Going, Going, Gone Girl - Here's Hoping

Before this week, the last film I saw in a large public cinema (or movie theater as I am now wont to call it – and yes, spelt that way, too; I am SO American these days) was The Hangover (the first one) in Century City in LA.

   

I bought the biggest burger and drink from the enormous Food Court and relaxed in a seat that was the size of my apartment’s living room.

   

I then laughed non-stop for the whole movie, as did everyone else. I could not remember a time I had laughed quite so much (well, not unless I counted reading my own columns, anyway). For days afterwards, I was still laughing.

  

Although, as a member of BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts), I receive all movies free for voting purposes, I decided this week to go to the real thing once more. The hype surrounding Girl Gone had been huge, as were the opening weekend sales, and, having loved director David Fincher’s The Social Network, was prepared to be massively impressed.

   

Just as I did in The Hangover, I cried throughout: not tears of joy, however, but tears of boredom. And then tears of fear – had I been kidnapped and was I being held against my will and, as in Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust, being subjected to something I would never be able to escape? In Waugh, the victim is the character Tony being held by a Mr Todd, who forces him to read Dickens to him – FOR EVER! In Gone Girl, it is . . . well, what is it? I’ll come to that shortly, but let’s say that my third batch of tears were ones of joy as I finally escaped the darkness, both literally and metaphorically and emerged into the light outside the Lowes movie theatre. 

Never has real life looked or felt so good. I went to Whole Foods and spent half an hour working out what I could have bought there for the $15 I had just wasted at the movies (only three things, as it happened, but still preferable).

   

For those who have yet to see Gone Girl (and who, heaven forbid, will still want to after reading this?), and who haven’t read the book, I won’t reveal the essentials, but will talk in generalities.

   

Leaving aside my feeling that Ben Affleck in one of the leads, Nick, is about as underwhelming (to me) as a frozen kipper, it’s a mess of a movie. Rosamund Pike, the other lead, Amy (no fish comparisons intended, by the way), is very good, but it’s impossible to empathise with either character, and if you don’t know who you’re rooting for in a movie, for me it’s over before it’s begun.

   

The catalyst of the movie, the moment that changes everything and leads it in a different direction, is even more underwhelming than Mr Affleck. It should be a real “WOW! I didn’t see that coming” movie moment, but I’ve had more excitement brushing my teeth, to be honest.

   

Then there is the issue of Ms Pike’s weight gain within minutes; the cat that never gets fed (yet never loses weight); the reactions of all the key characters to the central plot i.e. the girl that is gone (although, hardly a girl, quite frankly).

   

The police at the heart of the operation are hopeless; the Sesame Street Cops would have delved more deeply into the evidence. There is way too much repetition, during which we receive the same information, either visually or verbally several times over. The ending is incomprehensible on one essential fact that is supposed to be the other WOW! moment that winds the whole thing up after a staggering 149 minutes. There is not a jot of it that is remotely believable – neither was E.T. literally, but I believed it emotionally – either in terms of plot, characters, or human behaviour. It’s tosh for the masses.

   

It is as if they changed directors (and, at times, writers) every 15 minutes, never quite getting to grips with what kind of movie they wanted it to be (apart from one that made a lot of money by pulling the wool over the general public’s eyes). The hype surrounding it really is a case of Emperor’s new clothes, and its popularity can only be down to the problem of there being so little out there at the moment – and, in Hollywood, there hasn’t been for some time (though I absolutely LOVED The Hundred-Foot Journey, which I saw in a small private cinema). 

Critics who try to analyse Gone Girl in terms of its post modernism and insight into coupledom are, quite frankly, too fearful of shouting out “The King is in the all together!”

   Ms Pike will doubtless receive an Oscar nomination, and the film will make it onto the Best Adapted Screenplay list; but Best Movie? Dear lord, I hope not.

   

It is, alas, 149 minutes I will never get back. Gone Girl? 

Going, going, gone girl - forever, I hope.

    

60 Things NOT to Do After 60

DON’T . . .

1.       Regret anything. You’re too damned late and you’ll be dead before you get the chance to put it all right.

2.       Queue, unless you can blag your way to the front. Anything you want to see is on the telly or in a book.

3.       Try to understand men. Stop. You never will. They aren’t just from Mars; they are from another solar system yet to be discovered by real humans.

