STAGE
Quartermaine's Terms
Wyndham's Theatre
★★★✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
This well-executed and bleak tale of loneliness and English reticence is a necessarily subdued performance by Rowan Atkinson
REVIEW
St John Quartermaine, the gnomic and rooted teacher at Cull Loomis School of English for Foreigners, is as one with his staff room chair.
Few actors could instil such passivity with such presence and potential as Rowan Atkinson.
An Aardman smile, signifying nothing, a waspish swash of those U-bend wrists, a darting tongue moistening lips, Atkinson in repose is as others are at the height of their athleticism.
But the unprepossessing Quartermaine is a disaster as a teacher, poor as a friend and empty as a vessel. No Mr Chips then, our Mr Bean.
Simon Gray's 1981 study of '60s loneliness leaves questions unanswered - has he a hinterland? Is he cultivating his vacancy? Is he pitiable or content? He does little to alleviate the solitude but his colleagues are hardly an advert for conviviality.
He sits as a fulcrum while around him swirl infidelities, sadnesses, depression and frustration, presented to him like apperitifs for a meal he will never consume.
Atkinson is front and centre, but in his absence, this is an ensemble piece.
Conleth Hill is amusing as the clownish Henry, while Matthew Cottle is nicely anguished as a wannabe writer. Felicity Montagu as a frustrated spinster is moving, Malcolm Sinclair, grandly pompous, Will Keen, wincingly suburban and Louise Ford sharply buttoned-up.
Director Richard Eyre presents them framed, as in a portrait, each seeking a keener resolution of themselves.
This all moves towards an inevitably bleak conclusion, via farce, melodrama, and comedy but the end never entirely justifies the means.
The play is brilliantly constructed but, like Quartermaine himself, mostly irrelevant and rarely moving.
Until April 13, go to quartermainesterms.com.
Saturday, 16 February 2013
Friday, 1 February 2013
Film review: Flight (15)
FILM
Flight
(15) 138mins
★★★✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Denzel Washington is head and shoulders above the story he inhabits, which, despite bells and whistles, is a story about a self-pitying drunk.
REVIEW
Despite a terrifying plane crash that sees hero pilot Whip Whitaker lauded for his life-saving actions, this is not a conventional disaster movie.
That is because the disaster at its heart is Whitaker himself. The wreckage is not a trail of gnarled metal ploughed into a field in Atlanta but a string of neglected loved ones who have long since given up on the veteran pilot.
An anachronism of flight jargon results in talk of "lost souls" rather than fatal casualties. They mean the same thing, but not to Whip who lives, but heartlessly, and with demons.
For William "Whip" Whitaker is an alcoholic. And the heroism at the start of the movie is an unfortunate piece of luck that looks likely to keep his well-constructed deceptions in order.
Director Robert Zemeckis makes the terror of the crash real and impressive. But, this event, which book-ends the film, is a sideshow.
Ultimately, this is a heavy-handed tale about a drunk, an unappealing anti-hero who has exhausted the patience and loyalty of his friends and colleagues and is running out of time.
As investigators begin to probe how the accident happened, so John Gaitlin's sharp script - drawn from his own experiences of addiction - asks how it didn't happen before. Whitaker is a whip-and-top, bouncing wildly from one near-miss to the next.
Zemeckis said: "The suspense in the movie comes from the uncertainty of what the characters are going to do, how they are going to respond. The anticipation comes from not knowing what the characters will do from scene to scene."
Victims of his sozzled, pitiful charm include Nicole, a recovering addict played with touching vulnerability by Kelly Reilly, and union rep Charlie Anderson (Bruce Greenwood) who stands by his pal long after he's lost the right to ask anyone for anything.
There are few people who can hover between good and bad and keep us guessing like Denzel Washington, who takes a third Oscar nomination for his journey into the heart of darkness.
We've seen Washington in uniform before, with moral authority and courage, we've seen him as an everyman against the odds, and we've seen him as a fast-dealing shyster. We've seen that winning, thousand watt smile a thousand times.
He calls on all these attributes to make Whip complex, compelling and, occasionally, sympathetic character.
This is all is to his great credit because Whip, of course, is not complex. He is a boorish, cruel drunk, steeped in the ways of denial and always, always taking the path of least resistance, especially if it leads to a vodka bottle.
The movie is flawed because of this. We get the thrill of a plane crash. We get the brief witness stand drama but at its heart, this is a film about a drunk, being drunk, occasionally trying not to be drunk but conceding to drunkenness too often to be of any use.
Flight
(15) 138mins
★★★✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Denzel Washington is head and shoulders above the story he inhabits, which, despite bells and whistles, is a story about a self-pitying drunk.
REVIEW
Despite a terrifying plane crash that sees hero pilot Whip Whitaker lauded for his life-saving actions, this is not a conventional disaster movie.
That is because the disaster at its heart is Whitaker himself. The wreckage is not a trail of gnarled metal ploughed into a field in Atlanta but a string of neglected loved ones who have long since given up on the veteran pilot.
