DVD Review: Henry of Navarre

July the 4^th is of course a very patriotic day for one nation in particular. Us Brits like to moan about the Yanks now and again because perhaps old rivalries never quite die no matter how close the friendship. We have an even fonder tendency to exchange banter with our French friends across the channel. On Independence Day the story of one of their most fascinating monarchs arrives on DVD.

Henry of Navarre (aka Henri 4) has all the ingredients of an epic historical romp. Its visceral battle scenes, complete with frenetic handheld camerawork as well as sweeping shots, have been likened to Ridley Scott’s iconic set pieces by Variety. Its period details are meticulous and vivid, from costume to setting. Its themes of religious freedom, love and power are at once more inspiring than modern day concerns and still relevant. And of course, as addictive TV dramas such as The Tudors and Rome have proved, no story of royalty and betrayal is complete these days without plenty of nudity and animalistic sex.

Henri, played by Julien Boisselier, is a charmer from childhood. The film begins with the prince of Navarre, a small region of France, paying the girls as a mere boy for a glimpse up their skirts. He goes on to seduce, overpower and caress several other women throughout the course of the film. The first set of bedroom scenes, with a Catholic he is told to marry to secure peace, verge on the violent, fuelled by religious resentment and suspicion. They scratch and bite like tigers just released from a zoo. Henry of Navarre is not a film short on beautiful women or erotic encounters.

But Henri is still likeable despite his cavorting, which prompts his second wife to describe him as a “horny old goat”. Boisselier plays him as a man disillusioned by the role and world he was born into but determined to change things pragmatically. The film begins with Henri leading the Protestant Huguenots against the greater part of France controlled by the Catholic Medici family. Henri is encouraged into a peacemaking marriage in Paris and during this part of the film within the city walls and the Louvre palace, overwhelming tension and intrigue builds, with relationships in the court difficult to decipher. Henri is well meaning but naive and the betrayal eventually comes with the tragedy of the St. Bartholomew’s Massacre.

At this point it’s hard to understand why Henri doesn’t flee but eventually he wins the trust of the traitors and escapes successfully. He returns to his roots in Navarre and builds up the strength of his home. By the end of the film Henri is King of all of France, with the price being his religious belief and identity. But despite his growing wisdom, Henri’s childhood innocence and kindness is also preserved by Boisselier’s performance. This is a very modern film because Henri puts aside labels of religion and ancestry to cherish things that really matter in life and leadership; loyalty, friendship, love and freedom.

Henry of Navarre has its faults. It could do with being half an hour shorter but the two and a half hour runtime is more than filled with the substance of Henri’s fascinating life. Not all of the acting is assured, with Ulrich Noethen’s performance as Charles IX too over the top and caricatured regardless of the troubled nature of the monarch. The battle scenes, despite their initial impact, become repetitive. You are carried through it all though by the compelling complexity and emotion of Henri’s story and the appeal of his character. This would appear to be a diverse film faithful to history that both entertains and educates.

10 Reasons to see Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon

The latest Transformers movie has been critically panned from virtually every corner. Danny Leigh off that BBC show with Claudia Winkleface is even calling for strike action to boycott the movie in The Guardian and thus send a message to studio execs. But outside elite film critics there must still be a demand for Michael Bay’s franchise. And I bet those of you that are glass half full kind of people, are crying out for some positivity. Wail no more optimistic readers.

1)      Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon is based on a pretty sound and promising premise. It draws on one of the most historic moments in human civilization, the 1969 moon landing, to give a story about toys some narrative heft for the adults. The space race, we discover, was not just a competitive dash to the stars but a sprint for the wreckage of an Autobot ship, containing some alien tech with Godlike powers. But hang on the astronauts look round for a bit and then come home again rather uneventfully…

Aside from the idea there’s the title itself. I mean it’s pretty damn cool to make a film with the same name as a legendary Pink Floyd album! Oh wait, there’s a word missing. But they say Dark Side of the Moon in the movie? Maybe Michael Bay (or some lawyers) decided it was snappier to drop a word.

2)      Or perhaps no one wanted to limit this film to just the one “side”. There are at least three sides available because Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon is out in 3D. In fact with the juggernaut of 3D films slowing, its supporters in the industry are said to be pinning their hopes on Bay’s blockbuster because his trademark CGI pyrotechnics look stunning via the magic shades. I saw it in 2D because I wasn’t keen on paying more for a film I didn’t really want to endure. But let’s stick with the positives.

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen makes a case for being one of the worst films of all time. I haven’t even seen it (mostly because of the sheer force of the derision) but you know a film is bad when its director and star use words like “shit” and “crap” just seconds after they are no longer contractually obliged to promote it. The original Transformers was surprisingly good though and critical consensus is that this is substantially better than the sequel. The downside for Michael “Boom-Bang-Bam” Bay is that most reviewers are merely saying Transformers 3 is better to illustrate how atrociously bad the second instalment was.

3)      Damn I said I would stick with the positives didn’t I? Well there are always two big ticks alongside Michael Bay’s name. He is consistent and he always provides plenty of bangs for your buck. I saw the first Transformers by accident all those years ago and I was won over primarily by Bay’s competent handling of stuff frequently exploding into thousands of shards of glass and chunks of concrete. In Transformers 3, if you stick with it for over an hour, you get to see Chicago flattened. In one scene the human characters slide through a skyscraper as it collapses. Then they slide through it again. Then more stuff blows up. Then some more. Then there’s some slow mo. And a bit more. Something else goes bang. You lose interest.

