Those loyal readers visiting this blog whose sole thought every morning is to log in and see what else has been happening in my life might be interested to hear that after my cackhanded foray in becoming a ‘tablet middleman’ - buying up cheap tablets and then selling them on for a modest profit - will be dismayed to hear that I have recently come very unstuck in some such deal.
I should, however, first tell you that my relationship with tablets has now settled down into a staid and unexciting marriage. I now own a 7in Google Nexus and a 9in Samsung Tab and am happy with both. Not that I need either, and not that anyone in their right mind actually needs a tablet, let alone two, who also owns two desktop computers - a Mac and a PC - as well as five laptops (one of which is used exclusively by my daughter) and has use of a sixth provided by the good folk at work to allow me to access yet another PC at work in London to do ‘my quiz work’. Not that I use it at all, because as you can see I am spoilt for choice.
But before I bought the Samsung and Nexus, I dabbled with buying a cheap Chinese tablet.
The first hit the rocks very soon because the mini USB connection was flaky and I sold it on eBay for more or less what I bought it for. The second was another cheapo Chinese effort, and it was that deal which has proved to be disasterous.
I bought it from an outfit based somewhere in South China called Chinistore. The tablet and delivery set me back £158, and I also had to pay £11 in import duty. It arrived speedily, but when I unpacked it and turned it on, it was obvious that it was rubbish: the wifi didn’t work. So I emailed Chinistore and asked them what I should do.
They suggested downloading extra firmware and sent me a link to the site where I could download it. I went there, but as it was all in Chinese, I had no idea what link to click. And all the links I did click didn’t take me to what might - to confident Mandarin speaker and reader - be a firmware download link, but to either a soft porn site or a gaming site. So I emailed again and was sent a screenshot with an arrow helpfully pointing to the link I should try. I did try it, but merely got to the same succession of soft porn and gaming sites.
Well, I had had enough.
I am reasonably good-natured and didn’t in principle object to downloading extra firmware to get the bloody thing to work, even though I take the view, not unreasonably, I suggest, that the tablet should have worked straight out of the box and that there should have been no need to hunt to a spurious firmware download link on a Chinese website in the forlorn hope that I could get it do do what it was supposed to do.
When I bought it, I had paid through Paypal in the - as it turned out very naive - belief that I was ‘covered’, that I could return it and get a refund courtesy of Paypal’s ‘you’re safer than houses, squire, buying anything online using our service’ promise. So I opened a case requesting a refund on Paypal resolution centre and sat back.
A day later I received an email from Chinistore telling me they were very disappointed that I had already resorted to Paypal as they liked to believe their relations with customers were based on ‘mutual trust’ and that had I just asked, they would most certainly have refunded the money. But as it was would I please return the tablet. And they gave me an address in Shenzhen City (which is on the Chinese mainland opposite Hong Kong). I did as asked and sent it off at a cost of £28 in the box in which it had first arrived - and waited for my money. My money, of course, never turned up.
Eventually, Paypal informed me that they had considered the matter and would send me a refund once I had returned the tablet. And they sent me an address to which to send it back. Crucially this address, undoubtedly given them by Chinistore was a different address, on in Hong Kong. I replied saying I had already returned it. And then I sat back once again to await the arrival of my money.
The next thing I heard was that Paypal had decided that as I hadn’t returned the tablet to the address they had specified, I wouldn’t be getting my money from them after all. I pointed out that I was in no position to send it to that address as I had already sent it to another address given me by Chinistore. I also sent them a copy of the email Chinistore had sent me and a link to the Royal Mail tracking service which showed the tablet had been safely delivered to Shenzhen City.
Tough titties, was Paypal’s response. Rules is rules, aren’t they sunshine, and I hadn’t sent it to the address they had specified. If I wanted my money back, they added helpfully, I should get in touch with Chinistore and ask for it. I have done so - about eight times so far, but Chinistore seem to have crossed me off their Christmas card list (except for a brief email asking me to ‘rate their service’). And that, dear friends, is that current state of affairs. I don’t have the crappy wifi-less tablet they sent (which I don’t want anyway) and I am a total £197 out of pocket.
I have left out a few less relevant details, such as the several phone calls I made to Paypal’s resolution centre in Newcastle which led absolutely nowhere, and you are now fully in the picture. My question is: what do I do now?
My first thought was to take Paypal to the small claims court, but I somehow suspect that I won’t get much joy there and that some friendly judge or other will merely inform me to follow Paypal’s advice and chase Chinistore up for my money. So that to will lead nowhere.
Which only allows me one to suggest that you join me in a chorus of ‘fools and their money ...’
Friday 25 January 2013
Sunday 13 January 2013
Exactly how bad is Quentin Tarantino? Well, pretty bad - in fact, even worse than that, but as long as he rakes in the dollars, Hollywood ain't going to tell him: kill the golden goose? Come one. And don’t accept Tarantino’s version of slavery. Try Howard Zinn’s account instead
Every industry and art form needs its new blood, whether it is a fresh way of cooking the books in accountancy, dreaming up new scams in banking or telling the same joke in such a way that it is not so obviously the hoary old chestnut which has been knocking around since Moses. Originals are rarer, and true originals - that is those who haven’t been expertly packaged by a PR agency to look like the real deal - are even rarer still.