An anachronism of flight jargon results in talk of "lost souls" rather than fatal casualties. They mean the same thing, but not to Whip who lives, but heartlessly, and with demons.
For William "Whip" Whitaker is an alcoholic. And the heroism at the start of the movie is an unfortunate piece of luck that looks likely to keep his well-constructed deceptions in order.
Director Robert Zemeckis makes the terror of the crash real and impressive. But, this event, which book-ends the film, is a sideshow.
Ultimately, this is a heavy-handed tale about a drunk, an unappealing anti-hero who has exhausted the patience and loyalty of his friends and colleagues and is running out of time.
As investigators begin to probe how the accident happened, so John Gaitlin's sharp script - drawn from his own experiences of addiction - asks how it didn't happen before. Whitaker is a whip-and-top, bouncing wildly from one near-miss to the next.
Zemeckis said: "The suspense in the movie comes from the uncertainty of what the characters are going to do, how they are going to respond. The anticipation comes from not knowing what the characters will do from scene to scene."
Victims of his sozzled, pitiful charm include Nicole, a recovering addict played with touching vulnerability by Kelly Reilly, and union rep Charlie Anderson (Bruce Greenwood) who stands by his pal long after he's lost the right to ask anyone for anything.
There are few people who can hover between good and bad and keep us guessing like Denzel Washington, who takes a third Oscar nomination for his journey into the heart of darkness.
We've seen Washington in uniform before, with moral authority and courage, we've seen him as an everyman against the odds, and we've seen him as a fast-dealing shyster. We've seen that winning, thousand watt smile a thousand times.
He calls on all these attributes to make Whip complex, compelling and, occasionally, sympathetic character.
This is all is to his great credit because Whip, of course, is not complex. He is a boorish, cruel drunk, steeped in the ways of denial and always, always taking the path of least resistance, especially if it leads to a vodka bottle.
The movie is flawed because of this. We get the thrill of a plane crash. We get the brief witness stand drama but at its heart, this is a film about a drunk, being drunk, occasionally trying not to be drunk but conceding to drunkenness too often to be of any use.
Stage review: Di And Viv And Rose, Hampstead
STAGE
Di And Viv And Rose
Hampstead Theatre
★★★★✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Great performances and goodwill paper over any cracks in Amelia Bullmore's lively ode to female friendship.
REVIEW
Viewed from sufficient distance, the planet is featureless. The crevices and eddies of the surface are invisible and inexplicable to an alien.
And such it is with men viewing female friendships. We are clueless outsiders, blindly marking subtleties we cannot fathom. We are still bitching about A when A has been forgiven. We're busy praising B's steadfastness as B heads to cold exile.
Female friendship has a high drag coefficient, swift and slick, while men's sensibilities on the matter are more like a portly buffalo in a headwind.
Di And Viv And Rose does not illuminate the underpinning of such friendships but does present the reason they are worth fighting for. Mutual memories make meaning.
We follow the bustling threesome from an '80s uni house share through the grubby doings of everyday life for the next 27 years - all set to a cracking soundtrack.
Separations, sadness, sex, no sex and men attempt to slice and dice the triumvirate but their bond is not lightly broken.
Writer Amelia Bullmore pulls predictable plot levers to test their loyalties and the soapy traumas come too thick and fast but it's all done with such generous spirit and at such speed that cackling, crying and cluelessness roll into a single bubble of glee.
The cast are a joy. Anna Maxwell Martin is utterly beguiling as the gently promiscuous Rose but there are engaging performances from Tamzin Outhwaite as lesbian Di and Gina McKee as feminist-lite Viv.
There is little here that will linger and it's certainly not without flaws but, like Space Dust and Love Cats, it's all delightfully poppy.
Until Feb 23. Go to hampsteadtheatre.com.
Di And Viv And Rose
Hampstead Theatre
★★★★✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Great performances and goodwill paper over any cracks in Amelia Bullmore's lively ode to female friendship.
REVIEW
Viewed from sufficient distance, the planet is featureless. The crevices and eddies of the surface are invisible and inexplicable to an alien.
And such it is with men viewing female friendships. We are clueless outsiders, blindly marking subtleties we cannot fathom. We are still bitching about A when A has been forgiven. We're busy praising B's steadfastness as B heads to cold exile.
Female friendship has a high drag coefficient, swift and slick, while men's sensibilities on the matter are more like a portly buffalo in a headwind.
Di And Viv And Rose does not illuminate the underpinning of such friendships but does present the reason they are worth fighting for. Mutual memories make meaning.
We follow the bustling threesome from an '80s uni house share through the grubby doings of everyday life for the next 27 years - all set to a cracking soundtrack.
Separations, sadness, sex, no sex and men attempt to slice and dice the triumvirate but their bond is not lightly broken.
Writer Amelia Bullmore pulls predictable plot levers to test their loyalties and the soapy traumas come too thick and fast but it's all done with such generous spirit and at such speed that cackling, crying and cluelessness roll into a single bubble of glee.
The cast are a joy. Anna Maxwell Martin is utterly beguiling as the gently promiscuous Rose but there are engaging performances from Tamzin Outhwaite as lesbian Di and Gina McKee as feminist-lite Viv.