4.       Get your tits out for the lads. You should have stopped doing that 20, or even 30, years ago. No one wants to see them anymore.

5.       Believe in God. He ain’t there.

6.       Drink and text. You can’t hold your alcohol as well as you used to, and you have never got to grips with your iPhone touchpad screen.

7.       Run up an escalator that is going down. You won’t make it. Trust me on this one #paramedicsalert.

8.       Get in touch with exes on social networking. They really have moved on. You should, too.

9.       Take up ice-skating. Are you nuts?

10.    Tell the doctor how many units of alcohol you drink. They really do know that 13 means 30 (plus).

11.    Tell anyone that William Hartnell was the best ever Dr Who.

12.    Sleep on the sofa because you can’t be arsed to walk 10 feet to the bedroom.

13.  Be lazy, drunkenly heading for the bathroom in the middle of the night. The white telephone table in the hallway only looks like the toilet; you have several more feet to go.

14.    Think that topping yourself is the answer to everything. You’ll never find out whether it really was.

15.    Lose touch with your oldest friends. They’ve stuck with you this long, so you can’t be all bad.

16.    Talk to yourself on the street. Nobody likes a loony.

17.    Think you will ever be rich. You won’t. You have left it way too late.

18.    Have Botox. You will look like a pastry case with no filling and people will wonder why you are smiling when they tell you their entire family has been killed in a plane crash.

19.    Buy a dog. It could well outlive you and probably have to be put down once it has paid its respects by urinating on your grave.

20.    Get married – unless there is loads of money, loads of sex, or a Green Card in it for you.

21.    Take advice from people. They are only ever talking about themselves.

22.    Think that life was so much better when you were poorer. At least you get to cry over a glass of champagne now, rather than tap water.

23.    Wear a bikini. You will just look like an underdressed tree trunk.

24.    Think you can make someone fall in love with you. They will or they won’t. It’s that simple. And that complicated.

25.    Start looking up every ache and pain on Google, or you will think you have five minutes to live.

26.    Check the gray in your pubic hair. It will really depress you.

27.    Check the gray in any lover’s pubic hair; that will depress you even more.

28.    Believe a 20-something year old when they say they are attracted to your maturity. For “maturity,” read “no strings-attached leg-over.”

29.    Go platinum blonde in an effort to look younger. You will only end up looking like Myra Hindley’s less attractive sister.

30.    Contemplate any relationship with a man unless he is one who will put out the garbage.

31.    Accept lifts from strangers. You never learned that one, did you?

32.    Try to win a goldfish or coconut at the fairground. You never did during the first five decades of your life, so what makes you think your luck is going to change now?

33.    Buy a gun. You will only end up using it and end up in a box six feet under, or on Death Row.

34.    Say that you aren’t going to cry the next time you watch ET. You will. Keep a very large bucket next to you at all times.

35.    Watch Titanic. Life really is too short for that. And you know the ending anyway. It sinks. See? I’ve saved you the trouble already.

36.    Believe anything anyone ever tells you about penises. Especially men. And lesbians.

37.   Don't trust the soothing voice of a pilot when he says you are experiencing “a bit of turbulence.” You are closer to death than you know.

38.    Cry yourself to sleep. Come sunrise, your face will look as if it is nursing two baked potatoes under your eyes.

39.    Ever try to help the police with their enquiries. You’re a suspect. You probably did it, but have forgotten.

40.    Start watching the Columbo marathon – because it never stops, and life as you know it will be over forever. You will even start wondering if this is what you should have been doing your entire life

41.    Say the C word in the USA, or, if you speak Russian, the P word. “Prick,” however, is apparently perfectly acceptable.

42.    Breast-feed in public. Especially if you don’t have a baby.

43.    Start wondering if you are gay because you’ve never been married. You opted quite early on which side of the Penis vs the Furry Cup argument you were on, and there has been little evidence to prove you were wrong.

44.    Give up your seat to anyone on public transport, no matter how old, pregnant or infirm they are. You’ve been through shit, too; you’ve earned your spot.

