Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ‘A Psalm of Life’
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.
The seventh entry in an occasional series in which I try to cheer myself up by remembering what still exists in the world and cannot ever be taken capriciously away.
It’s a Mads Mads Mads Mads World
The ‘not that firm, never floppy’ handshake quip of Mads Mikkelsen had become an in-joke between me and my Dad, so he was overjoyed to see more nonsense from Denmark incarnate hanging out with a Great Dane, and drinking unfiltered beer in the woods where he seemed in the shortened TV version to have been found after a two-week bender.
Harvey Harvey Harvey…
Harvey Keitel co-produced Reservoir Dogs to get it off the ground and make Tarantino’s name. And what thanks does he get? Nothing compared to the thanks QT lavishes on Samuel L Jackson. Instead Harvey has got his revenge with his delirious series of ads for Direct Line Insurance playing his Pulp Fiction character Mr Wolf, a man who literally knows every barista in Scotland by name, and they know him. Naturally.
Four Sea Interludes, from Peter Grimes
Piano Concerto
Simple Symphony
Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge
Variations and Fugue on a theme of Purcell
Disney should not own everything. This is not apparently a thought that has occurred to the compliant regulatory authorities in America who have allowed the House of Mouse to just swallow 20th Century Fox. But Disney should not own everything. And it would be rather nice if the American online media could also start repeating this proposition, instead of propagating the opposite. Every time I see Sony being lambasted for having the audacity to own Spider-Man rights, or Universal for having Hulk interests, or, previously, Fox for having the bad taste to continue to make X-Men movies, I wince.
Disney now owns the rights to the X-Men, Fantastic Four, Alien, Die Hard, Avatar, Planet of the Apes, Ice Age, Home Alone, Predator, Kingsman, Goosebumps, having already scooped up Marvel and Pixar’s rosters. Who’s next? Sony?
Ahab has not any peace while Naboth has his vineyard…
Back in 2011 I outlined a perfect scenario: reading F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby while listening to Rhapsody in Blue and Piano Concerto in F by George Gershwin. This of course involves reading the sparkling prose of the poet laureate of the Jazz Age to the accompaniment of the music of the Jazz Age’s pre-eminent composer, whose works might well have been performed at Gatsby’s parties. This should be done lounging outside in the sunshine; usually possible if done on the 4th of July – which is a vital component of this scenario; and drinking something deliciously iced, but undertaken; as ‘a broken series of successful gestures’ if you will; over the course of an afternoon and evening so that you get to Nick Carraway’s magnificent peroration about night falling on Gatsby’s mansion just as the sun goes down…
I noted that I had once again failed to achieve this perfect scenario. For such a bittersweet novel as Gatsby I’m not sure that such continual anticipation followed by continual failure isn’t entirely appropriate.
Last month I had been thinking that the best way to mark Bastille Day, which falls on a Sunday this year, would be to breakfast on coffee and croissants somewhere, and then stroll, sorry, flaneur, to a grand civic park like St Stephen’s Green, there to idly sit on a park bench, and listen to something like this,
while reading something by Guy de Maupassant, marked with a Monet bookmark, and then boulevardier off somewhere like the Alliance Francasie on Kildare Street for the lunch of a bon vivant and raconteur.
Now it seems that this summer I may be in a position to achieve both of these perfect reading scenarios, and I don’t really want to, because there is no point in achieving such a scenario without sharing the experience with someone else.
What is one to do with thoughts that are far too long for Twitter but not nearly long enough for a proper blog post? Why round them up and turn them into a twenty-seventh portmanteau post on matters of course!
The Hounds of Hell
There is something finally and karmically wrong about watching The X-Files in full flight while Supernatural is still running almost at full steam. This second return of The X-Files, which we’re encouraged to just call season 11 and pretend it’s normal to have hiatuses between seasons of a decade, has been far better than 2016’s far shorter and less successful comeback. Some of this season’s mythology episodes have been damn good, while the monster of the week ones have frequently knocked it out of the ballpark. In particular ‘Familiar’, a disturbing tale of small-town hysteria with vigilante action going horribly sideways when due process is disregarded. But it’s not just a witch-hunt parable, there really are witches at work. And that’s when it felt like this was a direct challenge to Supernatural as mystical circles, ancient grimoires, and vicious mostly invisible hell-hounds started to appear. Was it a bit weird? Yes. The return in 2016 was a jolt as you realised how everything from Smallville to Supernatural to The Flash had shamelessly lifted their episode structure from The X-Files. So watching Supernatural be appropriated by The X-Files is like watching a father and son competing against each other at the Olympics. But maybe the influence has gone both ways. Season 13 of Supernatural gave Dean Winchester a number of godlike character moments. Here Mulder went by the name Bob to avoid having to explain Fox for the 1000th time in cafes, almost brought about the robocalypse by eschewing tipping robot chefs, and was shamelessly obsessive over old TV sci-fi VHS and Sasquatching. Perhaps it’s an example of what the Greeks called eris – good strife, or competition making both parties better.
Fighting with my Family was the catch-up film of the week much earlier today on Sunday Breakfast with Patrick Doyle.
Stephen Merchant is the decidedly unlikely writer/director of this sports comedy-drama about the cheesy world of wrestling, which is fixed not fake as Nick Frost is quick to point out. Frost and Lena Headey are the proprietors of World Association of Wrestling, based in Norwich, but their children Florence Pugh and Jack Lowden have the chance to hit the big-time when they try out for the WWE during a London event. But coach Vince Vaughn only takes Pugh with him to Florida for SEAL/NXT training. As the Goth Pugh struggles with the talentless bikini babes being more popular than her with the wrestling audience the embittered Lowden spirals into drink and rage back home. And that is where Merchant’s name on proceedings becomes curious. A wonderful dinner party where Frost and Headey try and fail to impress the classy parents (Merchant and Julia Davis) of Lowden’s girlfriend is pure Merchant, but then the sports drama surrounding such sequences is a familiar tale differentiated only by the theatrical nature of the sport depicted in training montages.
Listen here:
Talking Movies 