The Outrage of Arsene Wenger, Part 183589020782

Wenger's suggestion that City are being disingenuous with FFP is naïve and ignores the issue of football clubs behaving more like businesses

Frank Lampard with Manchester City, where he will play before moving to New York 

When Arsene Wenger called out Manchester City last week for what saw as dangerous flouting of FFP, it was tempting to suggest the kidology had already begun, prior to today's game.

'Is it a way to get around Fair Play? I don't know,' mused Wenger when questioned on the signing and subsequent loan of Frank Lampard from one City to another. His dead-bat response to his own rhetorical question suggests his mind's already made up - and as we all know Arsene Wenger is the only manager in the league with an economics degree.

Whilst that last point appears sarcastic, it's pertinent. Wenger will know what businesses are capable of, and have been since time immemorial, with regard to managing large capital assets in an environment where the game suddenly changes. They get creative.

In fact you don't even need a degree to know this. There's a broad parallel in the story with the UK's banks for the best part of seven years, as the British government - first Brown and Darling, then Cameron and Osborne - tried to get national GDP to grow by getting state-owned banks like the Royal Bank of Scotland to lend to SMEs and the like, mainly by ploughing them with cash. 

The problem was that banks to recapitalise for a variety of reasons - to prepare for impending regulatory fines, administer bad investments in capital restructuring, and make inroads on re-balancing the core tier ratio (deposits to lending) to buttress against a queasy economy and impending ECB stress tests. So the banks smiled sweetly and stockpiled the cash. Cue media frenzy. A bad public relations story for banks, but they got what they needed: more money.

What's happening over at City is just another example of what's been going on for years in the Premier League: by massive movement of large, liquid assets (Glazer) multi-tiered international businesses (any number of Premier League clubs, judging by their summer tours) and a 'dynamic' (no) regulatory environment, shall we say. Wenger's problem isn't Man City but the whole system, but he won't say so because Arsenal benefit from it too and he's got a match on Sunday.

And if you're going to look at the New York deal in detail, from City's perspective it's a smart move. Platini wants clubs to act responsibly with their finances - so City have, by buying or creating other clubs (Melbourne Heart in Australia are City's other 'sister' club) and using that base as a means of managing their players. It's just a surprise David Villa, newly signed for Melbourne, didn't show up at Carrington as well.

New York City FC also allows (Manchester) City to get close to young American talents very quickly and have the means to sign them up without asking them to travel half the world to do so. FFP is meant to exercise club youth policies to give younger players a chance. In 1974 the number of American kids playing soccer was 103,432. In 2012 it was over three million, with a large number playing in Eastern states. The American project appears mutually beneficial.

So Lampard's signing is a great footballing one for both Citys, and also a neat metaphor in football's transition from sport to entertainment commodity. That his final destination is America, where the top five Premier League clubs last season found themselves this summer, is particularly ironic. And whatever Wenger's complaints, it's difficult to criticise City for behaving like a business when UEFA have made it pretty clear that's what they want to see.

 

 

OSCAR CHAT

 

TWENTY EIGHT OUT OF SIX HUNDRED is less than 5%. Other things that are less than 5%:

• The number of voting members of AMPAS that are black.

Steve McQueen stands a great chance of becoming just the 29th black man or woman to win an Academy Award, and the first to win a Best Director award. Since the inaugural awards, there have been 600 Oscars handed out. Having suggested a nomination for handsome Hollywood hero Robert Redford here last week I now feel a bit embarrassed to have overlooked this weirdly archaic statistic. It seems difficult to believe that not a single black director has won an Oscar - in the entire history of the Academy Awards, only four films made by a black director have been nominated.

There are two ways to look at this. The first concerns the above numbers; whilst no one (i.e. me) is suggesting the Academy is institutionally racist, another statistic on their makeup is pertinent: more than half of the makeup are sixty or older. America has changed dramatically since 1953, when Sarah Keys became the first African American to challenge the 'separate but equal' race law in Carolina. That's important. From a demographic perspective it's hard to suggest America's rewarding it's film-making talent. Incidentally, McQueen is British.

