Star Wars triva: N and O

Sorry... haven't blogged for ages... will do soon. For now, this: more in my wise and trustworthy Star Wars alphabet.

N

Naboo.

Having done sand (Tatooine), snow (Hoth), the sky (Bespin) and forests (Endor), Lucas hit upon a great theme for his new planet… pointlessness. A bunch of idiots in silly clothes, some fountains, a lot of grass and somewhere a bunch of underwater wankers. The Trade Federation sensibly decided to destroy it, but were unfortunately thwarted by… er… you know, I cannot for the life of me remember. Oh, was it that Anakin… pressed a button… or something...? And there was… a big blue thing that fizzed.


Sorry, I’ve lost the will to live.


O

Ozzel, Admiral.

Ozzel is brilliant for a number of reasons. Number one is that he’s played by Michael Sheard, now sadly deceased, who also played not only Hitler (in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) but also Mr. Bronson, in TV’s Grange Hill. He’s also brilliant because he chokes extravagantly to death behind Piett, recipient of Vader’s irritable mood swings.

Vader was cross because Ozzel brought the Imperial fleet out of hyperspace early, thus making the rebels on Hoth realise that millions of Imperial Star Destroyers were about to blow them to pieces. Ozzel thought surprise was wisest, apparently. But what does that mean? Surely bringing the fleet out of hyper-space is precisely what alerts the rebels to the Imperial presence. So how does that constitute ‘surprise’? Answer: it doesn’t. He deserved to die.



Old Ben Kenobi
(an acrostic)

Oh, since before you were born, I’ve been
Living here, in this little flat, in
Denial of the terrible things I have done

Better not tell you
Exactly how your father met his end
Nor anything about Yoda, midichlorians, Leia or
         the fact that I used to hang out with these two
                     droids right next to me

Knight of the Old republic I may be
Even the last of their kind
Not going to let that stop me lying about absolutely everything
Or hiding the fact that this here
Bird in the hologram, who you clearly want to have sex with
Is your sister

Goodbye, Kobayashi

The New Year brings with it the unwelcome news that weird faced, top actor Pete Postlethwaite has breathed his last, and I for one am sad.

I first came across Postlethwaite's ghoulish visage in the 1989 television series 'Tales of Sherwood Forest'. As I recall, the premise of the show was that Postlethwaite played a bar owner, Eric, who loved the film Casablanca and wanted to model his bar on Rick's place, renaming it The Blue Parrot. I think. Although in retrospect I wonder whether I'm not wrong about that, as surely he'd have wanted to call it Rick's Cafe Americaine?

Either way, he never got the place renamed, and it remained 'The Sherwood Forest' for the duration of the series, much to Eric's chagrin. I remember thinking that this was a shame, as Eric did look quite a bit like Bogart. I guess that was the idea behind the programme.

I don't recall anything else about the show, and the internet steadfastly refuses to help me. There are, apparently, no video clips or pictures from this show anywhere on the world wide web, and if you do searches for 'Tales of Sherwood Forest' it just gets confused and offers you holidays in Nottingham, or  pictures of Jason Connery. A shame, as I really liked the show, and every time I saw Mr Pete afterwards, I went 'Oh, it's that guy from the Blue Parrot thing'.

Whatever Uncle Pete was in, he made better. He had a natural dignity that elevated every role he inhabited. He turned up in all manner of films, suprising you as his bulbous nose or droopy eyes appeared from nowhere. Here are some of my favourites:

Romeo and Juliet

All-rather-silly adaptation of the Bard's most famous "cock-up" play, suddenly invaded by the skull like countenance of Mr Pete as his weird-as-some-bats Friar Lawrence gave Leo some iambic advice.

Alien3

What's one more bald, freakish looking individual in this peculiar space sequel? Well, if it's Mr Postlethwaite, I'll be happy to watch. In fact, this film has a great British cast, and is well worth catching if you can grab the director's cut.

Brassed Off

The one he'll probably be remembered for. Who wouldn't want a friend/father/guardian angel like this?

The Town

Here playing a really horrible piece of work, making full use of Pete's ever more unusual features. One of the many tragedies about his death is that we'll now never get to see just how cartoon like his face would become as he travelled into old age.





The Usual Suspects

My favourite, of course. The suave, oddly accented Mr Kobayashi, both humble and subtly threatening. Of course, that probably wasn't his real name...

So goodbye, Uncle Peter. You were brilliant. Intelligent, compassionate and shot through with warmth and wit. We will miss you.









Wake up! It was all a dream...

Are you sure you're awake? I mean, a dream feels real when you're in it, does it not? Perhaps all of 2010 was a dream. Maybe it's New Years Eve 2009 and none of it happened. That would explain some of the more mental stuff like that whole ConDem coalition thing, and that Rainbow Lizard that stalked through Manchester firing lasers from its eyes shouting "Get me Morrisey or you will all perish!"

