Without Clout
Published Sunday, January 25, 2009 by Kevin Breathnach.
Or have Morgan and Howard fooled us by presenting this overhyped, shallow media event as some great battle for truth between two great forces of modern democracy: media and politics? Answer: yes, we’ve been conned. Frost/Nixon is a historical fraud, a mind-boggling travesty of the truth. Let me hasten to add, however, that it is without doubt the most gripping, entertaining, dramatically clever and fascinating fraud I’ve ever seen.What?
Cosmo Landesman today points out that Frost/Nixon is historically inaccurate, underlining, for instance, that the late night phone call from Nixon to Frost on which the film balances did not actually take place. But, as you've read, he thinks it's a gripping piece of cinema in any case. I think he's wrong. It's an utterly predictable film.
The going gets tough for the Frost camp, as Nixon is found to be quite good at being interviewed, and it stays tough for a lot of the film. But things start looking up (as they threaten to do throughout the film) when Frost's researcher does two days of research, the tables are turned, and the tough going is overcome. All this as the film heads conveniently into the home straight, ready for the happy ending which comes when Frost elicits an (historically inaccurate) apology from Nixon for Watergate.
I don't think there's much drama in this film at all.
Even the exagerrated apology is tame. Despite the film's portrayal to the contrary, the viewer is left wondering, firstly, if Nixon didn't get away with it after all, and secondly, how Frost went on to such stardom on the back of such a poor interview.
An entertaining, but by no means gripping film.
Labels: cinema, film, frost, nixon
|The Frog
Published Thursday, December 18, 2008 by Kevin Breathnach.
YOU COULDN'T GIVE THEM AWAY
Published by Kevin Breathnach.
Walking into Trinity early this morning, I saw a woman employed by the Irish Independent to give out free copies of their newspaper. Of the five people whom I saw walk past her, all five refused her generous offer: a sight more refreshing than the icy matutinal air.
Labels: irish independent, trinity
|Revidalance
Published by Kevin Breathnach.
As well as being twin towers of 20th century intellectual life, Gore Vidal and the late Susan Sontag share the honour of being the favoured grandparents of the New York Review of Books. I can't remember the amount of times each has been the subject to yet another essay published its hallowed pages, just as I can't be bothered to find out. But figures aside, the answer is often. And so, again, in the holiday issue of the review, we're treated to another essay on each. The difference between the two, however, is that the new essays on Sontag generally say something new on Sontag. Not so with Vidal, poor thing, who, with the publication of any selection, collection or reflection in the last five years, seems to have had more or less the same essay written about him and published in newspapers, magazines and reviews.
Labels: gore vidal, intellectualism, literature, susan sontag
|Back to Black
Published by Kevin Breathnach.
When he got out of the lift on the thirty-ninth floor he could hear the telephone ringing in his office. He fumbled the key into the door and scrambled to the desk and seized the receiver - What is it, he wondered, that is so irresistibly imperative about a ringing telephone?This comes from The Lemur, John Banville's third outing under the pseudonym Benjamin Black, which - at less than 200 generously-spaced pages - I had the pleasure of passing an afternoon alongside. The work is inconsequential, written to satisfy the coffers before the critics, but, for a book whose plot offers neither the pace, nor the suspense of Black's first two outings - to say nothing of The 39 Steps, written by John Buchan and alluded to above - it is nonetheless an enjoyable read. Much has been said about the difference between Banville and Black, yet, as The Lemur ably demonstrates, they share their strengths and weaknesses. Banville is often weak on plot, while Black, writing with a brow admittedly less furrowed than Banville's, is redeemed in this instance by an acuity of both observation and expression - two features which owe everything to the furrowed brow behind the mask.
Wouldn't make a bad Stephen's Day occupation.
Labels: banville, benjamin black, books, buchan
|TAKE DOWN THIS BOOK / AND SLOWLY READ
Published Friday, November 21, 2008 by Kevin Breathnach.
"And I quote from memory," they parenthesise.
