Friday Five: Darts

Just before Christmas, when I was doing a lot of sitting around with my leg in plaster, I 'discovered' darts. Of course I can't claim first knowledge of this pub pastime (I am still loath to call it a sport) as it has been around for some considerable time, but I have never really paid attention before. And I confess now, that I found myself totally hooked. And I'll tell you why...

5 Things I Like About Darts:

1. The tension - it may not be played by perfect physical specimens (and the close-ups on the throwing arm don't exactly highlight the peak of athleticism) but there is intense concentration, accuracy and skill going on up there
2. The crowd - they love it! Chanting along with the cheerleaders (who only know how to perform one 'dance') and entrance music (yes, really, like boxers, albeit in sumo suits), drinking copious quantities of amber liquid, encouraging every throw and feeling every miss, and waving signs declaring 'we're supposed to be at work', they are raucous and jovial and clearly having a great time
3. The pace - it's quick, scarcely has one leg finished before the next begins, and there is barely time to go to the bar. It's certainly fast, if not particularly furious
4. The jargon - there are legs and sets (indeed, just like tennis) and triple tops and you have to finish on a double and you can do it in five and be on a finish - it's not quite silly mid-on and daisy-cutters, but we're getting there
5. The pyschological drama - players can win or lose on body language alone, and they stand very close to each other for quite a lot of the tine

Friday Five: Crisp Flavours

When we were kids we were sometimes sat in a beer garden with a glass of lemonade and a packet of crisps each (I nearly wrote 'often' but that makes our parents sound like they were always at the pub, which isn't actually true). Trying to be nice, Dad would buy a selection and we would fight it out amongst ourselves. Being the youngest, I usually ended up with cheese and onion. I hate cheese and onion. For the record, here's what I do like:

5 Favourite Crisp Flavours:

1. Salt and vinegar - not 'battery acid', as my friend refers to them
2. Smoky bacon - probably tasted completely inauthentic, but extremely moor-ish
3. Barbecue beef - particularly Hula Hoops (you have to put one on each finger-tip, of course)
4. Prawn cocktail - Skips were particularly pleasant as they melted in the mouth
5. Pickled onion flavour Monster Munch - oh, happy days

Why do I sing?

Eamonn McNicholas, a fellow performer recently asked the question, 'Why do I sing?' He is doing a project on the answers and would like as many as possible, so please go to his blog and leave your comments.

I thought about this question and realised that I always have - I used to sing at school and in the church choir. I always just liked the release it seemed to give me, and I was told I had a decent voice. I sang for myself, all the time, around the house and while out walking or playing in the back garden. We had a 'no singing at the table' rule in our house, which I can only assume was because I used to do it to an annoying extent.

I copied and mimicked, and I invented my own tuneless little ditties. As I grew up a bit, I discovered harmonies, and I loved to play around with those. And then I discovered that I could entertain others by singing (people will listen to a song in a way that they won't listen to a poem or a Shakespeare soliloquy). Children love it, whether you are soothing recalcitrant babies or making up little routines with nieces and nephews, they appreciate the music. And this was a gift. My siblings didn't sing. I guess it was my point of difference. I assumed the role of family entertainer.

When I started doing musical theatre and singing in more discerning circles I soon realised that although I may be considered good, I would never be accounted great. This didn't particularly bother me (I had discovered that I prefered 'straight' acting and plays anyway) as I sang purely for fun and not for acclaim. It was social - once again, people are more likely to join in a song with than they are a recitation of one of Arthur Miller's more poignant speeches.

And it releases emotion and endorphines. I usually use sport for this - running, cycling, swimming, yoga, or even a brisk walk can make me feel better both mentally and physically. Until I was injured and on crutches, unable to exercise. I missed the buzz and the outlet. I went for a sing with some friends. I expelled air and opened up my lungs, controlling my breathing and tuning in to those around me. I felt those endorphines again - it was a natural high and I just really enjoyed it.

