Social Lethargy and The Art Of Being Stranded

Feeling a little dark today, my thoughts having turned early this morning to the conversation I had the other day with my wife. She had been in town with her best friend of, amusingly enough, the same name; Anna. Anna of the same name is happily and heavily pregnant with her first child, sired by my friend and accomplished DJ the wonderful Justin. The two Annas had boarded the tram with our daughter in the baby carriage, with help from a kindly fellow passenger. These sorts of spur-of-the-moment courtesies always make my day that little bit brighter, however banal they may seem. Upon arriving at their destination on said tram however, they looked around and asked out loud if somebody would please help them down the three steep steps from the cabin with the baby carriage. Everybody. Everybody turned their heads away and stared vacantly through their respective windows, as if on cue.
Now, having reached a respectable enough age, I'm realistic enough to acknowledge the fact that the once roaring engines of social politics have for some time been left idling and rusting away, but surely; this is something entirely different. Have the population become weary of everyday interaction with people unfamiliar to them? Have they become that jaded? Have they become super-saturated with the mundane and incessant media that is shoved impertinently at them from all directions? I can't help thinking that people in general are in real danger of losing their better sides entirely. Losing their basic good social instincts to the disparagingly ever-increasing amounts of tactless, self-abusive television shows, and invasive paparazzi mentality that the entertainment industry has drubbed into them from an early age. When I was a kid, nobody saw this coming, what with there being three TV channels to choose between, the most shocking programs of that time being no more daring than say, The Sweeney. No-one had any idea that sometime during the next couple of decades, the internet would be zipping through everybody's spare time, an infinite sanctuary from everyday life where the world and all it's tiniest details would be a mere click away, and where everything that was once truly offensive would now be joked about, read about, but never talked about. All of it open for anyone to view, and absorb.  And there's the rub.  People have been fed information at a staggering volume since the advent of the communication age, which naturally, has shortened their attention spans. All of a sudden, Everything is Nothing. The Great Human Comedy is then sadly in peril, life slowly becoming merely a thing for people to chew on and spit out, needing new flavors they won't have time to savor.
Anyway, to get back to Anna and Anna, the two girls were left, needless to say, carrying the carriage off the tram themselves which, what with my wife's hands being strapped into support sleeves, due to her recent carpal tunnel syndrome, and the other Anna being in that most delicate of conditions, was no easy task.
Every time I travel anywhere, I'm as polite as I can be to everyone that I meet. I believe that holding a door open for someone changes them a little as they pass through it, the brief mutual acknowledgment imparting a minuscule amount of what I recognize as being mild happiness. I know that with every small, polite interaction with a fellow human being the world reverts for a while to being just that little bit more engaging. I'm not, thankfully, bored of it yet.

               The Game Of Life: Come on, people; put some effort into it.


Today's review will be a little different, as what I'll be reviewing isn't a film, but a TV series. I'm one of those people who never watches TV, preferring instead to buy DVD box sets whenever a promising series is released, which I'll then watch back to back together with my wife, who luckily enough has similar tastes to mine regarding content and quality. A couple of years ago, I watched a series called Lost, which was one of the more engaging stories I've encountered so far, picking through the myriad  programs offered on the shelves of the media outlets, their packaging, interestingly, having become as much a part of the viewing experience as the content therein. This is something that has become more commonplace over the decades, giving rise to the "must have" phenomenon; the alluringly designed boxes, emblazoned with words like "special edition" or "extended version", allowing even the humblest consumer to feel like a true collector. However, Lost would gain nothing by being released in an extended version, having been produced with so many layers and sub-plots that keeping up with the ever-shifting storyline is actually challenging. Luckily, each episode begins with a recap, one of the actor's voices saying: "Previously, on Lost", after which follows a brief summary of past events in the series. This is common practice with TV shows, the summaries always centering around the characters that are to be in focus in the episode that they precede, and it's this method of reference that allows us to instantly re-immerse ourselves in each character's individual story, in order to follow each sub-plot more easily. But I digress. Having seen all the episodes up to the middle of the third season, I found my interest waning. I put it down, so to speak. I think it was due to the fact that there were too many questions left unanswered in the storyline, and I was becoming impatient. Just lately, I decided I needed to know how things turned out, so I watched the entire third season again, then the fourth, and am now enjoying the fifth. There are six seasons altogether, and the storyline has taken quite a few interesting twists and turns, something that the writers of this particular series are very good at adding, keeping the viewer on their toes with new surprises around every corner. Lost, for anyone who hasn't seen it, is a story that reflects the Big Brother Reality TV mentality; that voyeuristic study of human interaction, but does so with a storyline that is boldly different and cleverly written, putting one in mind of classics like the 60's show The Prisoner.  But where Patrick McGoohan's character Number Six was the main focus of The Prisoner, Lost  focuses on many different individuals. This is obviously a smart way to write a series, creating a character list from which everybody can choose their own personal favorites. Unlike real life, where several people will form a small group, due to shared interests or similar personalities, each person portrayed in the story has a particular personality trait of their own, which renders them unique within the storyline and, ultimately, alone. I'm looking forward to seeing how it all ends, and I'm hoping that the final revelation is as remarkable as the story has been.