The second is a knottier question and therefore a little more difficult to answer. How many films made by black directors deserved to win an Oscar? And, one step back, how many black film directors are there working in the industry? It's knottier because there are smaller considerations that flow into bigger subjects like national politics and macroeconomic policy, and those considerations are much harder to quantify.

For example: the age old debate on equality of opportunity and how that affects career trajectories. The US Social Security Administration (SSA) recently released data showing more than half of Americans earn below $30,000 pa, which is about $3,000 above the 'federal poverty line' (the line delineates who is in living in poverty and who isn't). That was for 2012. As this heat map shows, many Americans in the South live below the poverty line. The US Census Bureau suggests the majority of African Americans live in cities and suburbs within the South (although the suburbs are undoubtedly more affluent than they once were). CNN Money thinks the average public college education (i.e. open to all) is $8,200 pa per student. So allowing for a reasonable margin of error, a good percentage of African Americans will never get to college, and therefore find a door to film-making closed. And that's just part of the question - why are they in that position in the first place?

Demographics do make a huge difference - the most recent American census put the African American population of the US around 12%, so naturally more white Americans will be getting the opportunity to make an Oscar-winning film. But 12% of 381 million people is just under 45 million people - that's the equivalent of Ukraine or South Africa. It also doesn't answer the much more subjective question of quality - how many black directors are making Oscar-worthy films?

So in short, there does seem to be something wrong with the current set-up - but how much of that is in the Academy's hands is difficult to say. One final and interesting thing: the four previously nominated films made by black directors/ producers are The Color Purple, Precious, Django Unchained and The Blind Side. For anybody who's seen those films, there's a certain underdog theme to each, and three explicitly concern slavery. I think the Academy's right to promote these films as great social commentaries but they should be broadening the net more - it does ask an awkward question of what the voters are interested in watching.

Pic from Shetland Arts

Love/Hate: Series One Episode One

The Wire in Eire. The Woire. OK, I'm all out of Wire gags. First episode of Love/Hate reviewed here.

Channel 5's had a distinctly hit and miss record when it comes to importing drama from other shores - for every Walking Dead there's been two Law and Order knock-offs (a show that's proliferated so quickly it could probably have its own channel). There's a long way to go but in Love/Hate, it looks like the buyers might have hit something big.

Latest and Greatest?
Let's get the hyperbole out of the way. Comparisons to The Wire appear a touch misjudged; Sopranos references are well wide of the mark, if only because the scale of The Sopranos was so huge by comparison to TV peers. The Sopranos could also call on genuine Hollywood names - the likes of Joe Pantoliano, Steve Buscemi and the sadly deceased James Gandolfini will not crop up in Love/Hate any time soon.

But..?
On first glance, it does look good. There's certainly a few Wire-esque influences; the bottom-up storytelling through low-level players that made the American show so compelling has been restyled for a modern Ireland here. The grimy views, mundane estates and ever-present gloom are all present and correct. It squints at institutions and mines a rich black vein of humour in moments of tragedy. And it does have one or two very good characters. Aiden Gillen, who plays gangster John Boy Power exudes just the right mix of charm and menace and Nidge could be a great comic foil. A bit of an Irvine Welsh character.

Just your friendly local gangster: Aiden Gillen's John Boy Power

Good Boy Gone Bad
There's a certain irony that Gillen, who played Councilman Tommy Carcetti in the American drama, is now on the other side of the law as John Boy Power, and as an aside it does at least show how versatile Gillen is - Idris Elba got most of the plaudits as Stringer Bell so I'm looking forward to seeing the Irishman in this. Assuming he survives the brutal Dublin environment of course...

Marathon Man
The Wire prided itself on ensuring no-one was off-limits - the murder of Stringer Bell in Season Three was shocking for viewers (Simon later cited it as one of his all-time favourite Wire moments precisely because it was so shocking) - it'll be interesting to see who survives Dublin's gangland ruckus. My early thoughts are Power making it through, given he's Aiden Gillen and all that. Not so sure about Tommy.


