End Transmission
Thursday, 9 May 2019
Esther McVey Announces Tory Leadership Bid
Yes, this has seriously happened. Someone as STUPID as McVey is possessed with enough self confidence to think she can run the country.
Wednesday, 8 May 2019
An Unsuitable Job For a Woman (1982)
In 1982, Chris Petit followed up his enigmatic British road movie mystery Radio On with something that, on the surface at least, was more mainstream and traditional; an adaptation of a British mystery thriller novel. That novel was PD James 1972 story An Unsuitable Job For a Woman, which detailed the first case of young female private eye Cordelia Gray.
If my memory serves me right, I can only recall this being shown on TV once in the late 90s. It may have been broadcast before that of course, but I really don't think it has been since. It's transmission coincided with ITV's decision around that time to produce a TV series based on James' story starring Helen Baxendale who, at the time, was riding high from the success of Cold Feet. The series itself was short-lived (lasting just two series) but it seemed to be popular in the US, where episodes of its second series were broadcast a full two years before it received its UK premiere and where a full DVD boxset is commercially available.
I haven't read James' novel, but I heard that this was a somewhat loose adaptation from Petit and his fellow screenwriters Elizabeth McKay and Brian Scobie, and a cursory glance on the Wikipedia page for the novel proves it to be the case. Where the film does not deviate from the source material is in its basic premise and narrative; Gray is a twenty-three-year-old woman who was training to be a private detective under the tutelage of an older man, Bernie Pryde, when she finds that he has committed suicide and left her the agency. Her first case is also a suicide; that of a young Cambridge drop-out and son of a prominent individual. Cordelia learns that Mark Callender, the dead young man, had everything to live for - including decent grades and a considerable family inheritance - and begins to suspect that he was actually murdered, a suspicion that subsequently puts Cordelia's own life in danger.
Like Radio On, this is an off-beat and evocative film from Petit that perhaps has more interest in character than it does narrative. Whilst playing with the traditions of film noir - a mystery involving a wealthy family out in the sticks who perhaps know more than they are letting on - it stands out as distinctive because of its untypical central character. There's no tough, wisecracking Philip Marlowe-type here, just an unusual and determined young woman operating in what is traditionally viewed to be a man's world. Played by Pippa Guard, Cordelia Gray is an interesting proposition. Her inexperience as a detective is refreshingly never far from the film, but neither is her resourcefulness and a peculiar desire for justice that takes the form of an obsessional desire, not only to do right by the memory of the deceased young man, but also in terms of a romantic connection with that memory.
This connection makes for several reproachable decisions on her part, yet some are perhaps understandable ones given her ingénue detective status. Arriving in Cambridge, she opts to live in the estate cottage that Mark resided at as part of his job as a gardener, she begins to wear his clothes and even makes tape recordings of her findings in which she begins to talk to him. Most dangerous of all, she attempts to recreate his final moments, by hanging herself...inadvertently kicking the chair over!
Unfortunately, Petit doesn't seem able to breathe much life into Cordelia's eccentric investigation methods and her connection to Mark. This should be the most interesting aspect of the story, but it just proves too obscure and elusive. Most damning of all, one never gets the feeling that Cordelia is a natural detective. She should be seen to grow into the role so that, by the end of the film, the audience is convinced that she has made the right decision to continue her late employer's business, but Petit's obtuse characterisation, coupled with a perfunctory interest in the central mystery itself, means that we are never persuaded. James' heroine is universally praised for her femininity, empathy and mettle but, apart from the setpiece the film's poster recreates of her resourceful escape, having been thrown down a well by an unseen assailant and her odd fellowship for the deceased, we never really see this character in this adaptation. Guard is a capable and effective actress, but she is a touch too reserved in the role. She convinces best in the enigmatic, quietly obsessive moments, but is never really driving the narrative on thanks to the way Petit et al have chosen to restructure James' tale and never feels that concrete a character as a result. I think Baxendale is probably a better fit for Cordelia as James envisaged, bringing the toughness she highlighted in her role as a cynical junior doctor in the excellent BBC series Cardiac Arrest with her own natural attractiveness - and, given that James described her heroine as possessing features 'like an expensive cat' I'd say she was a good physical fit. Though, if I do pick up the book (and I suspect I might) I imagine that, given that description, I'd end up thinking of Sophie Ellis-Bextor!
