Midnight In Paris

Another short guy discovers that Ms Bruni doesnt take direction well

It's safe to say that Woody Allen skews to an older demographic. The missus and I went to see Midnight In Paris and we were easily the youngest people in the cinema by maybe thirty years. MIP is a time travel yarn that rips off Christopher Reeve's Somewhere In Time, setting it in 1920's Paris and 2010, er, Paris. The best thing about the film was casting Owen Wilson in the lead. With another leading actor the film would be a pretentious obnoxious mess, but Wilson's naivete and Texas charm allows us to believe in his character. This might be his best role since Dignan in Bottle Rocket. Unfortunately Wilson's surrounded by cardboard cut outs. Cut outs of Hemingway, Picasso, Scott Fitzgerald, Bunuel, TS Eliot etc. but cut outs none the less. The other bit of inspired casting was getting Carla Bruni for a small role, she was pretty good and it has to be said that the French First Lady appeals to men of a certain age. 
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Midnight In Paris is harmless enough and has one or two laughs (I liked the Djuna Barnes joke) and there's some nice shots of Montmartre at night. It's all really a bit of fluff, probably best watched on DVD. I do think that it's an interesting dinner party question to ask which city in which era would have been the most fascinating to live in. Paris in the twenties does sound enticing, as does Paris in the 1950's - that's probably the one I'd pick, but I'd also be intrigued by Vienna around 1900, London in the 1590s, first century Rome and fifth century BC Athens. 
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Anyway, if the last movie you saw was The King's Speech and you're itching for another flick then this is probably the film for you. Be prepared to stay until the very end of the credits because the people on either side of you will need assistance getting up.

Synonyms For Pork

A peeler, two hoodies and a spide eating Monster Munch...ahh Belfast

I'm currently writing a novel about a policeman in Northern Ireland in the 1980's. In Ulster we get slang from England, America, Europe and we also have our own criminal argot, which is good for a novelist because it means there are many synonyms. Just as the Inuit allegedly have many words for snow we've got rather a lot for the police. I thought you might be interested in some of the terms available and a rough estimate of their popularity in Belfast. 
1. The Peelers
2. The Police
3. Copper
4. Cop
5. The Old Bill
6. The Bill
7. The Fuzz
8. The Peels
9. The Plod
10. Black Bastards (which refers to the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s uniform not to race (although this uniform is in fact a very dark green))
11. Bobbies
12. Rozzers
13. The Filth
14. The Scum
15. The Pigs
16. The Guards (the Irish police only)
17. The SS RUC
18. The Johnnies
19. The Five O’s
20. The Stench
21. The Yardies
22. The Sweeney
23. The Kojaks
24. Bacon Sarnies
25. The Roberts
26. The Rashers
27. Peeler Pete and his Porky Pals
28. The Looney Tunes
29. The Wilburs
30. The Screws (more usually prison officers)

Duff Beer

The beard is really starting to get out of control now

Homer Simpson's beer of choice is Duff. On the show it's usually characterised as a lousy product that's been shrewdly marketed to idiots. Despite this many companies have asked to license the name Duff Beer and have always been turned down. Matt Groening doesn't want Duff beer to be licensed because he says it would cheapen the fictional brand and he doesn't want to encourage under age drinking. These are both pretty good reasons if you ask me. Fox's lawyers have gone after anyone who has tried to sell Duff beer and they've shut a few operations in Australia and the US. There is a Duff beer that's made in Mexico that Fox is going after at the moment and the one I tried last night is brewed in Germany and it probably won't last too long until the lawyers close it down too. 
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The big question of course is how does it taste? If Beer Rater is to be believed Duff is supposed to be terrible. But, actually, it's not that bad. For a start because it's brewed in Germany it is legally required to follow the Reinheitsgebot which guarantees certain minimum standards in German beer and although I am not a beer geek I didn't notice much difference from your bog standard lager. The head did not over foam, there was no metallic bitterness, the beer was pleasantly drinkable and the aftertaste (such as it was) had a pleasing citrus quality to it. If I was pushed I'd say that there were mild lemon notes and a slightly annoying sweetness. I've definitely had worse. Duff is a bland, harmless little beer and although I will certainly never be buying another one a chilled bottle on a very hot day wouldn't hurt at all.