So when Quentin Tarantino turned up, there was a good deal of rejoicing. The legend is that he was a passionate cineaste - actually, I’d prefer to use inverted commas as in ‘passionate cineaste’ as I find both words when used seriously to be pretentious and both words used in the same two-word phrase to be doubly pretentious - who was working in a video store and writing film scripts in his spare time. Finally, one script was so good - that for Reservoir Dogs - that he not only got to have it made, but was even allowed to direct it himself. And not only did he get to direct his film, but several ‘name’ actors - Michael Madson, Harvey Keitel, Steve Buscemi and Tim Roth - agreed to take part. (If you buy the legend, you really will buy anything, might I interest you in a beaten-up, broken-down car I’m selling which isn’t even worth scrapping?) But that was the legend and as Reservoir Dogs wasn’t half-bad, the legend, as they say, got a pass, and young Tarantino was the new kid on the block.
It has to be said that Tarantino did have something. The dialogue was witty without being forced and the set-up was intriguing. The film was also a box office success, and there’s nothing in any walk of life which impresses those who call the shots more than someone who can make them a mountain of moolah. So our Quentin, the video store clerk who made good, got to make a second film, Pulp Fiction. That, too, was good, and though one criticism of it might be that, in essence, it was the same film as Reservoir Dogs - great dialogue, intriguing set-up (three interweaving stories) and more name actors (John Travolta, Samuel Jackson, Tim Roth and Bruce Willis), it still had the same freshness as Tarantino’s first and, metaphorically, the lad was invited to even more Hollywood parties. And surely enjoyed it all.
At this point I should point out that although Tarantino went on to direct or write the scripts for several more films, I have only seen five others in which he was involved: Jackie Brown, True Romance (for which he wrote the script but which he didn’t direct), From Dusk Till Dawn (for which he wrote the script and which starred, in my view inexplicably, starred both George Clooney and Harvey Keitel, neither of whom would be thought to be on their uppers and so must have been doing the film for the dosh), Inglourious Basterds (starring one Christoph Waltz and Brad Pitt) and, most recently, Django Unchained (with Christoph Waltz again as well as Leonardo Di Caprio and Samuel Jackson). And of those five my view is that just one - Jackie Brown - was a ‘good film’ (not least because it wasn’t a Tarantino original but based on a story by Elmore Leonard) and just one - True Romance - although not particularly ‘good’ had some kind of merit. The rest were, again in my view, dreck (a word I know from German but which I sure I am using more in a Yiddish way).
Let me be very clear: not only did I think the other three were ‘not very good’, I thought they were total bloody stinkers, fucking awful, complete shite. Ironically, though, they did the biz at the box office so young Quentin’s star is still shining. Take a look at the user reviews on IMDB and you will see that the most recent, Django Unchained, is rated very highly - an average of 8.7/10. Loads of people rate it. But I don’t. So what does that say for my judgment. Well, I honestly don’t know. All I can do is to repeat that the two Tarantino films I have seen most recently - Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained - are quite simply terrible. Total and utter shite.
Both follow, for the viewer (or at least this viewer) a similar path: both are technically rather well made and both elicit a certain curiosity: where will this film go, where will it take me. But at the same time a number of elements jar. In Inglourious Basterds is was the pristine wooden hut (with a cellar, by the way - a necessary plot point) on a pristine Alpine meadow. And everything about it - that scene comes at the beginning of the film and goes on rather too long - is not just artificial but has nothing to redeem its artificiality. I hope that makes sense - it will do to some - because that’s what great art is: it imposes itself on you to such an extent that it redeems itself and you forgive its faults and accept it totally on its own terms.
Deadwood, which I mentioned a few weeks ago, did that, as did Pan’s Labyrinth. Great art succeeds against all odds. Inglourious Basterds did nothing of the kind. It simply failed. But, oddly, given the quite good dialogue, you grant Tarantino a little more time so that it fails a little more slowly. All the while you get just a little more nervous that there is, at the end of the day, a lot less to what you are seeing than meets the eye. Then comes the final scene, the explosion and fire in the Parisian cinema in Inglourious Basterds and the Southern mansion being blown to smithereens in Django Unchained, which helps you realise that what you have just seen is complete dross, total dreck, the work of a chancer who will, sooner or later be found out. It is a minority opinion, of course, but one which I shall stand by until my dying day.
Let me spell it out: Quentin Tarantino is really not very good at all, a one-trick pony who will, one day, be found out. I had thought that, perhaps, Inglourious Basterds was the exception which proved the rule, that everyone deserves a clunker now and then. After seeing Django Unchained I’ve realised that the opposite is true. Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction were the exceptions which proved the rule. Perhaps they were just beginner’s luck.
There are, of course, dissenting voices, with, according to IMDB, many more who consider Tarantino’s latest something of a masterpiece. But accepting that the majority opinion can’t be wrong reminds me of the advice I heard years ago: ‘Eat shit, 12 billion flies can’t be wrong!’ So here are the summaries to the many IMDB reviwers who think our lad walks on water: ‘Tarantino at his finest’, ‘Amazing formally, and with a moral complexity that will work on you from within’, ‘Quentin is Quentin. Highly entertaining and perfectly written’, ‘Spot-on characterization of internalization of corrupt values’, ‘Django Unchained is simply a BLAST from start to finish and a new epic of Quentin Tarantino!’ and ‘Tarantino Back To His Best!!’
BTW There’s is an unmistakeable camp element to Django Unchained, all that leather and sadism. If, despite reading this you decide to watch it, pay particular attention to the scene when some dude or other arrives to torture Django but is then seen off by the Samuel Jackson character and leaves. If his leaving isn’t a fully blown mince (possibly intended, but if so, why?) I’m a Dutchman.
. . .
