All Pain, No Gain

Bay tries true-story comedy without apparently checking what he was sending up

Returning to my abode after the festivities I decided to catch up on some terrible film trailers. Yes I got some presents, thank you very much. Usually my go to are the horror trailers on IMDB's Coming Soon link (the Android app, incidentally, is about 1.5648043043 million times better than it used to be - no more pointless clicking!) which is now handily showcased in a swipe-able reel across the top of the app. And here was trailer #1: oh my God. Pain and Gain.

 

Initial thoughts - sunbleached California, gigantic Mark Wahlberg yelling at himself, 'BASED ON A TRUE STORY' - I rolled my eyes, sniggered and ate the crumbs off of my t-shirt. Classic Bay Film - this one appeared to be about some superhulk who was such a master criminal an entire branch of armed LAPD officers were needed to bring him down. So far, so embarrassing. But then:

You ever just get tired of being where you are Adrian?"
Two things about this line:

1. This line was so awful in substance and tone it was off the chart in cringeworthiness. Even for Michael Bay.
2. It was delivered following a barbell being smashed to the gym floor in supremely adolescent style. Verdict: Sixth form existential crisis alert.

You'd associate both of these with Bay - his films (or "films" as at least one reviewer probably refers to them) reek of testosterone and this is classic repressed male adolescence territory. I was kind of surprised that this was Bay's first film set in a gym - and then it hit me. The FML guitar, the ridiculous physiques, the atypical woman's existence validated by man vibe - "there you go, yeeeaaheeaahh!" croons an arm-flexing Wahlberg to a sycophant gym-ho - it all adds up.

Michael Bay has Googled himself on the Internet. And this time he actually read the results.

I watched more, now perversely fascinated. My unbelieving eyes saw Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson appear (with a really weird vein in his shoulder area). I like him because he never takes himself, or indeed anything, seriously - exactly how a multimillionaire beefcake should act. Another nail in the Bay persona? Everything Johnson does is deeply silly. Was he trying to ironize himself? A crazy thought.

More follows. In brief: a kidnap of a millionaire gym owner (Tony Shalhoub) who thinks vegetables are for poor people (again when the hell did Bay start doing sendups of his own characters?) in awful superhero suits and then Ed Harris - Ed Harris - as... what? I couldn't figure it out. A mobster, reclaiming his role from Cronenberg's A History of Violence? An off-duty cop? I paused and went to my Wikipedia app (their new update is terrible. Crashes all the time!) to look this up.

And then I learnt this really was a true story and that in fact the characters Wahlberg and Johnson play are awaiting death sentences in Miami for kidnap and extortion.

So this was a comedy sending up two men about to be executed in real life. Makes Zero Dark Thirty look like a bastion of impartiality doesn't it. And my vision of a post-Enlightenment Michael Bay dragged back to the Dark Ages, by... Michael Bay. When will he learn?

It's Hip To Be Square (But Not Made of Concrete)

Changing city skylines through contemporary styles is laudable but may waste more money than it intends to generate through repopulation

Two stories in Tuesday's Guardian culture section took my eye, because I live near one and lived near the other and at first glance seemed opposite ends of the creative spectrum.

In the first. a row of rather charming terraces have sprung up in Ancoats, where a lot of my family come from in East Manchester following the painfully slow death of a Will Alsop project (my exposure to this guy is fleeting although the gist I get is a weird rococo-absurdist concoction) fronted by the Urban Splash people. Alsop is apparently emblematic of the 'champagne socialism' years of New Labour (how child's toys in Middlesbrough relate to that socioeconomic model I'll never know but eh) in the late Nineties when huge swathes of the city were reconstructed following the Commonwealth Games project win. The turnaround could not be more striking; here is Great Ancoats Street in the late Eighties:

Image from open.edu
http://www.open.edu/openlearn/society/great-ancoats-street-manchester

And here it is now following these rather charming, faintly Scandinavian (truly those Nordic monsters have never lost their pillaging prerogative) terraces in traditional red terrace brock topped with bright and breezy confections.



Image from guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2012/dec/18/social-housing-new-islington-manchester

Functionality is the term here and it's interesting to note the change in approach the respective architects have undertaken in response to the economic times they operate in. "The bones of [the plan] come from Alsop's sketch, made with a glass of wine in one hand and a thick felt pen in the other," reads the promotional page for the Urban Splash project. It's easy to perceive an almost judgement in the construction here - and I personally prefer it.

The second article concerns the long-overdue (my opinion) demolition of Preston city bus station, a monument to the Seventies fashion of brutalism (the station was completed in 1969 when, interestingly, the country was again beginning to sail into choppy political and economic waters). Here's a picture for you to vomit over:

Image from BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/travelnews/Lancashire

However. Whilst the great pieces of architecture rarely appear to be debated (everyone bar everyone loves Barcelona, Gehry's Opera House, Bilbao international airport, The Shard - okay I'm definitely pushing it there) at least to my untrained totally amateur eye it does feel that regeneration is increasingly an argument for money on style. Indeed although eye-watering to me, many protesters have announced the station as a masterpiece of a certain style which ought to be preserved as - don't chuckle - a piece of national heritage. Costs, inevitably in these times, have proved its final undoing.