Techno File

This handsome chap might kill you. Love/Hate's Darren

TV shows that use current technology to deepen plot always run the gauntlet. But given the ubiquity of it anyway, it'd be ridiculous of writers not to. It can also be what makes the show work - witness Series 1 of The Wire, which involved a giant wiretap operation on budget mobile phones around Baltimore by the city police. And Nidge learning how to use a gun via YouTube does make for interesting character development. Surely that website will come back to haunt him though...

Gangsters, by Chanel
A few people have pointed out this is a good looking cast, considering it's about the Dublin
underworld. I agree. But is it Darren's fault he looks like Danny Cipriani? In the quest for realism in TV, should you pursue a certain type of face? Admittedly there's no one in Love/Hate with a mug like a bag of spuds. But being good looking was never a crime. Which is fortunate, because otherwise this show would be over before it got started.

Love/Hate is on Channel 5 on Wednesday nights at 10pm.

Photos courtesy of What's On TV and Tumblr

The Complete Stories by Truman Capote: A Review

I nearly called this The Truman Show. I just couldn't go through with it. Sorry everyone.
 
Reynolds Price's introduction to the Modern Classic version of Truman Capote's Complete stories thrusts the diminutive Southern gentleman alongside the globetrotting bar-room aficionado and occasional war correspondent Ernest Hemingway. When I think of what I know about Hemingway and how busy he seemed, all the damn time, Capote is not a comparative figure in my mind's eye. He's just a very intelligent guy who had a fine eye for detail and character and spun woozily evocative yarns around his upbringing and New York living.

And yet I hugely prefer his careful, refined style, not effete as such but deeply interested in a feminine way for me. Capote's style seems perverse in streaks; never asexual but capable of occupying both genders in back to back tales.

The cover is a charmer; a precious young Truman stares intensely into a camera, wispy fringe combed across freckled brow and his clear blue eyes fix you in your place as a cigarette stub dangles from fingers that it feels insulting to describe as lithe, because it's a lazy term and this man would never appreciate slothliness in word or wit.

Twenty vignettes set all over America make up this collection, ranging as far south as Texas and as far north as New York. He's a writer I've always seen in New York thanks to his toothy personality, a fetish for etiquette and an alleged amphetamine habit that would stop Hemingway's bull in Pamplona. And indeed most of my favourite tales, including the exquisitely sinister Miriam and the famous Headless Hawk, are set in that snowflaked city.

As a Southerner, his taste and touch for gothic is refined and seems to possess an ancient wisdom. Elmore Leonard once advised aspiring writers never to describe the weather 'just because it's there': sound advice, and Capote's landscapes creep around their subjects almost tenderly. He has a particular talent for the night. 'Tall trees, misty, painted pale by malicious moonshine towered steep on either side without a break or clearing', make for an oppressive backdrop in A Tree Of Night, a sinister story of a lonely young woman travelling alongside a freak show compere and her savant partner, (relationship never clarified).

Like the sticky Southern heat Capote grew up in, the writing is regularly uncomfortably close to the skin. A surgical knife seems to hovers over each character, trimming and distilling a cast of dozens with a few short, sharp strokes. His brutal treatment of Walter Ranney in Shut A Final Door would be shocking if it weren't so unconcerned with itself, instead annotating his pain with merciless aestheticism via a silent hand. And it seems no background, age or indeed culture is beyond his tender grip. The writing feels amazingly tactile, like it had shook hands with its creations and perhaps sat down for coffee before committing their existence to paper.

Preacher's Legend depicts a decrepit Negro in semi-glorious senility, having finally made his peace with his unseen God in the woods near his shack home. Capote's forensic style lifts the tale off the page here - -it's commonplace to point out the inherent hazards involved with a creation of this broadness and contemporary whims would doubtless cause a younger writer to ironically stretch further than Capote probably did in his depiction. Instead what's captured is almost bitterly honest and gently funny in its exposure of loneliness and the beliefs that gather, like dust, in the spaces between living.