There’s another reason why I disliked Django Unchained so much. The studio PR guff, happily and gladly replicated by the fucking press, as eager as Hollywood to turn a dishonest buck printing whatever the fuck will turn that dishonest buck, makes out that the film is some kind of re-evaluation of the master/slave relationship and some kind of examination of slavery in 19th-century America. No, it’s not, it’s just another Hollywood potboiler. It’s just another Hollywood potboiler which has, rather belated it has to be said, cottoned onto the fact that the black US dollar has the same 100 cents as the white US dollar and that ‘aspirational’ blacks, whether in the US or elsewhere, might care to part with several of their hard-earned dollars to in widescreen technicolour how a black dude - Jamie Foxx in leathers - blasts the living shit, and then some, out of loads and loads and loads and loads and loads and loads of white folk. All this, it has to be said, under the ineffably spurious guise of evaluating - or possibly ‘re-evaluating’ - the master/slave relationship of 19th-century America.
Several years ago I came across, just by chance, Howard Zinn’s People’s History Of The United States. I read it and was exceptionally surprised by what I read. I have already written here in this blog about the book. Howard Zinn is admittedly politically left-of-centre and admittedly something of a socialist. But there is nothing wrong with that in my book and especially nothing wrong with that if a man or woman comes clean from the off about where he or she’s at.
Howard Zinn’s main point - with which I am obliged to agree - is that most history is written top down: what kings and queens and lords and ladies and presidents and parliaments and prime ministers and leaders did. Zinn decided to redress the balance when he set out to write his history of the United States: he showed how quite apart from those who came over to colonise the new world, there were those who were apprenticed and indentured to the colonisers, but to such an extent that they were more or less slaves.
He showed how the apparent emancipation of the slaves after the Civil War was a complete sham, how the ‘emancipated’ slaves were duped into continued servitude and slavery by means of the company store and the rest. And this was all news to a white, middle-class, public school educated lad like myself. So when Tarantino arrives with his blood-fest featuring a leather-clad black cowboy getting one over the whites by blasting them all to kingdom come, I recall history and don’t just puke once but several times.
So when Quentin Tarantino turned up, there was a good deal of rejoicing. The legend is that he was a passionate cineaste - actually, I’d prefer to use inverted commas as in ‘passionate cineaste’ as I find both words when used seriously to be pretentious and both words used in the same two-word phrase to be doubly pretentious - who was working in a video store and writing film scripts in his spare time. Finally, one script was so good - that for Reservoir Dogs - that he not only got to have it made, but was even allowed to direct it himself. And not only did he get to direct his film, but several ‘name’ actors - Michael Madson, Harvey Keitel, Steve Buscemi and Tim Roth - agreed to take part. (If you buy the legend, you really will buy anything, might I interest you in a beaten-up, broken-down car I’m selling which isn’t even worth scrapping?) But that was the legend and as Reservoir Dogs wasn’t half-bad, the legend, as they say, got a pass, and young Tarantino was the new kid on the block.
It has to be said that Tarantino did have something. The dialogue was witty without being forced and the set-up was intriguing. The film was also a box office success, and there’s nothing in any walk of life which impresses those who call the shots more than someone who can make them a mountain of moolah. So our Quentin, the video store clerk who made good, got to make a second film, Pulp Fiction. That, too, was good, and though one criticism of it might be that, in essence, it was the same film as Reservoir Dogs - great dialogue, intriguing set-up (three interweaving stories) and more name actors (John Travolta, Samuel Jackson, Tim Roth and Bruce Willis), it still had the same freshness as Tarantino’s first and, metaphorically, the lad was invited to even more Hollywood parties. And surely enjoyed it all.
At this point I should point out that although Tarantino went on to direct or write the scripts for several more films, I have only seen five others in which he was involved: Jackie Brown, True Romance (for which he wrote the script but which he didn’t direct), From Dusk Till Dawn (for which he wrote the script and which starred, in my view inexplicably, starred both George Clooney and Harvey Keitel, neither of whom would be thought to be on their uppers and so must have been doing the film for the dosh), Inglourious Basterds (starring one Christoph Waltz and Brad Pitt) and, most recently, Django Unchained (with Christoph Waltz again as well as Leonardo Di Caprio and Samuel Jackson). And of those five my view is that just one - Jackie Brown - was a ‘good film’ (not least because it wasn’t a Tarantino original but based on a story by Elmore Leonard) and just one - True Romance - although not particularly ‘good’ had some kind of merit. The rest were, again in my view, dreck (a word I know from German but which I sure I am using more in a Yiddish way).
Let me be very clear: not only did I think the other three were ‘not very good’, I thought they were total bloody stinkers, fucking awful, complete shite. Ironically, though, they did the biz at the box office so young Quentin’s star is still shining. Take a look at the user reviews on IMDB and you will see that the most recent, Django Unchained, is rated very highly - an average of 8.7/10. Loads of people rate it. But I don’t. So what does that say for my judgment. Well, I honestly don’t know. All I can do is to repeat that the two Tarantino films I have seen most recently - Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained - are quite simply terrible. Total and utter shite.
Both follow, for the viewer (or at least this viewer) a similar path: both are technically rather well made and both elicit a certain curiosity: where will this film go, where will it take me. But at the same time a number of elements jar. In Inglourious Basterds is was the pristine wooden hut (with a cellar, by the way - a necessary plot point) on a pristine Alpine meadow. And everything about it - that scene comes at the beginning of the film and goes on rather too long - is not just artificial but has nothing to redeem its artificiality. I hope that makes sense - it will do to some - because that’s what great art is: it imposes itself on you to such an extent that it redeems itself and you forgive its faults and accept it totally on its own terms.
Deadwood, which I mentioned a few weeks ago, did that, as did Pan’s Labyrinth. Great art succeeds against all odds. Inglourious Basterds did nothing of the kind. It simply failed. But, oddly, given the quite good dialogue, you grant Tarantino a little more time so that it fails a little more slowly. All the while you get just a little more nervous that there is, at the end of the day, a lot less to what you are seeing than meets the eye. Then comes the final scene, the explosion and fire in the Parisian cinema in Inglourious Basterds and the Southern mansion being blown to smithereens in Django Unchained, which helps you realise that what you have just seen is complete dross, total dreck, the work of a chancer who will, sooner or later be found out. It is a minority opinion, of course, but one which I shall stand by until my dying day.
