A SERIOUS MAN

“Jews are just like everybody else. Only more so.”- Dorothy Parker

What’s great about The Coen Brothers is that they never repeat themselves or pander to popular taste. They make movies they want to and are not afraid to mystify their audience. This is not done with any arty farty pretentiousness but out of a realisation that life doesn’t provide the easy solutions or self contained narratives that more mainstream cinema presents.

After their star-studded comedy ‘Burn After Reading’, the easy option would have been to repeat the anarchic slapstick formula and laugh all the way to the bank. The Coens preserve their reputation for independence, innovation and all round strangeness with their latest movie ‘A Serious Man’.

VIDEOCRACY

The movie ‘Videocracy’ by Swedish-Italian Erik Gandini makes for depressing viewing.

It is subtitled ‘basta apparire’ which loosely translates as ‘it’s enough to be seen’.

The documentary  charts the rise of ‘people’s television’ (sic) in Italy and the direct link to the country’s politics.

JACK ROSE RIP

Really sad to hear the terrible news that the mighty Jack Rose has died of a heart attack aged just 38. Arthur magazine plays tribute to this gifted musician who was one of the first to educate me that instrumental acoustic guitar albums could be dynamic and multifaceted.  Check out his Two Originals of Jack Rose on VHF if you’ve never heard him and prepare to be astonished.

Unfortunately,I never got to see him perform live but I’ve always enjoyed his solo albums and admired his contribution to the more experimental drone/noise band Pelt.

Sincerest commiserations to the family and friends of this great man.

TAKEN

The movie ‘Taken’ (scripted by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen and directed by Pierre Morel) dispenses with any wishy-washy  details like political correctness or moral ambiguity. All we need to know is that Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) is the good guy and all the other males are the baddies (this includes the French police).

As a retired CIA ‘preventer’ , Mills  knows bad things happen in the world. He’s proved right the moment  his daughter Kim lands in Paris having flown from the security (!) of LA . When she is abducted by Albanians to be sold into a life of prostitution, Mills springs into action and proceeds to clock up a massive body count to rescue her.

Neeson’s wraith is such that you almost expect him to yell ‘vengeance is mine’ as he single mindedly blitzes the opposition. As with James Bond movies and the Bourne trilogy you’re required to believe to take for granted that he is indestructible and immune from pain or doubt.

The rage and unhesitating cruelty he displays is deemed to be justified by virtue of the squalor and depravity of his rivals.  The vigilante ethos of this one man killing machine rapidly becomes the sole focus of the fast moving movie. Like Charles Bronson’s mission to rid the world of muggers in Death Wish. Neeson’s methods are equally ruthless and the pleasure of the movie lies solely in seeing the villains picked off one by one. In this respect it’s like the invigorating (if mindless) thrill you get from eliminating the bad guys in a computer game where there is no need to reason why – you just have to do or die.

THE LAST HARDCORE TROUBADOUR

They broke the mould when they made Steve Earle. The last of the hardcore troubadours was the title of a song on his  ’I Feel Alright’ album – one of a set of defiant songs asserting that despite his checkered past he was still standing and still more than capable of writing great songs.

That title was also used for the warts and all biography of the man covering his five wives, recurring drink and drug habits and time in prison. That he’s still alive to tell the tale is a miracle in itself as is the fact that at almost 55 he is still making albums that matter.

ZAPPA ON CROSSFIRE

Whenever I’m feeling low (as I do at the moment), Frank Zappa’s cool and reasoned arguments in the face of America’s moral majority (represented by John Lofton) never fails to raise my spirits.

THE DOUBLE HAND OF THIERRY HENRY

I don’t usually write about soccer on this blog but the hand of Henry debate stretches far beyond the usual parameters of sport into moral questions of right vs wrong; guilt vs innocence, truth vs lies and big business vs the little guys.

The immediate reaction of Irish fans to the blatant hand ball prior to France’s decisive goal was of disgust and rage, In some quarters this led to a furious rejection of all things French – wine, kisses , letters, you name it.

Thierry Henry, the man at the centre of the storm, is trying to avoid a Maradona effect, whereby his career would be forever blighted by this case of creative cheating. He claims that it was an instinctive reaction and not deliberate although if you watch the replay, the first looks like carelessness but the second is a blatant scoop to keep the ball in play.