              Perplexing Paradise: Nothing is as it seems when you're Lost

Quentin Beck,
December 6th, 2010

 

This month's Celebrity Robot Picture is sent in by Max von Sydow

Punk, Sell-Outs, and The Great Rock 'n Roll Dream

Little Miss Lipstick looks from her window,
Everything is tarmac and asphalt

-Escalators

All the men here dress like kids,
and all the kids dress like super-heroes.

-Greenberg

I'm not going to say that when I was a younger man, music had far more to offer in terms of artistic value, or that back then, music was produced by people with real talent. I'm not going to take the parental, authoritative view that all us snotty nosed little punk rockers and new romantics balked at back then, and say that the music the youth of today listens to is mostly just a load of old bunk. Alright, I am.
I can see why the older generation of my youth would feel that the songs and bands that influenced them as adolescents were far superior to the angry, volatile clusters of anarchy that we drew our inspiration from, but of course one has to remember that music tends to reflect the times in which it's written, and the music of our generation was created in the jet-stream of the failed love gurus and harmony poets of the 60's, and the faded family man crooners and homemaker divas of the 70's. All the sun-bleached, potpourri twaddle about never-ending devotion and blossoming adoration in the face of the global political chaos that galloped and shrieked around the edges of all that fluffy nonsense, well…something had to give. Now I know that all sounds a little harsh, but I'm not belittling the stars of yesteryear, indeed, I hold the greatest respect for such artists as Shirley Bassey, Jack Jones, Karen Carpenter and all the countless other great voices that defined the music industry of their respective eras, but as a young, raging ball of existential frustration and indignant hormones, these figures were merely something to be ridiculed, the stuff that old people listened to, and were thus rudely trampled beneath the (air cushioned) soles of our rebellious Doctor Martens. Nowadays, the insurrectionary fires of my youthful (mis)guided-missile-crusades have long since been stamped out to make room for the real world, which is, on reflection, far simpler. However, in these times of sado/masochistic shlock horror, and woefully bad, IQ butchering, soulless TV, where music's new generation has been conned into the sell, rather than drawn by the concept, it's easy to see that any decline in musical standards that has occurred since the advent of such institutions as MTV, is wholly the work of the corporate establishment. To put it another way, it's a sellout unlike any the world has seen before; an entire art form, packaged and sold to a junk-food generation who have been served with far too much garnish, and not enough filling, so to speak.  As a younger man, I was a member of several bands, one of them, Pearldivers, formed together with my two brothers, and though we never got further than the demo-tape stage, we produced music that actually had a point, that had something to say. Nowadays, it seems that it doesn't matter what your message is, as long as you have the right abdominal muscles. Oh, I know there are still artists around today both upcoming and established that have actual talent (and if any of you ever read this; you know who you are), but they have been back-shelved by the über-consumption bling that seems to define today's culture, where 18 is no longer considered young, and 40 is the age at which people start trying to find direction. I'm not as bitter as this post may come across as being, however, despite being well aware that the primal scream that we all followed back then is now but an echo in this new, shifting, high-speed jungle in which we find ourselves. I maintain that one should never be sad because something has passed, but should instead be glad that it has happened.
For after all, it was those wild, mutinous days that defined who we would, and in many ways shouldn't, be.

                            Angry Youth: Those were indeed The Days


Today's movie choice is Nicholas Stoller's Get Him To The Greek, a comedy starring Russell Brand, Jonah Hill, Rose Byrne and Elisabeth Moss. It's the story of a rookie talent scout from LA, Aaron Green (Hill) who gets roped into the arduous task of escorting fallen rock star Aldous Snow (Brand) from London to LA, so that he can perform a gig at the Greek Theatre, marking the ten-year anniversary of Snow's old band Infant Sorrow's infamous concert at the same venue. Snow has recently lost his superstar credibility following the release of his song African Child, described by NME as being "the worst thing to happen to Africa since apartheid". What follows is a roller-coaster ride of drugs, alcohol, women and more drugs, with Green trying desperately to keep up with Snow's formidable tolerance levels and equally punishing appetites while simultaneously trying to maintain his relationship with Daphne (Moss), his girlfriend. Similarly, Snow has issues with his ex, Jackie Q (Byrne), whose extreme lifestyle is the only thing Snow truly relates to. The film plays out at breakneck speed, resting only occasionally to allow the plot to thicken, before once again catapulting us into the mayhem of excess that is the world of rock. Funny and engaging, and spiced with the appearance of several big stars playing themselves, this is what has, sadly, become a rarity in today's cinema; a comedy that works. Both Hill and Brand are superbly cast, the chemistry between them perfectly conveying the confusion of social culture shock while generating just the right amount of sympathy for their lovably fallible characters.  A slight dip on the overall performance scale would have to be said to be the ending, where the usual moral message is delivered which, after the quality and pace of the rest of the story, is about as welcome as the bill at the end of a meal, and is something you just have to accept. Stoller is no stranger to comedy, having already cut his teeth writing the screenplay for the Jim Carrey hit Yes Man. With the right creative licence, we could be seeing great things from this man in the future.

