Ripley. The TV series with Andrew Scott.

If M.C. Escher had written a whydunnit he might have called it Ripley.

I say this because the recent Netflix masterpiece starring Andrew Scott and written & directed by Steve Zallion (he of Schindler’s List fame – more on that later) is an Escherian nightmare of wrong turns, about turns, smart turns and climbs that lead to nowhere.

The plot (Patricia Highsmith’s genius cannot be overstated here) is one of the most elaborate and thrilling I have ever encountered. The world’s greatest crime writers thrown in a room together could not have conjured up anything more magical even if Jesse Armstrong had been put in charge of them. It’s not that it’s full of cliffhangers, as such, it’s the sheer chicanery that Tom Ripley demonstrates as he shape-shifts his way through the lives (and deaths) of himself and his unwitting benefactor Dickie (Deekee) Greenleaf that make this story so compelling.

But let’s start after Highsmith and look at what Steve Zallion brings to the party. Well, for a start, the script is terrific. I don’t know the novel so I don’t know if it’s laugh out loud funny – but this sure is. One might grumble at his mild mocking of Inspector Pietro Ravini’s occasional flaws with the English language, especially his pronunciation of Freddie Miles’ (Meeles) name, but Vittorio Viviani bring a wonderful blend of Inspector Clouseau and Poirot to the part that is delicious. His mild OCD is amusing and that is one of the themes that run through the movie.

Zallion can never have had as much fun making a film as here. He plays tricks with the audience from start to finish and his elaborate use of repetition (posting the mail, riffling through notebooks, application of pen to paper, placing of items on bureaux, zooming in on concierges, framing of the post office, police cars, the cat, stairwells, paintings, drinking (or not) wine, ashtray purchasing, mimicking of Caravaggio and Ripley) is bonkers and dazzling.

The central motif of climbing stairs is extremely interesting. I have two theories on this. 1) it represents class climbing – Ripley is a wannabe, a charlatan and a grifter. He aspires to greater riches and stature and is deeply uncomfortable in society situations such as at Peggy Guggenheim’s party in Venice where he is in real danger of being found out for not being one of ‘us’. He’s always climbing to attain his goal. 2) it represents the futility of the whole police hunt, the whole story, as Ripley outwits every character (even the reasonably savvy Marge) by shifting the sands, rearranging the staircases so that we reach that ‘going nowhere’ outcome that Escher so brilliantly portrays in his paintings.

And lastly there’s his choice of monochrome to create a film noire, but also a work of art. Art is a central metaphor of the series. Caravaggio’s work, his homosexuality and his murderous past are all reflections on Ripley’s own story. Ripley loves Caravaggio with a passion because he admires not just his work but his lifestyle. The fact that Greenleaf’s wannabe painterly skills are appallingly lacking is just a bonus.

The cinematography has to be seen to be believed. Mostly spot on (it’s occasionally a touch overexposed) by Robert Elswit (He’s PT Anderson’s go to guy and won an Oscar for There Will Be Blood – bosh!). It drives the mood and the beauty, aided by a strong soundtrack, and has its moment in the sun when he stunningly, and frankly hilariously, references Schindler’s List with a single step of blood red cat paw prints. One second of red in eight hours of monochrome. You know the scene I’m talking about in both productions, right? Episode 5 if you missed it.

And then theres the acting. Johnny Flynn I could take or leave, Dakota Fanning played her irritating role to perfection (entitled little Sylvia Plathesque romanticist that she is). I’ve talked about the marvellous Vittorio Viviani, but the stars of the piece are the deliciously camp and truly dislikable Eliot Sumer who gets his just desserts as Freddie Meeles and, of course, the joy of Andrew Scott.

What can I say about Andrew Scott that hasn’t already been said? In the last five years he has risen from nowhere to challenge Steven Graham as Britains top actor. I think he has more range than Graham but both are a delight every time they hit our screens.

In this Scott OWNS the screen. His arch, sometimes befuddled playing of the unintended villain that is Tom Ripley is extraordinary. He falls into his murders rather than premeditates them so that makes him OK, right? And we are desperate for him not to be caught, because Scott has intoxicated us with his charm, his humour and his intelligence, all hidden behind a relatively blank canvas of a face. In moments of stress you can see the brain ticking, by micro-movements of Scott’s demeanour. This is acting of the highest calibre and Ripley, not the victims, is our hero.

We love Andrew Scott, therefore we love Tom Ripley.

You might have guessed by now that I loved this. A straight 10/10.

The Old Oak: Movie Review

I just love Ken Loach movies.

He is a one man opposition party to whoever runs this country, but most especially when the Tories are wreaking havoc.

In this film he has a triple attack on racism, poverty and immigration.

As usual, he employs a cast of largely amateur actors, real people, in the North (Durham area this time) and they have grievances.

A run down pit village is being repopulated with Syrian refugees and the largely unemployed and bitter ex mining community do not like the fact that these “Rag heads” are getting access to their benefits and attention of local government and volunteers.

The action centres jon an almost decrepit community pub called The Old Oak. Its manager, our hero, TJ Ballantyne (played by ex-fireman Dave Turner, a Loach regular), is struggling to keep the pub afloat with a small band of bitter and twisted ex miners as locals, racist to the core they resent TJ’s apparent favouring of the new Syrian community that is adding richness to their village.

The movie plays out in a fairly typical Loach cadence. Highs and lows, humour and pathos, atrocious behaviour and acts of great human kindness.

The script is good (by Loach’s regular Paul Laverty) if a little predictable and sometimes a touch fantastical, but that doesn’t matter. Loach’s objectives are clear and the haters will say it’s just left wing propaganda. In a way it is. It needs to be because no-one else is doing it. But Loach draws such humanity from his mixed ability cast that you simply cannot fail to love it.

It sits alongside a canon of work that is remarkable: I Daniel Blake (his rant against the benefits system), Sorry We Missed You (his rant against zero hours contracts), Looking For Eric (Cantona as a postman), Sweet Sixteen (the movie that launched Martin Compston’s career), My Name is Joe (Bitter and brutal observation on alcoholism with Gary Lewis in career-high form), Raining Stones (his polemic against the underground labouring/work system), Riff Raff, Poor Cow and, of course our beloved Kes.

What a director. This is just another solid, enjoyable, moving piece of work from a national institution.

Long live Sir Ken.

