Does more money make for lesser music videos?

So, much as I like the Coldplay album, especially played loud when driving long stretches of empty roads in the west of Scotland, I pretty much HATE the video for their single, Violet Hill. If you must, you can watch it here.

How much money would they have got to spend on that? Loads. And let’s face it, it looks crap. The only bit I like is where they all nod their heads in time, (2:15) but that’s because it’s like a tame version of Will Smith’s dirty pop beats in, you know, Nod Your Head.

You’d have thought with all their money, Coldplay’s management could have got a really interesting director to make a video. But maybe it proves the old adage: poverty encourages true creativity, while riches simply foster complacency.

A lot of my favourite music videos accompany songs from bands that haven’t yet hit the big time and are working with a relatively miniscule budget. In particular I like Noah and The Whale’s video for Five Years Time:

and Johnny Flynn’s Eyeless in Holloway:

I guess I like videos where the bands clearly aren’t taking themselves too seriously. Architecture in Helsinki are great at that. Coldplay have got work to do.

Trailer of the Week: The Day The Earth Stood Still

Today’s Trailer of the Week shows I’m not the only one to think climate change is the biggest threat to humanity since the atomic bomb. The Day The Earth Stood Still suggests that even if we’re bound for catastrophe, at least doom gives filmmakers a new reason to bring out the aliens again.

Starring Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly, the film’s a remake of a 1951 epic about a visit from strange men wrapped in foil, who warned the world of the dangers of atomic bombs. (Duh). Now they’re back, to warn us of another threat to, well, everything. Here’s what Keanu has to say: “The first one was borne out of the cold war and nuclear détente…

“The version I was just working on, instead of being man against man, it’s more about man against nature. My Klaatu says that if the Earth dies, you die. If you die, the earth survives. I’m a friend to the earth.”

Just for fun, here’s the original film’s trailer:

And here’s the new one, a bit scarier, but ultimately with some comic moments too:

Good to see Jon Hamm (Don Draper from AMC’s Mad Men) looking at home on the big screen.

Sex, drugs and rock’n'roll

All things I did last weekend.

No, not really. Forgive me. But I do really want your attention.

So I went through a phase of existential terror when I was about 12 years old, as I became temporarily convinced we were doomed to die in a nuclear holocaust. All due to an alarming novel called Children of the Dust which I borrowed one day from the school library. Don’t ever let your children read it. They won’t sleep for weeks.

Nowadays I don’t often think about nuclear war, and when I do (say after some scaremongering speech from the White House about Iran) I think, well, if it’s going to happen, nothing I can do will stop it. Right after that I stop worrying.

But apocalypse is creeping back into my brain. And this time there’s no angsty teen novel to blame. Only the world’s best scientists, economists, and NASA.

I used to be a sceptic about climate change, just like you (according to Ipsos Mori’s poll, “The majority of the British public is still not convinced that climate change is caused by humans - and many others believe scientists are exaggerating the problem“).

But then, about 18 months ago I had to read a document called The Stern Review, for work. How dull, I thought, weighing the massive tome (670 pages) in my hands. Also, wasn’t it about climate change, and isn’t that to do with science, and therefore something I won’t understand? (And doesn’t the cover look boring as hell?)

Then I started reading, then I got scared, and then I started wondering if maybe when I’m older I shouldn’t have kids after all, because, who knows what kind of world they will be born into?

It was like Children of the Dust all over again.

Catastrophic thinking? If only. I don’t expect you to read the report; like I said, it’s long, but then again, if you like horror movies where the whole world’s under threat, maybe you’ll get a kick out of it. Anyway this is how the BBC’s business editor, Robert Peston, described it:

• “The Stern Review says that climate change represents the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen. And on the basis of this intellectually rigorous and thorough report, it is hard to disagree. Sir Nicholas Stern, a distinguished development economist and former chief economist at the World Bank, is not a man given to hyperbole…

• …he warns that we are too late to prevent any deleterious consequences from climate change. The prospects are worst for Africa and developing countries, so the richer nations must provide them with financial and technological help to prepare and adapt”.

A very stern warning indeed. Published in 2006 the report demanded action on a personal, national and global level. Since then we’ve done, well, bugger all, to put it bluntly.

We’ve just buried our heads in the warming sand. And why is that a problem?