45.    Try to rescue anyone appearing to be in trouble in the sea. They are waving, not drowning. You, however, will drown.

46.    Keep checking your phone. He hasn’t called. Never will.

47.    Think too much. It’s never got you anywhere.

48.    Lend anyone money. Borrow to your heart’s content, but don’t lend.

49.    Get into debt. Oh, too late.

50.    Start making lists of how your life has changed since hitting 60.

51.  Use a battery operated device to shave your face and eyebrows when you've been drinking. You will end up looking like a turnip.

52.  Attempt to read Salman Rushdie again. You failed many times before. At this age, you will definitely be dead before making it to page 10 of any of his books.

53.  Cry yourself to sleep. You are dribbling into your pillow so much these days, you will be woken by your head thinking it is going down with the Titanic.

54.  Spend time with anyone who begins a sentence "You're gonna find this funny" or "You're gonna laugh at this." You won't. 

55.  Think you can become a web designer. Life - your life, certainly - really is too short. The only thing you have time for is to choose the font for your coffin lid. Pay an expert. 

56.   Try to pull out a stubborn champagne cork with your teeth. You won't have those teeth for much longer; enjoy them while you can.

57.  Get lazy, drunkenly heading for the bathroom in the middle of the night. The white telephone table in the hallway only looks like the toilet; you have several more feet to go.

58.  Go hiking alone. You will end up stranded for days on a mountainside, having to drink your own urine until the rescue services arrive.

59.  Tell young people that everything was better in the olden days; in the 21st century, they already know that.

60.  Worry about a global pandemic killing you off; it'll never happen... Oh, wait...

Keeping the Wolf from the Door

Law and Order: SVU. 

I swear that for every one I watch, they have made another six by the time the credits roll. How else would it be possible, every time I turn on my TV, to see yet another SVU marathon and so many episodes that I haven’t seen before?

   

Last night, I watched the second episode of series 16, which began last week. My DVR hadn’t recorded episode one because Verizon screwed up. I couldn’t watch it On Demand because Verizon screwed up again.

   

Verizon are ruining my life. I talk to them more often than I talk to my mother. Well, I say “talk”. The only people who appear to be contactable there are the social networking team on Twitter, and they really are very good indeed. The problem is that the people they pass the messages on to are the very people who don’t pick up the phone when you try to reach them by conventional methods. And so you go back to Twitter to name and shame the company into taking action.

   

I was perfectly happy with Time Warner Cable in Los Angeles, but when I moved to New York, I was assured Verizon were the best. Super-duper high speed internet, the ability to record 12 programmes at a time, 200 hours of storage space of HD on the DVR, and 1000 in SD.

   

To cut a long story short, it’s the slowest internet (and I am on 150/150 for all you techies out there) I have ever had, and my DVR has been swallowing SVU at a faster rate than I can watch it.

   

It turned out that I had been given the super-duper internet speed (that isn’t), but the bog standard, two programmes at a time, DVR recorders. This, I discovered only when the first episode of SVU clashed with another two recordings, and so never appeared. I turned to On Demand, where, in SD and HD, it was scrambled. Finally, a human has addressed this, but it means losing my collection of stored Judge Alex programmes forever, as the show is no longer on the air. See what I mean, Verizon? RUINING my life!

   

But back to SVU. I get very confused, because Danny Pino, who has one of the most beautiful mouths in television, is also on old episodes of Cold Case, which is my other addiction. I know he is called Nick in one or the other, but have no idea which, because every time he comes on screen, I just stare at those gorgeous lips (and he doesn’t look like a Nick, anyway. He looks like a . . . well, a Danny, which is just as well). And eyes. He really is incredibly gorgeous. I quite fancy the overweight one, too (I think he’s Cold Case, but don’t take my word on that), who is sexy in a Tony Soprano kind of way.

   

My real love, though, is Mariska Hargitay, who plays Detective Olivia Benson in SVU. Now, when I say “love”, I don’t mean it in a “Let’s go on holiday to the island of Lesbos, Mariska” kind of way; I just find her performance utterly compelling and one to which I have become addicted. Hargitay is not only a charismatic, sensitive actor, who knows that less is always more, she possesses a quality that you can’t really pin down, but which I will categorise as the Comfort Blanket Factor.

