My 10 Favourite Westerns

Call me crazy, but I would have gone with Grace Kelly in the cart

I've blogged this list before but it's changed a bit in the last two years. (There's a  new entry at number 9.) This is not the list you'll see at Empire Magazine or at the AFI or whatever. You wont find Winchester 73 or Red River on here as these are my 10 personal favourites.

10. Dead Man. Jim Jarmusch's alternative western with Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer and a brilliant Crispin Glover. (Actually isn't Crispin Glover always brilliant?)

9. Meeks Cutoff. Kelly Reichardt's minimalist, feminist western starring Michelle Williams. No one saw this and its certainly not for everyone, but I think its a hypnotically brilliant tale of a bunch of settlers lost on the Oregon trail.

8. High Noon. Carl Foreman's screenplay, Grace Kelly's close ups, the badge in the dirt, the action playing out in real time. If you don't like this film, I'm sorry, I just don't know who you are anymore.

7. The Searchers. Just about the only John Wayne film I can enjoy these days. Funny, dark, broody and beautiful. John Ford at the top of his game.

6. Paris, Texas. A guy is wandering in the desert. He has amnesia. The good news is that he was married to Nastassia Kinski. The bad news is that he tied her to a fridge and she set their trailer home on fire. His mission is to ride into town, bring mother and son together, ride out of town. BTW, there is no safety zone, apparently.

5. Unforgiven. Clint's mission is to ride into town, kill a couple of dudes, and, er, ride out of town. It all goes to hell and then it rains. David Peoples wrote the script, Richard Harris stole the show. Gene Hackman was pretty good too.

4. Blazing Saddles. Richard Pryor was the unsung hero here and with him in it this might have been the greatest comedy of all time. Still there's the beans, the Nazis, the governor, Maddy Khan. What a flick. 1974 was some kind of Wunderjahr for Mel Brooks and then, alas, zilch.

3. For a Few Dollars More. Best of the spaghetti three. They laugh, they cry, they shoot each other's hats. . .Then the wonderful Gian Maria Volontè breaks out of jail, robs the bank at El Paso and after that it's all: laaah, laaah, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, dada, dah, dah, laaah, laaah, la, la, la, la, la, la, laaah etc.

2. The Wild Bunch. Sam Peckinpah says that this is what happens when men go down to Mexico. When I went down to Mexico I did some nice snorkeling and drank margheritas but when MEN go down there, they machine gun entire armies of baddies. In slow motion. Brilliant.

1. Blood Meridian. They havent actually made this film yet but the movie of it in my head is awesome.

Mad Men S5 E1

Much modern film making is based on the false premise that people change. Executives want the characters in their films to arc and grow and learn things about themselves over the space of 120 minutes. Its silly of course because very few adults grow or learn things or change. Thats why most movies are so bad: they're centred around this central untruth and they feel completely artificial. (That and the fact that the core audience for films seems to be 14 year old boys). 
...
Television is different. In TV you don't have to have growth. In TV you can go to the planet of the week, jump through the time gate, have Kirk fall in love with Joan Collins, watch Joan Collins get hit by a bus and leave. Famously on Seinfeld the mantra was "no growth, no hugs," which seems about right. Even on a show like Modern Family which ends each episode with a one minute voice over detailing what the characters "learned" over the previous 22 minutes, essentially they're fibbing because the reset button is pushed and everyone is exactly the same for the very next episode. 
...
This is why Mad Men is so comforting. In five seasons no one has really changed at all. Don is still moody, introspective and a horn dog. Pete remains a spoiled, ungrateful little shit. Peggy is smart, sassy and insecure. Roger constantly cracks wise to cover his deep misery, angst and depression. We want these characters to stay like this. Its what we're used to and we like it. S5 E1 has been criticised in some quarters for its lack of action and the fact that everyone seems the same. To me this is not a pertinent critique and is applying the standards of one medium, film, to another, television. In fact the opening episode was pretty good. The plot such as it was, was about the surprise party Megan threw for Don's 40th birthday. She scandalised a couple of people by doing a little song and dance number. Don was upset not by the song and dance but by the fact that all sensible people on planet Earth hate parties and only the completely insane enjoy surprise parties or having a party at one's own house. 
...
I liked the lightness of touch of S5E1 (Harry has become a great comedic staple, seeing Pete's gun again etc.), the gags (Roger's quips and Pete's evil practical joke about the Staten Island Ferry terminal) and the grown up resolution to some of the storylines (the guy with the wallet wasn't a complete asshole). For me the best part of the episode wasn't Megan and Don attempting to ruin the white carpet but the lovely scene between Joan and Lane Pryce the two most human characters at SCDP. Both of them were feeling vulnerable and sad and both had the emotional capacity to comfort one another. Nice. 
...
A great start to S5. A-. 

