Twenty three years have passed since the original Wall Street introduced Gordon Gekko, the insider trader who insisted ‘Greed is good’ and ‘Lunch is for wimps’, and eventually receives a jail sentence. The film stood up on its own, almost defining a whole ‘Yuppie’ generation, so why bring out a sequel now?
My suspicions are that a sequel will do no harm to the careers of Michael Douglas (Gordon Gekko) or director Oliver Stone, and despite the long shadow of the parent film, ‘Money never sleeps’ is a worthy enough sequel to likewise stand alone.
Less obvious perhaps, but a serious message is also illustrated here. The current global financial crisis represents a perfect opportunity to explore the human element behind what is happening. Oliver Stone is saying that not only did we fail to learn the lessons of the stock market crash following October 19th 1987, but with an avalanche of toxic debt, economic stagnation, and the prospect of long term recession, the worst could be yet to come.. Continue reading Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)
A French literary masterpiece, Jean de Florette, along with the sequel Manon des Sources creates a single unbroken narrative. It is a two-part epic tale which spans three generations, building to an inevitable, yet completely unexpected conclusion.
In the first part, Jean Cadoret (Gerard Depardieu), a former tax collector, moves his family to the country to create a pastoral idyll in a rural Provencal village. From the neighbouring farm, Cesar Soubeyran (Le Papet), and his only remaining relative, nephew Ugolin, cast their covetous eyes on the adjoining property. They need its spring water to grow their own carnations and vegetables, and so are dismayed to hear that a new owner from away has moved in. Conspiring against the stranger, imagining themselves somehow justified as locals, they mischievously block up the spring, and watch as Jean desperately tries to keep his crops, his means of living, watered throughout the long, hot summer from a source miles away across the rugged terrain. Le Papet does not allow for Jean’s tenacity. Though they see his back-breaking efforts are ruining his health, and breaking his wife and daughter’s hearts, they turn a blind eye as events reach a tragic conclusion.
The story is a timeless one, a compelling triumph for justice and good, and reflects the revenge themes of the Viking sagas, or a Biblical parable unfolding, or perhaps the poetic justice of Greek tragedy, and it is satisfying to see the outcome, the inevitable futility of the Soubeyran’s scheming. It was heart-warming too; that by the end, you could feel for Le Papet, and even Ugolin, for how many times have any of us begun an unwise course we cannot reverse?
A Fleet Street reporter, H. V. Morton (1892-1979) fought in the First World War and was in Egypt in 1922 at the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb. One of the century’s most popular travel writers, he wrote books about Spain, Italy and the Middle East as well as the famous ‘In search of..’ series on the British Isles.
Something to remember about Morton’s book on Ireland is its historical perspective. In Search of Ireland was first published in 1930, which was a few years after Ireland had become a Free State in 1922. Morton is seeing Ireland in the early stages of independence separated from Britain. He warns the English in his introduction, “We must forget the hosts of prejudiced ideas about her which have accumulated during centuries of strife and misunderstanding…I must stress the point that the new generation of travellers must approach Ireland with the feeling that it is a foreign country.” I could not help but reflect on the history he refers to, when England was so often the aggressor, and Ireland the betrayed. Sometimes it seems he relates the events connected with a place without examining the underlying issues, he observes the empty cottages with hardly a mention of the famine or the forced evictions, or that emigration was so often not a choice, but a matter of survival. Nonetheless, Morton’s humorous and insightful observations about Ireland, as a traveller in a foreign land, are worth reading and re-reading.
“Dublin in the early morning, with the sun shining, is a city the colour of claret. The red-brick Georgian mansions, with fine doors, fanlights, and little iron balconies at the first-floor windows, stand back in well-bred reticence against wide roads, quiet and dignified, as if the family has just left by stagecoach.” Prose of this quality is what raises travel writing to literature, and Morton’s skill as an evocative writer is worthy of the best of his era. In explaining about the Book of Kells, which is kept in Trinity College, Dublin, he says that during the three darkest centuries of English history it was Ireland that was saving Greek and Latin for Europe..
”Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny; they have only shifted it to another shoulder” (George Bernard Shaw, 1903)
This is a very useful 310 page study by political commentator Maurice Latey for those interested in the factors that breed tyranny. He is particularly concerned with the psychological factors, what motivates these men to behave in the way they do. Although of necessity taking a broad historical approach, he concentrates on the twentieth century after World War One, arguably an ‘age of tyranny’, with Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and Mao Tse Tung foremost amongst others.
In ancient Greece, a tyrant was a ruler who seized power unconstitutionally or inherited such power. In the 10th and 9th centuries BC, monarchy had been the usual form of government in the Greek states; the aristocratic regimes that had replaced monarchy were by the 7th century BC themselves unpopular. Thus the opportunity arose for ambitious men to seize power in the name of the oppressed. Tyrants eventually came to be considered oppressive. Latey’s more refined definition of a tyrant is ‘a ruler who exercises arbitrary power beyond the scope permitted by the laws, customs and standards of his time and society, and who does so with a view to maintaining or increasing that power’.
He examines the tyrants of Greece and Rome, and the authors of that era. Aristotle said that tyranny aims at three things- firstly to keep the subjects in humility, secondly to have them distrust each other, and thirdly to render them powerless for opposition. These principle features of a tyrant can be discerned in the many historical examples, but also, underscoring their validity, in the leadership struggles of today, in settings as diverse as party politics, the church, the office and the company boardroom..
For the Americans in the audience at Kidwelly Castle, it was a night of the three things they immediately associate Britain with; a historical building, Shakespeare and rain!
Summer 2010 production
After two hours everyone was soaked, but at least we had coats and umbrellas, the cast did not. Awnings, or even patio umbrellas, might have helped save the players catching pneumonia, or at least in some scenes, but we appreciated how difficult this might have been in a production outstanding for its freedom of movement. The show must go on.
The show! Well-paced and professional, a blend of the familiar lines and a refreshingly light approach, they achieved so much in two hours. It left me feeling determined not to miss the next production. Not every company lives up to such superlatives, but Taking Flight deserves these and more. I shall continue to describe the strengths of this performance before mentioning minor weaknesses, at the risk of sounding, and feeling, churlish.
The major advantage of an outdoor setting has to be the informality, ‘Shakespeare in wellingtons’, and from the beginning you felt part of what was happening, identifying and empathising with the characters and their predicaments. One minor risk at first, is losing the thread of the story between scenes, as we followed the players, and reassemble to watch after costume or setting changes, but you soon adjust to this.
The castle yard setting lent an air of authenticity to the production, I was several times reminded of the replicated Globe theatre at Southwark, the Elizabethan theatre was open to the elements, but with its galleries and awnings, in Shakespeare’s time, itself represented modernity. In provincial settings, the plays must have been performed in similar fashion as tonight at Kidwelly. Would travelling players have made use of a horse-drawn wagon, as alluded to (Act 1, Sn.4) in the play? Quite possibly, and this gives an indication there would be few elaborate props, and these are often unnecessary, as here demonstrated so ably.
‘Romeo and Juliet’, with its well-known tragic theme , is nonetheless associated with Shakespeare’s earlier comedies, and the bawdiness of the earlier acts was well shown, to the point I wondered how the mood was to change upon the brawl and deaths of Mercutio and Tybalt. I need not have worried. The fight scenes were admirably directed (by Michael Aubin), spontaneous and natural, not stilted, including a stylish slow-motion sequence..
Joseph Sobran was originally an orthodox (Stratfordian) scholar who became increasingly puzzled by the complete failure of ‘William Shakespeare’ to leave even the faintest trace of his life or personality on the works of poetry and drama bearing his name. Sobran cites numerous ‘biographies’ of extraordinary length( one over 600 pages), all of which has been constructed on factual information sufficient to fill four sides of A4 paper. This is literally all that is definitely known of the man Sobran identifies for clarity as ‘Mr Shakspere’, one of 39 possible spellings. These biographies tend to be filled with suppositions relating to what the person who wrote the Plays must have done, all attempts to make Shakespeare as interesting as even the least of his works fail miserably..
