The Power of The Dog: Movie Review

Benedict Cumberbatch. Being a pure bastard.

Well, that’s the bar set for Best Movie at this year’s Oscars.

In which Benedict Cumberbatch blows his back catalogue out of the water in assuming a complex role that simply takes your breath away. It helps that he has the truly magnificent Jane Campion to direct him in what is a virtuoso performance on her part.

The entire movie plays havoc with “Western” stereotypes in a similar way to how Brokeback Mountain totally upended the genre’s conventions. But this is an even more nuanced movie than Brokeback Mountain.

Once again Kirsten Dunst shows how great an actress she is (I loved her in Melancholia and The Virgin Suicides and it’s a real shame that her reputation really lies in fluff and franchise movies, because she is so much better than that). Perhaps, finally, Dunst will be given the recognition she deserves by the Academy. Surely.

She plays the wife of her real life husband (Jesse Plemons)who plays Cumberbatch’s brother. Cumberbatch, a redneck bully with a secret, and Plemons, the more sophisticated of the two, bullied by his brother and manager of the ranch and its rather magnificent “stately” home. The mistrust and disharmony the two exhibit is relentless and deeply unpleasant.

Dunst comes into the family with a pubescent son from her widowed previous marriage (the marvellous Kodi-Smit McPhee – best known as a child actor in The Road and Let Me In, but all grown up now) he’s a pretty boy in a roughneck world, totally out of place and relentlessly bullied, just like his new step father.

But the son gets under bully boy Cumberbatch’s skin and sees him for what he really is. No need to explain – it’ll only spoil the fun.

Once again Jonny Greenwood pulls out all the stoppers with a brooding, thoughtful and magical score. And the camerawork by Ari Wegner is truly remarkable. She made a deep impression on me with her work on The True History of the Kelly Gang and also in Lady Macbeth.

The movie juggles the relationships between the two brothers and the new wife and her son artfully. The interrelationship between each of them shapeshifts throughout the movie and Dunst’s rapid descent into alcoholism (fuelled by Cumberbatch’s obvious hatred of her) is beautifully directed and performed.

Cumberbatch has never been like this, not even remotely, before. He’s a malevolent, evil force. Dunst is at her equal career best and Campion has rarely, if ever, put a foot wrong throughout her illustrious career. And this is a highlight.

This is a movie to really savour, to relish, but uncomfortably so.

Duck Feet by Ely Percy: Book Review

Last year Shuggy Bain won the Booker Prize. Set in Glasgow, it’s a coming of age life story told in working class Scots vernacular. It’s over rated in my opinion.

This year Ely Percy released Duck Feet. Set in Glasgow, it’s a coming of age life story told in working class Scots vernacular. It’s underrated in my opinion.

It’s been 16 years in the writing and it’s published by a small Scottish publishing house (Monstrous Regiment Publishing Ltd ) who had clearly not anticipated its success because I couldn’t find a copy anywhere for a Christmas gift because the printer had “run out of paper”, such has been its word of mouth demand.

Since it was written the author’s sexuality has u-turned which is relevant because much of the book is about getting off with her male school mates at Renfrew Academy.

There’s a rich tapestry of characters, immediately recognisable to any Scottish comprehensive school veteran. In fact, other than the intense use of vernacular, the characters will be recognisable to anyone anywhere.

It’s laugh out loud funny throughout, not just because of the everyday hilarity of school life, friendships, falling outs and misadventures, but because Ely Percy has a beautiful turn of phrase for every occasion. Many of the scenarios she paints will be familiar ones to the reader but she tells the tales with such aplomb that they appear fresh and charming.

It’s arguably a collection of short stories (and indeed chapters have been published in a variety of media in just this format) but they come together beautifully and chronologically in 70 chapters that tell the story of one unremarkable girl’s journey (Kirsty Campbell), through puberty, from first to sixth year of High School, alongside her troupe of ne’erdowells and misfits.

Towards the end there’s a pretty major tonal shift when an event happens that changes everything but I won’t spoil that for you. It marks a change in pace and tone that Percy handles with great skill.

If Douglas Stuart merited the Booker Prize then this must surely too. For my money it’s a superior novel and has already won Scottish Book of the Year. However, I can’t see it scaling the same heights as its illustrious predecessor.

It matters not. Just get yourself a copy and enjoy Kirsty Campbell’s schooldays.

My podcast best of 2021 list

It’s time to reflect on my best of the year. One thing that’s been great about it has been contributing to GreatPods.co a fab new aggregator of quality podcast reviews. Reassures me that my opinion is of some interest out there.

