Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

Having comprehensively failed to make it to the cinema on Saturday, we decided to make a real effort to go and see The Post this evening. We had supper — a rather good asparagus and lemon risotto, of which there was enough left over for lunch tomorrow — before walking the short distance to the Odeon for the movie.

The Post tells the story of the Washington Post's battle to publish the Pentagon Papers after the New York Times was served with an injunction by the Nixon adminstration. The fight takes place at a sensitive time, just as Katherine Graham is attempting to take the paper's owning company public. Much of the film's tension comes from the interplay between Graham and Ben Bradlee, the Post's tough editor, who is determined to publish when a second copy of the papers falls into his lap. Eventually, in a pivotal moment, Graham, under pressure from other members of the board who are worried that publication will spook the company's new investors, has to decide whether to side with Bradlee or whether to play it safe. In a nice final moment, the film concludes with a security guard discovering a break-in at the Watergate Building.

Needless to say, with a starry cast and a big name director, the film was always going to be good, but it does an excellent job of conveying the broad brush history of the Pentagon Papers — about which I have to admit a profound ignorance! I think it would be interesting to go back and watch All the President's Men, which features some of the same historical figures...

A gentle end to the year, with my day spent reading and lazing around.

The parents took themselves off to a matinee performance of The Imitation Game which they liked a lot — although pater said they it seemed to make out that Turing had done absolutely everything at Bletchley, whereas there were actually something 10,000 people there during the war.

Somewhat inevitably mater told me that Turing reminded her of me, but when we unpacked things it transpired that she only meant that he was portrayed as somewhat pedantic. (I suspect that this false resemblance owes more to Benedict Cumberbatch than Alan Turing: I've also been told that Cumberbatch's Sherlock reminds people of me; because there's nothing like being told that you resemble a high-functioning sociopath to make you feel good about yourself)

On their return the parents whipped up a few curries from Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Nation, including an excellent cold starter involving chickpeas and pomegranate seeds. JF came for New Year's Eve supper, on condition that she didn't have to stay until midnight, and we had an extremely civilised evening talking about books and trekking.

We indulged in a bit of fanishness over Scarlett Thomas, who we both love, and, while talking about writers whose books engage with literary matters, J mentioned that she knows Sarah Moss, whose novel Cold Earth I absolutely loved and which has stayed with me and continued to prod at me ever since I first read it.

Talking about some of the things I'd read this year, I said that I'd re-read Susanna Clarke's masterpiece Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell ahead of the forthcoming TV adaptation (and, now that the Callander has flipped over, I suspect I'm going to read it again this year). It turned out this was an easy sell: although she hadn't read the book, J had read and liked Clarke's short story collection The Ladies of Grace Adieu and as a specialist in 19th century literature, I thought she'd probably enjoy Clarke's (to my untrained ear) excellent pastiche of Austenian sensibilities.

After an extremely nice evening, J left for home and I dithered about whether to go to sleep or whether to see the new year in. In the end I got an early happy new year text from R and her snoring springer just as I was flossing my teeth and by the time I was done replying, I thought I might as well wait out the last few minutes of 2014.

Here's hoping 2015 is a good one!

It's the thirtieth anniversary of the release of Ghostbusters. I remember quite clearly pater taking me to see it at the Odeon Leicester Square. I'm pretty sure it was a treat — he'd promised he was going to take me to see something there — but I whether he hadn't suggested it in the first place as an excuse to get away from whatever the rest of the family were doing. As treats go, it was obviously a success: three decades on and I can still recollect what we were doing that afternoon. Of such moments are childhoods made...

Over on Tor, Emily Asher-Perrin points out just how profoundly messed up the world of Who Framed Roger Rabbit really is...

The ever wonderful Hadley Freeman has a delightful paean to Ghostbusters over on the Guardian web site.

Admittedly, a significant portion of my Ghostbusters adoration comes from two strands of nostalgia, one that is entirely solipsistic and one for the friendship that shadows the whole of this awesome little comedy. But nostalgia aside, this has always seemed to me the finest mainstream 1980s comedy...

Amen.

Mark Kermode puts forward a strong case for intelligent blockbuster movies in today's Observer. His argument essentially boils down to:

P1 Blockbuster movies succeed regardless of content
P2 Intelligent movies are better than stupid movies
C Therefore blockbusters should be intelligent

Which means that if Kermode is right about his first premise — and he provides some convincing evidence — it's a lot less risky to make an experimental blockbuster than it is to produce an experimental mid-price film...

I somehow missed The Incredibles when it came out but, thanks to the iPlayer and it's (recently added?) ability to catch up movies, I finally managed to find time to watch it. And I'm glad I did; it was very funny, wonderful beautiful and cleverly knowing, with it's nods to James Bond and both DC and Marvel's superhero comics.

Having queued up the recent broadcasts of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings Trilogy, I've finally got around to watching them and I'm seriously unimpressed. Not by the visuals, which remain stunning, but by just about everything else.

Firstly, the films are staggeringly dull. Yes, there are action scenes but they drag on for far too long and, besides, no-one ever seems to get injured no matter how absurd the odds so they're not really terribly involving. Secondly, none of the character are particularly interesting. With the honourable exception of Boromir, who comes closest to being tempted, none of the characters seem to express much in the way of doubt — or, in fact, anything that could be mistaken for a genuine emotional feeling — making it almost impossible to really care about them.

Then there's the whole problem about the external nature of evil. Rather than treat evil as an internal and personal thing — a genuine human failing — we're simply reminded that all evil is due to the ring and through it Sauron, and that if only the ring could be destroyed, evil would be banished forever. So all the humans who covet or fear the ring have a get out: they can simply blame the corrupting power of Sauron. So much for moral dilemmas.

All things considered, I think I'm going to stick with Wagner and Der Ring des Nibelungen. Yes, he was an anti-semitic adulterer with a penchant for Schopenhauer and silk undies, but at least his Ring Operas are interesting...

According to the Guardian, one of the films creating a buzz at Cannes this year is Fernando Meirelles' adaptation of Blindness by José Saramago. I loved the novel but I wonder how well it will survive the transfer to the celluloid, given Saramago's brilliantly distinctive style. I look forward to finding out...

I've finally got around to watching A Prairie Home Companion. Rather unsurprisingly, I totally loved it, but then I'm a fan of the radio show...