Baby Reindeer. The Edinburgh Fringe smashes it on Netflix. All Hail Summerhall!

Baby Reindeer has been receiving some great reviews, and I am going to add to that body of opinion.

It was written by, and stars, Richard Gadd but with a supreme supporting performance by Jessica Gunning as Gadd’s stalker Martha. In the stage shows, which provided the inspiration for this 7 part Netflix series, Gadd makes it crystal clear that it is an autobiographical story, in the TV adaptation this is less apparent. But it is all true

We saw the Edinburgh Festival Fringe productions of Monkey See Monkey Do in 2017, at Summerhall, and Baby Reindeer in 2019, also at Summerhall but in the Roundabout.

My wife is not always the most likely to join a standing ovation at a theatre show but at Monkey SeeMonkey do she was the first on their feet. I gave both productions five stars and this nearly gets the same, apart from the fact that Gadd as a stage performer, telling his life story, is arguably better than Gadd as an actor playing a character, based on him, but actually is him, Donny Dunn. This subtle change takes some of the edge off his performance and requires him to act rather than perform. They are different things. I’m niggling though.

A big difference is that the stage shows were both one man monologues, albeit with AV back up, whereas he is graced with a supporting cast here, not least the miraculous performance by his stalker Martha who inhabits this sweet-as-sugar character with a dangerous she-devil interior that only raises its head when she’s not getting her way, and her way would be to own and ravish Gadd.

Gadd’s second nemesis is the theatre impresario Darrien played impeccably by Tom Goodman-Hill who subjects Gadd to massive trauma and was the main antagonist in Monkey See Monkey Do.

The combination of Darrien and Martha, and their collective trauma, create a stultifying inability for Gadd to do anything about his situation. His pathetic attempts at stand up comedy make any positive interest, from anyone, yes anyone, appealing at a subconscious level to Gadd and that may be why he rolls with the punches for so long against enemies that seem, to the viewer, so obviously easy to unlock himself from – but this is the way poor mental health and low self esteem can manifest themselves.

Whilst most of us could easily disassociate ourselves with these two monsters Gadd simply cannot and finds himself descending into blacker and blacker territory.

His only escape is through the fourth key character, the Mexican trans-actress Nava Mau, who plays Gadd’s sort of girlfriend, although it’s not easy. Gadd’s sexuality is so confused that he simply doesn’t know what he’s looking for and it makes for a pretty challenging relationship.

It’s billed as a black comedy and there are comedic moments, and yes, Gadd, is a professional comedian. But don’t come to this looking for laughs. It’s a profound, original and true exploration of the stultifying impacts of poor mental health and it’s performed with sensitivity and great skill.

Surely the year will end up with this on all the top ten lists, in much the same way that “I May Destroy You” did.

It’s quite simply brilliant.

The Bear Season Two: Just watched

It’s funny how a programme can be so different from season to season and yet hold up its quality threshold and dramatic intensity.

Unlike the UK’s Boiling Point which is a one-paced act of unremitting rage (but great all the same) The Bear has many gears in its armoury and in Season Two, more so than one, it finds time to test drive them and show us serenity, rage, humour, regret and hope.

As it develops it has a zen like quality that introduces us to the characters of Season One that were just parachuted onto our screens in the midst of a war zone and left to get on with it. Whereas Season One was tricky to decode Season Two does all of the heavy lifting for you and week by week properly defines its characters.

Carmy (who we knew all about from S1) is given space to breathe as he plans how to position his new restaurant in Chicago and to experiment with the wonderful Sydney as she revels in her education as a fine dining (star) chef. Although how she survives her food orgy of Episode 3 is anyone’s guess.

Richie reinvents himself as a front of house magician and cultivated and cultured gastrophile. Marcus has an amazing sojourn in Copenhagen with an odd Noma-like guru chef. It’s as zen as the series gets, before the series centrepiece Fishes (that gets the full 60+ minute treatment) blows us all away.

Then Richie has his starring moment in Forks.

Along the way both Nat and Matty are filled out, character-wise, and without spoiling its conclusion for you we are ultimately teed up for another entirely unpredictable Season 3.

The writing, direction and performances (not to mention the music) in this production are magnificent. It’s not quite on the highest ever plateau of Succession, but I tell you what, it’s not far off. Wonderful TV that resonates as true to me and its many, many fans.

A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler: Recent reading.

This gets compared to the wondrous Stoner (an undiscovered novel of the 1960’s) by John Williams which I cannot recommend enough. It’s compared because like Williams’ classic this is the story of one man’s unremarkable life, told in an unremarkable way. And whilst this too is a beautiful (and recommended) read, it does not have quite the same depth, or class, of Stoner. Nevertheless it packs a punch like Barry McGuigan, light but lethal.

Unlike Williams’ opus this is a little read with a great deal of droll Germanic humour sprinkled throughout, despite the fact that it tells the story of a life of a largely sub-optimal life underpinned by frustration.

It’s Germanicness is at the heart of its appeal, because it feels so unlike most things I’ve read. And it packs a great deal into an almost tiny offering. Only 149 large-type liberally-spaced pages in and it’s done. Leaving you with a whiff of satisfaction and a little regret.

Its title is entirely descriptive, the whole life in question is that of an uneducated labourer in a German/Austrian lumber region that gradually transforms into a ski resort and walking hotspot. Our hero, Andreas, takes spartan opportunity and turns it into passable satisfaction with great dollops of misfortune (in the form of a bullying stepfather and a delightful wife who expires too early to make him truly happy) along the way.

It’s fundamentally bleak and yet, like Stoner, has an air of uplift in it, and it’s this effortless parable-telling that raises it up from almost mediocre content into a thing of pastoral beauty.

I really liked it. I think you will too.

An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro: Book review

This might be his slightest novel, weighing it at only 205 pages, but it’s his densest.

Another unreliable narrator – an old Japanese painter and teacher – Masuji Ono tells part of his life story, often repetitively (maybe he has dementia) and full of false modesty. He’s actually an arrogant old fuck.

It’s set in an unnamed Japanese city between 1948 and 1950 as the Empire is setting about post WWII rebuilding and the country is on its knees.

Ono-San was a celebrated pre-war artist, seemingly of a propagandist bent (and maybe in the pocket of the Emperor) but his star has faded and it’s causing some trouble in selling off his youngest daughter into arranged matrimony.