The front half of the year saw better output in my view and, of course, discovery of existing, but new to me, pods.

Those worthy of note and strong recommendation would be…

The Rest is History: Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook’s excellent and often hilarious history pod that’s also extremely interesting, if sometimes a bit mad. The best was their World Cup of Prime Ministers double header.

Dear Joan and Jericha: Julia Davis and Vicki Pepperdine’s super posh, super filthy agony aunt series where nothing BUT NOTHING is too extreme to discuss.

Brian and Roger: Big Owl’s fantastic black comedy by Harry Peacock and Dan Skinner about two men who meet at a support meeting for divorced men. One an unemployed lovely old soul who will help anyone (Roger) is increasingly exploited by the heartless and selfish Brian. Comedy gold. All told through the medium of telephone answering machines.

Grounded with Louis Theroux: Theroux is well known for his sideways look at documentary making, often choosing the left of field as subject matter. Here he talked to 22 people whose lives interested him (the best was FKA Twigs – truly brilliant)

The Battersea Poltergeist: A superb radio 4 drama documentary tracing the true life story of a poltergeist in 50’s London with a cynic and a believer acting as pundits. Gripping and great storytelling.

Wild For Scotland: A tiny, low budget doc about great walks in Scotland. Charmingly told by our lovely presenter Kathi Kamleitner.

Things Fell Apart by Jon Ronson: Podcast Review

I’m a big fan of Jon Ronson, having read several of his books and his two previous podcasts: The Butterfly Effect and The Last Days of August, both of which were brilliant. He also did a fabulous Grounded with Louis Theroux, the first in fact.

So this new outing from BBC Radio 4 had all the credentials for greatness.

It’s essentially an exploration of what he calls Culture Wars, but it’s not massively clear who the ‘wars’ are between or what he means by this.

The first three episodes suggest he has a pathological hatred of American Christian Fundamentalists who take on Femisists, the Pro Choice Movement (episode one)and the Liberal Left who used West Virginian schools as a test bed for new school text books in the 70’s (episode two).

By episode three he’s on to the AIDS epidemic and how, again, Christian Fundamentalists added homophobia to their delightful list of hobbies.

But then the themes start to wander and crumble a little. Episode four is about satanists and five, by which point I was losing interest, is about freedom of speech at Stamford University around about the time of the birth of the internet, built around some huge fall out over a Jewish Scottish joke (that isn’t even funny).

The trouble with this series is threefold:

1. The stories aren’t much cop
2. The premise is, for me, a little unclear and few of these episodes really do feel like proper wars, just spats
3. The idea (at least in terms of cultural exploration) was done much better, and far more engagingly and humorously by Willa Paskin in Decoder Ring. Her exploration of Unicorn Poo, The Mullet and other equally absurd cultural phenomena were just as well researched but were also genuinely fun and interesting.

I’m feeling Ronson has maybe hit a bit of a dry stretch in his career and this podcast is amongst his weakest ever work. At times turgid and often uncertain as to the overall point he is trying to make.

It’s all just a bit dull, frankly.

American Utopia by David Byrne (A Spike Lee Joint): Movie review

My friend Lisl MacDonald has seen this show live and raved about not, so to my surprise it appeared on Sky Arts last night. I didn’t even know there was a film of it. It’s recorded by Spike Lee at a Broadway Theatre which makes it intense and kind of club like.

It’s a gig, but it’s a theatrical gig with a band of 14 all with their instruments bluetooth connected so no cables get in the way, which is essential because it’s also a dance performance.

All dressed in beautiful mid gray suits and in bare feet, David Byrne himself looks magnificent. Handsome, erudite and with a singing voice that has not aged a day since he first graced the stage of CBGB’s in the mid 1970’s.

The show starts with a chain metal curtain very slowly rising from the stage floor to envelope the stage in a shimmering metallic glow through which performers appear and disappear. It’s highly reminiscent of a show I saw at The Edinburgh Festival a number of years ago called Rosas: Rain, choreographed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, one of the most beautiful contemporary dance shows I’ve ever seen. ( I feel sure Byrne must have seen it and been influenced by it).

YouTube won’t let me embed the link but you can watch a trailer of it here.

It’s the music that lifts this gig from not just outstanding to a level that even exceeds what many acknowledge to be the greatest gig film ever made (Stop Making Sense, incredibly by David Byrne, with Talking Heads).

