Sweet Nothings

"Christopher!" shouts an American tourist to her husband from a  Looky Looky Man stand on the edge of St Peter's Square , "These ones have got the new Pope on 'em!" Yes, we had no inkling when booking this holiday in January that we would find ourselves in Rome when Papa Francesco received the ultimate promotion (apart from the one from here to the heavens, I suppose). And however fantastic an opportunity this was for us to soak up a bit of living history, I'd have much rather visited the Sistine Chapel, which let's be honest is everyone's Roman must-see. Instead, it's been closed since the beginning of the conclave and reopens tomorrow when I'm back at work. So yeah, great timing with that resignation, Joe - thanks ein Bunch. We didn't attempt to brave the rain or the huddled masses in the square on Wednesday night just on the off-chance that the Cardinals would make up their minds, but it was quite surreal to watch the white...

It's a sad fact that, after visiting Venice, any other city can appear somewhat humdrum at first. As soon as we came out of Florence's station we were confronted with roads! And traffic! And no canals to be seen! Many of Florence's streets approach Venetian levels of narrowness and yet still allow all manner of vehicular access. Any pavements that do appear when you get out of the very centre are often precisely wide enough for one and a half persons to walk abreast, ie of little use for soppily hand-holding couples. The various vans, taxis and buses (including electric ones, excitingly) at least have the decency to take things slowly around the city streets. But the bikes... oh the bikes! Some cyclists will attempt to weave around the hordes of pedestrians with whom they are unwisely allowed to share the ways, whilst their more resolute bretheren keep to an arrow-straight course and rely on their bell to get tourists to move out of the way, with varying degrees of suc...

Visiting anywhere the second time around means you're free to notice the more intricate details you probably didn't have time to ponder on the previous occasion. For example: Gondoliers. If a lifetime's worth of TV and movies has taught me anything, it's that these men should conform to a very specific stereotype. I don't care if it's mid-March and a bit nippy - if I'm forking out extortionate amounts for you to paddle me around in your glorified canoe, I expect you to remove the puffa jacket - ensuring the stripey top is fully on display - don a stupid hat and sing me Just One Sodding Cornetto on repeat until I'm sufficiently romantically stimulated. Okay? Looky-Looky Men . They all probably come with tragic stories of life-and-death escape from war-torn hellholes and unfulfillable dreams of better lives, but never mind all that. We were far more interested in figuring out just how on earth they make a living. They all congregate in the same places ...

Way back when, it was possible to derive pleasure from a game where you simply rode your bike down a street each morning, delivering papers and avoiding loads of tyres/dogs/balls jumping/rolling/flying out at you. Happy days. Sadly The Paperboy is the new film from Lee (Precious) Daniels and not a better-late-than-never adaptation of the classic video game. If only it had anything resembling a coherent structure. “Now this is where things get complicated”, says the narrator (Macy Gray) at one point, the patronising cow. But she’s kind of right, because no sooner does the film starts to develop something approaching a plot, it gets bored of that, pumps up the sleaze levels and just throws stuff at the screen, intending to provoke as much as entertain or tell a proper story. The setup can be summarized thus: journalist returns to Florida hometown to investigate a possible miscarriage of justice, with his younger brother, a local bimbo who’s been flirting by mail with the ja...

I came away from Zero Dark Thirty  with my mind curiously un-blown. This was partly a case of media coverage reaching saturation point long before I got to see the thing, and partly a structural issue (of which more later). Neither of which are entirely the filmmakers' fault, unless of course you fall into the "anti" camp, for whom the film represents at best the CIA's manipulation of Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal into making them a two-hour recruitment ad, and at worst an outrageous endorsement of America's vile imperialism brought to you by a modern-day Leni Riefenstahl. Frankly I'd become bored with the back-and-forth arguments from both sides of this particular fence way before Zero Dark was released here. The rant that was teased at the end of my last post is not going to materialize, since I can't see there being anything new to add to the debate and nothing I say could possibly change anybody's mind. (Yep, I've been reduced to bait-...

"Whip" Whitaker (an Oscar-nominated Denzel Washington) is not bad at this aeroplane piloting lark, managing to flip a nosediving plane upside down in order to land it relatively safely in a bonkers and gripping sequence at the beginning of Flight . Unfortunately Whip is also rather fond of the sauce, amongst other substances. As the airline's lawyer (Don Cheadle) coolly informs him, America is the most generous country in the world regarding blood alcohol levels and he was still three times over the limit - and that's for driving a car . This film must rank as one of the best anti-drink drive ads of all time. (Except that Whip appears to fly well because of the drink and drugs rather than despite them, but we'll ignore that.) Needless to say, after the accident the twin pressures of sudden celebrity and potential lawsuits begin to take their toll, and Washington holds a slightly patchy movie together with a measured performance. The script gives more scope fo...

It’s that time of year again when we can pretend to be distracted from the grimness of the post-Christmas and New Year but pre-holiday freezing wilderness by the glut of awards-bait filling up our cinemas. There are still some movies coming out which aren’t up for any sort of baubles though - Gangster Squad is one of them, although it feels like a project that was commissioned with at least a vague hope of bagging a nomination or two. The trailer promises a glamorously gritty gangster piece, studded with moral ambiguity (the titular squad operating outside the law in an attempt to take down Sean Penn’s kingpin by any means necessary), a starry cast and - better yet - a supposedly true story as its inspiration. So what went wrong? Well, you never really feel pulled in. Characters rarely stray beyond the generic, the squad including a clever-but-weedy type, a grizzled old-timer, a black guy and a token hispanic. Ryan Gosling, as a smooth young cop who doesn’t seem to give a da...