There is little here that will linger and it's certainly not without flaws but, like Space Dust and Love Cats, it's all delightfully poppy.
Until Feb 23. Go to hampsteadtheatre.com.
An alarming time
There were a number of fiddly cross-matched plans I was due to execute the next morning, all reliant on there not being a sticky white meringue atop the railways of southern England.
So it was unsurprising that, come the middle of the night, an alarm sounded in my head. Or so I thought.
Once I had cleared my mind of buzzing Plan Bs, it turned out the alarm was real, emanating from a neighbour's flat.
My first thought was "drunken midnight sausage sandwich".
I never thought fire. Who ever thinks fire? I think heartless snack makers, marinated in Mackeson's, drifting off to Poker TV as sausages blacken in the grill.
(It is to the credit of the London Fire Brigade that, despite the cuts, they do not assume likewise.)
A sleepless night ensued. The sound was only lessened by toilet paper in the ears and a pillow over the head - not the way I dispatched the stout-infused sausage scorcher, you understand, but how I eased the pulsing irritation.
The day's plans thwarted by snow, I made myself at home. As did the alarm, which nestled irksomely in the aural milieu like a herniated fox at the breakfast table.
Contacting the estate manager, I kept silent about my sausage theory, which was unlikely to promote the door-splintering response I required.
Instead, I played upon the vision of smouldering corpses lying undetected while flames probed and prodded at neighbouring walls.
Someone should investigate, I said. He would see what he could do, he said.
By early afternoon, the alarm stopped. Silent applause. For it is a remarkable task, stopping a smoke alarm intent on alarming - requiring tenacity, guile and, generally, a hammer.
Alarms are connected to the mains and back-up batteries and yet when yanked violently free from both they continue to chirrup, like a beaten boxer who won't stay down.
It is as though the ready flow of electricity and dustballs of DNA have shocked into life a new species of highly-strung yelping roof turtle.
After the bomb, it will be the cockroaches and these nervy shell-topped terrors inheriting the earth, gorging on immolated pork products.
So the alarm stopped. Or did it? The high-pitched tone had now smuggled its way into the bandwidth of my tinnitus, acquired by years of nightclubs, rock gigs and roller coasters.
I couldn't be sure. I applied toilet paper and pillow again and still it was there, just above the hum left by Noel Gallagher at Knebworth sometime in 1996.
I hear it now. Real or imagined? I shall investigate once I've made myself a nice sausage sandwich.
Stage review: The Judas Kiss, Duke of York's
STAGE
The Judas Kiss
Duke of York's
★★★★★
IN A NUTSHELL
Rupert Everett is on blistering form in David Hare's witty and perceptive examination of the woes of Oscar Wilde.
REVIEW
For most of this absorbing masterwork, Rupert Everett's Oscar Wilde is seated. Or, more likely, slumped, deflated, a sack of clothes beneath a blubbery face.
He was not an old man during the course of the play's events - pre-arrest, post-jail - but he has an old man's physique, gait and prospects.
Should he take a deep breath and bellow away the gloom all would be well, it seems. But he sips just enough oxygen (and brandy) to fuel his brain and his quips and nothing more.
This gauche and tottering clown is in deliberate contrast to his fiendish and fierce young lover, Alfred Douglas, who is the very essence of youth - energetic, arrogant, petulant, cruel, passionate and, usually, plotting.
How much Bosie knows of himself - that his precocious power plays are merely childish goads to his family - is difficult to tell. But perhaps it is his vitality in conflict that leaves jaded Wilde enraptured, against all advice.
That advice comes from staunch friend Robert Ross (Cal MacAninch) who believes Wilde must distance himself from the young man to restore his fortunes.
Instead, says David Hare through an enthralling and clever script, it is for the preservation of his credo, for art and beauty, that Wilde chooses to float, impotently, towards ignominy.
For beauty encapsulated by Bosie, of course. And, for art, also, because he recognises that he is caught up in a narrative and his story demands a fittingly tragic end.
Everett is simply enormous as Wilde. Physically, yes, but psychologically too.
Forget the idle bon mots that trip from both actor and acted, this Wilde is infuriating, rigorous and mournful (but never sentimental). Everett marries the stoic curmudgeon to the rich prancing wit and hides all behind a haunted mask.
Freddie Fox finds enough in Bosie to make his patter convincing, to himself at least.
He exudes great presence and expends great energy to appear sincere and it is not inconceivable that this preening sulk would entrance the outsider Wilde.
The staging in Neil Armfield's production is ungainly and the nudity distracting but we are left, thankfully, with the retina scar of Everett's epic stillness - capturing a man broken but never quite defeated.
Until April 6, go to judaskiss.co.uk.
Film review: Lincoln (12A)
FILM
Lincoln
(12A) 150mins
★★★✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Daniel Day-Lewis is towering as Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's pernickety take on the President's battle against the slave trade.
REVIEW
The Gettysburg Address is recited casually back at its author by muddy soldiers presenting their purpose for doing battle. From the outset, this is a lesson in undercutting the myth of Abraham Lincoln.
