London inspirations

(picture courtesy of Malcolm Edwards www.flickr.com/photos/malcnhg/)

Last week I was asked to commit a dozen of the places that most inspire me in my native city, London, to video for a ‘Design Inspiration’ event at the old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane next week. Of course I laboured over my list and tried out various permutations. Alfie Dennen kindly bought me a copy of Ed Glinert’s London Compendium to help, which by coincidence I first spied in a bookshop window in Brick Lane a couple of years ago but didn’t nab. In the end I pretty much went with my gut-instinct first list. I was driven around in a Nissan Cube (which basically looks like Postman Pat’s van done all in white – think I may go on holiday in one to Greendale some time)  and rabbited away on camera – good fun (for me at least). Here’s where the Cube was headed…

1. My house

I love the view from home because it is just 5 miles from Charing X-marks-the-spot at the centre of London and yet it looks like this – capturing the surprises brought to you by the quirkiness of urban development in the city, and the diversity of the place as my allotment-side neighbours are Portuguese, Greek, Eastern European, Hollowayish and from all manner of origins.

2. St Pancras & Islington Cemetery

It’s where I go jogging (a memento mori, jog or you’ll end up in here with us) so I’m a bit of an expert on London’s biggest cemetery, established in 1854. It’s got a few famous people in it like the Pre-Raphaelite painter Ford Madox Brown (and Alfie’s gran) but it’s not one of those kind of graveyards, it’s punctuated with quirky stuff and I picked out the beribonned dog grave for some dumb Edwardian schmuck who died saving a canine companion from drowning in Highgate Ponds.

3. The Phoenix Cinema, East Finchley

We filmed in the auditorium which captures my love of both cinema and art deco. It’s the oldest purpose-built cinema in the UK, opened in 1910, called The Rex when my mum lived round the corner as a young girl. I do a little pro bono work there (currently trying to set up a fund-raiser screening of Film4’s Nowhere Boy to help raise the last £92,000 to enable the restoration project to mark its centenary next year). You can give a few shekels here if the urge takes you – really a good cause, especially if you love Cinema.

4. Whitestone Pond / Hampstead Heath

A great view over all of London, painted by the likes of Constable and the aforementioned Ford Maddox Brown. You look out over the Heath and the sheltered island of Victorian dwellings known as the Vale of Health. DH Lawrence among other blue plaquers lived down there – we share a birthday (with Herbert Lom and John Martyn too) and by Whitestone Pond is where I was born. The maternity hospital has since closed and become an old age home so I’m doing my best to get back there and complete the full circle.

5. The Electric Ballroom, Camden Town

Representing my love of Music – it’s where I first saw The Clash, one of the most exciting musical experiences of my life. Down the other end of Camden High Street I saw Siouxsie and the Banshees play at the Music Machine (now Koko or whatever its called these duller days), so this was the locus of my middle-class punk days.

6. St Pancras Church, Euston

A different kind of example of London’s quirkiness. The four caryatids holding up the roof – look at them carefully [below]… a bit on the squat side no? That’s because they were delivered the wrong size and they had to cut a bit out of their Grecian bellies.

7. The newsagent’s in Dean Street, Soho

As a small child I got out the car under the distinctive scrolled sign on my way to De Lane Lea sound studios to watch Eastern European animations being dubbed into English. Years later I noticed it again walking through Soho to my first job in the film/TV industry in Marshall Street. So it symbolises a lifetime’s passion for moving pictures.

8. Bar Italia

I love the blue plaque above the cafe which says something along the lines of TV was invented in this room. Typical British understatement…

9. Cutlers’ Hall

This year I became a Liveryman at the Cutlers’ Company. It’s a long story but it started by getting an educational scholarship from them when I was at school to study in France the year before I went to uni. I’m now involved in helping spread the love and cash to schools, fencers, surgeons and other worthwhile beneficiaries. I was standing at an event in the Mansion House in 2005 when I was first embarking on Lost Generation and the stuff on the walls reminded me how much I loved London and prompted me to become part of the fabric of the City of London.

