Smirks and 'Carry On......' innuendo aside, has anyone else noticed that this year on TV, virtually any mention of Covid on the news has got to be accompanied by long, lingering shots of someone on the receiving end of a jab. Of course, up to now we've always seen brief shots of patients given a pre-injection swab on the upper arm but, as far as I can recall, hardly ever of the needle going in - though now in close-up too - and being held there for several seconds before being withdrawn. It makes me wince seeing it so much now, just about daily, that I have to either look away or change channels. In fact only the other day I changed channels for that very reason from BBC national news to ITV local news and - as you might guess - both sides were simultaneously showing the same procedure. Even Channels 4 and 5 as well as Sky News are doing it now. so that I just want to screeeeeeam!
I have to get a regular such poke for giving a sample of blood to be checked twice a year for my diabetes [type 2] condition, as well as getting the annual Winter flu jab, plus maybe once or twice more for other reasons, but I just get it done and over with as speedily as I can as there's no alternative. I just start looking away and gritting teeth long before the needle goes in. But it's really no big deal. What I do not need is for my nose to be rubbed in it by constant visual reminders of what it's like. Jeepers creepers, we all know!
Every time I go for the annual diabetes check with a nurse at the doctor's surgery it's suggested (every flaming time!) that I really ought to do daily self-monitoring of my own blood to check glucose level, which involves pricking the head of the thumb to obtain a small smear of blood which you can measure on a little thingummyjig they provide you with. About 5 years ago I was given all what's needed to do that very thing myself. When it came to it I just could not give myself the required thumb-jab. Surely I can't be alone in this. It's not cowardice - well, okay, maybe it is - but I've always been a haemophobe (as regards other people's blood as well as my own) which was a major reason why I could stay no longer with St John Ambulance after a two-year stint. My phobia was hindering any effectiveness I might have otherwise had.
As for my diabetes, it hasn't caused me any major problems. Maybe just once a month or so I might get a dizzy spell through having low glucose, but that's put right quite easily by chewing on a few glucose tablets. As to how I'm to know if that level is higher than it should be, well I suppose self-monitoring would have revealed it, but not being able to do so I don't know how to tell. However, so far it's not caused any discernible problems.
Anyway, when it comes to Covid, at my present age and with the underlying condition I have, I'm not expecting to have a long wait before being called for my turn to take the jab - and go I shall, with no hesitation, albeit with just a little trepidation and gritted teeth. What I certainly do not need is to be shown on TV what the experience looks like. If their idea is to show how trivial the whole matter is, I can't be unique in it having precisely the opposite effect on me. (D'you hear that, all you TV companies?)
My antipathy for Winter is exacerbated by having two large rooms to keep warm, living room and bedroom (plus kitchen, of course) not just for me but for my four co-residents who feel the cold as acutely as, or even more than, I do, despite their being permanently enshrouded in their fur coats. The expense of keeping us all from freezing is a challenge every year - and now, as reliable as ever, come the warnings that this Winter will be the coldest, if not since ever, then for many years past. But we hear this doom-laden prediction year after year around this time though it never turns out to be as bad as that - so far.
Perfectly aware that I ought to be grateful that I've got a roof over my head - being homeless for just a short while would see the end of me I'm sure. Any thoughts about the depth of suffering of those unfortunate people cuts deep, as it should. So let's stifle my grumbling - after all, it's just three weeks to go before nights start, even if hardly perceptibly, back to getting shorter. In the meantime, my current mood is - ROLL ON SPRING!!!
There's a number of such terms being bandied about as though they were 'terms of abuse' and deemed by the attacking side as being sufficiently cutting enough to close down conversation, including, apart from the word 'liberal' itself, 'socialist', 'anti-capitalist', 'politically correct', 'tolerant', 'non-discriminatory' - and, hopelessly off the mark to genuinely apply to 99% of both British and American politicians, 'communist' [of all the terms!]. I, for one, and I'm sure all those of or close to, my persuasions would feel not only unfazed by but actually quite proud to be referred to in these terms - well, perhaps not 'communist' but only because anyone informed enough can see that it's manifestly wide of the mark.
I bring the subject up because recently in our TV networks' reporting on the recent decisive election result [at least the 'President' part of it] and its needlessly drawn-out aftermath, a number of American politicians from both sides are being invited to give interviews here - and exclusively for the Republicans, their interviews almost invariably descend to 'accusing' the BBC or Channel Four [our most middle-of-the-road channel, some would claim slightly left-of-centre] of being - shock, horror! - a typically 'liberal' or even 'left wing' [!] medium, as though that alone invalidates all questions being asked, the interviewer being expected to deny such an egregious 'slur', which they never do, often while trying to hide the smile on their faces. This happens time and time again.