Let me spell it out: Quentin Tarantino is really not very good at all, a one-trick pony who will, one day, be found out. I had thought that, perhaps, Inglourious Basterds was the exception which proved the rule, that everyone deserves a clunker now and then. After seeing Django Unchained I’ve realised that the opposite is true. Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction were the exceptions which proved the rule. Perhaps they were just beginner’s luck.
There are, of course, dissenting voices, with, according to IMDB, many more who consider Tarantino’s latest something of a masterpiece. But accepting that the majority opinion can’t be wrong reminds me of the advice I heard years ago: ‘Eat shit, 12 billion flies can’t be wrong!’ So here are the summaries to the many IMDB reviwers who think our lad walks on water: ‘Tarantino at his finest’, ‘Amazing formally, and with a moral complexity that will work on you from within’, ‘Quentin is Quentin. Highly entertaining and perfectly written’, ‘Spot-on characterization of internalization of corrupt values’, ‘Django Unchained is simply a BLAST from start to finish and a new epic of Quentin Tarantino!’ and ‘Tarantino Back To His Best!!’
BTW There’s is an unmistakeable camp element to Django Unchained, all that leather and sadism. If, despite reading this you decide to watch it, pay particular attention to the scene when some dude or other arrives to torture Django but is then seen off by the Samuel Jackson character and leaves. If his leaving isn’t a fully blown mince (possibly intended, but if so, why?) I’m a Dutchman.
. . .
There’s another reason why I disliked Django Unchained so much. The studio PR guff, happily and gladly replicated by the fucking press, as eager as Hollywood to turn a dishonest buck printing whatever the fuck will turn that dishonest buck, makes out that the film is some kind of re-evaluation of the master/slave relationship and some kind of examination of slavery in 19th-century America. No, it’s not, it’s just another Hollywood potboiler. It’s just another Hollywood potboiler which has, rather belated it has to be said, cottoned onto the fact that the black US dollar has the same 100 cents as the white US dollar and that ‘aspirational’ blacks, whether in the US or elsewhere, might care to part with several of their hard-earned dollars to in widescreen technicolour how a black dude - Jamie Foxx in leathers - blasts the living shit, and then some, out of loads and loads and loads and loads and loads and loads of white folk. All this, it has to be said, under the ineffably spurious guise of evaluating - or possibly ‘re-evaluating’ - the master/slave relationship of 19th-century America.
Several years ago I came across, just by chance, Howard Zinn’s People’s History Of The United States. I read it and was exceptionally surprised by what I read. I have already written here in this blog about the book. Howard Zinn is admittedly politically left-of-centre and admittedly something of a socialist. But there is nothing wrong with that in my book and especially nothing wrong with that if a man or woman comes clean from the off about where he or she’s at.
Howard Zinn’s main point - with which I am obliged to agree - is that most history is written top down: what kings and queens and lords and ladies and presidents and parliaments and prime ministers and leaders did. Zinn decided to redress the balance when he set out to write his history of the United States: he showed how quite apart from those who came over to colonise the new world, there were those who were apprenticed and indentured to the colonisers, but to such an extent that they were more or less slaves.
He showed how the apparent emancipation of the slaves after the Civil War was a complete sham, how the ‘emancipated’ slaves were duped into continued servitude and slavery by means of the company store and the rest. And this was all news to a white, middle-class, public school educated lad like myself. So when Tarantino arrives with his blood-fest featuring a leather-clad black cowboy getting one over the whites by blasting them all to kingdom come, I recall history and don’t just puke once but several times.
Monday 31 December 2012
Salmond and Farage: unlikely kissing cousins but they have a lot in common
A question, although only those of you in the UK should bother trying to answer. Those of you dipping into this ’ere blog who live abroad are certainly entitled to try, but once you know the question, you might well be baffled as to who I’m talking about. So here’s the question: what do the SNP’s Alex Salmond and UKIP’s Nigel Farage have in common? Well, at first blush not a lot, but in an odd sort of way they do.
Let me start on what I perceive as their plus points. In my view both are capable men, politically astute and, crucially, they stand head and shoulders among their party peers. I might well be wrong, of course, but without Salmond the SNP would – and will be – half the force it is now and, similarly, without Farage, the UKIP would – and will be – the same. A few years ago, Salmond stood down as party president and more or less retired and the SNP ground to a rather embarrassing halt. The SNP might well deny that’s what happened, but that’s what it looked like from where I sat at the time. Whatever the truth of the matter, the call went out to Salmond, and the great man returned to salvage his party and, as we now know, lead it into government for the first time in its history.
Something similar happened to UKIP: Farage stood down, the party began increasingly making a fool of itself, Farage was implored to return and now it is riding high(ish) in the polls. For me that matter is pretty clear: without either man the party each leads would wither and die and become nothing more than a footnote in history.
What they also have in common – and again I’m certain both parties would deny the claim – is that they are essentially one-issue parties. In fact, ‘one-party pressure groups’ might be closer to the mark. For the SNP that issue is independence for Scotland. For UKIP its making sure Britain – or the UK or whatever the technical term is these days – leaves the EU. Both claim to be bona-fide political parties whose policies go far beyond the one which is the raison d’etre, but as the saying goes ‘tell that to the Marines’.
