Juno

I'll keep this brief. A wonderful script, perfect casting and a story that manages to be sweet without making you want to barf, Juno is that rare thing: a film which has something genuinely original about it. A tale of teenage pregnancy may not have you rushing to the video store (does anybody use those anymore?) but it isn't the details of the plot which make it a joy, rather it's the very real journey of the characters as they all learn to deal with the consequences of Juno's pregnancy. The timid, boyish father of the child, the cool as a cucumber best friend, the ever supportive father and the uptight couple who aim to adopt the baby, all have things to learn about being an adult.

Diablo Cody who wrote the script (and won an Academy Award for it) has some amazing ways of phrasing things but also some real empathy for her characters, especially the teenage girls Juno and Leah. Ellen Page as Juno is utterly engaging, seeming to inhabit the part rather than act it (something which is even more obvious when you watch the screen tests on the DVD). As I've said already the casting is peerless, not a single weak link, the actors clearly relishing the opportunity to get their teeth into some dialogue which contains character rather than plot development. It takes the first couple of scenes to tune your ear in, and it may be that many will find the film to be relentlessly quirky. Many elements of the film have a whiff of Wes Anderson, especially the intrusive soundtrack, but underneath it all is affection and heart and the kind of warmth that keeps your interest to the end. The ending manages to leave you feeling good without feeling patronised by a neat and tidy finish which shows that the film makers have the kind of maturity, the discovery of which, the film is all about.

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rosebud

The Comfort of Things
by Daniel Miller

In David Fincher's brilliant adaptation of Fight Club there is a scene where the camera pans around the flat of our Narrator. As he describes all his lovely 'stuff' the names of each piece of furniture pop up on screen, IKEA catalogue style. We also see him flicking through a catalogue like it's pornography. This is a man who clearly loves his things as we find when his entire flat is destroyed, 'That condo was my life, okay? I loved every stick of furniture in that place. That was not just a bunch of stuff that got destroyed, it was ME!'. But his 'friend' Tyler Durden wants to free him from this materialism, 'The things you own, end up owning you', he says, and so begins the rebirth. Daniel Miller would like us to see that

'in many ways the opposite is true; that possessions often remain profound and usually the closer our relationships are with objects, the closer our relationships are with people.'

To do this he took a single street in South London and got behind closed doors, interviewing the inhabitants and showing, through their diverse stories, a varied and alternative view of how people express themselves through their possessions. As a demonstration of the startling variety of people in just one small part of the capital it is fascinating. The breakdown of society and community is an all too frequent news headline and whilst Miller doesn't refute it he certainly shows that if we made the effort to get to know our neighbours we might find them to be a jolly interesting lot.

Who would have thought that a weekly trip to McDonalds and the plastic toys given away with their Happy Meals would provide a mother with her only opportunity to spend quality time playing with her children? This regular ritual became a cornerstone of her relationship with them, the toys even helping their education (a collection of Snoopy's, each representing a different nationality) and the second toys which she collected, now stored in a cupboard in their wrappers, 'will be their inheritance'. Marina struggled with her parents values and was able to repudiate them in a single gesture which brings us full circle. Given her parents love of antique furniture you can imagine the hurt caused by their daughter buying a chest of drawers from a certain Swedish furniture store.

'I bought from IKEA because it was easy to open the drawers, you know. And it was wood, and I could build it myself and it was £200, not one for £600 that didn't work and smelt and probably had worms.'

So she managed to use IKEA to free herself from her parent's influence. What would Tyler Durden make of that I wonder? The book has many stories to tell. Some are obvious like the Australian, whose laptop has huge significance, standing in for his home itself, his email address the one place where his family and friends know they will always be able to find him. Within that laptop he is able to keep strict and neat control over his life whilst his home is almost devoid of items from the past (Miller finding significance in the Aboriginal practice of dissociation from the material possessions of the deceased).

Some are striking like the heroin addict whose flat was gradually emptied to feed his habit but no matter how bad things got, two things remained, his photos and CD collection. In many ways it seems that his regard for these two things is what kept him alive. Even when the carpets went from underneath his feet he wasn't able to relinquish his memories of happier times and the immediate emotional connection stirred up by his music, which isn't so much the comfort of things but the power of them to exert an influence over even a life out of control.

