Wordless Wednesday: The Great OutDors

Girls On Bikes

No prizes for guessing why this photo of Alexa Davies and Lily James caught my eye...and it's not because I like Mamma Mia!

In fact Raised by Wolves star Alexa Davies (pictured above on the left) is the only reason I'd contemplate watching Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again! or whatever it is it is called. And Lily James is a ray of sunshine in any film it seems.

Don't get me wrong, I really really adore ABBA, but when it comes to these films, I'm reminded of what Bill Bailey had to say; "It's like being hit over the head by a piece of Ikea furniture. Painful, but you have to admire the workmanship"

Out On Blue Six: The Style Council

I've been having fun flashback watching 1984 repeats of Top of the Popson BBC4 these past couple of weeks, as they've been showing The Style Council's wonderful cycling based video for their hit My Ever Changing Moods

Who would have thought that that video (discussed so beautifully and amusingly by this blogger) would become something of a rarity on the net thanks to Vevo being a dick and blocking it in the UK? If only I'd knew that back in the late '90s when I would routinely record onto VHS videos that took my fancy on VH1. I had a load of Style Council vids - along with many other '80s vids - interspersed with channel presenters such as Julia 'Jules' Carling (phwoar!) Richard Allinson, Bob Mills and King (yes, of Love & Pride fame). As it stands, if you're looking for the track on YouTube here in the UK at least all you'll see are 'live' performances on TOTP and Saturday Superstore or straight uploads of the track such as this one...

However, you can see the video in all its glory on Vimeo 

Silent Sunday: Chopper

Felicity Kendal in The Mayfly and the Frog (1966)

Doesn't The Good Life star look positively swinging on her scooter here in a still from the 1966 Wednesday Play, The Mayfly and the Frog?

Regrettably, beyond the star pairing of veteran thesp John Gielgud (making his debut in an original play for TV film) and Kendal (setting out on her career), I found Jack Russell's play, just too arch and old fashioned to be enjoyable.

The play kicks off with Kendal's scooter being unceremoniously tipped over by Gielgud's chauffeur driven Rolls Royce at a filling station in a Belgravia mews. When the Roller fails to stop, a disgruntled Kendal gives chase, determined to receive recompense for the broken headlamp the collision caused before heading on to Dover. She arrives at a huge Mayfair mansion and is given short shrift over the telecom. Undeterred, and ingeniously defying the amazing expense devoted to keeping intruders out, the girl enters the mansion via an open window to find Gielgud naked in the bath, whereupon a verbal battle of wits and wills soon plays out. 

It's a traditional culture clash/opposites attract story with a swinging 60s beat; the vivacious and cheeky Kendal in her biker jerkin and jeans, meets the fusty great tycoon. He believes in ownership and preservation, keeping rare and expensive paintings on the walls, whereas Kendal possesses nothing but the clothes she's standing in and a positive manner which means she sees the bright side in every corner of the world she has travelled to. Eventually, Gielgud's aristo (boasting the grand name of Gabriel Quantara - sounds like a villain from The Avengers doesn't it?) comes to view his secluded sanctum, his money and minions in a different light, as he becomes hopelessly enamoured by the vitality of the girl he christens, amongst other things, 'The Mayfly'

It's all just a bit too creaky now for me to fully enjoy, though the two leads are enchanting enough and it's quite amusing to see Gielgud dismiss the boyishly beautiful Kendal as "a child hermaphrodite", "a bisexual" and an "imp"

Fancy it? See it for yourself on YouTube 

To get the BBC to consider repeating some of these classic plays please sign the petition I started  here

A Day Out (1972)

A Day Out is a beautifully bittersweet play which was Alan Bennett's debut play for television in 1972. Set on a summer Sunday in 1911, it depicts the members of a Halifax cycling club, following them from the town to the ruins of Fountains Abbey. It's an idyllic vision of an England long past but hanging over it, like a black storm cloud just out of sight on the horizon, is the impending war which broke out three years later in 1914. It's addressed in a ruefully ironic manner when the keen socialist Boothroyd (Brian Glover) explains his theory that there will never be another war, and that people will look back on this generation as the dawn of a new age. Of course, we know this was not to be and The Great War cut its swathe through that generation and tragically through many of the club's members as well, as the 1919 coda suggests.

But for now, the day out provides a temporary freedom from the dull and stifling routine and grind of the mill, offering them at the very least a chance to air thoughts and feeling to sympathetic ears and likeminded souls, regardless of class and position in society, and a chance to breathe the fresh, clean country air. 

To capture the period feel, the director Stephen Frears shot A Day Out in black and white, and the hazy, cinematography equally captures the lyrical quality of Bennett's script as well as the artistic evocation of Edwardian life.