A biopic would have seen the figurehead in moments of triumph, scooping up the wounded and leading a nation, tattered flag in hand.
Spielberg and writer Tony Kushner have, instead, focussed on the last few months of his life as he engaged in the distasteful but necessary horse-trading required to see through the 13th amendment, abolishing slavery and ending the Civil War.
This, as aficionados of The West Wing would testify is a "process story". And aficionados of The West Wing will be the most eager supporters of this narrative tack.
In 1994 fictional Jed Bartlet commissions Josh Lynam to get him the votes. In 1865, Lincoln commissions the Secretary of State's unsavoury wheeler-dealers to issue bribes, jobs and jabs to bring over the waverers.
Deliberately dour and low-key, the movie is enlivened by speeches but nevertheless remains throughout more Commons tea-room than Fort Sumter.
Daniel Day-Lewis towers over the film. He is Professor Yaffle, stooped, mannered, wooden (in movement) but mellifluous and wise to his bones.
Above all, he is a man on a mission, not the model for a memorial. He infuriates his wife, scolds his son, favours another, mourns for a third and wants to get the numbers to work come what may.
He is prepared to prolong war to seal the deal and prepared to obfuscate to hide that discomforting fact.
Lovely cameos from the likes of James Spader, Jared Harrison, Sally Fields, David Strathairn and, most wonderfully, the cantankerous abolitionist Thaddeaus Stevens, as played by Tommy Lee Jones, illuminate the candle-lit dark while eloquence takes party rancour towards poetry.
But, still, that is the lot of the lengthy film. Vote-counting, shin-kicking and U-bend beards. The Thick Of It in the gloaming.
Spielberg, a man of images, lets Tony Kushner's rich and illustrious words do the work while Doris Kearns Goodwin's in-depth research carries the history lesson.
The director is left to create crescent moons from faces half in shade; to imbue brief battle scenes with Saving Private Ryan-esque authenticity; and to shoot Washington as Legoland.
Nation building is not all glory and principle. It is mucky compromise in smoke-filled rooms by roughnecks and dreamers who should know better.
Spielberg makes that film impeccably. Whether that is the right film to make is another question.
Lincoln
(12A) 150mins
★★★✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Daniel Day-Lewis is towering as Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's pernickety take on the President's battle against the slave trade.
REVIEW
The Gettysburg Address is recited casually back at its author by muddy soldiers presenting their purpose for doing battle. From the outset, this is a lesson in undercutting the myth of Abraham Lincoln.
A biopic would have seen the figurehead in moments of triumph, scooping up the wounded and leading a nation, tattered flag in hand.
Spielberg and writer Tony Kushner have, instead, focussed on the last few months of his life as he engaged in the distasteful but necessary horse-trading required to see through the 13th amendment, abolishing slavery and ending the Civil War.
This, as aficionados of The West Wing would testify is a "process story". And aficionados of The West Wing will be the most eager supporters of this narrative tack.
In 1994 fictional Jed Bartlet commissions Josh Lynam to get him the votes. In 1865, Lincoln commissions the Secretary of State's unsavoury wheeler-dealers to issue bribes, jobs and jabs to bring over the waverers.
Deliberately dour and low-key, the movie is enlivened by speeches but nevertheless remains throughout more Commons tea-room than Fort Sumter.
Daniel Day-Lewis towers over the film. He is Professor Yaffle, stooped, mannered, wooden (in movement) but mellifluous and wise to his bones.
Above all, he is a man on a mission, not the model for a memorial. He infuriates his wife, scolds his son, favours another, mourns for a third and wants to get the numbers to work come what may.
He is prepared to prolong war to seal the deal and prepared to obfuscate to hide that discomforting fact.
Lovely cameos from the likes of James Spader, Jared Harrison, Sally Fields, David Strathairn and, most wonderfully, the cantankerous abolitionist Thaddeaus Stevens, as played by Tommy Lee Jones, illuminate the candle-lit dark while eloquence takes party rancour towards poetry.
But, still, that is the lot of the lengthy film. Vote-counting, shin-kicking and U-bend beards. The Thick Of It in the gloaming.
Spielberg, a man of images, lets Tony Kushner's rich and illustrious words do the work while Doris Kearns Goodwin's in-depth research carries the history lesson.
The director is left to create crescent moons from faces half in shade; to imbue brief battle scenes with Saving Private Ryan-esque authenticity; and to shoot Washington as Legoland.
Nation building is not all glory and principle. It is mucky compromise in smoke-filled rooms by roughnecks and dreamers who should know better.
Spielberg makes that film impeccably. Whether that is the right film to make is another question.
Saturday, 19 January 2013
Film review: Django Unchained (15)
FILM
Django Unchained
(15) 136mins
★★★★✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Quentin Tarantino is best to his swaggering, infuriating and brilliant best with this audacious take on America's slave past.
REVIEW
Little wonder director Quentin Tarantino squirmed under scrutiny over movie violence.
In attempting to hold the high ground he had seized by claiming credit for dragging America's slave-owning past into the public arena he then painted himself into a corner.
