"Say you like me or the pussy cats die!"

This perfectly appalling movie is based on the 1957 novel, Angel, by Elizabeth Taylor whose unlovable protagonist was inspired by Marie Corelli, Queen Victoria’s favourite writer.

Angel specialises in slushy romantic fiction and her vivid imagination makes up for her ignorance.

She writes with authority about Italy without ever having been and won’t change a word of her novels even when they contain blatant errors like a description of opening a bottle of champagne with a corkscrew.

Her refusal to compromise for her ‘art’ makes her insufferable. You might admire her drive and single-minded determination to rise above humble beginnings but she is such a hideous personality that you just end up loathing her.

Like Margaret Thatcher, she is a grocer’s daughter and , like the Iron Lady, she  lacks any common humanity. You don’t have to like a main character to enjoy a movie but, in this instance, Romola Garai is so hammy in the lead role she’s not even someone you can love to hate.

Angel displays her naked ambition.

Despite her lack of redeeming qualities, all her childhood fantasies are fulfilled as she become a successful novelist and makes enough money to be able to buy the Paradise estate she dreamed of owning as a young girl.

The only reason for watching it, and the only reason I was interested in seeing it, is to see Michael Fassbender in pre-Shame role. He’s Esmé, a struggling artist whose paintings reflect his cynical character. Angel can’t understand why he doesn’t use brighter colours but is so smitten by his dashing good looks that she marries him anyway.

Subsequently the ill-matched couple become estranged when he enlists for the army. Angel regards the First World War as a trivial distraction that shouldn’t disturb her private universe. Esmé ends up killing himself, and I think anyone married to her would be tempted to take the same exit route.

Sam Neil , as Angel’s publisher, drifts gamely through the movie with the bemused expression of someone who has been conned into making a film to match My Brilliant Career.

I can only imagine that the French director thought his kitschy style would be in keeping with the brash and trashy romantic fiction Angel writes so prolifically.  But to pull this off, the movie needs to have the quality of a playful romp and plenty of tongue-in-cheek humour. Instead, it comes across as a heavy-handed tragicomedy and a parody of itself.

This is one of those records which you hear once and think ‘This is quite nice’ and then on each subsequent hearing the adjective goes up a notch.

You could call it ‘a grower’ if you don’t mind sounding like a guest on Smashey and Nicey ‘s Fab FM.

The great Jim White produced one of the tracks embellished with cello, upright bass, piano and french horns but there’s also a nice ‘let’s keep things simple and unadorned’  acoustic version of the same tune, Simon Says, to be seen and heard on Vimeo to give a flavour of Dare’s natty way with words:

Andrea Arnold’s bold debut movie was about a CCTV operator in Glasgow and in a strange way her brilliant follow up ,Fish Tank, is also about surveillance. Yet, while in Red Road the woman was on the outside looking in, the teenage protagonist of Fish Tank is on the inside looking out.

Mia is 15 and her life on a council estate in Essex is about as interesting and varied as that of a goldfish. Money is tight but the flat where she lives with her mother and younger sister, Tyler, is decent enough;  above all, hers  is a poverty of the soul.

Her mom is more interested in partying than parenting so Mia and Tyler have become pretty wild and unruly. Like many kids of this age (and I speak from experience as the father of a girl around the same age) Mia is emotionally confused and desperately needs to find a way out of what she perceives as a boring, dead-end existence.

School offers nothing and she is on the point of being expelled. You could say that she doesn’t do a lot to help make things better. She’s on the defensive even before she is directly criticised and gets violent and/or foul mouthed when crossed. Yet, her streetwise bearing and combative behaviour is mostly just a front.

Katie Jarvis got the part as Mia when a casting agent saw her having a row with her boyfriend at Tilbury railway station (one of the locations in the movie). She was cast for her attitude rather her acting experience; a risk that could easily have backfired but doesn’t as she manages to pull off the difficult feat of looking scary and sassy while also convincing us of her vulnerability.

Her hopes and dreams centre on dancing but ,although she practices regularly to hip-hop music, you know this is never about to become a female version of Billy Elliot.

We never see her dad but in his place is Connor (played superbly by Michael Fassbender) who introduces himself as a ‘friend’ of her mother’s. He proves to be a charmer who openly flirts with her and ,initially, he appears to be a decent enough guy. While no monster, he subsequently proves to be anything but a father figure.

Without giving away the plot, I can say that the second half of the movie is totally riveting as it changes pace and focus in an unexpected but credible fashion. This takes the drama away from the kitchen sink for some gripping scenes where the potential for tragedy is very real.