   

Every day, when I skip through the “Guide” when I have exhausted the DVR, I will always tune in if SVU is on. It doesn’t matter what time of day it is, and much as I say “Right, it’s my last one”, they put that Law and Order logo and voiceover “In the criminal justice system” up so darn quick, I am hooked again before I get even a finger to the remote to change channels. It’s my comfort blanket and I really, really don’t like it when it’s not on.

   

Dick Wolf, whose name appears at the end of all the Law and Order episodes, is the master of addictive television. I had the privilege of meeting him at a forum in London when the UK version was being made, and he appeared on stage with his leg in plaster. Apparently, he had been for a pedicure and his foot had become infected. It wouldn’t have made a whole episode, but there was something mildly amusing in the knowledge that he has all that genius and money and can’t find a pedicurist who doesn’t have delusions of amputeeism.

   

Anyway, I watched episode two of this season’s SVU, which was, by accident, incredibly topical, as it involved a sports personality being accused of something he may or may not have done (although that is always a hot topic in the US, as far as I can see). Sex, race, loyalty, truth, justice – all the big themes were there, as they invariably are in the Dick Wolf box of magical tricks. 

I just have to find a way to wean myself off SVU, if only for a day, as I am now an SV of the show itself.

   

In the meantime, Mariska and Danny, I really do love you both. But I still need some broadcasting methadone to get me off the SVU hard stuff. 

My real life is over unless I find a means to keep Dick Wolf out of my living room.

  

   

Fifty Ways to Beat Your Lover

Every TV network in the US last week devoted time to the NFL (National Football League) player, Ray Rice, who, a few months back, knocked his wife unconscious in an elevator. The incident was caught on CCTV, and the NFL has just suspended the player indefinitely (the initial punishment was a two game suspension).

   

Debate has raged over who should be punished the most: the player, the NFL, or NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who, it seems, knew about the severity of the attack (from Rice himself), despite initially claiming relative ignorance.

   

The stark and terrifying high numbers of abuse victims, not only in the US, is appalling; but what is most disturbing is the number of women who don’t stand up to the domestic violence horror that it undoubtedly is. TV interviews with women wearing Rice’s number 27 shirt revealed a “He’s a good bloke who just made one mistake” mentality, with many claiming that what happens behind closed doors between a husband and wife should stay there.

   

These interviews appeared to be with not very bright women, blinded by the celebrity status of Rice. But there are many intelligent women propagating abuse who seem oblivious to the fact that they are doing so.

   

Take Fifty Shades of Grey, a book published and heavily publicised by Random House, run by a woman (Gail Rebuck). It is written by E L James, a woman. I have met them both and know them to be smart cookies. The book, however (I confess to having read only the first volume – that was enough), is not an entertaining romp; it is nothing less than a celebration of abuse heaped by a man upon a woman – and, moreover, abuse she contractually signs up for. Instead of thinking “What a weirdo”, she is turned on by the desires of this handsome, single man, and has relatively few qualms about being his piece of beaten up meat. She is, in essence, gagging for it – and not in a good way.

   

The book raced up the best-seller lists, attracting a huge female readership; there is a movie in the making – written by a woman (Kelly Marcel) and directed by a woman (Sam Taylor Johnson). Everyone is making a ton load of money from their efforts and everyone is ecstatic over the books’ success (a trilogy). I have no interest in whether the hero, Christian Grey, sees the error of his ways at the end of volume three (I have no idea if he does); what I care about is that Anastasia Steele is an abuse victim whose story tells women everywhere that abuse is a turn on; pain is good; men call the shots. Shame on all you professional women involved with this.

   

Did any of you take a moment to consider the irresponsibility of the message you are putting out there? Listen, I know that many people are into sado-masochism and that many men and women get off on pain. There are also many violent books out there, material that gets published on a weekly basis that is deeply disturbing. Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho was one of them; but that book was nowhere near as reprehensible as Fifty Shades, as it never suggested that any of the psycho’s victims got any degree of pleasure from the truly horrific ways they were killed. Indeed, the most sickening slow death was cut when the book was turned into a movie.