He tried to insert simplistic gradations between "cathartic violence" and "entertaining violence" which can only translate as "violence that hurts baddies - necessary" and "violence that hurts goodies - worthy".
His revisionist Western (set in the South) contains much of both flavours and whether it's slaves set on by dogs or slave-masters castrated by shot, the result is just the same and usually found on walls and in puddles.
His needless justifications attempt to elevate a gore-fest beyond its very simple roots as a revenge movie.
In many ways, this is a companion piece to Inglourious Basterds. In both, the traditional opponents are redrawn and replaced with a new paradigm.
In the war-time sprawl, the Germans were defeated by the Jews. In the over-long but audacious Django Unchained, the plantation owners are done for by a former slave.
The director's impatience with the argument is understandable. If you're going to see a Quentin Tarantino movie, you know what's coming.
Lavish, unfurling scenes in which razor sharp characters have time to present their philosophies before unleashing hell on their foes.
It's all done with a swagger, lashings of scorn, a respectful tilt at genre, a painful self indulgence and a brazen disdain for queasiness.
Dr King Schultz, as played wonderfully by Christoph Waltz, is, therefore, the perfect QT character. The German bounty hunter has a gift of the gab as well as a dead-eye with a gun.
When he buys slave Django (the underpowered but charismatic Jamie Foxx) to help him track down his next bounty he finds a protege and a purpose.
For Django's slave wife (Kerry Washington) is named after a character in a German myth, a princess atop a hill for whom an adventurer must go through hellfire to rescue.
And so the quest to free Broomhilda is set and brings, by circuitous routes (there are lots of circuitous routes) the charming doctor and his taciturn sidekick to the plantation of ruthless boy king Calvin Candie (another star turn by Leonardo DiCaprio).
But the ruse that brings them to the bargaining table comes under scrutiny by repulsive house slave Stephen (rubberised Samuel L Jackson) - and their treachery will not go unchallenged.
Yet again, Tarantino has mined his love of cinema to create a brilliant, infuriating and rewarding event.
Django Unchained
(15) 136mins
★★★★✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Quentin Tarantino is best to his swaggering, infuriating and brilliant best with this audacious take on America's slave past.
REVIEW
Little wonder director Quentin Tarantino squirmed under scrutiny over movie violence.
In attempting to hold the high ground he had seized by claiming credit for dragging America's slave-owning past into the public arena he then painted himself into a corner.
He tried to insert simplistic gradations between "cathartic violence" and "entertaining violence" which can only translate as "violence that hurts baddies - necessary" and "violence that hurts goodies - worthy".
His revisionist Western (set in the South) contains much of both flavours and whether it's slaves set on by dogs or slave-masters castrated by shot, the result is just the same and usually found on walls and in puddles.
His needless justifications attempt to elevate a gore-fest beyond its very simple roots as a revenge movie.
In many ways, this is a companion piece to Inglourious Basterds. In both, the traditional opponents are redrawn and replaced with a new paradigm.
In the war-time sprawl, the Germans were defeated by the Jews. In the over-long but audacious Django Unchained, the plantation owners are done for by a former slave.
The director's impatience with the argument is understandable. If you're going to see a Quentin Tarantino movie, you know what's coming.
Lavish, unfurling scenes in which razor sharp characters have time to present their philosophies before unleashing hell on their foes.
It's all done with a swagger, lashings of scorn, a respectful tilt at genre, a painful self indulgence and a brazen disdain for queasiness.
Dr King Schultz, as played wonderfully by Christoph Waltz, is, therefore, the perfect QT character. The German bounty hunter has a gift of the gab as well as a dead-eye with a gun.
When he buys slave Django (the underpowered but charismatic Jamie Foxx) to help him track down his next bounty he finds a protege and a purpose.
For Django's slave wife (Kerry Washington) is named after a character in a German myth, a princess atop a hill for whom an adventurer must go through hellfire to rescue.
And so the quest to free Broomhilda is set and brings, by circuitous routes (there are lots of circuitous routes) the charming doctor and his taciturn sidekick to the plantation of ruthless boy king Calvin Candie (another star turn by Leonardo DiCaprio).
But the ruse that brings them to the bargaining table comes under scrutiny by repulsive house slave Stephen (rubberised Samuel L Jackson) - and their treachery will not go unchallenged.
Yet again, Tarantino has mined his love of cinema to create a brilliant, infuriating and rewarding event.
Saturday, 12 January 2013
Film review: Les Miserables (12A)
FILM
Les Miserables
(12A) 157mins
★★★★✩
IN A NUTSHELL
The ultimate musical, picked apart for its string of hits, returns to its stage roots, only on screen, in Tom Hooper's diligent pop opera video.
REVIEW
Here's something delightful - the reverse jukebox musical. Elsewhere songs (from Abba, Spice Girls et al) have had to generate a narrative on which to hang their scattergun ditties.
Here, a selection of memorable melodies finds a comfortable home alongside a cohesive narrative. Almost like it was planned.