Game Change

Although I dont have HBO, Game Change was pretty easy to find online and I'm glad that I did seek it out: it's a superior TV drama about John McCain's election campaign for President and the decision his campaign manager Steve Schmidt took to put Sarah Palin on the ticket. Palin and her surrogates have been complaining about Game Change non stop for about two weeks now but the lady doth protest too much. The film is a sympathetic portrait of a woman who loves her family, is an able local politician, has tons of charisma but is just completely out of her depth on the national stage. The acting in Game Change has been rightly praised. Woody Harrelson's performance as Schmidt is the best thing he's done since he played Sergeant Keck in The Thin Red Line and Julianne Moore inhabits Sarah Palin without parody and with such compassion that Meryl Streep's Mrs T is knocked into a cocked hat in comparison. I was less convinced by Ed Harris's John McCain but its tough playing someone so fundamentally decent. Game Change is paced perfectly and as entertainment it is utterly compelling. If you're looking for a movie with easy villains and a damning indictment of the political process you won't find it here. This is a nuanced, sober account of a bizarre moment in US history when a woman with virtually no knowledge at all of the world almost got to within a heartbeat of the Presidency. If you do have HBO I'd recommend that you watch this and if you don't it's worth looking for on the web. 

The Irish Tourist Board Damns Belfast With Faint Praise

Heaney, Longley and two men with beards

In an ad that's been running in The New Yorker the Irish tourist board urges New Yorker readers to come to Ireland to explore its literary heritage. The ad is called A Touch of the Poet and is an expensive double page spread with photographs of the Liffey, Ben Bulben and the James Joyce statue on O'Connell Street. Of course they talk about the Dublin of James Joyce and Wilde and Beckett which is fair enough. This, however, is what they come up with when they mention Belfast: "Belfast welcomes visitors with tours that encompass the favourite haunts of EM Forster, John Keats and Anthony Trollope." Who wrote that bullshit copy? It really is some tenuous nonsense when there's no need for tenuous nonsense as Belfast's literary heritage is very rich. John Keats? Really? John Keats spent one day walking from Donaghadee to Belfast and had nothing nice or very interesting to say about the place when he got there. He left immediately for the packet back to Scotland, so what pray was his favourite haunt in the twenty minutes he spent in the city? Forster spent a couple of days in Belfast in the 1950's unveiling a plaque. Trollope did actually live in Belfast and wrote The Warden there so thats ok but my God Keats and Forster? That's incredibly lame. What would I mention if I was going to do a literary heritage tourism spread about Belfast (especially a spread called A Touch of the Poet)? Well how about:
...
1. CS Lewis: born and grew up in Belfast. Wrote a little thing you might have heard of called the Narnia series. There's a statue of Lewis and his wardrobe and a blue plaque outside his house. Millions of copies of the Narnia books have been sold. Tourists might like that. 
2. Philip Larkin: the greatest twentieth century poet lived in Belfast in the 1950's and wrote some of his best work there. 
3. The Queens University Poetry circle in the 1970's produced Ireland's most important poets since the Gaelic revival. Who exactly you might ask? Well just half a dozen Pulitzer Prize winners and Noble laureates and winners of every other major poetry award. People like: Seamus Heaney, Ciaran Carson, Paul Muldoon, Tom Paulin, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, etc. etc. 
4. Belfast's current poetry scene is one of the richest in Europe with exciting young poets like Sinead Morrissey et. al. many of whom read at the Seamus Heaney Poetry Centre at QUB, the place for poetry in Ireland. Tourists might like that too.
5. And if we're talking about Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett how about mentioning that they spent their formative years in Northern Ireland at Portora School? Or that Jonathan Swift wrote A Tale of a Tub and began Gullivers Travels in a spot just outside Belfast called Carrickfergus. Or why not mention my favourite, the great Flann O'Brien who grew up in Omagh?
...
My point in all this is that the Discover Ireland people don't need to embarrass themselves by mentioning some half assed John Keats or EM Forster reference when the literary heritage in Belfast is already impressive. I haven't even talked about Louis MacNeice or Brian Moore or Ian McDonald or Ronan Bennett or Eoin McNamee or Colin Bateman etc. bloody etc. 

