Pictured above: my two closest friends, Ed Smith centre, Simon Kerruish right. Gone onwards.
Fellow players in the Boleros Ultimate frisbee team. And much, so much more . . .
(Incidentally, it was Ed’s mother Nada who started me off on the journey of reading and research that continues to this day, when she plonked Patrick Tilley’s “Mission” on the table, and said “here, read that, it might interest you . . . “)
Below, Daniel Barenboim conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, performing Nimrod by Edward Elgar, part of his Enigma Variations suite.
It’s an intensely emotional piece of music, hard to listen to without tears.
But there is too towards the end a promise of catharsis and of peace—of battles fought and won. In short, the life of (a good) man or woman in little.
So this from me to those two good men. And to all those everywhere loved and lost.
[ Originally published on Facebook 16 August 2015; addition 8 September 2021 ]
DVD box sets and streaming video services allow us viewers to hunker down, pull up the drawbridge and binge-watch entire series at a sitting if we feel like it. In this way I’ve caught up with several (mostly American) TV blockbusters like ‘Sopranos’ (both com-pelling and re-ditto), ‘Breaking Bad’ (a struggle, not totally convinced by the main character), ‘House of Cards’ (clever self-referential fun for a bit, eventually couldn’t be arsed to suspend disbelief any longer and gave up), ‘Homeland’ (good viewing but just plain lost interest in the plot after a while), ‘Band of Brothers’ (magnificent, all-time favourite), ‘Rome’ (also excellent).
So anyway, a while back a colleague in Geneva suggested I take a look at a series that first went out on HBO from 2002-8—The Wire—and very glad I did. It’s an ambitious work, among whose main subjects are the way that many (most? all?) American institutions are compromised, and the fact that the little guy never gets a chance.
Each series focuses on a different institution (e.g. police, unions, local government) in Baltimore, but many of the same characters appear in each. In the best traditions of contemporary big-budget American TV, it’s at once scrupulously plotted, imaginatively scripted, convincingly cast and acted, flawlessly directed, filmed and edited, and believably disbelieving about many of the shibboleths that America holds dear. Faced with its grand sweep, its gritty realism and social commentary, you begin to understand the draw of Film and Media Studies courses.
It also contains one of the most boldly, brilliantly written scenes I’ve ever seen.
Detailed to revisit old cases on a team investigating a drugs gang in Baltimore’s low-rise (and lower-income) projects, two overworked and world-weary homicide detectives reluctantly stop by a house in which a girl was shot, where they start going through the motions (to begin with at least) of recreating the circumstances of her murder.
The run-down urban setting of the The Wire‘s first series makes subtitles often helpful, if not essential. You won’t need them here. Look out too for the caretaker’s cameo, who acts as a kind of dumbstruck Greek chorus—essentially us—as the scene unfolds (see—we’re doing Film and Media Studies already already . . . )
[ Addition 8 September 2021 ]
Sad to hear of the death (apparently from drug overdose) of Michael K. Williams, who played the unashamedly homosexual stealer-from-drug-dealers Omar Little in the series.
From Wikipedia:
“For his portrayal of Omar, Williams was named by USA Today as one of ten reasons they still love television. Omar was praised for his uniqueness in the stale landscape of TV crime dramas and for the wit and humor that Williams brings to the portrayal. Omar has been named as one of the first season’s richest characters, a Robin Hood of Baltimore’s west side projects. The Baltimore City Paper named the character one of their top ten reasons not to cancel the show and called him “arguably the show’s single greatest achievement”. In 2007, he was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series for his role as Omar.”
Far too many scenes in The Wire featuring Michael K. Williams to do him justice, but here’s a little taste.
Omar has agreed to testify against “Bird,” who had killed security guard Mr Gant—a civilian unconnected to the drug business—(something that Omar never did).
He’s been inveigled into wearing a tie for his stand in the witness box, something he does in his own sweet way.
His testimony likewise:
Do yourself a favour folks: if you haven’t already discovered the richness and truth that is “The Wire,” now’s a good time . . .
The best of the friends I’ve been privileged to count as close (his name was Ed, see here) beguiled us all with his fierce intellect, immoderate wit, and a truly liberating command of the scatological.
Which makes it all the more surprising that I never came across Christopher Hitchens (“Hitch”) during his lifetime—a shortfall which I rue to this day.
