Sundry Saturday Guff

Three days until the start of NaNoWriMo. I have my characters named, their roles loosely defined, plot device fathomed, key scenes noted and I may even spend Sunday creating a some kind of pretty flowchart just to help me visualise and keep track of the thing.

The NaNo website features regional forums and today I went I met up with some of the folks from the Oxfordshire forum. Everyone was very nice although, being the socially awkward dork that I am, my contributions to the conversation were sporadic and not always coherrent. I failed spectacularly to convince those present of the genius of my novel's premise (psychological horror based upon the working principles of fax machines - no, it does make sense). I may have been a bit quiet but at least I didn't say anything inexecusably profane which means they may let me go to the next meet-up.

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I had a job interview last week with a local academic publisher (and, boy, aren't there a lot in and around Oxford). Database administration gubbins - nothing terribly exciting or inspiring but diverting enough to suit my job needs. The interview went well, they were impressed with my skills and experience and didn't grill me hard or try to catch me out with some evil interviewer trickery. A few days later I got an email saying that I was one of two final candidates and that they would let me know their final decision by Friday.

Friday came, Friday went, and I heard nothing. Bastards. So I am twiddling my thumbs and still wondering if I got the job or not. No news is good news, as they say (incorrectly - just because you haven't heard the news doesn't mean that it won't be bad).

I have another interview for another job on Monday.

John Peel

Today marked the first anniversary of John Peel's death. Has it really been a year already? I remember when I first heard the news - I couldn't believe it. He was a legend. He did more to promote new music then any other DJ on the planet. So many great artists owe their success to him, to his constant search for innovative, exciting sounds that no-one had ever heard and were unlikely to hear on regular mainstream radio. His desire to seek out fresh talent was insatiable. Listening to his show was always a revelation; you'd hear all manner of strange stuff that you might consider total crap and then he'd play something astonishing.

And who is there to replace him? Nobody. He was unique.

Thank you, John: You left us too soon.

Gardens of glass

I went to Kew Gardens yesterday to see Gardens of glass - Chihuly at Kew.

Dale Chihuly is an artist who makes extraordinary scupltures out of glass and from 22-26 October, Kew is opening in the evenings from 18:00-21:00 (last entry at 20:00) to give people the opportunity to view Chihuly's glass objects illuminated at night.

Seeing Chihuly's organic, oddly alienesque creations lit up in the dark of night is a spectacular thing to behold. My enthusiasm may have been slightly blunted by the tortuous journey by a succession of packed out buses to get to the damn place thanks to the closure of sections of the District line (a tale of woe worthy of the Disgruntled Commuter).

If you happen to be anywhere near Kew Gardens of an evening between now and Wednesday 26 October then I recommend you go take a look at Chihuly's beautiful works of glass. Or you can go during the day until 15 January 2006... but it's not as cool in daylight as it is at night.

I'm a film writer

Apparently, I am some kind of film correspondent and vital source of information for movie makers and film industry types...

Cinema Minima - CASINO ROYALE by Martin Campbell, starring Daniel Craig

It turns out that my comments were plucked from the ether by a friend of Suw Charman. Damn, she's a useful person to know.

Sundry Monday Guff

Sunday night, around midnight, a man passed the house in which I live on a unicycle. Despite living in a place like Oxford where cyclists are rife, you don't see that every day. He fell off, incidentally.

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There are rumours floating around that Michael Keaton is in the running to play The Joker in the next Batman movie. That would be Michael Keaton who played the Dark Knight in Tim Burton's Batman and Batman Returns. I'm sure Keaton would make a good Joker, as anyone who has seen Beetlejuice would probably agree. But could he live up to Jack Nicholson's performance who played The Joker opposite Keaton's Batman... um... Oh, the postmodern irony of it all.

The producers should give the role to Mark 'Luke Skywalker' Hamill; he was great as the voice of The Joker in the brilliant Batman cartoon series from the 1990s.

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Screw Star Wars: go see Serenity. It's smart, exciting, funny, moving and thoroughly satisfying. It is one in the eye to the fuckwitted TV execs who cancelled the TV show, Firefly, from which the movie spawned. It cost a paltry $40 million but still looks great. And characters sometimes stand around and have conversations. Conversations? In a movie? Character development? What madness is this? Yeah, well, it makes the characters feel like real people. That's writer/director Joss Whedon's biggest strength: creating characters you care about and then putting them in real jeopardy so you genuinely don't know if they will survive.

Don't worry if you haven't seen its shortlived TV progenitor—you'll be able to follow it. Did I mention it was funny? And smart? And exciting? Good. Go see it.

The name's Blah... James Blah

So, Daniel Craig is the new James Bond (or James Blond as some quarters of the press have hilariously dubbed him). A good choice; Craig is a fine actor who should be able to pull off the balance between sophistication and grit the role requires.