Tellingly, Guard gets third billing in her own vehicle thanks to star turns from Billie Whitelaw as her client, the Callander family's steely factotum, and Paul Freeman as Mark's father James, a wealthy industrialist who each supersede her in terms of progressing the story in its crucial final stages, leaving her to act as little more than a diffident bystander. The rest of the relatively small cast is rounded out by performances from Dominic Guard (no relation), Dawn Archibald, and Elizabeth Spriggs, with David Horovitch playing the archetypal PI-disapproving policeman. All good actors, but somewhat ill-served by an adaptation that doesn't seem to know how to handle the tropes of a murder mystery.
I mentioned earlier how Petit has changed aspects of James' novel and this is never clearer than in how he chooses to depict Freeman's character. In the novel, according to its description on Wiki, Mark's father is Sir Ronald Callender, an eminent scientist (note the difference in name and profession) and, I imagine, an older more conservative seeming man than the one depicted here. The first clue in the film moving away from the source material lies in James' seduction of Cordelia. I get why it's there; Cordelia gets close to Mark's father as a physical outlet of her desires for Mark himself, but it's an unconvincing and superfluous moment in the film. Where the rewrites really come to the fore however is in the way the case is solved and its ultimate denouement. Reading the summary on Wiki it's clear that James' novel is a much more satisfying approach (featuring an appearance from James' best-loved creation, policeman-turned-poet Adam Dalgliesh) than how Petit approaches it which is often abrupt and desultory, boasting a very lame ending that may leave audiences going 'is that it?', though it didn't help that the print I viewed was so murky it was hard to actually see what had occurred! Its moments of action are also handled poorly and it's true that a low budget may have been at play in making them so cursory and half-hearted.
It took me two goes to appreciate Petit's previous film, the existential Radio On, but I think my initial instincts regarding this more mainstream effort will prove to be correct. It's by no means a poor film, as there is something attractive at play here, but it is something of a misfire. It needed a greater appreciation of what makes a good mystery thriller work, something which I suspect Petit, with his tendency towards the enigmatic, had little interest in. Ultimately, it's this disinterest that scuppers An Unsuitable Job For a Woman; by the time that the film should be coming to life with a bang, it is all but spluttering away with a whimper.
If my memory serves me right, I can only recall this being shown on TV once in the late 90s. It may have been broadcast before that of course, but I really don't think it has been since. It's transmission coincided with ITV's decision around that time to produce a TV series based on James' story starring Helen Baxendale who, at the time, was riding high from the success of Cold Feet. The series itself was short-lived (lasting just two series) but it seemed to be popular in the US, where episodes of its second series were broadcast a full two years before it received its UK premiere and where a full DVD boxset is commercially available.
I haven't read James' novel, but I heard that this was a somewhat loose adaptation from Petit and his fellow screenwriters Elizabeth McKay and Brian Scobie, and a cursory glance on the Wikipedia page for the novel proves it to be the case. Where the film does not deviate from the source material is in its basic premise and narrative; Gray is a twenty-three-year-old woman who was training to be a private detective under the tutelage of an older man, Bernie Pryde, when she finds that he has committed suicide and left her the agency. Her first case is also a suicide; that of a young Cambridge drop-out and son of a prominent individual. Cordelia learns that Mark Callender, the dead young man, had everything to live for - including decent grades and a considerable family inheritance - and begins to suspect that he was actually murdered, a suspicion that subsequently puts Cordelia's own life in danger.
Like Radio On, this is an off-beat and evocative film from Petit that perhaps has more interest in character than it does narrative. Whilst playing with the traditions of film noir - a mystery involving a wealthy family out in the sticks who perhaps know more than they are letting on - it stands out as distinctive because of its untypical central character. There's no tough, wisecracking Philip Marlowe-type here, just an unusual and determined young woman operating in what is traditionally viewed to be a man's world. Played by Pippa Guard, Cordelia Gray is an interesting proposition. Her inexperience as a detective is refreshingly never far from the film, but neither is her resourcefulness and a peculiar desire for justice that takes the form of an obsessional desire, not only to do right by the memory of the deceased young man, but also in terms of a romantic connection with that memory.