What really stands out is his almost tender appraisal of the most subtle of emotional changes in his characters throughout - I imagined him combing his delicate fingers through that fine hair as he stripped and planed for the depth and dimension that's so insistent in his style. The omniscient position he assumed at the hub of East Coast society in the Fifties and Sixties no doubt played into the development of his style and there's equally no doubt of the relationship each held throughout the author's professional life.

But the most fascinating aspect of all of this was considering where the man drew his abilities from; paradoxically his social nature, his known propensity for gossip and discussion of those around him enabled him to draw on deep wells of understanding of human character that a more reserved individual would never have access to. That alone is not a talent, but these stories feel as fresh today as they did fifty years ago. The man himself would surely tell you that that is a price worth paying.


Pictures courtesy of Penguin.com

Picture Perfect

The success of Rear Window hinges on the everyman qualities of Jimmy Stewart

When questioned once about his approach to acting, Jimmy Stewart suggested one of the most important things was 'to try not to make the acting show.' At first glance the prosaic nature of the remark's only unusual when considering the undoubted depth of the man who said it.

But it's misleading to take at face value. A man who nearly avoided movies altogether to complete a masters in architecture at Princeton would have understood the importance of form and structure, and why an edifice owes as much to the ground it was founded upon as the more subtler aspects.

For a long time I thought this guy represented the quintessential icon of American popular culture; a post war icon, encapsulating family, small town patriotism and conservatism with a small c that was conscientious enough to listen to the liberal voice in its ear. I've been pleasantly surprised to find the evidence to this superficial perspective has sat on my rapidly crumbling shelf (never buy MDF folks. Life lesson right there).

Stewart, kind of appalled, kind of fascinated at once

Although I've owned his films for over a decade, it's fair to say I've only recently become a Jimmy Stewart fan. When I say recently, I really mean in the last week. The film that did the trick was Hitchcock's Rear Window, one of numerous films I own by the rotund Essex gentleman who by everyone's estimate was decades ahead of his contemporaries in understanding the psychology of film (more there shortly). I'm not the first nor best qualified to claim it as a masterpiece, but there you go - there's no sense in disputing it, certainly from these quarters.

Stewart seems an interesting guy full stop. He did Frank Capra's films - many of which I also own (including that one) but before dismissing his work as dreamy sentimentalism, watch them again. Anyone who's a bit of a Capra enthusiast understands the inferences - he knows, as well as his audience, that something fundamental is being lost as the film is being watched; that it's impossible to exist in the nigh-blissful scenes that his characters do and consequently that these films will remain films forever more. I don't believe Frank Capra wasn't really interested in capturing reality - his sniffier supporters might suggest he was better than that. I prefer to think he saw enough reality in real life.

Back to the subject. Stewart is the archetypal Capra protagonist - not naïve but big-hearted, straightforward yet not cruel towards men, and seeming to exist within a moral code miraculously unspoken throughout. These elements are almost believable in his acting, amongst the best I've seen. But Hitchcock made him into something a little different.

Rear Window's a clever piece of work and a more cynical perspective of community life within a major city - witness the emotional outpouring in the dead dog scene for confirmation of Hitchcock's rejection of the Capra code. But Stewart really nails the picture as an everyman with an eye for the narrative thanks to a time and life-consuming job as a magazine photographer. Slowly Stewart sloughs off the shell of disinterested citizen, becoming the recorder and narrator of blithe and unassuming community existing together in a steamy apartment block. Fascination's the seed of the carapace that grows apparently organically over the mundaneness of his lonely wheelchair-bound existence.

Between takes in Stewart's Greenwich apartment

But what prompted the fascination to grow? David Thomson writes really engagingly about a subconscious awakening in American pop culture upon the release of Psycho, the undertones of sexuality, gender and violence providing nourishment to a blooming voyeurism planted by an increasingly pervasive media, mainly thanks to TV. That film was released six years after Rear Window, but you can see the tendrils slowly yet inexorably enfeebling Stewart's perspective to be replaced by one which is created, prescribed and received as gospel.