• as the Nobel prize-winning scientist and economist Rajendra Pachauri explains: “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”

• according to the UN, climate change already kills 150,000 a year

• poor children will be among the principal victims of climate change

• climate change will cause global conflict, according to leading defence thinktank, RUSI (read their Whitehall report here)

• if you’re my age, it’s our children who will have to fight to survive in this climate-changed world. All the politicians who are currently trying to work out when and how we should stop producing carbon will be dead by 2050, the date they’re working towards.

• In Mother Jones, an article welcomes us “to the Anthropocene: the new geologic era we’re officially entering, a period in which humanity may simply, and catastrophically, outrun history itself”.

• Last week a NASA climate scientist called James Hansen told Congress it was nearly too late to defuse “the global warming time bomb”: “if we don’t begin to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the next several years, and really on a very different course, then we are in trouble”.

Trouble’s putting it mildly. For a sense of what Hansen’s talking about, I’d really recommend reading what I think is still probably the best article I’ve read on the issue, though it was written over a year ago now.

The great thing about the Sunday Times piece - based on Mark Lynas’ acclaimed book, which National Geographic have recently adapted for film - is the idea of breaking down what climate change will mean, one degree at a time. The world’s leading scientists have agreed temperatures will rise between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees C by the end of this century, but what does that mean?

Just saying temperatures will rise by 2 degrees actually sounds quite tame until you read about what impact that will have. It’s stuff like, the total disappearance of Arctic sea ice; desertification and extreme water shortages in the sub-tropics; floods and heat waves becoming the norm; melting glaciers in the Andes and Himalayas; more than a third of all living species facing extinction.

Ok.

I’ve put in this cup of coffee here because if you’ve got this far you’re a superstar but you probably need a caffeine kick.

I know this is probably the longest blog post I’ve ever written.

But I honestly think it’s also the most important thing I should be writing about.

A few weeks ago I was chatting to some super-intelligent friends, probably the cleverest people I know, and none of them really thought climate change was a big deal. They were inclined to think it was just another of those media-scares, like the millenium bug that never was.

That was when I started thinking apocalyptic thoughts again. Because I started to wonder how we could avoid temperature rises of below 2 degrees if even the brightest thinkers I knew hadn’t really got the fear. Why is public consciousness lightyears behind where it needs to be?

• Because politicians didn’t want us to know the truth. Last month NASA admitted:

“during the fall of 2004 through early 2006, the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs managed the topic of climate change in a manner that reduced, marginalized or mischaracterized climate change science made available to the general public.”

Or, as the New York Times concluded:

This [Bush] administration long ago secured a special place in history for bending science to its political ends. One costly result is that this nation has lost seven years in a struggle in which time is not on anyone’s side.”

[Unfortunately, America's disregard for truth has cost the world; in 2001 President Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol (which would have limited emissions from 35 developed countries); without U.S. support it became "as ineffectual as the post-World War I League of Nations"]

• because industry doesn’t want us to know the truth. Obviously there’s a lot of money to be made in fossil fuels, and as we’re seeing with oil, the scarcer they get, the better they pay. When it comes to greed, there’s no time like the present - forget 2050; who’s getting the biggest bonus this year? That’s got to be the logic behind E.ON’s outrageous plans to build more coal-fired power stations in the UK, which this government has shamefully backed.

• because we don’t want to know the truth. The necessary conclusion is that our current lifestyles are just not sustainable. It’s as simple as that. And lots of us would rather not give up our luxuries - cheap flights, cars, tumble-dryers, endless plastic bags and packaging, out-of-season food flown all over the world, keeping every gadget constantly plugged in, putting the central heating on full so you can wear t-shirts round the house in winter…

It’s about the pleasure/pain principle. The problem is, the pain won’t hit us in the developed world until it’s too late. The people climate change already hurts - say, the half million pastoral farmers in the Mandera district of North-East Kenya forced to abandon their way of life by a catastrophic four-fold increase of drought - have no real voice; no way of contacting people like you and me to warn us that we’re destroying our own - and their - habitat.

So, time to get evangelical. Hence, sex, drugs and rock and roll.

The experts say you shouldn’t write about climate change in depressing terms (e.g. the longer we go on doing nothing about climate change, the more mass suffering, havoc and extinction we’re going to face. If we took the scientists seriously, we’d all have trouble sleeping, just like 12-year-old Me waiting for the nuclear holocaust, except this time it’ll be floods and drought and whole areas of Bangladesh submerged).

