Brackets

Well, that night in Nelson (16th) was pretty heavy. Victor (Scottish) and Denny (Swiss) had 8 free drinks lined up in the Shark Bar, so we headed there first. Phillip, German, but Swiss (don't ask), was celebrating his 21st on the 17th, so 12 midnight was a good excuse to get things kicked off. Prior to that Reggy, or Regula, another Swiss paired up with me to play Robbie (Aussie) and Manon (Dutch) in pool. Surprisingly we won more than we lost, and all the while the Tui (a New Zealand ale) was flowing.

At 12, I selected Stevie Wonder's 'Happy Birthday to You' on the video jukebox and got in a Shaker Tail, or a shaker of some mixture of shots. Unfortunately the song got mixed up with other requests and didn't get played until 15 minutes later. The drink on the other hand went down very well.

Victor, Denny and I had worked up a free shot each and downed it before leaving (Butterscotch). Ah, were we merry. Then it was on to the Rock Bar where a lacklustre karaoke was in session. Without a qualm I put my name down ('I Can See Clearly Now'), but luckily was too far down the list to get called up. I had a beer or two and finished with a G and T. A pleasant walk brought us back to our hostel, the Paradiso, which overall was a cosy place to rest up for those two days.

Next morning up and at them. I was not quite hungover, but very tired and tipsy merry. At our first stop, given a nice green lawn, a crashed out face first, setting something of a trend, I believe. In the process I squashed a bug or something more unpleasant on to my t-shirt. I tried not to think about it too much.

Sleep on the coach, Beck playing along the way. Occasionally I read a little Hammett as I was nearing the end of the title story of 'The Big Knockover' and was hooked a little.

If I haven't said it already, I'll say it now, New Zealand is one of the most (if not the most) beautiful countries in the world. Few places I have seen compare. We stopped again to sample more of this beauty along a coastal walk. Beaches of white sand stretched along a wild sea, boulders and sticks of rock studding the water. Even in my dehydrated state I could appreciate the splendour. Amazing. The walk itself was a good hour, ending with an indifferent hotdog from a kiosk at Cape Foul. As I went to the nearby toilet I was warned by a solicitous American that it was called Cape Foul for a reason. It sure is. A colony of seals cause a whiff (though they provided us with a lovely sight, the pups playing, the bulls braying), but on this occasion she meant the toilet. Very stinky.

More sleep on the coach.

We stopped to photograph the Pancake Rocks, each column of stone looking like a stacked pile of pancakes. Good to see and by this stage the constant fast-paced walking ('We only have 30 minutes, folks!') was clearing out my head. Just as well that our destination for the night, Greymouth, boasted a brewery tour and sampling session.

Our hostel, the Neptune, was a very nice surprise. Though I was in an 8 bed dorm with most of the rest of the group I've hooked up with, there were no bunks, it being a huge room with single beds. It was really nice (as Phillip might say, 'nice' being his word of the tour).

The Monteith Brewery is a small operation, run by 10 people. These 10 are only back from their holidays, so not much beer has been brewed of late. The tour was pretty bland as a result, a huge group being shuffled from one bit of unused machinery to another. The testing at the end allowed us to taste 6 or 7 of their local brews. Some were quite nice, Monteith Gold being probably the pick of the crop. Victor, a fiddle-playing, Gaelic-speaking, English-disliking Scot, felt it was a matter of honour for us to drink the Celtic brew (something like Kilkenny's), so once we got transferred to a local hotel for a barbeque and 'mega pint', we had a pint of the stuff. The barbeque, a very reasonable $5 included in our tour fee, was princippaly sausages. For another $5 you could get a steak and I cannot resist a steak, certainly not a large blue steak, which is what I didn't resist. More pool, more drink. A little, shy Japanese girl, Tyco, looked pretty out of it, so I took it on myself to introduce her to the group. Having been 6 months in New Zealand, she has been fairly unhappy, not being able to make too many friends. With her cute face that shouldn't have been a problem. Anyhow I was a complete gentleman, drunk though I was. Given that this was Phillip's real birthday, Rebecca and Christina, the 2 German girls, produced a nice chocolate cake to chase the beer down.

There were 80 people going down today, so instead of 1, there were 2 Magic Buses (as if by magic, another one appeared). Our bus was still very packed and after engineering a seat for Denny beside Christina (apparently a match to be made), Rebecca delivered me to the middle chair at the back of the bus. Too uncomfortable, I moved up to sit beside another German girl when we made a supermarket stop. We were making our way to the Franz Joseph Glacier where prices are a little more expensive, hence the stop.