                        Rock Bottom: Hill and Brand on a collision course

Quentin Beck,
November 17th, 2010

Culture Clashes, Quiet Places, and Crap Vampires

 We walked around the lake
And woke up in the rain
And everyone turned over
Troubled in their dreams again
-The Cure



Well, here we are again and as usual, it's been far too long since my last entry. Things have been busy aboard HMS Beck, the crew working on reduced rations and only a few hours of sleep, but we've a strong wind in our sails and spirits are high.
My latest exploits within the field of film making have been enlightening, the central focus of which have been culture. Early in the week, I began work on a project with my friend and sometime colleague The Kingpin, the theme being to examine the cultural differences between Sweden and well, everybody else. We started our day with a prodigious breakfast of fried eggs, bacon and potatoes, washed down with a nice, strong cup of tea. Once fortified with this honking great mountain of food, we were ready for anything. We then took our rented production car, a Citroen C3, and whizzed away to our first location of the day, the home of an Egyptian gentleman who we will call Bakari, who has been living in Sweden with his wife and child for some time, and who had plenty to say about Swedes as a people. It was interesting to hear his observations, which largely referred to the fact that Swedes are a lot less extroverted than your average European. I can't say I entirely agree, having always found them to be very open, and easy to make contact with. The other people that we interviewed throughout the following two days, who hail from countries such as Canada, Iran, and Japan held very much the same view, and although I can see what they are driving at, I don't think they quite hit the nail on the head. The thing with Swedes isn't that they are introverted, but rather, as a Swedish language student we interviewed put it, very lagom.  Lagom is a word that the English language has no equivalent for, and means, translating as closely as is possible, just right. That is to say that Swedes like to keep a slightly lower profile than most, not wanting to stick out too much, or blow their own trumpet, as it were. Swedes themselves hold the general opinion that they are a shy race, and less outgoing than us loudmouthed Johnnies from across the water. On the whole, I find them pleasant company, good listeners, and satisfyingly enlightened. All in all it was a fun project to work on, although there is still quite a lot of material left to edit.
That, however, will have to wait, because this weekend finds us up in Värmland, a few hour's drive North of Gothenburg, where we are visiting relatives. Leia's grandparents, to be precise. Värmland is a beautiful place at any time of the year, positively bursting with birch and pine forests, and still, misty lakes that, as lakes have a habit of doing, seem to suck the sounds out of the air and produce a silence like that of an empty church, seeming almost unreal for an outdoor location. They are magic places, lakes, and when standing by them on these hushed, chilly days, I'm almost tempted to switch off my telephone for fear of breaking that perfect quiet.

              Beautiful Silence: Lakes are nature's way of saying Shhhhhhh.


Winter is almost upon us, and it's once again time to fit the snow tyres onto the car, a job that my father-in-law can do in a tenth of the time that it takes me to do it. He is a man who has, and I quote, 'petrol in his blood', and what he doesn't know about cars isn't worth knowing. My daughter is fascinated by him, always breaking into a huge smile whenever she sees him, which in turn makes him visibly swell with pride, and go gooey in that special way that only grown men can. My own father is affected by her in the same way, and seeing how he is around her sends me rushing back to some of my earliest childhood memories, to a time when our home was a happy one, when Christmas was an enchanted time, and summers lasted forever. Those images have never entirely faded from my mind, but since Leia's arrival, something has stirred within me, bringing them back with far greater clarity, and along with them a strange kind of yearning sensation, as if some part of me longs to relive those days of simple, worry-free existence, when the world was further away from us. Today, everything seems inescapably close, and getting away from it requires real effort.
Ah well; there's always the lakes.

I always round off my blog entries with a small film critique, and this time won't be any exception. I'm not, however going to be as positive as I usually am. Three years ago, I watched a film about vampires. It was set in an Alaskan town called Barrow, and was different from other vampire films, being more (and I use this word with reservation) realistic than the usual yarns spun surrounding these eternally popular creatures. It was called 30 Days Of Night, and starred Josh Harnett, Melissa George, and Danny Huston. Directed by Hard Candy helmer David Slade, it was brutally simple, and filmed in a way that didn't employ the usual Hollywood film methods of making everyone look like they've stepped out of the make-up trailer before every scene is shot, and where the vampires are all eloquent goth-new romantics who are dreadfully bored with everything, except their wardrobe. I liked it. Along with the brilliant Swedish production Let The Right One In, and Tony Scott's The Hunger, from 1983, it's to my mind one of the only few vampire films worth watching. So, when I found out about the sequel, entitled 30 Days Of Night: Dark Days, I was naturally excited and perched myself in my seat, popcorn in hand, ready for more of the same. What I didn't consider however, was the fact that sequels to decent films are almost always terrible by comparison, created to turn a success into a franchise. Dark Days started out with a glimpse of the events in Barrow, and my hopes were high. What followed was, simply put, rubbish. The story quickly turned into a tenuous Let's-Form-A-Team-Of-Vampire-Hunters spiel, which was about as convincing as an episode of Dukes Of Hazzard. Why film makers insist on making their vampires act like brainless reptiles whose entire communicative ambit consists of baring their fangs at the moonlight, (or just the ceiling), hissing and screeching, is anybody's guess. Not even the DoP Eric Maddison's capable camera work could save the day. Painfully predictable and embarrassingly weak, this awful farce goes from bad to nonsensical. Relative newcomer Ben Ketai directed this film, and one can only hope he pulls his socks up in the future, because films like this are all too commonplace in today's cinema, and annoyingly, usually make enough money to keep the cash cow fed and milked. Or bled, as the case may be.

       Bloody Stupid: Kiele Sanchez, soaked in....er....looks like Ribena.

