Edifying Evenings and the Great War...

Right, yesterday in a bid to better myself I attended a talk. Now, I could have stayed in, I could have watched Holby City or some other Wednesday evening nonsense, but instead I went to see Professor Richard Holmes give a talk entitled 'Tommy', loosely based on his acclaimed book of the same name (as opposed to the rock opera by The Who).

Holmes is a hugely respected military historian and many of you will have perhaps seen his programmes on TV (if not look at UKTV History, one of them's bound to be on) and will be aware of his astonishing factual knowledge, but as well as this there's a humility to his tales. He does not feel compelled to rely on the cheap shocks and gory theatrics that many modern historians pepper their programmes with. One of his most enduring series 'War Walks' is available here on Youtube and as one might imagine features a lot of walking, but even then it's simple walking towards the camera (with the cameraman backpeddling furiously) there's very little incessant hand waving, like your Schamas and your Starkeys, instead he offers a few pointed directions, stopping only to converse in French with a munitions expert and then casually carry on the narrative.

Holmes as a speaker is very much the same as Holmes the author- scholarly, equal parts lugubrious and droll, but most of all passionate about history. He spends much of each year in Flanders fields, examing the pockmarked remnants of the Western front and has an extensive, perhaps intimate, knowledge of what I would venture to be his favourite topic, the Great War and it was the objective of his talk (as it was his book) to challenge the popular conceptions about this oft-considered dark chapter in British military history.

He begins with a criticism of most Brits approach to the Great War- poetry. I should make clear that he has nothing but the utmost respect and admiration of these great poets- Owen, Sasoon, Gurney- but he simply feels that impression that one gleans from their work is not an accurate portrayal of the average British Tommy. Over the course of an hour he explains the changing face of the procedure of everyday life over those 4 years of war with a good deal of charm- from the stand-to before first light, to sneaking some food and a 1/16th of a pint of rum at night. 'Breakfast' he explained 'consisted of military order biscuit, bacon and a few drops of tea. The food was carried in hessian sacks, now, hessian has a sort of creosote-y flavour, a little unfortunate. The tea will taste a little of petrol as the petrol cans doubled as water containers. So your tea was a bit petrol-y and your bacon tasted of hessian, but you were generally in good spirits.' He explained that when the men were in reserve the padres would organise a film for them to watch though 'generally a Tommy was more interested in alcohol and women. The padres helped with the former and some of them- God bless them- with the latter.' As one can see, Holmes has a good deal of dry wit in his delivery but in lecturer mode it is appropriately always tempered with a sense of sobriety, seriousness, menace perhaps.

Though his talk is amusing, the underlying sense of melancholy is just as strong, particularly when he is discussing the first-hand accounts and the men joining Kitchener's moustachioed recruitment drive. 'The idea of the British Army is a fallacy.' He explained. 'In real terms, it was a group of tribes working in more or less voluntary collaboration with each other.' (Holmes would know, he achieved the rank of Brigadier in a celebrated military career). He went on to explain how the idea of the battalion was far stronger than that of a 'British Army' and of how these tribes were plucked from already existing groups. The Accrington Pals were raised from the Lancashire town and surrounding villages by its mayor, Glasgow produced 3 brigades: one from the city centre, one from the staff of the tramways (whose CO was the General Manager) and 'one' Holmes announced 'from the shopkeepers of the city, called- and it almost makes me cry- the Glasgow Commercials'.

He explained how the revisionist 'lions led by donkeys' opinion of the 60s did a great injustice to the British officers, more of whom gave their lives in this war than any other. Almost half of the officers by 1918 were raised from the ranks, breaking down the class barriers, however when it came to the end of the war they were left jobless and the social upheaval that they had spurred on in those 4 years had fizzled out. During the Q&A session, Holmes fielded a question on the subject of Haig being the 'Butcher of the Somme'. He sprang to the defence of the much-maligned Field Marshal claiming that, faced with such a green group of soldiers in Kitchener's Army and a lack of decisive methods of breaking the trench stalemates, Haig had to toughen up the country to the horrors of war and that if he had failed to do so, there would have been no victory in 1918. As he closed, he gave a powerful but much underused argument of the war, that Britain did a bloody good job, ordinary Tommies and Officers alike, in almost impossible conditions.

