![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
- Thu, 14:17: I love this weather as all the gals walk around in skimpy tops and bottoms
- Thu, 14:18: Well travelled bus user rides again
- Thu, 17:07: @spotonetwo pumps not pubs - mind you i did think i heard panic in the pubes!
- Thu, 17:09: Seen some hot totties today
- Thu, 22:19: Just got back from Herne Bay - been a good afternoon.
Mar. 30th, 2012
It's Not Punch, It's Ale
Mar. 30th, 2012 10:34 pmA couple of busy days whilst the weather has been glorious. All change tomorrow since it will be somewhat cooler. Back to the norm.
Today I popped over to Paddock Wood to visit a Punch Tavern pub called the John Blunt VC. Had a pint and a half of Bays Up and Under A fine quaffable ale.
This morning I received a book from my brother , “The Phantom At The Opera” by Gaston Leroux (Harper Perennial) , and yesterday the two Woody Allen films from Play, “Manhattan” and “Zelig”.
Still no sign of that BBT series 4 DVD.
I finished reading the John Le Carre novel, and well over halfway with the book on Montaigne as well.
Watched a couple of films on Wednesday night, “Sucker Punch” and “Shutter Island” , since we did not go for the usual Wednesday night session at the Dover Castle Inn.
Yesterday in a Wetherspoons I had a pint of Highgate Bee Zone (4.0 % ABV) as they still have their beer festival on. Also, a pint of the Caledonian Coffee Porter (4.3 % ABV)
Tomorrow I might pop over to Faversham as I am low on shag.
Today I popped over to Paddock Wood to visit a Punch Tavern pub called the John Blunt VC. Had a pint and a half of Bays Up and Under A fine quaffable ale.
This morning I received a book from my brother , “The Phantom At The Opera” by Gaston Leroux (Harper Perennial) , and yesterday the two Woody Allen films from Play, “Manhattan” and “Zelig”.
Still no sign of that BBT series 4 DVD.
I finished reading the John Le Carre novel, and well over halfway with the book on Montaigne as well.
Watched a couple of films on Wednesday night, “Sucker Punch” and “Shutter Island” , since we did not go for the usual Wednesday night session at the Dover Castle Inn.
Yesterday in a Wetherspoons I had a pint of Highgate Bee Zone (4.0 % ABV) as they still have their beer festival on. Also, a pint of the Caledonian Coffee Porter (4.3 % ABV)
Tomorrow I might pop over to Faversham as I am low on shag.
The Looking Glass War is the fourth George Smiley book by John le Carré. Where the previous book, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was about career spies, this is a more bittersweet tale about former military spies, trying to recapture to their former glory.
The spy part of "The Looking Glass War" is, of course, excellent. It concerns a former military espionage department in London (small, left over from the glorious days of World War II) and its struggle to train one of its former agents for a mission into East Germany. The technical background for the mission is well presented. The action itself, once it finally gets under way, is tense and doomed in a gratifying manner; we are given just the right sort of sketch-portrait of Leiser, the special agent. Moreover, as in "The Spy," we are given a strong sense that all this tension, duplicity and personal betrayal exist within the little world of espionage mostly for their own sake and not very much for the sake of the greater political good they are supposed to serve.
Again, Smiley is hardly the focus of the book. He appears more than he did in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and again one gets the idea that he (and Control) are playing puppet master with the characters in this book. But slightly bewildered puppet masters, as the military spies, led by Leclerc, jealously hide their machinations from the Circus and dig themselves in deeper.
My brother recommended another of his set in the sixties “A Small Town In Germany” which I will endeavour to look out for.
The spy part of "The Looking Glass War" is, of course, excellent. It concerns a former military espionage department in London (small, left over from the glorious days of World War II) and its struggle to train one of its former agents for a mission into East Germany. The technical background for the mission is well presented. The action itself, once it finally gets under way, is tense and doomed in a gratifying manner; we are given just the right sort of sketch-portrait of Leiser, the special agent. Moreover, as in "The Spy," we are given a strong sense that all this tension, duplicity and personal betrayal exist within the little world of espionage mostly for their own sake and not very much for the sake of the greater political good they are supposed to serve.