Quentin Beck,
November 7th 2010

Not So Secret Societies, Golden Woodlands and New York Families

The elm, the ash and the linden tree
The dark and deep, enchanted sea
The trembling moon and the stars unfurled
There she goes, my beautiful world

-Nick Cave


Once again, I've been absent from The Ether, due to baby duties, made twice as demanding by my poor wife's condition. She has been afflicted with carpal tunnel syndrome, which is, at best, rather taxing. For those who are not familiar with the term, carpal tunnel syndrome is caused by compression of the median nerve, which travels through the carpal tunnel, the latter being the passageway that connects the distal forearm to the centre part of the palm of the hand. This compression causes sharp pain when flexing the digits, particularly the thumbs, which basically means that using your hands for anything more complicated than waving hurts like buggery. So, Captain Beck has donned his Cape Of Omnipresence, and is manning all stations himself for the foreseeable future. Still, doing all the cooking, cleaning, shopping, nappy changing, baby dressing, baby bathing, laundry, (and all the rest of the chores that child raising entails) has caused me to slip into a somewhat more sensible routine regarding sleeping times, eating patterns, and well, everything. The concept of fatherhood did, initially, worry me regarding the amount of work it would necessitate and yes; it is a lot of work, but (yes, I'm going to say it) so worth the effort.
In my pre-parental days, I would regard the packs of pram-piloting, cake eating, café dwelling mothers (that would invade every food court in the city) with complete disinterest, the idea that I would one day share some common ground with them never once occurring to me. Now, it's a completely different story. I can walk into any café, restaurant, clothing store, you name it, and strike up a conversation with the nearest pram-pusher about anything at all. As long as it's babies. It's like I suddenly belong to a society that while in plain sight, is unreachable for the average (childless) person. As a man, it's particularly amusing to ask questions and advice of these amiable women, who absolutely delight in handing out tips and pointers, so much so that when in groups, they often try to outdo one another with their parental pearls of erudition. Plus, if you happen to know anything at all about women's fashion, then you're in like Flynn.

                                  Key To The City;  Leia and friends
                                           

I took my wife Anna and Leia (my daughter, for those who are first-timers here aboard HMS Beck) to a business meeting with me today, and it was a quirky, but enjoyable sensation, strutting around the conference room discussing camera angles and lighting possibilities while she was propped up on my shoulder, eying everyone in the room with a mischievous twinkle in her tiny eyes, as if to say; My Dad used to be in charge at home, but now I'm the one calling all the fucking shots, me, the boss. She's a hard woman, my daughter, but in a world like this one, that's got to count for something.
Autumn has arrived, bringing with it a palette of breathtaking golds and reds, and it's exactly this time of the season that I find most appealing, when there are as many leaves on the ground as there are on the trees themselves, carpeting the damp, sun-speckled woods with a thick, crunchy layer of what looks from a distance like shavings from colouring pencils. The air is crisp, yet warm, and there is a smell to it that can only be described as alive. I shall be out a lot these coming weeks.

                             Spectacular; Autumn, showing off again

My movie choice today is Everybody's Fine directed by Kirk Jones, and starring Robert De Niro, Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell.  Set on the Pennsylvania side of New York, in a town called Elmira, it tells the story of Frank Goode, recently widowed and feeling increasingly more aware of the fact that his relationship with his children is a lot more shallow than he would like to admit. After each of his now adult offspring cancel spending a barbeque weekend with him at the last moment, he decides to go against his doctor's orders and takes a trip to visit each of them unannounced. The resulting encounters reveal that none of his brood are what he has been led to believe, the truth about them having been instead embellished over the years to suit his expectations. A brilliantly layered character interpretation by De Niro is accompanied perfectly by the equally masterful Sam Rockwell, and strong performances from Barrymore and Beckinsale all bring this poignant tale to the table with just the right amount of trimmings to leave one feeling satisfied enough to waive dessert. Simple but stirring, this film serves to remind us all that life is indeed what we make it.

               Happy Families; De Niro and Rockwell strengthen the  bond
                                       
                                          
Quentin Beck,
October 11th 2010

Fatherhood, Artful Food, and The Wastelands

"A little me or he or she to fill up with my dreams
a way of saying life is not a loss" - Lou Reed  Beginning Of A Great Adventure


It's been a while since my last entry, and with good reason; I am now a father. My wife finally gave birth to a beautiful little girl, who we have named Leia. She has definitely got my eyes, and my wife's mouth, though as for the nose, it's a little hard to tell; all babies seem to have a similar nose when newborn, that being a small button variant, similar to that of the small pen-top trolls you could buy when I was a kid, the ones with the coloured hair that stood up like cotton candy flames. I had not fully understood what it would feel like to witness a birth, and as experiences go, it was a doozy. The intoxicating mixture of sweat, toil, pain and overwhelming relief, and to hold for the first time our own child, well; I could try to transmute this maelstrom of stimuli into words, but it would be like attempting to depict the universe using an Etch-a-Sketch. Looking at that tiny, over-expressive face that never seems to stop moving completely, I am filled with a combined sense of pride, bewilderment, awe, and complete and utter love. That may sound like the cliché that all other clichés gather and pray at the foot of, but this is truly what I feel at the sight of this wonderful little person. I don't believe in God, having never been convinced that any sentient force would ever have that much free time on their hands, but I do finally understand why people can hold on to such convictions. It is the closest thing to an actual water-to-wine miracle anyone can ever hope to witness. That, or England winning the world cup ever again.