Naturally it's impossible to anatomise the experiences over 4 years of the average British soldier in an hour long lecture, but Holmes gives it a bloody good go and one can't help but be sucked in by his charisma as a speaker. He's intensely knowledgable, witty and, in conversation, a very warm character with a true love of his subject. He spoke for an hour in great detail without so much as one piece of notepaper to aid him and fielded a number of insightful questions with remarkable ease. His final statement was a resounding one and I wholeheartedly agree. While there were terrible losses, we should take great pride in what our brave Tommies, their commanding officers and the soldiers of the Commonwealth achieved against the formidable German army in those 4 long years and though our last remnants of the war passed away with Harry Patch last year, we should never do them the injustice of looking upon it as the darkest hour of 20th century Britain, instead we should venerate those young men with us no more and remember it as the hour in which Britain won a remarkable, hard-fought victory.

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics... and Why I'm Not Here Next Week...

This is just a quickie (sometimes I have to do real life things too) to have a brief rant and explain why you might have to wait a while for another Friday Pictorial.

Many of you will know that James Cameron's Pocahon... Avatar has become the highest grossing film in movie history, not because more people have seen it than any other film, but rather because most cinemas see fit to charge extra for 3D films, meaning that you pay extra for a pair of tacky glasses and a 3 hour headache. Also meaning that it was a shoe-in to smash the box-offices records. Clever. Does this really count? Really? On the other hand I did read a cracking review of it on the Guardian website.

In today's other statistics news, Clint Eastwood was named America's favourite filmstar and why not, he's terrific. I've spent many a happy hour watching the Dollars trilogy and am looking forward to Invictus (featuring Bath Rugby's former back-rower Zak Feuanati as Jonah Lomu). The favourite sons of the western remained in power, with John Wayne achieving an impressive 7th place, despite being dead for more than 30 years and not having released a film since 1976's The Shootist.

Right, now on to my absence next week. I'm going to ride down mountains on two planks of carbon-fibre, while hopefully avoiding serious injury. This means one of two things- firstly, I'd better hope that I can remember how to ski fairly sharpish and secondly, that there probably won't be any blogs this Friday or next week. There should be another quick one tomorrow, though, if that provides any comfort at all.

The Twittering...

Right, as you'll denote from the wee widget on the side of this page I am one of the illustrious Twitterati (@SamuelERobinson), albeit a fairly unsuccessful one. I have, at time of writing, no less than 812 tweets for a mere 43 followers that's a dire tweet:follower ratio of 19:1. I'd like to think my treats (as @LloydWoolf likes to call them) are everything one would look for in a twitterer: Concise, often witty, sometimes banal and yet in 10 months of tweeting I have only 43 followers. Don't get me wrong, I love my followers like family, but within an hour of Bill Gates joining Twitter he had half a million followers (plus this marvellous treat from @Glinner) and Twitter crashed, prompting this picture from some unknown internet genius. I know that the comparison with one of the richest men in the world will do me no favours at all, but I have high standards. Perhaps I should take you back to the very beginning.

March 2009. As an avid listener to Richard Bacon's late-night 5live show (and all the honours and privileges that go with it...) I heard him discuss this new exciting form of social networking, Twitter. 'Ah, what wonders lay within the elusive 140 character Twoosh' I mused and consequently signed up. Bacon was at one point (and possibly still is) the most followed Brit on Twitter, with an astonishing 50,000 more than legendary Twitterer (now in self-enforced exile) Stephen Fry and yet he has only 530 tweets and has tailed off since bagging the prestigious 2 til 4 slot. I dream of 1000 followers, let alone over 1,300,000 and yet for love nor money, nor pestering comedians with @replies have I made significant gains in that time. The summer of 2009 was particularly hard- I managed to lose 10 or so followers for no real reason in particular, but I clawed my way back, slowly but surely.

I know that it has become somewhat fashionable to knock Twitter (yes, Gervais, I'm looking in your direction) and that some have tried but failed to grasp the catharsis, skill and artistry of the 140 character medium (Gervais again, he's a funny guy, but you can't keep the Twitterati down) but the truth is it is a masterful way of honing your writing skills. The 140 character limit forces you to be concise with your wit and numerous comedy writers and performers from the aforementioned Graham Linehan to the criminally funny @serafinowicz (how did he become so very good at this? I suspect a Faustian pact may have played a part...) have grasped this challenge with both hands and created some of the most innovative, interactive wit on the interweb.