There's something very irritating about those writers who, when quoting poetry in print, mention that they are doing so without reference to the text. There's no need to quote fallibly from memory when, in the age of the internet, a printed edition is always at hand. And, if you can quote infallibly from memory, there's no need to overshadow the chosen quote. Poetry worth memorising is more remarkable than memorising the poetry.
This afternoon, in any case, I at last found my way into the Yeats exhibition in the National Library. There's a small room in which a few of Yeats' poems are projected onto a screen, while recorded voices - famous, infamous and not famous alike - read them aloud. I somehow suspect that Ulick O'Connor's recital of 'When You are Old' was derived from memory alone. For, while his lively, polytonal voice carries the music of Yeats' poetry better than, say, the recorded efforts of Sinéad O'Connor, in at least two instances, Ulick gets the words mixed-up. Instead of "nodding by the fire", we hear "sitting by the fire"; and instead of "the sorrows of your changing face", we hear "the changing sorrows of your face." A pernickity point, perhaps, but every word is important in poetry - in shorter poems especially; you'd expect that the exhibition's curator to agree.
There's something very irritating about those writers who, when quoting poetry in print, mention that they are doing so without reference to the text. There's no need to quote fallibly from memory when, in the age of the internet, a printed edition is always at hand. And, if you can quote infallibly from memory, there's no need to overshadow the chosen quote. Poetry worth memorising is more remarkable than memorising the poetry.
This afternoon, in any case, I at last found my way into the Yeats exhibition in the National Library. There's a small room in which a few of Yeats' poems are projected onto a screen, while recorded voices - famous, infamous and not famous alike - read them aloud. I somehow suspect that Ulick O'Connor's recital of 'When You are Old' was derived from memory alone. For, while his lively, polytonal voice carries the music of Yeats' poetry better than, say, the recorded efforts of Sinéad O'Connor, in at least two instances, Ulick gets the words mixed-up. Instead of "nodding by the fire", we hear "sitting by the fire"; and instead of "the sorrows of your changing face", we hear "the changing sorrows of your face." A pernickity point, perhaps, but every word is important in poetry - in shorter poems especially; you'd expect that the exhibition's curator to agree.
Labels: literature, memory, poetry, yeats
|A Dreaded Sunny Day
Published Saturday, November 08, 2008 by Kevin Breathnach.
Though less than one year ago I lived no more than ten walking-minutes from its gates, until last week I had never strolled through the decorated aisles of Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris; a non-act of laziness disguised as nonchalance. When, last week, I at last got around to visiting the cemetery, a weak winter sun scaled the morning azure like some great air balloon in the distance, its light bouncing off the cobblestones to make the cracks in between appear darker still.
And then I came upon this, an impressive tomb marked:
In April of 1875, at the dawn of the Third Republic, Joseph Croce-Spinelli and Théodore Sivel died of asphyxiation during the ascent of their air balloon Zenith to over 8,600 metres, an altitude unheard of at the time. The scientists were survived by their colleague and co-pilot Gaston Tissandier, who at 8,000 metres had passed out, before again waking at 6,000 metres to find his both colleagues dead, having bled from the mouth, and the balloon cascading dangerously towards the earth. He roused himself sufficiently, and landed the balloon safely. Though he had become deaf, Tissandier went on to flourish as a scientists, as an aviator, as a chemist and as an editor of his own scientific weekly, La Nature; an owl of Minerva spreading its wings at his colleagues' last dusk.
I left before seeing either Oscar Wilde or Jim Morrison, Père Lachaise's most famous denizens, but on parting, I did see pictures of each on postcards for sale next to the cemetery's back gate.
Keats and Yeats are on your side.
And then I came upon this, an impressive tomb marked:
CROCE-SPINELLI ET SIVELIntrigued, I did some research.
MORTS A 8600 METRES DE HAUTEUR.
In April of 1875, at the dawn of the Third Republic, Joseph Croce-Spinelli and Théodore Sivel died of asphyxiation during the ascent of their air balloon Zenith to over 8,600 metres, an altitude unheard of at the time. The scientists were survived by their colleague and co-pilot Gaston Tissandier, who at 8,000 metres had passed out, before again waking at 6,000 metres to find his both colleagues dead, having bled from the mouth, and the balloon cascading dangerously towards the earth. He roused himself sufficiently, and landed the balloon safely. Though he had become deaf, Tissandier went on to flourish as a scientists, as an aviator, as a chemist and as an editor of his own scientific weekly, La Nature; an owl of Minerva spreading its wings at his colleagues' last dusk.