If the SNP achieved its goal and won independence for Scotland, it would be only a matter of time before the Scots Nats splintered into left and right-wing factions, which would largely mirror the current left-right split in Scotland of Labour v Lib Dems. (The Tories don’t have a look in up there, and even though the party has elected an out lesbian as its president, I believe that is mere coincidence and not a cynical ploy to try to persuade the electorate that it is now ‘modern’ and ‘good lord, we don’t even mind having a lesbian as our president’.) Once
that split occurred – in a by then independent Scotland – it would be the same old political game all over again, although I do feel, somehow, that the soul the SNP is rather to the left of centre.
That cannot, of course, be said about UKIP. David Cameron once described the party as ‘fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists’ and although I don’t accept that they are all like that, it must have been for many uncomfortably close to the mark. I’ve often thought that some of them would throw in their lot with the BNP if the BNP did not so obviously consist of – to use a popular phrase – plebs and oiks you wouldn’t ever want to see in your golf club. As it is, UKIP will have to do.
Were UKIP ever to achieve its aim and see Britain (or the UK – see above) leave the EU, it would, I think, be curtains for UKIP. Yes, they claim to have policies on education, health, the economy, the environment, the Teletubbies and fizzy lemonade, but as far as I’m concerned that is just PR bullshit for the masses, or at least for those of the masses who like to imagine UKIP really is a bons-fide political party and not just a one-issue pressure group in clean underwear and cricket club ties.
As it happens I am no great fan of the EU. I think that what started out as admirable idea has become thoroughly corrupt in far too many ways and, if it is not reformed, could well be the cause of a great deal of bloody conflict in Europe. And that would be ironic given the EU’s proud and all too incessant boast that it has ‘brought peace to Europe’. But unlike UKIP I think it would be outright folly to leave the EU. While Britain is in, it has a sporting chance of shaping and institution which has a great influence on its future. Once out, that influence has gone.
But back to Salmond and Farage: perhaps they should get together for a drink and compare notes. Oh, and both have can be rather funny. Not that it really matters.
Let me start on what I perceive as their plus points. In my view both are capable men, politically astute and, crucially, they stand head and shoulders among their party peers. I might well be wrong, of course, but without Salmond the SNP would – and will be – half the force it is now and, similarly, without Farage, the UKIP would – and will be – the same. A few years ago, Salmond stood down as party president and more or less retired and the SNP ground to a rather embarrassing halt. The SNP might well deny that’s what happened, but that’s what it looked like from where I sat at the time. Whatever the truth of the matter, the call went out to Salmond, and the great man returned to salvage his party and, as we now know, lead it into government for the first time in its history.
Something similar happened to UKIP: Farage stood down, the party began increasingly making a fool of itself, Farage was implored to return and now it is riding high(ish) in the polls. For me that matter is pretty clear: without either man the party each leads would wither and die and become nothing more than a footnote in history.
What they also have in common – and again I’m certain both parties would deny the claim – is that they are essentially one-issue parties. In fact, ‘one-party pressure groups’ might be closer to the mark. For the SNP that issue is independence for Scotland. For UKIP its making sure Britain – or the UK or whatever the technical term is these days – leaves the EU. Both claim to be bona-fide political parties whose policies go far beyond the one which is the raison d’etre, but as the saying goes ‘tell that to the Marines’.
If the SNP achieved its goal and won independence for Scotland, it would be only a matter of time before the Scots Nats splintered into left and right-wing factions, which would largely mirror the current left-right split in Scotland of Labour v Lib Dems. (The Tories don’t have a look in up there, and even though the party has elected an out lesbian as its president, I believe that is mere coincidence and not a cynical ploy to try to persuade the electorate that it is now ‘modern’ and ‘good lord, we don’t even mind having a lesbian as our president’.) Once
That cannot, of course, be said about UKIP. David Cameron once described the party as ‘fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists’ and although I don’t accept that they are all like that, it must have been for many uncomfortably close to the mark. I’ve often thought that some of them would throw in their lot with the BNP if the BNP did not so obviously consist of – to use a popular phrase – plebs and oiks you wouldn’t ever want to see in your golf club. As it is, UKIP will have to do.
Were UKIP ever to achieve its aim and see Britain (or the UK – see above) leave the EU, it would, I think, be curtains for UKIP. Yes, they claim to have policies on education, health, the economy, the environment, the Teletubbies and fizzy lemonade, but as far as I’m concerned that is just PR bullshit for the masses, or at least for those of the masses who like to imagine UKIP really is a bons-fide political party and not just a one-issue pressure group in clean underwear and cricket club ties.
As it happens I am no great fan of the EU. I think that what started out as admirable idea has become thoroughly corrupt in far too many ways and, if it is not reformed, could well be the cause of a great deal of bloody conflict in Europe. And that would be ironic given the EU’s proud and all too incessant boast that it has ‘brought peace to Europe’. But unlike UKIP I think it would be outright folly to leave the EU. While Britain is in, it has a sporting chance of shaping and institution which has a great influence on its future. Once out, that influence has gone.
But back to Salmond and Farage: perhaps they should get together for a drink and compare notes. Oh, and both have can be rather funny. Not that it really matters.
Wednesday 26 December 2012
The Deadwood stage stops here: why after David’s Milch’s Deadwood we should never put up with anything but the very best. (Oh, and hats off to casting directors the world over)
Let me start on a very obscure note. Some people, surely a small minority, stay behind a little when a film has finished and the credits roll to take a look at the names of some of those who made the film possible. Incredible as it might seem to some, the director and his actors - his ‘cattle’ as Fellini liked to observe - aren’t the only ones part of ‘the creative’ process. There’s the role played by the cinematographer (as important as the director in my opinion) and the director really is nowhere if a film’s various producers aren’t up to scratch. But even they don’t exhaust the list: the soundtrack - note ‘sound’ not just ‘music’ - will often make a film. (And by way of illuminating that, you might care to read this entry made after this was posted.)Take away the soundtrack and your average viewer really doesn’t know what to feel. In too many films a scene is only full of suspense because the soundtrack tells us so. So keeping an eye out for the ‘sound designer’ or whatever he or she is called, then looking out for other films he or she has worked on is a good, although means infallible, way of rooting out other films it might be rewarding to watch.