Yet it seems ridiculous that we should need to rephrase and market the truth just to get people to care about their own future. Then again, people are remarkably stupid about our own mortality, as hundreds of natural disasters have shown. And as they say over at Celsias.com, climate change is not a spectator sport.

There are things to be done.

The biggest one is going to be putting pressure on our government, through marches, petitions, letters to the environment minister Hilary Benn, our own MPs, and of course, wielding our votes like the weapons they are.

Without our input, ministers can say they lack a mandate. Don’t let them. We have to make it easy for them to protect our planet.

If you fancy something more active, follow the example of my friend Beth, who protested against coal power-stations (read her story at the end of the page here).

And, take small steps in your own life: go to celsias.com for ideas. You could also join my facebook group, and try to keep to its mantra: Trains Not Planes for Short-Haul Flights. Or come up with a group yourself. This is our cause, and now is our only chance to make a difference. Don’t wait.

Rufus Wainwright at Kenwood

I’ve just seen the delectable Rufus playing at Kenwood House on Hampstead Heath and it was a dream.

Although the skies had glowered on-and-off all day, there was, miraculously, no rain, and we sat in our striped deckchairs and drank in his luscious voice along with free fruit cider and a gradual music-drawn moonlight.

I’d seen him once before, but that was in front of a distracted Hyde Park festival crowd, where he was sandwiched between mediocre performers in one of those 3-songs-per-artist days; it wasn’t really his natural element.

This time the Kenwood grandeur was like a homecoming, allowing him to stretch out and bask in a committed fan-base who cheered and whooped the opening chords of every song.

At which point his natural, effortless talent as a performer was almost startling; he was so patently born to do nothing else. Chatty, totally relaxed and yet intent on getting everything right, at one point, half-way through a typically grandiose piano introduction he suddenly stopped playing -“Sorry, the mike’s too close and it’s making a weird sound,” he explained placidly, and so he started all over again, hammering out the beautifully broken chords like it was Rachmaninov.

“You’re in my living room“, he added, smiling, which was exactly how it felt, if his living-room was a massive outdoor park carpeted with grass, where you were allowed to picnic and hear him mess around and thread sweet harmonies on a grand piano.

Live, it’s striking how totally unpop-like his voice is, with its high classical power and span; trained so he can splice long notes seamlessly, sipping breaths you can’t tell where.

“Where you been Zebulon?“, about an unconsummated crush on a schoolfriend from Canada, was a gem of a song that I hadn’t heard before, including the characteristically lovely lines: “I only need your eyes/ Your nose was always too big for your face/ Still it made you look kinda sexy, more like someone who belongs in the human race”.

And he ended his three-song encore with his ever-assured, pitch-perfect version of Hallelujah. My thoughts exactly.

Trailer of the Week: Man on Wire

Some three decades before 9/11, crowds stopped and stared at the Twin Towers in New York one day, transfixed by a sight wholly unexpected and logic-defying.

A 24-year-old French man was walking on a steel rope, 410 metres above the ground.

It was an extraordinarily bold stunt, not least because the young performance artist in question - Philippe Petit - had illegally sneaked all his equipment (including rigging and the steel wire itself) into the World Trade Centre, with the help of friends and some fake ID cards.

Once he stepped onto the wire, he crossed it eight times, sat down, conversed with a seagull and bounced up and down.

The world was aghast and enthralled. Listen to the reporter’s awe-stricken tones in a contemporary radio broadcast here: “The Associated Press is talking about an unidentified man who is apparently walking a tightrope between the Towers of the World Trade Centre in Lower Manhattan…”

British director James Marsh has made an award-winning documentary about the feat, with in-depth commentary from Petit to accompany archive footage of the event, reconstructions and an appropriately hypnotic soundtrack from minimalist and veteran score-composer Michael Nyman.

Jason Solomons calls it no less than “the best British documentary since Touching the Void” and the film won two awards at Sundance this year. Looks like you should stay away only if you’re prone to vertigo.

Trailer of the Week: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

This film is about time. Specifically, what if time went backwards, or rather, what if one person got continuously younger while the rest of the world aged?