The book dwells fastidiously on the customs and mannerisms of a horrifically mannered and often obsequious Japanese cultural set of mores.

For a western reader (even though Ishiguro has long been a naturalised UK citizen), this makes for tough reading. There are many Japanese place names to contend with and his cast of characters is vast for such a small tome. What’s more, given the episodic, and sometimes rambling nature of the prose they pop up sporadically but with important things to say. It’s a laborious follow.

Like anything Ishiguro turns his hand too it’s quite brilliant in the quality of the writing and the slow release of information that just keeps one on track plot-wise, but it has none of the empathy of his other novels and certainly no playfulness at all. So it makes for a n endurance test, albeit a shortish one.

It was the least enjoyable of his books for me. But a weak(ish) Ishiguro beats 9/10 writers into a cocked hat and for that I recommend it. Just don’t make it your Kazuo debut.

The Bear Season 1: Just watched

We were late to this as we didn’t have Disney +, except we had, thanks Natasha. Anyway, I’d read all the hype and last night we set out to watch it, and this afternoon we finished it.

I had to go back and rewatch Episode 1 because on first viewing I was a bit trailing in its wake because the loud music bed, deep Chicagoan patois and rapid fire (some sotto voce) dialogue meant I wasn’t really picking up on its nuance. If I’m honest it was probably not till Episode 5 that I was fully invested but then, 7 and 8. Fuck me.

Christopher Storrer has written and directed a big bad beast. I love the way its title “The Bear” encompasses mental illness, Chicago ( key component of its magic) and the main character’s name (Carmy Berzatto).

I love its love affair with food and that battle between good and evil (pretentious or wholesome can both be great, and this series manages to marry the two effortlessly). It’s kind of like Pygmalion in reverse, or maybe The Great Gatsby, also reversed, where knowledge and superiority, and wealth, are levelled by the reality of Carmy’s situation – a dead brother and an inherited Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares restaurant.

Jeremy Allen White, him of the great Calvin Klein blow up, is majestic in the lead role but he’d be nothing were it not for his fellow restaurant employees. An ensemble cast that’s magnificent from the get go, none more so than his fangirl Sydney played with conviction by Ayo Edibiri. There’s a really touching moment in Episode 8 where she entertains Marcus in her home that really hit the spot for me, and her relationship with the feisty Tina is a thing of wonder – a thing that could have been truly hamfisted in the wrong hands.

The music score is beast and the comedy (while only evident in short bursts) is laugh out loud funny.

All in all, a complex bundle of fun and pathos in equal measure. From an uncertain start (for me) it rapidly transmogrified into a production that does indeed merit the plaudits that have showered it. Very much looking forward to Season 2.

Recent Reading: Maggie O’Farrell – This Must Be The Place and Instructions For A heatwave

I keep hearing good things about Maggie O’Farrell, the Irishwoman living in my native Edinburgh, and so I’d picked both of the above up in a charity shop some time ago, but left them languishing in my ‘to do’ pile. A conversation with my friend Victoria prompted me to start reading, and I’m glad that I did.

Both books share a strong sense of style. O’Farrell densely plots her novels so that there’s quite a long bedding in period in the story to establish exactly what’s going on. In that respect she writes like a crime/thriller novelist. But that effort is rewarded with depth of character and intriguing and clever stories.

In Heatwave we follow a family’s journey to uncover why their elderly father has simply upped and went one morning, right in the middle of the notorious 1976 UK-wide heatwave. O’Farrell captures the sweltering oppression of that one-off summer vividly and the story unfolds in very thin layers as we discover what both bonds and splinters this intense family. It’s a great read, although at times I felt she outstayed her welcome.

In the superior This Must be The Place another disappearance sets the story off, and another family saga. Again much of the action takes place in Ireland. But don’t think that makes her novels formulaic, they are anything but.

This time a stunningly beautiful and famous film actress with great artistic integrity (think Jennifer Lawrence) simply disappears overnight with the speech-impeded son of her and her auteur film-director partner. She flees to remote Ireland where she reestablishes her life before being stumbled upon by an American linguist with a troubling romantic life and a drink and drugs problem.

The attraction is instant but not eternal.

What follows is another heavily interweaving story covering the couples lives (including their past) and that of their own and shared children.

Each character is brilliantly drawn and the book’s multiple time lines gradually fall into place so that we are eventually left wondering if this is a romance with any real chance of making it through.

It’s a lovely story with real depth and quality of writing.

Clearly O’Farrell has an acute eye and ear for family life in all its complications. Both novels deconstruct the complexity of familial rivalry, sibling love (and the lack of) and the hierarchy of decision making in that unit.

It seems to me her writing is maturing with experience and that she continues to increase her personal writing ambition, with her latest, Hamlet, picking up many plaudits and book of the year nods. I look forward to reading that but, for now, she’s made a solid impression on me and I can recommend both books quite strongly, especially This Must Be The Place.

It’s yet another morsel of evidence that Irish writing is on fire just now – many of my favourite recent reads have come from that Isle (including Anna Burns, Colin Walsh and Paul Lynch.)

Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet: Book Review

Graeme Macrae Burnet rose to prominence with his Booker Shortlisted, His Bloody Project – a genuinely original historical crime novel, of sorts, that was transfixing from start to finish. He’s followed it up with this Longlisted Booker contender.

Again you could say it’s a crime novel of a sort in which no real crime takes place, but may have been autosuggested by the psychiatrist who plays one of the novel’s two central characters.

Arthur Collins Braithwaite is a brilliant lothario that stumbles on a career in psychiatry in the 1960’s in Oxford and London. A rule breaker, he actually has no formal qualifications but has some celebrity status and notoriety that keeps him in patients for a while. One of those patients, Victoria, is the sister of our second (and third as it happens) main protagonists – Victoria’s mousy sister, (unnamed throughout the book) and her alter ego Rebecca.

Victoria is the autosuggested victim, having thrown herself to her death from a bridge after a session with Braithwaite. Unnamed sister decides to visit Braithwaite to suss him out but undercover as a patient that she calls Rebecca.

What follows is a quite brilliant study of, I would say, Schizophrenia. So different are unnamed sister and Rebecca in so many ways that we have a clear Jeckyl and Hyde situation, although without the horror.

It’s a fascinating story based around Braithwaite’s case study notes of Rebecca and unnamed sister’s ferocious battle with herself to define her true identity.