Just kidding. Of course you're awake. And a good thing too, for we have finally reached the end of my seemingly interminable review of 2010. I know, I know, I said it was going to be four parts long, and it's been more like a dozen, but I got carried away. Anyway, I promise we're at the end now. Here's my favourite cultural artefact of the year. It's a film.

INCEPTION

Inception is the best film of the year. Proveable, mathematical fact. Unassailable truth, carved into the stone of reality like an eleventh commandment. It is brilliant, and if you don't think so, your brain is wrong and so is your face.

Here's some great things about the film. If you haven't seen it, don't read them. Go wand watch it, now, and then come back.

1. Dream Team

What a great cast. I never used to be much of a fan of Leo DiCaprio, thinking he punched above his weight when confronted with anything beyond cheeky-pretty-boy-face kind of roles. The Departed made me think again, and Inception made me realise that, yes, now he is capable of greatness. A restrained, unshowy performace that lets the torment at Cobb's heart ebb through gently and, on second viewing, reveals the constant struggle he has to control the chaos inside.

The rest of the team are loads of fun, especially Tom Hardy's Eames. They balance and complement one another perfectly, each getting their moment in the sun. If it weren't for the fact that the film absolutely must not have a sequel, I'd love to see them working together again. Maybe in a TV spin off where they infiltrate different people's dreams each week and mess with their minds. Sadly, such a spin off would, by necessity, have to scale down the action, so they'd probably end up with an episode where they manipulate a shopkeeper's dreams so he gives them free cheesy snacks.

2. Dream Theme

I've gone on about HansZimmer's amazing score already, here, so I won't trouble you any further. Suffice to say, the music is tremendous. Although if you live with me, you might be getting just a little sick of hearing it every single day.

3. Dream Scenes

Here's the main reason I think the film is great. It deals with some big ideas and themes, but never forgets that cinema should be... well... cinematic. Huge, brilliant visual ideas power the film's narrative: Escher-like impossible landsapes, trains smashing through rainy city streets, tumbling zero-gravity corridors and ice citadels straight out of the video game of Goldeneye.

Despite this torrent of stunning cinematography, none of the spectacle is superfluous. Like the Matrix before it, Inception's ideas are hardwired into its mise en scene. The logic of dreams is created in a way which eschews the kind of cod-fantasy that derailed Alice in Wonderland earlier this year and remembers that the truly surreal is very, very close to our usual experience of life.

Lovely moments of juxtaposition pepper the film, reminding us that the borders between the film's various realities are slippery and strange. Ones that leap instantly to mind:

Cobb falls backwards into a full bath; in his dream, tides of water smash through the windows.



Cobb's children slip into the mise en scene in the most incongruous of places, scampering away in the same manner each time.






The increasingly jarring crosscuts between the drab washed out monotone of the rainy city, the warm tones and angular lines of the hotel and the harsh bright snowscape of the ice fortress.

The final, beautiful moments before the darkness.

4. Dream Themes

So, Mr Freud, what is it about? Is he still dreaming or what?

Well, I don't think so.  I know, there are lots of clues that suggest he might be - not least the moment when he tries to spin the top about half way through the film but never gets to see if it falls. Also, Moll hints heavily that his life resembles a dream narrative, chased by the faceless agents of unknowable corporations. And there's that last, teasing shot of course. Is it going to fall? Why are his children still so young?

I think it will fall, I think he's awake. I don't really think it adds anything to the film if Cobb is still in a dream. The ambiguity is there not to suggest a twist in the narrative, but to reinforce what I consider to be the main theme of the film: the difficulty of closure.

Inception revisits two of Christopher Nolan's recurring themes: how do we heal, and how do we understand our own motivations? Oh, and also "Oh no, my wife/girlfriend is dead!', but that's kind of involved in the other two. Cobb is a typical Nolan character in that he is seeking healing from a past trauma and also living in a world where motivations are open to question. Most films are about the hero trying to reach some kind of closure, of course, but in Nolan's films that closure is often challenged, as are the motivations behind the hero's actions in the first place.

Cobb's healing is not going to be achieved by killing the bad guy, or learning to say sorry, or facing his darkest fear. This is how a lesser film would close his arc, and I think it is why some people leave Inception feeling a little short changed: this is not your typical narrative. Cobb's salvation is to realise the truth at the very heart of the film: we cannot trust our hearts. Ideas can sneak in and manipulate us, lead us to believe we are following some kind of emotional truth, when all we are doing is fooling ourselves. For Cobb, salvation comes when he realises that the Moll is gone, and that he has constructed a lie in her place. He pursues her, seeks forgiveness from her, wants her - but it isn't her. It is a simulacrum of the truth and he has fooled himself into thinking it matters.