4)      Alright there are some negatives. Like the constantly annoying and yelping Shia LaBeouf.

5)      But surely these are more than outweighed by the presence of Rosie Huntington-Whiteley? It was a big ask to find someone to replace Megan Fox’s assets but British lingerie model Rosie was named FHM’s sexiest woman of 2011. Physically she easily fills the implausibly hot girlfriend role. Bay knows he’s working with a thing of beauty, panning the camera down her body in the middle of action sequences.

Unfortunately her performance has been chewed, swallowed, digested and vomited onto a pile of steaming fresh elephant dung by every single critic. Surprisingly I thought her acting was worse when she was simply required to scream. We see her getting dressed from behind briefly at one point and in a couple of revealing dresses but not sufficiently unclothed to warrant the price of admission. Having said that Bay does his best to reduce every single female extra to eye candy by ordering them to strut about or look scared in something short.

6)      On the plus side! John Malkovich appears in what might be a mildly amusing but pointless cameo in a film that was at least an hour shorter.

7)      Ken Jeong also shows up as essentially his character from The Hangover, minus any of the sometimes funny rudeness. He is vital to one of the many baffling and needless sub plots. Which leads me to reason number eight…

8)      A glorious two and a half hour runtime may make any of the microscopically good things in this film meaningless but it has its beneficial effects as a sedative. You’ll be capable of falling into a sleep so deep that a succession of nuclear wars wouldn’t wake you after Bay has left you numbed and extremely bored by repetitive scenes of endless destruction.

9)      Actually there aren’t even 10 fake reasons to see it.

I have completely failed to live up to my nickname of Optimist Prime…

Films that remind you of people – Amelie

Sometimes you really wish you could forget someone. Not because you want to but because you feel like you have to. People are forever telling you to “move on” from them, as if they were a shifty beggar in the street wasting your time. They have condemned you to the rubbish dump of their lives, so you should do the same. Whatever you manage to salvage from the wreckage of them will only remind you of the way things were before the crash, in a time you cannot travel back to. It’s time for a new stage of your life, minus them.

There are days when it feels like you might be able to do it. There are loads of things to live for, more pluses than minuses dotting the horizon of the future. But the thing is life has a knack of throwing reminders your way that jolt you back to her, to him, to them, to there. Oh look, memory sneers in a stage whisper from the shadows, it’s the bar you spent all night talking in, the river bank where you first kissed or the station she used to get off at. Even when you’ve succeeded in blanking them out from familiar places, their memories surprise you in other ways.

“This was our song” is a phrase you often hear from the devastated dumpee, just before their face melts in a cascade of noisy tears, possibly years after the breakup itself. Then there’s the novel that becomes ostracised on the book shelf because of a strange connection you are suddenly seeing these days within its pages. Even their favourite paper or magazine can give you a slap in the newsagents occasionally.

Some of the worst offenders are films. There will be the trashy romantic comedy given inexplicable significance because it happened to be your first date. There will be films that divided you and films you wished them to see. And there will be some favourites of theirs you never found the time to watch.

This was the case for me as I finally watched Amelie in its entirety. I had seen bits of it but never the whole thing. I knew that the music was fantastically whimsical and enchanting. I had watched an uplifting scene via YouTube in which Amelie spirits a blind man along a street, vividly describing everything in a whirlwind of sensuous movement. I knew it was French and starred Audrey Tautou. And I knew it was one of the favourite films of someone I wish I could forget.

In a way I was desperate to hate Amelie. I knew what it would be like because I knew the people that liked it. I was hoping that it would try too hard, alienate me with its quirkyness and annoy me with its arty farty simplifications. There were times I felt a little like that. But mostly I loved it.

Why did I hope that I wouldn’t? It was hard at points to be enjoying it so much because they enjoy it. How much easier it would have been to be repulsed and to have found another tiny reason to take another minute step forward and away from the past!

Amelie is about being alive, feeling alive and dreaming. It’s about the smaller things, so particular and peculiar that they must be real, containing a touch of magic that makes life worthwhile. It is extremely funny and eccentric, fresh and unique.

It’s the eccentricity that I thought might annoy me. I thought that Amelie might have been quirky for its own sake, as so many films of its ilk are. But Amelie’s comedy is crucial to its success. It is almost self mocking at times with the ridiculous and random nature of its details.

In the opening twenty minutes I fell in love with the narration. Normally voiceover is catastrophic and awful. Perhaps Amelie’s is so charming and intoxicating because it is French. Or perhaps it is that at once meaningful and light hearted tone, which doesn’t take itself too seriously. Amelie feels like a novel throughout its enjoyable beginning which explains her tragic yet amusing childhood. Characters are brought to life instantly because of their odd habits and Amelie herself has baffling, childlike musings about the world which add to her appeal.

I was disappointed when the narration became less frequent throughout the film, which is extraordinary given my usual distaste for voiceover. I loved the musicality of the voice, the specific details it would come out with and the telling but mysterious insights we’d instantly learn about characters. Most of all I loved the way it seemed to mock any work of art trying much too hard to stand out.

But the retreat of the narrator brings Amelie herself to the foreground. The wonderful lines from the narrator are replaced by some witty and surprising scenes of dialogue. The visuals and sounds of the film grow and grow until modern day Paris seems like a wondrous place, with deserving and interesting souls to be saved on every corner.