One of the first things I learnt working in the film industry was that it takes a long, long time to make a movie, a fact entirely borne out by The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which has been in the works since 1994.

Since I was thirteen years old.

Since then I have done my GCSE’s, learnt to drive, taken A-levels, perfected the art of blow-drying my hair, completed a three year degree, a post-grad diploma and ended a war of attrition between myself and arachnids (ok I’m still working on that last one).

Meanwhile Benjamin Button - adapted loosely from a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald - has been washed and spun and wrung to an inch of its life by the ponderous Hollywood machine.

Numerous writers have had a shot at the script, including Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), Jim Taylor (Sideways and About Schmidt) and finally Eric Roth (Ali, Munich, The Good Shepherd).

Directors Spike Jonze and Gary Ross were attached at different times, but the job finally went to David Fincher, whose CV - including Fight Club, Se7en and The Game - guaranteed a safe pair of hands for a tricksy narrative.

Fincher will have had his work lightened by a stellar cast - Brad Pitt as Button, Cate Blanchett as the woman Button loves, plus Tilda Swinton and our Julia in supporting roles - but on the other hand he’ll have been burdened with hours of make-up work and visual effects to depict an unprecedented cinematic transformation: “I was born under unusual circumstances,” confides our narrator, “while everyone else was ageing, I was getting younger - all alone.”

Thus Pitt goes from elderly man-baby (?! yep), to a Robert Redfordian wrinkly 55-year-old, to a young dad (cradling real-life daughter Shiloh Jolie-Pitt), to a teenager, to a baby proper.

The narrative incorporates a kind of magic realism that may test the patience of mainstream audiences, but with the right touch, I’m hoping it could prove transcendent.

Save Zimbabwe from Mugabe: Avaaz.org

The situation in Zimbabwe is desperate. It’s easy to feel nothing but helplessness. My instinct is to get angry at the slowness of the international community to do anything concrete in support of the Zimbabwean people, but is that justified? Post-Iraq, the thorny issue of intervention - and at what point it becomes acceptable - only seems to get less clear (Philip Bobbitt gives some reasons for that here).

The UN’s unanimous resolution condemning the violence yesterday has got to be a good thing, though I did flinch slightly at the phraseology used by Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon: “Conditions do not exist for free and fair elections right now in Zimbabwe. There has been too much violence, too much intimidation.”

As if a certain amount of violence and intimidation would have been acceptable?

Anyway Avaaz.org are here to give us the chance to make our voices heard against Mugabe. Sign their petition asking Thabo Mbeki and other Southern Africa leaders to help establish a legitimate Zimbabwean government.

Trailer of the Week: The Wackness

Winner of this year’s Sundance Audience Prize, The Wackness is set in 1994, the year its writer-director Jonathan Levine graduated from high school and the debut albums of Nas, Method Man, Notorious B.I.G. and Outkast got into his head. “1994 found New York at a crossroads,” says Levine in his Director’s Statement. “And it found hip hop at its creative apex.”

Thus, two of the key protagonists of this film are a sun-drenched New York and a fresh-out-of-’94 soundtrack which you can listen to if you go to the chic official website and click on the ghettoblaster in the right hand corner.

The other stars are Josh Peck (who played the ‘fat’ kid in Mean Creek back in 2004) as our depressed, dope-dealing narrator Luke Shapiro, and Ben Kingsley as his dope-smoking shrink.

The film looks like a romcom with an indie-style poise and wit; self-deprecating alongside its own tenderness:

“I got mad love for you shortie. I wanna, like, listen to Boyz II Men when I’m with you,” Luke confesses, guiltily. Bless him. We’ve all been there.

The Wackness is due for UK release 29 August.

Sad but true: Brown’s not up to the job

Gordon Brown’s a liability.

Jonathan Freedland sums up Labour’s malaise all too well in today’s Comment is Free: “I find myself in sympathy with those who admired Brown through his 10 long years as chancellor and who keenly awaited his premiership, and yet now conclude that they got Brown wrong - that, on the current evidence, he is simply not up to the job.”

A sad but necessary conclusion. Encouraged by my A-level Economics teacher, who explained that Brown was one of the best Chancellors of recent decades, I also looked up to the man and dearly hoped he’d be of stronger mettle than the thespian Blair.