Whether you agree with that or not, what is it about the functional terraces of Ancoats that are infinitely preferable to the arguably equally more functional and more stylish (i.e. it is of a style) concrete station in Preston? Clearly style - or more probably taste, which possesses a certain moral (i.e. insufferably smug) quality to it - moves on, but surely on any level the arguments here are murky at best.

I suppose my summation here is that perhaps mere functionality is the great undoing (and I recognise my own responsibilities here too) of much popular modern architecture now. Whilst I certainly prefer my red brick block of apartments to living in La Scala (yes I do) I recognise a certain guiltiness on my part; irony underlies the linear idea that the less ornate a thing, naturally the more naked it becomes. And we should be able to live with that.

Salman Rushdie: Last Action Hero

Am I the only person that wants to see a middle aged author have an argument with Chewbacca?

Just read Shortlist's interview with Sir Salman Rushdie and his possibly not extemporaneous relating of the 'furore' shall we say of that little book he published in 1989 (how can anything that well reported be something he needs to reach back into the recesses of his mind for?).

I have the usual mixture of pity and admiration for the man that no doubt most people do and it must be a trifle unsettling to see your own name running neck and neck in the interest stakes with what's still a pungent and immersive read.

But. It did give me an idea. As I sat freezing on the tram I started thinking of Rushdie as a character in his own narrative; the urgency and sharp practices of his unique situation were so alien they made a seamless transition in fictional territory.

So then I started imagining other writers as characters apart from their work, Rushdie almost coming across as a - dare I say - Bournesque figure (specifically I'm thinking Guardian journalist Paddy Considine in the third one) and I nearly missed my stop. But that was due to the tannoy being totally out of the loop (we stopped at Piccadilly three times in my journey apparently).

The below are simply caricatures; I thought it best to keep them simple but there is possibly a few curveballs in there depending on perspective. With each I have tried to tie them to an outpost in pop culture. I have gone purely for entertainment value; generally where they would be least comfortable, I have placed them. Avant:

Jonathan Franzen as Hooper (played by Richard Dreyfus) in Jaws

This would be a sparkling comedy with Franzen in there - Jaws is one of my all-time faves and there are so many tight scenes between the trio which would probably split my sides if Franzen was in there. Specifically I'm imagining him as a blend of the good doctor and himself - uppity, snappish, warm and empathetic. The cage scene could descend into Marx Brothers-levels of hilarity (I am generally imagining a sped-up scene of the shark chasing a furiously pedalling Franzen around his smashed cage set to trumpets) and the final release post-sharksplosion I would probably finish with a really waspish comment which Scheider just doesn't get before swimming off.

Italo Calvino as Rufus T. Firefly (played by Groucho Marx) in Duck Soup

Calvino always struck me as a guy who had a ball writing his classics. Less so with the headliner If On A Winter's Night... this nevertheless had its quietly farcical moments (the visit to the publishers of the mysterious text is a scream and the relaying of the villainous author seesaws between bright hilarity and black drama). Calvino is one of my faves so I wanted to give him something he could really chew on, and I think he wouldn't have looked out of place in the Marx Brother's classic brouhaha Duck Soup. Imagining the Italian in slapstick mode is easy and in his eager playful style he upends the heaviest of topics, an enduring strength of the best satire and comedy. I may have broken my own rules here but I'm pretty sure this would deliver in spades.

Stephen King as Jack Torrance (played by Jack Nicholson) in The Shining

Yeah OK so we all know Torrance really is King; the raging alcoholism, the desperation for familiarity in his environment that made both authors, real and written, reach out for increasingly weird behaviours as success (and the ever-present fear of failure) manifested. But having read almost all of King's 'good' stuff in my early teens and knowing what he thought of Kubrick's take on his superb tale, I would be generally interested to see King take that role himself. I thought the raving Jack Nicholson did an incendiary job, coming to pieces in a totally 'believable' way and his easy camaraderie with the racist bartender is a scene that regularly flies under the radar but is brilliantly creepy on repeat viewing. Playing devil's advocate, I would of course love to be a fly on the wall for the filming too. King vs Kubrick; and that's definitely the way it would have gone down.

Hunter S Thompson as Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando) in Apocalypse Now

A good friend of mine once described Thompson as the sort of liberal who wants absolutely nothing to do with the state; I think I'd take that one step further and say he wanted nothing to do with society, unless it was on his terms. Principles were, as far as I can tell, there to be tested to the limit. Preferably whilst on drugs.