                              Mini Mine; Leia gets to grips with her dad.

Anyhoo, this month finds Captain Beck in Italy, and the sweet-smelling valleys and hills of succulent Verona, with its vineyards, fountains and jaw-droppingly romantic vistas. A man could get used to this, and quite quickly. I am not, however, merely tooling around this delicious part of our continent for pleasure; 'Tis my trade that summons me here, and alas, Mrs.Beck and the small, squashy individual that we have produced are back home in Sweden. Luckily, I am flying home every weekend to be with them, leaving Verona's airport every Friday, and arriving in Gothenburg via Frankfurt at around midday. Then it's a whole weekend of nappies, fun and frolics, more nappies and sporadic, brief periods of sleep, stolen between baby maintenance before Monday whisks me away once again to Grappa Town. I am always grateful when my work brings me to Italy, because of one thing in particular, that being food. The Italian kitchen is heaven for a man of my gastronomic tastes, its raw produce being largely domestic, and procured from soil that seems specifically designed to cultivate mind-bendingly palatable grub, and arguably some of the finest wines on Earth. The mediterranean has always been at the top of my Where To Have Lunch list, but the italians have always been the cup holders in my opinion, with the French pantry coming in at a hugely respectable second place. I've always maintained that when it comes to all things edible, the French are master craftsmen, but the Italians are, quite simply, artists.  I tend to find when flying back from this exceedingly enjoyable country that the normally bland comestibles offered in-flight taste particularly insipid, and usually opt to forego them. Anyone who hasn't been to Verona should do so immediately, and breathe in its soothing, complex perfumes, best enjoyed over a glass or two of some of its excellent local Valpolicella. Salute!

                        Wish You Were Here;  Verona will seduce you, all
                        too  easily.

 
My movie choice today is The Book Of Eli, (WARNING: SPOILER ALERT) directed by Albert and Allen Hughes, and tells the story of Eli, played by Denzel Washington, a lone warrior travelling a post-apocalyptic road headed West, where he must deliver a sacred book that holds the key to mankind's survival. Anyone with half a brain will work out which book our tattered hero is carrying, and at the risk of annoying anyone subscribing to the Christian faith, this is where the film almost falls flat, but hey; if Hollywood can afford to harp on about the apparently imminent apocalypse, then it can do so about The Good Book. And boy, does it ever. Still, these things aside, Eli is an entertaining enough yarn, that smacks strongly of the classic spaghetti western, although Denzel's character would probably have kicked the living buggery out of Eastwood's nameless gunslinger.
The film's wonderfully enigmatic villain Carnegie is played by Gary Oldman, who covets the book, and will do anything to relieve Eli of it. Some interesting supporting roles from the likes of Jennifer Beals, Frances de la Tour, Michael Gambon and none other than Tom Waits lend the action some extra quirkiness, but ultimately, the film's real saviour is Don Burgess, the Director of Photography. His too-close-for-comfort, fast paced comic book style of shooting holds the key to the film's intensity.
If one is willing to look past the Swiss cheese screenplay, what we have here is an enjoyable tough-guy movie, although that's all it ever really manages to be. This kind of movie is always in danger of choking on it's own popcorn, but Washington pulls off the role convincingly enough. I just can't help thinking that if this had been made in Sergio Leone's time, it would be far more remembered than it will be tomorrow.

                       Rough Trade; Denzel barters for water in Carnegie's
                       violent town.

Quentin Beck
September 9th, 2010

Babies, babies, all around.

Babies, babies, babies. Everywhere. I'm experiencing that same strange association to babies that one has when buying a new car, suddenly seeing the same model all over the place. My wife and I are expecting our first baby (it's due today, actually) and for this reason I am noticing babies and pregnant bellies wherever I look. One thing that has definitely changed when it comes to these small, pink individuals is the way I relate to them being around me. There was a time (not long ago) when I would find the sound of a screaming child to be about as comfortable as an airhorn amplified through a tube screamer, but lately the sound of one of those plump, high-pitched tykes sends small ripples of anticipation through me as I picture myself (for the thousandth time) cradling one of these fascinating little sprogs in my arms, the image strangely enough always in black and white. This is probably something to do with the 90's, when every postcard stand was full of monochromatic pictures of oiled, naked musclemen holding tiny babies in dimly lit rooms. Not that I'd actually oil up for it.
I'm on my way to town to meet The Kingpin for a coffee and a chat about website design, something which I've lately become very interested in. There are a number of fairly decent programs available for those interested in building a simple website, perhaps the best of them being Rapidweaver, which I'm told is an easy-to-use program that allows you to design, build and run your own site, updating and changing it as you go. This is definitely going to be my choice when I put mine together. Perhaps I'll even include a blog on the site, just for good measure. Hmmm. The Kingpin's late.
My movie choice today is Fish Tank, which stars Katie Jarvis*, Michael Fassbender, Kierston Wareing, and Rebecca Griffiths. Written and directed by relative newcomer Andrea Arnold, it's a brutally naked film centered around the life of 15 year-old Mia (Jarvis); a tough, mouthy girl growing up on a decaying housing estate in Essex, together with her unloving and often drunk mother Joanne (Wareing) and a younger sister Tyler (Griffiths) who is already showing signs of corruption from being raised in what can only be described as the wrong place for a kid to be. Things start looking up for the family when Joanne's handsome new Irish boyfriend Connor (Fassbender) arrives and wins everyone's hearts, but a secret lies in the wings that will soon throw everything into discord. Directed with a lot of heart this frank, moving film will leave most people feeling pity for its wretched characters, and distaste at the world in which they are forced to live, and yet Arnold manages to light up the darkness with glimpses of beauty in stark contrast to the grim, cheerless backdrop of urban half-life. Engagingly executed, with powerful performances from a well-picked cast, we can expect more good things from this director, her next endeavour being Wuthering Heights. If Fish Tank is anything to go by, it should to be well worth a trip to the cinema.

