Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

They must have struggled with Benedict Cumberbatch’s hair. It’s not meant to be straight. It was – sort of – but kept waving at the back. Can’t quite get over Gary Oldman’s transformation from Sirius Black to Smiley.

The new Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is like good coffee or dark chocolate. Not that I use either, but I suspect it’s how it must feel if you do. Like this film. It’s pure art. It’s like being inside a good painting. Somehow.

I can’t say I understood all of it, and I can no longer recollect if I ever read this particular novel by John le Carré or not. Suspect not, but the Resident IT Consultant assured me they stayed close to the plot. But it’s not the kind of film you need to understand. You just enjoy. Immerse yourself.

It probably helps that it was directed by a Swede. I’m not sure why, but it appears to be something Swedes are good at. And Tomas Alfredson strikes me as very good indeed.

As usual the authentic 1970s were too authentic, so to speak. But it looked good. And I’m amazed to see they unearthed some blue cups this time. We’ve had the green ones in every single period film or television programme for decades.

No sex please, we’re so very British

Not that I am, but I won’t let that deter me.

You know, coming from that den of sin, formally called Sweden, I’m used to the idea that we are a bit less concerned about sex and other horribly immoral things. Oh the joy of being propositioned by all and sundry as soon as you divulge your origins!

But I’m rapidly drawing the conclusion that it’s Britain and the US who are behind everyone else. More or less. That goes for both books and films and television.

My foreign reading challenge on Bookwitch proves that people in other countries can write books, too. It’s like fashion, though. If totally immersed in one ‘culture’ you think you’re on the edge of fashion, or at least not too dreadfully behind. But once comparisons are made with other countries, a certain dowdiness emerges. Clothes definitely. School Friend was most disappointed at being unable to spend any money at all on clothes when visiting Manchester a few months ago. ‘They’re so ugly!’ she exclaimed.

And yes, we do get sex in Young Adult fiction in British books. But not surprisingly, the Swedes have gone further.

It’s not just Swedes or books. Having seen some (well, only two this time, because I seriously ran out of time) Spanish language films in the Cornerhouse ¡Viva! film festival I realised they were saying and doing things in both the Spanish and the Chilean film that surprised me for a 15 film. Much more nudity and seemingly much more normal. They even let fat people undress in Gordos. And the discussion about different types of sex that the main character in La Vida de los Peces had with the two boys aged about ten or twelve at a family birthday party, was most refreshing.

I don’t often watch foreign films other than Scandinavian ones, but what I have seen tends to have an almost total lack of concern for what’s ‘decent’, the way we still stumble over here in Britain. And the Americans couldn’t even let Colin Firth swear in the King’s Speech.

It’s time for a rethink and some loosening up of silly rules.

Btw, I have found out that it’s going to cost me £80 to prove that I’m not. British. So glad they keep coming up with new ways to make money. A few foreigners like me and we’ll soon have paid for a library to remain open. Or does it not work like that?

Hello Hallé

And hello Beth. Just testing, as Daughter said in her email to the kitchen this morning. People want to see if things work. In my case I’m seeing if the (Google?) alert is alive and well for Beth. Hallé, Hallé, Hallé, but not Halle Berry, although apparently that works just as well. Or not. A bit like when I mentioned Colin Firth without really meaning to.

Sorry, waffling too much.

I stuffed envelopes again this morning and rather a lot of them too, even if I my dodgy knee left to go home before they were all done. Towards the end, as we lost a couple of the other stuffers to fluffy things like book clubs, an almost total silence ruled and we stuffed and we stuffed. I was down to a mere ten minutes per fifty letters, which improves my average of 200 an hour.

One letter was for a family concert at the end of March:

Another was for a more grown-up concert in three weeks’ time. Currently the Hallé orchestra are in Hong Kong. The instrument packing instructions were displayed on the walls as I walked along, still almost getting lost after several years. Too hot and your violin melts and too cold and your cello will not be too happy either. Except the cello and his pal the double base at least stand a better chance of sitting with their humans on the plane.

I rarely stuff letters addressed to friends, but today was different. One letter for husband of Borås Girl, which had me pondering why men so often are the ones listed on lists. At Witch Towers it’s the witch who’s on most of the mailing lists.

As I deserted the last of the stuffers I had a few minutes spare, just in case dodgy knee wished to walk even more slowly to the train. It walked fairly well, so I had a minute in which to pop into Cornerhouse for a programme for their Spanish language film festival ¡Viva!, which begins tomorrow.

So much culture! So little time!