I finished Hammett this time. 'The Big Knockover' and its sequel 'The $106,000 Bloodmoney' are convoluted, but irresistible. The Continental Op is a powerful creation. In 'The Gutting of Couffignal', a story that anticipates all the Die Hard movies and more, the Op, in a splendid defence of socialism (note who are his adversaries in this tale), claims he doesn't care about money or dames just doing his job. In 'The Big Knockover' and its sequel we see just how far this can take him (according to Wikipedia the title story is the inspiration for 'The Usual Suspects'). Murder by proxy is not beyond him, though as he says, he played the cards as best he could, but at the end of the day they just fell the way he wanted. The collection is not perfect; a tale of European intrigue, 'This King Business', is an uncomfortable attempt at exploiting the Op's Machiavellian side in an overtly political way. I get the feeling Hammett had just read 'Nostromo'. 'Tulip' too, a short segment of an uncompleted novel, is tantalising as autobiography, but a little out of place in the company of the Op stories. Nevertheless the book is a great read and never less than interesting.

So now I am in Franz Joseph, a full day glacier walk booked for tomorrow. I intend taking it easy for a while. I have just burned some pictures to dvd so I will be posting a few over time.

Babel and Babies

I took the Link bus to the Domain, a large Auckland park that happens to contain a huge, well-regarded museum. The link bus does a circuit of the city taking in many of the principal streets. I left it very late, however, and then got on the Link going in the opposite direction; in other words I took the long way around. When I got there there was only half an hour before closing time. This was just as well as it meant I wandered into a nearby glasshouse and fernery. I am no botanist and have no real interest in plants, but it was beautiful. I had taken Salinger's 'Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Seymour An Introduction' as it fit in my pocket and I suspected I might be reading in the park, so I took it out and read on a bench. A very pleasant amusement.

I am reading this final book of Salinger's for completion's sake. Once again the Glass family are the star attractions, and Seymour Glass in particular. It is many years since I read 'The Catcher in the Rye' and I cannot remember it too well (though I know the hero is Holden Caulfield). I would be very surprised if a Glass didn't figure in there somewhere. I still have to finish Hammett yet, so I won't write any reviews yet.

The Fat Camel Hostel (where I am writing this) is now my accommodation in preparation for my trip tomorrow. A free 'dinner' was provided at 7. I was accidentally given two vouchers which was as well as the trick here is that they want you to upgrade for four dollars. The initial portion then, in this case of basic carbonara, fits comfortably on a saucer. My two saucers helped my stomach for a while. While I think of it I had an awkward, but lovely potato and pork soup in a Japanese restaurant for lunch. They served it with four saucers of pickles and a bowl of rice, the lot costing ten dollars (around five fifty euros). It was lovely though I should have paid attention to the description that said pork bone for that is all the pork that was in it. I was the only caucasian there and I was sloppy. My 'I have nothing to declare but my genius' t-shirt is over the top at the best of times, but I felt a bit of a plonker wearing it streaked with potato and pork soup. When I tried to give them a tip they didn't know what I was talking about.

I decided to take a walk to the cinema to see what's on. I ended up watching "Babel" by the director of '21 Grams'. It is so doggedly determined to achieve its political effect that it almost forgets to entertain. Certainly knowing how things are going to work out (roughly) doesn't increase one's interest. It is overly long and overly 'tragic' (actually pathetic in the dramatic sense), but still worth a look. It is good to see different stories from different countries with different actors (Pitt, Blanchett and Bernal excepted) for a change.

And while I remember it, I saw 'Scoop' and 'The Queen' on my various flights recently, both films in their own way featuring the Press. 'Scoop', the latest from Woody Allen, purports to be some sort of comic thriller about a journalism student tracking down a serial killer with the help of a dead journalist. How the mighty have fallen! Allen should seriously consider leaving us with the works we love him for and stop poisoning his oeuvre. 'The Queen' on the other hand is really good stuff detailing the week after Lady Diana died as experienced by the British monarchy. I disagree with the monarchy as a concept and the British monarchy in particular, and have never had any interest in Lady Di (nor understood the fascination), but dramatically the film weaves a little bit of magic nevertheless. Helen Mirren is fine as Elizabeth, while Michael Sheen, though very close to an impersonation, nevertheless makes Tony Blair almost amiable. He is almost the hero of the piece, at one point berating a slimy Alastair Campbell for sneering at her predicament. Still in my view Blair betrayed Labour and funnily enough the film almost supports such a contention (Cherie is quick to point out his contradictions). Queen Elizabeth is given a human face and though I doubt this will be featuring on her DVD shelf anytime soon, she should be grateful she came out of the movie as unscathe as she does. The film seems to be attracting far more attention over here than it ever did back in Europe.