Throughout, Andrea Arnold refuses to adopt any moralistic position and her keen eye for realism leaves little room for sentiment. She makes you feel the authenticity of the situations and to see that, despite the hard exterior, Mia is desperately need of support and understanding.

There’s a touching scene at the end where she and her mother dance to a rap tune by Nas – “Life’s a bitch, then you die, that’s why we get high”.

You’d hardly call this a cheery or hopeful message but the final shot of a heart shaped balloon flying away is a symbol of the fact that Mia does succeed in holding on to a dream that a better life is possible.

So what is the difference when Peter Saville’s artwork for Unknown Pleasures is appropriated by the ubiquitous cartoon rodent for a T-shirt design?

This is not a ‘rock homage’ but a blatant rip-off and a sacrilegious one at that.

Sue the bastards I say!

Silvana was a woman I met on only a handful of occasions so, while her passing is sad, I can’t pretend it left me distraught. I therefore attended her funeral feeling more like an observer than one of the bona fide mourners.

The experience left me reflecting on some of the contrasts between the way the Italians and the English process their dead.

One of the striking differences is the custom of having the body available for a public ‘viewing’ immediately prior to burial. Unlike in Ireland, this does not usually take place in the home of the deceased but at a morgue and there is never anything remotely resembling a party atmosphere.

The location in the case of Silvana was the main hospital of her home town of Cesena in Emilia Romagna. There, the morgue consists of half a dozen rooms each with space for two bodies. Outside each room, the name of the temporary occupants are displayed and the bodies lie in open coffins. The rooms had no doors so it was possible to see other bodies laid out for visitors to pay their last respects.

It occurred to me that anyone could come here and mingle with the bereaved pretending to be a long lost friend or relative. If you were ever in need of a sobering reminder of your own mortality, there can be few better places.

Most of the other bodies were of elderly people but in the end room, the photograph outside showed a busty woman in her thirties looking tanned and full of life, a picture that looked incongruous and somehow in bad taste. Her mourners too were dressed in designer leisure wear as though to deliberately offset the greyness of the setting and looking as if this woman’s early death hadn’t yet sunk in.

All the bodies are covered by a thin white gauze like a lace curtain. In this way, you can make a farewell kiss without actually making direct contact with the face. The body is carefully prepared by embalmers to look presentable – eyes glued shut, mouth stitched up and make up applied. Silvana had no children and her husband was not in a coherent state so her sister (my wife’s mother) chose what she should wear – a long  plain dress, tights and black shoes. Bizarrely, these were purchased especially for the occasion from a shop specialising in clothes for this one-off occasion.

Embalmers do a thorough job of cleaning and polishing the corpse but the end result is that of a wax figure rather than a once living being.  In this particular morgue, the hands of the corpses are placed together on their chests as if they are making a final prayer.

Prior to this, the only other dead body I had seen was that of my father. As I wasn’t present when he died, I asked to see him and went with my elder brother. He was laid in a single room behind a curtain with a reproduction of William Holman Hunt’s allegorical painting of Christ, The Light Of The World hung behind the coffin. The stillness was the thing I remember most and it was not like I was seeing my real father, more like a symbolic representation of him to prove that he was no more.

In England, it is not the custom for friends and relatives to view the body but presumably embalmers and undertakers get to work just the same in the event of special requests like mine.

The way a death is publicised is also different. In Italy black edged posters are placed on street level advertising hoardings. These announce recent deaths, but are also commissioned to mark the anniversary of someone’s passing. In one tragic case in a nearby town, a girl aged 10 was run down on a pedestrian crossing near her home and each year the parents pay to display a colour photograph around the town with just her name, Alice, and the date written above. This is unusual as, although the photograph may be in colour, the rest contains black text stating name, dates and a short message, usually chosen from stock phrases in the undertakers’ files.

In England, the most public announcement is usually via a small ad in the local newspaper. This will contain a few well chosen lines of deep regret and gives details of when and where the funeral will take place. My grandmother used to take delivery of the free paper and turn directly to these obituaries saying “Let’s see who’s died”. I think she took some satisfaction from knowing how many she had outlived.

The Italian way with death is solemn, brisk and very efficient.  When the viewing is over, the coffin is swiftly sealed. A metal cover is soldered into place and then the lid is screwed down with a electric screwdriver. This is followed by a mass at a nearby church and then the coffin is transported to the cemetery for burial or cremation. The priest will sprinkle water and waft some incense over the coffin and intone a prayer hoping for eternal repose.

Plots are in short supply where Silvana was laid to rest. Her coffin was slotted into a free space created by removing old bones of some poor soul whose life is now long forgotten. Her brother watched the process then turned to me and said “Do you see how we all end up?”  He wasn’t smiling.