The heady combination of imported dogma and foreign rule were prevalent in both Conrad and Thompson's day and both have clear disgust for it. There's an ironic tendency for those ideals to twist and warp due to the very fact of their inflexibility however and very occasionally come unmoored, leaving their proponent appearing detached or worse, insane. Thompson was never a man to shy away from debate and controversy and Kurtz, one of the great sociopaths of the 20th century, has floated from the shores of existence through a combination of intellectual loneliness and tyrannical abuse of power. Thompson's wide-eyed mix of fascination, wit and disgust in essaying these nutcases would, in my eyes make for a good role reversal.

 

Will Self as Captain Han Solo (played by Harrison Ford) in Star Wars Ep IV: A New Hope

My goodness. I'm not sure how this might pan out but I'm basically thinking of the almost narcoleptic Self of Shooting Stars fame when I think of this superimposing. Self as the space cowboy of flowing locks, stylish waistcoating and pilot of the Millennium Falcon would probably be a mess but a man whose work was recently described as 'dazlling' trying to crash his way headfirst through the appalling contrivances of Lucas's space soap opera could potentially be the funniest thing on film.

I regularly associate Self with director Christopher Guest for no other reason than both have been known to lampoon modern wants with impervious wit (they have to my knowledge never worked together) and I like imagining Self in Spinal Tap. But Self having to converse -without shedding a tear of despair - with Chewbacca, an aggressive intergalactic Furby, would truly make my day. With apologies to Mr Self.

 

 

The Night of the Wrath of Psycho Dracula and Other Great Villains

Because Jaws Without The Shark Is Just Three Guys In A Boat

Seeing Cumberbatch playing some sort of genetically modified villain in the new Star Trek film has got lots of people, including my partner, quite excited. Half the excitement for me is the fact that you don't really know what's going on; there's just a lot of sound and quotes over said sound.

The other half is basically my own interest in Cumberbatch's villain. There's some chat that he's a Khan-like figure (and it is technically Star Trek 2 following the reboot...) and - who's that? Carol Marcus? Genesis Device you say? A-well well well...

I have a special interest in good villains because they provide a perspective that's not encouraged in society (I should qualify this; I am not a sociopath, I am a nice guy. Plus real sociopaths never use parentheses; they always say what they intend first time round). The best villains in film and books, like Robert Mitchum's terrifying Catholic priest, give a completely different angle to the accepted one and encourage dual perspective, which I think technically makes something twice as enjoyable.

So what makes a good villain? A lot of this naturally enough depends on the viewpoint of the reader and it's true that YouTube has repositioned many of the all-time top film villains as monuments to farce and general silliness (see the multiple, multiple Downfall parodies and James Earl Jones's hilarious Darth Vader sketches as two excellent examples) which shows just hard it is to keep a bad guy bad (there are no parodies of Bardem's Anton Chigurh, I note).

Charlton Brooker (his Twitter nom de plume) has just done a typically absurd takedown of Bardem's Silva in Skyfall and Bane in TDKR. But he points out two key things; that presence has to mean something, i.e. their character must be compelling as a standalone, and that their schemes need to have both an impact on the character in a tangible way (i.e. there is a key change as a result of their action and their character arc changes the plot in a fundamental way) and usually contain a material gain (money, power etc) An element of style (not in the Vogue sense) generally helps too - both to establish character and to twist the plot, like an arm up the back, to their advantage.

So who are my favourite villains and why? N.B. The below is totally subjective bar the two ground rules established above.

Anton Chigurh

The second point of the triangle in McCarthy's No Country For Old Men is for me one of the best villains ever created - and McCarthy has done a few in his time. Chigurh's presented as a man completely apart from modernity - he seems almost primeval in his style and suits McCarthy's minimalist prose very well and it's easy (and maybe instructive) to view him as a sort of Angel of Death figure. His chilling encounters with various dead-end characters (who are all almost immediately killed) convey a vicious disdain for ordinariness and ambiguity which suit the absolutism of his beliefs and present an impassable psychological wall to the police chief chasing him. Chigurh moves a very straightforward plot along at breakneck speed - man finds drug money, takes money, is pursued for the rest of his days. The chase has metaphorical undertones of sin conceived in naivety and makes a fine job of creating a deeply compelling good vs evil narrative - and how coarse the world can be against acts of fallibility.

Professor James Moriarty

Less a villain than a heroic construct and a manful attempt by Conan Doyle to bring the curtain down on his erstwhile detective, Moriarty is presented in The Final Problem as the genius behind the multiple crimes involving murder, larceny and kidnapping throughout Europe at the end of the 19th century. Holmes depicts the maths prodigy as a spider at the centre of his web, sitting silently and waiting for his victim to walk into the trap.
The fact Moriarty only appears once - and briefly - in the whole of Holmes's oft-discussed career is cleverly reverse-engineered by ACD as the validation of his ingenuity, staying away from the limelight and allowing his henchmen to do his bidding. Moriarty's sole confrontation with his nemesis is spare and simmers with violence and the raw conversation that ensues does enough to establish him alone as a genuine psychopath in the Baker St canon. Almost a shame he cops it at the end.

