Watching - December 2021

Christmas on 5th Avenue (2021)

Slightly above average Hallmark (or similar) Christmas TV movie. Entirely predictable but kind of fun. C said she'd read the book on which it is based, so I ordered that from the library and read that too.

Nostalgic Christmas (2019)

Formulaic stuff, with two leads who look way too airbrushed to be real, but the story is sweet and wholesome.

Love Actually (2003)

Probably my favourite Christmas film, despite being the usual, frustrating Richard Curtis mix of terrible, single-use-only jokes and genuinely moving scenes. And in fairness, some of the humour does stand up to repetition - which is probably more than can be said about the fat jibes. There's some great performances, but overall it's probably Emma Thompson who stands out (although in fairness her role has more emotional depth than, say, Hugh Grant's). And great choice of "God Only Knows" as the outro music.

Abominable (2019)

This was on the telly so we watched it, despite having never heard of it before. It's cute but not deserving of the level of critical praise it seemed to get (82% on Rotten Tomatoes): the animation is the same as all DreamWorks films, with no real improvement noticeable over earlier films (unlike Pixar and Disney, whose animation get better each time), the plot is pretty predictable and the deus ex machina of the Yeti's magical powers is over-used. My guess this was aimed at the Chinese market, as it's set in Shanghai and when challenged over the use of a controversial map boundary, Universal refused to remove it - which nails their colours firmly to the mast on this issue.

Encanto (2021)

Disney's big holiday release doesn't disappoint. The story runs on fairly well-worn rails but reliably delivers top quality entertainment - laughs and sighs and a few tears - while the animation is so impressive, not just for the level of detail but for the expressiveness: I don't think I've seen such human faces before. The songs, by Lin-Manuel Miranda, are very musical theatre (and have inevitable shades of Moana) and not really my thing, but the sequences during the musical items are stunning. Family fun, enjoyed by our family.

Frozen II (2019)

Family's suggestion for Boxing Day family viewing. Meh.

The Beatles: Get Back (2021)

I've been listening to The Beatles since before I can remember, I've read plenty of books about them and I've even met and chatted with Mark Lewisohn (at a wedding). I'd consider myself a fan. Yet this was a struggle - a really odd mix of fascinating and really dull. Watching it is a bit like panning for gold: hours and hours (literally) of low-grade musical farting around and then, suddenly, everything coalesces into "Let It Be" or "The Long and Winding Road", and suddenly we're seeing alchemy in action. I think it's important that this material is preserved, but if this is the "Director's Cut", then I wish there'd be a "Studio Cut" that's about a third of the length. Yes, anyone who's been in a band will recognise the interminable tediousness of trying to get everyone to play the same thing (watching this gives me a new respect for Ringo, who waits patiently and then just calmly plays perfectly each time), but I'm not sure I needed to see another band, even The Beatles, doing it in such detail. That said, the last episode, with the concert on the roof, is much better, and it's good to see the songs come together (to coin a phrase). So overall, I'm pleased I made the effort to watch it. But can we have a shorter version please? (Here's an interesting piece that discusses similar points.)

Cruella (2021)

Origin stories are all the rage these days (thanks, Marvel) and why should Disney villains be any different? This is a bit of a hodge-podge of film types but is mostly a heist movie, I think (going by Mark Kermode's masterly analysis). Emma Stone (one of my favourite current actors) is very good in bringing a little depth to a role that doesn't have an awful lot. There's plenty going on to keep our attention but overall the film is a bit unengaging.

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Excessive, funny, but soulless and morally suspect.

How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)

New Year's Eve family viewing - a mini-HtTYD-marathon (we don't have the third one for some reason). They're good films, enjoyable and involving, but to anyone familiar with the books - which is all of us in this family, since we have them on audiobook and listened to them in the car a lot when the kids were younger - it's a constant source of puzzlement why the plot was changed so much for the film. Oh well!

Reading - December 2021

Guitar Magazine (December 2021 / Issue 399)

Guitar Magazine (January 2022 / Issue 400)

I've been subscribing to magazines since the early 1990s - blimey, almost thirty years! The titles have changed - Q, Select, Vox, Uncut, The Word, Private Eye, Top Gear, Guitarist, just off the top of my head - but there was always something arriving on my door mat once a month, sometimes several somethings. I think it started with Q, but it's ended here: Guitar is the only magazine I subscribe to now, and it is stopping its print edition and moving entirely online. The final edition isn't anything special, which unfortunately highlights how expensive it is for what it is, given that I can get the same content now for free via a browser. Still, I'm a bit sad that I won't be getting a shiny new magazine through the door any more.

How to Tell If Your Cat is Plotting to Kill You by The Oatmeal/Matthew Inman (2012)

A very nice surprise Chanukah gift from the kids. I first read The Oatmeal ages ago and while the humour is always exactly my thing, it can be very funny. This is a collection of comics that have been published on the web site (e.g. Cat vs Internet) and some new comics, and comes complete with a big pull out poster of the title comic. (As an aside, why do they do this? Once it's folded up in order to go inside the book, it's useless as a decent poster because you'll never get the fold lines out!)