This resonates with me because I think this is how we tend to live our lives. We create stories around the events of our days and try to shape them into some kind of story, with heroes and villains and the possibility of catharsis. Old relationships, in particular, continue to hurt us as the ghosts of our ex partners or friends live in dream space, raking up old arguments and reinflicting wounds. Inception is a seed planted in the mind, making us believe that we want something we never really had.

And so off we go, out of 2010. And the year, sealed into the past, will become its own story. Certain events will gain significance and take their place in an artificial web of causality. We will start to believe that certain events made us happier, or more sad, and oh if we could have done things differently... But what we have is now, and the choices in front of us.

I hope they are good ones. See you there.

Review of the year: Excellent (Part Two)

One of the most moving things I ever saw was a child falling off a bike and really hurting himself. Not because it was hilarious to watch... I'm not saying that. I hardly laughed at all. But because of what his friend did. These were two boys, probably about ten years old or therabouts... maybe older. I can't really work out the ages of children between birth and the point where they start paying income tax. But lets say ten. Anyway, the other boy, seeing that his friend had fallen and was in pain, dropped his bike straight away and left it where it fell, running towards his friend to make sure he was alright. No macho posing, no laughter, just concern. I thought it was really nice, and it's stayed with me as an example of something lovely in a world that generally looks like it was designed by evil vampire wasps.

All of which is my way of saying... here are some nice things, to end the year on. Things that pleased me and made me glad to be alive in 2010. Absorb them, seek them out for yourselves, buy them for me as presents.

The Walking Dead

At last somebody has realised that the best way to faithfully adapt a novel - especially a graphic novel like The Walking Dead - is not to attempt to cram it all into 2 hours of blockbuster cinema. Yes, films are big and shiny and have lots of money to spend, but if you're looking at doing justice to the slow burn narratives and complex characterisation of a novel, you need to make a television series.

TV is brilliant these days, and the last ten years or so have seen the art form raise in quality to such an extent that it is no longer the unloved little brother of cinema, good only for hitting and stealing sweets off. Now TV has grown surprisingly tall and strong, and cinema is really wishing it had been nicer to it when it was younger, and is desperately hoping TV doesn't remember the day cinema pulled the head off his Boba Fett and laughed when he cried.

Sorry. Flashback. Anyway, it was with great joy that I welcomed the news that Robert Kirkman's ongoing tale of the zombie apocalypse was to be allowed full reign on television.

It's a slow burn, and the six episodes that have aired so far have not got us very far plotwise. But the point of the show - and indeed all zombie narratives - is to show us how the living respond to the situation they are in, and reveal their true selves once the bonds of civilisation have dissolved. The title explicitly refers not just to the zombies themselves, but also to we the living, for what are we but the dead waiting to happen?

The zombie moments themselves are also terrific: well realised Romero-style shufflers rather than the sprinting ghouls of other films, and blessed with really gross faces. The violence is explicit and necessarily horrifying and the situations really have you going 'Arrg! Aarg! Nooo!' and spilling your wine. Against all the odds, it has done well and been given a second series. I dance a joyful zombie dance.

 

Aha's farewell tour

Upon being told that I went to see Scandanavian pop band Aha in concert this year, most people's responses fell into one of the following categories:

a) Aha? Didn't they split up in 1987? No? Really? I'm sure you're wrong. You're probably thinking of Keane. I like Keane.

b) Aha? Who are they? Being under 20 I have no idea what you are talking about. Now get out of my bedroom or I'll call my dad.

c) I know you went. I went to see them with you. I bought the tickets.

d) I know you went. I'm Morten Harket, lead singer of Aha, and I saw you in the crowd weeping like a child. Now get out of my bedroom or I'll call my dad.

Well, they are still together, except they're not because this was their farewell tour. Aha are absolutely fantastic and have probably done their best work in the last dozen years or so. Here's an example.




The farewell concert was gorgeous, full of amazing songs that were frankly impossible to sing along to due to Harket's still impressive vocal range.They are an incredible pop band with some top melodies, and in a fair world (i.e. one not dominated by radio stations terrified of anything older than last week) they would have continued to be huge.

The really odd emotional highlight was an audience singalong of the chorus to 80s Bond Theme The Living Daylights. In case you can't remember how these incredibly profound lyrics went, it was something like this: 'Whoah, oh oh oh, The Living Daylights.' It was great, and weirdly bonding.

Amusingly, near the end, a middle aged man behind us inadvertently revealed that he'd never ever been to a gig before. The band had said goodnight and left the stage, but hadn't yet played Take On Me - probably their most famous song. Would they come back, do you think, to round off the evening with their most triumphant creation? Probably not, according to this bloke, who got up, put his coat on and complained loudly 'I would have thought they'd play Take on Me!'.