   

When women join other women to promote the idea that a woman enjoys violence on the scale of Fifty Shades, I seriously worry for our society. It makes them no better than the interviewees discussing Ray Rice; they, too, are in collusion with the side of society that turns a blind eye to one of the most important and unaddressed issues of our times.

   

I have been lucky with the men I have been involved one. Only once did a boyfriend push me around on the street; luckily, someone was there and instantly came to my aid. It heralded the end of the relationship, but not because I instigated it. He had been unfaithful, and it was my knowledge of the affair that ultimately brought things to an end.

   

Would I have kept seeing him, following that incident? Would his aggression have escalated? I have no way of knowing; but I know that my feelings for him overwhelmed any logical thought as to what he was actually doing or where it was going.

   

Ray Rice’s wife, Janay, is standing by her man because she loves him. It’s the main reason women who leave abusive men always go back (financial is another); the reason they forgive; and the reason they get beaten up again and again, and often get killed in the process – thousands upon thousands every year in the UK, and a heck of a lot more in the US, where it is claimed one in three women suffers abuse from their partners.

   

Men need to be punished for their violence; but women also need to get a grip and stop telling men that it’s okay for them to behave like this. Any woman who goes to see the movie Fifty Shades is financing abuse and putting another tick in the box that says it is all right for the abuse to continue, because, guess what: we love it, really.

   

I mean, REALLY?

I repeat: shame on you all.

 

   

Let There Be Light - Remembering 9/11

Like most people, I know exactly where I was when the Twin Towers came down. 

I was having lunch in the Groucho Club in London’s Soho with my best friend Elizabeth and the writer Keith Waterhouse. A waiter came over to tell us that we should go upstairs to watch the TV as a plane had just gone into one of the Towers.
   
I sat, in a crowded room, in complete silence, watching, with disbelief, the sight that has now become one of the most devastating in our lifetime.
   
Initial rumours were that 20,000 were feared dead, and in the French House, a local pub, a priest openly prayed in the bar.
   
It is 13 years today since the attacks took place, and time has not lessened the impact on the city. Among New Yorkers, there is bitterness that the tragedy has subsequently turned into a political argument over money; another dispute centres on the six minute film in the museum, which apparently fails to point out that the majority of Muslims are peace-loving, law-abiding citizens who do not run around blowing up buildings.
   
Others complain that the Freedom Tower that has gone up in the original Towers’ place is not tall enough. They wanted the biggest two-finger salute to Al Qaeda that it was possible to build.
   
But, for many New Yorkers, 9/11 is too painful to talk about, and they have no desire to visit the site, nor engage in any commemoration of it. As one said to me: “I lived through it. Why would I want to be reminded?”
   
I went to the site earlier this year - a perfect spring day in the Financial District, where the streets are eerily dark in the shadows of the buildings that stand sentry all around. Older buildings that look as if they could do with a good clean lend a grubbiness to the area, like poor relations who come to visit their better off cousins who long outstripped them in terms of wealth. In Liberty Square, the scent of tulips was overwhelming, the red and yellow adding some much needed colour among the greys and browns of stone and concrete.
   
And then there it is: an unostentatious tower of light like an angel that has descended unannounced, quietly, to restore order.
   
It is exquisitely beautiful. Most of my time here, since I arrived five months ago, has been spent photographing buildings rather than people, but the Freedom Tower is something else. Of course, its presence is loaded with the sadness of 9/11, which gives added poignancy to its place in New York history; but it also stands alone, both literally and metaphorically. It is the light of the future and, while the past will never be forgotten, it is a reminder that courage, fortitude and love remain at the heart of the human spirit.
   
When 9/11 happened, I wondered, if I had been a passenger on one of the planes, knowing it was the end, what my one regret in life would have been.
   
It was that I had never lived in Paris. The following week, I was on the Eurostar out of London to pick up the keys to an apartment in the 6^th arrondissement, where I stayed for a joyous four years.
   
Ever since 9/11, I have tried not to live a Could’ve Would’ve Should’ve kind of existence. I cannot begin to imagine what it was like to live through the tragedy, nor to lose someone in such horrific circumstances.
   