Quentin Beck
August 7th, 2010

*Katie Jarvis is rumored to be on the short list for the role of Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher's US adaptation of Stieg Larsson's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, opposite Daniel Craig, who is (also rumored) to be playing the lead male role of the journalist Mikael Blomqvist. Fingers crossed.

This month's Celebrity Robot Picture was sent in by Charles Dance

Coffee, Monsoon Season and Missing Patients

Today it's raining with the volume one usually associates with a monsoon scene from a 50's jungle movie, falling heavily enough to cause small leaks in the roof of the tram in which I am currently sitting. I do confess to liking this kind of weather; buildings and structures becoming pleasingly reflective, bringing dull surfaces to life and lending the surroundings a vibrant, organic feel that always has me reaching for my camera.
I'm on my way into the city to meet The Stormbringer for a coffee, and as is always the case with him, he'll be there before I am. We'll talk about everything from guitar licks to classic cinema, rarely experiencing any prolonged moments of silence, and after about an hour we'll shake hands and say goodbye with a promise of lunch or another coffee during the next couple of days.
Two hours later, having bid The Stormbringer farewell, I'm on my way home. I'm watching the people through the rain-distorted glass of the tram's windows as they mill around under any available shelter. This time of year the weather can change dramatically from one day to the next, going from deluge to drought so suddenly that planning any kind of outdoor activity is more or less impossible. One of the things I've always liked about this country is the fact that the seasons are always clearly defined; the spring being fresh, colourful and green, the summers hot and lazy, the autumns bracing, wet and vibrant, and the winters white and crisp, but at this particular time of year the sun and rain seem to squabble with each other, locked in a shouting match that lasts for a month. The thing that takes the most getting used to here is that the winters last for six months, which means that the spring, summer and autumn are experienced as being over all too quickly. This does however make them seem far sweeter for their brevity.

My choice of movie for today is Martin Scorsese's brilliant Shutter Island, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo and Ben Kingsley. Set in 1954, it's the story of US marshal Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) and his partner Chuck Aule (Ruffalo), whose investigation into the disappearance of a patient from Boston's Ashecliff Hospital on Shutter Island turns into something far more sinister, as he races to uncover the truth about what's been taking place there. Shot with breathtaking colour and contrast, it leaves you with the impression that you've just watched a piece of true classic cinema, each scene painstakingly arranged with an air of pre-digital finesse, from a time when Technicolor was the word on everyone's lips. Based on the novel of the same name written by Dennis Lehane, who also wrote Mystic River, the story itself is compellingly and intelligently woven, and has you hooked from word one.
Fine performances from a cast that includes a quietly enigmatic Ben Kingsley as the hospital's director Dr. John Cawley together with Scorsese's scalpel-fine directing sew this disturbing tale up tightly, as the viewer is drawn inexorably into the island's mysterious web.
DiCaprio is an actor who has accomplished a great deal, from being a bit-part actor in various tv series before bouncing onto the big screen in the 90's, his big break coming in 1993 playing opposite Johnny Depp and Juliette Lewis in Lasse Hällström's much-loved What's Eating Gilbert Grape. He is currently appearing in Christopher Nolan's Inception, a sci-fi action thriller about dream invasion, and is due to hit the screen next year in Clint Eastwood's Hoover as J.Edgar himself. Another project he is rumored to be involved in, although at the moment only in pre-production stage, is the film adaptation of the comic-book hero Aquaman. Sounds like fun.