My Current Favourite Beers

1. Pliny the Elder - IPA, USA
2. Westvleteren 12 - Trappist Quad, Belgium
3. Rutland Bitter - Trad English bitter
4. Dark Lord - Imperial Stout, USA
5. Fuller's London Porter - Porter, England
6. Rochefort Trappistes 10 - Trappist Quad, Belgium
7. Ayinger Celebrator - Dobblebock, Germany
8. Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout - Stout, England
9. Guinness Draft - Dry Stout, Ireland
10. Russian River Supplication - Sour Ale, USA


1 and 10 on my list come from the great Russian River Brewing Company

Dirk Gently

Dirk Gently, the guy from Saxondale and the poor woman
who married Ross on Friends

Let me start with a bit of heresy: the Douglas Adams Dirk Gently novels aren't that great. The books, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul and the unfinished Salmon of Doubt are very much a product of their time and have aged not quite as effortlessly as Adams's Hitchhiker novels. Adams was a writer of rare genius and the Hitchhiker novels are inspired, anarchic and still very funny. But the Gently books have a late 1980's-Apple-Mac-Pot-Noodle-Culture-Club-MASH-on-BBC 2-on-a-wet-Wednesday-night feel about them and would have faded into oblivion had they been written by anyone else. Gently himself is barely in book 1 which is a shame because he's much more interesting than any of the other characters. He has a bigger part in the better book 2. Adams was more of a writer of ideas than character anyway and actually the ideas in both novels are interesting and often quite amusing. (Neil Gaiman seems to have nicked several of these ideas to kick start his own novel writing career.) 
...
It was with only mild enthusiasm then that I began watching BBC 4's Dirk Gently series, produced by BBC Wales and very much from the same stable as Dr. Who and Sherlock. But the TV series is actually a lot more interesting than the novels. The self involved, clever and rather irritating Gently (yes he reminds me of stablemate Sherlock as well) is well played by Stephen Mangan. He doesn't take himself as seriously as Benedict Cumberbatch and he's ably supported by Darren Boyd who I first saw as the annoying yuppie neighbour in Saxondale and who was a brilliant John Cleese in BBC 4's Holy Flying Circus. The writing in Gently is crisp (by Howard Overman) and the style and editing are very much in the Sherlock/Dr Who mode too. 
...
Like I say I wasn't expecting much from this show but after two episodes I am mildly optimistic that the Beeb have another cult hit on their hands. It's a shame its on BBC 4 as it will only get a small fraction of the audience of Sherlock but if you can find it, I think you'll like it. 

Springsteen Rated

The new Bruce Springsteen album, Wrecking Ball came out yesterday. In my opinion its his best since the underrated Tunnel Of Love. You can hear the title track (and all the other tracks and an outtake) here. I am not a huge Boss fanboy so I feel I can be pretty objective about his canon. Here's the complete list of albums (thank you Wikipedia) with my grade in bold. A = classic, B = very good, C = good, D = average, E = poor, F = fail/must miss. 

• 1973: Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. C
• 1973: The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle B
• 1975: Born to Run A-
• 1978: Darkness on the Edge of Town B
• 1980: The River B+
• 1982: Nebraska A
• 1984: Born in the U.S.A. A-
• 1987: Tunnel of Love A-
• 1992: Human Touch C
• 1992: Lucky Town  D
• 1995: The Ghost of Tom Joad C
• 2002: The Rising B-
• 2005: Devils & Dust F
• 2006: We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions F
• 2007: Magic F
• 2009: Working on a Dream E
• 2012: Wrecking Ball A-

The Cold Cold Ground - The Sunday Times's Verdict

image from Rich Pangburn

In their crime round up last Sunday, the Sunday Times (UK) reviewed The Cold Cold Ground. This is what they said: 


The first in a trilogy, Adrian McKinty’s impressive The Cold Cold Ground (Serpent’s Tail £12.99/ebook £12.99) is set in Belfast in 1981, a time of hunger strikes, riots and sectarian killings. DS Sean Duffy, a university-educated Catholic cop living in a Protestant area, heads the investigation when a man’s body is found in a car, with a music score grotesquely hidden within the cadaver. Later deaths suggest a “Northern Ireland Ripper” could be at large, possibly homophobic, possibly with paramilitary connections. McKinty’s publisher compares this series to David Peace’s Red Riding novels, and there are similarities besides the period, such as the weaving in of figures who are either real (Gerry Adams) or in light disguise. Duffy’s constant wisecracking, however, lends this novel a black humour reminiscent of Jacobean drama, imbuing it with a very different atmosphere from Peace’s bleak Yorkshire noir.