This connection makes for several reproachable decisions on her part, yet some are perhaps understandable ones given her ingénue detective status. Arriving in Cambridge, she opts to live in the estate cottage that Mark resided at as part of his job as a gardener, she begins to wear his clothes and even makes tape recordings of her findings in which she begins to talk to him. Most dangerous of all, she attempts to recreate his final moments, by hanging herself...inadvertently kicking the chair over!
Unfortunately, Petit doesn't seem able to breathe much life into Cordelia's eccentric investigation methods and her connection to Mark. This should be the most interesting aspect of the story, but it just proves too obscure and elusive. Most damning of all, one never gets the feeling that Cordelia is a natural detective. She should be seen to grow into the role so that, by the end of the film, the audience is convinced that she has made the right decision to continue her late employer's business, but Petit's obtuse characterisation, coupled with a perfunctory interest in the central mystery itself, means that we are never persuaded. James' heroine is universally praised for her femininity, empathy and mettle but, apart from the setpiece the film's poster recreates of her resourceful escape, having been thrown down a well by an unseen assailant and her odd fellowship for the deceased, we never really see this character in this adaptation. Guard is a capable and effective actress, but she is a touch too reserved in the role. She convinces best in the enigmatic, quietly obsessive moments, but is never really driving the narrative on thanks to the way Petit et al have chosen to restructure James' tale and never feels that concrete a character as a result. I think Baxendale is probably a better fit for Cordelia as James envisaged, bringing the toughness she highlighted in her role as a cynical junior doctor in the excellent BBC series Cardiac Arrest with her own natural attractiveness - and, given that James described her heroine as possessing features 'like an expensive cat' I'd say she was a good physical fit. Though, if I do pick up the book (and I suspect I might) I imagine that, given that description, I'd end up thinking of Sophie Ellis-Bextor!
Tellingly, Guard gets third billing in her own vehicle thanks to star turns from Billie Whitelaw as her client, the Callander family's steely factotum, and Paul Freeman as Mark's father James, a wealthy industrialist who each supersede her in terms of progressing the story in its crucial final stages, leaving her to act as little more than a diffident bystander. The rest of the relatively small cast is rounded out by performances from Dominic Guard (no relation), Dawn Archibald, and Elizabeth Spriggs, with David Horovitch playing the archetypal PI-disapproving policeman. All good actors, but somewhat ill-served by an adaptation that doesn't seem to know how to handle the tropes of a murder mystery.
I mentioned earlier how Petit has changed aspects of James' novel and this is never clearer than in how he chooses to depict Freeman's character. In the novel, according to its description on Wiki, Mark's father is Sir Ronald Callender, an eminent scientist (note the difference in name and profession) and, I imagine, an older more conservative seeming man than the one depicted here. The first clue in the film moving away from the source material lies in James' seduction of Cordelia. I get why it's there; Cordelia gets close to Mark's father as a physical outlet of her desires for Mark himself, but it's an unconvincing and superfluous moment in the film. Where the rewrites really come to the fore however is in the way the case is solved and its ultimate denouement. Reading the summary on Wiki it's clear that James' novel is a much more satisfying approach (featuring an appearance from James' best-loved creation, policeman-turned-poet Adam Dalgliesh) than how Petit approaches it which is often abrupt and desultory, boasting a very lame ending that may leave audiences going 'is that it?', though it didn't help that the print I viewed was so murky it was hard to actually see what had occurred! Its moments of action are also handled poorly and it's true that a low budget may have been at play in making them so cursory and half-hearted.
It took me two goes to appreciate Petit's previous film, the existential Radio On, but I think my initial instincts regarding this more mainstream effort will prove to be correct. It's by no means a poor film, as there is something attractive at play here, but it is something of a misfire. It needed a greater appreciation of what makes a good mystery thriller work, something which I suspect Petit, with his tendency towards the enigmatic, had little interest in. Ultimately, it's this disinterest that scuppers An Unsuitable Job For a Woman; by the time that the film should be coming to life with a bang, it is all but spluttering away with a whimper.
Monday, 6 May 2019
Barry Lyndon (1975)
No offence but Stephen King fans must be very sensitive souls.
I say this because I have often heard criticism directed at Stanley Kubrick for his decision to play fast and loose in adapting King's novel The Shining, yet I've never heard any complaints of Kubrick stamping his own identity on any other number of adaptations. Think about it, he completely changed the ending of Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, he turned the nuclear holocaust novel Red Alert into the comedy Doctor Strangelove, and he produced here a very intriguing and wholly different reading of Thackery's The Luck of Barry Lyndon.