But honestly, who gives a fuck?

The last few Bond flicks have been nothing but glorified videogames stuffed with utterly implausable scenarios, gadgets and locations. I remember some ludicrous car chase in a big building made of ice. What the fuck was that all about? Goldeneye was OK and the one with Michelle Yeoh in it was enjoyable simply because it had Michelle Yeoh in it. But Tomorrow Never Dies Another Day or The World Is Not Dead Enough Today or whatever were completely forgettable. Robert Carlyle was a baddie in one of them - no idea exactly what his evil plan was. I seem to remember that the last one was nothing more than a bunch of homages to previous Bond films strung together but with Halle Berry replacing Ursula Andress. I must admit that although Pierce Brosnan is on paper an ideal Bond actor I find him unbearably smug.

So, Bond 21 will have a new leading man and will be based on Casino Royale, the only original Fleming novel not to have been made into a serious Bond film (and, dear god, let's not think about that crappy, psuedo-psychedelic spoof with David Niven). Martin Campbell, the director responsible for rejuvenating the series 10 years ago with Brosnan's debut, Goldeneye, is once again going to rejuvenate the series with more grit and fewer gadgets and gimmicks.

Yeah, well, I'll wait until it turns up on the Christmas TV schedules, thanks. Anyone know when the next Jason Bourne movie is out?

And the winner is...

John Banville has won the 2005 Man Booker Prize for his novel, The Sea.

Having never read this book or any of Banville's other thirteen novels, I can't comment on whether he is a worthy winner although I have been assured by more well-read acquaintances that he is good.

What does amuse me is that a 'difficult' book by a relatively unknown author who doesn't hang out with the literary establishment, didn't go to university, took the autodidactic route to educate himself and wears his literary ambitions to write 'real books' on his sleeve has won the most well known prize for literature in the UK. Apparently, national booksellers are really pissed off about it. This also amuses me. A lot.

Good on ya, John.

REVIEW: A History Of Violence

Summer 2005 won't go down as a classic blockbuster season both in terms of quality and box office revenue. Star Wars Epsiode III was fine despite George Lucas' defiantly rubbish dialogue and some crap editing; War Of The Worlds delivered the carnage but was strangely soulless for a Spielberg flick. Batman Begins was better: dark, intelligent, exciting, well acted, directed and photographed. OK, Katie Holmes as a hard-nosed D.A. was rather hard to swallow and Cillian Murphy's creepy Scarecrow simply faded from view in the final act but, nevertheless, Christopher Nolan did a fine job in reinvigorating the most interesting of superhero franchises. The most fun had to be Stephen Chow's joyously demented Kung-Fu Hustle. If you didn't see it at the cinema, rent the DVD. Now.

So bring on the autumn, the serious cinema-goer's friend. Now is the time for all the curious arthouse films, cult movies and Oscar contenders. Two of my favourite directors have new films to see this autumn. Terry Gilliam finally returns after an seven year absence with not one, but two films: The Brothers Grimm and Tideland (although the latter has yet to secure distribution in the UK so we may have to wait until the New Year before we can see it). And David Cronenberg has returned with A History Of Violence, adapted from the graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke.

Cronenberg is mostly thought of as a horror director but this quiet, thoughtful Canadian is much more than that. As far back as his intensely visceral early "body horror" films such as Rabid and The Brood, he has explored the relationship between body and mind and themes of disease and identity. His films are influenced more by the likes of Descarte than Dario Argento.

On a superficial level, the simple plot of A History Of Violence could be that of any number of Westerns: the secret past of an apparently wholesome family man catches up with him and threatens to destroy the new life he has made for himself. Viggo Mortensen plays Tom Stall, husband, father and owner of a diner in a decent, anonymous town in Middle-America. He enjoys a tender and still passionate relationship with his wife, Edie (Maria Bello), and is altogether the caring and decent patriarch.

One night as Tom is closing up the diner, two armed thugs arrive demanding coffee, pie and the contents of the till. Initially, Tom offers up the money and asks them to leave but when the lives of his staff are threatened he swiftly disarms and kills the robbers.

Branded a local hero, Tom's face appears all over the TV news and newspapers. Business at the diner booms but his actions draw the unwanted attention of the black-suited and scarred mobster, Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris), who claims that Tom is not Tom at all but a man with a violent past called Joey Cusack.

Tom then has to face not only the threat to him and his family at the hands of Fogarty and his associates but also his family's growing doubts that he is the man they thought he was.

It is a straightforward and predictable plot but what raises this film way above the standard of a typical b-movie thriller is the intelligent, probing script by Josh Olson, Cronenberg's assured direction and strong performances from the cast.