In parts hilariously funny, but always with an undertow of sinister mental health issues it makes for a unique and unputdownable read.

Bravo Mr Macrae Burnet. Two smash hits in row.

My Aunty Margot. God Bless her. (TBH he already has).

My Aunty Margot is a bit of a legend in sport and in teaching but today, after a long period of ill health, she was joined by family and her beloved congregation at St John The Baptist RC Church in Corstorphine to be bestowed the Archdiocesan medal by the Archbishop Leo Cushley. This is a rare honour and reflects her devoted attention and dedication to the church. It goes back a long way and is a really lovely recognition of a great, great woman. i was honoured to be there with Jeana, Jane, Emily and many of my extended family.

We all had a ball and were fed a King’s ransom of food afterwards by an adoring church community. What a lovely day.

By some pretty bonkers coincidence I was handed a hymn book that had a tribute to my Grandmother, Peggie, Margot’s mum.

The Zone of Interest: Movie Review

Four movies into his very slowly expanding movie CV (Sexy Beast, Birth and Under The Skin) Jonathan Glazer once again lands a punch that no-one could see coming. I mean, how could they?

It’s been ten years since the sublime and shocking Under The Skin (from a source novel by one of my favourite authors, Michel Faber) now he’s done it again with a novelistic source from Martin Amis. Having read a little about this it would seem that the movie and the book are barely related. Same theme and location, yes, but story-wise very different.

For a start it would be a push to say the movie’s narrative led. There is a slight thread holding it together but this is really an exercise in stylistic horror like you’ve never seen before.

The psychology of the holocaust has long fascinated me. How could an entire country apparently sign up to a dictator’s whims when his charisma, to me, seems so indecipherable. But worse, how could so many of his followers carry out such atrocities seemingly without question?

But this movie goes a step further still. How could the families of these monsters knowingly reap the benefits of this accursed man’s activities?

Sandra Hüller (who might win best actress at the Oscars for the incredible Anatomy of a Fall) stars as that very woman (Hedwig Höss). Living a life of privilege in an unattractive house with a cultivated, but not exactly stunning, garden in the lee of Auschwitz. Her husband, the camp Kommandant, played by Christian Friedel, is a snidely little creep who sleeps in a separate bed (his work done having sired five children to his despicable wife). At night he takes his pleasure with the Jewish housemaid, who’s always one dropped crumb away from the gas chambers that brood ominously just across the garden wall. Höss’s more than happy to remind her of that.

Höss takes her pick of fur coats, new blouses, diamonds concealed in toothpaste tubes as the apparent spoils of genocide filter regularly into their home. They party, they feed sumptuously, they swim in the river, they cough up the ashes of dead Jews – only a small blot on an idyllic lifestyle

Höss’s mother arrives, but soon leaves in disgust at this heinous way of living.

A young girl sneaks out at night to hide apples for the Jewish labourers – a death defying act that is momentously captured on night vision film. This stunning technique turns her into a lurid white spectre against what looks like a nuclear background, to the sound of an outrageous soundtrack by Mica Levy. Underscoring the score the Kommandant reads Hansel & Gretel to his younger children (it’s no coincidence that the evil witch is burned in the oven – although the story “cooks” her to soften the blow). Who this mysterious figure is is not revealed, but perhaps it’s the Kommandant’s oldest daughter. The one with a conscience. The only one. The Kindly one. 

It’s truly remarkable moviemaking.

The star of this colossal piece of work though is Johnny Burn, the sound designer, who brings Auschwitz to life without ever really seeing it. other than its rooftops.

On a side note. I’ve been to Auschwitz (which is actually three death camps not one) and the one that features in the movie, Auschwitz III is now a museum. These days it’s impeccably manicured and the buildings are entirely surprising, two or three story high red brick constructions that could be schoolhouses if we didn’t know better. It’s very disarming. The muddy, filthy wooden huts we all remember from the movies and the newsreels are in Auschwitz I, a short drive away. So this clean, Teutonic death factory is disarming and Glazer captures that strange orderliness of the setting as we often see the well-kept rooflines of the houses beyond. (Albeit with smoking chimneys and glowing fires)

What Burn does though is pull the rug away. The air of semi-respectability that we are seeing is subsumed by endless industrial groans suggesting boilers (certainly machinery we don’t want to think about too much) working at full blast. Gunshots echo out, but subtly in the distance, muffled shrieks, distant dogs barking, at one point a cold blooded murder. The steam train arriving with fresh cargo. 

It all adds up to make Auschwitz a looming threat, playing out a murderous background soundscape, like a satanic orchestra, whilst in the foreground we see a sort of Utopia at play.

The movie is shot as a series of beautiful tableaux, often reminiscent of classical paintings, but interspersed with empty screens, red or black, and the mind-boggling night vision work. (it’s searingly black and white, not green, as you’ve come to expect). This creates a sense of tranquillity and opulence, and yet it’s backgrounded by the worst atrocities ever committed in Europe.

Jonathan Glazer has created his masterpiece. Few would imagine he could top his first three movies and yet this comes from a place that only he can truly understand. It’s not clear why he’s made this movie. It’s not actually telling us anything new and yet it feels like the most original take on a familiar tale we will ever come across.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin: Book Review

Ultimately it became clear why Gabrielle Zevin is a children’s book writer, but it took a while.

It’s an accomplished book that wants to be more than the sum of its parts and can’t quite reach its lofty ambitions. For a start it chooses one of Macbeth’s most famous soliloquies as its title and that’s bold. Macbeth is grieving the death of his wife and wondering what’s the point. It’s all just another day.

That’s kind of the point of this novel. Unrequited love between the two central characters, Sam and Sophie who are gamers turned celebrated game-makers. They both love one another but neither can find it in themselves to declare that love and so tomorrows follow tomorrows as their lives gradually unfold, alone and apart.

It’s nearly a masterpiece, but it falls sadly short by believing its better than it really is and the characters become caricatures of themselves and eventually outstay their welcome so that, in the end, it becomes a bit of a drag to complete. There’s also a bizarre penultimate chapter that is so up itself its laughable.

But, it’s a good read. It’s fun and it’s fresh. It’s just not as good as it wants to be.

And no, it’s not Shakespeare.

(But it will be a smash hit movie.)

The Holdovers: Movie Review

Why this has so many Oscar nominations is beyond me. Admittedly it’s a poor year, although the winner will be a good one. This will not be that winner.