Quentin Beck
July 31st 2010

Sausages, Kippers and The End Of The World

As I've mentioned before, I've lived in Sweden in the city of Gothenburg since the late 80's, and although there are things that I miss about England, I'll never move back there. It's merely a question of routine however, as I understand very little about how things work in England nowadays, and would quite frankly feel somewhat adrift if I were to try to settle there again.
One thing in particular that I often find my thoughts drawn to is English food. I have on numerous occasions heard Swedes mention the fact that we don't have any notable cuisine in England, and that the only dish we're recognized for is fish and chips. They are of course wrong, obviously never having tried a saveloy, and usually not having experienced England outside of the typical tourist guide areas of London, where one would be hard pressed to find any traditional English dishes*, settling instead for a plate of ribs or a curry. Hang on; I think curry might be considered traditional by now.
What then, is traditional English food? If I try to explain about Sunday roasts, (something I miss most of all from my time still living in England) people always look at me as though they're thinking: Nope. I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, but I'm just gonna keep smiling agreeably, with that fond, reminiscent expression on my face until I can change the subject. Yorkshire what? Eeeeuuuurrrrgggghhhh. Oh God, please stop talking. Basically, much like any other country I can think of, national dishes encompass anything that has traditionally been eaten by anyone but the wealthy, often composed of sausages, liver, minced meat or leftovers stuffed into pies or batter mix or sometimes thrown in with what basically can be described as edible waste, and given whimsically diverting names like Toad In The Hole, Spotted Dick, or Bubble & Squeak. No, people should definitely keep their weird, stodgy traditional food to themselves.
Another thing I can get a yearning for is being able to walk into a pub and get a ploughman's lunch, with decently fattening pork pie, a doorstop of good strong cheddar, a car-park-sized slice of thickly cut crusty bread, pickled onions and all the trimmings. Yum.  But one can make do, if one knows where to look for ingredients and is prepared to spend a little more money, imported foods being smashingly expensive compared to domestic produce. We are lucky enough to have a specialist food shop here in Gothenburg called, unsurprisingly, The English Shop, and therein among the tightly packed shelves, one can find most of the old favourites, from Twiglets to Bisto Gravy Granules, to Quality Street. As I said, it's a little pricey but in my opinion, well worth it. Having said that, some foods are much cheaper and more readily available here. Yesterday for example, I fried some smoked kippers for dinner, which were picked up by a good friend of mine from a fish smoker north of here, who has a small shop on a boat. I served them with fresh mushrooms and aubergines, that I'd butter-fried with chives and a sprinkling of lemon pepper, and I have to say they were probably the most delicious kippers I've ever eaten.
Buuuuurrrrppp!!!!
Today's film mention is The Road, directed by John Hillcoat, and adapted from Cormac McCarthy's** novel of the same name. It stars Viggo Mortensen, Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce and Kodi Smit-McPhee, with a somewhat short appearance by Charlize Theron, and is the story of a man, (Mortensen) and his son (Smit McPhee) as they attempt to survive a post-apocalyptic America. Very little is said about the nature of the apocalypse, and we are left to assume that it was some form of environmental disaster that has killed virtually everyone and everything on Earth including all plant life, and has completely obscured the sun, causing temperatures to plummet to brutal depths. Bleak and honest, the story focuses on the duo as they pick their way south in the hopes of finding a better climate. Their path is strewn with hazards however, and they are forced to deal with everything from near-starvation to bands of wandering cannibals. A competent appearance from Robert Duvall as a lonely old traveller adds more human drama as the two traverse the desolate, lifeless wastelands in search of anything edible and adequately sheltered resting places. Other films have broached the subject of impending ecological doom, such as the ambitious but nonsensical The Day After Tomorrow, but few manage to deliver their message as effectively as Hillcoat's dark tale, and the secret is in its simplicity, and the fact that the aftermath, which is the film's focal point, is far more terrifying than the event itself. A fine performance by Mortensen, who has come an awfully long way since  starting his screen career as a young Amish farmer in Peter Weir's wonderful Witness, in 1985. Expect more good things from this powerhouse actor, whose next project will be playing none other than Sigmund Freud in David Cronenberg's 2011 release A Dangerous Method, which I'll probably watch while eating a jumbo bag of salt & vinegar flavoured Monster Munch. Can't wait.

Quentin Beck
July 26th 2010

*Short of perhaps some of the traditional pies and puddings served at Porters restaurant-cum-winebar, just off Covent Garden
**Who also wrote the brilliant No Country For Old Men

Glaciers, Trains and Weapons of Mass Destruction

'And I'm waving through the window. As we go, somebody says "What are you waving at?" But what do I have to lose? Somebody might wave back.'
-Waterboys


I had one of the strangest dreams last night. I was piloting an enormous drilling machine, shaped like a giant, sharpened lipstick (I say piloting because I was actually sitting in a high-tech cockpit like that of a fighter jet, complete with joystick controls and wearing a mirrored helmet) drilling my way down through the largest glacier in existence. It was okay. I woke up wondering if I was going to get paid once I'd tunneled all the way through. I'm not sure I want to know the meaning of this one. Blisteringly Freudian.
Three hours later and I'm sitting at the central train station in Gothenburg, Sweden, where I have resided now for over half my life. Gothenburg that is, not the train station. I'm on my way to the main college in Uddevalla, north of here for a business meeting, and as usual I'm enjoying watching the crowds of people as they flow around each other at varying speeds. It's a little reminiscent of driving in Paris.
I like train stations a lot more than I like airports, the latter often being filled with tired, stressed individuals who look as though they might punch you in the face if you so much as ask them the time of day. Train stations are always permeated by a slightly easier energy; the passengers always travel a little lighter, and over shorter distances, meaning they don't usually get time to reach boiling point before arriving at their destination. The best way to move through a crowded train station is to wear headphones and listen to something organic, like Portishead or Morcheeba while watching the people around you. This instantly gives you the feeling that you are part of an elaborate video that, oddly enough, fits the music perfectly.
Another hour has tiptoed past and I'm on the train, sharing that quirky elevator anonymity with everyone else. The city starts to thin out as we speed past it's outer districts, and perfectly fluffy Simpsons style clouds hang in the tall blue sky like badly photoshopped cotton-wool. It's a fine day for getting out of the city.
I'm thinking of my wife, who is heavily pregnant with our first child, and I'm filled with a little rush of something that feels like positively charged vertigo. Becoming a father is something that I always knew I'd do, but now I find myself at this point, I'm a stew of pleasingly positive emotions, often catching myself staring at families with small children wearing a slight smile, my eyes with a watery glaze to them. I must look weird. A million questions about fatherhood cross my mind at those moments, and I push these aside, telling myself that as a human being my persona is in a constant state of evolution and therefore any answers, opinions or advice I may give my baby as it* grows while being (hopefully) morally sound and correct, will reflect the existential state I currently find myself in. Duh.
As I sit writing this, the scenery rushing by becoming greener with every minute, I note with some amusement that everyone in the compartment (including myself) is preoccupied with their own small piece of technology; phones, cameras, mp3 players and laptops. It seems we've perfected our own ingenious way of avoiding the awkward silence that deafens people when they're placed together in a small area. Sometimes I wonder what their reaction would be if I suddenly whipped out a kazoo and gave a noisy rendition of the theme from Rhubarb & Custard.
Yesterday's film was Green Zone, a modern war flick directed by Paul Greengrass about the controversy surrounding the American army's presence in Iraq, the plot focusing on the fact that the US action of sending teams of soldiers into the country to locate and seize weapons of mass destruction was merely a front to allow the strategic deployment of military forces in order to dissolve the already divided government and place a puppet leader in power. Starring Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear, it's a fairly run-of-the-mill Hollywood bash that focuses on a troop led by Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Damon) looking for Iraqi chemical weapon sites during the confused, powder keg days following Saddam's overthrow, with plenty of military terms and abbreviations thrown around to lend all the relevant characters the appropriate sense of authority. Scenes of hushed, high-level intrigue noisily intermixed with segments of chaotic mob tension and running, pitched nighttime battles. It's here, during the combat scenes that Greengrass finds his feet, the action taut and claustrophobically shot with hand-held cameras and a disturbing lack of music. While it's not the best film I've seen recently, the sensation of scuttling through the bullet-riddled streets of Baghdad in the dark will definitely stay with me for a long time to come.
I'm reaching for my headphones now, as I'm approaching my destination. Mazzy Star should suit the campus crowd quite nicely.