The only thing this show misses is Psycho Killer, but it has many of Talking Heads’ greatest songs, including my all time favourite, I Zimbra, which has it’s back story interestingly explained by Byrne. ( a 1932 Dadaesque nonsense Poem.)

You’d think a Talking Heads show without the other Heads would lack something. No it doesn’t because the musical accompaniment is outstanding.

Technically it is utter perfection with glorious but understated lighting and sound that is off the scale in its perfection.

The finale is breathtaking and tear-inducing, bringing to a fitting conclusion a show that I will be watching many times in the future.

An absolute nailed on 10/10 for me.

365 Stories by James Robertson: Book Review.

This has been my Jobbie (or is it jobby) book for about two years.

I have one in the upstairs lavvie and a different one down stairs. And, of course, some of my jobbies are emanated off-site. So that’s why it took meso long.

Jobbie books are as important to me as any other. They create a rhythm to my life that is well-suited to the moments of pedastalic contemplation that do not require, in any way, to be scatalogical.

Some people like Private Eye, The Beano, magazines, their iPhones.

Each to their own but for this purpose, I choose literature, or history.

This is both.

Robertson set out to write 365 stories, all of exactly 365 words, in 365 days.

A monumental objective with no guarantee of success and, of course, there are days when he succeeded better than others, but taken in totality this wondrous tome represents a snapshot of Scottish cultural life, folklore and even fantasy.

Much of it is existential. Robertson clearly has an interesting fixation on his mortality – death features frequently as a character, often alongside daft, but no so daft, Jack of Jack and the Beanstalk.

It’s a broad mix of humour, philosophy, fantasy and frankly, just moaning. He is a middle aged Scotsman after all – so he turns some of his favourite gripes into stories (gripes about authority feature most frequently).

It was with a heavy heart that I turned the final page as I sent the last of the weans I’d dumped at the pool off to the sea.

Thank you for this James.

I’m onto Sapiens now.

(Upstairs that is, I’m still on The Colour of History in the downstairs cludgie).

1902: by Saltire Sky Theatre: Theatre Review

It’s a shame there was no programme with this show because I can’t namecheck the cast.

Turned out, as it came to an end, though, that it was the writer, director and star, Nathan Scott-Dunn’s, 150th and final appearance in a piece of work that is triumphant in its conception and delivery.

From the start we are treated to gentle live music from the Hibs Strip clad guitarist who soundtracks the show, playing a random selection of post punk greats. It’s about the only moment of gentility that we will encounter in the two hours that we spent in a rough and ready Leith Arches, immersed in a performance that reflects the greatest moment in the mighty Hibernian FC’s roller coaster history.

The butt of every rival Hearts fans’ jokes, Hibs’ 114 years without Scottish Cup glory, was frankly a club embarrassment, but from a headed goal in the 92nd minute at Hampden in May 2016 by Sir David Gray it was all over.

The clock reset.

Dignity restored.

Unbridled joy brought to the streets of Leith.

So the Arches is a fitting venue, barely a stone’s throw from the hallowed pitch of Easter Road Stadium.

What Scott-Dunn does is use that story (the outcome of which every audience member knows) as a plot device around which to build a story of betrayal, family disharmony and working class poverty and violence that will be familiar to the readers of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting. It’s not a rip off in any way, but it’s a world that was as real to Welsh as it clearly is to Scott-Dunn.

Indeed the vernacular applied by Scott-Dunn is very much that of Welsh’s pages, the humour too, so it’s not surprising that baldy Irv features on the show’s flyers with a 5 star endorsement.

I stopped counting the number of cunts in the script at around 100, so if you are squeamish about that sort of language, of overt sexism (it’s how lads talk) and extreme violence this is not gonna be your cup ae tea. But, if you can overcome that and see that it is the language of the streets you’ll be fine. In this case the streets, not actually of Leith but of Bonnyrigg – a town not much associated with literary greatness.

It is now.

It’s largely set in and around the Bonnyrigg Hibs Supporters Brigade, named because it sounds harder than Bonnyrigg Hibs Supporters Club. And these boys need to be hard because the main protagonist ‘Deeks’ (classic Edinburgh nickname) has just borrowed a grand off the town’s hardest cunt to buy four cup final tickets for his pals, none of whom have £250 to spare.

The loan gets called in quickly by the Rangers supporting Begbie type loan shark, “Sambo”, who looked me in the eyes in my front row seat and forced me to admit he was scaring me. It’s only theatre. But he was scaring me.