Captain Burke

Most books are crap. Just as most songs are crap and most restaurants are crap.  Mediocre books are sometimes even more offensive than crap books because you can tell that the author is often intelligent and gifted but either through laziness or cynicism he has reined in his skills.
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That's why I loved reading Declan Burke's Absolute Zero Cool. It's not crap. In fact it's a brilliant, experimental, out of left field crime novel, very much in the tradition of Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman. Now you know how much I love The Third Policeman so this is high praise indeed from me. I was lucky enough to read AZC in manuscript and I thought it was funny and outrageous and very clever. You may think I'm biased, Dec and I are mates, we did a reading together in August and afterwards he stayed with me in Carrickfergus, but you don't have to take my word for it about AZC, John Banville and John Connolly also love Dec's book and a host of other writers have blurbed or reviewed it and whose quotes you can read at Dec's famous blog: Crime Always Pays. 
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Last week Dec was shortlisted in the crime category of the Irish Book Awards. His competition is stiff, but this, I feel, is his year. He certainly deserves it.


Click here to vote for Declan Burke's ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL in the Irish Book Awards

Beard Or No Beard?

Next week my German publishers Suhrkamp are sending a photographer out to St Kilda to take a photo of me for the German version of Falling Glass. The problem with this is that I've been growing a beard since early September, or as I like to put it, since early September I have been liberated from the tyranny of shaving. The photograph they take is going to be on the book jacket forever and probably on all the German versions of my novels for all time. So the question is simple. Beard or no beard? At chez McKinty we are a house divided. My wife is not keen on the face fluff but my kids like it and I like not having to scrape my chin every day. The readers of this blog have already displayed their good sense and taste by coming here in the first place so I'd really appreciate your thoughts. ZZ Top or Justin Bieber? 

A Rare Guy Moment

I was at the Safeway supermarket in St Kilda the other night getting some supplies. Normally I'm there with my two daughters or my two daughters and my wife. But on this particular night I was on my own. I could buy anything I wanted but the question Mick Jagger posed all those years ago was what did I need. I was momentarily dazzled by all the choices and the lack of children fighting and screaming near by. It was very much like that bit in The Hurt Locker. You do see single guys in the Safeway and they're all of a type. They never have baskets or carts and they do not have a shopping list or a plan. They cover a lot of territory moving from aisle to aisle and then back to the aisle they were just at a moment ago. If they can't find something they give up rather than ask for help. Women seem to have plans and shopping carts and an iron will and they move through the supermarket with ruthless efficiency like Rommel's Panzers in the eastern desert in early 1942. I wandered aimlessly for a while and I almost got a coffee cake but it had no bar code on it and I didn't want any kind of an incident at the checkout where they have to speak into the microphone and they hold up the coffee cake for everyone to see. So, anyway, coming out of the Safeway I found that I had purchased a large frozen pizza and a bottle of tequila. I think this is a classic guy move. I don't see many women walking home through the park with a frozen pizza and a bottle of tequila. Women passing by very much gave me a pitying sort of look but the men knew. Yes, the men knew. It was like that secret male code they talk about in Spaced. 