Magnus Pym

Le Carre's subtle beast is an unforgettable and humane take on a con artist of many colours. Pym is a diplomat of redoubtable esteem who leaves his family to spend his final days under a false name on the English south coast, having sold state secrets to the Soviet Union as a double agent. The father-son dynamic is allegedly based on le Carre's own relationship with his father, and is turned over and over in the son's hands as irrevocable and fatal evidence of his blighted nature. Pym spends his life creating a narrative and a backstory for himself and his involvement as a diplomat in the British government appeals to both the created and real Pym for the same reason. Le Carre intertwines the two competing identities flawlessly and presents an irrefutable case for the downfall of his antihero following the first fateful meeting with the Czech spy, Axel. Conspicuously less sinister than the first two, Pym's hugely appealing to me for his moral ambiguity. Although undoubtedly not a hero for his actions and multiple deceits he's maybe the author's best example of a man finally unable to tell the difference between right and wrong.

Dracula

Yes, really. Although it's absolutely fair to say the book is a shocker and nowhere near deserving of its renowned classical status thanks to two-dimensional characters and some truly baffling character behaviour, the title character has been analysed to death (pun not intended), rewritten and played in so many guises in multiple contexts in multiple eras it'd be frankly silly to leave him (it?) out. The potency of the character lies in Stoker's clever manipulation of the multiple notes, diary dates and news articles, which each portray a presence never quite there. Absence certainly makes the heart grow fonder here and his appearances result in radical changes in character; all but Van Helsing fall under his ancient spell.
One of the most consistent interpretations of Dracula is that of the id attacking the ego and overcoming it. Freud's assertion that the ego maintained the 'reality principle' in the self lends this analysis lots of weight, the idea being that Dracula's power is simply a manifestation of the pleasure principle destroying the reality before it, acting selfishly and without interest in consequence. The sexual nature of his conquests further adds credence. Credit where due - Dracula is undoubtedly schlocky in parts but presenting such a compelling literary example of the fundaments of 20th century psychology takes some nous at least. And you wouldn't have had Gary Oldman in those sunglasses either.

Milo Minderbinder

Heller's savagely funny capturing of capitalism at the centre of the Second World War is embodied in the squadron's mess officer. What appeals so strongly about Minderbinder is his complete fastidiousness and conscienceless nature to people; like Chigurh but in a fundamentally different way his interests are singular and pursued with ruthless logic. Interestingly some of his characteristics are based on real life; his phrase "what's good for Milo Minderbinder is good for the country" is apparently based on Charlie Wilson's quote regarding General Motors in a Senate hearing in 1962.
Minderbinder is one of the only villains in the list who does not meet his deserved end in the conclusion of Catch 22 but in eschewing convenience Heller gives Minderbinder a longer sentence; as one of the best characterisations of a system which is frequently only a tip of the scales away from the sort of lunacy on show throughout.

Pinkie Brown

The last name on my list and for me, all the more compelling due to his age. Brown is several years younger - in Dracula's case, hundreds of years younger - than every other character on this list, and yet because of it he is the most vicious in a fundamental way. Greene wrote the novel to question the ideals and moral weight behind the Roman Catholic Church and deliberately positioned good and evil side by side in Pinkie and Rose (which, you'll notice, actually depict the same colour - a shade associated with love - only one of them is a blurry, ambiguous description whilst the other is cast as the definitive article). By making the godless honest-to-goodness Ida Arnold the hero, the inference is complete; faith is a seed in the soul, growing or withering depending on the attention lavished upon it. Brown's fluctuation between psychopathy and moments of tenderness offer hope of salvation but the finest piece of composition is reserved for the 'wedding' of the teenage couple; never has a wonderful moment seemed bleaker, Pinkie's ineffable bitterness pervading the joy of Rose in her innocent yet devout understanding of the institutions of her faith. Greene wrote better books but he rarely improved upon this monstrous manchild.

A Great Introduction To Writing Great Introductions



"Watson, Movember is over. Now shave that bloody thing off, it looks terrible"

Just read this fantastic introduction to Conan Doyle's The Adventure of the Red-Headed League (part of the Five Orange Pips... short story collection)

"Now, Mr Jabez Wilson here has been good enough to call upon me here this morning, and to begin a narrative which promises to be one of the most singular which I have listened to for some time. You have heard me remark that the strangest and most unique things are very often connected not with the larger but with the smaller crimes,  and occasionally, indeed, where there is room for doubt whether any positive crime has been committed. As far as I have heard, it is impossible for me to say whether the present case is an instance of crime or not, but the course of events is certainly amongst the most singular that I have ever listened to. Perhaps, Mr Wilson, you would have the great kindness tor recommence your narrative. I ask you not merely because my friend Dr Watson has not heard the opening part, but also because the peculiar nature of the story makes me anxious to have every possible detail from your lips. As a rule, when I have heard some slight indication of the course of events I am able to guide myself by the thousands of other similar cases which occur to my memory. In the present instance I am forced to admit that the facts are, to the best of my belief, unique."