To give the British Conservative Party its due, its members do not spit out these and similar words with the name-calling venom that some American Republicans do in accusatory tone. If they are used at all it's in the sense of being non-judgmentally factual. And I've also noticed, by the way, that when an American right-wing politician is suggested as being 'reactionary' or even a 'fascist-sympathiser' they rarely, if ever, wish to disassociate themselves from such words. Interesting.
But those I'm talking about here, rather than answer a searching question they'll draw out the argument, usually because the answer is too difficult or they don't have one, by throwing in a time-wasting hostile deflection. Can't they just see that such faux-vituperations have zero effect? Exasperating!
So, to all those to whom I'm referring, pray let me have just one more word..........
Having now got set into a daily routine of taking a mid-morning nap to make up for the lost hours in having to rise between 3 and 4 a.m. to attend to feline needs by serving them their 'breakfasts' followed by ushering them out and fetching back in where necessary, I returned to bed around 9.30 as is my wont on Sundays, having had my first run-through of the 'Observer', intending to rise in time to catch my weekly compulsory listening to 'Desert Island Discs' (Yusuf Cat Stevens today - unmissable).
More often than not on going to bed there are already one, two, sometimes three pussy-cats before me already snoozing there. Today Bobby and Snowball had already bagged their nicely separated 'territories' and I had to snake my body between them, only to be followed shortly later by Blackso, purring loudly and pounding a lower leg of mine, 'massaging' a calf, in effect. Any shifting around on my part would be unwise if I was to avoid being given a threatening hissy snarl on awakening any of them. Anyway I did manage to sleep for a little while but when the time came for me to leave the three deep sleepers, if I wasn't to disturb them I had to go through a series of contortions to extricate myself, only on this occasion to misjudge my physical centre of gravity and tumble right off the side of the bed with a thump - to look up and find three pairs of wide-open green eyes, censoriously fastened on me sitting there, twisted on the carpet. Now if I'd been younger, or even a sprightlier middle-ager, I would have got up and laughed it off. Unfortunately I'm long past that stage now and just getting on one's feet again in such a situation is no trifling matter. Looking this way and that for something to hold onto so that I could lever myself up, at an age when my muscles feel like they are trying to lift all dead-weight, I was sitting there on the carpet for at least a quarter of an hour, the cats having returned unconcerned to their dozings, my evident distress not being their worth to worry about, and probably with some irritation at me having interrupted their repose. Anyway, after struggling every which way, finally with the help of a door knob as a fixed fulcrum I did manage to haul myself up onto the edge of the bed again, panting and puffing like a steam train, but with considerable relief. When I'd gone down it was onto a hip and I did wonder if I might have injured myself, but it only took a few more minutes to recover from a trifling soreness, and soon I was right as rain again. But for a short while I did have some serious concerns as to my well-being.
It's not by any means the first time such as this has happened, the last time was maybe four or five years ago when I tripped right over in the same room. Simply getting up, and beside the same bed once more, took me even longer to get over than today's mishap. I fear that today won't be the last time either.
Oh, the 'joys' of senility, which I guess most of you haven't started to experience yet! It's a laugh a minute, I tell you!
The story is based on Wm Nicholson's own experiences as he witnessed the collapse of his parents' marriage, with his own very solid script carrying the conviction of someone who's seen it happen first-hand. (He also penned the award-winning C.S. Lewis play , 'Shadowlands', later filmed by Richard Attenborough).
This was filmed last year in a location less then 30 miles away from where I'm typing this, along the English Channel coast. 'Hope Gap', which I'd never heard of is, I learn, one of this shoreline's local features.
Annette Bening is, unusually, playing English. I can only recall her doing it once before, in Ian McKellan's 'Richard III' of 1995. In 'Hope Gap' although her accent does falter a few times I didn't find it so much as to be distracting.
After 29 years of marriage she remains a non-working housewife while Nighy is a history teacher to teenage pupils, dutifully coming home at predicted times to routine cups of tea over desultory conversation with his wife where his lack of enthusiasm and inability to respond with emotion is, though she doesn't say it outright, getting on her nerves. The nub of the story is that he eventually plucks up the courage, after telling his son, to inform her that he's going to leave the marriage - and why. She's incredulous at first, not understanding why he doesn't want to work at saving the relationship. With sharp words exchanged, nearly all from her own side, he walks out on her, leaving both her and their son distraught. The body of the film concerns her fight to hold on to their marriage and his conviction that it's beyond hopeless to even attempt it. One might have thought there'd be a lot of shouty arguments, but while there are just a few points where Bening does raise her voice, - though there's no yelling, nothing headache-y - Nighy tries to retain sang-froid throughout, and largely succeeds, at least on the surface, he remaining softly spoken right through the personal upheaval.