Somewhere on that list of credits you’ll find out who was responsible for ‘casting’. Now, I’ve never made a film and the chances of me ever doing so are in minus figures. But were I ever be required to do so (and I should prefer to be a producer rather than a director), I would make damn sure that whoever was hired to help with the casting damn well knew his or her job and was damn well the best or close to at casting. Each different film will have its own production dynamic, with the director and the producers having a greater or lesser say in who is hired and who isn’t and whoever is responsible for casting is, I should imagine, only able to suggest for and against and give advice. The final decision will rest with the producers, unless the director is so ‘great’ he or she (invariably still ‘he’, but we all live in hope) as to have the final say.
Why, I hear some of you mumbling, grumbling even, is this chap going on about ‘casting directors’ and ‘casting agents’. Is he really so fed up with watching paint dry? Well, no I’m not. I’ll explain why, unusually, my thoughts recently turned to casting directors and agents. But before that I shall point out an irony: we only become aware of casting (or heating a room or seasoning a dish) when something has gone horribly wrong. If, on the other hand a film is well cast (or a room is heated exactly right and a dish is - OK, you get my drift, no need to labour the point) none of us, I’m sure, reflects: well, isn’t this film well cast!
But that’s what occurred to me recently when I started watching Deadwood online. The casting of that was spot on, impeccable.
. . .
Some might have heard of Deadwood, some might even have seen it on TV (on Sky here in Britain). It was the brainchild of one David Milch (no, I hadn’t heard of him either before I started watching the series and stars, among others our very own Ian McShane). You can find out more about Milch here and here. Some might only know it because of newspaper reports of its shameless use of obscenities and profanities, but to judge it according to what our strait-laced Press choose to believe will upset their strait-laced readers would, at best, be wholly misleading and, at worst, a travesty of judgment. Deadwood is, in my view - there will, of course, be others - one of the very best, if not the very best series to have been screened on TV (and it’s no surprised that it was brought to the small screen by America’s HBO).
It deals with life in the small Dakota settlement of Deadwood in the mid-1870s, when Deadwood was an ‘illegal’ settlement established after gold was found nearby. In fact, the discovery of gold was the sole reason why the ‘camp’ Deadwood was established. Naturally every scurvy version of humanity found his and her way to Deadwood in the wake of that
discovery as well as rather less scurvy individual. Deadwood (above) was illegal because it was an ad hoc settlement established in land the US government had signed over to the native Americans under the Treaty of Laramie. You can find out more here. And because it was ‘illegal’, it did not come under anyone’s jurisdiction and was literally beyond the law. Several people were murdered daily and were murdered with impunity. And it Milch’s TV series portrays life in that settlement in gory, shocking, disgusting detail.
According to my reading, Milch, who had made his name with the series Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blues (neither of which I’ve yet seen, but I shall look most certainly chase up after being so enthused by Deadwood) and then wanted to make a series about the gradual establishment of civilisation and the establishment of the rule of law. He had planned to set it in ancient Rome. HBO were interested in such a series, but as they already had a series about Rome in production, Milch was asked to think again and came up with the idea of charting the slow, painful crawl of a society towards civilisation and the rule of law in Deadwood.
But a bland description of his TV series as ‘a society’s crawl towards civilisation and the rule of law’, although essentially true, does not do Deadwood (the TV series) justice whatsoever. If anything, such a description might well turn a potential viewer off, but that would be a shame. Deadwood, the western, is unlike any western you are ever likely to have seen. It is about people, not stereotypes. The camp is filthy, the people are filthy, their morals are filthy. They don’t dress in the way Hollywood’s costume department for so long tried to persuade us ‘cowboys’ dressed, they wear the same clothes as folk dressed in further east, except that everything was filthy and ragged. Mud is everywhere. Death is everywhere.
Milch admits that the way many people use the foulest language in his TV version is not verbatim in that the obscenities and profanities in use 136 years ago were not those we are accustomed to hear today. But, he argues, using their language would sound so archaic as to detract from the dialogue and all he has tried to do is to update Victorian obscenity and profanity to what we - at least, what some of use (guilty, m’lud) use today. But I shan’t carry on. All I can do is to urge the scrupulous among you to buy yourself a DVD box set of all three series or, as I have done, seek it out online. I hope you will not be disappointed. In my experience it is unique.
A postcript: only three series of Deadwood were made and then, inexplicably, HBO pulled the plug. So far I have not been able to find out why. There was talk of two film-length episodes to ‘wrap up the story’, but negotiations came to nothing and there seems little prospect that they will now ever be made. If anyone knows quite why HBO pulled the plug - as far as I know viewing figures held up well and never flagged - I should be keen to find out, so get in touch.
For me not one single performance hit a wrong note and it would be unfair to single out any actor. But I shall be unfair and state that as the immoral, murderous, cynical, sarcastic saloon and whorehouse proprietor Al Swearengen Britain’s Ian McShane (above) is superb. And casting McShane, who I understand was initially reluctant to take the role and had to be persuaded to do so by his American agent, was casting of genius. That’s how and why I first came to consider the role of the casting agent: I’ll repeat that we never really realise how good these man and women do their job when they get it right. It’s only when an actor is utterly miscast (as, in my view Robert Redford was when he played Gatsby in The Great Gatsby) what they come to our attention.
