Hullo Clouds, Hullo Sky

We went to see that Cloud Atlas film last weekend, because we were both at a loose end and we’d both read the book so it seemed like a good idea.

I got a dirty, dirty mouth.
And a twenty-dollar wig.

When the BBFC certificate came up at the beginning, it warned that there was to be some ‘strong language (one very strong)’ so we decided to keep a watch out for that and point it out when we spotted it (it turned out to be Tom Hanks saying ‘cunt’ which doesn’t strike me as being particularly strong in a film made for grown-ups, but I have been informed that ladies tend to see it as the Swear Of Last Resort so I shall bow to their sensibilities while also pondering why it is that gentlemen have no equal antipathy to, I don’t know, ‘cock’ or ‘prick’ or ‘spamdagger’[1]).

The film does what films often do, which is to change the narrative structure of its source material in order to make it more suitable for the visual medium. In this case, the Russian Doll-like structure of the book has had the back of an axe taken to it, smashing it into tiny shards of narrative and strewing them all over. Which actually works, as this new structure means the viewer has to pay attention to which story strand is being focussed on at any given moment, rather than having the luxury of a fifteen to twenty minute section to get bored with. Events are moved around – one event in particular moves from the end of its original section in the book to the beginning of the film’s, and in doing so changes the entire texture of the sequences.

It is, in essence, a portmanteau film of the sort that were made back in the sixties and seventies, the kind of film where rather posh people on a train journey told each other rather interesting stories then found out they were all rather dead. If it is, it’s a portmanteau film as made by William Burroughs – cut up and slapped down again almost at random, but still retaining some form of shape.

There are a number of other liberties taken with the story tone; in the book, the Orison of Sonmi-451 sections read in a quiet, almost stately manner, whereas in the film they’re treated as Great Big Loud Science Fiction, with chases through the air and bright colours and you almost expect Kate Beckinsale to pop up. Jim Broadbent’s main section, The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish, by contrast, plays and looks very much like a 1970s Britcom movie, out of keeping with the book’s more restrained, genteel comedy.

And of course there’s the make-up. This has been mentioned in other places and it’s being mentioned here because it’s the weakest aspect of the film. The concept of having the same main players taking different roles is a good one; it underlines the theme of the book and puts it right up there on screen for even the dumbest viewer to see.

Love actually is all around

It’s further spotlit by the lingering close-ups of the comet-shaped birthmark that recurs throughout the different time periods shown, but the actors are the main vehicle for the idea. Unfortunately, the make-up doesn’t always work. The aging makeup in particular is awful – you wonder why Hugh Grant is hiding under a late period Jimmy Savile mask – but in general you spend just a little too long noticing the make-up rather than the actor, and a little too long noticing the actor under the make-up in an “oh, it’s him again!’ way, that you’re jolted out of the film. Sometimes, though, the disguise works – when Halle Berry turns up disguised as a middle-class white woman, I actually thought it was Madonna up there on screen, and that was as big a jolt as seeing Hugo Weaving in drag.

What? This isn't W.E.?

Now you may have got the idea that I didn’t like this film. And you’d be wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Not in a so-bad-it’s-good way, as I find bad films to be simply that: bad films, with no redemption to be had. Cloud Atlas is not a bad film. It’s really a pretty good film of a near-unfilmable novel. I’d read reviews that said it had an unnecessary third hour, and I sat there wondering when that third hour would appear, expecting the weight-shifting and bladder-straining that goes with an overlong film. They didn’t come. The film held me, never less than interested if not always entranced, for its full length, and I couldn’t say that about most films I see.

I suspect that time will be good to Cloud Atlas, that it will get good word-of-mouth (I’ve yet to meet anyone who’s seen it and didn’t enthuse about it, and that includes an acquaintance in the film industry who can usually be relied on to badmouth anything. And anybody. I like the fella.) and be watched repeatedly, either at the cinema or on DVD. I’m going to see it again in two days, something I haven’t done since I accidentally agreed to see Snakes On A Plane with two different people on consecutive days and couldn’t in all conscience let either party down.

Go and see it. Read the book, either prior to or after the film. Agree or disagree, love or hate, Cloud Atlas is at least an attempt by a big studio to make something other than bangy shouty blowy-up films, laboured scatological comedy films or pale wan teenage monster films, and for that at least it deserves your time.