So, in short, I suppose that's my answer - I sing because I enjoy it. What about you?

Friday Five: Favourite books of 2011

Earlier this week I did a piece on Radio New Zealand National about my favourite books of 2011. Slightly misleadingly, it was introduced as the books I have read over the summer, which isn't exactly true and has led many people to believe that I read incredibly fast - I don't; I just spend a lot of time reading! Furthermore, among the books I read over summer was Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay, which was actually written in 1967 and so not exactly admissible.

As I pointed out, I usually read fiction over and above non-fiction, so five of my favourites are fiction. I also included an autobiography, however, which was The Fry Chronicles by Stephen Fry, the second part of his autobiography, in which he regales us with his progress through university and his first forays into university, acting and comedy. He has a lot to say on all fronts (the book is 425 pages long) and there is a further instalment to come. This may seem slightly excessive, but he writes as he speaks; with screaming intelligence and an evident love of language, never saying in ten words, what he could in a hundred.

The others are as follows (in no particular order):

1. Gillespie and I by Jane Harris - Harriet Baxter is an elderly spinster writing her memoir about events in Glasgow in 1888 when she arrived in town for the International Exhibition, and stayed due to her friendship with the Gillespie family. This culminated in a criminal trial which she dissects here with ever-increasing ambiguity. Memoirs are always unreliable by definition; referring to contemporary known facts does not make them any less so. Trust is a tenuous commodity and its nature makes this an intriguing novel, and Jane Harris a beguiling author. More please!
2. The German Boy by Patricia Wastvedt - This is a novel of endless love and terrible war, but it is nowhere near as trite as that makes it sound. Peopled with many characters, the story revolves around sisters Karen and Elisabeth, their friend, Rachel, and her brother, Michael. Elisabeth and Michael experience a connection - "the arrow through the heart that stops it beating" - in a London kitchen in 1927, and it takes us 356 pages to discover whetther they ever act upon it. Full of miscommunication, passionate relationships and spontaneous decisions that return with haunting consequences, there is a touch of Atonement about the novel.
3. Snowdrops by A D Miller -  A D Miller's debut novel is a high-class, up-market mystery thriller with short, punchy descriptions and a gathering sense of intrigue. Set against the ferociously challenging backdrop of a financially progressive Russia, it was a surprise but deserved inclusion on the shortlist for the 2011 Man Booker Prize. Nick decides to make a career and lifestyle move to Moscow to prevent himself from succumbing to the "thiry-something zone of disappointment". He is soon revelling in a glitzy social whirl of parties and nightclubs, meeting the enigmatically beautiful Masha, with whom he becomes infatuated. Suspicions begin to knock at Nick's subconscious, but he refuses to let them in. Snowdrops are "the bodies that come to light with the thaw. Drunks mostly, and homeless people who give up and lie down in the snow, and the odd vanished murder victim." But snowdrops are also fragile harbingers of the promise of spring and new beginnings. The sentences are short, and the pace is fast, but the apparent simplicity belies poetry and humanity that will melt your defences.
4. State of Wonder by Ann Patchett - It seems impossible to review this novel without mentioning Heart of Darkness as there are obvious similarities: a nervous acolyte (Marina Singh) travels through jungle and up river (the Rio Negro) to meet an old mentor (Dr Annick Swenson), who has gone native, and try and return her to 'society'. She is forced out of her comfortable surroundings to face tribal civilizations and to question her accepted Western ethics. Patchett conveys the sense of place and discomfort brilliantly as the Western world collides brutally with the law of the jungle. Medical and environmental ethics are questioned as Marina finds herself among an Amazonian tribe called the Lakashi; a fascinating, if slightly stereotypical, case study. There are many relationships in the novel: husbands and wives; lovers; parents and children; community and colleagues, but the central one is that between Marina and Dr Swenson - erstwhile student and teacher.
5. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman - The eponymous imperfectionists are those who work together, or more often apart, to publish an English-language newspaper in Rome. Individual chapters are devoted to different characters so the novel is told from a variety of viewpoints and the separate stories come together to make a comprehensive novel, just as feature sections should complement each other in a good publication. People used to be informed by publications comprised of real people meeting each day to discuss and communicate; now there are silos of information delivered from isolated consoles. The novel yearns for human contact, with all its imperfections. This was Tom Rachman's debut novel - I will be eagerly awaiting the next one.