Again, Smiley is hardly the focus of the book. He appears more than he did in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and again one gets the idea that he (and Control) are playing puppet master with the characters in this book. But slightly bewildered puppet masters, as the military spies, led by Leclerc, jealously hide their machinations from the Circus and dig themselves in deeper.
My brother recommended another of his set in the sixties “A Small Town In Germany” which I will endeavour to look out for.
Shutter Island – directed by Martin Scorsese
I watched this on the hard drive Wednesday night, and I thought it was excellent right to the end.
When was the last time you had to wait until the final sentence of a film to understand all the details? When was the last time you went to a genre movie – or what looked like one in spooky trailers – and realized the director had fulfilled that promise and meditated on his favourite topic?
“Shutter Island” does just that. After four decades, Martin Scorsese has earned the right to deliver a simple treatment of a simple theme with flair. But Dennis Lehane’s novel about an investigation at an asylum for the criminally insane lets Scorsese deal with the subject that connects almost all of his non documentary features: the reasons humans mistreat each other.
There’s little overt violence, though even the storm clouds hanging over this island seem pregnant with blood. The most horrifying thing in the story has happened before we come in, though we don’t know quite how or why for a long time.
Scorsese and screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis explore the consequences of violence – inescapable guilt, fruitless denial, pathetic justification – on scales large and small. They twist a knife in the gut while provoking the mind and touching the heart.
The film begins, tellingly, with illness: Seasick federal marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) pukes on the ferry from Boston to the island where mad folks are being imprisoned in 1954. The film-makers remind us at once that seemingly healthy people can be overcome by irresistible impulses, a theme that runs throughout this picture.
Daniels and his new partner (Mark Ruffalo) investigate the disappearance of an inmate who left a locked and barred room without alerting a soul. They get surprisingly little help from Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), the pleasant and seemingly humane psychiatrist who runs the place.
Or is it surprising? Cawley answers to Dr. Naehring (Max Von Sydow), whom Daniels suspects of being a Nazi allowed to practice in America. The prison warden (Ted Levine) prattles cheerfully about the bestial natures of people. Daniels hears rumors that doctors on this unsupervised island are conducting experiments that will create a race of conscienceless killers for the U.S. government.
We seem to be in two kinds of familiar territory at once. A lone honest official, accompanied by a sidekick who supports him but thinks he’s exaggerating, puts his life on the line to unearth a conspiracy. Meanwhile, the tale unfolds in the frightening kind of setting Agatha Christie used 70 years ago for “And Then There Were None” – an island cut off from the mainland without phone communication or imminent ferry service, where anyone may be operating under a false identity.
But as Daniels collects data, he can’t reconcile bits of information. And he’s plagued by nightmares, one set in the Dachau concentration camp (which he helped liberate) and one about his slain wife (Michelle Williams), who urges him to quit.
Because Scorsese’s at the wheel, terrific actors do one scene (Patricia Clarkson) or a few lines of dialogue (Elias Koteas). Scorsese builds suspense by casting guys often seen as psychos: von Sydow, Kingsley, Koteas, Levine, John Carroll Lynch of “Zodiac,” Jackie Earle Haley of “Watchmen.”
The director has cocooned himself among old friends: not only DiCaprio in their fourth pairing, but music supervisor Robbie Robertson, cinematographer Robert Richardson and editor Thelma Schoonmaker (who has won three Oscars cutting for him). Their work is as watertight as the script by Kalogridis, a Davidson College graduate: There are no loose ends or false notes in any of it.