10. A view of St Paul’s Cathedral and the  OXO Tower

I proposed in the Whispering Gallery at the base of the dome from 35 yards away. My other half gave me my wedding ring in the top O of the OXO Tower when it was a building site during renovation. Between the two runs the sweet River, lifeblood of the city.

11. The Festival Hall

I love the design and interior. My mum’s brilliant art teacher, Abram Games, designed the Festival of Britain logo. We picked up the BAFTA there this year for Embarrassing Bodies. Loads of lovely associations.

12. Tate Britain

Represents my passion for Art, though most of the Modernism I particularly adore has moved downstream to Bankside. I love the streets behind and the bomb damage to the side wall (a lucky escape, the place must be blessed).

Feel free to leave your own London inspirations below…

It all went belly up

Landshare wins RTS Innovation Award

Can you spot which one is the award?

Last night Landshare won the RTS Innovation Award for User-generated Content. It was one of only six such awards given out (other winners included BBC iPlayer at over 100 times the budget of littl’ ol’ Landshare).

This is the 2nd of these annual awards. Last time out it was even better – Big Art Mob won the Mobile category, an inaugural winner alongside Flash Video (yes, the whole darn technology).

This year Landshare was nominated alongside Sexperience (in the same category), so I liked them 66% odds.

What the judges said: “The judges felt that the award should go to a project that they feel reinvents the viewer/user/programme maker relationship and which is making a fundamental difference to the way key issues of the moment can be addressed. A project whose success demonstrates as one judge put it “how television can make a difference”.”

Straying away from my own oeuvre, another very worthy winner was BBC Children’s marvellous Bugbears – think Monsters Inc meets Creature Comforts, used as a way to help children address&express difficult emotional subjects. It’s the work of Marc Goodchild (who was at our table – the Table of Triumph with its unique double gong status) and my old muckers Joe Elliot and Anthony Lilley of Magic Lantern (among others). I first saw it this time last year at Sheffield DocFest when I was doing a speaking gig on interactive documentary chaired by Paula LeDieu. Japhet (whose second name slips my ravaged mind) from Marc’s team at cBBC demoed it and I was instantly charmed.

Other awards went to the amazing BBC R&D bods who have such a world class heritage in broadcasting/media innovation, pretty much second to none. An honour to be among them.

 

Update 19.xi.09 BIMAs

Tonight Landshare won the BIMA (British Interactive Media Award) for Community Social Media (as well as being nominated in the Special Achievement Award: Viral Spread category). It follows in the footsteps of MindGym (97) and Embarrassing Bodies (08).

4 of the best

This week I’m staying in S. Agata, on the coast about an hour south of Naples, and today I’m off to see for the first time Pompeii, so buried stuff is on my mind. It’s in the nature of a blog that stuff gets buried – this post is me resurrecting 4 of my favourite posts from this blog:

1 Starless and Bible Black

on titles, jazz, Dylan Thomas and Joyce’s Ulysses

2 What Is It Worth?

on Buffalo Springfield, Belsen and what’s of true value

3 Fear & Sex

a survey of the Daily Mail, anxiety and sex

4 In the beginning of the End (serpent mix)

a remix of The Doors’ The End and the first chapter of Genesis (the bible book not the band)

And on the subject of great songs, the soundtrack for today (fortunately it’s on the ol’ iPod) must be Siouxsie & the Banshees’ Cities in Dust – after all these years it’s going to come into its own:

“Water was running, children were running
We found you hiding, we found you lying
Your city lies in dust
Ohh oh your city lies in dust, my friend

Hot and burning in your nostrils
Pouring down your gaping mouth
Your molten bodies blanket of cinders
Caught in the throes

Ohh oh your city lies in dust, my friend
Ohh oh your city lies in dust, my friend”

4 things that are bothering me about the Credit Crunch

To celebrate our record recession as marked by today’s announcement of a neat 0.4% shrinkage of the UK economy between July and September, making this recession the longest since records began, here are 4 things that have been bugging me on this front…

1
Earlier this week I read in the Evening Standard an article celebrating the rise in retail sales figures in September with a woman from Selfridges revelling in all the spending, just like the good ol’ pre-Crunch times. Are we all just going to slip back into buying all that Chinese-made shit we don’t really need?