We Can't Keep Meeting Like This by Rachel Lynn Solomon (2021)

Most of the romantic novels I read feature characters who are adults, with jobs and sometimes families to look after - and the target audience is presumably also adult. "Young adult" romantic fiction is about and for teenagers. It's a while since I was a teenager, but I can still remember what it felt like (as I am sure most people can - apparently impressions and memories formed while your brain is still developing are more vivid), and it's nice to be reminded of the intensity of emotions around a first love or crush. This book evokes that very well, and the story is a sweet one of a girl finding her own wishes for the future as well as understanding her feelings for someone else. The fact that the main character is Jewish also appeals, as does the fact that it's never over-explained.

Miracle on 5th Avenue by Sarah Morgan (2016)

This was the source material for the slightly-above-average Christmas schlock movie Christmas on 5th Avenue that we watched earlier this month. The book has exactly the same story arc that any Silhouette/Harlequin/M&B novel does (in fact, it's on the Harlequin imprint MIRA) but at somewhat greater length, which made it feel like it was padded unnecessarily. The plot makes slightly more sense here than it does in the film, but it's still very predictable. That said, I enjoyed it!

No Time Like The Future by Michael J. Fox (2020)

I seem to have inadvertently missed out the third Fox life installment (A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Future) but I suspect that it's fairly similar to this and to his other books: an engaging, readable mix of stories from his recent life and thoughts on what it means. He's consistently open about what is happening to him, but perhaps slightly less reflective on how privileged he is to have the world's best medical care available to him - the privilege afforded by both his fame and fortune.

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (1934)

I caught a bit of the 1974 film on the tellybox over Christmas. I don't think much of Albert Finney's Poirot though, and Kenneth Branagh's 2017 version isn't on any service we have, so I thought I'd read the book again. The actual solution is very imaginative of course, but it's shorter than I remember, and Poirot basically solves it in about fifteen minutes. (And the book is nearly ninety years old! Not my copy, which dates from the 70s.)

The Wolf of Wall Street

Director: Martin Scorcese
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie et al

2013

Excessive and funny, but soulless and morally suspect.

If I remember rightly, the first 18 film I saw was Personal Services (Harrow ABC, with my friend Vashti). I can't help thinking that it would barely scrape a 15 these days, so tame is it by modern standards.

The Wolf of Wall Street is not tame. In fact, it seems to be designed to see how far you can stretch the censor's limits. It's got multiple different drugs being consumed constantly, it set the world record for the most times "fuck" is said in a film, and has more full frontal nudity than any other film I've seen (not that I've done a lot of research into this).

I don't have a problem with any of this - except maybe the nudity, or specifically, the fact that it's nearly all female nudity. I get that the film is about a world of excess and no morals, and women being treated like inanimate playthings is (sadly) a realistic portrayal of this, but it seems very convenient for the film makers to be able to have so many very beautiful, very naked women throughout the film and still claim they're just being true to the source material.

As ever, there are a couple of questions that have to be asked. Firstly, could the story have been told as effectively without so much flesh on display? Yes - at least, the nudity could be implied with the same effect, I think. For example, Margot Robbie apparently refused the offer to film one of the most notorious scenes with a robe on, because she felt that the character would be naked. I think she's right, but it's easily possible to make the audience realise that the character is naked, with all that says about the character, without the actress actually being naked.

Secondly, are men being asked to do the same thing (as Caitlin Moran asks in How To Be A Woman)?Unsurprisingly, no; certainly not in this film and I don't believe generally. Sure, there's plenty of sex scenes, but apparently men don't often fuck naked - although, fair play to DiCaprio, we do see him "full back-al" (to quote Steven Moffat's fantastic Coupling) - and of course it would be completely unacceptable if there were any good-looking men showing their genitals. The one (in)famous scene where Jonah Hill (no offense, but not handsome) supposedly gets his cock out is so obviously done with a prosthetic that it's almost insulting, not just to all the women who are expected to really bare all, but to the audience, who presumably can't cope with the real thing. (If my memory serves, this is one thing that Personal Services does have in it at one point - an actual, real penis.)

My point here is not that I dislike nudity in films - I don't mind it at all. I just think that in real life, men get naked just as much as women do, and films should reflect this. Maybe the film makers here would claim that the balance in The Wolf of Wall Street is correct, for this story - and maybe they're right. And of course there are societal double standards at play here, since if you showed as much male nudity as there is female nudity, it wouldn't get past the censors at all.

Anyway, that extended point aside - and I am fairly certain that The Wolf of Wall Street is far from being the only film guilty of exploiting this particularly cultural loophole - I enjoyed the film (yes, even the naked women). It's very well made, entertainingly told, and even if it didn't need to be three hours long, it doesn't drag. DiCaprio is superb, and you get a sense of how charismatic the real Jordan Belfort, whose story this is, was to achieve what he did (although bearing in mind that Belfort's book was the source, and he was involved in the making, I think it's fair to assume that some of this was exaggerated).

However, ultimately, despite the participants' strenuous claims to the contrary, this is a film that glamourizes excess. There's very little sense of any ramifications for their selfishness and unpleasantness: Belfort's jail sentence occupies only a couple of minutes of screen time and is mainly shown as a pleasant summer retreat, with added barbed wire. More importantly, there is no acknowledgement at all of the thousands of real people who got swindled by these jerkoffs. Meanwhile, Jordan Belfort gets a cameo in the film, publicity for his current real-life business (motivational speaking) and will be regarded by many more people now as a man who achieved the kind of success they aspire to. I'm pleased I watched the film, but it's morally suspect and it seems obvious to me that it was made in the same spirit as the story it tells - to make money, regardless.