Coming Soon: The Marxist Dialectic in Wreck-It Ralph

---

[1] I know why. I. Know. Why. Please don’t gang up on me. 

Rasp

Well, I did something yesterday that I hadn’t done for a while, and that’s go to the pub on a Sunday afternoon to watch a football match that I had any interest in.

Pretty often I’ll while away a Sunday in some boozer or other, usually to have lunch because it’s easier to go out and buy a roast dinner, which is what you want on most Sundays but not every Sunday, than it is to buy meat and vegetables and get them all prepared up and cooked and then there’s the whole Yorkshire pudding thing because by god they’re a bastard to get right but buying them in just isn’t on.

But pretty often, when there’s football showing in wherever we’re having that roast dinner – and sometimes there is and sometimes there’s not, generally depending on how gastropubbish the place thinks it is. For instance the Queens in Crouch End is very very GPish, to the extent it calls half of itself itself a Dining Room and insists you eat in this Dining Room and not in the bar, which means you have to get up and walk from one part to the other to get more drinks in, which kind of negates the whole thing if you ask me – it’s a game I’m not really investing anything in. It’s neutral. No biggie.

Of course yesterday was different, as the game was the North London Derby and I’d said I’d go to a certain pub to watch it with an old mate I’d run into a few days beforehand, so that’s where I went, to this pub that I wouldn’t usually go to because as far as I’m concerned you go to a pub to either meet people before moving on somewhere else, or to eat because see paragraph 2 (above), or – and this is rare these days as I hardly drink at all except the odd glass of red with a meal that calls for it – to enjoy a good glass of beer. Proper beer, to be drunk in proper surroundings, to wit an atmosphere generated by not too large a number of people, having a nice time with their friends. No drunks, no shouting, nobody under thirty (possible reduction to twentyfive in the case of less excitable womenfolk) and no music (possible exemption for quiet jazz/country, preferably something already part of my own collection which, when played in said pub, comes as a pleasant surprise (also applies to supermarkets)).

Proper beer was not on sale, not even in bottles; mass-produced fizzy lager and nitro-kegged bitter was the choice, so I had a pint of Carlsberg which, by seven o’clock, had given me a nasty head and a distinct feel of being chemically attacked.

The right team won, as is only proper, and the universe is finally adjusting itself to its correct alignment, having been out of bonk for about fifty years.

However, upon returning home and having woken from a Probably The Worst Lager In The World-induced doze I found that, despite having no distinct memory of having done so, I had shouted very loudly and sung very lustily during the game, as had my old friend, the people near us, and everybody else on the left side of the pub (the right side being that side traditionally occupied by the Opposition).

And that is why, since last night, I have been unable to produce anything more than a rough deep growl with paintstripper overtones. 

No reflection upon the rest of the public

Fella came into the shop last week; one of the semi-regulars, someone we’ll see maybe every two or three months. Small, bad skin, ill-fitting leather jacket. You know the sort.

“Hello Steve,” I said. “How have you been?”

I should point out that Steve buys only a particular type of publication from us; he’s very into pictures of large-breasted women in very skimpy outfits. Who isn’t, though?

“Rotten,” he says. “Bastard Mayans said the world was gonna end, so I took out a bank loan and blew it all on a week with a dominatrix. Thought I wouldn’t have to pay it back ‘cause the world was gonna end. World didn’t end, I’m up to me arse in debt. Fucking Mayans.”

And Now, Some Music

Thanks to this fella, who is Canadian and who did one of those 'Best of last year' lists, I discovered these, who are Canadian also.

I rather like it, despite there being several reasons - the Tom Waits soundalikee air to it, the fey female vocal that sounds destined for a mobile phone advert - not to.

But, y'know, that's me.

(I'd also recommend the live version, in which Leah Fay is covered in... something.)

Unchained from an Idiot

Sitting round at my brother's, catching up on television that we'd both missed over the holiday period.

We were watching an overview of the pop music of 1978, something the BBC has done for the last couple of years as a kind of taster for its weekly re-runs of that year's Top Of The Pops (something they may not be able to continue for much longer, given that a good proportion of both hosts and performers have turned out to be rapists and/or child molestors).

