THE LATE REVIEW: Dallas Buyers Club

It’s Friday night; the first promise of Spring has lulled us into wearing light overcoats then betrayed us with a kiss of freezing wind. The Woman Of A Certain Age keeps me waiting a little longer than I’d like, so I’m standing outside the Odeon in Muswell Hill. Anybody who has ever arranged to meet me knows I’m not a waiter-insider no matter how cold it gets.

We order hot chocolate from the foyer kiosk and wander upstairs to the main screen. There, a small man greets us warmly and reaches for our tickets with his one good arm, the other twisted up against his chest.

“Sit where you like’, he says. “Nobody else will be coming tonight.”  We sit in the general seating area.

“No, not there” he tells us. “Sit there, those two seats. The sound’s better there.” W e can’t yet check on this as there’s no sound to listen to. “I’ll be back in a minute, just going to check on something.”  And off he goes down the steps, dragging one leg a little as he does.

He comes back and beams as he tells us that he’s checked with the booking office and there’ll be only another five or six people in. So he invites us to sit anywhere we like – not in the one-and-nines, but how about the Premier seats that have extra-large armrests and tip back a little?

We’re not about to refuse a free upgrade, and he’s good enough to let slip that the really expensive seats, the double-sofa jobs at the front, are really not very good and have hardly any legroom compared with these seats, the seats he’s pointing to with his one good arm.

“This is lovely” we say, making necessary conversation until something happens on screen – trailers, Coke adverts, those irritating quizzes – to stop all three of us from talking.

I start on about the beauty of the cinema itself. It’s a wonderful building, the Muswell Hill Odeon; one of the last of the 1930s Art Deco picture palaces, not yet carved up too badly into twenty-seat mini-cinemas, with sweeping lines that draw the eye down toward the screen.

“Say something” he says. “Say something loud”. I don’t need telling twice, so I let out a tentative yelp.

It rolls around the auditorium, bouncing back from the screen and somehow gaining in volume, until it burst back at me.

“Bloody hell.”

“Yeah!”  He and I grin at each other, and spend a minute or two competing with hollers and Cab Calloway-style Hi-de-hoes – it’s only fitting, given the surroundings – until we’re standing at opposite ends of the front row, leaning over the rail, whooping together into the empty space in front of us.

Eventually The Woman Of A Certain Age tells us that we should, despite her enjoyment of this childishness, knock it off. Besides, another couple have come in and our new friend really ought to do for them what he did for us.

So he does, but without the acoustic adventure, and we all settle back into being typical cinema-goers.

The film is excellent. A skeletal Matthew McConaughey is all nose and cheekbones and impenetrable accent; at times, the sound, obviously mixed to be absorbed by a full audience of actual people, sounds cotton-woolly and indistinct. Having to concentrate on what he says doesn’t detract from his performance; rather it enhances your immersion in his character’s situation.

Everybody leaves except us; I like to read at least the first half of the credit roll, and more so for a film which has no opening credits except a title card. A small shock at seeing Jennifer Garner’s name: I’d not recognised her, but then I know her mainly for Elektra, which she’d probably rather not be recognised for.

We make our way downstairs: there’s no sign of the usher. It’s a pity, I tell The Woman Of A Certain Age; I’d like to thank him.

As we get to the last doors before we head out into the March cold and a take-away from Toffs, he’s there, tidying the foyer. I offer my hand, realise his good hand is holding a broom, and not knowing what best to do, pat him on the shoulder.

Low Content Mode

There's been very little new material here for the last few days as there has been a bout of, well, not so much burning the candle at both ends but also taking a blowtorch to the middle of the candle then strapping the candle to an IED and watching it explode in a shower of coruscating little light-bursts, a bit like when you try to stub a cigarette out in a high wind but about a thousand times brighter and a thousand times more likely to set you on fire.

As soon as the thick-headedness caused by lack of both sleep and proper food has passed, normal service will resume.

SLEEP-DEPRIVED COMIC-BOOK REVIEWS...

...has to get up early in the morning so is held over for a few days.

Meanwhile:

New Daredevil logo. Those cute lil' devil ears on the second D? No. 