In spite of that I guess what I most enjoy about this is the general vibe of relentlessness with which Stewart sets Jefferies up in every aspect of his confined life. There's a real element of self-preservation inherent in Stewart which naturally comes from his day job (nb as you'd expect the attention to detail in every aspect of Vertigo is fantastic) but he too is a product of his environment; his class-dominated perspective is a metaphorical straitjacket for him to both defend himself with and attack from. That broken leg is more than broken bones - a literal symbol of L.B's postwar attitude to life, both comfortable with and railing against a society fracturing with every passing world event (detail!)

Grace Kelly, the syrupy-voiced faux-celebrity girlfriend is absolutely brilliant at adapting to his stoic attitude and puncturing holes in his bullish demeanour - more than once it seems there's a boxing match going on between a heavyweight fighter and a quicker, nimbler counterpart who weaves in between the crushing blows. Her opening scene recounting her 'working day' - and Stewart's bored reaction - is hilarious. Both parties seek to concoct stories for L.B's neighbours, L.B in particular appearing almost pathologically addicted to narrative and coherence.

Of course the interest lies in whether his stories bear out the truth or crumble, and it's interesting to observe the camera watch its protagonists. And therein lies the second point, neatly wrapped up by Kelly just when it appears (spoiler!) the villain of the piece will escape unpunished. "Whatever happened to that old saying, 'Love thy neighbour'?" she quips as the corpse of L.B's neighbour's dog is ceremoniously withdrawn into the apartment amid wailing and recriminations. Hitchcock couldn't have guessed how television would make fleeting stars out of the everyday people in his flats and apartments but the draping of fictitious narrative over a real life is amazing to watch - this film is nearly 60 years old but feels as contemporary as ever.

A brief word on the camerawork- it's been covered in more expansive and frankly better detail elsewhere but this is one of the only films I've ever seen that makes it explicitly clear that everything you are watching is being manipulated. The protagonist is a photographer. Many of the film's scenes include views from his binoculars/ camera lens.

But even outside that, Hitchcock achieves a sort of free indirect style with his camerawork, strongly inferring that the visuals reflect Stewart's own interests rather than his. For me that's the distinguishing mark of a masterpiece over merely very good. But even more, it's a demonstration of the talents of a man who understood - whether it was in film or architecture - never let the joins show. Maybe I'll take that on board when I buy my next shelving unit.

Pictures courtesy of The Lightning Bug's Lair and HHHHound.com

Bigelow Unchained

Could the death of Osama bin Laden have received the same treatment as slavery in Django Unchained?

Not many people know Kathryn Bigelow for Point Break do they? The tale of two detectives breaking a surfing drugs gang on the Californian coast was described as 'Looks 10, Brains 3' by Time's Richard Corliss. It would be unfair - and erroneous - to say the same of Zero Dark Thirty, whatever your take on this film is.


Keanu Reeves plays perpetually dripping drip Johnny Utah in Point Break.

But reviewers have waded in on many aspects of ZDT, notably the thrilling conclusion (that I suspect are deeply cathartic to many Americans) and the highly contentious torture scenes that at least one reviewer suggests 'glorify' torture (although that argument sort of feels like a leap).

The best take on the whole circus, besides Michael Moore's amusingly straight-up diatribe via Facebook, could be Peter Maass in The Atlantic. Maass is apparently a vet of East Coast broadsheet attitudes, having written in the NYT and the New Yorker on both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. His suggestion is that ZDT is not to be trusted - precisely because the material gained by Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal in the making of the film to imbue it with authenticity came from the CIA.

It's a reasonable point, when you consider the angles that could be played here. How much were Boal and Bigelow given? Under what pretext? Did they themselves go in with a game plan (probably along the lines of 'don't annoy the CIA so we get the movie made with minimal fuss' - a potential game-changer in itself) and how much did they stick to it?