I love the detail of the rationale for repetition here - there's dozens of different examples of writers introducing stories/ characters into their work and there are plenty of uninteresting ways of doing it (**if you're interested or just a cynic when it comes to good/ bad writing check out Selected Essays by Gore Vidal - his lowdown on the New York Times bestseller list of 1974 is both chucklesome and humourless in its dressing down of lots of the big names at the time of writing**). Plenty of folk would point to an aesthetic compulsion as motivation for this calibre of composition but I think it owes more to Conan Doyle's meticulous nature in his paid work as a physician.

It's a fine writer in my eyes that combines fun (enjoyable, not instructive) with the tapestry on show here. Conan Doyle, like his ineffably precise sleuth, weaves a net to catch all possible queries on re-publishing Mr Wilson's tale.

There's the intellectual element - perhaps the strongest component - demonstrated when Holmes remarks that 'the strangest and most unique things are very often connected not with the larger but with the smaller crimes' - the groundwork for why the tale must be repeated is laid here with barely a creak or a groan as it's tamped in.

There's the 'real time' element - Watson strolls in to find his compadre with a total stranger, which you'd expect of any half decent scribbler in the same scenario - thirdly the oh-so-subtle 'As a rule...' which anyone familiar with Holmes's ruthlessly rational mind will immediately come to agreement with (the real trick there is of course parlaying the reader into agreement of this approach through previous strong characterisation) and finally Holmes requiring the tale again to cross-reference against his previous casework - adding depth, history and a flourish of his personality into the mix.

I've written here before that Conan Doyle's talent for granite characterisation could withstand tectonic movements in a tale (where planned obviously - Holmes is but a man) but this seemed like a particularly eloquent unfurling of a very good yarn.

I Don't Know Much About Celebrities But I Do Know I Like Watching Films About Moonshine And Weird Americans

Its landmarks, presidents and holiday destinations are well known to many. But increasingly -some would say equally - well known are its transient pop stars, craggy chat show hosts, Perez Hilton, cult religions. America makes a point of keeping people interested in it, for seemingly any reason it can find. Lots of people are interested in it for lots of reasons. Commerce, media, culture - some academics have made careers out of being professionally interested in it.

Andy Warhol for example. This guy changed the culture that they worked in in a big way - the 15 minutes, Campbell's soup - clever-clever conceits that shot a sly look at its ever-evolving visage, brought about by its postwar cultural influence. Film directors have tried to assemble some sort of construct of what the idea/brand/nation it is, looks like, how it feels to be there.

Point being of course that - there IS no definitive image, there are only the images of interest, which have done their own work in moving things around, bringing different aspects of an intense melting pot of ideas, an album of snaps showing the huge variety of focus.. There's been interest in:

• Great citizens (Kennedy, Lincoln, Malcolm X)
• Great historical events (countless WW2 films, Vietnam films, films about the civil rights movement, even - in Short Cuts - a film about the film industry in Hollywood)
• Films about the country's geography (Terrence Malick is king here)
• Thousands of marketing adverts masquerading as films (hi Jerry Bruckheimer, welcome to my blog)
• The anti-establishment (essentially the Coens and Malick but Payne, Russell to an extent - even Stillman) 

But few directors have made a critical and financial hit of filming its underbelly - the most powerful elements in the society today which no one can really remember not being there. They just sort of happened. Scorsese's the big fish in that pond, but he's mostly done the great mafia films, with their focus on old-world faiths married with new-world economics and materialism.

The other guy is Paul Thomas Anderson. During his career so far he's turned his lens towards various parts of the unwashed American anatomy; the porn industry got the close up in Boogie Nights (with a career-defining performance in lots of ways from Burt Reynolds), a coruscating document of the country's relationship with religion, the oil industry and free market economics in There Will Be Blood and now his most contemporary - and trippiest fantasia yet - The Master, which deals with celebrity, cults and the post-religious Western world.

I actually saw this last week but it's hard to put into words how I feel about a lot of this film. Having said that, I am aware this is a really long post. To begin I guess I should say I'm weirded out by stuff like Scientology and I am a pretty open minded guy - I'll generally listen to anyone's point of view in the hope they have a semblance of something interesting to add to that bubbling sea of opinion and rhetoric. Sometimes I'm disappointed. Especially when I listen to Nigel Farage. But watching Philip Seymour Hoffman's depiction of pseudo-scientific religio-extraordinaire (his full working title) Lancaster Dodd made me think of Tom Cruise (not going where you think it is) and his depiction of another bombastic nutcase Frank 'T.J' Mackey in Anderson's Magnolia. Only instead of 'RESPECT THE COCK' (you can't not capitalise that ejection of testosterone) you get 'PIG FUCK' when Dodd is challenged on his spaced-out worldview. Anderson certainly does explosive emotions very, very well. Particularly in men.