Oh well, things fall apart. Read the rest of Freedland’s piece - be warned, if you’ve got a stake in society it’s a tearjerker - here.

Meanwhile, Sue Cameron writes in the FT: “all over town businesses are hiring Tories. Public relations companies are to the fore but all sorts of commercial organisations and non-profit-making outfits are sniffing the wind and looking for true blues.”

Oh dear Lord. The tide has already turned. Then again, David Davis’ heroic resignation last week made even me a Tory-supporter for a nano-second.

Photos courtesy Mark Hillary and Rakka on Creative Commons.

Viva la Vida

It’s no false modesty to say I’m not very good at writing about music and therefore usually leave the job to my friend Matt (who, btw, has just been nominated for Press Gazette’s student feature writer of the year, yay!)

Anyway I’m not going to try to describe why I love the new Coldplay album, though I’m still in that play-it-incessantly stage of audio bliss where I can’t quite bear to leave the house without my i-pod. My favourite track on the record is Violet Hill; second is Lost! with its church organ, syncopated beats and hand-claps though that will inevitably change once I’ve listened to it one billion times. Also enjoyable is the odd, sunny, Hawaii-tinged Strawberry Swing.

I’ve gone through the same stage of addiction with all Coldplay’s albums, so that they’re now inseparable from my memories of certain key events in my life. Parachutes is A-levels and swapping jumpers with my first love in July and August 2000; A Rush of Blood to the Head was the soundtrack to long, hot bus rides in Cuba in September 2002; X & Y was unemployment and floundering graduate angst in summer 2005.

I know it makes me deeply uncool to confess that Coldplay are one of my all-time favourite bands, but I don’t really care. I’ve never had any time for music snobbery. Life’s too short to not be allowed to enjoy something just because you do. My dad says Coldplay sound too samey; that there’s nothing new in their music and that’s why they suck. He might be right. Funnily enough I’m also inclined to agree with Ann Powers in the LA Times, who compares their resonance to picking up “a self-help book from the display table in a big-box bookstore… [and finding] a phrase that exactly applied to your life”.

Johnny Rotten might not like the new album but the NME is unexpectedly complimentary: “they are fantastic at what they do, ie sneaking alternative culture into the nation’s subconscious while pretending to be dinner party music. And ‘Viva La Vida…’, like the much-maligned (by the band anyway) ‘X&Y’, is a brilliant collection of songs”.

Sushi wraps on Fleet Street

Dashing from work to an evening film screening, I knew I had to eat something sustaining to prevent serious tummy rumblings. But I didn’t have time for a sit-down meal. What to do? Another sandwich?

The health/taste showdown is now of course far less common than in the glory days of Ronald Macdonald and Greggs the Baker, but still, it’s easy to fall into a rut (my particular groove is Fresh’s “Bugsy” sandwich: grated carrot, houmous, watercress and alfafa sprouts).

Cycling along Fleet Street I was sandwich-sated enough to swerve my bike off the road when I caught side of Abokado, and its enticing signage offering “SUSHI WRAPS TO GO”.

Here was the answer to my quandary.

Delicious parcels of nori (roasted seaweed) packed with sticky white sushi rice and flavoursome morsels of salmon/tuna/carrot, avocado & ginger.

Abokado helpfully list the calorie and fat content on each wrap, so you know exactly what you’re getting for your bite, and you can buy a single sushi wrap or a pair, meaning you can mix and match your fillings.

If sushi isn’t your thing, they also do tortilla wraps, pots of miso soup, teriyaki chicken udon noodles, noodle salads and fresh porridge in the morning. It’s not even that expensive. Yum-E.

Abokado have shops in Drury Lane, Fleet Street and Fitzrovia (16 Newman Street).

Trailer of the Week: Wall-E

The eponymous star of Pixar’s new film looks like a supercute amalgam of E.T. and R2D2.

I’ve got a soft spot for sci-fi and dystopian narratives in particular, plus an enduring fascination with robots (which I blame on Isaac Asimov’s series of amazing short stories, I Robot). Thus the romantic misadventures of a little machine whose job it is to clean up the world once we’ve all left sounds like lots of fun.

Apparently the first 45 minutes of the movie have virtually no dialogue, but the quality of Pixar’s animation and the lovable, detailed characterisation of WALL-E is so exceptional as to make the silence utterly compelling.

