Boyz n the Hood

Finally. Finally. My dream of starting a movie club where we watch classic movies that we've never seen before seems to have started. We watched Boyz n the Hood and, frankly, it stands up. It was extraordinarily good - touching, sad, funny, smart - just good. Cuba Gooding Jr. looks the same as he does now (i.e. he looked 40 then and does now), Lawrence Fishburne is amazing, as is Angela Bassett, Morris Chestnutt, everyone, basically.

Watch it. I don't have much more than that.

Oh, and I saw Jaws in 2017. That's something to add. It was great.

You're welcome!

I'm back, baby. Back.

On Envy

I am, finally, reading a book by Zadie Smith.

There is a reason why it took me so long, which can neatly be summarized as "baggage caused by College-era envy and other complicated things." 

Less neatly and concisely:  I went to the same Cambridge college as Zadie Smith.  When I arrived, I was told of her book deal's existence, even though I didn't knowingly lay eyes on her for probably the first month.  In a college of about 400 undergraduates, with three bars on hand for numerous hours of cheap drinking, you knew everything about everyone.  It's just the way it was - incestuous and close. 

Over the next year, I learnt more about Zadie (in my head, she's always "Zadie," despite never having said a word to her) that seemed positively unfair.  It turned out she was an incredibly good singer (she performed at a college event with a jazz combo, I believe).  She also could dance which, in a college full of geeky, undersocialized white teenagers/early 20-somethings, was unusual.  Of course, she is also unbelievably beautiful.  That she had all these things going for her in addition to being smart and a wonderful writer sort of blew my mind. 

Then she became incredibly successful.  There is always a Tube book - the book you are guaranteed to see at least one person reading on public transport each time you step into the Underground.  For a while, it was The God of Small Things; Trainspotting also was a big one.  Harry Potter books, obviously.  And, for a while, it was White Teeth.  And I did not respond graciously to that, and refused to read it.

Before this seems like a vindictive thing aimed only at Zadie, let me point out that many, many, many of the people I met at Cambridge were similarly over accomplished and incredibly difficult for me to process emotionally.  Although I had always been pretty good at sport, and I was clever, I didn't have any other strings to my bow.  I went to Cambridge and met all these incredibly bright people who were spectacular musicians; who were much, much, much better at hockey and other sports than my feeble attempts; who were great actors or stand up comedians; who made movies; and who were really good looking.  So Zadie was merely emblematic of the envy and weirdness I discovered about myself at Cambridge.  Also, when Katharine Hepburn died - star of my favourite movie, The Philadelphia Story - the Guardian published a piece by Zadie on her love for Katharine Hepburn. Gah!  (I know what you're thinking - reading this blog, it's hard to understand why I didn't become the acclaimed and highly successful writer). 

But it was petty, and childish; and for someone who got to go to one of the best universities in the world which has endlessly opened doors for me, as well as making wonderful friends and meeting my highly significant other, I really don't think I can complain about others' gifts and good fortune.  I'm not proud of it; I just want to explain how silly I was, and why I changed my mind.   Although that is not complex; I think I just grew up a little and threw off the petty fears and petty pleasures.  I was wandering through the Brooklyn Central Library, and there were several of her books on the shelf.  And I finally decided to pick one up and check it out - in more ways than one (drum roll!).

For some reason, On Beauty appealed the most - perhaps because I'm now legally tethered to an academic, or because I live in the US and straddle both a British and U.S.-based identity.  I'm not really sure, but that's what I chose.  I've only just started, but already there has been so much staggeringly lovely writing.  It's not flourished, or ornate, but is insightful, well-observed, sharp, and funny:

When it comes to weather, New Englanders are delusional.  In his ten years on the East Coast Howard had lost count of the times some loon from Massachusetts had heard his accent, looked at him pitiably and said something like:  Cold over there, huh?  Howard's feeling was:  look, let's get a few things straight here.  England is not warmer than New England in July or August, that's true.  Probably not in June either.  But it is warmer in October, November, December, January, February, March, April and May - that is, in every month when warmth matters.  In England letter-boxes do not jam with snow.  Rarely does one see a squirrel tremble.  It is not necessary to pick up a shovel in order to unearth your rubbish bins.  This is because it is never really very cold in England.  It is drizzly, and the wind will blow; hail happens, and there is a breed of Tuesday in January in which time creeps and no light comes and the air is full of water and nobody really loves anybody, but still a decent jumper and a waxen jacket lined with wool is sufficient for every weather England's got to give. 

This portion I've typed is as much a public service announcement for my U.S. chums.  But I particularly love the bolded phrasing, which captures those Tuesdays so perfectly, I can almost feel them.  Which, given the current humidity and heatwave, is rather special.

Brutal

I can't remember where I first read of Elizabeth Taylor the author, rather than Elizabeth Taylor: Actress. I did a bit of poking around the internet, but appear to have misremembered my source so, alas, this will have to go without citation. Nevertheless, I have had several of her books on my "to read" list that I have accumulated on the NYPL website. I finally got around to reading one, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, which I finished this weekend.

Well. It is elegant, sparse prose; it appears to deal with frivolities - food, particularly - and societal norms, reflections. Yet it is an utterly brutal and unflinching look at old age and dying without being wanted or needed. It is quite shaking; not mean-spirited, but matter of fact and all the more horrifying for it. It's not often that a book of merely 200 pages or so is going to stick and haunt my thoughts, but this will be it. Unsurprisingly, I'm reading joyously frivolous young adult fiction to get me through the aftermath.

