Mike Leigh’s new one (after Secrets & Lies and Vera Drake, both wonderful and memorable character pieces) is about Poppy, a relentlessly cheerful woman who learns to drive. And that’s about it. It’s marvellous.
There’s a lot of ground covered in H-G-L, but I’m most interested in how the film explores learning. The theme of how our social interactions shape us. Using the device of formal education of different sorts, it highlights the hidden lessons that exist all around us and that shape us from early childhood onwards.
This is obliquely explored through different kinds of talk. Poppy’s responses to life are fascinating for their incoherence – she contradicts herself repeatedly, and it’s clear that what she says isn’t representative of any inner set of beliefs, but is entirely strategic to build positive relationships. Her counterpoint, Scott the driving instructor, is similar in how what he says doesn’t relay any deeper truth – but in his case, it’s because his talk is founded in self-deception.
There’s a scene in the middle that has not been well-received in reviews, a lengthy sequence where Poppy interacts with a derelict. I loved that sequence, for its sustained tension and its avoidance of clear meaning, and for showing how Poppy’s talk works even when all obvious meaning is stripped away. It’s a brave scene, that exasperates the viewer as much as it should enchant and unnerve – and it’s at the midpoint of the film for a good reason.
See it sometime. No big-screen needed, at all; wait for DVD with impunity. But if you want a change of pace after some big-budget popcorn flicks, this is worth checking out.
Fr-Fri-Friiiiiday Linky
Glenn Greenwald is reliably awesome writing on the U.S. political scene, with a particular focus on media support for the Iraq war. He’s been all over the Pentagon-approved independent military experts story, and today recounts something even I find shocking for its directness: an admission, in a TV interview, that corporate execs at MSNBC deliberately and openly forced a pro-Bush, pro-War bias. It isn’t the first time we’ve heard this, either, as Greenwald recounts, but the audacity of it still unnerves me. Manufacturing Consent doesn’t even go far enough for this.
Russell Brown took note of this campaign to save ‘Dollhouse’ before it even starts – another case where reality follows close on the heels of satire.
Running short of ignorant and aggressive comments to news stories? Never fear, spEak You’re bRanes has an automated generator that will solve that problem!
Benicio del Toro won Best Actor for his starring role in Soderbergh’s enormous two-part biopic Che – but one has to wonder, do the films include this little-known incident between Che and Mao?
Our Public Discourse
This profile of a persistent tagger generated over 100 comments. The first 100 break down into the following general response types:
- Serious punishment (imprisonment, deportation or direct violent retribution)
- Other punishment (cutting off benefit, etc.)
- Insulting the tagger with no other comment (waster, moron, loser, etc.)
- Looking for a positive way of working with him
Merging the “other punishment” category with the “insults” category (to represent negative affect without any specific demand for serious punishment) gives this distribution:
The Busy
Have had the busy well and truly this past week. Apart from the usual nonsense of study study and worky worky, I’ve had a major meeting that I had to prep for, two classes of papers to mark, a freelance assignment due, an ethics application to complete and submit, a 6-month report to write and get reviewed and signed, a playtest game to prep, run, and report on, another meeting to prep for, a friend’s housemove to assist, and a job interview.
I sat down on the afternoon of 22 May (last Thurs) to write all of those deadlines in a list, then carefully figured out how I could possibly get them all done. I must have done my sums right because it’s a week later and everything got done and I also returned a mystery postcard to its owner, watched the last episodes of The Wire, and joined in a trashy film fest with the Knifeman.
Was not perfect. I missed a birthday party I really wanted to go to, turned up to some farewell drinks but was confused enough not to find the farewell-ee despite apparently walking right past their table a couple of times, and did not reply to a letter from overseas that really deserves a swift response. Plus, didn’t get all the study done I wanted to.
Still. I’m glad I’m in this Wednesday instead of last Wednesday. Last Wednesday was kind of intimidating.
Postcard – Happy Ending
Remember that mysterious postcard? After nearly two decades at sea, it has been returned to the woman who wrote it.
Neat how the internet makes this sort of thing possible, huh?