I left before seeing either Oscar Wilde or Jim Morrison, Père Lachaise's most famous denizens, but on parting, I did see pictures of each on postcards for sale next to the cemetery's back gate.
Keats and Yeats are on your side.
Labels: death, history, Paris, pere lachaise, science
|Fluctuat nec mergitur
Published Wednesday, October 29, 2008 by Kevin Breathnach.
The first chapter of John Banville's new novel The Sinking City (in corso) is, for some reason, available to read on the Manchester Review's website. I'll be reading it tomorrow on a flight to Paris.
Labels: banville, books, notice, Paris
|Winterwood
Published Sunday, October 12, 2008 by Kevin Breathnach.
The men of the mountain! I said, just for the laugh.
"Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades," said Vladmir Nabokov, the author of the great confessional Lolita, "Let us worship the spine and its tingle." It was with the close of Patrick McCabe's Winterwood, whose narrator Redmond Place differs only from Lolita's in his unwillingness or inability to know himself, that I last sat down, artistically delighted, a tingle felt not just between the shoulder blades, but upon my cheeks. Winterwood, my first exposure to McCabe, is a psychologically labyrinthine tableau — often reminiscent of David Lynch's Twin Peaks — consciously painted with the simple, progressively darker brush-strokes of a stylistically unsophisticated, structurally manipulative narrator.
Labels: nabokov, patrick mccabe, twin peaks, winterwood
|Domestic Bliss
Published Tuesday, October 07, 2008 by Kevin Breathnach.
Order, order.
Nothing to show for the autumnal month of this year's summer holiday; there's only so long self-discipline will hold. But the mind is perked this week by the resumption of college, alongside which will resume, I hope, the normal, shaky service renowned in this quarter of the internet.
Labels: notice, pierre bonnard
|Who ate all the pi?
Published Monday, September 01, 2008 by Kevin Breathnach.
The photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson confesses his great passion for geometry. "I do not believe in God", he said, "but I do believe in pi." He might have liked the composition of this, a photograph of someone called Yves, taken in 1967, which I found in a bundle of old polaroids left long ago in the pocket of a duffel-coat I bought second-hand in Paris this summer.
Labels: cartier bresson, france, Paris, photography
|Arabian Nights
Published by Kevin Breathnach.
One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night.Germaine Greer talks football. After decades of hardship and storm, the sun peaks over the horizon, ready to dawn on Manchester City. Super-rich Arab investors have bought the club from human-rights abuser Thaksin Shinawatra, our prodigal son Shaun Wright-Philips has returned from South London, and at the moment, as the transfer window remains barely ajar, it looks like we're about to nick Dimitar Berbatov from underneath the noses of rivals United. Give me back, give me back the wild freshness of Morning!
Labels: berbatov, germaine greer, man city, thomas more, wright-philips
|A Study of Writing Habits
Published Sunday, August 31, 2008 by Kevin Breathnach.
I like The Fall, and Mark E. Smith especially. He's a Man City fan, after all. But I wonder just how qualified Una Mullally is to submit, in the esteemed pages of one national newspaper, that Smith's autobiography is "one of the best music autobiographies in recent times," when she herself has read from it only "a good few extracts" according to her piece. Not hailed as, not regarded as, but is. Some extraction, that. If she'd read the whole thing (no mean feat at 256 pages), I suppose she'd be entitled, if still not disposed, to drop the approximation and call it the unbounded best of the lot?
Labels: reading habits, sunday tribune, the fall, una mullally
|I heard the Duffys shouting "Damn your soul"
Published Wednesday, August 27, 2008 by Kevin Breathnach.