As you might imagine, this loan call-in sets off a chain of mostly violent events that I won’t spoil for you but range from the hilarious (there’s a magnificent, truly magnificent, gag about a Suntan salon) to the really quite sad. Poverty does not come emotionally empty handed.

It’s at this midway point in the show that the volume increases, the neck veins bulge, the perspiration pops despite the less than clement conditions.

A wee radge Cockney barmaid enters the fray and has us in stitches, but also close to tears. It’s a triumphant addition to the cast because without her the testosterone may have just about overwhelmed the show. It doesn’t.

This is not big-city, state-funded theatre, this is honest storytelling escalated to greatness through clansmanship, comedy, pathos and passion. The cast is uneven, but mostly brilliant. The venue is unexpected, but perfection actually. The spirit is indomitable.

“We are Hibernian FC, we hate Jam Tarts and we hate Dundee”. We got that in spades from 1902, but we also got what it means to live in an ordinary life with a lack of hope and what Hibs, a community club at its heart, who win two thirds of fuck all, means to its community.

It means everything actually and Nathan Scott-Dunn shows us why.

This show will live long. When you get the chance to see it (it took me 150 performances) see it with an open mind, and an open spirit.

And if you’re a Jambo or a Dundee fan, see it for what it is. Exactly the same as what you feel about your own club, your own community.

And like me, take your football-agnostic other half. In my case my wife, a Jambo. She loved it just as much as I did.

Bravo.

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld: Book Review

This is the second novel about First Ladies that I have read by Sittenfeld this year. Rodham (about an imagined history: If Hillary hadn’t married Bill) and this, about the life of Laura Bush.

In different ways both are magnificent. This is far longer (636pp), more serious in its observations and gets way deeper into the psyche of a First Lady who was pro-abortion, killed a classmate (boyfriend) accidentally, did not agree with the War her husband initiated and, at least in the novel, was so humble that she questioned her validity to hold the position of First Lady at every turn.

The main protagonist (Alice Lindgren/Blackwell) is never named as Laura Bush but it cannot be otherwise and that’s what grants it so much gravitas as a novel. Historically it is accurate and the issues that trouble Alice are exactly those that troubled Bush. She too was a librarian that entered, through marriage, a mighty rich dynasty and served her country as best she could and with far greater popularity than her idiot husband (in the novel he’s called Charlie Blackwell).

What makes the novel so compelling is that it is an extremely detailed analysis of not just a life (it takes us from 1954 to 2007 or so) of initial ordinariness through to spectacular fame, but that it throws up the moral compass by which Alice has to (chooses to) live her life. This takes in a huge transition from her small town upbringing in Wisconsin, where the ramifications of the death of her boyfriend, caused by her in a car accident, to her relationship with the highly privileged Charlie Blackwell (George Bush).

In the chapter where we first meet the extraordinarily rich Blackwell clan for the first time I was reminded of the scenes in The Crown where Thatcher goes to Balmoral and is overwhelmed by her daughter of a grocer status in the presence of extreme wealth, privilege and fame. It’s cringeworthy but delicious.

In the final quarter of the book we get to imagine in close detail what the ramifications of that life mean to her as a woman (First Lady), an ordinary woman, and the political consequences of her actions.

Much of the book is a polemic on what it means to be a wife, any wife, not just the First Wife. As public property she has a ‘duty’ to support her husband and his political beliefs (tricky for Alice as a Democrat). As a woman, simply in a long term relationship with a man who does things she might not agree with, we witness her tussling with how to change his behaviours without wrecking their relationship.

It’s mighty writing.

At times it can feel a little stretched out, particularly in the second half of the novel, but mostly it’s absolute gold.

Curtis Sittenfeld has a comedy stardust pen and I’m amazed, astonished in fact, that to my knowledge none of her masterful work has made it to the screen. She can, at times, give Aaron Sorkin a run for his money in the acerbic political writing stakes.

She also has a knack of dealing with sex in a very believable way. In Rodham we squirmed as Hillary and Bill made out. She does not shirk the responsibility here either, and it adds even more realism to the drama. They are human beings after all, not political robots.

As the novel reaches its climax (even though it covers a lifetime of change the narrative arc is not what matters particularly here) it pulls all the strands of guilt, worth, love, duty and loyalty together in a really quite moving denoument.

If you have not read any Curtis Sittenfeld please trust me when I say American Wife and Rodham are extraordinary works of art that will stay with you for a very long time. (I have lost count of the number of recommendations I’ve made of Rodham, this will be no different.)

Entirely recommended.