There are trending topics for the populars and the Americans (usually nonsense about some Justin Bieber type or other or just plain ridiculous rumours i.e. Johnny Depp and Jeff Goldblum dying - not together, there wasn't some kind of agreement) but the real joy of Twitter is in the simple mirth generated by a brief sentence or two. Many of the finest comic minds in Britain have used it as a promotion, practice and outreach tool and it allows us mere mortals a wild e-lunge at them as we grab their humourous coat-tails and are dragged along with them. My fellow comedy bloggers (@simone_QoF and @JamesWalkerMan) and I have found it a rather handy little distraction through which we are able to investigate the inner-workings of the successful comedian's mind (as well as plug our blogs, of course...).

Another joy of Twitter is the hashtag. This minute piece of internet paraphernalia allows you to lump your tweets in with people talking about the same thing or even create your own fleeting hubs of discussion, allowing you a few seconds of illusory influence before someone more famous than you comes up with something else. For the last week or so I have been trying desperately to get my hashtag #unsuccessfultvpitches (for example: Being Herman - A number of famous Herman((n))s ((thinking Maier, van Rompuy, Li but not Goering)) share a Bristol flat) off the ground (click link for full list and details). It's a simple comic premise allowing you to create a pun on a tv programme and a witty synopsis and yet only me and one other person have contributed. Never shall I cease to attempt garnering suggestions for it and I may well include blog updates of my success (not very likely) or otherwise (highly probable).

I suppose the nub of the issue is that Twitter remains very much a (and I hate to use this miserable titbit of media vernacular) Marmite topic. I personally love it, it has become somewhat of an addiction for me and yet the satisfaction of creating a perfect, witty 140-character one-liner is often outweighed by the ignominy felt after the general disinterest of High Twitiety. Even deceased, legendary, morbid melancholic poet Edgar Allen Poe spends almost as much time lamenting his lack of followers as I do- 'I remain perplex as to why a writer of my wit, imagination & magnitude doesn't possess as many followers as half-wit B-list actors' and 'What must I do for you ungrateful scalawags to adore me even more?'. Both complaints that I myself have just about managed to refrain from spewing out into the e-verse.

'What must I do for you ungrateful Scalawags to adore me even more?' Truer words on the human condition have never been uttered.

Sympathy For The Devil...

Well, last week saw the return of The CW's brilliant Supernatural from it's mid-season break. It's now entering the second half of it's fifth season in which the complex storyline that has been built up over the last four seasons will be resolved. The show has a huge cult following on both sides of the Atlantic but its basic premise of two brothers hunting supernatural beings could so easily be poorly done, so what is it that makes Supernatural such a brilliant show?

The success of any show invariably hinges on its main characters and Supernatural is no exception to this. The relationship between Sam and Dean Winchester carries the show and is fraught with twists, turns, laughter and tears, all portrayed brilliantly by actors Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles. Series 4 saw the arrival of the angel Castiel (Misha Collins), considered by many to be the third main character and he has quickly become a fan favourite for his deadpan delivery and flecks of near-autistic angelic naivety.

The show weaves it own mythos from every corner of urban legend and mythology- pagan, christian, ancient or modern- and has succeeded in creating a rich tapestry of characters and creatures and has put a new spin on several traditional monsters. The majority of the episodes in each series are self-contained meaning that new viewers can simply drop-in, however the writers are still able to carry the overall story arc throughout, with a handful of episodes solely dedicated to this purpose.

The show has an incredibly distinctive style, most episodes taking place along the backroads of small-town America (though principal photography takes place almost exclusively in Canada) and a number of key elements have become every bit as legendary as the characters and the creatures they hunt. Perhaps the best examples of this is Dean's 1967 Chevrolet Impala, which is the brothers' primary method of transportation and has as much a right to be considered a star of the show as any of the characters and the Colt, a legendary gun forged by Samuel Colt capable of killing anything... well, almost anything- turns out that there are five things in creation that it can't defeat (one of which just happens to be the most nefarious arch-villian of the show).

There too is a brilliant sense of humour and fun throughout Supernatural and even in the most dire of circumstances, the Winchester boys usually have a quip or two up their sleeves. Dean has the lion's share of memorable lines, but each episode remains endlessly quotable and a number of supporting characters provide their fair share of hilarity (Castiel's reactions to human quirks are invariably priceless and cult author/prophet Chuck Shirley provides a number of hapless laugh out loud moments). There's a self-awareness to the show too, something which I always consider a valuable quality for any TV programme to have. It's not afraid of poking fun at itself and at its legions of loyal fans (a recent episode centering around a Supernatural convention was a clever example of this), which can only be a good thing.