Here was a man who lived by argument and debate. A voracious reader—who seemed never to forget a single thing he’d read—he travelled the world’s trouble-spots and interviewed the world’s change-makers, bringing a critical and independent (his words) mind to challenge all forms of settled belief with an almost otherworldly fluency and coherence.
He was also a prolific writer and broadcaster.
Just a few book titles will give you some idea: “No One Left to Lie To” (his indictment of Bill Clinton); “The Missionary Position” (ditto Mother Teresa—“. . . was not a friend of the poor . . . was a friend of poverty. . . . said that suffering was a gift from God . . . spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women . . . ”); “God Is Not Great” (subtitle “How Religion Poisons Everything”); “The Trial of Henry Kissinger”, and so on.
But Hitchens was not just a polemicist. He also authored biographies of men he admired (George Orwell, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine), and left us with essay collections on any number of topics. Plus a splendid memoir (“Hitch-22”—as good a place to start on his writings as any).
British-born, he moved to the USA in his early thirties, finally becoming a US citizen in 2007.
He died of cancer in 2011.
Seek him out, I urge you. For even if you disagree with his views, his manner of putting them across always delights, not to mention the wit and learning-lightly-worn.
You’ll find plenty of videos of him in full flight on YouTube. I’ve chosen one of the very last of these: an interview by Britain’s Jeremy Paxman shortly before Hitchens’ death.
Paxman was a famously abrasive interviewer (he once said his default mindset when interviewing politicians was “why is this lying bastard lying to me?”). But here he becomes almost (gasp!) deferential, as these two fine intellects range over career, beliefs, illness, and impending death.
Would that Christopher Hitchens were still alive today—his breadth of knowledge, his clear and incisive thinking, and the tangential slash* of his wisdom would be welcome—nay, essential—correctives to the madness that is our current world . . .
[ * So wish I’d coined this, but in fact I lifted it—if memory serves, from Frank Herbert’s “Dune.” q.v. ]
Dysfunctional government is rather in the news these days—whether it’s a U.S. president who hires and fires almost weekly; the same president who won’t concede an (apparently) unquestionable election result; a UK prime minister who even his own party accuses of dithering and incompetence; not to mention all the politicians around the world whose corruption and blatant self-interest are impossible to ignore.
There’ve been plenty of TV series that have portrayed or satirized this—think of West Wing in the States, Yes Minister in the UK, and House of Cards on both sides of the Pond.
But none of these, nor any of the many political movies, have come as close to the bone as Armando Iannucci’s The Thick of It.
Here we have a series that portrays the byzantine machinations of politics brutally and (I’m pretty sure) honestly. As Wikipedia‘s typically po-faced article says, “It highlights the struggles and conflicts between politicians, party spin doctors, advisers, civil servants and the media.”
Hard to know where to start here. Maybe with the stellar performance of Peter Capaldi as director of communications and spin-meister of his party. Or is it the ever-sharp writing, or the wonderful ensemble-playing of the cast . . .
A team of writers produced consistently edgy scripts, and when I tell you that there was a dedicated “swearing consultant” whose task was to add even more colourful language, you’ll get an idea of just how rich the dialogue is.
The series featured no incidental music, no laughter track. All shot hand-held. Plus Capaldi is on record as saying that “Fundamentally 80% of the final cut is the script that we started with.” In other words, some 20% of the dialogue is improvised, which only adds to the sense of realism.
The four series of The Thick of It ran from 2005 to 2012, and never flagged. It was hugely successful, spawning spin-offs on both sides of the Atlantic (the movie In the Loop, a U.S. remake, and the HBO series Veep).
It’s also a series that repays repeated watching, each time discovering new nuances of performance, new appreciation of the quick-fire dialogue and the scabrously inventive invective.
I love it . . .
The Thick of It was at one time on Netflix, also on BBC’s iPlayer, but I’ve also seen it on the UK’s ITVx and various other streaming services. I promise you it’s worth looking out. More about it on Wikipedia.
Ultimate (Wikipedia entry here) is unusual—perhaps unique—in that there are no officials. No referees, no umpires, no touch-judges, nada.
Instead the players officiate themselves, and the sport relies on their honesty and sense of fair play (‘spirit of the game’) to get things done right.
So infringements are called by the players themselves, stuff like fouls (ultimate is in theory a non-contact sport), travels (once you’ve caught a disc you can’t move with it), in- and out-of-bounds calls, picks (not allowed), and a few others.