Quentin Beck
July 23rd 2010

*I use the word it as we don't know what sex it will be

Creative Progress

There is decidedly more that can be learned from watching films than I'd care to admit. I'm not talking about the complexities of life, being more than happy to leave that in the hands of those who experience cinema without ever so much as glancing beneath it's onion-skinned layers. I'm referring to the art itself.
One man's wine being another man's vinegar set aside, I enjoy disliking a film just as much as loving one, and that simple fact that makes me realize how lucky I am.
That being said, it's quite staggering to see how many films are being made (despite the recession) by people commanding astronomical budgets, their epic-scale offerings mostly having so little actual substance that they can be likened to nothing more than extremely long pop videos. This is of course hardly surprising, given that today's filmmaking generation was raised on the aforementioned medium. Paradoxically, Many viewed the video as the death of the music industry, at least as a source of true talent, while others saw it as a bright, challenging new platform from which one could rewrite the laws of The Moving Image.
This brings me somewhat tenuously to my point. There seems to be a general school of thought within the film industry that asks: Where to now? What haven't we tried? It seems that so many of today's up-and-coming directors, and not too few of the well established ones, are so caught up in this problem that they forget to ask themselves if they should be trying to find this particular holy grail. Don't get me wrong; if I see something that hasn't been tried before and it works, I'm all over it. But when I see something that leans entirely on that one technological crutch, I see a wasted opportunity. I want the twist. I want the impact. I want the sequel to have a point. Which brings us back to the wine and vinegar, which are becoming increasingly harder to differentiate between.
Flavour is a good comparison to most creative arts. Music, for example changes it's flavour constantly, as does cinema. The current trend of over-applying computer graphics to films, which often leaves us with a very flat plot or screenplay, can be compared to producing fast food. One thing that occurs to me is the change brought about by the advent of the synthesizer within the music industry. Bands like Depeche Mode, having achieved immortality early on, relying on the novelty of the synthesizer to capture the appropriate imagination, later reverted to using electric guitars, bass and drums, using instead the synthesizer as an ingredient rather than a recipe. This is much the same pattern I'd like to see emerge within the film industry regarding cgi.
I just watched (for the second time) John Turturro's brilliant Romance And Cigarettes, which I believe is his directorial debut, and is a poignant and ballsy musical, starring James Gandolfini and a wonderfully slutty Kate Winslet as his mistress. Superb stuff, and refreshingly human.

Quentin Beck
20th July 2010

The First Step

"No one likes clowns on the other side of the world"-Tom Waits

Somebody somewhere said something like: "The greatest of journeys begins with a single step."
This isn't actually true. It starts with packing.
This blog represents my first foray into this strange and enticing corner of the ether, and embarking on a journey is the only parallel I can draw in describing the experience.
Unfortunately for me, and presumably for anybody with enough spare time to actually read any of this, I travel light. That is to say that rather than a well-organized suitcase of verse, neatly folded and placed in the correct compartments, this will represent something more akin to a rudely thrown-together duffel bag, it's contents randomly balled-up and stuffed in.
My main motivation for starting out was my brother, an accomplished (and published) wordsmith whose talent for stringing together sentences positively dwarfs mine. Those not inclined to take my word for it can scoot over to his blog, aptly named: keepthinkingbutch.blogspot.com
Anyway, I'll try to keep things as concise as possible, whilst hopefully still holding your attention.
If you're reading this; thank you.

Quentin Beck,
July 19th, 2010