So ubiquitous are the classics (I Dreamed A Dream, Bring Him Home, One More Day etc) they have become divorced from their original purpose. Suddenly, set anew against a stunning, stagy backdrop (including another star turn by Greenwich) they make sense all over again.
The result is a wonder - not without flaws - and a trauma, requiring the best bulldog spirit to stem the tears.
I am so biased in favour of Les Mis that a film adaptation of the much-cherished musical was set against a phalanx of prejudices.
The experience is akin to seeing your first love, who sings in the bath, appear on The X-Factor - same music, same intimacy but in a grander setting. In public. Familiar yet out of context.
But all the headline stars give strong vocal performances. Hugh Jackman as tormented Jean Valjean, on the run from policeman Javert (Russell Crowe); Amanda Seyfried as Cosette, Valjean's adopted daughter; Samantha Barks as love-lorn Eponine.
Top of the list though are Anne Hathaway as Fantine and Eddie Redmayne, who is a revelation as revolutionary romancer Marius.
Hathaway's I Dreamed A Dream steals the show (the camera stays with her for every heartbreaking second till it's unbearable) while Redmayne's Empty Chairs At Empty Tables is viscerally raw.
The much-heralded pairing of Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen as the light-fingered inn-keepers are much the most disappointing of the entertainers.
They touch on the weakness of an otherwise diligent production by director Tom Hooper - that is, lack of nuance and range.
Pathos is there in bucketloads but comedy and - more essentially - fury are missing. There is plenty of anger in the story - anger at God, circumstance, fate and power. But that section of the palette has been cauterised, the edge blunted.
Where is Colm Wilkinson (the West End's first and best Valjean) when you need him? Oh yes, he plays the Bishop. Nice touch.
Hooper handles the action well and the visuals are superb - degradation hasn't looked this good since Dickens with Caravaggio in charge of the baroque set design and lighting but this falls just short of being a classic.
But I'll wager this movie will be a DVD blockbuster. Its length precludes too many viewings but as a soundtrack with visuals, it is unsurpassed.
Les Miserables
(12A) 157mins
★★★★✩
IN A NUTSHELL
The ultimate musical, picked apart for its string of hits, returns to its stage roots, only on screen, in Tom Hooper's diligent pop opera video.
REVIEW
Here's something delightful - the reverse jukebox musical. Elsewhere songs (from Abba, Spice Girls et al) have had to generate a narrative on which to hang their scattergun ditties.
Here, a selection of memorable melodies finds a comfortable home alongside a cohesive narrative. Almost like it was planned.
So ubiquitous are the classics (I Dreamed A Dream, Bring Him Home, One More Day etc) they have become divorced from their original purpose. Suddenly, set anew against a stunning, stagy backdrop (including another star turn by Greenwich) they make sense all over again.
The result is a wonder - not without flaws - and a trauma, requiring the best bulldog spirit to stem the tears.
I am so biased in favour of Les Mis that a film adaptation of the much-cherished musical was set against a phalanx of prejudices.
The experience is akin to seeing your first love, who sings in the bath, appear on The X-Factor - same music, same intimacy but in a grander setting. In public. Familiar yet out of context.
But all the headline stars give strong vocal performances. Hugh Jackman as tormented Jean Valjean, on the run from policeman Javert (Russell Crowe); Amanda Seyfried as Cosette, Valjean's adopted daughter; Samantha Barks as love-lorn Eponine.
Top of the list though are Anne Hathaway as Fantine and Eddie Redmayne, who is a revelation as revolutionary romancer Marius.
Hathaway's I Dreamed A Dream steals the show (the camera stays with her for every heartbreaking second till it's unbearable) while Redmayne's Empty Chairs At Empty Tables is viscerally raw.
The much-heralded pairing of Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen as the light-fingered inn-keepers are much the most disappointing of the entertainers.
They touch on the weakness of an otherwise diligent production by director Tom Hooper - that is, lack of nuance and range.
Pathos is there in bucketloads but comedy and - more essentially - fury are missing. There is plenty of anger in the story - anger at God, circumstance, fate and power. But that section of the palette has been cauterised, the edge blunted.
Where is Colm Wilkinson (the West End's first and best Valjean) when you need him? Oh yes, he plays the Bishop. Nice touch.
Hooper handles the action well and the visuals are superb - degradation hasn't looked this good since Dickens with Caravaggio in charge of the baroque set design and lighting but this falls just short of being a classic.
But I'll wager this movie will be a DVD blockbuster. Its length precludes too many viewings but as a soundtrack with visuals, it is unsurpassed.
Saturday, 5 January 2013
Weighing up the chances of diet success
On the way home, spilling from a rubbish bin, a box of chocolates. Not any old box of chocolates strewn across the paving slabs but truffles, wrapped in silver foil. Hotel Chocolat or similar.
I thought: there's a drama right there. Throwing out good chocolates. I surmised only two good reasons for throwing out good chocolates - the cat, neglected over Christmas, had taken to malevolent micturition, or, more likely, a giant New Year symbolic act.
