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Take the TGV to Zurich and jump off the roof of Dignitas
Went to the Bowie Bar last night and it was atypically packed - plus, they'd run out of cider (which is a bit rubbish, but it happens) without putting an empty glass on the pump handle (which is never, ever OK, because it wastes customer and bartender time, and anyone failing to mark an empty pump in this or a similar way should never be allowed to work in a pub ever again, and that's the moderate version, because at the time I generally think in terms of limb removal) so we decamped to the Defoe, which is a fine and spacious pub and long may it prosper. En route, I saw a tortoise clambering around the muddy bed of the empty New River extension. Was it wild? Had it escaped? How does a tortoise make a break for freedom anyway? But other than that, I've mainly been watching films:
A Very British Coup was actually a TV miniseries, but on DVD it has no episode breaks, so who's counting? Ray McAnally (get 1 x deed poll, dude) stars in a fantastical tale of an outlandish alternate 1980s in which Keith Allen has hair and a thoroughly leftwing Labour party wins a landslide election victory. But, like any good alternate universe story, everything after that one crazy premise follows with the utmost plausibility. It helps that, in 1988, TV was obviously less scared - so unlike The Thick of It, the Labour and Conservative parties are named rather than implied, and while the vile cable and newspaper baron may not actually be called Rupert Murdoch, they barely attempt to disguise him either. As crazy as much of the action now seems - part of the reason Harry Perkins becomes PM is that, after uncovering massive malfeasance in the financial industry, a load of bankers ended up with gaol sentences, rather than the bail-outs and bonuses we now know they'd receive - this feels like it could have been the real world, right down to those tire-track mugs everyone had back then. In many senses even the coup itself is just a lens to magnify the real fate of every PM or President elected on a wave of hope - the loss of momentum, the end of the honeymoon, the tiredness. And the way a rumour, no matter how untrue, can cripple a politician - well, just look at the Swiftboating of John Kerry, or the ludicrous accusations Obama can never shake to the satisfaction of large (if idiotic) swathes of his nation.
A last crazy detail: among the advisors on this tale of a Labour leader who abandons off the record briefings, whispering campaigns and the like, the credits list one Alistair Campbell.
Miranda (not the sitcom, though I saw an episode at the parents' and it's not as bad as the trailers suggest) should be an excellent film. It has Christina Ricci and John Simm as the leads, supported by Kyle McLachlan and John Hurt. Even the minor roles have the likes of Tamsin Grieg and Julian Rhind-Tutt; drop them into a tale of love and library closures, and you should have a cult classic, right? But while Simm has the best hair I've ever seen him with, Ricci is looking unsettlingly like a pug, and the plot hangs interesting incident on a skeleton that's simply too generic. Also, the music is by our old friend Murray Gold who, perhaps inspired by the presence of a Twin Peaks star, seems to be trying to emulate the Bad Angel, and not doing it terribly well. Why is this man still employed?
The Sweet Smell of Success is one of many films, most of them very good, which I checked out because the Flaming Stars nicked the title for a song. Tony Curtis plays the impossibly handsome, sharp-suited and near-totally amoral publicist Sidney Falco, roaming the night of quite the most archetypal screen New York I've ever seen, trying to get himself back in the good graces of JJ Hunsecker (a mesmerisingly powerful Burt Lancaster), whose newspaper column seems to be regarded as the word of god. I suspect that most journalists want to be that columnist, possibly combined with Woodward and Bernstein (Hell, give that mixture a bowel disruptor and fancy shades and you've got Spider Jerusalem) and if the film trips over itself a bit when it has to resolve the plot, the journey there was still well worth it.
A Very British Coup was actually a TV miniseries, but on DVD it has no episode breaks, so who's counting? Ray McAnally (get 1 x deed poll, dude) stars in a fantastical tale of an outlandish alternate 1980s in which Keith Allen has hair and a thoroughly leftwing Labour party wins a landslide election victory. But, like any good alternate universe story, everything after that one crazy premise follows with the utmost plausibility. It helps that, in 1988, TV was obviously less scared - so unlike The Thick of It, the Labour and Conservative parties are named rather than implied, and while the vile cable and newspaper baron may not actually be called Rupert Murdoch, they barely attempt to disguise him either. As crazy as much of the action now seems - part of the reason Harry Perkins becomes PM is that, after uncovering massive malfeasance in the financial industry, a load of bankers ended up with gaol sentences, rather than the bail-outs and bonuses we now know they'd receive - this feels like it could have been the real world, right down to those tire-track mugs everyone had back then. In many senses even the coup itself is just a lens to magnify the real fate of every PM or President elected on a wave of hope - the loss of momentum, the end of the honeymoon, the tiredness. And the way a rumour, no matter how untrue, can cripple a politician - well, just look at the Swiftboating of John Kerry, or the ludicrous accusations Obama can never shake to the satisfaction of large (if idiotic) swathes of his nation.
A last crazy detail: among the advisors on this tale of a Labour leader who abandons off the record briefings, whispering campaigns and the like, the credits list one Alistair Campbell.
Miranda (not the sitcom, though I saw an episode at the parents' and it's not as bad as the trailers suggest) should be an excellent film. It has Christina Ricci and John Simm as the leads, supported by Kyle McLachlan and John Hurt. Even the minor roles have the likes of Tamsin Grieg and Julian Rhind-Tutt; drop them into a tale of love and library closures, and you should have a cult classic, right? But while Simm has the best hair I've ever seen him with, Ricci is looking unsettlingly like a pug, and the plot hangs interesting incident on a skeleton that's simply too generic. Also, the music is by our old friend Murray Gold who, perhaps inspired by the presence of a Twin Peaks star, seems to be trying to emulate the Bad Angel, and not doing it terribly well. Why is this man still employed?
The Sweet Smell of Success is one of many films, most of them very good, which I checked out because the Flaming Stars nicked the title for a song. Tony Curtis plays the impossibly handsome, sharp-suited and near-totally amoral publicist Sidney Falco, roaming the night of quite the most archetypal screen New York I've ever seen, trying to get himself back in the good graces of JJ Hunsecker (a mesmerisingly powerful Burt Lancaster), whose newspaper column seems to be regarded as the word of god. I suspect that most journalists want to be that columnist, possibly combined with Woodward and Bernstein (Hell, give that mixture a bowel disruptor and fancy shades and you've got Spider Jerusalem) and if the film trips over itself a bit when it has to resolve the plot, the journey there was still well worth it.
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