I like the film’s tag-lines too: “From the humans that brought you Finding Nemo” and “In space no-one can hear you clean”.

Wall-E is released in the UK on Friday 18th July.

Re: Gone Baby Gone

Since I started this whole Trailer-of-the-Week thing, I haven’t actually seen any of the films I’ve touted through their trailers.

I know, kind of embarrassing. But, in my defense, it’s because none of them have been released yet! Until now. Tonight I saw Gone Baby Gone and I’m happy to say it lived up to my very considerable expectations. Casey Affleck was exceptional; the plot dark and twisty and surprising; the picture of Boston that emerged both gritty and believable, though the film also seemed to shine an unflinching light on the shadowy underbelly of cities everywhere. What a relief that I’m not recommending trash hey. Catch it on the big screen while you can.

Obama, hope and King Lear

Are we there yet? Last week Obama finally clinched the Democratic nomination. For observers, entrenched in the daily wranglings of pre-election coverage, where even a candidate’s choice of reading matter or style of dancing can take on a sun-shadow significance, it was hard to take in just how epochal the moment was. And how dramatic the shift will be, if Obama takes George Bush’s place in five months time. No-one summarized the potential for change better - nor, admittedly, more slushily - than Obama himself:

generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image…”

Obama is the first to admit the audacity of such hope. That doesn’t make it less blindingly exciting. It put a line from King Lear into my head.

In the last scene of that play, the aged, beaten-down Lear carries his beloved daughter Cordelia onto the stage. Shakespeare has already stretched the tragic genre to its most desolate reach (with on-stage torture, familial betrayal, jealousy, madness and suicide the norm) yet he has allowed Lear’s youngest daughter to be a deviant carrier of hope; a cure to her demented father and the character most capable of bringing redemption to the “dark and comfortless” world these characters inhabit.

But this is tragedy. So just when we think Cordelia and Lear might get to live in relative peace and sanity for a while, old Shakey pulls the rug from under our feet and has the angelic girl brought on dead, the mark of a noose still fresh on her neck. Leaning over his child, Lear strains to hear her breathing. He knows she’s gone. But, maddened with loss, he momentarily imagines resurrection: “This feather stirs; she lives! if it be so,/ It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows/ That ever I have felt”.

Those words express not only the overwhelming desire that Cordelia not be dead, but also a more general human bent: a willingness to suspend the scepticism learnt from what’s already been; to grasp at hope even when experience tells us we should know better.

My intention is not to draw comparison between Cordelia and Obama. Cordelia stands for something far less tangible than any particular politician. Instead she represents the concept of political integrity. At his best, that is what Obama represents. Meanwhile the world has become like Lear, cradling an object most of us had assumed dead. As the FT’s Philip Stephens notes: “the election is being more closely watched beyond America’s shores than any I can think of. The world would dearly love a vote”. An Ipsos Mori survey of 22,605 people across the world found only 14% supporting John McCain while 55% would most like to see Obama win. Whatever he did with it, an Obama Presidency would signal the same incredible resurrection of hope that Lear imagines in the restoration of his child.

Shakespeare has King Lear say that if Cordelia turns out not to be dead, it would “redeem all sorrows” - i.e. the miracle of her resurrection - the chance of something so extraordinarily good - would make up for everything else that has gone so terribly wrong. Perhaps, post-the worst President America has ever seen, (according to CNN, Rolling Stone, the Washington Post, and innumerable bloggers) the world has never been so ready for a politician with integrity. In King Lear, Cordelia turns out to be dead. But we knew that; it’s a tragedy. Real life is less predictable. Could a President Obama redeem some of the sorrows engendered by George Bush and Blair and their ill-fated axis of no-good? We can only hope. And pray that American voters come to believe “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for… We are the change that we seek“.

With thanks to Matthew C. Wright on Creative Commons for the B/W photo of Obama.

Little People

I’ve just come across a brilliant blog - Little People-A Tiny Street Art Project - and you have to check it out.

The artist, Slinkachu, creates Borrower-sized people and puts them in various poses in cities across the world. Supercool.

Trailer of the week - Burn After Reading

It’s about time we, the public, got another Coen brothers film. And here it is. Dream line-up: Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Clooney, Pitt, John Malkovich.

