn't entirely clear to me why Torson was as devoted to him as he was - Torson was absolutely gorgeous, such lovely eyes, so tall and handsome, so composed and self- confident, it was hard to see how such a magnificent man could be seduced by such an emotionally awkward guy. By contrast JEdgar was a basketcase in his personal life, a bit more tenderness on his part may have helped this. The film also reminded me of Remains of the Day - I wish JEdgar and Torson had actually had the guts to be lovers. All hollywood hypotheticals of course :-).

Movie - Shame 20.02.2012

Well, hard to know where to start with this one. The main character was just so unengaging. Carrie Mulligan of course stole the show with her quivering vulnerability, it was a direct counterpoint to the main character's emotional shutdown. I could not engage with him. At one point, the middle of an orgy scene, it just became funny because you could see the pain he was supposedly going through, but you just couldn't feel it. It got better after his breakdown, when he became flesh and blood again, and I think the tender scene with his co-worker was really good, and then the final scene was also a good one to end it on, him teetering on the edge between fantasy and reality.

Movie - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 18.02.2012

Reeealllly boooring film, I realised after one and a half hours that I had been daydreaming the whole time, so I just walked out, I wasn't even curious enough to see the ending. There was absolutely nothing engaging about this film. The use of women in this film was ludicrous, purely as sexual punctuation points - eg a glimpse of a miniskirt flashes by, or the stupid scene of the young couple kissing on the couch, totally unecessary - as if that's what the director thinks will liven this grey film up, how cheap and cheesy.

Oh the one good thing about this film is Benedict Cumberbatch's face. He's like a blonde Keanu Reeves, with those upward slanting eyes, high cheekbones, strong jaw and sandy mop of hair. Quite gorgeous to watch, he looks good in this film.

surrounded by finery

I really hope nobody subscribes to this blog, because I'd like to use it a little more spontaneously to update things as they occur here in this wonderful/nasty city of London. Tonight JM and I went to the park after work - it's been a bugger of a day - long hours and , for me at least, a lot of potentially wasted effort until all these things that I've been throwing myself at may eventually 'bear fruit' - story of my life so far, exccept this time with a definate business edge. To set the tone, earlier today I went to the hairdressers, they did their usual trim and the usual manic attack with the hair straighteners, so that this afternoon I look remotely like a Sloane Ranger -ie somebody potentially well dressed with straight hair.

So anyway JM and I head to the park and grab a couple of ciders on the way. Sit next to the massive white swan pond, except this time it's surrounded by migrating geese (from where?) who have liberally dotted the surrounds with piles of feathers and lumps of goose shit. Charmingly, people still manage to loll about in all this. JM and I remain sophisticated and grab some of the stripey deckshairs, pull out the newspapers and sunglasses and have a lovely and well earned time in the sun. The shoes even came off.

I became entranced, and perhaps with the help of the cider, got a real feeling of bonhomie. That's what I want to record here. Some sort of insight. I'm hungry so must grab some dinner, but basically the feeling, the barrier Im getting through with all this self-employment shit in the middle of a massively steep UK recession, is perhaps the shift that has to happen in order to see the world through a sales-delivery mindset, the eyes of an entrepreneur perhaps? This would be very nice if only it were true. I must go and eat, so will hold this thought until next update, and if there really is anyone out there reading this, please don't!! but if you have, please have a nice day and look after yourself and try and find your 'nugget'.

On the way home we passed the latest Rolls Royce and Bentley's parked outside the Japanese restaurant, nose to nose, both with peak-capped foreign drivers, cars about £250K each, drivers about £20K each per year..... it's like that around here. Outside the hostel, cheap bikes chained to the black glossy rails. Its a pretty grand city, I do love it here. Love from Sue in London.