Some are poignant like Jenny, a 91 year old living on her own who in her blindness finds great joy in dusting. After having been visited by family or friends and spending time reminiscing she can then spend time running her fingers over the objects which fill her home, deeply connected to those memories and also of course filling the void left by the absence of her guests.

I didn't find this to be quite the refutation of empty or alienating materialism I expected. There were occasional glimpses of the altruistic relation to objects like the philatelist whose collection is not for monetary gain but just one example of the care he takes over his possessions which is an extension of or rather very much a part of his great care for the people in his life. But very often the objects which have real significance are because of people first, because of the past, of memory; the 'sentimental value' which we can all understand. The pair of trousers from before a pregnancy which didn't fit after the birth but then all of a sudden did again ('I did feel absolutely ridiculously so pleased. I don't know why, because it's only a pair of trousers. It wouldn't have mattered if they had been new trousers. I don't think I would have been so excited. But it was because I could match them to a time when I could wear them').

This reinforces Miller's strongest point which is that in a modern metropolitan city like London, where the traditional unifiers of religion and community have a diminishing impact on people's lives, what takes its place is not an empty attachment to material possessions and a diminishing of personal relationships; most people would agree that the measure of happiness in their lives was entirely dependent on the success or otherwise of their personal relationships but what Miller could see was the vital role objects within the house or even the house itself could play in that, and how effectively this was displayed to an observer like himself.

In a book which felt a little too long for me Miller actually makes his clearest points with the opening two chapters; Empty and Full. The welcoming warmth of Mr and Mrs Clarke, in their house filled to bursting point with Christmas decorations (800 ornaments for the tree alone) has an immediate effect on Miller. Their attention to things is an extension of their sensitivity and attention to others and most of all to each other. The 'aesthetics of care' applies to both people and objects 'since one always turns out to be the vehicle for the other'. He contrasts this with George, a man used by his parents to express their total authority, now left dependant on authority for his entire life. 'The flat was empty, completely empty, because its occupant had no independent capacity to place something decorative or ornamental within it.' This literal emptiness combined with the feeling that this man, whose life was devoid of relationships with others, was basically waiting to die reduced Miller to tears.

With my own relationship to books and music and by extension to the people I talk to about them and lend them to I found a lot to connect with in this book. It is fascinating to look at objects in a more significant way, especially when they seem at first to be so inconsequential. This is an accessible and provocative book which challenges some of our basic assumptions, as the best non-fiction should. I'm off to look at some first editions now.

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do not adjust your sets

Don't worry, remain calm, I'll explain everything.

I couldn't take it anymore. The slightly sickly greeny-browny-soupy-colour of my blog was doing my head in. I had to change it. Maybe it's the new year, call it spring cleaning, but either way I hope you like my new home. It still needs some tweaking but whilst you wait would you care for a cup of tea?

A Nice Cup of Tea

By George Orwell

Evening Standard, 12 January 1946

If you look up 'tea' in the first cookery book that comes to hand you will probably find that it is unmentioned; or at most you will find a few lines of sketchy instructions which give no ruling on several of the most important points.

This is curious, not only because tea is one of the main stays of civilization in this country, as well as in Eire, Australia and New Zealand, but because the best manner of making it is the subject of violent disputes.

When I look through my own recipe for the perfect cup of tea, I find no fewer than eleven outstanding points. On perhaps two of them there would be pretty general agreement, but at least four others are acutely controversial. Here are my own eleven rules, every one of which I regard as golden:

• First of all, one should use Indian or Ceylonese tea. China tea has virtues which are not to be despised nowadays — it is economical, and one can drink it without milk — but there is not much stimulation in it. One does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after drinking it. Anyone who has used that comforting phrase 'a nice cup of tea' invariably means Indian tea.
• Secondly, tea should be made in small quantities — that is, in a teapot. Tea out of an urn is always tasteless, while army tea, made in a cauldron, tastes of grease and whitewash. The teapot should be made of china or earthenware. Silver or Britanniaware teapots produce inferior tea and enamel pots are worse; though curiously enough a pewter teapot (a rarity nowadays) is not so bad.
• Thirdly, the pot should be warmed beforehand. This is better done by placing it on the hob than by the usual method of swilling it out with hot water.
• Fourthly, the tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right. In a time of rationing, this is not an idea that can be realized on every day of the week, but I maintain that one strong cup of tea is better than twenty weak ones. All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a little stronger with each year that passes — a fact which is recognized in the extra ration issued to old-age pensioners.
• Fifthly, the tea should be put straight into the pot. No strainers, muslin bags or other devices to imprison the tea. In some countries teapots are fitted with little dangling baskets under the spout to catch the stray leaves, which are supposed to be harmful. Actually one can swallow tea-leaves in considerable quantities without ill effect, and if the tea is not loose in the pot it never infuses properly.
• Sixthly, one should take the teapot to the kettle and not the other way about. The water should be actually boiling at the moment of impact, which means that one should keep it on the flame while one pours. Some people add that one should only use water that has been freshly brought to the boil, but I have never noticed that it makes any difference.
• Seventhly, after making the tea, one should stir it, or better, give the pot a good shake, afterwards allowing the leaves to settle.
• Eighthly, one should drink out of a good breakfast cup — that is, the cylindrical type of cup, not the flat, shallow type. The breakfast cup holds more, and with the other kind one's tea is always half cold before one has well started on it.
• Ninthly, one should pour the cream off the milk before using it for tea. Milk that is too creamy always gives tea a sickly taste.
• Tenthly, one should pour tea into the cup first. This is one of the most controversial points of all; indeed in every family in Britain there are probably two schools of thought on the subject. The milk-first school can bring forward some fairly strong arguments, but I maintain that my own argument is unanswerable. This is that, by putting the tea in first and stirring as one pours, one can exactly regulate the amount of milk whereas one is liable to put in too much milk if one does it the other way round.
• Lastly, tea — unless one is drinking it in the Russian style — should be drunk without sugar. I know very well that I am in a minority here. But still, how can you call yourself a true tealover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it? It would be equally reasonable to put in pepper or salt. Tea is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer tasting the tea, you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water.
  
  Some people would answer that they don't like tea in itself, that they only drink it in order to be warmed and stimulated, and they need sugar to take the taste away. To those misguided people I would say: Try drinking tea without sugar for, say, a fortnight and it is very unlikely that you will ever want to ruin your tea by sweetening it again.

These are not the only controversial points to arise in connexion with tea drinking, but they are sufficient to show how subtilized the whole business has become. There is also the mysterious social etiquette surrounding the teapot (why is it considered vulgar to drink out of your saucer, for instance?) and much might be written about the subsidiary uses of tealeaves, such as telling fortunes, predicting the arrival of visitors, feeding rabbits, healing burns and sweeping the carpet. It is worth paying attention to such details as warming the pot and using water that is really boiling, so as to make quite sure of wringing out of one's ration the twenty good, strong cups of that two ounces, properly handled, ought to represent.

(taken from The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume 3, 1943-45, Penguin ISBN, 0-14-00-3153-7)

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Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion

Originally published by [sic]Magazine


It may only be the middle of January but for the last few days I have been enjoying almost constant sunshine as I listen to a ridiculously early contender for album of the year. I also feel a little woozy too due to the rather trippy album art above, but it's my own fault for staring too long. Animal Collective have been making music for a while now which plays fast and free with influences, approach and steadfastly refuses to be labelled easily. But at the same time they have never been in danger of crossing over into the mainstream and a wider audience with albums which always contained tasty treats but never quite managed the satisfaction of a slap up meal from start to finish.

Part of this is due to the fragmented nature of their sound, their desire to push the envelope and also of course the ethos behind their collective which means that not all members have to be present for each recording. Merriweather Post Pavilion sees Josh Dibb (aka Deakin) taking a break and the influence of Noah Lennox (Panda Bear) coming to the forefront. After being such a fan of Person Pitch I have to say this makes me very happy. And it should make you happy to because it also makes for their most satisfying album yet.