Anticipation

There is something of the macabre involved in anticipating the finale to a series. Be it books, be it a trilogy of films, be it a tv show, there is a feeling of dread in approaching the end. That can happen with a single book or movie, particularly as so many often go downhill so quickly as the author attempts to wrap it up. But with a series, it is magnified due to the time and effort invested in it prior to the ending. So while one feels anticipation and excitement for the denouement, there is a genuine feeling of terror - what if the wrong person ends up with the character you love the most? What if, simply, the ending is shoddy? My friends who were seriously invested in Lost have struggled with that ending. And what if you have created a great piece of art or culture - yes, I'm looking at you, George Lucas - but then the author can't let it go, and they keep sucking your emotions away with sub-standard rubbish afterward that makes you forget why you loved the art in the first place?* So many people have slated the final season of The Wire, and I think a great deal of that is the relative disappointment, even if it's still miles ahead of anything else on tv.

There is also the simple regret at the coming to pass of something that you love. This is the feeling I have now as Mockingjay is sitting in wait for me at my local library. I was a latecomer to this, but The Hunger Games gripped both Cerebus and me, and as a result, I positively raced through Catching Fire, the second book that I've now handed onto Cerebus. I don't want to be disappointed in it, but there is also something about having everything unresolved, as if you're on the brink of something wonderful - or terrible - and there's a delicious joy in that uncertainty, the possibilities of what could happen. And the realisation that once you're done with the book, that's it. No going back. The story is fixed, done, and there will be no changes. Which is why I howl and howl and howl when I re-read the Dark Materials trilogy. That light, the hope has been snuffed out.

* Of course, a lot of people would argue about the general rubbishness of Return of the Jedi - which was probably an ill-fated harbinger of the awfulness of the new movies - in comparison to the glories of The Empire Strikes Back. Which leads me to ponder why the second of a trilogy is so often the best of them. Several come to mind: Star Wars trilogy, The Subtle Knife in the Dark Materials Trilogy, The Godfather Part II... hmm. Is it because the author is setting it up, with often a lot of darkness, but doesn't have to wrap up all the loose threads or worry about that, at least? I think so. But one to ponder.

Wired

Why does it take us (me and Cerebus, that is) so long to wind up to watch an episode of The Wire? We've had massive pauses between seasons, and even in the middle of some. I think it's because I know how brutal it will be, and how it emotionally blacks out everything else on tv. We just watched the first episode of the fifth and final season, and I'm already traumatised at this being the last 12 or so for me to watch; I'm exhausted with McNulty and his utter idiocy/self-destruction; frustrated at the political machinations, and both Cerebus and I are aware of a massive spoiler we suffered that is hanging over us, with us just waiting for it to drop. Still, there are glorious, glorious things to enjoy: Bunk is one of my favourite characters on tv, ever; one of the newspapermen, despite reminding me of Mick from Brookside (but who played Lewis in Homicide: Life on the Streets - didn't remind me of Mick then), is clearly going to become one of my favourite characters in this season; and the rhythm, sharpness and familiarity of it is overwhelming.

I suppose I just don't want it to end.

AFI

A couple of things got me thinking about the AFI Top 100 Movies. A work colleague with a much more pretentious (i.e. impressive and learned) taste in movies was talking about it, and then there was a question about how many movies the hosts of Answer Me This had seen. So, I've seen seven of the top ten, and overall, a paltry 41. Boo. Still, I'm pleased with my top ten results. And, of course, Casablanca is second in the list, and as I have discussed at length elsewhere, I adore this film. So I'm watching this and I plan to make my way through at least some of the rest of this. Although given the results of my attempts to get through The Observer list, maybe I should avoid it and just watch some good films rather more informally.

Nadir

As Cerebus points out, I have my own unique brand of snobbery. For example, I get very uptight about the I'm-smarter-than-you-art-so-I-have-to-point-out-everything highbrow stuff, as I have discussed previously on this blog. I'd much rather watch/read something supposedly "low brow" but completely unaffected than ever, ever have to sit through American Beauty again. On the other hand, the "low brow" cannot be anything related to a shopaholic, anything with Kate Hudson or Matthew McConaughey, the "He's not that into you" film and its brethren and anything with the manic pixie dream girl as a main character. Or, indeed, anything trying to teach young girls that having sex is dangerous, you need to be protected from yourself by a man who may kill you with his passion if he does have sex with you, and if you have sex you'll end up with a weird mutant monster baby. And yes, the third installment of that movie series is out in cinemas now!

The problem is, I like low brow, but am picky about what constitutes good lowbrow as opposed to terrible lowbrow. Why, for example, do I find Jackass repeatedly compelling, whereas any reality show (more or less) is just too infra dig.? I haven't quite worked that out, but this weekend I've had a dear friend staying with me, and we've watched numerous incarnations of "The Real Idiots of Wherever" and their spin-off shows, and it really has just been too much for me. I don't know why, when I really can watch terrible things over and over and over, including horrible toilet humour, crass and revolting sexual jokes made by awful and grotesque human beings (hello It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) and those are my favourite programmes, but when it comes to real people doing those things I am just horrified and find it all beneath me. I find their grotesqueness horrifying, not amusing; I need to turn away, hide under my cushion. But then, I do that with Peep Show and Extras but can watch those over and over and over again.

This is a remarkably useless post. I just wanted you to know that I really, really, really cannot bear reality tv and it's not because I think I should only watch Mad Men and things on HBO. I've tried, but unless it's neatly packaged and contained for me by Joel McHale, it's just not for me.