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Too much cheesecake too soon
Apr. 20th, 2008 11:20 amSo I return from the countryside with its pigs and obelisks only to discover that London's been smelling like the countryside anyway. And fresh from storming the pub quiz at the seafront Hook & Parrot, whose new landlord is causing some controvery by bringing poledancers to sleepy Seaton, I head to a rather jolly harbour bar-themed evening in Whitechapel. There's a reminder there about the superfluousness of travel, isn't there? Anyway, Shore Leave - a night I would unhesitatingly recommend except that the next one is yet another First Saturday Of The Month job. Why is everything on that night these days? Still - cheap, friendly, good outfits, great music (too few clubs play Dietrich) and a very big garden for the smokers, complete with a mirrored car.
Among the country things with which London has yet to supply me: more opportunities to chop wood. Which is top fun - it's like exercise, except not boring, because there's an axe.
It was mainly the Nick Cave/Warren Ellis score which led me to take an interest in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, especially since I'm not that big on Westerns. Nonetheless, it is a very, very good film - although also one I'm glad I saw on a big screen, if not *the* big screen, because a lot of its power is in the slow, beautiful shots, the landscape. It never quite explains itself, even while the occasional voiceover makes it feel at times like an unusually well-done reconstruction for a documentary; you're left with echoes and intimations. There are hints of Judas in Ford's betrayal, the role which is necessary to the myth but also doomed to eternal vilification. Or is he the thwarted fan? Maybe it's about wanting to be someone, or failing that, to end them? These were my guesses, but I'm sure someone else could watch it and come up with another handful of motives just as plausible. And that's what I liked; it felt like life. Life in all its grandeur and mystery, as against the even-duller-than-the-real-thing school of 'realism;.
A masterstroke, too, to have Brad Pitt as the only real star. Not that the rest of the cast aren't fine actors, but they're not celebrities. Sometimes, an actor's fame as themselves can militate against their plausibility in a part; here it's an easy, effective way to get across Jesse's mythic status.
I find middling Who episodes like 'Planet of the Ood' or 'The Lazarus Experiment' strangely reassuring. In between the masterpieces and the atrocities, they're the ones which remind me most of the old series, which give me the strongest feeling of continuity.
Among the country things with which London has yet to supply me: more opportunities to chop wood. Which is top fun - it's like exercise, except not boring, because there's an axe.
It was mainly the Nick Cave/Warren Ellis score which led me to take an interest in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, especially since I'm not that big on Westerns. Nonetheless, it is a very, very good film - although also one I'm glad I saw on a big screen, if not *the* big screen, because a lot of its power is in the slow, beautiful shots, the landscape. It never quite explains itself, even while the occasional voiceover makes it feel at times like an unusually well-done reconstruction for a documentary; you're left with echoes and intimations. There are hints of Judas in Ford's betrayal, the role which is necessary to the myth but also doomed to eternal vilification. Or is he the thwarted fan? Maybe it's about wanting to be someone, or failing that, to end them? These were my guesses, but I'm sure someone else could watch it and come up with another handful of motives just as plausible. And that's what I liked; it felt like life. Life in all its grandeur and mystery, as against the even-duller-than-the-real-thing school of 'realism;.
A masterstroke, too, to have Brad Pitt as the only real star. Not that the rest of the cast aren't fine actors, but they're not celebrities. Sometimes, an actor's fame as themselves can militate against their plausibility in a part; here it's an easy, effective way to get across Jesse's mythic status.
I find middling Who episodes like 'Planet of the Ood' or 'The Lazarus Experiment' strangely reassuring. In between the masterpieces and the atrocities, they're the ones which remind me most of the old series, which give me the strongest feeling of continuity.