What a marvellous name! The family of Macaulay belonged originally to the Scottish highlands. His mother was a brilliant woman of Quaker descent; his father was a business man who was very successful in trade, and appointed at one time governor of the Sierra Leone Colony in Africa, and he spent the whole of his fortune in helping to free the slaves. In consequence, when Macaulay left college he faced the immediate problem of supporting himself and his family.
We should take note of Macaulay’s personal qualities. He read everything from Plato to the cheapest novel, and after reading a book, could recall practically the whole of it after a lapse of twenty years. To this photographic memory we are indebted for the wealth of quotation, allusion and anecdote which brightens every page of his writings. Probably a few of his errors too!
‘Music from another room’ is a 1998 romantic comedy dependent on fate to drive the main storyline, the pretty predictable one of no-hope underdog Danny (Jude Law) trying to win the hand of already engaged Anna (Gretchen Mol). As a brown eyed five year old, he helped deliver her, and decided he would marry her. Twenty five years later, blue eyed Danny heads in the right direction by returning to his hometown, to move in with girlfriend Sarah. As he arrives, she is moving out, clearly intending to be gone before he gets there. Danny: ‘I thought you loved me.’ Sarah: ‘Really? What made you think that?’ Danny: ‘Probably when you said you loved me.’ Sarah: ‘You take things too literally..’ Probably as well to walk away, Danny.
At least he is in the right town. Soon, by accident, Danny meets Anna, attractive, unavailable, but far worse, cool, highly strung, and seeing herself as the emotional caretaker of the family. Danny is not deterred, even as he finds himself entangled with each of the eccentric Swann family members including the blind and sheltered Nina (Jennifer Tilly), the cynical feminist sister Karen (Martha Plimpton), bullying brother Billy (Jeremy Piven) and neurotic wife Irene (Jane Adams), eccentric academic father Richard (Bruce Jarchow), and mother Grace (Brenda Blethyn). For Grace’s personality, think Jane Austen’s Mrs Bennet.
Based on a true story, Clive Owen stars as a successful Australian sportswriter cast into the role of single parent to six year old Artie after the tragic death of wife Katy. He had another son, teenage Harry, by a previous marriage, living in England. How does a widowed man, cope with a job and running the house? For me, the story was really about how a husband and father, and a child and son, and equally apparent in them both, dealt with their grief, and coping without wife and mum for all the ordinary things we all take too much for granted.
Resolving to reach out to Artie, he comes up with his own style of parenting, ‘just say yes’, no rules, no chores..
Guest Review by Mr Chris Wollams, and originally published in Icon magazine
Rating:
This is the inspiring story of one man following a diagnosis of cancer, and the decisions he faced.
This book is both excellent and controversial. Over a six month period, Michael Gearin-Tosh found out about the options available for treatment of Myeloma including chemotherapy, but in parallel, he became more intrigued by the Gerson Therapy and embarked on his own personal treatment plan. The Gerson Therapy is time consuming and not for everybody and it must be remembered that cancer is a very individual disease.
But Michael believed in the Gerson Therapy and this, coupled with his self-belief and natural energy, has seen him through the last eight years. All credit to him; he should be an icon for cancer patients and his book an essential read. His book does highlight the extraordinary gulf between ‘conventional’ medicine and ‘alternative’ medicine and the success of Michael Gearin-Tosh in controlling his cancer has significant implications for us all.
Sir David Wetherall FRS, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University said in his letter to the Sunday Times about the book, “Though I do believe passionately in scientific medicine, I have not got to the stage of being so blinkered that I cannot believe that at least some aspects of the more complementary approach may have a lot to offer. I think they could be put to the scientific test, and should be, but whether this will happen is far from clear. But of one thing I am sure; regardless of what a patient is suffering from, their personal reaction to their situation and their state of mind is of critical importance, and to ignore them in the face of high technology and medical practice is to court disaster”..