2
There seems to be no sign of genuine banking reform. Even Boris Johnson is now feeling stiched up by the bwankers. Short-term thinking (if you can call it thinking) is the nemesis of long-term well being.

3
In the wake of the oil prices hitting their peak, the moment they started coming down a bit, I remember reading the depressing newspaper headline: Supermarket forecourt price wars. This just after you started noticing people really thinking twice before making a car journey. Our capacity to fall back into old ways is frankly depressing.

4
People keep referring to it as if it’s another run-of-the-mill, cycle-of-things recession, perhaps a bit worse but still a known quantity. My instinct about it is that it contains elements the like of which we have not seen before and understand no better than the bwankers understood what they were doing when they bought those packages of cancerous debt.

We had a chance for a moment there to stop and reflect and consider where true value lies, make some radical changes and get our lives back into balance, perhaps healing our battered environment to a sufficient degree in the process. I hope that moment hasn’t passed but I wouldn’t bet my bottom dollar on it (if I could afford dollars these days).

4 pantheistic quotations

Been working on an arts/literature project recently involving quotations. In the spirit of Sunday night reflectiveness and on the weekend of my first Muslim wedding, here are some quotes I’ve come across in the last while that capture something of what I feel on the spirituality front…

What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos.

(Einstein)

That which is impenetrable to us really exists. Behind the secrets of nature remains something subtle, intangible, and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion.

(Einstein)

One should count each day a separate life.

(Seneca)

Let your capital be simplicity and contentment.

(Thoreau)

And one for luck…

Plenty of kind, decent, caring people have no religious beliefs, and they act out of the goodness of their hearts. Conversely, plenty of people who profess to be religious, even those who worship regularly, show no particular interest in the world beyond themselves.

(John Danforth)

It’s not (only) TV – Italian Documentary Screenings cross-platform workshop

The Medicine Men (and friend) on Channel 4

Here are the references for the Cross-platform workshop at Trento:

My Commissions:

Osama Loves – a participative journey
Embarrassing Bodies – a popular health show
Empire’s Children – capturing people’s stories of the end of empire
Big Art Mob – documenting public art across the UK and beyond
Surgery Live – using Twitter to enhance live TV
Alone In The Wild – another experiment in using Twitter with TV
Landshare – linking people who want to grow their own food with space to grow it (derived from a factual format – River Cottage)
Sexperience – sex education through people’s first-hand experience
Adoption Experience – all about adoption from people’s direct experience
Picture This – a friendly place to improve your photography, integrated with an arts series
Medicine Chest – capturing people’s stories about traditional approaches to health

Other Channel 4 Commissions:

Bow Street Runner – a history game about the founding of the British police force
1066 – another history game about the Norman Conquest

The skinny on Skinny-dipping

Rupert Brooke in Granchester (with soft collar)

On Thursday evening I joined Channel 4 colleagues at The Courthouse Hotel [formerly the Marylebone Magistrates Court, was glad to see cells have been imaginatively retained] opposite Carnaby Street (a resonant area for me as just round the corner from my very first workplace, Solus in Marshall Street, Soho, whose attic contained hidden gems like footage of Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight and James Baldwin in Paris) to view as it was broadcast a programme I had (deliberately) only seen as raw footage – Alone in the Wild. Since the beginning of July we have been publishing online the rushes of the show as they came out of the wilderness of the Yukon, where cameraman/film-maker Ed Wardle was living and recording his experiences himself, completely alone in the wild. My part of the cross-platform commission also involved publishing daily out-going only short messages from the wild via Twitter, which were subsequently used to punctuate the three films in the series. [Next one is this Thursday at 9pm on C4]

One scene in Episode 1 saw Ed delighting in a skinny-dip in the lake where he had made camp, frolicking like a child, immersing himself with joy in the place he shared with a stately moose and grayling destined for his frying pan.

