Milk

I watched this movie on a flight from New York to Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago. It's excellent.

For those of you who don't know, its the bio-pic of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to public office in the USA; in the late 70s.

I feel I have to state up front that the pre-AIDS gay scene, particularly the San Francisco one featured here, fascinates me and repulses me in more or less equal measure.

I find the sense of community, bonding, shared responsibility, shared homes and possessions, etc., really quite appealing - in some ways its oddly reminiscent of the way the Bible portrays the early church; the believers (a persecuted minority) being united in possessions and purpose.

Of course where the SF gay scene in the 70s differs from the early church is the sexual promiscuity, etc.

I did find the sexuality in this movie pretty tough going at times. There's nothing explicit on screen, but I found some of the attitudes and behaviour pretty repulsive - particularly the elevation of the importance of sex above the importance of relationship. There's one scene here where two guys start making out before they even know each other's names. I know this happens in heterosexual as well as homosexual circles, but I still find that pretty uncomfortable viewing.

The movie starts with Harvey Milk recording a message to be played only in the event of his assassination. It sets up your expectations for the film. Before viewing the film, the only two things I knew about Harvey Milk were that he was the first openly gay man elected to public office in the USA, and that he was murdered while in office. However, I think the opening of the film kind of puts false expectations onto the viewer, as he wasn't really murdered for his homosexuality (as is implied at the outset, and throughout the film), but for other political reasons. However, that is really a minor niggle.

Sean Penn gives an outstanding performance as Harvey Milk. How he didn't win awards for this performance is a mystery - this is a masterclass in acting. From the word go, I wasn't watching Sean Penn acting the part of Harvey Milk, I was watching Milk himself. This is a good enough reason to watch the film in itself.

The character of Harvey Milk is also very interesting. He didn't set out to be a politician. Indeed, the film starts on the eve of his 40th birthday when he's reflecting on his life and he realises that he's not really done anything of note. But we see him slowly changing from the attitude of "someone should do something about this..." to "nobody else is going to do something, but I can do something...". Its amazing how this shy guy transforms into a figure head and a leader.

The rest of the cast are good too, and the period setting is perfectly evoked, but this is Penn/Milk's movie.

Its fascinating, informative, thought-provoking and entertaining. Highly recommended.

War of the Worlds (one man show)

"Take a look around you
at the world we've come to know,
Does it seem to be much more
than a crazy circus show?
But maybe from the madness
something beautiful will grow,
In a brave new world,
With just a handful of men.
We'll start, we'll start all over again..."

Just a handful of men? How about only one man?

No one would have believed in the first years of the 21st century that Jeff Wayne's musical epic "The War of the Worlds" could be performed in under an hour at the Edinburgh Fringe. No one could have dreamed that it could be done by one man. Few men even considered the possibility that Jeff Wayne himself would give permission for such a show. And yet in one of the Niddry Street vaults of the 'Underbelly' venue, a mind immeasurably superior to ours dreamed up an excellent show and slowly but surely he performed this play before us.

I think it would be fair to say that I'm a fan of "War of the Worlds". I love the H.G. Wells book. I used to have a tape of the talking book of it (in the 1980s) which I wore out through over-playing. I love Jeff Wayne's musical version of it. I like the 1953 movie. I have a tape of Orson Welles's 1938 radio show. I loved the recent movie starring Tom Cruise. Basically, I like it. A lot.

So when I saw it was on at the Fringe this year, it was my only 'must see' show. I went to see it yesterday. I wasn't sure I was going to like it - how could one man perform the story? How could one man sing the songs? (was he going to sing the songs or was the tape just going to play them?) Was he going to try and play any of the music? Hang on, there's at least one female role in there, how can one man perform 'Spirit of Man' (a duet between Phil Lynott and Julie Covington on the original musical)? But I went and found out.

The venue ("Underbelly's Baby Belly 1") is one of the Niddry Street Vaults - supposedly one of the most haunted places in Edinburgh. Its basically a stone and brick cavern, wide enough for ten chairs with an aisle up the middle and deep enough for a stage (circa 10 feet deep) and about 20 rows of seats. The vaulted ceiling is quite high up and was covered in sheets for the Fringe. Basically, its an atmospheric place. The audience were ushered in at the start of the allotted time with "The Eve of the War" already playing. About half the seats in the place were filled. But it was a Thursday at 4:20pm, so that's not too bad.

Once we were all sitting in place, Pip Utton ran up the aisle, leaped onto the stage and began performing with some of the most iconic words in English literature "No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century..."

I'm always the same when watching plays. The opening few minutes are always a disappointment to me. I'm like "is that it? Just a man in a waistcoat on stage..." this feeling of slight disappointment came to a head when he got to the (almost as iconic) "The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one he said..." - yes, he sung them. But while he hit all the right notes, the man is clearly not a singer. And his timing on some of the words was off slightly. Oh dear.

But then we got into the meat of the story, the cylinder landing on Horsell Common, and the ensuing events, and I was captivated. Next time he sang I realised he was acting in song, not singing. He wasn't aiming to reproduce the vocal performances of the original musical version, he was telling the story and occasionally doing so in song. Thus, his performance of Forever Autumn, while not as musically perfect as the CD was still beautiful and actually more moving than the original. You could feel the loss in the guy's voice: "A gentle rain falls softly on my weary eyes, as if to hide a lonely tear, my life will be forever autumn, 'cause you're not here..." Heartbreaking - in a way that the CD never is.