A big mention now for Ian and Roisin whose new son, Euen, was born on New Year's Eve and Tom and Ann whose new son, Eoghan, joined their household of boys yesterday. Similar names on similar dates, all very coincidental I'm sure. My best wishes to both families.

Horror Sequels: Revenge of the Toenail!

Thursday I shaved away my beard intending to be photographed as I intended to travel. Passport photos were required for a Chinese visa I need, but in the end the Chinese Embassy was closed for visas Thursday afternoon and all day Friday, so I'll have to go out on Tuesday. The day wasn't wasted though; I bought my plane tickets and met up with Barry B. for lunch. Thanks again Barry.

On Friday I continued my lunch dates. In contrast to what was to follow, I had a very pleasant Italian lunch with Ali (stunning as ever). Pasta, wine and good company are perfect for a Friday lunchtime. The afternoon, perhaps something I might normally fill with films, was a relaxing lounge around town. There have been no interesting film releases for weeks, however, all was not entirely dead cinematically as I had another venue for getting my fix; the Dublin Horror Movie festival, the Horrorthon.

Intrigued by the prospect of seeing new work by John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper, last night I went along to a screening of three episodes of the "Masters of Horror" series. This series, only aired in the States, takes well-known directors of the genre (eg. Coscarelli, Argento, Stuart Gordon), gives them 2 million and 10 days and asks them to come up with an hour long tv episode. John Landis completed the trio with a piece called "Deer Woman", but I was less interested in that. Landis is rightly lauded for "An American Werewolf in London", but outside of "Innocent Blood" hasn't done much else of genre interest. No, Carpenter and Hooper, despite the disappointment of recent years, are always auteurs to watch. Predictably though it was Landis's piece, laced with humour, which proved to be the best of the three even with (or probably because of) a totally implausible monster called, you guessed it, a deerwoman. Anyhow below are some reviews I put into the IMDB. There may be, as they say, spoilers.

[WARNING! The next paragraph includes toenail scenes of a graphic nature that some readers may find offensive.]

All was well when I got home, but at 1.30 in the morning my big toe began to throb. By 2.00 it was agony. Out with tweezers and scissors, I tried to tackle what was yet another ingrown toenail, or rather the recurrence of my first one. What was happening to me? What was wrong with my toes? I took away some nail, but could get nowhere and ended up getting very little sleep. Emergency! I looked up Golden Pages and got a chiropodist in Lucan who could see me at 12 today. I won't dwell any more on this. Suffice to say he had to anaesthetise the toe (more needles!). It was major. He extracted a HUGE piece of hidden nail, nail I never even suspected and nail that I carried around with me in a little wad of tissue for the rest of the day. He suspects I suffered a foot injury some months back that has caused the problems I've had. I think he may have hit the nail on the head (which is probably what I did). All should now be well, but as he himself said, I had my own little horror movie today.

Anyhow resting at home I finished off "The Continental Op". Tough stories well told. In "The House on Turk Street" and "The Girl with the Silver Eyes", Hammett created perhaps the definitive femme fatale, Elvira. Almost supernatural in her sway over men, she is as mean as they come right to the wonderful last line of the latter story.

There's a lot of humour too. In one story the Op holds up two crooks, relieving them of $19,126.62. His partner finds some stamps. "Take 'em along," says the Op. "That's practically 8 cents."

Anyhow the horror reviews.

The Damned Thing

As someone with a lot of time for Hooper, and as a fan of Ambrose Bierce, I was excited at the prospect of a Hooper directed adaptation of Bierce's story, "The Damned Thing" (a kind of American version of Guy de Maupassant's "The Horla"). The original story, though chilling, was a short and simple piece, so some broadening of the tale was always going to be necessary. Unfortunately this proves the undoing of the episode.

Inasmuch as he draws nothing but a one-note performance from Flanery and an inappropriately over-the-top one from Raimi, Hooper must share some of the blame for the failure of the piece. However, he achieves a sense of dread at the start that he doesn't let disperse. His hinting at greater terrors, also hearkens back to his "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" days, and overall I saw more to celebrate than criticise in his direction. The main flaw lies in Richard Christian Matheson's screenplay. [Richard Christian Matheson is the son of the truly great Richard Matheson, author of "I am Legend", "The Incredible Shrinking Man" and so much more.]