The Nick And Artie Show

My new author photograph did not turn out well

Who doesn't love Artie Lange? He was the best thing about the Howard Stern Show, Mad TV and The Norm Show and his book Too Fat To Fish was funny and surprisingly poignant. Artie's story about scoring cocaine while dressed as a pig is one of the most hilarious - and disgusting - anecdotes you'll ever hear. His well known gambling, alcohol and heroin addictions led to a suicide attempt and a period in the psych ward, which he talked about on Letterman last week .
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His new radio programme which runs from 10pm - 1 am Eastern Time is a sports talk call-in show. Artie is quick witted and funny and he knows his baseball and a little bit about football and basketball. He's got a lot of stories about sports and even more about gambling on sports. His partner on air is Nick DiPaolo who I know only from an episode of Louie where he talked about his hatred of Barack Obama. DiPaolo is not as witty as Artie and his on air persona is not very attractive: an old school borderline racist Italian American who thinks political correctness is ruining the country. This is some tired schtick and although it might appeal to the geriatric Fox News or Limbaugh crowd its not really Artie Lange's audience. When he's on a roll DiPaolo sounds like Junior Soprano on a bad morning which is odd because it says on Wikipedia that he grew up in Danvers, Mass and went to the University of Maine. Hmmm. But like I say this is only his on air persona. I want this show to do well so maybe DiPaolo could tone down the pseudo Jersey Shore mook and, you know, let Artie be Artie. . . 
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One very good thing about the show is that all the episodes are available commercial free on iTunes, something the Stern show never did for its loyal fans. 

Bin Laden Found, Gadaffi Found, Waldo Still Missing

He's a very slippery customer (hint hint).

Face Off - Breaking Bad s4

The secret role model of every chemistry teacher in America. 

This is a spoiler free look at the season 4 finale of Breaking Bad. 
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A man who would pick a pun would pick a pocket says Stephen Maturin in one of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels. Well that's certainly one opinion. I, however, am a sucker for a good pun. Face Off is the title of this episode. Nice, Mr. Gilligan, very nice indeed. 
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I liked the season finale a lot. Was it good enough to redeem a somewhat slow and patchy season? Did it make up for the creaking plot and the logic problems of the last two or three episodes? Actually, yes I think maybe it did. This episode was up there with the very best of season 1. We forget sometimes how clever Mr. White is. Neurotic, impulsive, emotional but very smart. And we also shouldn't forget that although Walter White got a degree in chemistry from the University of New Mexico a cancer diagnosis has given him a Ph.D. in advanced badassery. 
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The writing in Face Off was crisp, the directing taut, the acting spot on, the element of surprise, well, surprising and it ended with a nice Norah Jones/Danger Mouse song that I wasn't expecting either.   
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I'd really love them to end Breaking Bad at this point. I know that they won't but I wish they would. We don't really need to know how every little thing goes down and ending the entire series here would send the cast and the audience out on a high (no pun intended). 

The Badness Of Death

Yale University has put many of its philosophy courses on YouTube and iTunes for free. Professor Shelly Kagan's course on death is one of the really interesting ones. Kagan is a sort of American Bernard Williams although I don't think Professor Williams would ever have sat cross legged on his desk wearing Converses (he certainly didn't in my tutorials). In the lecture below Kagan discusses Tolstoy's classic story The Death of Ivan Ilyich and he begins to unpack the badness of death. Yes we know it's bad but how bad and why is it bad...

Irish Poem Of The Month

Death Of A Naturalist 
by Seamus Heaney


All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on window-sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.
Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.

Tin Tin

smart move that the poster doesn't show
Tin Tin's pale, weird, lifeless face

This is what you get when you put together the man who made Always and the man who made The Lovely Bones. Yeah they made some other stuff, I guess, but I'm not feeling in a generous mood after watching this travesty. Motion capture is a very sinister and creepy process for making films and it just doesn't work at all. I thought everyone in Hollywood understood that after The Polar Express but clearly, like the late Muamar Ghadaffi, out there they only listen to yes men. 22 year old yes men with Siri enabled iPhones and that admittedly cool ap that tells you what stars you're looking at if you point it heavenward (or even downwards to get stars in the other hemisphere)...er, what was I talking about? Oh yes. Tin Tin. The film is lifeless, silly, a waste of an amazing cast and with some shockingly bad writing. When Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright were making Spaced they would have made fun of a movie like this, instead of being in it and that my friends is what the fairy gold from LA does to you. The reviewer for The Financial Times called this the ugliest film ever made, which it isn't, but I know what she means. Take my advice, if you want to see a good Tin Tin movie just read Tin Tin in Tibet instead and avoid this cold, cynical, undead rubbish.  

Coming In January 2012