Those chocolates were 2012 - indulgence, gorging, muffin tops and armchairs. Fling them. Fling them right out. Because I start as I mean to go on, says the confectionery reactionary, donning sweat band and cape.
I like the thought. The drama. (The sacrifice!) But it's a tough time to start, January 1. Gestures are all very well, but you're hooked on the carbs now. Used to wearing a Pringle tube as a sleeve. Still off work a little while long. Accustomed to cake with every hot beverage.
February 1. That's when to start. Clear the shelves of stilton and strawberry cheesecake. Wean. W-e-a-n. January is weaning month. Go cold turkey on the cold turkey.
There is a chance that in 2013 the Large Hadron Collider will get to the bottom of things, find the indivisible unit of existence.
If you don't want to know what it is, look away now. It's the calorie. That's the fundamental building block. It's everywhere, in everything. You can't escape the calorie.
Yes, you can chuck it out on the streets like an EastEnders bad boy - but turn around and its back. Lurking. Calories lurk.
They're still part of the deal if you eat standing up, or in the dark before bedtime, or straight from the fridge as a distraction while you're chopping healthy legumes.
Physicists say that it is the Higgs Boson that gives objects mass. Yes, but not with the cruel efficacy of the calorie. The Higgs doesn't haunt your crumble like the calorie.
The unforgiving, unyielding calorie, like a mirror on the human soul. Look at yourself! Making you feel sinful and weak and mortal and briefly alive before you're cruelly smited.
Forget the Higgs Boson, the calorie is the God particle.
Licence to grab your money
■ Here is some simple maths. Don't ask me to show my workings. This is not about a decimal points but political ones.
Think of 100 people, friends for life, at a push. Tall order but go with it. British, preferably, or living here at least and robust of health and fans of QI and Top Gear. Imagine you and your 100 pals dutifully pay your licence fee all your lives from uni halls in springtime to shambling bungalow of the autumn years.
Between you and your crew you've just funded ex BBC boss George Entwhistle's five-star gap year (though not his other ancillary benefits - that's the purview of some other goggle box chumps).
You laboured hard for that dosh. Entwhistle not so much. Cheers anyway though.
Wii are the champions
■ Mayor Boris Johnson says he understands the beneficial reassurance of physical things - like police station counters - in an age when everything's going virtual.
To a point. I could quite happily see municipal tennis courts ripped up as part of a move to make the entire sport digital. In that way, my supremacy with the Wii wand would erase all my various humiliations in the real world.
I thought: there's a drama right there. Throwing out good chocolates. I surmised only two good reasons for throwing out good chocolates - the cat, neglected over Christmas, had taken to malevolent micturition, or, more likely, a giant New Year symbolic act.
Those chocolates were 2012 - indulgence, gorging, muffin tops and armchairs. Fling them. Fling them right out. Because I start as I mean to go on, says the confectionery reactionary, donning sweat band and cape.
I like the thought. The drama. (The sacrifice!) But it's a tough time to start, January 1. Gestures are all very well, but you're hooked on the carbs now. Used to wearing a Pringle tube as a sleeve. Still off work a little while long. Accustomed to cake with every hot beverage.
February 1. That's when to start. Clear the shelves of stilton and strawberry cheesecake. Wean. W-e-a-n. January is weaning month. Go cold turkey on the cold turkey.
There is a chance that in 2013 the Large Hadron Collider will get to the bottom of things, find the indivisible unit of existence.
If you don't want to know what it is, look away now. It's the calorie. That's the fundamental building block. It's everywhere, in everything. You can't escape the calorie.
Yes, you can chuck it out on the streets like an EastEnders bad boy - but turn around and its back. Lurking. Calories lurk.
They're still part of the deal if you eat standing up, or in the dark before bedtime, or straight from the fridge as a distraction while you're chopping healthy legumes.
Physicists say that it is the Higgs Boson that gives objects mass. Yes, but not with the cruel efficacy of the calorie. The Higgs doesn't haunt your crumble like the calorie.
The unforgiving, unyielding calorie, like a mirror on the human soul. Look at yourself! Making you feel sinful and weak and mortal and briefly alive before you're cruelly smited.
Forget the Higgs Boson, the calorie is the God particle.
Licence to grab your money
■ Here is some simple maths. Don't ask me to show my workings. This is not about a decimal points but political ones.
Think of 100 people, friends for life, at a push. Tall order but go with it. British, preferably, or living here at least and robust of health and fans of QI and Top Gear. Imagine you and your 100 pals dutifully pay your licence fee all your lives from uni halls in springtime to shambling bungalow of the autumn years.
Between you and your crew you've just funded ex BBC boss George Entwhistle's five-star gap year (though not his other ancillary benefits - that's the purview of some other goggle box chumps).
You laboured hard for that dosh. Entwhistle not so much. Cheers anyway though.
Wii are the champions
■ Mayor Boris Johnson says he understands the beneficial reassurance of physical things - like police station counters - in an age when everything's going virtual.
To a point. I could quite happily see municipal tennis courts ripped up as part of a move to make the entire sport digital. In that way, my supremacy with the Wii wand would erase all my various humiliations in the real world.
