Doris (Valentine's) Day

Valentine's Day.  A day for eating heart-shaped chocolates.  A day for receiving flowers.  A day for being cooked a romantic feast by your loved one and drinking too much fizzy wine and singing I Got You Babe at each other.  (Oh Tim and Emily, you crazy American shiny-toothed fake laughing kids).  A day for returning to the blog and writing about Doris Day romantic comedies because, erm, not because I've got some spare time on my hands this evening.  No, I'm just more of a Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves fan when it comes to Cher.  Especially when she looks like this.  Crikey.

I've seen Lover Come Back, with Doris Day and Rock Hudson, and That Touch of Mink, with Doris and Cary Grant.  These are films very much of the 60s.  Some would say dated, I would say, well, yes, dated, but in a very heart-warming way.  In That Touch of Mink, Cary Grant wants to sleep with Doris Day, whilst she wants to marry him first.  That is basically the entire plot.  If it were made today, there is no way that Cary Grant's character could seem anything but sleazy, and Doris Day's would just seem prudish and slightly insane (she does want to marry him after about five minutes of knowing him.  Yes it is Cary Grant, inspiration of some rather excellent youtube tributes, but even so, this seems a bit hasty).  But somehow, both are completely charming.

Lover Come Back is also utterly ridiculous, and utterly lovely.  In this one Rock Hudson and Doris Day are both advertising executives, competing over an account.  There's a bit of mistaken identity, Rock Hudson being a loveable playboy, Doris Day being Doris Day, and some truly spectacular hats:

I love Doris Day.  I would always choose her over romantic meals like this.  (Unless my date looked like Cary Grant or Rock Hudson, in which case only a fool would say no to free cheese).

Happy Valentine's Day everyone.

The Christmas 2010 Coca-Cola Advert

It is nearly Christmas, hoorah, and we all know what that means.  Carol services, advent crowns, Jesus?  No!    It means the Coca-Cola advert with the lorries will be on TV.  (Apologies to my mother - I know Christmas is all about Jesus really).

But this year, things are different.  Coca-cola have planned a two-prong attack, and I seem to have missed the first prong (do I need to apologise to my mother again?).  Apparently the 'Holidays are Coming' advert underpinned the 'anticipation phase' of Christmas, which ran from 14 November to 13 December.  Now we are into the 'celebration phase'.  But I am not ready to celebrate.  I did not see any lorries on TV (though the contributors to this fascinating yahoo answers chain obviously did), and now all I have is this unpleasant offering:

I do not like the Coke Santa when he moves.  He's got that dead behind the eyes, slightly evil Tom Hanks in Polar Express look about him,  but he's not computer generated, he's an actual person.  When he tilts the snow globe, about 21 and 38 seconds in, it is particularly disturbing.  Tilting the snow globe sounds like a terrible euphemism.  Sorry to my mother, again.

I'm sure it's lovely to drink Coke at Christmas so that you can feel a sense of togetherness that no other fizzy beverage can provide, but the thought of a creepy puppet master dressed up as Santa, manipulating the level of the land so that people can have a Christmas snog does not fill me with Christmas cheer.  And the song is rubbish.  Bah humbug.  Ah, now I have found the true spirit of Christmas.

The Apprentice - interviews round 15 December 2010

This is it.  The moment we’ve been waiting for since we realised that Lord Sugar was never going to see on his own that Stuart Baggs the brand is a ridiculous man.  Yes, it’s time for the interviews episode of The Apprentice, undoubtedly the best part of every series.  Who can forget Lee's dinosaur impression?  Who can forget… no, that’s the only thing I remember about any of the other interview episodes.  But still, the return of cloud-haired papyrus-wielding Margaret Mountford was a joyous prospect.

Stuart Baggs the brand is clearly also a fan.  "Margaret!"  he cried lovingly, as he entered the room and saw her across the table.  In his head: trumpets were playing; a slow motion run towards her as they were magically transported to a field of galloping ponies; a lingering embrace.  But alas it was not to be.  She rapped his knuckles and became Miss Mountford for the rest of the interview.

Another highlight was learning that Chris referred to himself on his application form as a 'revered theology scholar'.  Has he done a PhD?  Is he well-versed in the Dead Sea Scrolls?  Well no, but he did do RE at A-level.  I'm shocked he wasn't asked to take part in the Christopher Hitchens Tony Blair debate, personally.

Other than that nothing overly exciting happened, I am disappointed to report.  Stella breezed through, and dull Chris got the second place (despite Nick Hewer saying that he "droned on"), seemingly because Joanna is rubbish at interviews and Jamie had begun to do Gordon Brown-esque twitchy smiles which I imagine made everyone nervous.

So who's going to win?  Presumably Stella, but we shall see on Sunday (note, not Wednesday), when she and Chris must design and market new alcoholic drinks.  I suppose it will be nice to not have to go cold turkey from reality TV on Sunday night.  And going by last weekend's standards, Take That are bound to make an appearance.  It has been four whole days since they've appeared on television.

Of Gods and Men *****

Of Gods and Men opens in a monastery in Algeria in the 1990s, with a small group of French monks quietly and methodically going to prayer. Everything is symmetrical, orderly, and peaceful. They live in harmony with the Muslim villagers, selling honey at the market and running a medical centre. This harmony, however, is about to be broken. 

Their serene balance is disturbed by a group of violent fundamentalists, who are now looking for medical supplies as some of their members have been injured fighting. The head of the monastery stands up to them, but they know that they will be back. The monks must decide whether to stay, and almost certainly be killed, or to leave, and abandon the people who rely on them so much. When talking to the villagers one of the monks compares the brotherhood to birds on a branch, unsure whether or not they are about to fly away. A woman replies that the monks are actually the branch, and it is the villagers who are the birds. Without the monks they have nothing to stand on. 