Of course, to bring the show down to about a 50 minute run time, some of the story and songs had to be abbreviated and one of the songs dropped entirely. Given that this was a one man show it was quite reasonable that 'Spirit of Man' was dropped and the character of Beth, the Parson's wife was lost from the story. That was a shame - as I really like that song - but I guess it had to be done. Thus the performer had only three primary roles to play: The un-named journalist who narrates the story (i.e. Richard Burton in the original recording), the artilleryman (David Essex) and the Parson (Phil Lynott). While performing the character of the artilleryman, he used an accent very similar to David Essex's from the original recording, but also somehow managed to convey a different character through body language. Surprisingly, the Parson was portrayed using a Welsh accent. This worked rather well.

The performance was generally excellent, if I hadn't known every word of the script fairly well I'd only have noticed him fluff his lines once (actually I noticed three deviations from the original words, but two of them would have passed the non geeks by entirely). The only prop on stage was a small 'hill' on the right hand side, but its amazing how much of the atmosphere of the story can be conveyed by a masterful storyteller and some careful use of green, red and white spotlights.

So all in all, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Highly recommended (there's 3 days left, so hurry up). And I'm now - more than ever - inclined to go to the full-scale 30th anniversary tour next year. Tickets on sale in October. If its half as good as the one man show, it'll be great.

Misplaced Childhood?

I went to Parson's Green Primary School in Edinburgh when I was wee (the image on the right is a pupil's recreation of the school logo - its supposed to be a beacon burning for all to see, but I always thought it looked like a litter bin on fire, the bins they had in the playground in the 70s were metal cage-like things).

Anyway. I remember quite enjoying the first two years of my school experience. I had a nice teacher, Miss Mackay (who ended up married to my eldest brother, but that's another story!), I made some friends and generally got on OK.

Then came primary 3 and 4. For two years I had Miss Grosset for a teacher and hated every minute of it. I was a bit of a dreamer but could do sums and writing and the stuff that I was supposed to do, but I did it slowly. Miss G's solution to this problem was to shout at me. Unfortunately, my response to being shouted at was not to speed up and do the work, but to retreat further into daydreams and slow down further. Which made her shout louder. And so on.

I remember one occasion when I'd been going slow on some sums and the class was going swimming in the second half of the morning. I was shouted at and threatened that if I did not finish the sum sheet in question that I would be left while the rest of the class went swimming. I didn't finish the sums. The rest of the class went swimming. I was left - on my own, with no supervision - in the classroom to finish the sums in time for lunch. The teacher in the next door classroom occasionally peeked in, but I was basically left by myself for about 75 minutes. I don't think I ever finished the sum sheet.

Of course, such actions on the part of a teacher would be severely dealt with these days. But that is not really the point I want to make. The thing is, for years I have remembered that day as an example of how bad P3 & P4 were for me. But last week I was talking about it with my wife and I came to realise that this is my only memory of those two years! I can recall several different things that happened in P1 & P2, quite a lot from P5, loads from P6 and P7 but only one from P3 or P4 (and I don't even remember which). I must have blotted out everything else.

Generally, I have a very good memory for events, places, etc. (not people's names, sadly) and I am quite shocked to discover that two years of my life (except one morning) are missing. Can I get it back? Would I want to? I'm not sure.

By the way, P5 (Mrs Quinn), P6 (Miss Stillie & Mrs Hunter) and P7 (Miss Howie) were all reasonably pleasant experiences for me, but I would never have said I enjoyed school until I reached the high school and discovered, much to the surprise of many, that I was really quite good at maths & science.

Anchorman

I finally got around to watching Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy on Friday night. It was funny in bits, but nothing like as funny as I'd been led to believe. I mean, the characters are great and funny, but the actual plot isn't really that funny. Shame.

Kids today...

Kids today, eh?

You know, there's many, many cool things that kids have today that hadn't been invented when I was a kid, or were so overpriced that they couldn't be bought by anyone with a reasonable pocket money allowance. And in almost every instance, I don't wish they had been around or affordable when I was a kid.

It was fine growing up with only 3 channels on the telly (OK, so there were 4 by the time I was 12, but...), no video or DVD (I never had a VCR until I was a student), no iPods, no mobile phones, no handheld games consoles (apart from the occasional space invaders or pacman), no internet (i.e. no hotmail, msn, skype, bebo.com, etc.), and so on. I was even in that unfortunate generation that was slightly too young for skateboards when they were first popular and slightly too old for them when their popularity returned a decade or so later. But I had a great childhood. There's nothing kids have today that I would have wanted back then... except Heelys.

Why, oh why, were these not invented when I was eight? I would have loved a pair of them! I could have coasted around the streets pretending I was one of 'Bailey's Comets' (sorry if that reference was lost on anyone under the age of 35, it was a cartoon in the early 70s). How cool would that have been? Sigh.

Mika - first listen...

I'm currently listening to the Mika album for the first time. I'm about half way through it and really enjoying it!

But then again I like The Darkness, The Feeling and the Scissor Sisters - so I clearly have an inclination to 70s influenced cheese.