Somers Town, the Movie August 26, 2008
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Camden, Reviews , add a commentSomers Town is not grey. It has trees, and parks and with the warm honey and red brick of its low rise apartment blocks is as attractive as any densely built inner city area. The worst of the experimental social housing architecture of the sixties and seventies never made it here, and most estates are small. Some of us even tend plants in front of our buildings. Its streets are clean, and safer than surrounding wards. Filming in black and white makes it all look grimmer than it really is, and I suppose that was the idea.
Shane Meadows’ Eurostar-sponsored sequel to the award-winning ‘This is England’ is set a few years after the first film when Thomas Turgoose leaves for London, and ends up at St Pancras. Sleeping rough, he is attacked by some yobs who steal his bag and his money. A local woman buys him breakfast and gives him £10, before he hooks up with a young Polish lad, Marieck, and they set about hanging out in Somers Town.
The sponsorship is only obvious if you know it’s there. Marieck’s father is working on St Pancras, and at one point spouts a paean to the wonders of getting to Paris in two hours. The final scenes, in Paris (ie. after a trip on Eurostar), are shot in grainy colour.
Familiar landmarks abound. Marieck’s Dad drinks at the Cock on Charlton St, the boys fall in love with a French waitress at the Golden Tulip, and she lives in Levita House. They steal Tommo some clothes from the Chalton St laundrette and meet a bloke who, somewhat unlikely, rents deck chairs in Purchese St Open Space. Marieck lives in what seems to be a combination of Oakshott Court and a couple of other buildings.
This is an endearing if rather slight film. Tommo reluctantly wears checkered trousers and a dress, as the best clothes in the stolen laundry bag. Marieck’s father is struggling to give his son a better life, while the son spends his days taking photos and not having much to do. The two boys become good friends, but nothing really goes anywhere, and not much happens.
Other reviewers have commented that as the film is only seventy minutes it is a bit of a ripoff for cinema-goers. The Renoir in the Brunswick Centre have rectified this by showing it with a short, ‘ A Dog Altogether’, also by Shane Meadows. If you live here, or are a Shane Meadows fan, it’s worth seeing. Otherwise, perhaps one for a wet Sunday DVD.
Just Because It’s Catherine Tate, It Must Be Funny?? August 25, 2008
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Reviews , add a commentA brash slapper, Catherine Tate in Under the Blue Sky, has come back to his place and they’re getting down to it. He is a little premature and, given the amount of alcohol involved, the evening is over. She regales him with tales of former lovers and his own general inadequacy. Their relationship was ever thus, his unhealthy obsession fed by her stringing him along with contempt. He has compromising photos of her, threatens her and forces himself on her. The dialogue is witty, chuckle-provoking at first, but this is not a scene to provoke the hilarity found by some members of the audience. It’s uncomfortable, a slice of an unpleasant side of life. Although there are shades of her trademark chavs, the comedy here is very black indeed.
This is the second of the three vignettes of love between teachers which make up Under the Blue Sky. Life in the staffroom is fraught with unrequited lusts and misunderstandings. In the first Helen (Lisa Dillon) is in love with commitment-phobe Nick (Chris O’Dowd). He ‘values their friendship’, she can’t let him go. She’s the sort of woman who, if you know her, you just have to sit there waiting for the train crash and pick up the pieces.
The third is the only one which sorts itself out well. Francesca Annis does a poignant turn as Anna, the teacher in her fifties in love with her thirty-something friend. Angst at the age gap is overcome, and the audience gets to leave on a happy ending.
I went for the names - Catherine Tate and Francesca Annis - and they justify the hype. Tate’s very physical acting as she morphs from desire to disgust to fear seems over the top on the small screen, but from 50 metres in the stalls, is gripping.
Under the Blue Sky is at the Duke of York’s Theatre until 20 September. For 90 minutes with no interval, its probably not worth the silly West End ticket prices (£47.50 for a good seat - ouch) but get 50% standby tickets from the TKTS booth in Leicester Square.
Where did the corn go? August 20, 2008
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Miscellany , 2 commentsIt’s August. There should be corn on the cob. Proper corn on the cob, with leaves.
Waitrose only has cobs on little plastic trays wrapped up in plastic bags.
It’s worse than Sainsbury’s wine by the glass. We’re doomed, doomed.
A life as Everyman - Michael Frayn’s Afterlife August 17, 2008
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : London, Reviews , add a commentWhen Michael Frayn’s new play, Afterlife, opened in June, it was to mixed reviews. Using the medieval miracle play Everyman to tell the life of Max Reinhardt, the German Jew who established the Salzburg festival in the 1920s with the play as a centrepiece, is either appreciated or not.
Everyman, or Reinhardt (played by John Allam), is summoned by Death to the presence of God to be judged. He calls upon his friends to join him on the journey, but they decline. His worldly goods are no use to him. The Poor Neighbour, spurned by him early in the play, changes into Muller, the Nazi who takes over his house after Austria is occupied and Reinhardt flees to America.
The many women in Reinhart’slife are represented by two, who are Everyman’s redemption. His mistress and later second wife, Helene Thimig, played by Abigail Cruttenden is Faith, and his Deeds are represented by his secretary, Gusti Adler (Serina Griffiths).
Frayn weaves the stories of Reinhardt and Everyman together to present an impression of the character of the man more than biographical detail. He appears to have lived as if on a stage, better with an audience than making conversation in a small group, shown through the rhyming couplets and repetition of parts of the script, breaking of into ordinary prose when events are more mundane. As he rehearses his household staff for a banquet, you see the Reinhardt who was notorious for directing every last detail of a play, down to the actors gestures and tone.
The sets are spectacularly simple. Most of the play is set either on the steps of Salzburg Cathedral, where Everyman is performed, or in Leopoldskron, the baroque palace which Reinhardt and Thimig restored and which he believed would be his most lasting legacy. Each is represented by huge, white frontages which move back and forward as the scene changes and imply grandeur.
In the end, Reinhardt’s real legacy is the annual production of Everyman, which continues this summer in Salzburg, and so this play grasps the significance of the man. It is clever and polished, like Reinhardt himself.
It is on at the National Theatre until 30 August, and well worth seeing.
Apartment security August 3, 2008
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Miscellany , add a commentWalk up York Way past Kings Cross, the new Guardian offices and Arts Centre of Kings Place, until you’re in the heart of the developments yet to appear. Turn right, through a small park which might be a bit dodgy at night, past new flats too expensive to have attracted many inhabitants, to the sixties-style council estate behind. So far, so inner London. It scrapes through the high heels after an evening in the pub test*.
Go through three massive, intercom controlled steel doors to get to the flat. CCTV everywhere. There must be a reason. This doesn’t feel good.
It’s a nice enough flat, needing some work but a good size. The vendor refuses to leave the fluffy wee kitten, but will sell the appliances. The garden is through a glass door in the kitchen, with a flimsy wooden fence and a gate even I could get over, though perhaps not in high heels after a night in the pub. A fit burglar would take minutes to break in.
If I had come in the back way, I’d have liked the place. Now I’m just wondering who would design a security system with such an obvious flaw.
*I refuse to live anywhere I don’t feel safe walking home in high heeled shoes, carrying my laptop bag and a few drinks to the wind. Fortunately, I’m not easily scared.