But it taught me a lot about life: that it really is short, but it is also beautiful. 

Yes, there is darkness along the way, but it can turn on a dime.

You just need to look among the shadows for the angels.  
    

    

Please, Cry for Me, Argentina

I’ve never been what you’d call a natural follower.

I’ve never been on a march or rally, and I don’t queue. Not since I hit 50, anyway. Life really is too short for queuing.

  

My natural instinct is to be the follow-ee, not least because I don’t trust anyone else enough to follow in their footsteps. However, this hasn’t always worked out well. On a recent flight to Spain, when we landed I purposefully set off in what I thought was the route to passport control. Not at a casual stroll but in a real “I KNOW where I am going, the rest of you can dawdle all you like” kind of way. When I came up against a security barrier and double-locked doors, I turned back, only to see 200 fellow passengers who had clearly been impressed by my leadership qualities.

  

This week, I decided to start Argentine tango classes, thinking that 40+ years of ballroom dancing would stand me in good stead.

  

There was one thing on the form that bothered me: I had to place a tick beside “Leader” or “Follower”, as the class was limited to seven of each.

  

Men tend to tick the former, women the latter: it’s just the way things are for most dances, particularly Latin American ones. But I knew, from my ballroom dancing years and some very weak “leading” males, that this did not bode well. I recall one partner who walked off the competition floor from me in Butlin’s annual championships in Minehead because I was moving my arms in a different direction from his during the Bambi Blues (What can I say? He was wrong; I was right. Why would I follow someone who was leading me down the “Doesn’t stand a snowball in hell’s chance of winning” route?).

  

Another partner was rushed to hospital for stitches when I flipped back a little too vigorously during a step called the Dead Man’s Drop in the Rumba. Let’s just say he dropped more than I did. Not my fault he couldn’t hold on. Weak leadership. See what I mean?

  

I tentatively ticked “Follower” for my tango class and arrived to find three leaders and three followers, but with the teacher (female) able to do both roles, she informed us that she would be a leader for the night.

  

The class started well, as we were required to do “warm-up walking”. So far, so good. Feet at an angle, sliding across the floor in my new dance shoes, torso straight, eyes ahead, and all accompanied by faint tango music playing in the corner. I was enjoying this.

  

Then, we had to partner up. Now, which part of “Right foot forward” is it so difficult for a so-called leader to understand? That was one man. The next was even more trouble. Having been told that we had to move anti-clockwise around the floor, he decided to set off on a collision course in the opposite direction.

“I’m the leader!” he informed me, when he came up against forceful resistance.

“But we’re going the wrong way!” I insisted, a little too loudly.

“I like to break rules,” was his response. Try that next time you’re in bloody Argentina, I wanted to scream.

Luckily, I then had to move on to man number three, whose technique involved stepping on each of my big toes every other step. Followers, we were told, have to go along with whatever the leader wants in tango. Really? Even if they want to send your feet off on a path in which the only outcome is certain amputation? I don’t think so.

  

His arm wasn’t helping. The teacher came along and told us that our arms were too low – “You’re pushing hers too hard,“ she began, before adding: “or she’s dropping it.”

  

Hang on a minute. I am NOT dropping my arm. Decades of ballroom dancing have ensured that I even go to sleep with my right arm in ballroom dancing hold. I am just trying to stop this dolt who is breaking every bone in my feet from dislocating my arm, too.

  

Ninety minutes is a long time in tango. It is an age if you are a follower dependent upon leaders intent on hospitalising you at the earliest opportunity.

  

All the followers (female), by the way, were picking everything up pretty quickly, but as with most things in life, men just can’t multi-task.

“I can’t talk and think,” said man number three, as he bulldozed my toe for the tenth time in two minutes.

  

Having signed up for the intensive course, I’m determined to see it through, although my bet is that the bone crusher won’t turn up for the second class. Whatever your views on Che Guevara, unlike these guys at least he knew how to lead.

  

So, I can’t wait to get past the basics and sign up for private lessons. Then, perhaps, I will set off for Argentina, where, knowing my luck, I will be robbed, kidnapped and sold into tango slavery.

  

It sure beats living limbless in New York City.