I expected Amelie to be preachy, perhaps patronising or too desperate to be different. I wanted to dislike it for my own good. But in the end I am glad to have seen it. I liked it because it’s good, not because of any associations it has with anyone. I thought it was unique and it made me feel alive and full of possibility, regardless of what others think. It’s a beautiful and beguiling film that reminds us how life can be so too, with dreams coming true, big or small, out of nowhere.

Phil Jones and Chris Smalling are the perfect long term replacements for Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic

Phil who? This was the reaction of a lot of football fans when it emerged that the first major bidding war of the summer had broken out over a 19 year old Blackburn centre back. Liverpool looked as though they were wrapping up a deal for yet another promising youngster, as Kenny Dalglish looks to rebuild, but then Manchester United swooped in with Sir Alex Ferguson on his own reconstruction mission. A sizeable £16 million release clause in his contract was triggered and after a period of uncertainty, Fergie got his man.

Or should I say boy? Jones is currently with the England Under 21s for the European Championships. Against a Spain side much fancied to win the whole tournament, Jones won plaudits for his performance alongside another United youngster, Chris Smalling. Sir Alex bought him last summer and he has since proved himself as a top quality, capable defender, deputising for the increasingly injured Rio Ferdinand with composure beyond his years. The 21 year old was also praised universally by pundits and columnists and it was generally accepted that but for Jones and Smalling in central defence the Spanish would not have been held to a 1-1 draw.

It’s looking worryingly like the same old story for England fans, even at Under 21 level. On paper the squad of youngsters is stronger than most, bursting with names that have already gained considerable Premiership experience and demonstrated their skills on a tough stage. Some might even think it’s stronger than Fabio Capello’s first team and many players will be looking to break through. But following the promise of the hard fought draw with Spain, England drew 0-0 with Ukraine, with the only impressive performances coming once again from the defenders. Talented forwards with enormous potential simply didn’t deliver.

And literally as I write England have capitulated to a 2-1 defeat against the Czech Republic in a must win match. Danny Welbeck had headed them ahead with just twenty minutes or so to go, but then it all fell apart with an equaliser and a snatched winner as England poured forward in stoppage time. Their tournament is over. Stuart Pearce’s boys are no better at winning trophies than the men.

None of this will greatly concern Sir Alex Ferguson. He is used to watching England internationals as accomplished as Paul Scholes, David Beckham or Wayne Rooney go off to tournaments and return dejected and defeated. It did not stop them becoming phenomenally successful Old Trafford legends. He will set about the task of moulding Phil Jones and Chris Smalling into the perfect readymade pairing to replace the ageing Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand.

In an interview this week Smalling said that he liked to think both he and Jones had a mixture of Ferdinand’s passing ability and football brain, as well as Vidic’s hard as nails tackling prowess. This might be true because certainly Smalling has proved that he is no physical lightweight and Jones is versatile enough to play in midfield, so he can presumably pass a ball reasonably well. But there’s no doubt that Jones appears to be the tough tackling long term replacement for Vidic and Smalling the smoother operator to step into Ferdinand’s shoes. I mean he even looks a bit like Rio.

Jones proved his Vidic-esque credentials by almost singlehandedly taking United’s title challenge to the last day of the season. In the end a penalty earned the Reds a 1-1 draw at Ewood Park but Blackburn almost gave Chelsea hope thanks largely to Jones’ one man brick wall. Even on his Blackburn debut against Chelsea in March 2010, not long after his 18^th birthday, Jones made his presence felt with some stinging but legal challenges on the likes of Frank Lampard.

Smalling meanwhile, as I said, has had a surprisingly key role over the last season at Old Trafford. I’m not sure even Fergie would have anticipated his rapid rise through the ranks, leaving the veteran manager contemplating selling the likes of Jonny Evans, John O’Shea and Wes Brown with not too much concern. Ferdinand’s fitness is unlikely to ever reach the heights of reliability and effectiveness again, meaning that Smalling will be called upon more and more often until eventually Rio is relegated to experienced squad member. The former Fulham man will grow in confidence the more he plays, so that he’ll be bringing the ball out of defence and looking for a killer pass as Ferdinand did in his prime, as well as covering superbly.

Jones and Smalling then have the potential to become a durable, formidable and complimentary partnership at the heart of one of the best teams in the land. Any understanding the two develop could also be transplanted beneficially into future England teams. But before such a partnership forms, they are going to have to compete against one another to play alongside Vidic for perhaps the next couple of seasons.

This time will test, trial and prove the individual ability of each player but will give them little chance to play together. If they have both been useful and their talents have passed the tests of high quality football on a regular basis at the Theatre of Dreams at the end of this period, then Sir Alex (or his successor) will have relatively cheap, and English, replacements for two of the best defenders the Premiership has ever known.

Miliband can defeat his critics and Cameron’s leadership by reinventing the nature of opposition

Like it or not, love him or loathe him, David Cameron has proved himself to be a competent and capable leader in his first year in Number 10. He has shown himself to be easily the most adaptable Prime Minister of the 21^st century and perhaps the most versatile and formidable party leader too. He has embraced the unique hurdles and challenges of coalition government to at once deliver radical policy his party believes in and please the electorate. He has vowed not to make the mistake of Tony Blair’s early years, in which political capital went unspent. He’s taken a blitzkrieg approach to numerous important issues and departments, somehow taking most of the country with him through a combination of confidence and yellow human shields.