Looking for Dustin Hoffman, and Finding a Body in the Park

This happened to me last week, and is a story provisionally called Looking for Dustin Hoffman, and Finding a Body in the Park. On getting up at 6am and slowly leafing through a magazine over a coffee, I remembered from the news the night before that Dustin Hoffman was in town, and more importantly, that he owned a house in Kensington. As I was thinking idly about what the rich and famous would do to get about without being recognised, it suddenly occurred to me that, if you were Dustin Hoffman, perhaps you would get up very early and go down the road to Hyde Park, to have a look at the lake, the Palace, the swans and all that. So, suddenly finding some enthusiasm, I grabbed on my running gear and headed up the road.

I was still in a low-key morning mode. Jogging sounds too extreme - it's more like a ridiculous jokey walk as I try to avoid running on the concrete. At 630am, the shops are opening, things are introverted and tucked into their own wrappings. All except for the few office workers striding assertively forward, eyes engaged, suits and sneakers. I was somewhere in-between, still sleepy, still on a quest.
The best part is getting to the Park, selecting the route and opening up onto the soft grass with a looser running stride. I chose to go through the trees, gigantic dark park sentries, forming a veritable border along Knightsbridge. Their wafting elongated pink blossoms belied their monumental structure. I reminded myself of the mission - to find the Marathon Man. So, Hoffman style, I got into the ‘running zone’ – a quasi-meditation state embedded in the rhythm and repetition of the running stride. Loosening the shoulders and upper chest, breathing from below, letting it in, exhaling loudly.

Getting up the slight incline, the park is actually quite buzzing with joggers. I wondered if I’d left it too late, my ‘early bird’ was suddenly looking at a crowded field. Any half-famous celebrity would have coolly got out of there half an hour ago. No matter, I was enjoying it by now.

As I neared the lake, I could see a dark shape on the pebblecrete path, like a large black rubbish bag someone had left there. As I got nearer, the rubbish bag developed two boots and a pair of trousers, and I wondered what someone had done to leave a motorbike outfit piled there on the ground, like it had just had an accident. As I circled carefully from about 10m, I could work out red rubber gloves, then again circling there was a head, with hair, a body, a crumpled mess lying strewn like a crumpled piece of rubbish in an impossibly distorted wrecked position, tumbled, the limbs could not fit together like that in one piece, pieces were broken, it was a snapped dropped body, a person, lifeless.

Crumpled like a thrown ball of paper. Arms twisted the top half in one direction, the bottom in another, no human life to hold it together. Ghastly, thrown and discarded, wrecked cavity…like it had been dropped off at speed by an impatient malevolent force, I stared in disbelief. To get a grip I retreated backwards, scanned for others.

Joggers nearby were indifferent, locked into their own worlds, with headsets, eyes focussed on the goals ahead. Couldn’t they see what was there? I ran towards the gate, towards the Park care truck I’d seen earlier.

There was a young woman jogging towards me, beaming and brightly brushed, headset on, backpack full of office clothes, running towards the city. ‘I’m sorry, do you have a phone, I think there’s a dead body over there’ – she stopped, shocked, disbelief. Why was I sorry - I felt insensitive, I should have thought to break it to her gently. Gasping, with quick jerky movements she upturned her bag, fumbled for her phone and dialled 999. Somehow she was feeling the panic and shock I could not feel, I felt indifferent to. Through tears she got emergency services to come right over, ‘can you describe him’ – ‘no I cant go there, it’s too horrible, I can’t look, his hands are bright red’ – ‘excuse me’ I tried to interject, ‘they are red gloves he’s wearing’…..’Excuse me’, I almost felt like saying, ‘can I have the phone, that was MY dead body, I found him, can I talk to them’, but she was handling it, it would be a good story at the Office for the rest of the week. In the midst of this we both steeled ourselves to look closer at the motionless lump of ex-person lying there.

Other people were running past, stopping for a moment, doing a brief jogging semi-circle, hands to mouths, then running on. One man evidently a tourist even came over to take photos, studied shots from careful angles. We both looked at each other aghast, ‘can’t believe people, who would do that’ ‘I cant believe people are just ignoring it’. The operator maintained a steady flow of calm. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw a foot move, but dismissed it, or perhaps couldn’t see the point of changing the course of events, I was almost needing something to shock me.