Tell you what, Whoopi Goldberg's looking her age these days. (from Revolutionary War: Warheads)

To the point

There’s a large branch of Primark, not that there are any small ones, you don’t see Primark Bijoux on random corners the way you see Tesco Expresses and Sainsburys Locals but give it time, before you know it you’ll be able to buy hoodies in a just-too-thin-to-be-any-good-against-a-stiff-breeze acrylic mix and a choice of slightly squeamish colourways no more than a short stroll from your door.

Let’s start that again.

There’s a large branch of Primark near us, in the big shopping centre, and as much as I adored the great Alan Coren he was wrong when he said, as he did on a radio programme called Freedom Pass in which he and another gentleman of a certain vintage used their pensioners bus passes to travel from Camden to Palmers Green on the upper deck of a 29, that the big shopping centre was built on the site of the old Wood Green Empire. The old Wood Green Empire still stands, more so than does the old British Empire; it's now a branch of the Halifax a good hundred yards from the redbrick monstrosity called Shopping City. Still, a remarkably entertaining programme which was re-broadcast a few nights ago on Radio 4 Extra as part of a tribute, and a much deserved one, to the late great man. 

Third time lucky?

There’s a large branch of Primark near us, in the big shopping centre. I was walking through it the other day, not that I was shopping there, more of an M&S man myself, occasionally Zara Man, sometimes a cheeky amble through the gentleman’s department in John Lewis or Debenhams but, being my age, caught on the outer edge of being able to wear jeans and nearing the time when I’d appear ludicrous in anything other than proper trousers, a sensible shirt and jacket, maybe a hat.

And again. 

There’s a large branch of Primark near us, in the big shopping centre. I was walking through it the other day and, really it’s not even as if it’s a place to go to look at other people. Everybody there seems happy enough and I certainly don’t want to get all snobbish about them, about the clothes, certainly, I’ve never seen anything in there I’d want to put anywhere near me, but not the people.

This’ll work eventually.

There’s a large branch of Primark near us, in the big shopping centre. I was walking through it the other day and again, the people there are fine but if you were, perhaps, looking to shall we say make new contact with new people, it’s not the place you’d start. Supermarkets at around six in the evening, they’re good for that sort of thing. You can get a head start by checking people’s baskets, see how many ready-meals for one they’re buying, whether there’s a cat involved, that sort of thing. That’s the sort of thing.

I’m not giving up.

There’s a large branch of Primark near us, in the big shopping centre. I was walking through it the other day, and as I turned a corner this tall and rather self-possessed girl stretched out her arm and punched me, right in the kisser. Accidental, of course, it’s unlikely this girl goes around punching strange men in discount clothes shops or any other place, unless it wasn’t accidental at all. Maybe punching strange men is something she does all the time in all manner of place. Maybe, and I hope this doesn’t sound misogynist, she sees it as a feminist thing to do. Nip into a shop, smack some unlucky bugger in the mouth, make it look like an accident – Oops! I was just putting on my cardigan! Sorry! I was just checking my phone! – and mark it up as a small victory against the repressive forces of male hegemony.

She apologised, quite genuinely, in that ‘oh my god I’ve just punched someone!’ way that involves a hand on the victim’s chest, combining sorrow and sympathy, then scarpered. I checked my wallet. She seemed like a nice girl but in Wood Green you can never be too careful. Then, out of nowhere, an assistant appeared, full of are you alrights and you’re not hurts, and she started a conversation that kicked off as being about the weather but suddenly turned into Oh My God I Know You! And as it turned out, she was the daughter of an old customer of mine and she remembered her daddy taking her to see me in my old shop, many years ago. He’s passed now, sad to say.

Small world. Sometimes not big enough. 

So. What happened was...

I have received a letter from a Mrs. Elaine Palethorpe of Stony Stratford, Buckinghamshire* in which she kindly asks why the original Tottenhamista blog died the slow, lonely death of neglect and isolation that it did.

Well Mrs. Palethorpe, your concern is appreciated. As you asked so kindly, here’s what happened.

Margaret Thatcher died.

I had known for several years what my considered reaction would be to her death. I had the jazz-musician anecdote ready and waiting.

When the time came, I just had to put it into a suitable form and make it public. Which I did.

Whether it was the Baroness’ death or the fall of some other curtain I cannot say, but after that day I no longer felt the need to continue. Posts became fewer and farther between, a strange ennui descended, the urge to foist my ill-tempered attempts at entertaining the masses** left me. Frankly Mrs. Palethorpe, I scarcely wrote a word in the best part of a year and frankly I didn’t want to. I was in a form of hibernation, shedding an old skin if you wish, making some adjustments to this old suit of clothes I call my life.