Filip & Fredrik

We’re back to this business of knowing what you don’t know, or even what others don’t know and might want to be informed about. Every time a news presenter on television says ‘and this afternoon the prime minister, Mr Joe Bloggs,..’ I want to scream and say that one of them is enough. We know who’s prime minister, and we know who Joe Bloggs is. Well, a great many of us do, anyway.

It’s the times when no information is forthcoming and it would have been really useful to have, that I think of this the most. Years ago I stopped my subscription to Swedish magazine Vi on that basis. It was getting a bit expensive, and when I had finished reading an interview with two tremendously well know Swedish women (I’d never heard of them, exile that I am) and I wasn’t even sure which one was on the left and which one was on the right in the photographs, that I decided Vi was obviously no longer catering to me, the ignoramus abroad.

OK, so I’ve gone back to subscribing again. Several times. And mostly I’m very happy and like the quality of the writing and feel the photos are suitably labelled. I feel I have learnt something.

Today I finished reading an interview with Filip & Fredrik. I would have finished it earlier had I not delayed halfway through because I felt lost. Loads of pretty pictures of the duo, by Evalotta Fredén. Information on where they were taken. No information which of the Fs was on the left and which on the right. So I still have no clue.

And I’m still left feeling I didn’t quite grasp what these two men have done for Swedish television that is so exciting. I’ve seen their names mentioned often enough, but never seen them in action. But the photos were good, and some of what they said was interesting enough.

Once I’ve written this I will google image them and see if I’m any the wiser. I’m doubtful because I know what happens when I google image myself. I either look like some half naked dominatrix in skimpy black leather (not me) or I’m some famous person who has appeared on this blog and therefore bears my name in the search engine world. Or maybe I really am Colin Firth? Who’d have guessed?

If Vi are worrying, I am not intending to cancel my subscription again. But I may ask for clarification on left and right.

King Colin

The King’s Speech is the kind of film you want to watch again as soon as the credits roll. It’s not often that happens to me.

What I want to know is if King George VI was as interesting in real life as he seemed in the film, or if it was Colin Firth? I’ve gone from having no particular interest in the good King to thinking he really was quite fun, and can’t help but compare him to his descendants.

In fact, I’ve been surrounded by royals for a week or two. Just finished reading about Richard III and all the people surrounding him, including iffy bishops. I thought the George VI bishop was pretty iffy too. And the abdication was covered as recently as last week in Upstairs Downstairs, so I’ve had two Wallis Simpsons to contend with. The film one was better.

It’s one thing to know the King stammered and suffered in public. It’s another to witness how it actually was to be him. Trying every cure or doctor you can think of is familiar to many of us, whatever the problem. The Duchess of York seems to have been determined to help him, although I wonder if much of what was in the film was true.

Fun, though, and it makes you like both of them. The Duchess sitting on the Duke (to help with the breathing?) was amusing. Watching both of them doing things they’d never done before, like using a lift, is illuminating. Having to borrow a shilling to bet.

Seeing Lionel Logue and how he worked was wonderful. It may have come as a shock that he was no doctor, but it goes to prove that neither titles nor official qualifications mean that someone is any good at what they do.

The swearing was priceless, and so was the singing. I’ll never hear that tune again without thinking of George VI.

Seeing the reactions of the Duke and Duchess to Lionel’s ‘common’ ways of treating them as people was lovely. Royals need some resistance, I believe.

Finding out what might well have caused the stammering was heart rending and the cruelty to children shocking. It looked as if our current Queen had a slightly better start in life.

The plot is so simple that you can barely write about it: King stammers. King eventually receives decent treatment. King can speak in public. But there’s so much more to this film.

I will have to see it again, soon. Annoyed it’s not even out yet, but grateful we were able to catch a preview at the weekend. It’s definitely a ‘buy the DVD immediately’ kind of film. The more immediate the better.

A Single Man

‘I’m English. I like being wet and cold.’ So says Colin Firth to his young student played by Nicholas Hoult in A Single Man. It’s a film that people will flock to watch, starring three handsome male actors covering a wide age range. Now, I don’t mean that our Mr Darcy has grown old, but next to Matthew Goode he is. Somewhat. And Nicholas Hoult is barely old enough to be a college student.

It’s only thanks to the ladies hairdos that you can tell whether it’s a flashback or not; late 1940s or early 1960s. A Single Man feels quite Christopher Isherwood-ish, which was to be expected. Not much happens. Matthew Goode dies in the opening scene, but the only aspect that made this a really sad occasion is that with homosexuality having to be hidden in those days, Colin Firth’s character can’t go to the funeral or even be seen to grieve very openly.

Other than that, I wasn’t convinced that there was much feeling there at all. He wants to kill himself, and spends the day preparing his suicide, but then things don’t go as he, or we, expect.