Ed Miliband on the other hand, has been constantly under fire from both the media and Britain as a whole, and his own party. His leadership is generally, and not unjustifiably, characterised as ineffectual and inactive. He has more often than not chosen to stand by and do nothing but protest vocally at government plans. He has claimed to be the voice of Britain’s ordinary people and its “progressive majority”. His critics say that this majority doesn’t exist and even those that think it might, recognise that it has to be earned and forged from blood, sweat, tears and most crucially of all, policy.

Labour under Ed Miliband has produced almost no policy. His supporters and aides will argue that he’s been focusing on healing Labour’s image, bruised and battered by thirteen years of controversial government. But there has been no clear rebranding or change of direction either. The publication of elder brother David’s would-be acceptance speech last week highlighted just how much more Ed could have done from the start. I was critical of David’s lazy leadership campaign and even praised Ed’s more concrete vision. Looking at David Miliband’s speech though, it’s hard to argue with those who say he would be doing better as leader right now.

The speech sets out the deficit as Britain’s key political argument. It simultaneously does more to defend Labour’s record in government and admit its mistakes than Ed has done. It systematically addresses key areas with attractive focus; Ed’s speech tended to waffle more generally, focusing on alerting the world to the fact that he was an alright sort of guy. Well now we all want to know what he’s going to do to prove it.

To make things worse for the victorious Miliband, his shadow cabinet has hardly had time to settle. Alan Johnson didn’t last long as Shadow Chancellor. There has already been more than one reshuffle. Ed Balls, finally in the role he has craved for so long, is Labour’s only ray of activity. Last week he announced the one concrete policy they have in opposition; increase the bonus tax on bankers. Balls intends to gather support from rebellious Lib Dem and even Conservative MPs to push a Bill through Parliament that would take more money from the banks to fund employment schemes for the young and house building projects; to stop the rot on growth.

Now it’s obvious that one of Miliband’s weak points has been his inability to do much else besides bash the banks. Credible Prime Ministers cannot afford to make such powerful enemies or be defined by the one headline grabbing policy. But the plans of his money man Ed Balls are exactly the type of thing Labour should be doing more of. The government’s refusal to invest in the economy or change course on its programme of cuts is doing lasting damage. Labour cannot afford to just talk about this. They should hit the coalition where it hurts; by acting to safeguard the national interest it claims to be working for.

And Miliband could go further. He could say that a Labour government would not just build homes for struggling first time buyers but insist that they are all green. Labour needs a new stamp that marks out policy as theirs, which goes further than simply investment vs. cuts. As David Miliband set out, Labour has to acknowledge that it will tackle the deficit; the question is how will it do it differently?

 Ed should make it abundantly clear that he is proposing policies for consideration now, intending to pass them now because to act too late would let the state of the economy and the government’s initiatives do irreparable harm. More house building would kick start the construction industry; more homes would get the property markets moving and add stability to a fragile, slow recovery.

Miliband has continually fallen back on the fact that the party in opposition traditionally keeps its cards close to its chest until an election. People should not be expecting him to be outlining detailed policy now, he says. I defended criticisms of him early on by using the argument that he shouldn’t rush through thinking about such important issues. But he has had time now. He must have some ideas. And he needs to start sharing them.

This is not an ordinary government. The coalition can be stalled, halted and persuaded on almost any issue. Parliament is not a sea of blue and carefully selected opposition proposals could become law. The NHS “listening exercise” and the rethink of Ken Clarke’s justice reform are examples from the past week alone where Cameron has been swayed enough to track back. Ed Miliband needs to do something bold to win the respect of voters. Disclosing genuine alternatives in full and frank detail will show that Labour care enough to act in the country’s interest, not their own.

I write just hours after both leaders in the contest for the nation’s political affections made important speeches on policy. As is the trend of late, it was David Cameron’s that made the greater impact. Speaking to a meeting in London of a foundation called GAVI, backed by Bill Gates, which provides vaccines for the world’s poor, the Prime Minister would have won over voters usually hostile to all things Tory.

His detoxification of his party has been enormously successful and pledging £814 million (the biggest donation of any nation) to an effective charity, goes a long way to satisfying his own voters, thanks to a clear strategy, and others in the electorate. With one speech Cameron scored moral points as well as talking convincingly about finding a clear foreign policy role for Britain based on duty, encouraging private sector growth and stable, democratic government.

Miliband’s speech was also important. It aimed to win back the agenda of community from Cameron, who has dominated the thinking of voters even with his unsuccessful Big Society idea. Miliband talked of responsibility and made surprisingly tough statements about those who didn’t give back not receiving welfare support. There were strong strains of the Blue Labour ideology Miliband recently endorsed, which focuses on democracy and accountability at the grass roots. It was about the overall narrative direction of Miliband’s leadership and designed to answer critics.

However whilst it’s important Miliband finds a stronger and more defined guiding vision for his party, action is what the public wants from him now. For an opposition leader options are limited, so action essentially means policy announcements. The Labour leader needs to be braver and take some gambles with his leadership, to both win over the country and protect it. No one will reward him for waiting until the election.

Mock the Week Reborn

 Certain programmes on television are compulsive viewing. Over the years the number of these programmes has decreased considerably, for me at least. With the advent of BBC iPlayer and other catch-up services (although I only really make regular use of iPlayer, with the exception of the occasional trip to 4OD) I rarely submit to the schedules for something I like to watch. But the odd show, live or not, will tempt me to watch at the scheduled time like an obedient puppy.