There's lots of factors at work here. Of equal importance is the legacy this film leaves - lots and lots and lots of reviewers, to a man/ woman Americans, have spoken of the emotional satisfaction - and even pride - they felt when they heard bin Laden had been killed by Navy SEALS in the hills of Pakistan. That's a lot of weight to push against, and without being cynical, it may be that Bigelow and Boal decided to cut a couple of (minor) corners in the belief they were on the right side of the argument. Does that do lasting damage or is it skin deep?

The threshold of truth for ZDT is infinitely higher than almost all of its contemporaries, precisely because it's such an emotionally 'engaging' (euphemism alert) event in Western and American culture. That's undoubtedly the challenge that Bigelow and Boal wanted to address when they went to the CIA for their answers, and whilst it's right that the bar is set high, it's hard not to wonder what would have happened if Bigelow decided to fictionalise elements (and I'm steering clear of the whole does torture work/ not work debate here by that inference).

So what's the answer? Leave the film to someone else? Not an option for a tough nut like Bigelow, ex-wife of Cameron that she is. Tone it down? Moot point. A left-field option (in more than one sense) would have been not to involve the government at all and simply record your own take, regardless of how controversial the subject is. Massively ballsy admittedly, and possibly a colossal act of vandalism. But how much of Jessica Chastain's character is legit and how much script rewrites?

It's interesting to look at Tarantino's Django Unchained, released a fortnight earlier in the UK, as a counterpoint to Zero. Both deal with moments that had - and have - tangible impacts on American culture. Both deal with extremely unpleasant elements of human behaviour. But where one aims to record an event as close to the 'truth' (i.e. what's discussed above), the other puts its desire to entertain front and centre.

No one can possibly say that Tarantino has meddled with the truth when it comes to Django Unchained. Because of course in this tale, there are no factual checkpoints - the whole story is fiction. But the violence, the blood, the admittedly appalling language that so offended Spike Lee, is all pretty accurate - toned down if anything according to the man himself. And yet the film has miraculously escaped censure from almost everyone, except Krishnan Guru-Murthy of course.

I'm not suggesting for a moment that the majority of the moviegoing public don't care as much about slavery as they do about a terrorist from Saudi Arabia. But is it easier to write a movie about the evils of slavery, which are shown many, many times in extremely gruesome contexts, than it is about a more contemporary issue? Are the screams of ZDT that much louder because they're that much nearer, temporally speaking?

It's fair to say the picture to the left is pretty shocking. Full disclosure: this man is eaten by dogs. That's sanctioned by his 'master' following his attempted escape of his hellish existence of beating other black men to death to stay alive. Without context, this might be one of those halfwit efforts Eli Roth or arch idiot Tom Six occasionally concoct and label 'cinema'. Is this a less appalling image because of the stylistic hues of Tarantino's direction? Because there's no explicit truth attached? Because - pardon the slight cynicism - it's expected of Tarantino, and therefore acceptable?

At the moment there's three films showing that all deal with huge events in America's history - these two plus Lincoln, Spielberg's eponymous biopic. Each is handled with its director's distinctive style; is that the only issue at stake here or is Bigelow under pressure to deliver a different sort of film due to the magnitude of the narrative? And if that's the case, why are others under less apparent pressure to deliver? Personal choice or something more pernicious at work?

Is it impossible to completely reimagine the death of Osama bin Laden? There appears to be huge psychological as well as critical implications here - a film it appears much of America was desperate to see perhaps couldn't have been done another way due to those two (crucial?) factors. Being practical, a reimagining could have been career suicide, and I guess it's fair to say the topic is of such a particularity that very few options were available to Bigelow in recreating a still-seismic event.

Perhaps thinking that a less self-consciously accurate appraisal of the political event of 2011 wouldn't be such a bad idea, I then considered this: Quentin Tarantino making Zero Dark Thirty. After Inglourious, I'm not sure after all that it's a good idea.

Pictures courtesy of msn.com and myreelpov.wordpress.com