This scene from ‘The Godfather part II‘ is a masterclass in elegant, truthful screenwriting and controlled, understated performance. After the attempt on his life, Michael takes one of his most significant counsels with his adopted sibling and consigliere to the Corleone family, Tom Hagen. During this midnight exchange Michael pointedly refers to him as brother, and promotes him to the rank of Don in his absence. Michael goes on to raise his suspicion that the orchestrator behind the failed assassination attempt may lie within the walls of his home, perhaps even within the family itself….
A subtle and powerful dialogue rich with emotion and drama which propels the story forward, while at the same time deepening the characters and strengthening the core theme of the film. Like all truly great scenes this reveals and conceals in the same moment. For me, the highlight of the trilogy.
The first ever film version of Lewis Carroll’s tale, directed by Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow and released in 1903, has just been restored by the BFI.
Tim Burton’s new 3D version of ‘Alice in Wonderland‘ is due for release on the 5th March, after a successful resolution to the squabble between Disney and the cinema chains over DVD release dates. I’m very excited to see it, especially after today’s glowing review in the The Times. C’mon it’s Tim Burton directing ‘Alice in Wonderland‘ – how can you resist! I’m booking my seat at the imax right now.
For the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which stages the Oscars, and even more so for those television companies that broadcast them, whoever invented the retractable microphone is an innovator whose impact upon their profession is equal to that of John Logie Baird and the Brothers Lumière. It used to be that the Academy could do little more than pray that a newly-awarded Oscar-winner would not inflict upon the ceremony an acceptance speech likely to turn the watching millions into dozing dozens. But now it has the retractable microphone.
Not as unseemly as a hook from the wings thrown around the neck of a long-winded winner, and yet as decisive as a trapdoor suddenly opened beneath him, the retractable standalone microphone eased all AMPAS’s concerns about speeches. Notice how nowadays, whenever some uninteresting Oscar winner (a special effects artist, say, keen to thank by name all 189 members of his staff; or some dull foreign filmmaker taking his win for Best Documentary Short Subject as licence to make the absurd insinuation that there are movies made outside of America) begins to bore, the music from orchestra pit rises and, just as the gushing acceptee starts to shout over it, the microphone in front of him descends into a hole in the floor. He is defeated, and left with no option but to welcome the impossibly elegant arm of Halle Berry or Liv Tyler as it ushers him, silent, from the stage.
The Academy has powerful opinions about what constitutes an acceptable acceptance speech. It does not like lists. It does not like the discussion of agents. It does not like thank yous being given to make-up artists and chauffeurs and personal chefs and accent coaches. In fact, it doesn’t really like thank yous at all – excepting, of course, those offered to the Academy itself, to God, and to Steven Spielberg.
These aren’t, incidentally, just the inferences of an inveterate Oscar-observer: they are facts stated by the Academy – which, every year, instructs its nominees in how to behave should their names be announced once the relevant golden envelope is opened. The nominees, as all who have watched the Oscars will be aware, absorb absolutely nothing of this advice.
Even so, the Oscars have seen masses of acceptances speeches so perfectly pitched they might have been pre-approved by AMPAS. They have, of course, also seen an at least equal number of speeches so awful they seem calculated to annoy everyone associated with the ceremony. But only once have they seen the same winner give a standout example of each.
In 1951, Marlon Brando delivered one of the pivotal performances in American cinema when he played Stanley Kowalski in Elia Kazan’s adaptation of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire‘. Movie critics and progressively minded moviegoers all felt, as anyone who watches the film always will, that he deserved to be named Best Actor. The Academy didn’t quite agree. Having never honoured good old Humphrey Bogart, voters felt they owed him an Oscar, and so gave him one for his turn in ‘The African Queen‘. Bogey’s was a performance certainly worthy of celebration – but it was, everyone knew, a league below Brando’s.
Still, Marlon was awfully decent about it and didn’t seem disappointed or petulant. Subsequently, when, three years later, he gave another of the pivotal performances in American cinema in another Elia Kazan classic ‘On The Waterfront‘, he duly received what should have been his second Oscar statuette.
1) Easy Star All-Stars – Electioneering
2) Linval Thompson – Marijuana (W11 trustafarian remix)
3) The Clash – Armagideon Time (Hug a hoodie remix)
4) The Smiths – You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Dave
5) Pulp – Cocaine Socialism (The heir to Blair remix)
6) Invisible – Baby Doll
7) David Bowie – Sound And Vision (Steve Hilton nudge theory remix)
8) League Unlimited Orchestra – Things That Dreams Are Made Of
9) Heaven 17 – Play To Win (Andy Coulson phone tap remix)
10) The Jam – The Eton Rifles (fuck off back to Eton remix)
11) The Flaming Lips – The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
12) Pulp – Sorted For E’s & Wizz (Dave the rave remix)
13) Nellie McKay – David (Just call me Dave remix)
14) Joe Jackson – I’m The Man (Carlton PR remix)
15) Bob Dylan – Gotta Serve Somebody
16) Barb Jungr – Tangled Up In Blue
17) Speech Debelle – Searching (Smythson remix)
18) Ty – Sophisticated And Coarse
19) Burial – Unite (post bureaucratic age remix)
Don’t worry dear readers ‘Touching From a Distance‘ is an equal opportunities piss-taker and Gordon Brown will be getting the treatment too.
As you can imagine I had a great fun putting this Spotify playlist together and I’d love to hear your suggestions for tracks for a Dave the Rave Mixtape in the comments.