Until last weekend I’d not been to Berlin before - a non-achievement that becomes more remarkable/incomprehensible given that I lived in Germany for half of 1999 and studied the language for years. However, being a lazy student I considered the mere act of moving to Munich to be more than enough upheaval, hence the idea of travelling around the whole country - which would hardly have been hindered by my near total lack of social life at that time - barely even occurred to me. I also spent far more time in internet cafes and Irish bars than in more culturally worthwhile establishments. I didn’t go to any museums in Berlin either, but at this time of year there was a fine alternative in the form of the Christmas Markets. If you’re thinking it sounds slightly odd to spend most of a winter’s holiday shuffling around increasingly-crowded mazes  in sub-zero temperatures rather than inside toasty warm buildings, maybe a nice gluhwein or a good currywurst would change your mind. Back...

So I bought the Sunday Times this week. It's a paper I started taking (love that pompous phrase) when I was a student, for reasons which were less to do with politics and more for the value for money it offered due to its sheer bulk. Plus the sad truth was that my student days were not spent in a 24-7 haze of sex'n'drugs'rock'n'roll, and therefore I had plenty of time on my hands at the weekends. (They certainly weren't filled with actual work either). My limp-wristed, muesli and knitted sweater-y, Guardian-reading habit was not yet fully-formed then, although it had been the paper of choice during free periods in the sixth form when we were stuck in the library but didn't fancy doing any actual work (spotting a pattern here?). And it was the Sunday Times that first made me question whether the Grauniad had been right about everything, thanks to a certain Mr AA Gill. Gill is one of my absolute favourite writers, and I immediately fell in love with h...

Skyfall has justifiably been getting great reviews and there is much talk of it being the Best Bond Ever~!, which is quite the claim. Is it one that’s even remotely close to the truth? No, is the short answer. The long-winded and infinitely more tedious answer - which will almost inevitably involve SPOILERS - is below: The Bond franchise is a funny old beast, frequently rebooting or reinventing itself while still cradling the same recognisable bunch of characters and tropes tightly to its be-suited bosom. A Bond film can wander from the template, but only in some ways and never by too much. This is why rumours of an auteur type like Tarantino ever getting the director’s gig are so much hot air, even though the media still tries its best to fan the flames - Tim Burton was asked about it last week, for example (memo to Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli: I will hunt you down if you ever try this.) Casino Royale was the most recent, and best, reboot - probably becaus...

More preview screenings to warm the heart and save us from the autumn rains, or something. First up: Untouchable , the Weinsteins’ latest French acquisition now being aggressively peddled on a social media outlet near you. This is an odd couple tale of posh paraplegic Phillipe (François Cluzet) and his working-class carer Driss (Omar Sy), who is hired on a whim and of course brings about much mutual discovery and understanding for the pair despite their chalk’n’cheese origins. The whole thing hinges on the character of Driss, and luckily in Sy – who served his apprenticeship in TV comedy – they’ve found an actor who can clown with the best of them but is imposing enough to convince as a guy who hasn’t lead the most law-abiding of lifestyles up to this point. Having said that, realism is definitely not on the menu here. This is classic feelgood fare in which a man disabled from the neck down gets stoned, driven around Paris at ridiculously high speeds and has his ears fo...

Dexys - Birmingham Symphony Hall, 12 September To the uninitiated - that is, anyone whose knowledge starts and ends at Come On Eileen , maybe extending to their rib-tickling performance of Jackie Wilson Said on Top of the Pops in front of an image of burly darts star Jocky Wilson - this Dexys tour would have been a curious experience. What's up with the singer's diction, they might very well ask. What happened to the Midnight Runners bit of their name? And why does a diminutive guy in the dungarees and pencil moustache seem to inspire such rabid devotion in a hallfull of old men? Being a mere thirtysomething, I wasn't there from the beginning. From reading up on the interviews and the period details though, and more importantly from listening to the records, I started to gain some idea of the impact that Kevin Rowland and his band must have had. Rowland (left) and chief sidekick Pete Williams share a chuckle An 80s band carefully cultivating a particular image wa...

Friday 10th - Athletics (Olympic Stadium) At last came my chance to have a wander around the Olympic Park, and a balmy Friday evening had surely created the ideal atmosphere for it. The Park feels more authentically Olympian than visiting other venues elsewhere, and it felt great to immerse myself in a place I'd been reading about and seeing from afar for years. It's easy for the Park to radiate warmth and vitality when it's teeming with people, of course. The real test will come once the Paralympics are over, and all the talk of Legacy will become real. Having been to both Barcelona's and Munich's parks in recent years, they give off a sense of occasion as memorials but both felt somewhat barren and sparse. World's largest McDonalds~! Still, I doubt this was on anybody's mind when they were inside the stadium, which was packed as it was for every session. Minor quibbles such as long queues and incompetent staffing at the food stalls couldn'...