You can listen to my interview here:

Friday Five: Hairstyles

Going to the hairdresser can make you feel great. A good hairstyle can give you confidence, whereas a bad one can ruin your day. Of course, different styles suit different people (and different moods and occasions), but there are some classics that always look stylish.

5 Favourite Hairstyles:

1. The beehive - preposterous but fabulous. I'm thinking Dusty Springfield, Bridget Bardot, Audrey Hepburn here; not Amy Winehouse or Marge Simpson
2. The crew cut, or variations on the theme for men, such as the suedehead, which is basically a growing out crewe cut. It's just a good, honest style that indicates you're not so vain that you spend hours messing about with hair product - I find that important in a man
3. The asymmetric bob - I'm aware that it doesn't suit everyone and is possibly detrimental to your eyesight, but it's intriguing
4. Beach hair - the long, tousled, curly, side-parted, messy but not look. You know; the one favoured by the likes of Kate Hudson, Heidi Klum and Penelope Cruz - of course it helps to have big eyes and a gorgeous smile
5. Clive Owen - yes, I know that's not actually a haircut per se, but whatever style you would call his just looks effortlessly perfect - short, practical, sexy and sophisticated - lovely; just lovely.

Submarine

Submarine
(dir. Richard Ayoade)

Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) deadpans early on in Submarine, “The only way to get through life is to picture myself in an entirely different reality”. With cringing self-consciousness he imagines he is original, although he is actually an achingly average adolescent. His primary concerns are to protect his parents’ marriage and to lose his virginity.

Richard Ayoade directs a superbly self-aware film that knows what it wants and isn’t afraid to draw attention to how to get it. Oliver maintains a voice-over at pertinent points in the film, noting things like, “I wish life could be more like American soap operas – then when things got dramatic you could fade down and pick it up later.” When a dramatic event does present itself he sighs, “Sometimes I wish there was a film crew following my every move. At this rate I’ll only have enough budget for a zoom.” And indeed, there is a zoom shot. It’s painfully artistic but manages to be entertaining too.

Oliver’s parents (Lloyd and Jill) are excruciatingly embarrassing in the way that only parents of teenagers can be. They are played with compelling awfulness by Noah Taylor and Sally Hawkins (whom I normally find extremely annoying – here she is pitched just right). Oliver spies on them and monitors their conjugal relations by their use of the dimmer switch in the bedroom.

When Graham Purvis (Paddy Considine with a ghastly Paul King mullet), an old flame of Jill’s, moves in next-door, Oliver fears for her fidelity, especially when she attends Graham’s new-age nonsense meetings and disappears with him into the back of a sign-painted black transit van. Her husband Lloyd, reacts with a dignified depression that only makes sense once you’ve left pretentious puberty behind.

Oliver doesn’t want to be a bully but if that’s what it takes to fit in at school (filmed with painful nostalgia at Bishop Gore High School in Swansea) and get the girl (the oh-so-cool pyromaniac Jordana Bevan – Yasmin Paige) then he’ll give it a go. He fancies himself as something of a hero in his duffel coat and considers the fact that he is roundly ridiculed to be the fault of his peers, not his affectations.

He tells Jordana “It might be nice to develop more mutual interests besides spitting and setting things on fire” and their tentative sexual encounters are reminiscent of every awkward experience you haven’t managed to eternally erase from your memory. He conducts a Super 8 eight footage of memory – capturing a grainy montage of ‘two weeks of love-making’.