I’ve been equally struck recently by accounts of poet Rupert Brooke’s skinny-dipping activities in Granchester, a place made magical for me after a lone moonlit cycle-ride to there in the middle of one Romantic night. In particular, accounts of ‘The Midnight Swim’ when this proto-hippy young poet shared the waters of Byron’s Pool with the unstable, radical woman of letters Virginia Stephens, later Woolf, who finished her life alone in the underwater wild of a Sussex river.

It was 1911. They were both single. Rupert was 24, Virginia was 29. It was the year Poems 1911 was published (clue in the title), Brooke’s one and only volume of poems to appear during his actual lifetime. (Woolf’s first novel appeared four years later.)

Christopher Hassall describes the incident in his biography of Brooke (Rupert Brooke: a Biography 1964):

“It was the end of August. Virginia Stephen arrived at the Old Vicarage and occupied Ka’s bed on the other side of the house. The garden room was strewn with scraps of Strindberg, pages of Bland Vassen and fragments of verse. Probably the guest had brought with her an early chapter of The Voyage Out to revise while Brooke was reading or writing stretched out on the grass. One warm night there was a clear sky and a moon and they walked out to the shadowy waters of Byron’s Pool. “Let’s go swimming, quite naked,” Brooke said, and they did.”

Brooke mentions in his well known poem The Old Vicarage, Granchester this pool where his poetic forebear Byron swam when no-one was about:

Still in the dawn waters cool
His ghostly Lordship swims his pool

The painter Augustus John, who lived nearby with a caravan load of hot women and brown children, was also a naked frequenter of the pool, as was the philosopher Wittgenstein.

The Midnight Swim is also fictionalised and extrapolated upon in Jill Dawson’s recent novel The Great Lover which I read on holiday this August (exactly 98 years after the skinny-dip in question), kindly given to me by Aysha Rafaele (a fellow C4 Commissioning Editor from Documentaries) who spotted it in the Richard & Judy Book Club pile.

So any action between the two of them, both swingers-both-ways? Rupert, I get the impression, was more inclined to the hetero. Virginia must be well documented but I’m not sure exactly how her bi was balanced. Lytton Strachey had proposed to her two years earlier but they both realised, in the cool light of day the next morning, it wouldn’t work out. I don’t think any one knows or ever said quite what occurred, which leaves it as a lovely little mystery…

The Midnight Swim wasn’t their first watery encounter. In April 1899 (Rupert was 11, Virginia was 17) the Brookes went to St. Ives on holiday, where Leslie Stephen was also vacationing with his family. The two of them played together by the sea.

Yeats called Brooke “the handsomest young man in England”. By the year of The Midnight Swim, Brooke was secretly engaged or attached in some fashion to Noel Olivier, a fascinating character in her own right (Rupert was 24, Noel was 19) here’s her Wikipedia entry.

I had a go recently at drafting a Wikipedia entry for her sister Brynhild who seemed a promising character, the most beautiful of the Olivier sisters, but there’s very little to go on. This is what I have so far:

”’Brynhild Olivier”’ (1886 – 13th January 1935) was a member of [[Rupert Brooke]]’s circle before the First World War and associated with the [[Bloomsbury Group]]. She was the fourth daughter of [[Sydney Haldane Olivier]], 1st Baron Olivier, and Margaret Cox; she was sister of Margery, Daphne and [[Noel Olivier|Noel]].

She married art historian [[A. E. Popham]] (Arthur Ewart Hugh Popham, known as Hugh) in 1912 (becoming Brynhild Popham). Hugh Popham was a friend of Rupert Brooke. They were divorced in 1924. She married [[F. R. N. Sherrard]] in 1924 (becoming Brynhild Sherrard).

She was the mother of [[Anne Olivier Popham]], who became the wife of art historian and writer [[Quentin Bell]]. She was also the mother of the poet, translator and theologian [[Philip Sherrard|Philip Owen Arnould Sherrard]] (born 23 September 1922, Oxford).