The film, frankly, is remarkable. The power of emotion it inspires is something I have rarely experienced in the cinema. A particularly effecting scene occurs towards the end of the film, when the monks have their ‘Last Supper’. There is no dialogue, it is just a group of men eating, while Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake plays in the background. The camera pans round each of their faces, and we see every line, every flicker of fear, of happiness, and of faith, in themselves and in their God. 

This is not the kind of film to just pop to in order to while away a couple of hours. You feel every single one of its 122 minutes. Normally I would say that a film feeling long is a bad sign, but that is simply not the case here. The pace is slow, and the scenes are long, but it is somehow fitting that a film like this leaves time within it for contemplation. 

Of Gods and Men will stay with you for a long time after you leave the cinema. And you may take a while to leave. I had to sit until the end of the credits to gather myself, as did a lot of the audience. Astonishing, beautiful, captivating, devastating; I could go through the alphabet. But I won’t, don’t worry.


Original review here.


PS Just to clarify, I did not see this Of Gods and Men.  Though I'm sure the above review would apply to that, too.

My Afternoons with Margueritte ***

My Afternoons with Margueritte is not exactly a film full of high-octane thrills and spills.  But you can probably tell that from the poster: Gerard Depardieu and an old lady sit on a bench, feeding the pigeons.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that the poster is a plot spoiler - sitting on a bench feeding the pigeons probably takes up a good half of the film.  

Depardieu plays Germain, a lovable loser.  He lives in a trailer in his mother’s garden.  He has friends in the village, but they all laugh at him and think he is stupid.  Then he meets Margueritte, an intelligent, highly literate woman in her 90s, and she reads to him, and thus unlocks the door to knowledge, and enlightenment, and self-respect, and respect from others, and all those other clichés that we get from this ‘gosh, isn’t reading good?’ kind of film.

But, despite it winning no prizes for originality, My Afternoons with Margueritte is actually very sweet and touching.  The relationships between Germain and the women in his life - his scary mother who has never shown him any love, his ridiculously pretty, young, vivacious girlfriend (sorry to be shallow but, really?  French women don’t like dungarees, do they?), and of course Margueritte - are all very sensitively and movingly conveyed.  

This is very much Sunday afternoon cinema.  Themes of ageing, of mother/son relationships, of different kinds of love, are covered at a very gentle pace, but it never fails to be charming.  Oh, apart from at the very end where an awful saccharine poem is read over the end credits.  I would advise you to leave before that bit, as the sugar content may send you over the edge.  You’ll get horribly hyperactive on the way home.

[Original review here]

Oxford Poets - Oxford Playhouse, 12 November

Encompassing Geoffrey Chaucer and Michael Rosen, and taking in Ancient Greece and the shops of Oxford High Street along the way, Live Canon really impressed at the Oxford Playhouse on Friday. They performed Oxford Poets, poetry and the occasional song by men and women with some connection (however slight) to Oxford. 

The initial thought of going to a poetry recital made me slightly nervous. In my mind I had images of people draped in black, a fog of cigarette smoke, maybe the odd beret and a set of bongos in the background. Live Canon are nothing like this (though I do mourn the lack of a bongo player). The three of them are young, energetic, and wonderfully engaged with each other and the poetry, and therefore with the audience. 

It is an increasingly rare thing to be able to hear classic and modern poetry performed, and I am a new convert to its joys when it is done well. It does take work from the audience, but the rewards are great. Listening to poetry takes a different type of concentration, and it did take me a good ten minutes to tune my brain into the rhythms in order to understand, well, anything to be honest, but once I managed that it was a really special experience. Lines that could have seemed indecipherable on a page came to life when spoken aloud. 

Massive congratulations to Live Canon for delivering a lovely performance, and managing to seamlessly move between themes of education, war, love, even existence itself, with barely a pause. I will certainly be looking out for their work in the future. Despite the lack of bongos.


[For fear that I am not obeying my terms and conditions, the original of this review is here.  All of my other theatre reviews are at dailyinfo.co.uk too.  I don't think there are many of you reading this that I wouldn't have directed to dailyinfo first anyway, so I can't imagine I need to worry about copywright issues.  But we can pretend that this is proper, can't we?]

Journey's End - Keble College, 9-11 November

Set entirely in an officers’ dugout close to the front line towards the end of World War I, Journey’s End tells the moving story of a small group of officers as they wait to go over the top. We watch how the relationships between the men develop and shift over the course of a few days, and learn how they cope differently with the pressures of war.

The production of this play by Sinclair Productions is particularly timely, with the final performance set for Remembrance Day. And despite being a different country, a different century, and a considerably different way of fighting, the examination of the horror of war is particularly important today.

The way that themes can be applied to contemporary war is perhaps part of the reason why the play is still a GCSE set text. And this is where Sinclair Productions begin their own battle. The challenge of putting on a text read in schools is that the audience will naturally be made up of a large proportion of school children. And school children are probably the most difficult audience to please. There is much to commend in this production, with excellent set design, imaginative lighting, and decent performances, but the cast really struggled to keep the audience’s attention.  The funny scenes just weren’t funny enough, whilst scenes of real poignancy fell sadly flat as the tension was broken by mistimed giggling. It is easy to blame the children for not keeping quiet, but then maybe if the diction had been a little clearer, and the connection between the cast and the audience had been a  little stronger, it would have been much more difficult to become distracted.