Thackery's novel, much like his later Vanity Fair, is one that is populated with schemers and their hapless marks. Told in the first person by Barry himself, it's an unreliable account of his rise and fall in Georgian times. "Hang you for a meddling brat! Your hand is in everybody's pie!" Barry's debt-ridden uncle may complain of our hero in an early sequence in the film, but Kubrick doesn't share this view. For him, Barry is a passive victim of two dominating themes that he would return to again and again in his films; fate and human fallibility.
Casting Hollywood heartthrob Ryan O'Neal in the lead role, Kubrick elicits a performance that is a world away from the grandstanding of Malcolm McDowell or Jack Nicholson, opting instead for a blankness that allows the other characters in the story - tellingly, Barry's antagonists - to place their own impressions upon. This underplaying works in great contrast to the litany of character actors who enliven proceedings, up to and including Leonard Rossiter's Captain Quinn, a tight coil of neuroses, and Frank Middlemass' pig-squealing coronary victim. Employing in Michael Hordern an equally unreliable narrator for the movie allows Kubrick to lend a formal voice to the attitudes of Barry's enemies and Georgian high society as a whole. To them, Barry is an ingenious upstart and cunning opportunist inveigling his way into their circles. His actions are relayed as traditionally picaresque, robbing the audience of an insight into the reality of Barry's inner life, feelings and motivations. In many ways, it feels like Kubrick is challenging our own preconceptions: do we take the narrator, who bridges the gap between the actions and our reactions, at his word or do we accept that he may be misleading us? Are we just as much snobs as the society of 1700s?
There's a pleasing sense of things coming full circle in the narrative of Barry Lyndon. Part One, which explores his rise, sees him coming into contact (and subsequently losing) a variety of father figures (Captain Grogan, Captain Potzdorf and the Chevalier du Balibari) to replace the father he lost in a duel at an early age. Part Two sees him dispense entirely with this desire because he himself is now a father, however cruel irony comes into play when he loses his beloved son. And the duel that robbed him of his father is one he is somehow personally and perversely compelled to repeat, firstly in success (of sorts) with Captain Quinn, and lastly in failure with his wronged and vengeful stepson, Lord Bullingdon (Leon Vitali, who of course went on to become Kubrick's personal assistant).
Thackery's satire is episodic, flamboyant and farcical, but in translating it to film Kubrick delivers instead a melancholic and subdued three-hour epic, one that befits the haunting qualities of the score from Handel's Sarabande and Schubert's Piano Trio in E-Flat. It is the works of Hogarth brought to life by natural lighting and NASA-borrowed, super-fast 50mm lenses. It is a resigned yet sympathetic study of fatalism.
Friday, 3 May 2019
The BBC: Framing the Narrative in the Tories Favour
I just had to share this tweet from Robyn Vinter which takes a screen grab of how the BBC have decided to report the local election results today.
https://twitter.com/RobynVinter/status/1124244236319297537
As you can see, they've chosen to go with 'Where the Conservatives lost and won' before reporting gains of 19 and losses of 69.
But when it comes to reporting Labour's gains of 32 and losses of 37, they've opted for 'Labour lose dozens of seats'
As Vinter suggests with such clear misrepresentation is it any wonder that people believe the BBC to be biased with their news and politics reportage?
Let's be clear; the Tories have lost almost 500 councillors, and the full result isn't even in yet. So why are the BBC so determined to claim that it is Labour - who are on course for a significant national lead - who are the losers?
Undoubtedly the narrative from the MSM is going to blame Corbyn for not making greater gains, but the simple fact of the matter is that Labour's membership is deeply divided on Brexit, a dangerous farce that is (and this isn't stated enough) wholly of the Tories making. With many traditional Labour strongholds in favour of leaving the EU and many more liberal, metropolitan Labour areas vehemently against, the party is stuck between a rock and a hard place in which they will obviously disappoint one or the other. That's what we are seeing here for sure, but what we are most definitely seeing is a complete dissatisfaction with the government for getting us into this mess in the first place.
As is often the case, Owen Jones hits the nail on the head.
Wednesday, 1 May 2019
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