Brynhild was the first of the four Olivier sisters the poet Rupert Brooke met. Although she was reputedly the most beautiful, it was her sister Noel Olivier for whom Brooke fell.

She was first cousin of the actor [[Laurence Olivier]].

If there’s anyone out there in internetland who knows anything more about Brynhild (Bryn) Olivier, please do let me know via comments or however so I can get enough substance in the article to make it acceptable for Wikipedia – i.e. more information on what she achieved in her adult life.

Rupert and Noel met in 1908 when he was 20 and she a 15-year-old schoolgirl at the then fashionable, progressive Bedales in Petersfield. Noel’s father was Lord Sydney Olivier (uncle of dear, dear Larry), a prominent Fabian and high-ranking civil servant, serving in his time as Governor of Jamaica and Secretary of State for India.

Bedales was something of a centre for getting your kit off. Various members of Brooke’s circle had been there, the first co-ed public school, which encouraged a passion for the open air and healthy outdoor games. Nude swimming and sunbathing (segregated) made it on to the curriculum (hoorah!). The Sun Bathing Society’s Annual Summer Conference was held there in 1931 and naturists used the Bedales grounds out of term in the wake of their starting to organise in Britain during the previous decade.

Noel went on to have a long and interesting career as a doctor, politically active in a way reflecting her Fabian roots. Rupert had a short one as an early crash-and-burn teen hero, paving the way for everyone from James Dean to (fellow Cantabrian) Nick Drake to River (appropriately enough) Phoenix. He didn’t quite make 28. He cast himself as a Neo-Pagan (becoming a central figure of an eponymous group of writers and artists) and Virginia confirmed this: “He was consciously and definitely pagan.” They were the original Teddy Boys, the reckless youth of the Edwardian era, rebelling against the constraints of stiff-collared Victorian ways.

Embodying the Neo-Pagan ideals of youth, comradeship and the Simple Life, Brooke revelled in going barefoot and skinny-dipping: “Two miles from Cambridge up the river I wander about barefoot and almost naked. I live on honey, eggs and milk.” (letter to Noel Olivier, summer 1909). A bit of Romantic exaggeration of course, but Rupert certainly enjoyed casting off a few layers.

This summer I had the Simple Pleasure of bathing in Lough Hyne, just outside of Baltimore (the one in West Cork as opposed to The Wire one). It is pretty much unique as a salt-water lake, quite the place to go if you want to hang with a goby, shanny, blenny, three-spined stickleback or clingfish. Its salty water reminded me of another top bathing experience – the Blue Hole, East of Port Antonio, Jamaica (aka the Blue Lagoon since Brooke Shields skinny-dipped there in 1980, directed by Randal Kleiser, who I had a ridiculous phonecall with when I was working at Solus – for some unaccountable reason I turned momentarily into The Player, luckily old Randy couldn’t see the tenderfoot at the other end of the transatlantic line). The Blue Hole is a mixed salt and fresh water lagoon, fed by cold underground springs. When you swim you have the unique experience of one stroke warm, next stroke cool, warm, cool, warm, cool, warm, cool. Divers and scientists say it has a depth of about 180 feet. Local islanders say it is bottomless and a monsterous creature lives down below. The mixture of intense physical pleasure and underlying anxiety of the sheer extent and unknowableness of Nature is an experience common to skinny-dippers the world wide.

Far from Embarrassed

Just spotted this new comment on the Embarrassing Bodies website:

Hi team

Just a little note 2 say a very big thank u very much! I was watchin an episode that featured how 2 check 4 lumps in the breast. I am a 33yr old single parent & thought i didnt need 2 check myself until i was in my 40’s but im very pleased i did, approximately 16 weeks ago i saw ur show & went 2 my gp because i found a lump, at first the locum was quite dismissive until he felt it then he refered me 2 the breast specialist at my local hospital. I went 4 tests & got diagnosed with breast cancer, i just had a wide local excision & am currently waitin 4 the results from that op but i am optamistic a small amount of radiotherapy is all that will be required to complete my treatment.