John Henry in the traditional folk song and Thierry Henry of the mediocre national squad are both villains and both are desperate men. Thierry has cleverly described calls by Ireland’s call for a replay as fair and reasonable safe in the knowledge that FIFA were guaranteed to reject this demand.

England’s ex-golden boy Gary Linekar and a top Guardian sports critic have commented that the onus should be on players to own up to crimes of this magnitude and confess to the referee at once. With the stakes so high this in pie in the sky stuff. Some have suggested that the referee’s blind eye was deliberate and with the newly emerging scandal about match rigging, this can’t be entirely ruled out.

But when the dust has settled, I think the key issue to come out of this squalid affair is the FIFA cannot continue to bury their heads in the sand and refuse to use video technology to avoid such major controversies. With the World Cup in South Africa looming, what sense does it make that millions watching at home can immediately witness an injustice but one individual is left to make a snap decision based on what he sees in real time.

Admittedly, this may slow the game down a little – I can see the risk that players will make a TV mime to the ref every time there’s a foul, offside claim or penalty dispute. But for the sake of the game, a trial period should be set to establish a system whereby a fourth official is able to whisper into the ear of the man in black : “You might want to look at this!”

FATHERS ON THE ROAD

Well worth reading a great (and rare)  interview with Cormac McCarthy in the Wall Street Journal on the eve of the release of the movie version of The Road.

McCarthy comes across as someone with a finely tuned bullshit detector. He drew upon his own relationship with his young son for his post apocalyptic masterpiece. I was particularly touched by what he said when asked about the reaction to the novel from other fathers:

“I have the same letter from about six different people. One from Australia, one from Germany, one from England, but they all said the same thing. They said, “I started reading your book after dinner and I finished it 3:45 the next morning, and I got up and went upstairs and I got my kids up and I just sat there in the bed and held them.”

BEING INDIE

In her book ‘Slanted and Enchanted : The Evolution of Indie Culture’, Kaya Oakes sets out to find out exactly what ‘indie’ means these days.

Oakes’ qualifications for this mission are that she teaches writing at the University of California, Berkeley and is a co-founder of the Kitchen Sink magazine (“for people who think too much”) where she is now senior editor.

Oakes’ well honed journalistic skills mean that she is able to give a pretty good, if slightly stodgy, overview of the topic. I think the writing should have been livelier and some of the conclusions struck me as overly clichéd and predictable. When she writes things like how there is a need to find “an identity in the increasingly consumerist and conservative culture of the late eighties“, it reads too much like a sociological text-book.

A GOOD DEATH

Woody Allen’s once quipped  ”I’m not afraid of dying; I just don’t want to be there when it happens”. This is a similar rationale that you also find in a corny joke I remember hearing, on the Dave Allen Show I think, when one man says to another – “I’d like to know where I’m going to die” – “What for?” asks the other. The man replies “Because I won’t go there!”

Behind this black humour lies the very real fear of the when, where and how we will die. These are not happy thoughts, of course, and for the sake of sanity they are questions most people (myself included) prefer to put to the back of their minds.

I admire the philosophy of my mother who at the ripe old age of 81 has just bought a new car and continues to plan holidays and excursions as if she had another 30 years to live (given her stubbornness and hardy constitution, who’s to say she’s wrong!).

There will come a time, however, when the inevitable must be faced and so I was moved by bravery of a couple from Berkshire, who this week chose to end their lives despite the fact that they were still in relatively good heath.

Dennis and Flora Milner, who were aged 83 and 81 respectively,  wrote to the BBC explaining their decision : “we can no longer attain the desired and acceptable level to support an enjoyable and worthwhile life”.

Daughter Chrissy, who knew what they planned to do (but not when) gave a short and dignified interview in which she said that it was her parents’ intention to have a “good death” at the end of their happy and devoted  life together. A BBC booklet ‘planning a good death’ is available but obviously the advice doesn’t include suicide.

UK legislation currently classifies any assisted suicide as a criminal offence.  For this reason, many choose to go to Swiss clinics where it is legal.  This option is only available to those who have the financial means and can come to terms to dying a long way from their homes.

The moral questions and dilemmas highlighted by the Milners story are huge, but , as Chrissy Milner says,  there needs to be an urgent debate with a view to adding clear and rational legislation to the statute books. The work of the organisation  Dignity in Dying is vitally important in putting pressure on the government and highlighting the plight of ordinary people who don’t want to end their lives in degrading and painful circumstances.

Image = Plate 37 from William Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’