Book reviews: Clearing out the cobwebs
Was one of your New Year Resolutions to improve your mind and clear your reading list of all those guilty but shortlived pleasures. Here's a shortcut.
The Victorian City: Everyday Life In Dickens' London
Judith Flanders (Atlantic Books) £20
If the lives of Pip, David Copperfield and Oliver Twist are the bricks, Judith Flanders and her immaculate research are the mortar - filling in the bits in between; the domestic routines, the smells and sounds a Victorian would meet negotiating the unforgiving city. Dickens used to walk the streets at night, with his journalistic eye noting colour and character. Flanders does the same from afar and the result is immeasurably satisfying. For those of us who spend our life duelling with London, the accounts of slums and sewers, transport woes, street lights and railways, rivers and cemeteries are a glimpse at the foundations of the city and a reminder that our travails are lame in comparison.
★★★★★
Both Flesh And Not
David Foster Wallace (Hamish Hamilton) £20
The title of this collection refers to Roger Federer in the first of Foster Wallace's essays but could easily refer to the author himself. His voice and intent is still a major presence in the US literary scene even though he killed himself in 2008. Here, an erudite examination of modern mores, including studies of "conspicuously young" authors and Terminator 2, display his erudition, passion and love of language through 15 essays, some never before available in print in this country. If his novels appear formidable then this collection allows for a gentle, but intellectually rigorous, introduction.
★★★✩✩
The Signal And The Noise: The Art And Science Of Prediction
Nate Silver (Allen Lane) £25
There has never been more information about than there is today. But, somehow Big Data is not making the art of prediction any better and, in the case of the financial collapse, actually aids distortion. Nate Silver is an expert in using statistical information to assess likely outcomes and characterises this duality in the title of the book. He makes the case for a more sophisticated, analytic and dispassionate reading of the information available. Silver's book is an unashamed geek's reading of probability and uncertainty leavened with graspable case studies - US elections, baseball statistics, the failure of the ratings agency. Don't expect an easy read, but do expect a frighteningly illuminating one.
★★★★✩
Antifragile: How To Live In A World We Don't Understand
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Allen Lane) £25
Taleb introduced the world to "Black Swans" - high impact events that occur outside the realm of normal expectation (see The Signal And The Noise above). He develops his idea to argue that Black Swan events are, ultimately, beneficial and invents a word to suggest the qualitative nature of the aftershock - Antifragile. The thesis can be described in the evolutionary notion that "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger" so it isn't as radical and new as Taleb insists the reader must believe. However, his thorough analysis is a useful weapon against his subtitle - that debilitating "world we don't understand".
★★★✩✩
The Victorian City: Everyday Life In Dickens' London
Judith Flanders (Atlantic Books) £20
If the lives of Pip, David Copperfield and Oliver Twist are the bricks, Judith Flanders and her immaculate research are the mortar - filling in the bits in between; the domestic routines, the smells and sounds a Victorian would meet negotiating the unforgiving city. Dickens used to walk the streets at night, with his journalistic eye noting colour and character. Flanders does the same from afar and the result is immeasurably satisfying. For those of us who spend our life duelling with London, the accounts of slums and sewers, transport woes, street lights and railways, rivers and cemeteries are a glimpse at the foundations of the city and a reminder that our travails are lame in comparison.
★★★★★
Both Flesh And Not
David Foster Wallace (Hamish Hamilton) £20
The title of this collection refers to Roger Federer in the first of Foster Wallace's essays but could easily refer to the author himself. His voice and intent is still a major presence in the US literary scene even though he killed himself in 2008. Here, an erudite examination of modern mores, including studies of "conspicuously young" authors and Terminator 2, display his erudition, passion and love of language through 15 essays, some never before available in print in this country. If his novels appear formidable then this collection allows for a gentle, but intellectually rigorous, introduction.
★★★✩✩
The Signal And The Noise: The Art And Science Of Prediction
Nate Silver (Allen Lane) £25
There has never been more information about than there is today. But, somehow Big Data is not making the art of prediction any better and, in the case of the financial collapse, actually aids distortion. Nate Silver is an expert in using statistical information to assess likely outcomes and characterises this duality in the title of the book. He makes the case for a more sophisticated, analytic and dispassionate reading of the information available. Silver's book is an unashamed geek's reading of probability and uncertainty leavened with graspable case studies - US elections, baseball statistics, the failure of the ratings agency. Don't expect an easy read, but do expect a frighteningly illuminating one.
★★★★✩
Antifragile: How To Live In A World We Don't Understand
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Allen Lane) £25
Taleb introduced the world to "Black Swans" - high impact events that occur outside the realm of normal expectation (see The Signal And The Noise above). He develops his idea to argue that Black Swan events are, ultimately, beneficial and invents a word to suggest the qualitative nature of the aftershock - Antifragile. The thesis can be described in the evolutionary notion that "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger" so it isn't as radical and new as Taleb insists the reader must believe. However, his thorough analysis is a useful weapon against his subtitle - that debilitating "world we don't understand".
★★★✩✩
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