I loved this gig. It awakened in me a renewed love of the band, and of the possibilities of intelligent pop in general. One of the highlights of my year.

Matt Smith as Doctor Who

I remember quite well the day the fourth Doctor Who, played for seven years by Tom 'mad as toast' Baker, fell off a big tower and thunked into the ground, hurting his back and triggering the swirly BBC effects of  regeneration. It was inconceiveable to my ten year old self that anyone could take his place. When Peter Davison's first story rolled around a few months later I was sure of only one thing: I hated this new guy, and it would be really nice if he could fall off something too, preferably onto a spike, and turn back into my curly haired hero.

I imagine Matt Smith set off similar thoughts in a lot of children this year, as he took over the best role in the world from uber-popular David Tennant, who had spent four glorious years being quite, quite brilliant as Doctor Who and winning over the hearts of an entire generation. Heck, forget children - most adults I know went into terminal denial at the idea of anyone else stepping into those battered Converse trainers.

Well, take a bow Matt Smith. You started brilliantly and just got better, becoming a totally new and yet instantly recognisable Doctor. Funny, weird, clever and heroic, you made the Doctor all the things he needs to be - a role model to anyone who watches, who loves all the strangeness of the world and hates injustice with a passion. Great stuff. Please keep doing it.

Toy Story 3

I really, really liked Toy Story 3. If you don't like it, it is because you haven't seen it. Or because you are evil. A glorious, life affirming, brilliantly constructed story that says gorgeous things about life, friendship and change. That is all I have to say.





And finally... 

I do have one more thing to stick on my list, but I've decided to give it its own entry, on the grounds that it's probably my favourite thing of all my favourites. So I'll see you next time for that. In the meantime, enjoy those around you (unless they are Nazis), have a cup of tea and avoid spoilers.

Happy Birthday Mr Jesus

A special Christmas Day message, for those of you who aren't drunk yet, possibly because you've been forced to attend some kind of alcohol-free church event. Suckers.

Christmas day is lovely. A warm, fuzzy, festival of stuffing things in my face, playing with toys and not giving a toss about anything vaguely unpleasant. It's like Sundays would be if we'd thought them through properly and organised an extra day of the week after them to recover. The normal rules of time don't apply and we drift through the day on warm currents of satisfaction and consequence free bliss.
 
I mean, yes, there are a lot of people for whom it is a miserable reminder of their poverty and of the harsh realities of their horrible lives. And there's a lot of depression, and suicide and stuff. But for me, in this lovely warm house with a load of alcohol and nothing to worry about beyond how long it is until Doctor Who starts... it's great. Let's just forget about those other guys. They were probably evil in a past life or something. That's how it works, isn't it? Yeah. Pretty sure.

Anyway, I think Christmas Day is a genius idea. I mean, quite apart from the fact that I got a cool zombie T-shirt and some Lego. And the way everyone drinks so much it makes me look normal for a bit. I think Christmas is really, properly lovely and good.

Naysayers like to protest that the festival isn't very Christian any more, and that it's a shame, and that we've lost the true meaning etc. Well, to some extent, I suppose, but also... no. There's no point saying Christmas isn't very Christian any more. Why? Glad you asked:

Firstly, Christmas was never particularly Christian in the first place.We nicked most of the trappings from the pagans when we nicked everything else off them, including their sweets. Saying it's not very Christian is like going into a building that was originally an Odeon cinema, and was then turned into a Gala Bingo hall, and then converted into a Cineworld cinema, and complaining that you can't play bingo there. It is. It's exactly like that.

Secondly,  it's quite easy for your Christmas to be Christian without someone else telling you how. And by 'Christian' here I mean an all embracing, behavioural concept which is as much about being nice to people as it is about formulating a doctrine of belief. Avoiding basic human decency because it hasn't been state sanctioned is a pretty poor response to a season that is meant to be about indiscriminate goodwill.

Here's a good thing we can do at Christmas, and it's not necessarily to do with belief, or even social justice (although both those things are dead good). We can take the space given to us on Christmas Day and use it to be really lovely to those around us. We can relax and enjoy each other, and really see what we're all like once the shackles are off. Look - I'm not at work! I don't have to bore you about the day to day nonsense that constructs my self image! I can be a simpler, easier me for a bit.

The homeless and the lonely need support and love, and hats off to those who devote their time to that. But perhaps for some of us charity really does begin at home. Maybe the people around us look comfortably off, and have money and warmth and a house and oh so many DVDs, but rarely have a moment to be free of all that and just... exist. Souls need healing too. The Bible calls it sabbath. Time out from the nonsense. Time to be in the present moment, and remember you have a soul.

Merry Christmas, you lovely people. Now get me some Bailey's.