One of these programmes, as “regular readers” may know, is Doctor Who. I get ridiculously excited as that time comes round every Saturday and then I’m practically clapping my hands with glee as the theme music plays. I employ nurses to mop the saliva from the sofa as I sit there drooling. I hire security staff to hold me down should someone make a noise akin to a whisper, as I am liable to absentmindedly throw sharp objects at the offender or simply laser their soul with killer evils.

Mock the Week used to sit atop the comedy pile on my shelf of sacred TV treasures. Literally nothing could beat it for a good rib tickling chortle. It was easily king of the panel shows. Consider its rivals. QI is quite interesting, quite funny at times but it hardly goes for the comedy jugular. Have I Got News For You is hilarious but largely dependent on the guest host doing alright or being a good enough target for Merton and Hislop. Never Mind the Buzzcocks has lost its two best assets; Simon Amstell and Bill Bailey and was always about music, which somehow just ain’t as funny as everything else in the news.

I could keep listing inferior panel shows but essentially Mock the Week was the best. And why was it the best? Because it grouped together the best surgeons of hilarity in the land (commonly called comedians) and simply let them compete for comedy points by cracking gags about the news. The fact that it was topical was funny, the rivalry and chemistry was funny but it basically boiled down to sticking good comedians in one place.

The best of the comedians became regulars on the show, with Frankie Boyle, Russell Howard, Hugh Dennis and Andy Parsons joining jolly accented Irish host Dara O’Briain, every single week. I was glued no matter what was going on in my insignificant life. When balaclava wearing burglars stole all my worldly possessions, petrol tankers exploded outside my bedroom window and piss accidentally seeped out, I was oblivious. So hungry was I for the feast of LOLs.

Then something strange happened. The magic began to fade. I found myself watching on iPlayer, then only the occasional episode on iPlayer. I wondered whether this was just another phase of my viewing habits, passing by like Postman Pat, Loose Women and the others. How was it possible that I wasn’t dying in pain from my spasm-ing muscles when Frankie Boyle made a joke?

The rivalry was killing the show. The fierce competition for jokes that made it into the half hour final cut of the programme was spilling over to such a degree that it was noticeable, in a detrimental way, after the edit. Frankie’s superpower, the ability to creatively and imaginatively shock the laughs from you, became obsolete. His unpredictability became predictable. He dominated and stifled the talents of the others.

And so he left. But this didn’t tempt me back to watch every week. As much as I loved Russell Howard, I wasn’t a big Andy Parsons fan. Dara was limited by hosting duties and the guests could be good but were often disappointing.

Then, whilst at a recording of Russell Howard’s Good News by the Thames earlier this year, he answered an audience question with a bombshell. He wouldn’t be doing anymore Mock the Week. And he has moved on I suppose, with a successful BBC3 show that really suited him. He had a far more enduring quality than Frankie Boyle; genuine humanity. Boyle’s act was just that, a put on sham of offensiveness. His Channel 4 sketch show caused a brief stir and passed into the shadows. I don’t remember what it was called, just that he crossed a line of decency at some point. And I didn’t watch it.

So with perhaps my favourite comedian left on Mock the Week leaving it, you’d think I would have given up on the show for good. But I decided to give the first episode of this series a watch on iPlayer. I thought that maybe some new blood would be good. And I was right.

Chris Addison is turning into something of a new regular but he’s not set in stone; he doesn’t have his own seat. He is very funny mostly, despite his tendency to wear loose shirts that show off his thin chest and glimpses of hair. Seann Walsh, who I’ve seen live at Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow in Bristol, sat between Greg Davies from The Inbetweeners and Andy Parsons. Walsh was terrific, really confident what I think is his first appearance, or at least he hasn’t had many. An impression of Michael McIntyre during “Scenes we’d like to See” had me in stitches. Davies is not afraid to be silly to get laughs.

Talking of daft the final guest, another one turning into a new regular, was Milton Jones. Wearing a loud shirt he produced his usual volley of surreal one liners but each time I see him on Mock the Week his weird, snappy humour seems to make more and more use of topical material.

I will be watching the episodes of this series, whether it be via iPlayer or more old fashioned methods. The show seems to have re-found its mojo by finding the best comedy performers and stand-ups around. Its lost much of its bitter competition, with all the competitors regularly laughing at Milton’s odd jokes. The key to success seems to be avoiding absolute regulars and bringing back a mixture of different talent of week. Keep the guests fresh, like the topical material.

I laughed. A lot. Watch it.

Short story: The Lonely Tree

This is just something I rattled out, slightly in the style of Murakami:

This is the story of a boy, who was not yet a man. It’s the story of his first love, his first heartbreak and the tree that fell on him.

It’s the fashion to have summer romances but the boy was allergic to everyone’s favourite season. It made his eyes red and his nose stream.  In fact he had always thought that girls were allergic to him. It wasn’t that he couldn’t speak to them or that they didn’t like him, but that they couldn’t love him. More than anything the boy wanted to know love. One winter, when the air was crisp and the nights chilled, he thought that he did.

He couldn’t believe his luck. A childhood crush, the cleverest catch around and a friend he cared for deeply rolled into one package. Her smile locked his worries away and out of reach for hours. Being with her he felt as if he wasn’t alone for the first time in his life. Hearing from her was, surprisingly, almost as good. Making her happy filled the void of purpose in his life. His existence no longer felt empty. Simply put: she made him happy.