Typically emotionally stunted and self-absorbed, when his parents threaten to split up all he can think of is how this will affect him. He is equally insensitive to Jordana’s troubles, and is simply annoyed that “in the Top Trumps of parental problems, cancer beats infidelity”. All this is played out against the sublime whimsy of Alex Turner’s (The Arctic Monkeys) music, including sample lyrics such as “You can leave off my lid and I won’t even lose my fizz” and “If you’re going to try and walk on water make sure you’re wearing comfortable shoes.”

I’m not quite sure in which era this film is meant to be set – sometime at the end of the last century at a guess. The clothes and hairstyles are early 80s; some of the cultural references are late 80s/ early 90s, and the playground argot (such as the use of the term ‘gay’ in a derogatory manner: ‘displays of emotion are gay’) is later again. Mind you, time loses all dimensions in South Wales so we are genuinely adrift.

The cast (young and adult) are superb and the acting is nuanced and intelligent. As the title suggests, there is much to negotiate beneath the seemingly placid surface, suspended in suburbia trying to decide whether to sink or swim. This is definitely better than your average film flotsam.

Films watched in 2011 (Part Three)

No Strings Attached (dir. Ivan Reitman, 2011)
A bonk buddy film in which the platonic friends with benefits fall for each other – oh, how original. It’s meant to be different because it’s the girl who shows indifference, but she changes in the end, as we knew from the beginning.

The Oxford Murders (dir. Alex de la Iglesia, 2008)
The billing of Elijah Wood and John Hurt led me to expect more than a Dan Brown does Midsomer Murders type of affair, sadly erroneously as it turns out. That’s actually unfair to Midsomer Murders, which is at least entertaining.

P.S., I Love You (dir. Richard La Gravenese, 2007)
Yes, Hilary is still wank but Gerard Butler does sexy Celtic goofball pretty well (as a Scotsman he plays Irish well enough that most Americans won’t know the difference). The only surprise is that he’s meant to be the dead one sending messages from beyond the grave, while she is the one acting like she’s in the wooden box. On the movie-review site, Rotten Tomatoes, this was liked by 82% of audiences as opposed to only 11% of top critics. That tells you all you need to know about the target market.

Portrait of a Lady (dir. Jane Campion, 1996)
Nicole Kidman has become very hit and miss – here she is very miss, but she still looks good as does everything else – and therein lies the problem. The slavish adherence to Henry James’ classic lacks any nuance.

Rage (dir. Sally Potter, 2009)
Disappointingly forgettable despite an excellent cast (Judi Dench; Eddie Izzard; Lily Cole; Jude Law; Dianne Weist; Steve Buscemi; David Oyelowo) and great premise – an exposé of the fashion industry caught on candid (cellphone) camera. It might have made a decent experimental theatre piece or even installation artwork, but doesn’t capture enough interest on screen.

The Road to Guantanamo (dir Mat Whitecross and Michael Winterbottom, 2006)
A topical reconstruction of events that led to three British citizens being held at Guantanamo Bay. I don’t agree that denying human rights legislation to detain potential terrorists in the war against terror is acceptable. Neither do I believe these guys are entirely innocent or truthful – if you are going to a friend’s wedding in Pakistan, why would you pop into Afghanistan as the borders are closing for three weeks instead? This and many other questions remain unanswered, as reasons and motives remain buried beneath too much sound and fury – more drama than documentary.

Sanctum (dir. Alister Grierson, 2011)
Australian cave-diving drama with pitiful dialogue and acting, and clearly signposted undercurrents of father/ son tension – supposedly better in 3D; yet another example of technology swamping all other cinematic considerations.

Scott Pilgrim vs the World (dir. Edgar Wright, 2010)
An intelligent and amusing way of melding the virtual with the visual in an oddly appealing teen romance portrayed as an X-box game.

Sex and the City (dir. Michael Patrick King, 2008)
Before having seen this film I didn’t know what all the fuss was about. Apart from daring to suggest that women over 30 should be allowed out in public (and on celluloid), I still don’t.