From a subtext point of view, Matheson is good. Tying the damned thing to oil exploration and so to the basis of American wealth and prosperity is clever, linking the evil of society to its very mainspring. However, his charting of the disintegration of Cloverdale leaves far too much to the imagination. One day there is bad weather and restlessness, the next it's the end of the world. There is too much of Flanery moping around with his whiskey, instead of small vignettes of growing madness (such as the hammer suicide).

Sheriff Reddle, for all his centrality in the story, is a truly wasted character, serving very little purpose. For instance, for all his paranoia and remembrance of things past he fails to respond when his wife uses practically the same warning phrases that his mother once used. Instead of preparing for the coming storm and protecting town and family, it seems his sole function is as catalyst for the unfolding of the exposition; a journalist tells him his family history; a doctor tells him about deaths; old newspapers tell him about the original oil drillings (adding very little to what we've learnt already); and at the outset he is the child who witnesses an earlier manifestation. All these things come to him, he himself doing very little. Then to sabotage what psychological realism there was, we have this apparently socially conscientious sheriff abandon the town to carnage while he drives his family home. Even if one charitably sees him as being possessed at this point, it's a pretty stupid course of action.

As I wrote, the original story was slender to begin with. However, this simplicity opened it out to all sorts of interpretation. This adaptation is strongest when it seizes on this ambiguity to make a reasonably clear ideological point. Ironically it is the telling itself that proves to be confused. Next time Matheson should keep it simple.

Pro-life

I had a lot of hopes for this episode. Good reports about the
"Cigarette Burns" piece in Series One suggested Carpenter was back on
song. The story too featured a couple of Carpenter staples, principally
the assault on an isolated enclave of goodies and the threat from
within. Add to this the presence of genre favourite Ron Perlman in the
cast and the signs were good. Sadly the end result didn't deliver.
Firstly Cody Carpenter is no match for his father in the score stakes.
Carpenter senior made musical magic with a cheesy synthesizer in his
heyday; just recall "Halloween", or "The Fog". Cody keeps the
synthesizer, but can't seem to do anything memorable. To be honest he
tries, but then he gets no support from the movie itself.

Perlman is dependably fine as the pro-life father. Despite his villain
role, Perlman invests Dwayne with a certain amount of humanity, creating at the outset a character more appropriate to a realistic, complex issue drama. However, this is a monster movie and it is a real shame that the scriptwriters have to go to extremes to demonise him. Having told his sons not to hurt anyone, that their
prime objective is to recover their sister, Dwayne inexplicably spends
most of his time executing a sickening death on Dr Keever. Wasn't his daughter, preventing an abortion and "Saving the child" his principal aim? This scene is
gratuitous and seriously wounds the movie.

Concentrating on Dwayne's attack on the clinic and working that strand out to its
logical conclusion realistically probably would have resulted in a far
more interesting movie. Unfortunately Carpenter is also saddled with a
feeble Rosemary's Baby element. Even though this provides him with an
opportunity to reprise his "spindly-monster-in-the-operating-theatre"
scene from "The Thing", it also leads to a unintentionally funny scene
involving a demon and its dead spawn. For all the modern special
effects, the demon struck me as no more credible than the monster in
Tourneur's '50's classic, "Night of the Demon", while the whole demonspawn birth very much echoed a similar scene in a British low budget flick called "Cradle of Fear" (a not too dissimilar story, similar creature born).

In the end, there was simply too much going on for this to be
effective. Having said that at least he didn't plump for a "There's a
twin!" ending.

Beware the Boo-ed Meaneys!

A while back I got an invitation to "An Evening with Christopher Hampton". He's an interesting writer (and director), perhaps most famous for his screenplay for "Dangerous Liaisons" (directed by Stephen Frears). I think he may have won the Oscar for that. Anyhow tonight his directorial debut, "Carrington", (he's directed another two since), was to be shown with a 'conversation' afterwards. Contrary to my usual tastes I sat near the front this time; the main event for me was the conversation not the movie, though, as I hadn't seen it, that was a bonus.

A real bonus. Probably a little too much bedswapping going on for too little reason (but then wasn't that the case with "Dangerous Liaisons"), but all in all a touching story of a real and unusual love affair. In a nutshell, the painter, Dora Carrington, and the homosexual writer, Lytton Strachey, fell in love, shared lovers and ultimately could not live without each other. The two central performances by Emma Thompson and Jonathan Pryce were generally excellent (doubted Thompson a little towards the end; she doesn't do mad/suicidal easily).