Tottenhamista died, alone, unwanted, unloved.

I have something of a new impetus now.  The day isn’t complete without around a thousand words or so, not necessarily here but in various projects. I have something of a new muse now also, inspiring me to sit here every day and release coalesced thoughts into the wild.

There’s a chance, also, a strong chance, that other things will go further; I’m saying nothing as yet, hubris is a terrible destroyer of potential and I will not tempt my own downfall. If these things happen, and if ‘these things happen’ is not, as it generally is, the phrase that summarises the disappointment of failure, they will be announced here.

Thank you for your interest, Mrs. Palethorpe. My regards to Mr. Palethorpe if such person exists***, and my very best to you both.

*I haven’t.

**sometimes as many as eighteen of them

***he doesn’t

Every post should start with a Bill Withers reference

Lovely day, looks like Spring’s very much about to pop its head around the door, so time for something musically suitable. No idea why, but I fancied Blur’s Out Of Time; a little solemn perhaps, but deep down do we not all have a slight melancholia even as the year rebirths?

I dug out Think Tank, intending only to play the one track before moving on to the random iPoddery that usually scores the day. Somehow the CD started before I could select.

It’s very easy to forget certain parts of an album. You buy one, usually on the strength of something from it that you’ve heard elsewhere, you listen to it all the way through maybe a couple of times, you put it on the shelf and there it stays until you get that urge to hear it again, probably just the one immediate track that made you buy the thing in the first place, but you hear the entire album and…

There are some great tracks on Think Tank that I’d forgotten about. There are also some great tracks on it that I didn’t like when I first heard them. If I’d done as usual and fed the iPod through speakers, I’d’ve played Out Of Time and only Out Of Time, as that’s the only Blur track I have on the iPod. No Tender, no ParkLife, not even Girls And Boys.

Listening to the whole of Think Tank re-established the variety of music the group were creating at that late stage in their career, Damon Albarn’s world music interests were making a firm stamp on the sound but they’d not gone the Full Gabriel. There are loud crazy tracks, and weird experimental tracks and at least one track foreshadowing Albarn’s disappearing-up-himself trick that would make his later solo material such hard work to listen to.

I would have missed all this if I’d just linked up the Pod, and it struck me that most of the music I buy these days is via download. I only buy physical CDs for music I definitely want on my shelves, otherwise it’s an everyday thing to click an icon on Amazon or iTunes and have the sounds playing within a minute or so.

We buy single tracks and ignore what else is offered. We buy whole albums and after a while we delete every track that isn’t that one immediate favourite. We can’t go back and be surprised, months or years later, that the music we didn’t like then is music that sounds perfect now. We change. Our tastes change. But in our rush to embrace ever greater amounts of the immediate, we’re losing the means to re-evaluate and re-appreciate the old. It’s also unavoidable that download sales are more immediately recognised by artists and by management, each click registering in the cash register or in the songwriter’s pen, giving them a real-time illustration of what the public wants. And as the public gets what it says it wants, only those most unconcerned with commerciality will produce anything other than what already goes down well.

Worse than this, as we hack away everything that isn’t familiar, we lose the guide that shows us the unseen city. If Graham Parker’s band The Rumour hadn’t covered Do Nothing ‘Til You Hear From Me on the b-side of an old vinyl 45rpm single, I’d have had no initial exposure to Duke Ellington. No Duke, no Dizzy Gillespie, no Miles Davis. An entire planet of new and wonderful sounds eliciting newer and more wonderful responses from brain and heart, all branching from that one flip of a scratched disc.

We can’t prevent technological progress and we shouldn’t wish to. Nobody wants to be sat in front of a tiny, near-unreadable black-and-white tv screen watching the Coronation. Let’s not lose our sense of adventure, though, and let’s above all not lose the knowledge that growing up, growing older, brings different appreciations of old experiences.

None of this, however, will stop me from throttling my bloody lodger if he plays this sodding Nazareth’s Greatest Hits album one more time.

Jesus

This morning we have a headache. Normal service, etc, etc.

Meanwhile, here is an emergency picture of Debbie Harry.