Paul Giamatti dials in his performance as a grumpy (actually not THAT grumpy) teacher of Greek History in a second rank American private school. 

He has to look after a bunch of kids during the Christmas/New Year holidays alongside the school cook.

Most of the kids f*ck off and he’s left with one sensitive sixth former (looking suspiciously older) and, of course, they all bond.

It’s such a movie of tropes that I found it tiresome from the get go and entirely predictable.

Nothing is BAD about this movie, but nothing is good either. A Beautiful Mind and Dead Poets Society are both better exemplars of the genre and I didn’t especially love either of them really.

If movies by numbers is your thing then this is your movie.

All Of Us Strangers: Movie review

I so wish I liked this movie more. It’s gorgeous and thoughtful and wonderfully acted, by Andrew Scott in particular. It’s a touching subject about grief, loneliness, the act of coming out, death and suicide.

But I’m afraid it’s just really boring. It’s way too darkly shot – the cinema projector simply couldn’t cope with how black it is and consequently you could actually see the projector’s bulb fighting to get on top of the opaqueness of the subject matter. Clare Foy looked out of place and Paul Mescal must dream for a role that doesn’t require endless shagging.

I nodded off several times as Andrew Scott struggled with his endless, tiresome grief over the death of his parents (like 20 years ago FFS) who are actually still alive, or are they ghosts, or is it a dream?

Actually…who cares in the end. My wife wept a bit. I did not. And I’m a sap.

And the soundtrack is dull as ditchwater.

A nice possession.

This is my scalpel.

I’ve had it for nearly forty years.

I relocated it from the artwork studio of Hall Advertising in Drumsheugh Gardens, Edinburgh.

At one time an artworker skilfully used it, or one of its bedfellows, to cut my tie in half after it descended upon a piece of flat artwork he was tending to.

Everybody laughed. 

Even me. 

(It was a life lesson in getting out of the way when you’re not needed. It might even have been a lesson in micro-management.)

It sits in a cup full of Sharpies on my office desk at home and it gets used quite a lot.

Not to incise cadavers, remove stitches, perform open heart surgery, mind you. The aim of Swann Morton, its manufacturers (and possibly designers).

No, I use it to open parcels, shape paper for CD covers inserts, scrape plaque(tartare) from my teeth, slice sellotape, render blue, brown and green/yellow wires ready for electrical plug management. Little things that would be less satisfying with scissors.

I use it most frequently in the lead up to Christmas.

I have on occasion sliced small packages of skin from my fingers. But I forgive it.

Note its lustrous patina.

It’s a little treasure of mine.

.

Macbeth: Review (the big fat fancy one)

This is underwhelming. But megahyped. 

Tickets were selling in Edinburgh at an unprecedented £175 face value. This is frankly ridiculous.

Indira Varma does a good Lady MacBeth. 

But Ralph Fiennes is too old, too decrepit to be a believable ambition driven monarch. He looks more like a nice wee spot in a care home would suit him quite nicely. (My pal said he was like Leonard Rossiter in Rising Damp and I have to agree.)

As we enter the theatre (makeshift and terribly short legroom) we pass through a modern war zone (could be Syria, could be Gaza) it makes us think we are in for a modern reinterpretation of the greatest ever play. 

We are, but in costume only, as it transpires.

What follows is a competent (but no more than that ) retelling of the story of Scotland’s greatest King(s).

We await greatness but it seems it will only come tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow.

I thought it was a bit of a mess really with its Star Trek whooshing doors and its slightly distempered stage.

The witches are boring, Fiennes is boring. Thank God for Indira.

Fine, but pedestrian. 

If you are in Washington and hoping for the greatest English Shakespearian production of your life…save your money. Go watch Rising Damp on YouTube. Save yourself a few bucks.

39 years in the trenches. Then versus now in advertising.

It takes time to become a veteran in this business (advertising). So, it takes a while (39 years in my case) to be asked to look back on the olden days of what I do.

I was honoured to be asked by Barry Hearn to join him for a 60 minute chat with The Lane’s Creative Director, Ian ‘Fletch’ Fletcher about advertising, then and now.

So here’s Barry’s Marketing Society / Lane podcast called leading Conversations #21.

Please do enjoy. And let me know what you think.

It’s here.

Poor Things: Movie Review

First off, I have to state that I adore Yorgos Lanthimos. I adore Emma Stone. I adore Mark Ruffalo and I adore Willem Dafoe.

That’s it then. Slam dunk. Movie of the year. (Or is it?)

I also have to say that I am a great admirer of Alasdair Gray who wrote the source novel in 1992 and won the Whitbread Prize for his efforts.

The novel is described as a post modern take on Frankenstein in which Dr Godwin Baxter (there’s a pun in the name) creates a very different and lovable monster that he essentially adopts – Bella Baxter – a beautiful young erotomaniac brought back to life with the brain of an infant.

Bella is played with outrageous abandon by Stone and as the (long) movie unfolds, she evolves from a ‘beautiful retard’ that can barely speak and has dysfunctional locomotion (plus is keen on a terrible twos tantrum on a regular basis), to a fully fledged young genius and palatable member of Victorian(?) society.

But the journey she takes is eventful, colourful and stunning as she visits reimagined Paris, London, Lisbon and Alexandria in houses (and brothels) that merge Willie Wonka with Wes Anderson and a bit of Jules Vernes thrown in for good measure.

Three suitors attempt to unravel Bella’s being with varying degrees of success but the stand out is Mark Ruffalo’s outrageously posh gigolo Duncan Wedderburn. Rufallo’s sublime English accent more than makes up for Dafoe’s in and out Scots Frankenstein and he steals the show repeatedly as he seduces Bella before falling on hard times.

Stone is remarkable, but I was troubled by the sexual politics at play here. In a book written by a man and a movie directed by a man the male gaze is on Stone throughout and her route to success is through prostitution. I’d be interested to know what my female friends think of this strand of the movie. Is it objectification or is it liberalised feminism boldly and proudly on show? I found it hard to decide at the time, although surely the latter is Lanthimos’s objective.

It’s a tough movie to capture the essence of. The story is actually a little thin and quite unremarkable, but the styling and much of the script is extraordinary, truly extraordinary. If, for nothing else, the succession of mutant hybrid farm animals – a duck with a full sized pig’s head for example. And all of the central performances are notable (especially Ruffalo).