Watchin ur show has saved my life & thanks 2 u all my 2yr old son will still have a mummy

Keep up the good work!!!

The Breast Self-Check video in question is here

Update 14/09/09:

A new viewer comment:

“I was watching Embarrassing Bodies around the above date and your Doctors were showing viewers how to check for breast cancer. I took note and examined myself. I found a lump and went to my GP. Now 5 weeks later I feel fully recovered now after a lumpectomy to remove a cancerous tumour. Because I found it in very early stages, it hadn’t spread to my lymph nodes and my outlook is fabulous. Treatment now involves 3 weeks of radiotherapy and tablets for 5 years. Thank you for your clear way of showing people like me how to potentially save our own lives!”

Best of British – Top British films of the last 25 years

Mike Leigh's Naked (ooh matron!)

My response to today’s Observer Film Magazine list of ‘The Best British Films 1984-2009′

My 15 favourite home-grown films of the last quarter century (in no particular order) are:

• In Bruges [not in The Observer list, made by FilmFour, a cracking script by Martin McDonagh]
• 24 Hour Party People [I'm not a huge fan of Steve Coogan but he's brilliant in this #24 of 25]
• Venus [Peter O'Toole and Leslie Phillips make a great double act, not in The Observer list]
• The Remains of the Day [deeply moving performances by Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, not in The Observer list]
• A Room with a View [perfectly executed film of its type, not in The Observer list]
• Naked [the fruit of David Thewlis' creativity #14]
• The Hours [Nicole Kidman shines among a host of brilliant actresses, not in The Observer list]
• The Constant Gardener [another powerful Ralph Fiennes performance, not in The Observer list]
• Last Resort [Pawel Pawlikowski bursts onto the British scene, not in The Observer list]
• Hunger [a bold, fresh artist's film from (the other) Steve McQueen but not an arty one #16]
• Chaplin [captures something of the greatest film-maker of all time, not in The Observer list]
• Secrets & Lies [a culmination of Mike Leigh's approach #3]
• In the Name of the Father [powerful acting spearheaded by Daniel Day-Lewis, not in The Observer list]
• A Month in the Country [a gentle, bucolic one - not in The Observer list]
• Defence of the Realm [a top-class thriller shot by Roger Deakins, not in The Observer list]
• The Commitments [energised by the powerful lungs of Andrew Strong, not in The Observer list]

Bubbling under: Borat, Howard’s End, High Hopes, Shadowlands, Johnny English, East is East, The Bounty, Son of Rambow, Billy Elliot

I enjoyed flicking through the pages of today’s Observer Film Magazine, The Nation’s Choice, focused on contemporary British cinema as I supped my Cullen Skink outside a pub on the Shore of Leith, winding down from the manic activity of the Edinburgh Television Festival, said soup surely worthy of sitting alongside Tarmac and Lino as a GSI (Great Scottish Invention). [It would have been fun to check out the online discussion the mag urges us to visit but after ten minutes searching for it on The Guardian/Observer site I gave up.]

Leafing through I realised this has been a fairly significant part of my life over the years, despite being more focused on telly – from the photo of my old flat-mate Emer McCourt alongside #21, Ken Loach’s Riff-Raff, to Loach’s producer Rebecca O’Brien who sat at the table I hosted at the TV BAFTAs a couple of years ago; from Mike Leigh who I met at Dick Pope’s around the time my first son was born (the same son who three years later slammed a heavy glass door onto the renowned director in a Crouch End shop) to Dick himself, one of my first bosses at Solus, who shot #3 Secrets and Lies (and much of Leigh’s oeuvre besides); from Ben Gibson, Director of the London Film School, with whom I was involved trying to set up a South African film/tv scholarship to Ewen Bremner, featured in both #1 Trainspotting and #14 the marvellous Naked, who I met when he was making a training film early in his career (written by John Mole and, unbeknownst to the casual viewer, based on Beowolf).