Beautifully filmed in wonderful locations, and with some great, if possibly overdone, 1960s authentic props. Very nice touch to have the mild mannered Colin Firth offering to kill the neighbour’s brat.

The James Dean look-alike was a fresh breeze in a fairly stifling drama about hurt feelings among people it was hard to like. And perhaps nobody realised that it’s his British accent that makes Matthew Goode so sexy. Fake American works nowhere near as well.

At Cornerhouse from today.

‘Every crook and nanny’ at St Trinian’s

It wasn’t too bad, that second St Trinian’s film. Not that I have seen the first one, and I gather the second is supposed to be worse. But I quite liked it. Funny and very light. And it had that Mr Darcy and the Doctor in it, so the scenery was OK, if you can ignore Rupert Everett’s teeth. I’m not keen on cross-dressing like that, though. Gives me a sort of eugh feeling.

Don’t believe they wore white sports socks in the sixteenth century, but David Tennant was cute tied up. Quite cute as the baddie, too. Dog was awfully cute, but according to Daughter I need to understand that Mr Darcy had killed its predecessor or some such ghastly thing. Which was not very nice.

A bit of education could be had through all that Shakespeare, and maybe I ought to go and have a look round The Globe one day. Agree with the critics who felt the school girls were too old. There must be plenty of suitable wannabe actresses aged 17, rather than these elderly 20+ people they had dug out from somewhere. Maybe they are famous?

‘Big fish, little fish, cardboard box’ is always amusing. And so is having the fat girl be the intelligent one. So unlikely. Although the actress has a good date for her birthday, I have to say.

Genova

It has Colin Firth at least. At first I thought it’d prove ideal for our ex-Mr Darcy to walk around looking stiff and upset, grieving for his dead wife, but there’s not much of that. Throughout his new film Genova, I kept screaming (silently, of course) that what his daughters needed was constancy. Taking them to Genoa is so Not A Good Thing. But does he learn? I don’t think so.

His 10-year-old daughter, Mary, keeps seeing her dead Mum. She believes her mother has forgiven her for ‘killing’ her in the first place, but then why would Mum try and get Mary run over? While Mary goes round churches lighting candles for her mother and seeing her all over the place, her sister Kelly, 16, travels round Genoa on motorbikes with beautiful young men, and doing her best to lose Mary.

What is it with Americans and their infatuation with Europe? A year working and going to school in Italy is far less romantic than a long holiday, especially for the recently bereaved. I kept urging them to go home. Then there are the two women vying for Dad’s attention; one is his Italian student, and the other his old American pal, who’d like to be so much more, and who keeps taking Mary into churches and goes on about counselling.

Don’t experiment with your children like this.

Genoa looks good, except for some of the dark and narrow alleys with dubious people hanging around. I’m surprised they don’t get more lost than they do. And I don’t understand the need for advertising one of our less loved airlines.

Genova is on at Cornerhouse from tomorrow.

Mamma Mia!

I’m not late. This was the second viewing of the film, following three trips to the theatre for the stage version. I am generally a very disappointing mother, but have vowed not to fail in the ABBA department, so the “summer” had to finish with more Mamma Mia!, and to be honest, I did wonder if it made sense to go again.

The answer is I could easily go again tomorrow (but I won’t). Anything that puts a grin on your face so quickly, and makes sure it remains there all the way through, is good. It is very silly, really, but so is the stage musical, and none of it makes much sense. But it entertains.

I think of it as leftovers. I get everything out of the fridge and look at the food until it becomes clear what I can make with this particular mix of ingredients. And as Son often says, leftovers for dinner can be better than something carefully planned. To write the story of Mamma Mia! I imagine that Catherine Johnson must have got all the ABBA songs out of the fridge and looked at them too, until a pattern emerged. Like the dinner, the result is slightly weird, but so good.

Even on a second viewing Pierce Brosnan still can’t sing, but his bare chest is worth seeing. Colin Firth is always adorable, and let’s face it, Stellan Skarsgård covers the Swedish connection nicely. Son claims not to like Meryl Streep, but I do, and the film is good enough to make Dominic Cooper bearable, but no more.

Maybe I should just settle down and wait for the DVD to be available, and not spend more money in what’s a very tatty and rundown local cinema. We’ll see.

Mr Darcy is 48

I most definitely didn’t set up this blog to list birthdays all the time, but as I was doing business over at the international movie database, I just happened to notice that Colin Firth is 48 today.

I quite like the man, but that’s not why I decided to mention him. It’s an experiment, really. Last year I happened to write about Colin Firth in passing, and my hit rate shot up dramatically. Just testing to see if his name has magical qualities.

If you find me doing too many birthdays, let me know and I’ll deal with me.