The Sunday Times joins an impressive list of papers below (and many who dont have web reviews) who have loved TCCG. In fact the only sort of negative review (and it wasnt that negative) of the book I have found anywhere was in the Irish Sunday Times. I've gotten a shedload of great blog reviews too, the latest this week from Paul Brazill. The thing I love the most though is to get reviews from you! So far 17 customer reviews on Amazon.com, 38 on Amazon.co.uk, 55 on Audible.com and even one on Amazon.de. If you haven't got TCCG yet, check out what they say below and get the book (you wont be disappointed) and after that I would love it if you could leave me a review. Slainte. 

The  Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/06/cold-cold-gound-adrian-mckinty-review

The Irish Times: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2012/0204/1224311231508.html

The Irish Independent: http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/review-fiction-the-cold-cold-ground-by-adrian-mckinty-2982300.html

The Times (London): http://adrianmckinty.blogspot.com/2012/01/times-weighs-in-on-cold-cold-ground.htm

The Glasgow Herald: http://www.heraldscotland.com/books-poetry/reviews/adrian-mckinty-the-cold-cold-ground-serpents-tail.16368721

The Sydney Morning Herald: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/in-belfasts-cauldron-20120203-1qx31.html

If Scotland Secedes Should Shetland Skidaddle?

If Scotland leaves the UK in 2014, it would make a lot of sense for the Shetland Islands to secede from Scotland. An Independent Shetland would have roughly the same population as the Faroe Islands but it would be much wealthier as most of the UK's North Sea oil reserves would lie within Shetland's territorial waters. Shetland's bonds to Scotland are tenuous. Until the fifteenth century Shetland was part of the Kingdom of Norway and the last of the Norn speakers did not die out until late in the nineteenth century. Shetland is closer to the regional Norwegian capital Bergen than it is to Edinburgh (if my estimate on Google maps is correct); Norway you'll recall is the only country in Europe which has weathered the recent financial storms with aplomb because of its vast Government Pension Fund which will have assets close to a trillion dollars by 2019. Shetland would be foolish to join Scotland which will probably have a great deal of difficulty making ends meet, like Ireland (or God save us, Northern Ireland). Independence or some sort of reunion with Norway would make much more sense culturally and especially economically. 
...
And of course as Shetland goes so presumably does Orkney. And it wasn't that long ago that the entire Western Isles were part of the Kingdom of Norway either. Kintyre used to be part of the Scottish-Irish kingdom of Dalriada and why shouldn't the Gaeltacht in the north and west have its own country rather than be dominated by Scots speaking lowlanders? And what about the crazy Protestants of Ulster who consider themselves at least half Scottish, what if they want a union with Scotland not England or Ireland? It all gets rather complicated doesn't it? Look, I'm not saying that the Scots shouldn't vote for independence in a couple of years but once the secession box is open who knows what might come out of it. If the Shetlanders have any sense they'll keep all that lovely North Sea oil for themselves. A Burj Khalifa in Lerwick would look fantastic. And a pony for everyone!

Reading Orwell

Orwell (the tall guy) getting an incompetent machine gun
lesson in the Spanish Civil War

For Christmas this year I was given The Collected Essays of George Orwell in the lovely Everyman edition which comes in at a staggering 1363 pages. I don't know how much this book cost because it was a present but I should say straight away that it is definitely value for money. The essays cover the period from 1934 - 1949 but they feel strangely up to date. Orwell seldom blunders in his judgements of contemporary writers and politicians. His reading and range is vast and his prose style is impeccable. I had read a few of Orwell's essays before and there are some great ones available online for example: Such Such Were The Joys and Inside The Whale, but I do recommend that you get this book. It's a nice object to have and it will give you hours of edification and entertainment. I was never bored during the 1300 pages and was frequently surprised and on a couple of occasions I laughed out loud. Obviously Orwell hits the odd dry patch now and again but more often he goes through periods when everything he wrote was gilded with genius. One such period was February 1946 when he managed to produce five of his most iconic essays one after the other: Bad Climates Are Best (about how you get nothing done when the weather is nice), Books v Cigarettes, The Moon Under The Water (about the perfect pub), The Decline of the English Murder (about how murderers used to be better in the good old days), Words and Henry Miller. A few weeks earlier Orwell wrote his famous piece on preparing the perfect cup of tea and only a few months later he wrote his deadly accurate and hilarious: Confessions of a Book Reviewer. 
...
If you liked Christopher Hitchens's collection Arguably then I can't recommend the Everyman Orwell highly enough. If you didn't like Arguably then I'm sorry Mr. Chomsky or Mr. Cockburn this isn't the book for you.