Burn After Reading is headlining the Venice Film Festival in August and will open in the UK on September 5th. The Coens reprise the formula they do so well: ordinary guys get way out of their depth to chaotic, hilarious effect.

Because the trailer is R-rated, I can’t embed it sadly, but you can watch it on youtube here.

(How fun is it to see Brad acting it up as a complete dolt?!)

The Scoop

Ever since Grease I’ve wanted to go to a drive-thru cinema. The next best thing - actually better as it’s zero carbon - is The Scoop’s outdoor film screenings, held in a mini Roman amphitheatre on the banks of the Thames (just in front of City Hall).

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,” began Hitchcock’s Oscar-winning Rebecca, last night. With a rug to warm our chunk of wide stone step, a punnet of strawberries for snacking and a thirst for some good old-fashioned suspense, I was in cinematic bliss from the opening credits, an emotional state that snowballed with Laurence Olivier’s all-out gorgeousness as the troubled Maxim de Winter, Joan Fontaine maintaining impeccable manners as his sweetly confused second wife, and Hitchcock’s inimitable layering of chills and thrills.

The Scoop’s free films continue with some supernaturally good movies: The Usual Suspects is on tonight, one of the best films of the decade Michael Clayton screens Friday 20th June, Withnail & I on Wednesday 25th, the terrifying Don’t Look Now on Thursday 26th and the essential Sound of Music on Friday 27th. Instructions are: turn up in time to take a seat by 9.15pm, wrap up warm or at least bring layers and maybe a cushion (though you can hire them there) and take some change to buy an ice-cream, booze or a kebab from Amano, who run a barbecue station at the back. And enjoy.

Britain’s Modern History Boy, Andrew Marr

I’ve just watched another episode of Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain on the BBC i-player. Until now I didn’t know the difference between Harold Wilson and Harold Macmillan, nor what exactly led to the three day week.

This is frankly appalling considering the years I have spent 1) in education and 2) living in this country. So I am indebted to Mr Marr for enlightening me in such a painless (and actually most entertaining) manner.

Turns out the series was first broadcast last summer, and even won a BAFTA for best specialist factual programme in April.

What I like is:

• listening out for Mr Marr’s sporadic lapses into a scots lilt when he gets excited
• the way he clearly loves storytelling as much as he loves the factual stuff
• how empassioned he gets about rationing, politics, film, protests, well anything really
• how he drives around in vintage sports cars in this pseudo-Bond manner which is faintly ridiculous but also quite endearing considering how much of a nerd he is.

The government should probably pay him to make series after series until he has covered the whole of history, and then schools can replace rubbish history teachers by simply buying the box-set: Andrew Marr’s History OF THE WORLD.

You have five more days to learn about 1964 - 1979 here.

Trailer of the Week - Gone Baby Gone

Ben Affleck’s directorial debut - starring his younger brother Casey - was set for UK release in December 07. Then Madeleine McCann went missing, and suddenly Gone Baby Gone, a story that begins with a blonde-haired tot being stolen from her bedroom, seemed to play too close to the bone. The release was pushed back six months, and the film will finally open here on June 6th.

In the meantime, it’s garnered considerable acclaim - “The brothers Affleck both emerge triumphant in this mesmerizing thriller”, cheered Rolling Stone; “a satisfyingly tough look into conscience”, said the New York Times. On metacritic it gets a very respectable 72%. Supporting actress Amy Ryan even got nominated for an Academy Award for her role as the gone baby’s drug addicted mom.

It’s nice that Ben Affleck has come good, some ten years after he first stole hearts in a shellsuit and a silver chain. The talent he and Matt Damon displayed (and won an Oscar for) when they wrote Good Will Hunting - expertly digging at the soft parts of human relationships without getting slushy - was hardly done justice by some of Affleck’s subsequent career moves (Armageddon, Forces of Nature, Pearl Harbor, Jersey Girl). A doomed relationship with J-Lo and the Bennifer label didn’t help his profile.

So it’s with restored hope in our ability to renew our best selves that I recommend this trailer. Ben seems to have found his calling behind the camera, while his younger brother looks right at home on the other side (”I’m not sure exactly when Casey Affleck became such a good actor”, swooned Manohla Dargis).

Go Afflecks go!

Republicans dead, says Clinton advisor

An American named Sidney Blumenthal has written a new book with a fun title.