The reason a Lancaster Dodd is interesting in a way a Nigel Farage is not is not just that one doesn't exist. Dodd has that all-conquering personality trait; watchability. That's a very 21st century phrase (i.e. it's not a real word and it's basically a Big Brother thing) and it's also the great silent statement throughout the film. Anderson makes a special point of never telling the viewer how this quack worldview originated - and there is a compelling reason for it. By ignoring and never mentioning Dodd's history, you simply get the finished article - in contemporary terms, a celebrity. It's a clever trick, and you're constantly aware that by watching the film you're engaging with the conceit and consequently validating it, and therefore Dodd.

Anderson deliberately provides history and context to the other half of the central duo, Freddie Quell. A zigzagging dog of a man who dry-humps sand-ladies and harasses well-to-do gentlemen with his photography instruments, he is immediately cast as both lonely and unusual through his sexually charged analyses of Rorschach tests which he completes upon leaving national service after WW2. Dodd's relationship with Quell is thickened through the murderous cocktails the latter works on; the former's alcoholism serves to strengthen his 'cogence' (or at least makes him write a hell of a lot more).

(A sort-of coda of Quell's existence is inserted midway through the film when he's forced to leave a shelter he has been staying in after poisoning an alcoholic with his home-brew. The camera in this scene shakily tracks Quell's gasping progress across the hewn fields and encapsulates the escapee's demented lifestyle perfectly.)

There's something of a dramatic crescendo halfway through the film when Dodd stays with his 'followers' at a well-to-do home in Philadelphia state. The preceding longshot here showing the travelling circus greeting and hugging their devotees in front of a grand country home is obliquely idyllic. One of the things I particularly enjoy about all of Anderson's films is captured nicely here - the chance to introduce satire or smugness into a scene which dramatically must end badly - yet he never does. He pulled a similar trick with the fantastic baptism scene in There Will Be Blood and many, many times over (almost all involving a buxom lady asking Burt Reynolds if she could do something more and more disgusting and Reynolds's blithe reply - 'Yeah sure!') in Boogie Nights. Instead, he simply lets the camera watch and record.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman stars as the charismatic
and intellectually dubious Lancaster Dodd in The Master

This is followed by a grimly compelling scene involving fraud and the police, souring the sugar-coated joie de vivre in the house, and, in one very woozy scene observed through a blind drunk Quell's eyes (the jauntiness combined with the décolletage on show gives the scene something of a sinister edge), an intimacy that's strangely lacking from the film once the two men's temporary incarceration is complete.

Joaquin Phoenix then; although there's too much to extrapolate upon here he's a super talent and I've always enjoyed whatever he's been in. Quell is a difficult man to like and even understand in some ways - his violent capabilities seem to belong to a primal past and in one memorable scene involving paint-thinner, faux-psychiatry and a total lack of blinking, shocking revelations reveal the potential roots of his torment. A man unloved and unsure of his own capability to love, he becomes a loyal follower to his Master, their dependence on each other refracted through the prism of the whisky tumbler. Of paint thinner. And, y'know, other stuff.

The film's conclusion lands both characters in England in the late postwar years following an unsuccessful bout of rehabilitating Quell back into a 'normative' state. The resulting split has taken its toll on master and follower; Quell returns to the moody, aimless drifter who shows up at a former beau's residence and, unable to focus following the news she has married and left town, mutters an inanity about her having a famous surname as a result of her marriage.

Dodd, meanwhile, sits impotent behind a huge oaken desk, unable to engage again with his work following the completion of his second book (in which the primary focus of his original work is completely reversed - Anderson again dead-bats the obvious but does skew the perspective with another fiery, borderline-insane outburst from Dodd).

I can't leave this without mentioning the incredible Lady Macbeth-esque performance from Amy Adams as Dodd's wife; my friend Alun remarked on leaving that she reminded him of Laura Linney's wife to Sean Penn in Clint Eastwood's Mystic River and so she does perform a similar, bloodcurdling role here, embodying the ideas of the moment in sharp crystalline form. Her mastery of Dodd adds a different dynamic to the film and allows the relationship between Dodd and Quell crucial room to breathe and develop. It's a long way from Cruel Intentions 2 and well deserved - she is great fun to watch and upstages the central pairing with her icy demeanour and brutal use of her sex to get her way (again kudos to Anderson for actually allowing a woman to do something like that in a film - good to see some controversy in there!)

The Master ends and returns to its opening theme of clear, blue waves parting as a boat sails over the ocean on a glorious summer's day. Quell is present in both opening and closing scenes and I'd guess it's instructive to note Dodd's tale ends in ruminative darkness, in striking contrast to his counterpart who ends on a so-so happy note. Good times are there for the honest, was my inference of this conclusion - but I could be wrong. I would love to see a Paul Thomas Anderson film about something like surfing or a family ice cream business. I just don't think it's going to happen, and I guess based on this evidence I don't mind too much.