The ambulance emerged from the pink blossom perimeter. Our waving arms drew it to us magentically. The ambulance arrived and as its shadow pulled over the decimated man, he unfurled like a jack in the box. The impossible angle unfolded into a contortionistic acrobat, with maniacal dreadlocks, red rubber gloves who kept on performing crazy manipulations. As the ambulance men crouched to reason with him he told them to ‘fuck off’.

As I jogged away from the scene of the crime a fellow who had observed the scenes’ resolution jogged beside me and said he had seen the same guy yesterday and thought he was dead. ‘did you call anyone’ I asked him, ‘no, he’s just a tramp but its good that you did at least’. As I jogged back I reflected that we may have just inadvertently been had by some derelict performance artist, some performance Mike Moore, and I hoped that the young woman’s day wasn’t too ruined. And I took one last rueful look for Dustin Hoffman amongst the people sitting on the park bench. I felt unsettled all day, and went back that sunset to sketch the white swans on the pond.

Slumdog Crap

Am I the only one (again) who couldn't stand Slumdog Millionaire?? I walked out at about the 2/3 mark, annoyed with myself for wasted even that much time. The part that did it for me was the scene where the little kid falls into the cess-pit and goes running through the crowds covered in shit. That was totally offensive and even taking the piss like that does not reflect well on a culture that could allow that. Within the first of the subsequent ten torture scenes I could tell the plot. It was such a superficial stupid artifice of a movie, the success that it is now receiving makes me feel crap for what popular taste actually stands for.

Revolutionary Road 5 minute review

This movie does not have the 'wow' factor of Mendes' American Beauty, I was not left with a sense of poetic brilliance, the plot line is predictable almost from about the first third of the movie, yet it is poignant. Despite being a bit plodding, it does spell out in a literal sense the lies we can tell ourselves and the fears which keep us trapped in SECURITY, and even if it does take a literal response to get this message through, it's one that could be expressed more often. So I'm giving this one 3.5 stars Margaret.

I saw it tonight because of the two lead actors, my favourite couple Kate Winslet and Leonardo. I respect pretty much every movie they've been in, OK and I know it's daggy but I loved Titanic and have seen it several times. So here they are, looking late 30-ish, Leo looking pretty squinty and actually playing an unsympathetic character. That's my criticism - there wasn't much to like in his character, a bit 2D - and therefore not much clue as to what Kate's character (Chloe)'s fascination and devotion to him was grounded in.... she was such an idealistic and comparatively deep character, and she was actually hobbled by this little man. The falsities of people and the narrow lies they tell themselves and each other, believing it, the suburban 'ordinariness' lie, the lie of the 'little person' - perhaps contrasted with the romatic ideal. Who is right in this scenario? Well in this movie apparently it's the madman, the Real Estate agent's mentally ill son, he's the only one who can see - and say - the truth. Albeit in a very clumsy and cringey way. The others, well they patch over it till it becomes disabled by all the layers and the only way out is through Chloe's self-administered abortion with predicatble consequences.

Despite having read such bad reviews, I could 'tune into' the movie and empathise with Kate Winslet's dilemma. 50's motherhood and the frustration of being discounted as a person by a little 'not man enough' man - both sexes trapped and lying within the falsehoods of their roles, both characters trapped and lying within the 'hopeless disillutionment' of the suburban life with kids. Funnily enough, incidentally, saw an exhibition in the East End last week by this Danish artist Professor, also bemoaning the fate of married life with kids. Obviously a semi-serious motif for me right now, contemplating these things semi-seriously whilst I still have some reproductive capacity and whilst there is a semi-serious option here to follow it through. Being surrounded by colleagues - perhaps the 'average' Pom my age, who all have kids, feeling a kind of freak for not being there yet. So yes, these movies which say 'hey it's not all it's cracked up to be' present somewhat of a balance. But are they just expressing outdated views on limits of parenting. Are 'today's parents' much more liberated?.......