Inevitably this ethos can be compromised by a ‘win-at-all-costs’ mentality when big prizes are at stake. So teams may opt to have neutral ‘observers’ on the sidelines, as a sort of line judge-cum-dispute resolver.
This is different in the professional game (started in 2012), where there are umpires and line judges.
It’s a very pure running sport: 7-a-side on a field usually somewhere around the size of a football field; endzones not goals; score by catching the disc in the opponents’ endzone; if a disc is intercepted, dropped or goes out-of-bounds, the other team gets possession immediately.
Because a disc thrown right-side-up floats, there’s often enough time for a defender to catch up and bat it away; similarly, there are times when you and the disc are going at the same speed but it’s out of your reach, so the only option is to get off your feet (‘lay it out’) to make the catch.
This makes for some pretty spectacular athleticism, a flavour of which you’ll see in the highlight reel below.
It’s also possible to throw a disc upside-down, when it behaves much more like a ball, with a distinct up-down trajectory. Anyone familiar with American Football will appreciate the skill needed both to make this throw (especially when it’s windy) and to judge the catch or interception (ditto).
The free-flowing nature of the sport means serious aerobic effort—one moment you’ll be running (and thinking) hard to get free, then suddenly there’s a turnover and you’re immediately running just as hard to cover your opponent, themselves now trying to get free to take a pass.
But once you get the disc you’re in effect the quarterback, with a quarterback’s need for clear field vision, calm decision-making and good technique to make the next successful pass.
A very complete sport then . . .
What else? Well, in my day at least, teams would party as hard they played (at some tournaments ‘winning the party’ conferred almost as much cachet as winning the tournament . . . )
Pretty much all big tournaments have an Open Division for both men and women, and these days a Co-ed or Mixed Division too. College or University teams often have their own divisions and tournaments.
And as players have got older, so new divisions have appeared for those still wanting to play but maybe no longer up to Open standards. So there’s Masters (33+ for men, 30+ for women), Grand Masters (40+ and 37+ respectively) and even Great Grand Masters (50+ and 45+).
Most games are played on outdoors on grass, but there are indoor tournaments too, and beach ultimate is also very popular.
I only discovered Ultimate in my early 20s (wish it had been earlier). Played for 15 years or so and retired aged 37 when it became clear that cutting it against the best of the next generation was getting harder.
But during that time I had the privilege of getting to know some of the great teams and great players from around the world, not least the world-dominating New York franchise of the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Damn, we had some fun . . .
But don’t for a moment think this is a game just for the boys. Women’s Ultimate is equally fiercely competitive―supreme athletes from other disciplines, discovering Ultimate, can’t wait to make the switch. Here’s a more recent video from USA Ultimate that gives a taste of the atheticism, sportsmanship and co-ed appeal of this magnificent sport:
Mankind (and I mean man-kind) being as fucked up as it (he) is, the obscenity of war shows no sign of abating.
Until modern times, war has been mostly sanitized and mythologized in film.
In reality it is—has always been—a story of horror, defilement, unendurable loss that must be endured.
Yet a story also of lasting bonds formed, perspective gained, meaning found.
HBO’s Spielberg and Hanks Band of Brothers series manages to put some of this across.
It follows a Company of American paratroopers, taking in their training, their D-Day drops and combat, their involvement in Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge, their liberation of a Konzentrationslager, their taking of Berchtesgaden and Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest, and on to end of the war in Europe.
Not least among the many moving moments are the voices to camera before each episode of some of those who served and survived.
Impossible to encapsulate the richness of the performances, the gritty faithfulness of the action, the emotion of the whole in just one clip, but here’s a taste from late in the piece—a surrendering German general addresses his troops . . .
If you haven’t already lived this magnificent modern masterpiece, do . . .
For my generation, Pink Floyd’s 1973 breakthrough album ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ was a seminal moment, for all sorts of reasons I won’t even try to go into here.
More than 40 years on, some of its music still stands comparison with the finest, not least in the plangent piano-and-improvised-female-vocal section of ‘The Great Gig in the Sky.’
There’s something about a female voice singing without words that—for me at any rate—goes straight for the emotional jugular.
This is ‘Eternal’ by southern-Spanish artist Nacho Sotomayor (you’ll note the Moorish influence in the vocal phrasing). Listened to it several times, assailed each time by feelings of immense, unutterable longing—although again, maybe that’s just me . . .