Sherlock Holmes Solves Everything For Everybody And Still Leaves You Wanting More

So I just finished reading The Hound of the Baskervilles which is of course a book starring (for the most part) Sherlock Holmes. A persistently brilliant read and the reason I choose the former adjective is due to the positively canine behavioural traits of the star of the show, one Mr Sherlock Holmes.

The introduction to The Hound... by art and film buff and general broadcasting guru Christopher Frayling makes clear that Holmes is a singular man in the romantic and 'existential' sense if you'll permit me (I intend to stay clear of terms such as 'epistemology' throughout here as frankly they're a turn-off) beginning with that astonishing opening in which a curly haired spaniel materializes from Holmes's deductive reasoning of a walking stick with distinctive marks in the middle (n.b Holmes reasons through intuition that the dog carried the stick by the teeth - one thing I did really enjoy about this incidentally was the unspoken detail that the marks in the middle indicated equal weighting on each side should the stick be carried horizontally, which is of course exactly how a dog would behave. James Wood talks about stuff like this in How Fiction Works - seems to me to be fiendishly hard to do but I digress) which the trusty (yes it's a dog metaphor) Dr Watson brings to his master's attention (yada yada).

Hound of the Baskervilles has been variously touted as an attack of the Id on the ego (step up Freudians), an attack of the proletariat on the bourgeoisie (step up Marxists), a treatise on rationalism (step up philosophers) and as a detective story (the other 90%). For me leaving aside the underlying metaphorical stuff this book is just a consistently amazing example of how to write really great detective fiction. I've read quite a lot of this stuff in my youth and I've travelled the globe in my narrative escapades - I've read Mankell and some of Larsson in Sweden, Chandler in LA, Christie in most of England and Europe and Le Carre in Berlin and London. I'm a cultured guy when it comes to this genre. But Kurt Wallander will never be played by Lucy Liu. What makes a detective and his compatriot so popular they can be watched by millions a century after they retired?

Lots of people (alright, everyone) will say 'it's the story, dummy' and it is. BUT it isn't just that is it? Arch clever guy Umberto Eco studied a great deal of Conan Doyle's - and by extension Holmes's - superlative techniques and dextrously weaved them into The Name of the Rose. The novel is set in a Franciscan monastery in which an 'outsider' (read; non-superstitious weirdo) comes in and begins to use his environment, temporality, cause and effect and intuition into behaviours by those around him to build a picture of the murderer, who he eventually gets (although not without the bodies piling up). Eco's point is that the deductive qualities of Holmes are in fact vastly heightened qualities that we ourselves have and use to make sense of the world around us on a regular basis.

Detective stories come in many hues but Holmes and his wit seem somehow life-affirming; unlike the miserablist Larsson who, being brutally frank, comes across as a bit too nihilistic to be taken very seriously (there's only one way to do nihilism: with a smile). Conan Doyle makes the facts of the case stand up and tell their story and that's the engaging part; the interaction, the mingling of these pieces of evidence which are alive and say things to each other - not to mention the ingeniously innocuous nature of some of them (the boot that goes missing from outside Henry Baskerville's hotel room upon his arrival in London is one of the best 'elements' of a story I've read and is weaved in such simple colours) all of which suggest both nothing and something deeply odd all at once.

The Hound is also particularly famous for its depiction of Dartmoor. With its huddle of stone dwellings once occupied by prehistoric man and wails of legendary beasts swirling in the fog, the clarity and steadfast logic of a clearly thrilled Holmes stands in stark contrast to a beautifully realised canvas, almost impressionist in its ethereal wastelands and inhospitable mires. The inferences of man versus his environment and specifically the science of reason against the unspoken laws of superstition and whimsy are drawn with subtlety and simplicity at every stroke; at just 160 pages long the pervasively sinister atmosphere is sketched expertly and creeps in every page the lonesome Watson spends there with his charge. Conan Doyle spent time there with former journalist and Express editor Fletcher Robinson and as a serving doctor in the Boer War it's obvious the guy's got previous with desolate open environments. The seal of approval may well come from the poet T.S. Eliot, who was fairly familiar with the composition of the dearth of humanity himself and was reportedly a huge fan of Holmes's.

The above may be another strong reason for the enduring popularity of this, Holmes's best-loved and most-read tale. Garlanded with praise like no other work by Conan Doyle, it's hard not to notice the familiar theme of man overcoming uncertainty - and almost certain death by what can be variously interpreted as hereditary traits and the sins of others through to sheer fear and ignorance of death and its consequences to master all within his realm by relying on his own wherewithal and intellectual ability.

I could go on and on about this book - it's that good and delivers with so much economy of prose on such a consistently high plateau that this 'review' or whatever is something of a knockabout thing in assessing its merits and powers, but the greatest praise I guess I could pay The Hound is that I will seriously consider seeing how Lucy Liu gets on if she travels to Dartmoor.

