A Pub Bore at the Movies

This is the time of year when it’s a challenge to fit in all the great movies which come out to line up with the awards season. I have therefore been given permission to divert from my main themes in this posting, in order to chunter about what I've seen recently. This isn't Peter Bradshaw, btw; no, this is the cyber-equivalent of the bore in the corner of the pub who just needs to tell you what he’s been up to recently.

First, Frost/Nixon, which we saw followed by a live Q&A by satellite (well, you can’t expect these busy people to come all the way to York, for heaven’s sake) with the writer, Peter Morgan, and Michael Sheen, who features in a lead role in most of Morgan’s oeuvre (irrelevant fact: Sheen's dad is a semi-professional Jack Nicholson lookalike). I haven’t seen the play, and someone who’s seen and liked both tells me that there is some good stuff in the play which isn't in the film – nevertheless, when, in the film, Frost asks Nixon “And the American people?”, you sit there waiting for Nixon to acknowledge the extent of his crime in one of the most tense silences I’ve known in the cinema. The film reignites an old debate about the permissible limits of fiction in the context of historical events – one of the key episodes in the film never happened. It took a question from an audience member to elicit this from Peter Morgan – which emphasised the foolishness of the interlocutor, Jason Solomons, an Observer film critic, in dominating the questions himself and only allowing a few minutes for the ordinary punters to have a go. Oh, I almost forgot - Peter Morgan dropped in the slightly amusing fact that the Broadway production of the play was called 'Nixon/Frost', because no-one in the US can recall who Frost was.

To Slumdog Millionaire: it’s very violent in parts, and has a visual scatological bit near the beginning which had the whole audience groaning out loud - definitely one to see with a crowd in the cinema. I gather that some in the Indian film business don't like the film, because unlike the generality of Bollywood films, it doesn’t try to sanitise the reality of life on the streets in Mumbai. Nevertheless, there’s a wonderful Bollywood ending over the titles – someone sitting in front of me tried to get up as soon as the first title appeared; he sat down again very quickly.

If you go to see Slumdog having read on the side of a London bus (those that aren’t advising you of the probable non-existence of an omnipotent deity, that is) that it’s a ‘feel good movie’, you may be in for a shock. Particularly if – like me - the last feel good movie you saw was Mamma Mia. Slumdog is to Mamma Mia as a bike is to a Rolls Royce. Both will get you there, and leave you pleased at having accomplished the journey. But you will feel much more battered by the elements at the end of the bike journey, yet also more profoundly satisfied at your achievement. They also have something in common – both stories are ludicrously improbable, but I doubt that anyone who sees them will care about that. The songs are better in Mamma Mia, even if they have to be shoe horned uncomfortably into the story (and if those takes were the best they could get from Piers Brosnan by way of a singing voice, then can we please be spared the ones on the cutting room floor, if they have such things in this digital age?). My daughter gave us the Mamma Mia DVD for Xmas, knowing that her mother had much enjoyed it on a girly trip to the cinema. This meant that I could watch it in the privacy of our home. (I am a devoted Abba fan. If the original recordings pall after a bit, try mezzo soprano Ann Sofie von Otter singing Like an Angel Passing Through My Room. Have a Kleenex to hand).

Films are much more fun than philanthropy; discuss.

Getting, Giving and Golf

On Christmas Eve, Nicholas Kristoff, in a New York Times article called The Sin in Doing Good Deeds, asked the question: If a businessman rakes in a hefty profit while doing good works, is that charity or greed? The season has also been enlivened – for those of us fortunate enough not to have been victims – by Mr Madoff whose name and swindle (as many have pointed out) are straight out of Dickens. It’s interesting, and sad, that so many charities lost money with Madoff. Ed Pilkington points out in a Guardian piece called Tales from the country club that the Palm Beach Country Club was at the heart of Madoff’s social and business circle. As Pilkington writes: anyone wishing to join has to prove they are not only persons of huge wealth but also of upstanding character - they must demonstrate that they give away hundreds of thousands of dollars each year as charity. In return, they gain entry to a social circle that can help them further enhance their fortune. Madoff, he says, was the epitome of the moneymaker/money-giver, as he not only coined wealth for himself and others, he was also a major philanthropist. It’s surely no coincidence that one of those who lost money with Madoff was Arpad Busson who, as both readers of this blog may recall is the same person whose charity, Absolute Return for Kids, benefited from a fundraising dinner (at which guests were entertained by Prince) which raised over £26 million. Pilkington has neatly summarised the process through which this kind of charity simply serves to reinforce the situations which give rise to the need for charity in the first place. It is regrettable that some very worthwhile charities have been caught in the Madoff backwash (and a good thing that Atlantic Philanthropies is coming to their rescue, in part at least) but those of us who have been deeply suspicious of this kind of conspicuous giving/acquiring can surely, as the New Year dawns, allow ourselves some comforting schadenfreude.