A great cast of professionals and locals give A Day Out an authentic north country flavour and many of the 'new faces' here such as Paul Shane,  Brian Glover, Bernard Wrigley and Dave Hill would become firm favourites for this kind of genre in the years to come. Oh and I defy you not to think of Arthur Conan Doyle when David Waller's bewhiskered Mr Shuttleworth appears on screen, ever the recipient of James Cossins' toadying Mr Shorter - both make for a fine middle class double act.

A Day Out is available on the DVD Alan Bennett At The BBC and in instalments to view for free on YouTube. 

To get the BBC to consider repeating some of these classic plays please sign the petition I started here

Bumday

Anna Ewers; Pirelli Calendar 2015

Bumday

Who Needs Boris Bikes?

This girl showed London where it was at cycle wise long before the Honey Monster Mayor!

Spotted on the retrogirly site

World of Leather

Bardot on a Bicycle

Les Novices, 1970

BMX Bandits (1983)

BMX Bandits was a movie I first watched at junior school; the headmaster would rent it out of the video shop at the end of term for our treat. And it really was a treat. The key components of the film, BMX, walkie talkies and Australia were all utterly cool to a child in the 1980s. BMX was the bike I and all my friends rode and loved, walkie talkies kept us all in touch (remember mobile phones were unthinkable to a child in the 80s, sure they existed but they were the size of a brick, required a case and a portable charger and were only for the rich yuppie adult minority. Now of course kids as young as 6 have mobile phones and walkie talkies are obsolete) and Australia was the land that gave us Neighbours, then a new and extremely popular daytime soap on BBC1. 

Because of my history with this film and the fact that it was such a part of my childhood,  I felt very nostalgic towards it in my memory, but wasn't really brave enough to revisit it as an adult.

A recent review from someone I follow on Letterboxd rekindled my memory of this film and, because I'm watching an awful lot of Ozploitation at present, it felt only right that I watched it again.

Well, it was better in my memory. In my memory, my innocent youth, I didn't cringe. It's perhaps a little unfair to say that though, as you can't recapture your youth nor did I really expect to. This is a relatively harmless film with bright summery colours, loud 80s fashions and an even louder synth score that, if it were a child itself, you'd worry about the E number it had had. There's something cheesily delightful about seeing a pre stardom Irn Bru coloured frizzy haired Nicole Kidman popping a wheelie to the wowee adulation of her cohorts as they evade Bryan Marshall and his two crooked colleagues.

Director and ozploitation veteran Brian Trenchard Smith has great fun satirising his more mature X rated catalogue in a conversation one of the teenage BMX Bandits, Goose, has about the grisly films he enjoys watching. It's a gag which would have gone over my head as a child, but I can totally appreciate now thanks to my recent viewings of the genre and BTS's work within it.

Lastly, I have to share with you the strapline on my DVD copy which proclaims this 'The Citizen Kane of BMX movies' Hilarious!

Biker Babes

It Isn't Just The Dark Knight That Rises

I give you Anne Hathaway as Catwoman and her arse...

Yes I've just got around to seeing The Dark Knight Rises and I've got to say as much as I feel it's a good movie I do feel unsatisfied to a certain extent, when you take the trilogy as a whole. For me, Batman Begins is still the best film in this series that Nolan made. The Dark Knight came a good second but this primarily seemed more concerned with tying up the loose ends of the franchise and leaving a massive door open.

The high points are of course Anne Hathaway doing her kick ass wannabe Audrey Hepburn schtick bending over upon the Bat-Bike in leather. Wowsers! 

Bale is as assured and capable as ever, Joseph Gordon Levitt is very interesting, and then there's Gary Oldman and even Tom Conti doing his substitute Alfred role.

The lowpoints, well....Whose idea was it to make Tom Hardy totally unrecognisable and have a voice like Harry Enfield doing Nelson Mandela albeit a few octaves deeper? 

Nolan handles the doom laden mysterious scenes rather well but his grasp of action is still rather muddled and worse, his grasp of sympathetic scenes immediately lean towards the mawkish. Michael Caine is an amazing actor, a man who can cry on cue, yet the scene where he discusses what he'd always hoped from Master Wayne doesn't ring true, because it is poorly directed. A more assured hand may have reined it in more and may have caught it in a more subtle light, but here it is anything but. 

This is a great film don't get me wrong, but it should be after the two previous films an amazing and satisfying conclusion, but it ultimately isn't.

Here's an excuse to share this picture...

Biker Britt

Britt Ekland and Patrick Lichfield, by Terry O'Neill

Lora Lamm

Girls And Bikes

Girls Love A Big Chopper!

Excuse the pun, had to be done.


First picture is US glamour model Roberta Pedon, second I'm not sure