On comes footage of Blondie performing 'Picture This': Debbie Harry at the height of her powers, staring at the camera, chewing non-existent gum, genuinely looking like she'd happily carve your heart out and hand it to you on a plate and not give a damn about it. She's wearing a bright yellow mini-dress and tights, with the pencil-thin strap of her handbag crossing over her chest just to make absolutely sure that you pay enough attention to her figure.

We both sit there, entranced, for the full length of the footage. When it ends, I turn to look at him with a 'I can't believe how good that was' look on my face, and say:

"The production on that song was fucking amazing!"

Next week: an appreciation of the lighting and production design of 'Danish Lesbian Nurses IV: Drilling and Filling'

Lebensraum

Been meaning to do this for a while, so...

Meanwhile, over here, I shall talk about comics, thus leaving the lush green pastures of Tottenhamista unsullied by such low pastimes. 

And I hope you're happy about that.

Me And Him And Them And Me

Enjoying a wintry trudge through the dirty sludge that had turned the walkways of Alexandra Park into a freezing quagmire, and while speculating on exactly what manner of damage each snowboarder, tobogganist and sledger had done to themself as they hurtled down the steep slopes on their expensive snowboard or their improvised-out-of-an-estage-agent’s-signboard toboggan and made unexpected yet high-speed contact with one of the park’s many trees - some of which had been especially planted, years ago, expressly for the purpose of causing hurt to winter sports enthusiasts - my thoughts turned to Michael Gove. 

Had he ever, I pondered, after a long day of selling off playing fields or selecting new frames for his ‘Joe 90 all growed up’ spectacles or just generally being chinless, considered what was going on that very day in the Great Hall of Alexandra Palace?  Probably not, for I cannot see Mr Gove ever sitting down, be it in person at the event or simply at home in front of the telly, to enjoy the many depths of a game of snooker. 

The classroom of the future

This is a shame, as a great deal of the average school’s curriculum could easily be replaced by the careful study of a frame or two. Geometry, given the need to calculate the angle of strike between cue and object balls (plus the delicious spanner thrown in by the smaller size of the white, necessitating all manner of extra formulae). Physics, required to determine the amount of force to be imparted from the player, through the cue, through the white, to the colour, so impelling these joyous spheres to their destination in the table’s pockets. More thrillingly, the combination of both these disciplines needed to not only pot a colour but also leave the cue ball with just the right amount of momentum to cease its motion in exactly the right position to set up the next stroke. 

And the simpler lessons to be learned, no less important; basic mathematics, so a player may keep score, and project their future points tally, and estimate the number of snookers needed. Most importantly, the glorious sense of good old-fashioned British fair play, as so joyously exemplified by the player who, at the crucial moment of a crucial game, brushed a ball from its position with his waistcoat; he then called a foul on himself, and by doing so lost the frame and the match. This wonderful embodiment of the sporting ethic thus expelled himself from the tournament. Would this happen among the over-paid jessies of the soccer field? I doubt there is need to even ask. 

Admittedly, some teachers needed something of a makeover.

So: think on, Michael Gove. Consider the cost savings to be made. One second-hand table (or, for inner-city comprehensives, a trip to Rowan’s in Finsbury Park in the company of a roll-up smoking, weasel-faced herbert who could surely be sourced from the swollen ranks of those seeking work) could easily replace three teachers. And, should a pupil take to the game, imagine the tax they’ll pay on their winnings. As for those dinky little waistcoat-and-bowtie combos they’d wear, a smart suit shows a smart mind. You should know that, given the calibre of the Cabinet’s schmutter, eh?

It’s a win-win situation, Michael. In fact, I’ll tell you what, if you need a little more persuading, how about you come along to the next tournament at Ally Pally and I’ll guide you through a few frames. Obviously it would be a terrible faux pas to speak loudly during a game and so distract the players, so it’d be best if we met outside, possibly in the car park. No, the one at the bottom of the hill, the one without much by way of lighting. Oh, and, my schedule means I can really only make it in the evenings, after dark. 

But please, do come. How will you recognise me? I’ll be the one in the ski-mask. Well, it’s cold at this time of year. Just to be sure, I’ll be holding a snooker ball. In a sock.