Came across it via Spotify, using their radio-station option with Buddha Bar as the base. How lucky we are these days to be able to get genre music app-chosen, internet-streamed, and through the witchcraft of wireless piped to the hi-fi, tv, soundbar, wherever . . .
So I’ve started dabbling a bit in High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography.
You’ve probably already seen plenty of HDR photos without realising it—they’re the ones that seem super-realistic or even outright surreal. For instance, any water photo where the water looks airbrushed is almost certainly an HDR shot, for reasons that we’ll come to presently. The human eye, it seems, views the world in HDR, so the technique can produce shots that resemble more closely what we actually see.
It’s not a particularly new thing, but I only just came across it (via John Dvorak of ‘PC Magazine,’ to whom undying thanks).
Now I’m no photographer, but long ago did on an impulse buy an entry-level Canon DSLR. And have underused it consistently ever since, eschewing the arcana of ISO, shutter speed, f-stops, white balance etc. in favour of the camera’s (admittedly very good) point-and-shoot automatics.
Which till now has worked fine. But having discovered HDR, I find myself eager to learn all about these many variables, mostly because now I have to.
See, HDR uses multiple images which are then merged to create the final photo. I’m sure that good photographers have been doing this for decades, but now digital has made it much, much easier.
What you do is take several shots of the same scene in quick succession with different exposures. This is known as exposure bracketing, and bless ’em, most DSLRs have a feature that will do it for you automatically—called (natch) Automatic Exposure Bracketing, or AEB. (And just in case it sounds like I know what I’m talking about, I’m still very much learning about all this myself. But, aside: it is interesting how quickly you can learn even abstruse technical stuff when there’s a reason to—I remember way back giving my sister Caro a quick intro to processor speeds, RAM size, hard-disk capacity/spin-speeds, other like stuff when she was looking to buy her first computer, and before I knew it she was in the shop authoritatively talking price/performance with the salesman like a seasoned pro . . . )
Anyway, in the simplest HDR you take three exposures—one normal, one under-exposed and one over-exposed. These you then put through software (I’m using Photomatix) that merges the three shots and offers you various preset/manual options of what bits to take from which. If you want to get fancier you can merge five, seven or even nine different exposures (if your camera can take ’em), giving you more options and more potential richness—as well as exponentially greater complexity and more opportunity to screw up the end result.
The attentive will already have spotted one limitation: because the different exposures are taken SEQUENTIALLY, HDR works better with subjects that aren’t moving too much (time-difference between frames = moving stuff moves). Also, unless you’re rock solid you’ll screw up the merge doing it handheld. Which tends to mean using a tripod for stability, at the risk of losing spontaneity.
So for all you inventors out there, first one to figure out how to take multiple exposures CONCURRENTLY wins the big prize . . .
And going back to airbrushed water, any technique that involves taking multiple, sequential shots of fast-moving water will produce a composite that doesn’t freeze the water’s motion at one particular time (I’d always wondered . . . ), although this issue (called ‘ghosting’) is already in part being addressed, and I’m betting will eventually be resolved as computers get quicker and the software cleverer.
The photo above shows what HDR can do, in this case using a 7-frame composite (not mine, I hasten to add): the one on the left is the original shot (it’s also the middle one in the frameset underneath). Not bad in itself, but see how merging in elements from the 6 other frames creates the stunningly detailed image on the right. (Bit garish for my own taste, but you get the, er, picture . . . )
The HDR photos below were all taken from the balcony of my Copenhagen apartment. They are a little crude I admit, but do give an idea of how HDR can add depth, and enhance the display of extremes of darkness and light.
I’ve always had immense admiration for those who, while pushing forwards in their own skill-sphere, respect the greatness of those who preceded them. I also find myself increasingly moved to tears by the witness of excellence.
So finding a profile of magician Ricky Jay (‘Deceptive Practice’) on Netflix just now was doubly impressive (and yes, I do seem to be watching a tad too much TV these days, but in amongst all the shoot-’em-up dross there are plenty of genuine gems).
Here is someone who has spent a lifetime perfecting the art of legerdemain, but who shares also a Ray Mears-like (I don’t have many heroes, he’s one) reverence for the knowledge of those who went before.
In this stage-show clip, Jay typically pays homage to one of his own mentors and heroes, Max Malini, but watch this mostly for his breathtaking mastery of the cards . . .