Being Dysfunctional Is Great (And You Can Look Okay In A Binbag Too)

David O. Russell has a really satisfying name. Less peppery than David O. Selznick, whose surname makes me think of savoury pretzels, he's also one of those directors, like Alexander Payne and Wes Anderson, who gets photographed a lot wearing a shirt and tie.

This is an informal piece about the film Silver Linings Playbook because I am wearing a cashmere sweater, jeans and it's a Sunday evening. I really enjoyed I Heart Huckabees when it came out, even after seeing that bust up between Russell and Lily Tomlin (spectacular!) and decided on the basis of a trailer I watched alone in bed on Saturday morning once that this was a film I wanted to check out to see if I felt the same way about the guy.

Obsessive compulsive behaviours are a thing close to my heart, because I have been obsessive compulsive for almost half my life. It's something that comes on and off depending on a variety of factors, mainly how tired I feel - which might mean I am just twitchy (I feel the need to do certain things more if I have had less sleep than usual on a cumulative basis) but I will always do certain things because they are part of my life. The deal, as ever, is recognising habits for what they are; physical manifestations of my mental state. In that respect I am dissimilar to other people but only because other people don't do specifically what I do.

I enjoyed Cooper's portrayal of a 'self-built' man hugely. I have never seen any Bradley Cooper films but this was a real eye-opener for me; the bull in a china shop approach I was expecting (and kind of got) was an aspect of, rather than the performance. The straight-upness of the guy was a big win for me and Cooper, with his 6 foot whatever frame, permagrizzled jawline and consistent choice of loungewear with a binbag for his street jogs came through as all goofy au naturelle rather than a calculated move. This is a film that really oozes sincerity in every hue and Cooper's Pat, saying farewell to A Farewell to Arms at 4am or watching Singin' In The Rain on his iPod (donated by his rageaholic buddy Ronnie) is an all over embodiment of that feeling. His clear-eyed focus on a goal he may never achieve through his previous sins was an admirable statement and I think Russell deserves a lot of credit for showing this without blinking.

Anybody reading this will have done so because they wanted information or (God forbid, from me) an opinion of David O. Russell (skip this blog if that's the case, I'm all shyness and weird turns in the dark) but anyway Russell is, of course, well known for his soupçon of giddy, screwball highs and social-realist lows, all of which again are delicious to my palette, and Playbook doesn't disappoint; the camerawork, a strong feature of his in Three Kings, is again employed to engaging and claustrophobic effect, particularly in the Solitano domestic household, an intense relay of a cramped and intense atmosphere in both the physical and metaphorical sense. At times it reminds me of those docu-dramas you (still?) get on terrestrial TV (usually Channel 4) 'observing' a family under pressure in some way. The Steadicam here both adds to the spicy ménage, suggesting an extra presence of induced stress, and another purely ambivalent perspective, content to watch as it blurs between a ranting Jennifer Lawrence (what a performance; great) and a slowly unpeeling Robert de Niro (my favourite character, for self-evident reasons).

It feels right to mention Lawrence on the basis that she is another actor that I have never seen in anything. Boy she is good. Most adjectives in the Depression Thesaurus feel lazy when describing this character and that's to Lawrence's great credit IMO: she is completely convincing in a plot that veers off the rails as it reaches its destination and handles her sentimental streak with the right amount of love and cynicism so that come that rather slushy conclusion you feel as though she (and Cooper) earned it. A post-game household scene in which she destroys Pat's father's (de Niro) obsession that she is redirecting his son's 'juju', much as a magnet does with filings is hilarious, and de Niro plays the obsessive to perfection, bowing to completely nonsensical reasoning in a totally lifelike manner (trust me on this; I have had exactly the same experience and was smiling whilst biting my fingers at this point).

De Niro, FWIW, is absolutely excellent. There's a charming piece on him in today's Observer and he comes across as a lovely guy, enamoured with youth and cajoling them into leading the way in life. I would be wholly unsurprised to see some sort of award going his way soon for this performance and his partnership with the wonderful, wonderful Jackie Lowe (a portrayal of desperately anxious motherly love that's completely beguiling) is the bedrock of Russell's tragicomic genesis. De Niro also lends a toughness to the film's emotional catharsis, a post-dance scene that in other hands may cloy with a sentiment too sugar-sweet for all tastes. But this is judged to perfection and the physical bond that is reignited between father and son - it's impossible to write that moment in unsentimental terms, let alone film it - was totally nutritious to me.

I was so pleased to see Russell demolish my previously held conventions on why certain scenes 'don't work' in cinema, a feeling I previously experienced in pop lit whilst reading Franzen's The Corrections. It's a delight to enjoy a thing whilst recognising elements you have seen in other films and fallen out of love with because of your judgement. I felt a reappraisal of a lot of previously held perceptions was due and ultimately the subjective part of me that responds to the rom com has changed in a definitive way. The most enjoyable experience I took away was a simple one; that whatever art is, it's definitely completely shapeless and logic and reason stand as part of the subjective experience to say anything, anything at all, can and will be fantastic in the right pair of hands.