A Single Man (dir. Tom Ford, 2009)
Colin Firth plays slightly against type in a serious role about an English professor struggling to cope with his partner’s death in early 1960s America – an alien in LA before it really came out. So good it hurts.

The Social Network (dir. David Fincher, 2010)
Facebook is not the devil’s work – it is a pathetic attempt by selfish whining nerds to be taken seriously. A good script and solid performances prove we should communicate off-line more.

Source Code (dir. Duncan Jones, 2011)
A modern Minority Report – you get to go back in time (over and over again) until you can change the course of history, but only if you’re prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice – and if you’re not, the American government will make you make it.

State and Main (dir. David Mamet, 2000)
Funny, clever, self-reverential film about making a film. An amusing script and intelligent acting, but possibly too in on its own jokes to be great.

Submarine (dir. Richard Ayoade, 2010)
Gorgeously geeky low-budget Welsh festival film in which 15-year-old Oliver Tate imagines himself as a hero in a film about his life, dealing with angst issues common to teenagers everywhere (and especially in Swansea).

Tamara Drew (dir. Stephen Frears, 2010)
A film based on a comic based on a book should by rights be a huge incoherent mess, but it works brilliantly due to sensitive directing and a stellar cast – Gemma Arterton; Roger Allam; Dominic Cooper; Tamsin Greig.

Too Big to Fail (dir. Curtis Hanson, 2011)
Excellent – great acting, snappy dialogue and a huge issue: focussing on the Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy and the subsequent global financial meltdown. It is delivered with intelligence and dignity, bravely putting forward both sides of the argument.

The Tourist (dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2010)
Johnny Depp, Paul Bettany, Rufus Sewell, espionage plot, Venice setting, canal chases..., what’s not to like? Two words: Angelia Jolie – it seems she can ruin just about anything.

The Tree of Life (dir. Terrence Malick, 2011)
Pretentious, art-house, drug-addled, irritating nonsense – Brad Pitt and Sean Penn are wasting their time, and mine.

The Trip (dir. Michael Winterbottom, 2011)
Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon play sort of themselves in a semi-scripted not-quite road trip as they travel the North of England in the bleak (but beautiful) mid-winter, dining at restaurants and ‘critiquing’ the food – ‘the tomato soup was tomatoey. And soupy.’ – while arguing over who does the best Michael Caine impression. What could be better? Not a lot. This homesick-inducing film would have to be my favourite of the year.

True Grit (dir. Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, 2010)
Oscar-nominated Western revenge action quest – I haven’t seen the John Wayne original, but the friend I saw it with says he has and it’s just as good in a slightly different way.

Up in the Air (dir. Jason Reitman, 2009)
Slick and diverting, likeable without being too demanding, and ultimately positive without being saccharine – and that’s just George Clooney. One great line of many: “We’re two people who get turned on by elite status. I think cheap is our starting point.” This fine example of the friends with benefits theme is anything but cheap, arguing in a roundabout fashion that everybody needs somebody to love.

Wendy and Lucy (dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2008)
A vagrant girl forms few attachments as strong as the one with her dog. It’s slow, gentle, slightly haunting and quiet, and you know you will cry.

Winter’s Bone (dir. Debra Granik, 2010)
Girl attempts to track down her druggie dad in a grim landscape, while playing the tough oldest sister with family responsibility. Jennifer Lawrence was rightfully nominated for an Oscar for her gutsy performance, and deserved it more than Natalie Portman. The film was also nominated for Motion Picture of the Year, but didn’t stand a chance against The King’s Speech.

Zombieland (dir. Ruben Fleischer, 2009)
Zombie apocalypse comedy with Jessie Eisenberg (before he did The Social Network) as a shy student trying to get home in a weird and not-so-wonderful world. He teams up with veteran Woody Harrelson as a vengeful redneck zombie slayer in a series of stock scenes (deserted supermarket; plush mansion; funfair rides and shooting arcades) reinvented with inspirational nonsense. Banjos can be deadly.