Fate had never looked so kindly upon him before and deep down he knew that her favours would be brief. But while it lasted nothing else mattered. Or rather, everything mattered more. Her dreams enriched and expanded his own, her energy and life gave them colour. He was filled with enthusiasm and a drive he did not know he possessed. He felt like a better person and fully himself for the first time.

Looking back on it he supposed the relationship would seem a short lived folly to onlookers, and this angered him. Nothing had ever meant more. At least to him. The boy had never realised just how important intimacy, close friendship and the joy of caring for someone was to happiness. When it ended, for no reason besides that she didn’t love him after all, things reverted to normal. Only more so.

He wondered if that happiness had been an illusion and whether he had truly known love. He felt catapulted back to square one. He did not know what to think or feel, knowing for certain only that he was empty again. And he was alone. The dreams that had grown to new heights in her company were now mere weeds, smaller than the clumps of green nothingness at the foot of the tree in his garden.

The tree watched as the boy moped and rolled around like a pig in his misery. At first the tree felt sympathetic towards the boy, as no one knew better than him what it was to be alone. Trapped in his hollow shell with no friends to speak of, and no means to speak, the tree longed for contact of some kind. He knew everything the boy was missing and more. And then the tree realised how selfish the boy was. And how much harder it was to be a tree.

As the spring rapidly shifted into summer the boy felt every concrete trace of his love fading away, swamped by the passing of time. With each day he felt more and more like he had no right to feel anything at all. All he had left were the memories and hopes in his head. He missed so much; far too much for words, he told himself.

On a blue morning with a blazing sun and abstract strokes of white overhead, the boy had an epiphany. Well it was that day at least that he admitted to himself a truth that he had felt for a while. He said to himself: “Love is enough for me”. He knew that, for the right person, he would sacrifice all the goals and ambitions he had thought essential to his well being, satisfaction and success. He acknowledged that, during his time with his first true love, he had enjoyed and derived immense contentment from even the harder things. He was glad to be there when she was upset, happy to calm her down, even if he was only a slight comfort. Caring for someone important to him, as important as that, was all he could ever need.

He remembered reading a novel in which the main character believed there were only three chances of finding your soul mate. He pondered whether for him, “soul mate”, meant someone worthy of his absolute care. Plunged back into sadness and despair by the thought of having lost someone he could lose himself in and devote himself to, he ran into the garden, blinded by fierce tears. He crouched down in the dirt, sniffling as the pollen swarmed up his hostile nostrils. He pressed his back against the trunk of the tree. He stared at the world around him, confused and crying.

By this point, the tree was seething. The tree didn’t know how he knew all about what the boy was thinking and feeling, but he did know, and it made him angry. The tree did not know he was capable of anger. The tree could not think, had no brain and nothing at all to account for the melancholy consciousness brooding within his gently swaying frame. The wind blew lightly across the garden, flicking the odd leaf and stroking the odd stem. The tree felt a shiver of cold. The tree felt.

The boy was gradually coming out of his panic, descending into a depressed paralysis. The loveliest, brightest petals of the most vibrant flowers looked bleak to him. His mind’s eye conjured a symbolic bonfire of his dreams in the corner of the lawn. If he could be so easily tempted from them, what chance did he have of achieving such grand plans? What did they matter anyway? Forcing his head up from its slouch on his knees, he felt the bark in his hair and decided there was no point to any sensation at all without someone to share it with.

The tree was fuming with anger from its roots to its summit. It could sense the boy’s sadness. His self involved and ungrateful emotion wasn’t just saturating the air around the tree now, but squirming and writhing against its flaky skin. The tree couldn’t stand it. It was determined not to take it anymore. It wouldn’t be buffeted by nature or ignored by men today.

The boy sighed deeply, turning his face into the breeze and relishing its cold wipe. He felt the gusts get stronger and firmer in waves, as if someone were stirring the air with an enormous food blender. Pulse after pulse slapped against him. The sweat under his arms went from hot and sticky to icy and damp. His spine creaked as the tree trunk rocked a little against him. His back stood firm easily like a castle wall against the minute thrusts.

The tree was summoning all of its energy from its very furthest extremities, even the roots beyond the garden wall. The tree was straining every part of its being in pure and untamed rage. The tree was alive and a part of nature but for the first time ever it was wild. It did not have muscles to tense or bones to move but it had life and the tree channelled every last ounce of it into its rage. It didn’t know what it was doing or understand the consequences. All it knew was how wrong the boy was, how angry it made the tree feel. It was trying to teach the boy a lesson, on behalf of trees everywhere.

The boy continued to feel little swellings at his back. Small pressures, surely caused by the wind, made the entire structure of the tree wobble a fraction. Leaves that had been noisily rubbing in the flower beds slowly stopped. The bending blades of grass rested and stood upright. Gradually, the trunk seemed to be moving faster, almost pushing out into the boy, like something was stuck inside. The tree rocked more and more as the breeze died away to an unnoticeable whisper. As the branches began to rattle, the boy noticed properly for the first time the firmer and firmer touch of the trunk. He glanced up towards the sky, through the canopy of crisscrossing browns and greens, only to shrug away again with a sob.