It also features one of the best TV soundtracks in living memory. An exceptional original underscore is married with a smattering of classic rock hits from bands such as AC/DC, Blue Oyster Cult, Foreigner, Lynyrd Skynyrd and many more. The music is the underlying foundation of the show and a constant frame of reference for Dean, creating an endless source of jokes, aliases and arguments on the subject.

In short, it's a remarkable show that takes the ideas of horror (that Hollywood constantly grapples and often fails with), comedy (ditto) and good old fashion brotherly love and melds them into 40 minute rollercoasters of laughter, fright and action that exists within its own fully-fledged mythology. In complete layman's terms, think Dukes of Hazzard meets An American Werewolf In London meets Wanted Dead Or Alive by Bon Jovi and your a little way towards understanding what I'm on about.

From the moment I saw the opening few minutes of the pilot episode, I knew it was going to be a good show, by the end of the twelfth episode 'Faith' (which remains one of my favourite episodes of any American series) I knew it was going to be a great show and after four and half series, it has sustained this high quality wonderfully. This fifth season has often been touted as the last, the big finale, the final showdown, but rumours have surfaced of a sixth and both Ackles and Padalecki have options for a sixth on their contracts, however this is purely conjecture (but if it is true, feel free to say you saw it here first...). It is in my eyes one of the best-written and best-acted shows on television and is not as recognised as it surely deserves to be. So, do yourself a favour and pick up the Season 1-4 boxset now, it even has a nice picture of the Impala on the box. What more could you want? (Don't answer that, I just thought it'd be a snappy ending)




Things I Also Watched Recently...
As well as Supernatural, I caught up with plenty of films that I should have watched a long time ago, these included: The Damned United (touching romantic comedy about Brian Clough and Peter Taylor...), Hellboy II (del Toro is an unadulterated genius- the King Midas of film making) and The Wrestler (during which I nearly had a bit of a weep, in a totally manly way...).

The Friday Pictorial: Steamboat Blog Jr.

Ok, so this an exciting new feature called the Friday Pictorial, in which I will attempt to craft some manner of film, cartoon or general visual information for your delectation. Today's is a semi-autobiographical silent movie.




The track is 'Frolic' by Luciano Michelini (yes, the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme...).

Politics or: How I Learnt to Stop Caring and Just Bloody Well Get On With Things...

Despite the long title, this is going to be another collection of ramblings spun around a topical starting point- Scott Brown. This one is a fairly serious one too, because it's hard to be funny about Republicans winning things. Ok, I warned you. I imagine most of you will have gleaned my political stance from my choice of publications, but if by some miracle you haven't, it will doubtless become clear during this post.

Obama's in a bit of a pickle now, what with the election of Scott Brown, who had a cheeky pop at the Healthcare Reform Bill, robbing the Democrats of a filibuster-proof majority. Did the Kennedy's die in vain, so that a dangerous, truck driving Republican Cosmo centrefold could scupper the only sensible piece of American legislation in the last 10 years? Seriously, people might knock the NHS for waiting lists etc. but every Briton should be proud to live in a nation where such an amazing piece of reform is possible and moreover Americans should see that the Healthcare Reform Bill is much more than an excuse to tax some of the Republican elite, it's a way of making sure that every average blue-collar family lingering on the poverty line have access to free, comprehensive and universal healthcare. A hugely admirable, nay, noble crusade.

The seeds of welfare politics were sown by the Liberal Government in the early 1900s, spurred on by doubts over national efficiency to produce a remarkable manifesto of social reform policies, including most importantly of all the National Insurance Act. These weren't vote catching policies, it was true innovative social upheaval by one of the most revolutionary governments in British history and set a precendent for state intervention into healthcare, later capitalised upon by Atlee's post-war Labour Government. The Second World War created the context for change and the NHS was hot on its heels allowing this revolutionary act to be brought in and although concessions were made, it still put an end to private or panel and allowed access at the point of need within the system. A system that, to this day, ensures that everyone is entitled to treatment regardless of social or economic standing.

So why exactly are the Americans dead set against it? I wish I could tell you but now, thanks to Browns devastating election it would seem as though Obama, suffering some of the lowest approval ratings in American history, will have to rethink the bill. It's typical, isn't it- you try and do something to help your country and they turn round and knee you in the rattlers. If he is somehow forced to withdraw the bill, the problem is that when the next global 'pandemic' occurs it won't be the Republican fat cats that suffer, it'll be honest workers struggling to get by who fall victim to medical bills and treatment costs and that just isn't fair. But then life's a shithouse anyway (right kids?) so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

My remedy? Get Bruce Springsteen to record another Born in the USA-style album about the travails of an ordinary blue-collar man, with a finale about him dying because he can't afford to go to hospital.