So to the 'conversation'. Helen Meaney was the compere and, as a bonus, Jonathan Pryce, looking very worn, showed up (would have liked to hear more from him as it transpired). Hampton, a short, long grey-haired individual, sounds a little like Tony Blair and like said Tony is well able to talk. Luckily, or we would have gotten nothing from the whole event. Meaney was a disaster; archly she pointed out that "cinema, you know the lights, the cameras, allows you to show emotion without words, doesn't it?". I could have hit her. Ill-prepared and unsuited to any film-oriented discussion, she got worse. Pausing to get her wonderful insights together, a member of the audience managed to butt in. At first I thought this was a blessing; if she couldn't ask anything sensible, let the people who were really interested, those who came to see Hampton, do the work. Unfortunately the audience, which had a high proportion of elderly people, were not going to save the evening. I mention the elderly contigent to highlight the fact that these were no young, hungry students wanting to learn about filmmaking; this was a bunch of pensioners getting in out of the rain (and oh, how it rained, didn't I mention it rained...). I'm being harsh, but they were there for a real conversation, not to learn anything. The interlocutor in the seat behind me seemed to think that his usurping of Meaney for one question allowed him to keep his conversation going. Inane question after inane question flowed from this member of the public ("Why do you think Carrington killed herself?" Didn't you see the movie you emotionally blind idiot!) Then another age-challenged maniac asked "Did you (Hampton) feel the spirit of Carrington?". I was tearing my seat to shreds. Meaney of course didn't have a clue what was going on, nor did she understand that part of her role was to rein things in. What a waste of a golden opportunity?

Why didn't I ask something you may ask? It wasn't entirely because I'm chicken; I have asked questions in similar situations. No, I was angry and yes, couldn't think of anything intelligent to ask. After all there were so many distractions! I was interested in Hampton's work on Conrad's "The Secret Agent", as I am a Conrad fan, but, I am ashamed to say, I haven't seen it (it never got a release here), so felt nervous about asking. I kept racking my brains over what the third movie he directed was (yes, Meaney didn't even give a potted history of his work, possibly because she didn't know it). I just checked there; "Imagining Argentina", another Emma Thompson film and one that I have seen. No masterpiece, but it's heart was in the right place, being an indictment of General Videla and his reign of terror in Argentina. Hampton wrote and directed that movie, surely a project worth a question. And outside of mentioning "Dangerous Liaisons", did we get any background? No. "Mary Reilly", a flop that paired him up with Frears again, any comment? No. And what of his Graham Greene adaptations (eg. "The Quiet American")? Ehh, no. I have just glanced at his IMDB entry and there is a tonne of stuff begging to be asked. Yes, maybe I should have glanced at that beforehand, and yes, haven't I a cheek when I didn't and couldn't do better. But wasn't that Meany's job? Wasn't I a spectator? If I'd known I'd be dancing, I'd have brought my dancing shoes.

Anyway I'll stop griping. I left the cinema and there was Hampton and Pryce still standing outside. Two crumblies had Hampton monopolised, but I got to shake Pryce's hand. He'll always be Sam Lowry as far as I'm concerned, so it was good to meet him.

A little more griping; when I got home there was some TV crap, "Bon Voyage", ripping off "Misery" and more shamelessly (coincidentally a movie on Channel 4 later). Probably some crumbly feeling the spirit of Stephen King.

I am reading Dashiell Hammett's "The Continental Op" right now. Hammett was a true genius, but the Op is unjustly neglected (everyone knows Sam Spade, but who knows the Short, Fat, Balding Man with No Name). I read "Nightmare Town" a few months back which included some Op stories, but all the stories in this volume let him strut his stuff, and so far so excellent. They'd make a great tv series. He's a real little man hero in contrast to cool, Satanic Spade, and I think probably truer to the leanings of good old left-winger Hammett. Spade really only appeared in "The Maltese Falcon" and a couple of shorts. The Op gets at least twenty outings, including two novels, "The Dain Curse" and "Red Harvest" (Hammett's best, in my view).

Just saw in Wikipedia that there were 40 short stories! And "The Dain Curse" has already been adapted for tv. The short stories though, they're the ones to tackle. Yes, a tv series.... Wonder if they're in the public domain....

Not content, I looked a little deeper and the Continental Op story, "Fly Paper", was adapted by Donald E. Westlake for the "Fallen Angels" tv series with Christopher Lloyd as the Op. Not a good choice of Op. Too tall and eccentric.