But, I think it’s a movie to admire, not to love. But, as a piece of art, it’s sublime.

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch: Book Review

This won the Booker Prize a few months ago and in quality terms sits alongside Colson Whitehead’s deadly duo of The Underground Railroad and Nickel Boys that won him the Pulitzer back to back. None of the three of them are what you would call easy reading, but each shares a love of humanity that shines through human anguish and strife like glorious beacons. In Lynch’s book, set in Ireland, a totalitarian government has rapidly insinuated the culture of the nation, turning its citizens into either patriots or rebels. Eilish, our central protagonist is a middle class mother of four married to the leader of the Irish teacher’s Union. The book opens with the Gardai at her door seeking the whereabouts of her spouse. Only a few pages later he is incarcerated, we know not where for, presumably, crimes against the state. And so begins a nightmare that threatens the whole substance and meaning of her life. Eilish, certainly not a patriot, finds herself shunned by her community. Slowly but surely the book ramps up Ireland’s descent into mayhem and the implications it has on all of Eilish’s family, including her newborn Ben who reaches toddler stage by the time of its heartbreaking denouement. The story is really about familial love in the midst of war torn chaos. It is directly inspired by the Syrian conflict that was the catalyst for the English Channel’s boat crossings but this is only one conflict in a constant global shifting sands of outrageous political, and religious, fervour. How a state as solid and secure as Ireland can implode quite is rapidly as it does is not really the point, but it’s shocking. The point is that poisonous aspects of nationhood and tribalism can spring up anywhere, any time. There are echos of the Wehrmacht that fully kicked off on Kristallnacht; it’s subtly portrayed in a horrifying passage half way through where it’s car windscreens, rather than Jewish shop windows, that take a battering. But the analogy is clear. Lynch’s prose is beautifully poetic and this conflict’s place in time is regularly referenced when he spells out that although we are reading a story set in Eilish’s present, it is rooted in both the past and will well-up again in the future, such is the certainty of the human condition. Lynch uses no para-breaks (see what I am doing here) nor quotation marks which renders the story breathless, echoing the turmoil and lack of headspace Eilish finds herself in, unable to make clear decisions because events constantly pile on top of each other. What’s more, her father is suffering from Alzheimer’s and is crumbling. Like many older people he is doggedly independent and in denial of his condition. And living on the other side of Dublin, across various frontlines, visiting him is a treacherous, verging on suicidal, undertaking. There is absolutely no let off in the accelerating heartbreak and injury that befalls Eilish and her brood as she seeks safety in some form or other. But ultimately that safety comes at a great price. It’s heart wrenching redolent of The Road but with less time for contemplation or consideration. It deserves to join the highest echelon of Irish novels, indeed any novels. I was broken-hearted that it had to end.

Kala by Colin Walsh: Book Review

Kala is the latest in a string of Celtic (Irish and Scottish) books that I have greatly enjoyed. In his acknowledgements Walsh puts this run of Irish writing successes down to the Arts Council funding he received and the impact of their funding on the Irish Writers Centre. The SNP or future coalitions in Scotland would do well to imitate this investment in the arts and culture.

This terrific thriller opens with ‘the gang’ 15 and foolish sitting on their bikes at the top of a steep hill goading each other on to ride down the hill towards a narrow gap in the wall that takes them across the main road between onrushing cars to the field on the other side. This death defying stunt is a metaphor for the rest of their lives a deep dark plunge into an abyss of fear and death.

The gang: Kala, Aoife, Helen, Aidan, Joe and Mush live in rural Ireland in a village called Kinlough. It’s not the sort of place you’d expect murders and disappearances, but this is exactly what transpires when days after the hill-cycle Kala disappears, never to return.

Brought back together some 15 or so years later Joe has become a pop superstar, Helen a Canadian Freelance journalist but the rest of the gang have stayed at home, and although still great friends, grudge the glamorous lives of these two protagonists. 

They’re back for a wedding that never happens because Kala’s murder is confirmed on the day of Helen’s arrival, when her bones turn up on a local building site.

The gang, led by Helen, attempt to understand what has happened and in the process discover a nightmarish underworld of low life scum. Something they were completely unaware of until now.

Told as point of view by Joe, Helen and Mush in alternating short chapters the story freely flows between now and their childhoods as the truth slowly reveals itself through a pretty hefty cast of 21 characters, mostly related to each other in some form.

In many ways it’s a procedural story, but the quality of writing (from award winning short story teller, Colin Walsh, in this his first novel) is considerably above average with outstanding descriptive prose that never misses a beat. He also nicely mixes the tenses with Mush and Helen speaking in first person and Joe in third person omniscient – which makes you think maybe he has stuff to hide.

It’s a great character study and a rip roaring yarn, so it’s difficult to imagine anyone who wouldn’t enjoy this. So do yourself a favour. Go Irish this year. And then go see the movie, that it surely must evolve into.

And if you have room for more of an Irish bent I highly recommend (the much more complex but truly brilliant) Milkman by Anna Burns that recently won the Booker).

Same Team: A Street Soccer Story at The Traverse Theatre

Robbie Gordon and Jack Nurse each score double hat-tricks in the writing of this fabulous new play at The Traverse in Edinburgh, under Bryony Shanahan’s taught direction and in collaboration with Dundee Women’s Street Soccer organisation. I have not laughed so much in a theatre for a long time. Line after line land on the six yard box to be smashed into the top bins as the outrageously great script provides a pitch perfect ensemble cast with the times of their lives.

Hannah Jarrett-Scott has the pick of the parts, as the highly strung B, but TBH all five actors would have places in a theatrical Champion’s League Man City squad. 

But a play this great starts with the writing and that’s where Gordon and Nurse make the actors’ jobs easy. Not only in the hilarious techno fuelled banter that makes up large parts of the script, but in telling the back story of each of these womens’ lives with real sympathy and quiet space. It feels based on truth (and I imagine where the Homeless Change project in Dundee contributed).

The story is a good one. Five homeless women are selected to represent Scotland in the Women’s Homeless World Cup in Milan. As befits a good story their abilities are mixed and their personalities like oil and water. But football is a leveller and, naturally enough, the group’s dynamic waxes and wanes with their fortunes on the pitch. It would be an enormous spoiler to tell you how they fare in Italy, you’ll just have to hope that it finds a second life. I feel sure it will because a show this good, performed this well, cannot spend the rest of its life in a memory-based Panini sticker album.