I think the film works so well and is so convincing because the writer has written of what realistically did happen. Although in no way an 'action' film - very wordy, in fact - my attention never wandered once. One regret I did have is that a key encounter takes place close to the film's end, and the very last words of that exchange are uttered so under-the-breath that I didn't catch them at all, nor can guess what they were despite that moment being so crucial.
Bill Nighy in any film always commands one's attention even if he happens to be a background figure in a scene, though he's never so in this. But the undoubted true star here is Bening who has me going so far as to rate her performance here as possibly the best she has ever given. (Pity that the entire audience at the screening I attended was comprised of me alone).
You will note that the two average ratings stated below are nothing like I suggest. I have indeed seen more than just one being rather sniffy, one declaring the film to be 'old-fashioned', which may well be true. I can only reveal that out of all the films I've seen so far this year (yes, all fourteen of them!) this one has given me the most satisfaction of them all..........8.
(IMDb............6.6 / Rott.Toms.........3.8 out of 5 )
For a film of 2 hrs 30 mins length one does expect a certain level of cohesion and cogency but I was, frankly, all at sea within minutes of the start. Just who were these characters? For whom were they working? What were they fighting over? That the entire world was at stake, I got, but the motives and plots behind the story remained a mystery to me throughout. To add to the confusion the final half hour or more is given over to a battle between two armies. Just who was fighting whom, God only knows! There was some race against time with thumping background score to keep us on the edge of our seats, but over what? Amid all the clamorous explosions, gunfire, as well as fist fights (and throwing near-at-hand objects at each other), most of the participants were for much of the time in head-to-foot camouflage gear, and helmeted and visored, so I got completely lost as to just who was who.
An original feature of this film (we are given a number of illustrations of it in the film's earlier stages) is that in several scenes time goes both backwards and forwards simultaneously, the direction of travel depending on the character, not only in the combat scenes but also in an extended car chase with lots of crashes which, in reverse time mode, the vehicles 'de-crash' themselves. And in the culminating noisy confrontation, blown-up buildings reverse their demolition. Presumably such is reflected in the choice of a palindromic word as the film's title. But putting that aside, was the film confusing? You bet! And what was the point of having this time reversal thingy anyway?
The main character - and the principal 'goodie' - referred to simply as 'The Protagonist' is played by the likeable John David Washington (above, so good in Spike Lee's 'BlackKklansman' of 2018) though here he's as invincible and as quickly recovering from injury as 007 would himself be.
So we know that 'The Protagonist' is going to save the world as we can surmise from his otherwise blank name, but the rest of the cast - Elizabeth Debicki, and even Robert Pattinson and Aaron Taylor-Johnson - can they really be trusted as to which side they are actually on even if they are colleagues of the 'Protagonist'? But there's no such ambiguity as to Kenneth Branagh's character, a nasty, sadistic Russian oligarch and megalomaniac (Boo! Hissssss!) who'd easily give Ernst Stavro Blofeld a run for his money. In addition, Sir Michael Caine makes an early two-minute (max) cameo.
I'd been wishing that I'd taken the trouble to have seen this film on an Imax screen, which would have been possible with a little travelling, but I doubt if it would have changed my ultimate opinion of it. But what might have made a difference is that I saw it at a cinema which does not have the best sound quality, making yet more pronounced my frequent difficulty of understanding much of the dialogue. I wish I'd seen it subtitled which I could have done but would have meant going out in the dark which is not feasible nowadays. That should have cleared up quite a bit of the confusion I felt on what the hell it was all about ought.
As you'd expect with this director, there are a number of visually impressive set-piece 'chapters', perhaps the most memorable being at the start in a crowded concert hall. However, I think that around two-thirds through a film which requires an amount of concentration, I was aware of my attention starting to flag and visual and aural fatigue gaining hold.
Despite 'Inception' also having itself many enigmatic strands, some never fully explained, I was at least glued to the screen and intrigued by what was happening throughout - and I paid to see it again on a cinema screen. Not so with 'Tenet'........6.
(IMDb................8 / Rott.Toms...........4.4 out of 5 )
Though now they'll likely be very sporadic.
Booked to see the eagerly-awaited (by me) 'Tenet' at this local seafront cinema next Tuesday, which'll be just two days shy of six months since seeing my last film.
Told you this posting was going to be concise.
Well, blow me down! Just seen that it's over two months since our last posting (employing the royal 'we'), and this simply will not do! So here's our ploy for times coming.With some regret (just a little bit) it would appear that my days of frequent cinema-going are now part of the past. I haven't been at all since last March, and even when it becomes possible again I should think that for me the practice wouldn't be more than a well-spaced rarity. However, on those occasions when it does happen I will still post my thoughts on any film in question as before.
Thus, in order to keep this blog alive so long as I am so myself, I will attempt to post now and again on a miscellany of subjects, hopefully not too weighty but in concise and pithy manner, so you may know there's still life in this old boy yet!
Next post is coming soon(ish). See ya there?