By the way, if you like Deadwood, take a look at Justified. It’s different, but it also stars Timothy Olyphant.
Somewhere on that list of credits you’ll find out who was responsible for ‘casting’. Now, I’ve never made a film and the chances of me ever doing so are in minus figures. But were I ever be required to do so (and I should prefer to be a producer rather than a director), I would make damn sure that whoever was hired to help with the casting damn well knew his or her job and was damn well the best or close to at casting. Each different film will have its own production dynamic, with the director and the producers having a greater or lesser say in who is hired and who isn’t and whoever is responsible for casting is, I should imagine, only able to suggest for and against and give advice. The final decision will rest with the producers, unless the director is so ‘great’ he or she (invariably still ‘he’, but we all live in hope) as to have the final say.
Why, I hear some of you mumbling, grumbling even, is this chap going on about ‘casting directors’ and ‘casting agents’. Is he really so fed up with watching paint dry? Well, no I’m not. I’ll explain why, unusually, my thoughts recently turned to casting directors and agents. But before that I shall point out an irony: we only become aware of casting (or heating a room or seasoning a dish) when something has gone horribly wrong. If, on the other hand a film is well cast (or a room is heated exactly right and a dish is - OK, you get my drift, no need to labour the point) none of us, I’m sure, reflects: well, isn’t this film well cast!
But that’s what occurred to me recently when I started watching Deadwood online. The casting of that was spot on, impeccable.
. . .
Some might have heard of Deadwood, some might even have seen it on TV (on Sky here in Britain). It was the brainchild of one David Milch (no, I hadn’t heard of him either before I started watching the series and stars, among others our very own Ian McShane). You can find out more about Milch here and here. Some might only know it because of newspaper reports of its shameless use of obscenities and profanities, but to judge it according to what our strait-laced Press choose to believe will upset their strait-laced readers would, at best, be wholly misleading and, at worst, a travesty of judgment. Deadwood is, in my view - there will, of course, be others - one of the very best, if not the very best series to have been screened on TV (and it’s no surprised that it was brought to the small screen by America’s HBO).
It deals with life in the small Dakota settlement of Deadwood in the mid-1870s, when Deadwood was an ‘illegal’ settlement established after gold was found nearby. In fact, the discovery of gold was the sole reason why the ‘camp’ Deadwood was established. Naturally every scurvy version of humanity found his and her way to Deadwood in the wake of that
According to my reading, Milch, who had made his name with the series Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blues (neither of which I’ve yet seen, but I shall look most certainly chase up after being so enthused by Deadwood) and then wanted to make a series about the gradual establishment of civilisation and the establishment of the rule of law. He had planned to set it in ancient Rome. HBO were interested in such a series, but as they already had a series about Rome in production, Milch was asked to think again and came up with the idea of charting the slow, painful crawl of a society towards civilisation and the rule of law in Deadwood.
But a bland description of his TV series as ‘a society’s crawl towards civilisation and the rule of law’, although essentially true, does not do Deadwood (the TV series) justice whatsoever. If anything, such a description might well turn a potential viewer off, but that would be a shame. Deadwood, the western, is unlike any western you are ever likely to have seen. It is about people, not stereotypes. The camp is filthy, the people are filthy, their morals are filthy. They don’t dress in the way Hollywood’s costume department for so long tried to persuade us ‘cowboys’ dressed, they wear the same clothes as folk dressed in further east, except that everything was filthy and ragged. Mud is everywhere. Death is everywhere.
Milch admits that the way many people use the foulest language in his TV version is not verbatim in that the obscenities and profanities in use 136 years ago were not those we are accustomed to hear today. But, he argues, using their language would sound so archaic as to detract from the dialogue and all he has tried to do is to update Victorian obscenity and profanity to what we - at least, what some of use (guilty, m’lud) use today. But I shan’t carry on. All I can do is to urge the scrupulous among you to buy yourself a DVD box set of all three series or, as I have done, seek it out online. I hope you will not be disappointed. In my experience it is unique.
A postcript: only three series of Deadwood were made and then, inexplicably, HBO pulled the plug. So far I have not been able to find out why. There was talk of two film-length episodes to ‘wrap up the story’, but negotiations came to nothing and there seems little prospect that they will now ever be made. If anyone knows quite why HBO pulled the plug - as far as I know viewing figures held up well and never flagged - I should be keen to find out, so get in touch.
Tuesday 25 December 2012
What would Christmas be without a heartfelt plea? So here's mine: think of those who aren't as lucky as yourselves
Let me be frank: I like Christmas, though I must add that without children (which, for me is any young person up to and including the age of 23) Christmas isn't all that important. I was brought up by an English father and a German mother in an observing, though not overly strict, Roman Catholic household, and we always celebrated Christmas as the Germans (and many other northern Europeans do) on Christmas Eve. To this day - Christmas Eve, in fact - I would prefer to celebrate Christmas as we did when I was young, but almost all families take their lead from the female figurehead, and my wife is English (well, actually, Cornish and from Methodist stock to boot).
And although I don't regard myself in the slightest bit Christian, religious or denominational, though I do choose - choose being exactly the right word - to believe in God (but don't even think about trying to tease me out on that one, as such a belief is so intensely personal that it might make no sense whatsoever to anyone else and just lead to a colossal waste of time, much of it, no doubt, taken up with unwelcome proselitysing and none of it on my part) I do abhor how in Britain Christmas is all-too-often reduced to a booze and gift fest of the crassest kind. I know that contemporary wisdom insists that December 25 was chosen as the 'birthdate of the saviour' by the fledgling Christian churches (not 'churches', not church) to soak up the demotic 'pagan' celebration of the winter solstice, but that rather misses the point.