Here is a rare TV appearance made by the Kray Twins following the collapse of their first trial March 1965. The jury could not agree a verdict and the judge halted the retrial after some damning evidence appeared about the main prosecution witness.
Interviewer: “Ronald, what are you going to do now?”
Ronnie: ”Well, I’d like to go abroad for a short while and er then I’d like to be left alone.”
The posh interviewer in this clip looks like a very young Tom Mangold. Can anyone confirm this?
Less than a month after this trial ended, the Krays had taken control of the Soho club they had been charged with demanding protection money from. They changed its name to “El Morocco” and threw a huge party. They invited everyone they knew, including the police. Detective Chief Inspector Leonard ‘Nipper’ Read went along, if for no other reason than to see who else was there. Read chatted to Ronnie and, at some stage in the evening, had his photograph taken with him. Naturally this appeared in the newspapers the next day and created a storm of criticism. Letters of complaint flooded into Scotland Yard, most originated via the twins, who were carefully orchestrating a campaign to discredit the police. Although Read was exonerated in a subsequent inquiry, he was removed from the jurisdiction of the Kray investigation, promoted and sent off to help unravel the mystery of The Great Train Robbery, the biggest theft the world had ever known, which had taken place in August 1963.
Ronnie and Reggie Kray were eventually arrested again on May 8th 1968 and charged with murder and variety of other offences.
“A hundred witnesses you say. Only twelve men on a jury, you remember that, only twelve men on a jury,” screams Vic Dakin as he is arrested in the final scene of ‘Villain‘, 1971.
During the eleven months The Twins were in custody awaiting their trial some of the fear, and consequently their power, had drained away to the extent that it was impossible to nobble the jury. They were convicted in March 1969 and both sentenced to life imprisonment.
For further reading, try Thomas L. Jones excellent history of The Krays, also worth a read is a somewhat lurid biography of Lord Boothby and details of his involvement with The Krays – you couldn’t make it up!
Regular reader David thinks that Will Osborne was thinking about Vic Dakin in ‘Villain” when he writes “…..Or the good old English equivalent of taking your Mother down to Brighton in a brand new Roller for some whelks on the Sunday after you’ve hit the Glasgow to London Mail train.” In his post ‘The Getaway‘:
Over To David:
Vic Dakin is the quintessential villain. He is a murderous, sadistic East End criminal. Vic loves his mum but, having said that, he hasn’t got one other redeeming feature. Vic is one of the nastiest pieces of work since er, er… Ronnie Kray.
Think of classic British gangster movies and ‘Get Carter’ and ‘The Long Good Friday’ immediately come to mind, followed by a long list of more recent ones. ‘Villain” often gets overlooked, maybe because it didn’t exactly get rave reviews when it was released. It’s true that Richard Burton’s East End accent did wander off in different directions at times, but in the character of Vic Dakin he was so truly believably nasty it just didn’t matter. I saw this film when it was first released in 1971 and I watched the DVD today wondering if , as so often happens with the passage of time, I was going to be disappointed.
I wasn’t. The screenplay by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais was based on Al Lettieri’s adaption of James Barlow’s novel ‘Burden of Proof.’ It had pace and great dialogue. There was a star studded cast including a very handsome young Ian McShane who played Wolfe, Vic’s somewhat reluctant and frequently battered love interest. This film features some great action sequences and locations but it is not for the faint hearted. It doesn’t pull any punches in its depiction of the most unglamorous and graphic violence. There are beatings, shooters, cut-throat razors and lots of blood, all enhanced by the excellent sound and picture quality that has been reproduced on this DVD. Enjoy!
With three of the UK’s hottest artists The Xx, Hot Chip and the mercurial Dupstep genius Burial (alias William Bevan) all hailing from Putney and from the same “bog standard” Comp (Elliott School), perhaps South LDN is the centre of The Culture?
Dubstep to my mind fulffils Matt’s test of “culture being produced that has genuine menace, that takes old stuff and makes new stuff which is truly threatening to our settled ways of seeing things?“. Dubstep has a cinematic quality, like the soundtrack to a solitary walk along the brooding streets of south London at 3am in the rain while being followed by a stranger. “5:5″, the fifth anniversary compilation from the genre’s leading label, Hyperdub, perfectly captures that spirit. The 32 tracks include the fabulous “Distant Lights” from the music’s true master Burial.
Three seminal remixes:
Bloc Party- Where is Home (Burial remix)
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The Xx – VCR (Matthew Dear remix)
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Hot Chip – Over And Over (Maurice Fulton Remix)
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In answer to Matthew d’Ancona’s question “Where is it now, I wonder?” (The Culture). Well for music it’s New York or more specifically Brooklyn, the epi center of the alt-pop resurgence which is dominating my current music buying & gigging. Bands like Yeasayer, MGMT, Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, Atlas Sound have moved the genre on to exciting new heights and the more grungy TV on the Radio and Interpol, have added a harder edge. LCD Soundsystem my band of the decade and the new most exciting band to come out of NYC since the Talking Heads command the scene, in the marvelous ‘New York, I Love You’ they pay homage to their beloved New York and Lou Reed.
Meanwhile like Edmund White & Patti Smith, James Wolcott – recalls the NYC of the Seventies, “a time when artists’ lofts were inhabited by actual artists, every subway car held potential drama, and legends from Lennon to Warhol and Garbo walked the streets”.