Right, that's the serious politics out of the way, I'll be funny again tomorrow, I promise.

Disjointed Ramblings About BBC 7... and Let the Right One In

Apologies in advance, this post is likely to be somewhat bitty for a number of reasons. Firstly, it's snowing outside which means that I'll simply have to mention it (in a kind of 'ooh isn't that nice' way rather than the prepsoterous sensationalised '60,000 people to die' kind of way). Secondly, I'm supposed to be going out to collect voxpops for a radio station and I might be cut down in my prime to become some poorly-paid hack/Shackleton. Thirdly, I managed the grand total of 4 and a half hour's sleep last night, so this could well make no sense at all. Right that's all the disclaimers out of the way, so let's get on with it.

The first issue I'd like to discuss is BBC 7. I know what you're thinking- that's not an issue, that's a radio station and well, you'd be right. The issue is probably the undervaluation of this station which provides insomniacs like me with some rather excellent distractions while we're trying and inevitably failing to get to sleep. I guess it could be termed a Specialist station, but then that makes it sound like some weird radio porn (a bit like the 'specialist music' section in smaller branches of HMV- I just want to look at some blues or folk records, don't make me feel like a pervert in the process). BBC 7 features an extensive library of classic and contemporary comedy, drama and documentaries, but the section that I rely most heavily on is the Crime and Thrillers from 1 o'clock onwards, currently featuring the excellent Sherlock Holmes recordings made by Carleton Hobbs and Norman Shelley. It's a rather excellent way of assimilating curios from the sea of classic fiction into your consciousness too- until a couple of weeks ago they had been playing all 30 episodes of Russell Thorndike's Doctor Syn series', narrated by the surprisingly versatile Rufus Sewell.

Then there's the 15 minute drama at 2 o'clock, which since Monday of last week has been H. E. Bates' Love For Lydia, a semi-autobiographical tale set in the roaring twenties, following a journalist named Richardson as he falls for an heiress and proceeds to claim his as one of the most depressing lives ever (when in reality it's the other characters who have a right to feel hard done by). Drawled in Tim Pigott-Smith's rich baritone, we follow the young journo as he is enchanted and summarily rejected by the titular Lydia, whose other suitors proceed to die in increasingly depressing (but also accidentally mildly comic) circumstances. The first fell drunkenly off a bridge while Lydia and Richardson were busy arguing and then last night Tom was found dead with a bullet wound, a policeman claiming that he accidentally shot himself while attempting to traverse a stile ('one of the dangers of carrying a gun at night' !!). Now, I'm largely unfamiliar with the source text, but we have run out of male characters apart from the family's driver Blackie (whose father died) of whom Lydia is a 'business partner', so I can only imagine that he will perhaps drive a car containing all the remaining characters (including Nancy, the only character I have any sympathy for really) off a bridge while shooting himself.

The feature that perpetually torments me is the children's programmes that begin somewhere around five o'clock and feature singing, excitable annoyances (and that's just the presenters...) and an alarming propensity to rasp loudly "Wake Up!" in a curious, terrifying whisper that causes me to sit bolt upright every time, expecting to see the children from M. R. James' Lost Hearts or perhaps Eli from Let The Right One In sitting at the end of my bed. Actually that leads me on to another quick rant. As I mentioned in my post about Highlander, there is a Hollywood remake of Let the Right One In slated for later this year with Cloverfield's Matt Reeves at the helm. As if that wasn't bad enough, the English version will be known as Let Me In (you know you're in trouble when you have to dumb down a five word title for the American market). Director of the original, Tomas Alfredson, was suitably skeptical about what will likely be another trashy horror that somewhat misses the point of the original, quoted as saying 'remakes should be made of movies that aren't very good, it gives you the chance to fix whatever has gone wrong.' Now there's certainly nothing wrong with Alfredson's marvellous adaptation, featuring stellar performances and brilliant cinematography and it was even Mark Kermode's film of the year last year- so why remake it? Well, Reeves offered the defence that he 'has nothing but respect for the film' and even author of the original novel, John Ajvide Lindquist, said he was excited that it would be following the plot of his novel rather than Alfredson's film and that the end result could be quite different. Simon Oakes of Hammer Pictures (yep, that Hammer Pictures) claimed that it would be very close to the original (shooting down Lindquist's dreams in a fiction-y fireball) but made 'very accessible to a wider audience'. So that's any hope well and truly flushed down the Hollywood remake toilet then...