The boy’s indifference only enraged the tree still more. So that, as the swaying grew quicker and quicker, the consciousness that had formed inside the tree disappeared, becoming something else entirely. Now the tree was just movement, just energy, just purpose. All of the life the tree had ever known became focused on the boy and ending his ignorant and cruel soul. The tree had never known what a soul was; would never know. It did not know whether or not the boy had one. It only knew that the boy had to be stopped. He had to be taught that at least he had tasted love, known happiness, shared warmth and feeling. He had to be shown that at least he could dream, chase dreams and possibly live them. There were always those lives that did not live, always those with truly no hope left; always lonely trees.

There was a crack. And the trunk threw its full weight at the boy, who scrambled too late from his pity. Falling branches pulled away the light and the blue from the canvas of the sky, bringing only dark.

Like in films, the boy came to gazing at sheer whiteness. Nothing else. The colour white was the afterlife? Appropriately empty he thought. And then he remembered. The tree.

He had often dreamt about his funeral. A song lyric drifted into his mind – “the dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had”. The dreams in which he was dead were some of the best he’d ever had; terribly self indulgent fictions in which all the figures and characters of his life turned up, gushing praise and regrets. All the girls and friends he’d ever wanted poured their hearts out. He was great after all.

There was no one here he really wanted to see. The strip lights buzzed and whirred, stuffing light down his retinas. The whiteness turned out to be the roof tiles. A steady beep and blip passed the time like a clock ticking. His heart was liable to suddenly conk out. He was hooked up to a monitor like on telly. His parents were here.

They didn’t believe him about the tree. When he was well enough to argue, they argued. They accused him and lectured him. They warned and scorned him. His mother ranted about the hardships of life, bemoaned his ignorance. Even his father shouted. He wasn’t allowed grapes, hadn’t been for years, so someone, probably his mother, had brought biscuits. His father had eaten most of them during the interrogations.

If he’d been able to text, he might’ve texted her, would definitely have texted his best friend. She hadn’t come to see him, even when he’d asked his parents to try to organise it. He was still alone. But something felt different. His skull was cracked, his spine weakened, his legs bruised, his right ankle broken, toes misshapen, right thumb fractured, left hand in plaster, nose crooked, face scratched, knees cut, wrists sprained and buttocks sore. But he felt stronger.

When they took him home he realised what it was. The tree hadn’t been dealt with yet. Its big, bulky carcass, torn in two and smashed in a heap through the fence, reminded him how bad he had felt. It reminded him that he’d realised he just wanted somebody to love. A universal truth, some might say, theme of many a song, but for him it was deeper, all his other wants were trivial and only to love was what he needed and what he craved.

Those trivial dreams might have been exposed as mostly meaningless, but somehow the tree had taught him they were still important. Months in a hospital bed had forced him to write again to pass the time. So that’s what he would do. He would write more and more, hopefully better and better, churning out any old nonsense. He would write to forget, write to remember, write to move on, write to preserve, write from the heart, write from the mind, write in the night, write in the day and write to lose himself. He would write because he could. And to touch, now and again, on truths that made everything worthwhile.  Even the lonely trees.

The impact of “impossible question” is impossible to calculate

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-13627415

Follow the above link and you’ll find a news story about an “impossible question” set in an AS exam last week.

The most baffling and infuriating aspect of this story is the response of the exam board, OCR. They have apologised profusely for the error and they insist that “procedures are in place” to deal with such things. They have contacted the schools involved to reassure them that their pupils will be treated fairly.

OCR claim that they will take into account the disruptive effects of the impossible Maths problem. It was literally impossible, not just hard. And inevitably some students won’t have figured this out.

OCR say that they will work out which pupils DID figure out the sum was impossible. They will reward those who show the correct working out and readjust their grading scales to cope with the time students will have wasted on the eight mark question; a substantial amount in a 72 mark paper.

It seems reasonable that OCR will take these steps to mark appropriate working out positively and adjust their marking as a whole. But students are calling for a complete retake of the paper on social networks. And I think they should get one.

Whatever “systems” or “procedures” OCR may have in place, calculating the levels of stress caused by the unfortunate typo and how this affected the rest of an otherwise intelligent student’s performance, is as impossible as the un-answerable question they set in the exam. It really is astounding sometimes just how ignorant of the realities of taking an exam these exam boards can be. Or perhaps they are just selfish.

Organising retakes, particularly ones where the organisation must foot the bill, is costly and time consuming. Sorting this out in a truly fair way is not in the interests of OCR. And yet today’s younger generations are constantly trampled underfoot by protestors about the decline in standards of modern education.

Is it any wonder young people can’t properly prove themselves when the system continually falls foul to cock-up after cock-up? It’s an absolute disgrace that there are any errors at all in exam papers but they are there all the time. Most are not as crucial as this one, but typos crop up in almost every examination without fail. If there is a decline in standards it is not with the intelligence of students, but with the way they are being assessed.

I am sorry for such a rant about a seemingly minor and mildly funny news story. But it’s not funny for those involved and teenagers making themselves ill with the pressure of trying to succeed. High achievers and hard workers still exist, producing young adults as intelligent and as ambitious and well meaning as in the past.

Politicians use slogans like “broken Britain” to scare voters into supporting them. They tap into the fears of the elderly and adult about growing disrespect amongst emerging generations. But all the time they are conceding control of bodies and organisations that ought to be serving communities and students, thus losing the right to respect amongst clever young people who deserve their own.