(I didn’t meet Jennie, but I handed the postcard to someone who instantly recognised the tot in the photo and was quite blown away by the story. That was a neat moment.)
Interview With A Tagger
The public rage over tagging that has been simmering in NZ these past few months has not exactly covered the local media in glory, but the DomPost surprised me with this profile of a tagger. It’s complex and revealing, non-judgmental but certainly making no excuses. The subject of the profile is articulate in some quotes, and quite the opposite of others. It’s by turns baffling and revealing.
Kitchener epitomises all that people detest when they see their city or town defaced by vandals. A seasonal fruit picker currently out of work, he’s a young, bored man with no interests and no ambitions that don’t include spraying paint on someone else’s property…
…He says he understands why people would get upset at being tagged, but he just doesn’t care.
“I definitely wouldn’t like it if it was done to me. But if I thought about that I wouldn’t do it, if I thought about people’s feelings. I’ve never cared what people think of me. If I did I would’ve stopped.”
It’s a great piece of compact profile journalism. It could stand to be several times as long, but I suspect that would only reveal more complications in its subject.
Nice one, Marty Sharpe. Nice one, DomPost.
Celebrating ‘The Wire’
Despite me being wall-to-wall busy, Cal and I found time this weekend to finish watching the fifth and final season of ‘The Wire’. Fantastic, urgent, essential television. The flaws in the last season – it had plenty – faded as it built to a pleasing and unexpectedly tight conclusion.
In celebration, then, here are a bunch of links about the greatest TV show of the decade:
Seven minutes of Wire creator David Simon talking about why he loves Baltimore (with cameos from some Wire cast members) (no spoilers)
David Simon on The Wire, talking right at the beginning of season one in 2002
The Guardian interviews Snoop Pearson about how she went from prison to acting (no real spoilers)
Salon on ‘everything you need to know about The WIre’ (no spoilers in the excellent overview in page one, then it describes seasons one and two in detail)
The Atlantic interviews David Simon at the start of season five
Simon writes in the WaPo (which, by the way, gets a hammering in season 5) about his experience of journalism
Simon’s letter to viewers at the end of the series (no spoilers, actually)
Any Problems?
I’m trialling a new stats counter on this site. Anyone having trouble with this page due to the scripts doing odd stuff, please comment and I’ll dump it. Not worth the hassle!
For Seattle people…
I know there are a few Seattle folk reading this, or people who might visit Seattle this summer – I want to plug the summer return of the Pacific Northwest’s favourite ice cream makers, Epicurean Empire Ice Cream!
They return this weekend to the U-District Farmer’s Market and to the Ballard Sunday Market. More details over on my LJ post!
(Because if you can’t use your blog to promote your friend’s ice cream business, what’s the point of it?)
Friday (Linky) On My Mind
I have a whole section in my bookmarks of “people to add to my blogroll” that I will honestly get around to doing someday. In the meantime, this one’s open in a tab right now so I am reminded to share: occasional commenter and all-around gent Dan has started Freshly Ground, which is mostly a blog about eating well. He muses in an entertaining way about how his young family is doing food-wise, with an eye on sustainability and nutrition and of course the NOM NOM NOM factor. And shares loads of tasty and simple recipes as he goes! Today’s entry is about when to cheat…
(And on the subject of food, Giffy is flickr’ing her lunches. Check out the one she blogged today: this is a good example of lunchy awesome, in my book.)
I’ve talked about Purity Balls before – it’s one of my posts that keeps getting traffic off of google and being passed around Facebook – and am thus inclined to share this commentary from Salon.com’s Broadsheet section: “We’ve written before about Generations of Light Ministries’ fantastically creepy “purity ball,” where fathers make a pledge to protect their young daughters’ hymens. But the New York Times’ coverage of the 2008 ball launched the event’s creepy quotient into the cosmos…” Go see. Yeesh.
And from the “holy cow” files, here’s what happens when a ten-year old boy writes a letter the Charles Manson and gets a reply.
That’s all I gots for ya this week. Additional linky from you folks is encouraged in comments…