I for one fervently hope Republican America is dead and gone. But isn’t it more likely just playing dead in a zombie-kind of way? Lying quietly in a Bush-shaped-grave, about to jump out as soon as the Democrats stop fighting each other and try to win the actual election… Then it’ll start with the scare-tactics: hey America, do you really want to elect a Black Man as your President? Or a WOMAN, of all things?

Tuesday’s Fabian Society event, between the Guardian writer Jonathan Freedland, and the journalist/author/Clinton-ally Blumenthal, didn’t get its teeth far enough into the fascinating question of what the world will actually look like after Bush (which was, after all, half the title of the talk). But it started well, with Blumenthal painting the historical backdrop to the Republicans’ current crisis. “The Republicans have been the dominant governing party since 1968,” he began, “but through a mixture of arrogance and hubris… they’ve been discredited in a big way.”

Blumenthal, dignified in a blue suit and maroon-coloured tie (has he had his colours done?) was particularly insightful about Dick Cheney’s vision for Republican power. “Cheney had the idea of an unfettered, unaccountable executive - an imperial presidency,” he said. “Of course he is a master of this kind of bureaucracy because he’s been in the White House for decades.” [Cheney started out as Donald Rumsfeld's deputy under Nixon].

Using the example of “decision memos” (which, naturally, Presidents sign off on whenever anything’s decided) Blumenthal gave us a peek into Cheney’s influence over Bush. While President Bill Clinton had apparently understood his administration’s policies so well he “could have written the memos himself”, information going to Bush was far more tightly controlled, with decision memos “carefully packaged” by Cheney. Bush merely signed on the dotted line. (Blumenthal talks more about this in his last article as a columnist for Salon but the best place to get the dirt on Cheney is in the Washington Post’s Pulitzer prize-winning series).

In Blumenthal’s eyes, the disaster of Hurricane Katrina sounded a death knell for Bush: it “blew away a facade,” revealing “not only cronyism and corruption but a hollowing-out of government”.

“We’ve seen the zenith of Republican power…” he surmised. “Now I think they’ve entered the wilderness years.” Great, I thought. That was before Blumenthal started bigging-up Hillary Clinton (for whom he’s a senior advisor). Then it all went a bit wrong.

“I remain hopeful there’s still a chance for Senator Clinton,” he said, earnesly. “I think, for good or ill, there is no consensus of who should be the Democratic candidate”.

Hmm. Tell that to the 1,982 delegates currently pledged to Obama (as opposed to 1,784 for Clinton). Or consider the latest figures from Pollster.com for the top democratic contender: Obama’s on 50.2%; Clinton’s on 41.7%. It sounded a lot like Blumenthal was in denial.

On the other hand, one only has to read Pollster’s own Mark Blumenthal on “the inherent shakiness of horse-race results” to understand why some experts are still hedging their bets on this contest. And, after all, Sidney is a long-term friend and advisor to both Clintons. So you can’t really blame him for fighting their corner. Can you?

The problem is, I was interested in Blumenthal for his insights, his analysis, his experience-based critique of the political machine. I’m not interested in what increasingly sounded like a spin doctor’s smoke and mirrors routine. As Blumenthal dodged questions about Hillary’s misjudgements and errors, it became hard to trust anything he said. The brand of wry honesty he’d displayed when chatting knowledgeably with Freedland about historical American politics evaporated as soon as he was asked about Campaign 2008. He took on a goal-defence position, twisting and turning (albeit uncomfortably) to counter any attacks.

Someone asked about Ms. Clinton’s threat to obliterate Iran. “That was certainly strong language for Hillary,” Blumenthal blustered. What about Hillary’s unnecessary references to Robert Kennedy’s assassination? Simply a case of “misunderstanding” on the part of the Obama campaign, retorted Blumenthal. It was all very frustrating. The ghost of Samantha Power hung over the discussion, warning Blumenthal not to say anything too provocative, or quotable, or interesting.

In the end, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Blumenthal was there to sell a book. He wasn’t pretending to be an objective reporter. I just wish Freedland had acknowledged that and steered the discussion away from Clinton vs Obama and onto the original question: what will the world look like without Bush? Because, with all this Democratic infighting and that ever-present zombie possibility, a White House minus George W. is the only scenario we can afford to predict with complacency.