When we in the West celebrate Christmas, we are, whether knowingly or not and willingly or not, following a Christian tradition. So I feel we should, at least, do one of two things: either acknowledge the fact or drop the pretence completely. At the moment most of us do neither. We choose to pronounce 'goodwill to all men' and attend decide, in a cloud of boozy nostalgia, to attend a carol service, and then congratulate ourselves on how sensitive we are to the mood of the occasion. And that is that.
As a young RC lad growing up (and who thought he wanted to become a priest for a short year or two before he sprouted pubic hair and discovered girls) our family Christmas celebration more or less started after lunch on Christmas Eve when my older brother Ian and I were sent off to confession at our parish church, as much to get as out of the house for a few hours for our mother to prepare for the Christmas Eve jollitites as to prepare ourselves for taking communion at midnight mass. (A real catholic - sorry Catholic) would write Midnight Mass. I don't.) We arrived back home as it was growing dark after making our confessions (and in those purer, pre-pubescent days I was not yet obliged to think up a working euphemism for wanking as, dear reader, I did not yet wank - that came later) and were exiled upstairs to change into 'good clothes' until we were finally called downstairs for supper and then die Bescherung, which was heralded by the tinkling of a bell supposedly rung by das Christkind to summon us into the living rooms with its Christmas tree and presents.
A casual reader might assume I am trying to make fun of the whole occasion. Well, the casual reader should realise that he or she is quite, quite wrong. I loved it then, as a child, and I would love it now, as an adult attempting to create the same occasion for my children. At the end of the day, Christ this and Christ that, as far as I am concerned one meaning of Christmas is to try to demonstrate to our children just how much we love them. Yet ironically, because we love them so, so much we always fail to convey just how much - it is, children being children and not yet parents, a quite impossible task.
Writing this, I am fully aware that there are many - far, far too many - children out there who will not, tonight, experience the childish joy of Christmas, children who might, instead, experience an unremitting misery knowing that they are, for whatever reason, excluded from that joy. That they exist should not tempt us to deny the joy to others. But we should remind ourselves that they are out there. So as I publish this entry at almost the stroke of midnight (here in the UK, Greenwich Mean Time and all that, of course) I wish you all a happy Christmas, but also urge you to consider, if only for a moment of two, all those children, from the age of nothing to whatever, who are not able to celebrate a loving, warm and familiar Christmas and not to forget that most of us are a damn sight luckier than others. And to remember them not now, on Christmas Day, but every day for the rest of this year, and every day for the rest of your life.
Apart from that, God bless you all.
And although I don't regard myself in the slightest bit Christian, religious or denominational, though I do choose - choose being exactly the right word - to believe in God (but don't even think about trying to tease me out on that one, as such a belief is so intensely personal that it might make no sense whatsoever to anyone else and just lead to a colossal waste of time, much of it, no doubt, taken up with unwelcome proselitysing and none of it on my part) I do abhor how in Britain Christmas is all-too-often reduced to a booze and gift fest of the crassest kind. I know that contemporary wisdom insists that December 25 was chosen as the 'birthdate of the saviour' by the fledgling Christian churches (not 'churches', not church) to soak up the demotic 'pagan' celebration of the winter solstice, but that rather misses the point.
When we in the West celebrate Christmas, we are, whether knowingly or not and willingly or not, following a Christian tradition. So I feel we should, at least, do one of two things: either acknowledge the fact or drop the pretence completely. At the moment most of us do neither. We choose to pronounce 'goodwill to all men' and attend decide, in a cloud of boozy nostalgia, to attend a carol service, and then congratulate ourselves on how sensitive we are to the mood of the occasion. And that is that.
As a young RC lad growing up (and who thought he wanted to become a priest for a short year or two before he sprouted pubic hair and discovered girls) our family Christmas celebration more or less started after lunch on Christmas Eve when my older brother Ian and I were sent off to confession at our parish church, as much to get as out of the house for a few hours for our mother to prepare for the Christmas Eve jollitites as to prepare ourselves for taking communion at midnight mass. (A real catholic - sorry Catholic) would write Midnight Mass. I don't.) We arrived back home as it was growing dark after making our confessions (and in those purer, pre-pubescent days I was not yet obliged to think up a working euphemism for wanking as, dear reader, I did not yet wank - that came later) and were exiled upstairs to change into 'good clothes' until we were finally called downstairs for supper and then die Bescherung, which was heralded by the tinkling of a bell supposedly rung by das Christkind to summon us into the living rooms with its Christmas tree and presents.
A casual reader might assume I am trying to make fun of the whole occasion. Well, the casual reader should realise that he or she is quite, quite wrong. I loved it then, as a child, and I would love it now, as an adult attempting to create the same occasion for my children. At the end of the day, Christ this and Christ that, as far as I am concerned one meaning of Christmas is to try to demonstrate to our children just how much we love them. Yet ironically, because we love them so, so much we always fail to convey just how much - it is, children being children and not yet parents, a quite impossible task.
Writing this, I am fully aware that there are many - far, far too many - children out there who will not, tonight, experience the childish joy of Christmas, children who might, instead, experience an unremitting misery knowing that they are, for whatever reason, excluded from that joy. That they exist should not tempt us to deny the joy to others. But we should remind ourselves that they are out there. So as I publish this entry at almost the stroke of midnight (here in the UK, Greenwich Mean Time and all that, of course) I wish you all a happy Christmas, but also urge you to consider, if only for a moment of two, all those children, from the age of nothing to whatever, who are not able to celebrate a loving, warm and familiar Christmas and not to forget that most of us are a damn sight luckier than others. And to remember them not now, on Christmas Day, but every day for the rest of this year, and every day for the rest of your life.
Apart from that, God bless you all.
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