You’ll realize that, if you reassemble the puzzle pieces afterwards. As you do, you’ll see that “Shutter Island” fits into Scorsese’s career pattern as surely as “Kundun” or “The Age of Innocence” or “Raging Bull,” all of which are about psychological or physical cruelty. “Island” offers the most overtly sinister setting in any of his films, but all of them lead through the dark labyrinth of the human soul.
The other film i watched was "Sucker Punch" and it was crap. Chalk and cheese.
I watched this on the hard drive Wednesday night, and I thought it was excellent right to the end.
When was the last time you had to wait until the final sentence of a film to understand all the details? When was the last time you went to a genre movie – or what looked like one in spooky trailers – and realized the director had fulfilled that promise and meditated on his favourite topic?
“Shutter Island” does just that. After four decades, Martin Scorsese has earned the right to deliver a simple treatment of a simple theme with flair. But Dennis Lehane’s novel about an investigation at an asylum for the criminally insane lets Scorsese deal with the subject that connects almost all of his non documentary features: the reasons humans mistreat each other.
There’s little overt violence, though even the storm clouds hanging over this island seem pregnant with blood. The most horrifying thing in the story has happened before we come in, though we don’t know quite how or why for a long time.
Scorsese and screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis explore the consequences of violence – inescapable guilt, fruitless denial, pathetic justification – on scales large and small. They twist a knife in the gut while provoking the mind and touching the heart.
The film begins, tellingly, with illness: Seasick federal marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) pukes on the ferry from Boston to the island where mad folks are being imprisoned in 1954. The film-makers remind us at once that seemingly healthy people can be overcome by irresistible impulses, a theme that runs throughout this picture.
Daniels and his new partner (Mark Ruffalo) investigate the disappearance of an inmate who left a locked and barred room without alerting a soul. They get surprisingly little help from Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), the pleasant and seemingly humane psychiatrist who runs the place.
Or is it surprising? Cawley answers to Dr. Naehring (Max Von Sydow), whom Daniels suspects of being a Nazi allowed to practice in America. The prison warden (Ted Levine) prattles cheerfully about the bestial natures of people. Daniels hears rumors that doctors on this unsupervised island are conducting experiments that will create a race of conscienceless killers for the U.S. government.
We seem to be in two kinds of familiar territory at once. A lone honest official, accompanied by a sidekick who supports him but thinks he’s exaggerating, puts his life on the line to unearth a conspiracy. Meanwhile, the tale unfolds in the frightening kind of setting Agatha Christie used 70 years ago for “And Then There Were None” – an island cut off from the mainland without phone communication or imminent ferry service, where anyone may be operating under a false identity.
But as Daniels collects data, he can’t reconcile bits of information. And he’s plagued by nightmares, one set in the Dachau concentration camp (which he helped liberate) and one about his slain wife (Michelle Williams), who urges him to quit.
Because Scorsese’s at the wheel, terrific actors do one scene (Patricia Clarkson) or a few lines of dialogue (Elias Koteas). Scorsese builds suspense by casting guys often seen as psychos: von Sydow, Kingsley, Koteas, Levine, John Carroll Lynch of “Zodiac,” Jackie Earle Haley of “Watchmen.”
The director has cocooned himself among old friends: not only DiCaprio in their fourth pairing, but music supervisor Robbie Robertson, cinematographer Robert Richardson and editor Thelma Schoonmaker (who has won three Oscars cutting for him). Their work is as watertight as the script by Kalogridis, a Davidson College graduate: There are no loose ends or false notes in any of it.
You’ll realize that, if you reassemble the puzzle pieces afterwards. As you do, you’ll see that “Shutter Island” fits into Scorsese’s career pattern as surely as “Kundun” or “The Age of Innocence” or “Raging Bull,” all of which are about psychological or physical cruelty. “Island” offers the most overtly sinister setting in any of his films, but all of them lead through the dark labyrinth of the human soul.
The other film i watched was "Sucker Punch" and it was crap. Chalk and cheese.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}