The film depicts violence as a virus that gradually infects the entire Stall family. The teenaged son, Jack (Ashton Holmes), at first tries to diffuse confrontations with the school bullies with words and jokes but, in the wake of his father's "heroics" at the diner, then responds to their harassment with a savage beating. Violence also infects Tom and Edie’s physical relationship: sex becomes less a tender act of love than a rough, bruising act of anger and mistrust. It's as if they are testing the limitations of their capacity for violence to themselves and each other.

Cronenberg's direction throughout is superb, understated but effective. The early domestic scenes with the Stall family, the unexceptional small talk between Tom and his staff, the bored, ironic banter between Jack and his girlfriend and the harmless, almost mundane teenaged fantasy Tom and Edie play during sex create a believable naturalistic context for the brief but brutal confrontations scattered throughout the film. It is a credit to Cronenberg that the unflinching scenes of violence have real impact and are genuinely shocking even to a modern audience desensitised to cinematic viscera. But there is something else going on: the bloody scenes are shot in a slick, choreographed and stylised fashion familiar to any viewer of contemporary action flicks. This juxtaposition between the naturalistic and artificial makes you realise how you would usually take such onscreen violence for granted in a thriller and how much you would enjoy it. Cronenberg manages to disturb and exhilarate you at the same time. He makes you think, goddamnit.

All the performances are strong but a special mention must go to Mortensen's subtle and unnerving portrayal of Tom. As his family increasingly doubt if this man they thought they knew is actually who he says he is, so too does the audience. There are points of great tension in the film when you genuinely don't know what Tom is going to do and he remains an ambiguous character right up until the end credits.

As the film draws to an end, there are no tearful reconciliations, no great epiphanies, no convenient Hollywood closure. Some issues have been resolved, some haven't, and we are left wondering where the fuck the characters can go from here. Cronenberg does not provide any easy answers and the film is all the better for it.

Where Rodriguez and Miller’s graphic novel adaptation Sin City was nothing more than a hollow, bloated and relentlessly tedious sequence of riffs about violence plundered from hard-boiled detective thrillers and film noir, A History Of Violence is the best cinematic meditation on violence in life and in the media since Man Bites Dog.

Suw Charman in your ears

My chum Suw Charman was on Julian Worricker's BBC Radio Five Live show this morning talking about the world of blogging. It was a broad introduction to the blogging phenomenon that covered personal blogging, business blogging, journalism and political blogs in countries where freedom of speech is supressed.

You can listen to it online for the next week (as I did because I was still well in the land of nod when the show was broadcast this morning): Julian Worricker - Radio Five Live - Sunday 2 October.

One of the questions asked was why do people blog. I've been posting an online journal one way or another for nearly five years and I still don't know the answer to that. As a writer and composer, I am partly keeping my eye on the future and thinking that I can use this blog as a publicity tool in the unlikely event that I get anything published.

A point made on Julian's radio show was that some people use blogging as a convenient way of letting their family and friends informed of what they are up to like some kind of electronic conference call or virtual postcard. Other people use blogs to discuss very specific subjects (knitting is apparently a big blog subject at the moment). I don't blog for any of those reasons. I know a couple of friends occasionally swing by to read this drivel but my family don't - I don't think I'd want them to. And I never concentrate on one particular subject; I waffle on about any subject that happens to cross my mind.

A further point was the social aspect of blogging, the fact that people can comment and leave trackbacks to create a large "paper trail" back to your blog. I haven't really been using blog software long enough for that to happen (my old journal was all hand coded in HTML - I was a fool). I seem to have a few return visitors but nobody regularly leaves comments (come on... isn't anyone as excited as I am about the re-release of the original uncut Japanese version of Gojira (Godzilla)?).

Saira Khan, who presented the item on blogging on this morning's broadcast, asked this question on her own blog (which she set up with Suw's help to prepare for this morning's discussion). These are possible reasons I left in her comment box:

1. That writing a blog instead of buckling down to writing short stories or my long-gestating novel still counts as 'writing'. It doesn't, of course.


2. I have such a fascinating life that it would be verging on criminal to not share it with the world. It isn't, of course.


3. The knowledge that I have a public blog will make me feel obliged to update it often and therefore cajole me into paying great attention to the world around me so that I may find fodder for writing. It doesn't, of course.


4. That blogging is merely the latest medium through which I try to make sense of the world and my place in it. I am no closer to figuring that one out, of course.


5. Suw told me I should. Yeah, that's probably it.

Well, yes, I was in a funny mood when I wrote that but the point is... I don't know why I blog. I just like it, I guess.

On that highly ambiguous if not entirely unsatisfactory note I shall end this post to ponder the question some more. In the meantime, you can all look forward to reading my review of David Cronenberg's A History Of Violence once I get around to writing it.