Bravo. Brilliant stuff that everyone will love.

Here’s a behind the scenes video.

Pearl: Movie Review

I’ve now seen all three of Mia Goth’s extraordinary A24 movies this year. In each one she has singlehandedly carried the movie to ridiculous heights of greatness.

All three are billed as horror (X as a slasher, Infinity Pool as an unhinged psychopath study and Pearl as another psychopath gestational study).

All three deepen A24’s reputation as the distributor of the year/decade, the greatest signifier of quality in moviemaking right now.

All three mark out Goth as the leading horror female actor in history if not, increasingly, one of the great female actors of her generation full stop.

It’s Pearl that that confirms this most potently as her performance is jaw dropping throughout.

It’s the origin piece for X, but the two movies could hardly be less similar, even though the central character is the same person (60 years apart) and shot on the same farm location in Kansas.

This tells the tale of young married Pearl with her husband labouring in the European trenches of WWII, her father a wheelchair stricken quadriplegic – a victim of the Spanish Flu which is a clever reference as it was written by Goth and Director Ti West during lockdown – and her raging mother, a German immigrant trapped by her crippled husband in rural America and resentful to the back teeth because of it.

Goth (Pearl) wants to escape this and become a dancer but is thwarted at auditions for not being blonde enough. This triggers her inner psychopath and whilst we don’t get a rampage on the scale of X we do see her nascent evil emerge.

It’s Goth’s startling performance and Ti West’s dazzling direction that marks this out as a horror of sheer class, although in truth it’s not really a horror at all: not a single jump scare and very little in the way of butchery.

Two scenes stand out, both featuring Goth, a long monologue to her friend and the closing credits which are reminiscent of Sinead Connor’s classic pop video.

This is movie making at its finest and a must see in my opinion.

Volkswagen UK should be hanging their head in shame.

My student daughter Ria has our old Golf. It’s a 58 plate with 160,000 miles on the clock but it’s diesel and is still running well (so far so good).

She recently received a product recall message from VW UK to take her car in for the ABS to be adjusted as it has presumably come to light that it is defective/dangerous. She duly obliged and took it to a Dundee VW dealership on 30th October. She was not offered a courtesy car whilst VW fixed their defective manufacturing.

It’s now the 2nd of December and despite multiple pleas to both the dealership (who I would argue are innocent in this but are the customer face of VW) cannot, or will not, give her a courtesy car which she needs on a daily basis to travel from Perth to Dundee to study. The car will now not be repaired until AT LEAST the 24th of January because VW cannot source the replacement part to fix their defective product.

And yet they STILL refuse to give her a courtesy car (even some old banger that’s going to the auctions would be acceptable because they “don’t have one available” What? The might of VW, Audi, Skoda and Seat can’t between them muster a single banger to lend her while they sort out the problem that have created themselves?

It’s not fair and it’s surely unacceptable if not illegal.

Please share.

Scotland Women vs England Women is a scandal.

This will surely go down in history as the most outrageous qualifying match ever. How were these teams allowed to compete in the same Olympics qualifying group?

Put simply, it is Scotland’s DUTY to throw the match against England to give those Scotland players who are good enough the opportunity to play in the Olympic tournament in a GB side that will of course be dominated by English women.

Anyone who accuses Scotland of lying down will be correct, but, and it’s a big but, the football authorities responsible for allowing this outcome to happen are the ones at blame, not the players or their managers.

I’m Not With The Band (A Writer’s Life Lost in Music) by Sylvia Patterson: Book Review

I didn’t know of Sylvia Patterson, she was never really a big name music writer like Barbara Ellen or Miranda Sawyer but, as it turns out, she had quite the CV behind her.

Raised in Perth by an alcoholic mum and adoring dad her life story (Published in 2016 but evading me until now) is diaphanously explored through this wonderful book’s pages.

She’s a bit of a sorry soul in most respects; addicted to weed, a very heavy drinker and unable (mostly) to forge a real relationship, her housing situation in London is sub-optimal to say the least and she barely had two pennies to rub together – life as a music journalist, especially a freelancer, may be glamorous but it sure isn’t financially rewarding.

The book sort of evolves as it emerges into the light, starting out at the lite end of glamour in Dundee on Etcetra before graduating to Smash Hits (Ver Hits) in London then NME before Glamour magazine (fits your lifestyle and your handbag) as music editor, before going freelance.

We get real insights into all of these magazines as Patterson charts the gradual and terminal decline of the music press. My beloved NME being the most remarkable implosion.

But the meat of this extraordinary, and yes it is extraordinary, story is the interviews which she retells in forensic detail. She’s clearly kept the tapes which allows her to transcribe them in all of their gory glory.

Madonna, Prince, Spike Milligan, Blur (wankers especially Damon), Coldplay, Kylie (12 times), Spike Milligan, Eminem (utter cunt), Cypress Hill, Marc Almond (wanker), New Order, Oasis, Pulp, The Manics (bevvie merchants extraordinaire), Led Zeppelin, The Beckhams, Beyonce (as Destiny’s Child), Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse, Adele…The list is endless and all killa no filla. Most have at least a chapter each dedicated to them, all are analysed as artists and human beings. Some do not fare well.

The writing is brilliant, unique in style, relaxed, a bit gossipy but never show offy. This feels like a true expose of the music industry, a bit Kenneth Anger I suppose.

Patterson herself comes across as brave, bold, maverick, non-conformist but vulnerable and scatterbrained, so in no way is this a “look at me” self aggrandisement, but a slightly sad, slightly regretful summation of a career that feels terribly overlooked. If her journalism was as good as her book-writing she should have been the most famous music journo in the biz. Maybe spending too long at Smash Hits, which people like me sneered at, was part of her problem – although writing stars emerged from that stable. Perhaps her lack of ambition stimied her. I don’t know, but what I do know is I’d love to meet her and admire her tremendously.

Bravo Sylvia.

Anatomy of a Fall: Movie Review

Well, this is by a distance the best movie I’ve watched this year. It actually feels more than a movie experience as it’s so writerly, almost so theatrical that it becomes much more than the sum of its parts by the time you emerge from two and a half hours of spellbinding storytelling.

It’s a French courtroom procedural at its heart.

