A thoroughly frightful February in the Meadowbank ghetto this morning, with Arthur’s Seat in the backdrop conforming to its winter type; there is a desolation in the air here 24/7 and a ‘hobby’ of mine is listening to peak The Smiths in all their miserableness every time I lumber through the car park with a protein bar nabbed from Sainsbury’s.
That wee KFC picnic area is a delightful sight come spring, the main attraction hordes of local tribes (most off their nuts on crack cocaine) fending off seagulls.
The terrified audience bolted from the theatre, so the apocryphal story goes. Why anyone would flee from a black-and-white moving image with no sound didn’t appear to come into the mythmakers’ thinking.
YouTube user Denis Shiryaev has given the Lumières’ slice of early cinema a 2020 makeover (4K and 60 FPS) and it has the effect of amplifying the nostalgia factor and the strange serenity of the ‘narrative’. The frame’s occupants always looked too nonchalant to me, this a time when the presence of the camera was meant to turn folk into a frenzy. A mere few minutes of research reveals the extras in the shot were asked to ignore the filmmakers, the subjects ‘directed’ so to speak.
This is the upgrading of vintage visuals done right, none of this Ted Turned colorization pish.
This started off so well. For seven episodes I was gripped. It was so intricately put together and had a masterful Breaking Bad cliffhanger quality to it. Like most contemporary dramas, though, it crumbled into the nonsensical at its denouement. The last episode was so dire it ruined the preceding madness. Depression kicked in and I was then reminded of how Lost completely … lost the plot.
Stay away from this rubbish. Anyway, there’s always a good doc about Nazis to help ease the melancholy.
Famous for being the birthplace of Sir Sean Connery, and that’s about it as far as historical significance goes. The area has gone through such transformations over the past decade or so it’s unrecognisable from the Noughties. The pub ‘The Fountain’, for example, was in recent times popularly compared to Vietnam in the age of Presidents Johnson and Nixon; today it is thoroughly hipster and you need to venture elsewhere to witness a glassing.
Watching this was a regret – I hated every minute of it but was compelled to witness the ghastly proceedings unfold. I usually have a weekday curfew of 11:00 p.m. but here I was lucid way into the wee hours with a WhatsApp cat topic frenzy on the go. Lesson learned: Do not ever Netflix (verb) when it’s dark.
The Internet is the Digital Frontier and all that, and now it appears to be the case that the apotheosis of human endeavour is an outlet for almost every single looney with a vengeance; the World Wide Web and the sociopath are meant to be.
The online sleuths in the three-episode show are more competent than the cops meant to be doing the basics of their jobs as professionals, which says rather a lot. The only reason I kept on watching was how in the fuck they managed to uncover the things they did. It is must-see detective work.
Perhaps one day it will happen but I very much doubt it – a lauded director decides to use Gorgie Road as a seedy backdrop for a modern noir. I imagine a jaded Bogartesque PI stopping off at Aldi for a few cheap beers after a draining day spent with myriads of local scum.
In fact, I’m going to have to make this motion picture, the drama shot on a battered HTC, Gorgie City Farm the site of the climactic shootout.
Most films are rather terrible, either your average generic copycat picture (sequel, superhero, franchise) or a total disaster zone. A very small elite of films are incredible, and then we have a hefty batch of escapist fare which feature a sublime scene deserving to live within a better movie.
Blade (1998).
Operation Blade (Bass in the Place), a song so synonymous with late ’90s techno it defines it. And that is the essence of the scene. Ropey CGI, Wesley Snipes struggling to make the choreography work, but the 100% chav tune papers over it all. It is a ghastly movie and the sequels likewise. Incredible music, though.
Deep Blue Sea (1999).
This film was dire, but Samuel L. Jackson’s stirring speech interrupted by extreme-close up bite-action was something else, totally unexpected, utilising the Hitchcock technique to perfection. If it happened later on in the movie it would have been wiser, as after this scene of madness there is no point in watching the remainder of it.
The Matrix Reloaded (2003).
An unabashed muddle, a shambolic mess as coherent as The Architect’s monologue. The highway chase, though. That’s what a short movie should be. And that’s what sequels should have been – short snippets.
Hannibal (2001).
I think the first hour of Hannibal (2001) is a mightily classy affair. You’ve got Florence and vistas and art chat and Hannibal running the show. If they kept the movie there it could have approached masterwork status. But they didn’t and it descends into calamity as soon as Italy is discarded. Sad.
Edinburgh January blues in a snap (the roundabout connecting Elm Row with London Road). It’s not exactly Chernobyl circa 1986 but mornings in this part of town are certainly fucking grim.
I know absolutely zilch about cars – I cannot drive one, have never possessed and never will have any interest in them, and cannot fathom sharing the same road with so many dafties. I see a lot of these ‘boy racers’ congregating in supermarket car parks, revving their engines and taking selfies. The mind boggles. It’s one of the many reasons why I scratch my head at these Fast & Furious films. Utter shite. I just don’t understand the appeal.
This movie transcended the ‘car fetish thing’, however. Mainly because the topic is merely a foundation for broader themes and character dynamics. Ferrari here are the urbane, suave totem of Italian sophistication; Ford, the bog-standard symbol of production line Americana. And in another example of what we now call ‘globalism’, the Yanks want a bit of the prestige and to shake off the crass tag.
Christian Bale’s Ken Miles is an affront to the company men presided over by Tracy Letts’ Henry Ford II, the monolithic Ford Motor Company no institution in which to showcase one’s maverick inclinations, yet Miles finds a way through pure undiluted talent. It’s another absurd yet captivating Bale performance, the highlight of a movie in which nothing annoyed me even though it’s ostensibly about cars.
I’ve not been in a car this much ever, Munich Airport to Bad Bergzabern to Straubing to Munich Airport, a goodbye to the 2010s in a most chilly and mostly plastered Deutschland, with a soundtrack of the decade’s tackiest pop hits.
Bad Bergzabern in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate took in the delights of this wooden bad boy, which I presume was an observation tower to view troop movements as its vistas overlook the border with France. I climbed up the fucker and left a wee mention at the top, carving ‘Nuuuuu’ into the floor with a pocket knife. I am very proud of that. One day some random will scratch their head at the … ‘word’ and then hit Google. A lovely wee town, it even had a heaving club which was visited just after midnight, where locals sparked up inside. Flashbacks kicked in to a pre-2006 Edinburgh when you could smoke a cigar and not get chased off the premises by their interior ministry.
Midnight fireworks.
Straubing – not a lot happened in Straubing. I did my usual morning run/descent into death followed by a supermarket jaunt, and rounded off proceedings by watching Dragons’ Den clips for three hours off a tablet, contemplating the decade ahead and hoping that one day folk in airports will just fucking learn how to distinguish between the arrivals and departures screens (this also applies to the denizens of train stations).
Freezing run action in this park.
Goodies.
Other delicacies included the outrageous wearing of Crocs and the sighting of that ‘big pile of shit’ from Jurassic Park (1993).
All in all, quite the splendid wee trip. A civilised affair (for once).
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 