In 1968, the year Man Utd won the European Cup and one year before Kes appeared, Ken Loach made a curious little documentary drama about Everton FC called The Golden Vision in which players are interviewed, officials attended and supporters orchestrated and observed. Everyone involved spoke with an unreserved erudition of another day and an assured humility of, in footballing terms, another age. Unfortunately there's no sign of it on the internet, but BBC 4 showed it last week, so perhaps it will once more pop up some time in the near future. A great social document, it's certainly one to look out for.
In what I presumed to be footage a few years older than the documentary itself, an FA official is asked to speak about the increasingly common inclination of fans to hurl abuse at players, referees and each other. He opined that such fervour was a regrettable aspect of the game, but that if (as he supposed) letting off steam in such a fashion stopped young men from starting, say, race riots, then it was a tolerable, even necessary aspect of the game, too - which I suppose is true enough.
It had been some years since I'd last gone to a football match, and longer still since I'd last sat through a League of Ireland match, but last night, with peculiar alacrity, I agreed - volunteered, really - to go to Dalymount with my mother to see Bohemians take on Drogheda. We arrived at the ground, passed through the turnstile, bought (terrible) fish and chips before kick-off, and I was surprised to find a great wave of nostalgia creep up my spine and come to rest between the shoulder blades. But when the match started I felt no propensity to shout anything at anyone as I suppose I had a decade ago.
It was at around this point in this post that I had planned to write a few words about the social aspect of football: about how much more tribal the game feels on a smaller, more indigenous scale; about how menacing a few voices, half-a-dozen flags and one or two drums can seem from the opposite side of a stadium; about how worrying it is that so many football fans seem unwilling to accept the fallibility of players and officials, and unable to draw a distinction between the referee and his decisions. But as half-time approached I thought better of that essay because, primo, I'd come across as a pretentious old bollocks, and, secundo, by the looks of it, race riots had been forestalled in Phibsboro for at least another night.
Bohs won two-nil, and the referee's a wanker.
In what I presumed to be footage a few years older than the documentary itself, an FA official is asked to speak about the increasingly common inclination of fans to hurl abuse at players, referees and each other. He opined that such fervour was a regrettable aspect of the game, but that if (as he supposed) letting off steam in such a fashion stopped young men from starting, say, race riots, then it was a tolerable, even necessary aspect of the game, too - which I suppose is true enough.
It had been some years since I'd last gone to a football match, and longer still since I'd last sat through a League of Ireland match, but last night, with peculiar alacrity, I agreed - volunteered, really - to go to Dalymount with my mother to see Bohemians take on Drogheda. We arrived at the ground, passed through the turnstile, bought (terrible) fish and chips before kick-off, and I was surprised to find a great wave of nostalgia creep up my spine and come to rest between the shoulder blades. But when the match started I felt no propensity to shout anything at anyone as I suppose I had a decade ago.
It was at around this point in this post that I had planned to write a few words about the social aspect of football: about how much more tribal the game feels on a smaller, more indigenous scale; about how menacing a few voices, half-a-dozen flags and one or two drums can seem from the opposite side of a stadium; about how worrying it is that so many football fans seem unwilling to accept the fallibility of players and officials, and unable to draw a distinction between the referee and his decisions. But as half-time approached I thought better of that essay because, primo, I'd come across as a pretentious old bollocks, and, secundo, by the looks of it, race riots had been forestalled in Phibsboro for at least another night.
Bohs won two-nil, and the referee's a wanker.
Labels: bohemians, football, kavanagh, ken loach, sport
|I'll just say one word: 'Tony Wilson'.
Published Tuesday, August 26, 2008 by Kevin Breathnach.
Without any real intention of doing so, I ended up watching, I think, every episode of Britain From Above, the recent BBC documentary series in which Andrew Marr imparts wisdom bestowed upon him by the skies, plus a team of researchers and experts. The show was actually a lot more interesting than it sounded and, despite the occasional descent into green-and-pleasant-land patriotism, Marr does come across as quite a genuine, genial, affable bloke. But whenever he came down to interpret any of his less mechanical flights (by paraglide, say), it took great effort to remove from mind this image of Tony Wilson - genius, poet, twat - as played by Steve Coogan in 24 Hour Party People.
Labels: andrew marr, britain from above, tony wilson
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