Beyond this punctuation of connections though is the steady presence of Channel 4, FilmFour, More 4, Britdoc (the Channel 4 British Documentary Film Foundation) – in particular, my esteemed colleague Tessa Ross whose fingerprints are on so many of the films (from Billy Elliot to #9 Slumdog Millionaire), dubbed recently the Mother of British Film-making. Choose Life is engraved on the glass doors of Channel 4’s Glasgow office in recognition of the Channel’s role in bringing the landmark movie that is Trainspotting to life. #11 Touching the Void was commissioned out of Peter Dale’s More4. #16 Hunger was patiently nurtured by my much missed colleague Jan Younghusband in Channel 4 Arts (her ex-husband Peter Chelsom made Hear My Song, which starred my friend Adrian Dunbar and whose script crossed my desk at Solus (and still sits in my bookcase) on its way to Roger Deakins, another of my bosses at Solus – the kind of thing which links the Channel 4 nexus and my pre-C4 web of experiences). The next generation is represented by Mat Whitecross, whose film Moving to Mars is being broadcast on More4 in November and was part-financed by Britdoc, run with flair by former C4 fellow Commissioning Editor Jess Search. I haven’t worked it out exactly but I’d say well over 30% of the Top 25 has FilmFour/Channel 4  input. Stephen Frears’ big break with #5 My Beautiful Launderette. From #17 Shane Meadow’s This is England to #10 Four Weddings and a Funeral, the full gamut. What an incredible record and a significant contribution to the last quarter century of British cinema.

Labour of Lovechild – 4 reasons to see Inglourious Basterds

Mélanie Laurent putting on the war paint (see #4)

1 Once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France

A bravura opening sequence of some 25 minutes in near real-time a la Once Upon a Time in the West, part of the linkage of Westerns and War Films explored in Inglourious Basterds. Christoph Waltz rachets up the tension with his stand-out performance as the insidiously suave SS ‘Jew Hunter’ Colonel – as scene stealing as Ralph Fiennes’ Amon Goetz in Schindler’s List. The interrogation through chat is as good a dialogue as Tarantino has ever written.

2 Performances

As well as Austrian Waltz’s excellent performance which bagged him Best Actor at Cannes, Brad Pitt does a great – slightly cartoonish/Cormanesque yet highly compelling – turn as Lieutenant Aldo Raine, a no-nonsense Tennessee kickass (fellow native of Tarantino’s home state) playing the equivalent of the Lee Marvin role in The Dirty Dozen, pulling together the dirty Basterds to go kick some Kraut ass behind the lines in the run up to D-Day. He squeezes plenty of comedy out of the part, not least in his undercover I-talian.

Mélanie Laurent is also very charismatic as heroine Shoshanna, last survivor of a massacred Jewish family who takes refuge in Paris running a back-street cinema, resonant of wartime films like Marcel Carné’s Les Enfants du Paradis. Inglourious Basterds is very much the lovechild of Sam Peckinpah and the French section of the International shelves of QT’s legendary video store. Laurent has a perfect deadened steeliness about her, an angel of death set to visit the Nazi basterds.

3 Bar room brawl

The second bravura talkie set-piece is a long sequence in a cellar bar culminating in a Mexican stand-off (worthy of John Woo). Like the opening scene, it is driven by interrogation through chat, the tension tautened to breaking point as a Gestapo uniform gets his terrier teeth into an undercover Englishman (played by Michael Fassbender, brought to prominence in FilmFour’s Hunger). The ebb and flow of tension is reminiscent of the Joe Pesci restaurant scene in Scorsese’s Goodfellas, with echoes of Hitch.

4 Putting out fire

As ever, Tarantino’s use of music is palpitating. The scene where the scarlet woman puts on her war paint to Bowie’s Cat People theme is a good reason in itself for the invention of Dolby. I’m going back to see Inglourious Basterds again just for that moment.

It’s a film which keeps you thinking after your initial somewhat bewildered exit from the movie theatre. It was good to see a bunch of Northern Irish teens having an animated discussion about the film as they sparked up outside the multiplex in Newry. I suspect this one will bear multiple viewing (probably more scene by scene than end to end, which says much about QT’s style of film-making) and like a blood red Burgundy get better with age.