Argo
A worried President Carter.
(dir. Ben Affleck) (2012) Competent, over-praised and ultimately futile defence of the Carter administration.
Continue Reading →Tranquility in Sorrento
I essentially completed my novel, Tranquility in Sorrento, Tasso’s town, circa April 2013. Unlike Joseph Conrad, who, when finishing Lord Jim one early morning, shared a piece of chicken with his cat, I couldn’t hear my cat’s insistent calls to breakfast: he was thousands of miles away. Moreover, there was no feeling of triumph, merely relief floating in a sea of fatigue and alcohol. I started this thing in 1979, ignorant of vast swathes of modern fiction, an ignorance that cannot be overcome, perhaps only palliated, by reading 24/7. By 2013, having worked on it in time to spare and short periods…
Continue Reading →Withnail & I
(dir. B. Robinson) (1985) Perfect homage to the strange death of swinging London. Withnail, I and Uncle Monty et al emblematize La Bruyere’s epigram that self-indulgence and severity towards others is the same vice. Looking up from our slim volume of Nigel’s poems, its pages stained with buttery tears from crumpets, we see the sky is beginning to bruise…home lads! To Vim under the sink and one bar on. (Look for more killer (and accurate) quotes from the film here). [See “Vivian & I” by Colin Bacon (2010, Quartet Books) for Withnail’s prototype, Vivian Mackerrell. Vivian & I available at Amazon.com]…
Continue Reading →The Young Poisoner’s Handbook
(dir. Ben Ross) (1995) 1950s Britain never looked so dystopian and between his grotesque family and idiot prison psychiatrists, you find yourself wanting young Graham to keep getting away with it. Of course, with silly, smug, progressive psychiatrists like Dr Ziegler to let him loose and call him cured, he’s a shoe-in!
Continue Reading →Annabel Lee
Annabel Lee (Edgar Allen Poe) It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love that was more than love – I and my Annabel Lee – With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me. And this…
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