All the elements you might expect are there: tribal beats, ambient noise, sampled instrumentation, sunshine soaked psychedelia, and harmonised vocals. Some reviewers have called it their most accessible album or even a pop album but don't be fooled into thinking that this is an easy listening experience. Avey Tare said in a recent interview that they "..want people to hear the melodies and to pick up on things. I don't know if we're getting better or just doing it in a different way." Well those melodies are much clearer right from the opening track which begins with quiet vocals reminiscent of Mercury Rev before thumping beats come in and the melody carries the touching lyrics about missing somebody you love (which picks up on what Avey Tare has mentioned as the album's theme: "being away from home a lot in the past year, from our girlfriends or wives or families"). This is followed by one of the album's standout tracks. 'My Girls' starts with a triplet beat on the keyboard which might remind you of 'You Got The Love' by The Source but when the harmonised vocals come in and sharp percussion it becomes a catchy song about a man's love for his family complete with an ecstatic 'Woooh!' in the chorus. I'm not making that sound very good am I? Just listen and I bet you'll love it.

Male harmony singing can be repetitive across an album's length but here the sheer diversity of styles means that they're never less than interesting and often so much more. On 'Guys Eyes' the voices are seperated, each following a seperate line like singing a round only for them to be united in the chanted 'need her' which is pushed along by tribal drumming. It's complex, intricate and brilliantly effective. 'Daily Routine' stutters in with a tentative fairground organ, the body of the song a mechanical sounding rendition of a repeated journey but at the end, as the organ fragments, extended vocals resolve the melody into a glorious finish. The inevitable mention of the Beach Boys now comes with 'Bluish' which is a gorgeous love song, kept honest by smart lyrics ('I like your looks when you get mean/I know I shouldn't say so but when you/Claw me like a cat, I'm beaming') and the constant sampled drone underneath its sweet pop melody. Hearts are clearly being worn on sleeves and that kind of romanticism pops up again with almost-ballad No More Runnin which is, well, beautiful.

As you would expect the album is bursting with sounds; animal, vegetable and mineral, with rhythms and percussion to match. But the clarity comes from the strength of the actual tunes and more than ever the genuine warmth of the lyrics. It's perfect that the album closes with the ludicrously positive 'Brother Sport', a bouncing and slightly bonkers floor filler (although it seems far more appropriate to think of people dancing around outside, arms held up to the sky) which is infectious in the extreme and a fitting climax to an explosive but coherent album. It rewards repeated listens, each journey through highlighting something new whilst unifying what you've already noticed. You couldn't ask for much more in the cold months at the beginning of the year, especially with all that gloom out there, and it just may be that when summer really arrives this album will have established itself as a constant companion.

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WALL-E

The first piece of animation I saw from Pixar many years ago was Luxo Jr. You know, the little lamp that now features as part of the logo. Unbelievably that short film was made over twenty years ago in 1986 and for all the amazing advances that have been made in computer animation since then it is the charm that is somehow conveyed by an anglepoise lamp which means it still brings a smile to your face today. In fact seeing as you're here:



In many ways WALL-E is the direct descendent of that little lamp. A simple robot with limited movements and yet somehow capable of communicating subtleties of emotion, executing nuanced physical comedy and, crucially, making us laugh. It is the year 2700 and the Earth has been deserted by its human population after life became unsustainable. The rising tide of waste has covered the planet and it was the job of the Wall-E robots to collect, compact and clear it in preparation for our return. From space we zoom in past the thick layer of space junk orbiting the planet, past what look like rolling hills and skyscrapers but which resolve themselves into piles of rubbish, some haphazard some neatly stacked and ordered by the last remaining Wall-E, our hero. The first half hour of the film is all his. No speech, no other characters (well, he has one companion, a hardy cockroach) it's like a return to the era of silent comedy. Perfectly judged, filled with neat in-jokes it's just wonderful. If the rest of the film doesn't quite match its simplicity it can't be blamed, we need a plot to see us through a feature and in fact it's an achievement to keep it as focused on that same physical comedy as it does.

It's also a surprisingly brave for a studio like Disney to be behind a film with such a strong anti-corporate message and with such an apocalyptic set-up. But let's not go overboard looking for the wider cultural significance of the film, far better to appreciate its true strength: following that first achievement of computer generated imagery through to its apogee (so far!).

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