But it’s a marriage breakdown story at its heart

But its a tragedy at its heart, as the son of our main protagonist loses his sight as a result of his father’s momentary lack of attention (in this respect it reminded me of The Child in Time by Ian McEwan in which a simple lapse of concentration leads to a lifetime of anguish).

This is to prove pivotal at the climax of a densely multilayered script that keeps you guessing from start to finish. Not that it’s a whodunnit.

Basic story is this. Mum, famous writer being interviewed by a sexy young French literature student whom she maybe fancies because she is bisexual has to abort interview because Dad (failed writer and home carer for the son he blinded) starts to drown out the interview by playing P.I.M.P at full volume on the stereo. Mum seems unconcerned; semi-sighted son takes beloved dog for a walk in the snow. When he returns dad is dead having either jumped or been pushed by his wife from the top floor of the chalet.

We now embark on a slow (reminded me of Michael Haneke direction) unravelling of a pre-trial build up with Mum’s old friend (flame?) before the trial itself shift shapes endlessly as the story unfolds.

It’s set in the French alps where French husband Samuel has forced his German wife Sandra to relocate. She speaks perfectly good French but insists they converse in English.

At the trial the court insists on French (but she drops often into English) and this ambiguity and fluidity of language is a powerful metaphor for the rules of marriage, how relationships are brokered, where the power lies.

At its core sits the simply incredible, often inscrutable, Sandra Hüller who’s barely off screen. She has a script to die for, written by the director Justin Triet and Arthur Harari . In many ways it’s the star of the show because it’s so clever, moving and labyrinthine.

Then there’s a mesmerising performance by 11 year old Milo Machado Graner, the semi sighted son who is the key to the whole story, but keeps his cards well hidden until the breathtaking denouement.

Frankly, the beautiful blue eyed pet dog deserves a mention too. You’ll need to watch it to see why.

All in all it’s a remarkable movie. The Haneke reference is deserved. The performances outstanding. perhaps too slow in the first act, but by the end you’ll be wanting more.

Don’t go for popcorn entertainment. Go for philosophical human insight and intrigue. You’ll thank me – if that floats your boat.

The Snow Queen at Royal Lyceum Theatre Review

Morna Young’s very Scottish adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen is a delight from start to finish. We watch as if through a mirror to a beautiful rendering of the Lyceum’s Grand Circle recreated on stage into a clever two-level set crafted with much detail (we were in row A of the stalls so got a pretty close up view). The costumes are beautifully crafted too.

The tale is a pretty closely followed retelling of the classic fairy tale, but moved to Scotland which affords us a grand opportunity to mix modern and auld Scots with a fair bit of the Doric. This leads to several good one liners in what is a funny but not pantomime script.

In fact it’s not panto at all, which is the way with the Lyceum’s Christmas shows, but this, more than most, is primarily concerned with storytelling and performance than ‘she’s behind you’ and lewd innuendo, although Richard Conlon gets a chance to successfully air his comedy chops as a camp unicorn in act 2.

It’s directed by Cora Bissett but doesn’t particularly feel like a Cora show. I don’t know why I say that because she has a pretty broad repertoire. It somehow feels more constrained than I’d expected Cora to be with this. That’s not to say her work is not up to scratch because it very much is. She teases excellent performances out of the entire cast, led by a newcomer to me, Rosie Graham as Garda.

One young child sitting next to us was clearly scared to bits by Clare Dargo as the Snow Queen and had to leave after 20 minutes, but it’s not a scary show and should be good for most kids, although it is quite long. Maybe a touch too long if I’m honest.

It’s really quite a lovely performance. Touching and sentimental without being gushy and I for one would highly recommend it.

Enjoy.

The Beatles: Now and Then. The final Single.

I wonder if you share my enthusiasm for what at first seemed to me to be a gimmick release but turns out to be rather moving and beautiful. Although my Unbcle Rab declared it “a bit mushy”. And my wife Jeana said, “The trouble is I don’t like Paul McCartney’s voice.” Nicely spotted Jeana.

Me? It’ll be on my best of the year list because, quite simply, it’s one of the best of the year.

Thank you technology for giving us this.

Yes we did.

That^ was replaced with this…

Columba’s Bones by David Greig: Book Review

David Greig has written some of my favourite plays. I will never forget his Macbeth addendum, Dunsinane. And The Strange Undoing of Prudentia Hart is a play like no other you have ever seen. Add to that The Suppliant Women (after Aeschylus) Solaris and Yellow Moon and you have a writer of significant importance. (And that’s just the tip of the iceberg).

I bumped into him on Monday lunchtime on Lothian Road, and after chittery chattery he asked me if I was still writing this largely undiscovered colossus of writing magnificence. “Yes”, I humbly replied.

“Well, you’ll regret meeting me today” he proclaimed as he fumbled in his rucksack to fish out a copy of Columba’s Bones and thrust it into my hands. With that he disappeared into the fog.

It wasn’t foggy.

Gulping with fear I strode to Sainsbury’s for my Red Pepper and Lentil Soup, a bargain at £1.50 in these days of crippling extortion. Fear, because the thought of ploughing through a religious tale set in Iona in 825 was my idea of hell – I’d read the publicity and had abandoned the idea of purchasing this novel.

Fast forward 5.5 hours, to whence I sit on the #43 Lothian County Bus to South Queensferry. People are looking at me like I’m a leper as I guffaw at page three of this magnificent jewel.

It’s only 180 pages, it’s A5 in size, pocketable, and has big type for the hard of reading, so if it was going to be a chore it was going to be a manageable chore.

It’s not a chore.

Yes, it’s set on Iona. Yes, it’s 825AD (or whatever they call it now). Yes, it stars a monk, a viking and a widow. No, it’s not a turgid bag of fleapiss.

What David Greig does, and this cues me up to blow voluminous smoke up his beardy arse, is conjure up (based on an existing story I think) a truly great thing. Firstly, it’s hysterically funny (think Monty Python meets Mary Beard, pissed). Secondly, it’s properly engaging. In so few words Greig creates three characters that are at once unique and at the same time familiar. Thirdly it’s unputdownable.

It’s a story about revenge, love (of God, man and woman) and values. But mostly it’s just a right rollicking read. I’ll say no more because it’s easy to spoil it.

By Wednesday teatime, as I rolled off the #43, it was done. I will be extolling its virtues to all and sundry for many moons.

Not only must you read it. You must.