David Cameron’s Big Society rhetoric might make use of such a monumental mistake from a bureaucratic body like OCR but what does he actually have to say about fixing such common problems? He rants against paper pushing and champions efficiency starting at a local level but provides no money or support for it to happen. Likewise Labour’s opposition moans about the destruction of Britain’s cultural heritage, without saying how it would save it in government.

Politics does little to earn the respect and admiration of pupils. Neither do “professional” educators who rush out text books and muck up exams. Teachers, for the most part, still do a good job, but not all the time. I don’t know where from but perhaps those who worry and pick at the next generation, would like to find some worthy role models for it.

In this case though, serves these kids right for taking a subject as dull and dreary as Maths.

What will be the Rotten Tomatoes film of the summer?

So far we’ve had the surpise hit of Thor, along with the critically panned but blockbuster ruling The Hangover: Part 2 and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. But which film will be left as the “fresh-ist” come the end of the summer rush for the cinema?

This week X-Men: First Class has landed with impossibly perfect critical reception, largely at least, with the average approval rating way into the 90% zone. I would wager that this will remain the best superhero smash of the season, at least according to the critics.

In terms of box office takings, nothing will surely be able to touch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2? The much anticipated and long awaited conclusion to the series will be devoured greedily by millions. Whether or not it will be a hit with critics is far less clear cut. There’s a chance it will be too over the top, descending into one drawn out epic battle. Or it could finally nail it, getting the best out of the book for diehard fans and the best out of the cast for cinema lovers.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the only mainstream release I can see surpassing X-Men is JJ Abrams’ Super 8. Many of the reviews already emerging have criticisms of this film but most critics are likely to be seduced by the ambition of the project and tributes to 80s hits and Spielberg-esque filmmaking. This will be a story with the thrills a modern day blockbuster requires, as well as some old fashioned character development and emotional investment, fuelled in all probability, by nostalgia.

Total Film, one of the first key sites to review, gives it 5 stars: http://www.totalfilm.com/reviews/cinema/super-8

The dark horse of the summer, in terms of combining critical and audience support, may well be Jon Favreau’s Cowboys and Aliens.

What are you most looking forward to?

DVD Review – Max Schmeling: Fist of the Reich

Nazi Germany is a historical setting we are all familiar with. Films set within the Third Reich often have similarities; good natured people trying to help persecuted Jewish neighbours, informers, political intimidation, concentration camps and the striking red background of the swastika. Equally there are areas often overlooked. The boxing rings for example.

Max Schmeling is a German film directed by Uwe Boll which tells the story of one of the 20^th century’s greatest boxers. He became world champion in the early 1930s, getting his big break by beating the title holder by default after an illegal “low blow” from his opponent. The film begins by following Max as a paratrooper for the German army in Crete, where everyone seems to know his name. During a conversation with a British prisoner he recalls how his fame started, flashing back to his regret at being denied the world championship outright. The rest of his career became a struggle to prove he deserved that title.

Schmeling wanted to prove himself outside of Germany as well as within it. He wanted to be the best in the world. He was already a national hero but he wanted to win other countries over with his ability. He frequently flew to America for huge matches at iconic venues such as Madison Square Garden. He was beginning to win admiration around the globe until his task became a lot harder with the rise of the Nazi party. As Germany’s image was soured so was Schmeling’s. One of the interesting themes in this film is that Schmeling saw himself as a boxer first and a German second. And that Nazism would simply pass as though it were an adolescent phase.

Hitler wanted Schmeling to be a symbol of the Aryan race and Germany’s might. As Schmeling sought to arrange fights with the formidable black American boxer Joe Louis, an opponent with an unbeaten record and extraordinary number of KOs that would enhance his boxing credentials should he somehow beat him, the Nazis tried to portray the clash as a battle between races and ideologies. Schmeling was naive in one sense but extremely brave in another, to carry on regardless of this manipulation and insist it was just a boxing match. Through his honour he simultaneously became a political pawn by refusing to recognise the wider significance, and rose above the Nazis by continuing with his dream.

So this film is an epic historical drama, encompassing wide areas of German life before and after the Nazis took power. We see both the glitz of the Weimar era and the race riots of Kristallnacht on the streets of Berlin, when Jewish shops and residents were viciously attacked. The period detail, particularly the costumes, and the variety of locations, are impressive. It is also a story of the rise of a sporting great, with Rocky style montages as Schmeling trains for his big fights and moments of tactical deliberation. And there is a love story, when Schmeling meets his soul mate in actress Anny Ondra and manages to marry her.

The love story gives this film something extra. There are, as I said, a lot of stories set in Nazi Germany, often with romances, sometimes with sporting heroes trying to avoid the control of the regime. But this romance is particularly convincing. Henry Maske gives an Arnie-esque performance, as a simple man falling for a beautiful woman. And Susanne Wuest is believable as first a teasing woman suspicious of a brute pursuing her affections and finally an actress frightened by what the Nazis are doing to her profession.

A short but enlightening “Making of” feature on the DVD reveals the reason for the authenticity of this relationship on screen; Maske is not an actor but a boxer. Therefore, as Wuest puts it in an interview, we have a boxer playing a boxer and an actress playing an actress. Director Boll was impressed with Maske’s performance and put it down to his ability to effectively play himself, identifying with Schmeling to inhabit the character.

Overall this might not be the most original film experience but it is immensely enjoyable. All of its various elements are superbly executed, from the production standards to the acting, from the music to the exciting and raw boxing matches themselves. This feels like an incredibly real snapshot of history and it’s a story that deserves to be well told about a remarkable man.