Though it feels like since school ended, I ran to the furthest corner of the earth, fell into a coma for ten years, took off on a spaceship and got trapped in a space-time wormhole, not a whole lot has been happening. I have been watching an awful lot of movies, as is my wont during holidays. The best was Inception, which remains entirely indescribable — if you don’t believe me, watch the trailer and notice how you have no more information about the film than before you watched it. I think the best way to catchphrase it would be “conceptual magnificence”. It was just awesome. I couldn’t give you a “worst” because I haven’t watched any bad films. Moulin Rouge was entirely bizarre, and if you can get past Ewan McGregor’s desperate shouting into his microphone, it’s fairly entertaining. Big Fish was similarly strange (why have I been watching so much Ewan McGregor?), though well made as always when it comes to Tim Burton. I wasn’t sure what to feel at the end of it (a common quality of many Burton films), apart from shock at just how bad Helena Bonham Carter’s Southern accent is. Helena, we love you, but you’re just too posh to be a hick.

Other new discoveries which are highly recommended include Thelma & Louise, one of those films at the end of which I could find nothing to criticise (Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis fabulous, the tone perfect, all hail the writer/director, whoever they are); An Education, which I’m sure everyone on the planet but me has seen, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen something good and British, and Carey Mulligan nails it; Un long dimanche de finançailles, which the class watched one day while I was away — only Jeunet can turn the First World War into a touching, watchable feat in that way, apart from uniting Marion Cotillard, Audrey Tautou and Dominique Pinon (three of my favourite French people ever) and getting Jodie Foster to speak fluent French (GASP).

Perhaps the biggest surprise in the bunch was Love Actually, which I was not expecting to like but thought I might as well rent, since everyone always talks about it and it falls under the pretending-to-study category of Love Through the Ages. It was actually rather uplifting. I’m not really a fan of Richard Curtis, never having understood what all the fuss over Notting Hill, Four Weddings etc was about, but I think he got it right this time, with a warm, honest film with all your favourite British institutions. It didn’t end entirely happily, but it affirmed one’s faith in…I don’t want to say love, so I’ll say humanity. No great work of cinematography, of course, but it did the trick for a Wednesday night in.

Moving back into cinema, I actually went three times during the last week of term. Monday (Sports Day, MUAHAHAHA) I went with Amirah to see Eclipse, which was rather tolerable actually; it was a better film (due to better story and less Bella) than New Moon, and since even New Moon fell into the still-enjoyable category of So Bad It’s Literally Funny, I believe I got my money’s worth for what I was expecting. Searching deeper (never a good idea with Twilight) for the causes behind this, I considered the possibility that it was due to the multiple viewpoints. The actual plots aren’t all bad, acceptably thought-out — in the main — with enough action to hold up the rest, so once the audience is finally granted a brief reprieve from Bella’s dull, self-wallowing, one-dimensional abyss of emotionlessness (which admittedly), the film’s not bad viewing. The flashbacks to Jasper and Rosalie’s past lives, though lazily filmed like everything else, and the introduction, through the newborns and the Volturi, of some scenes WITHOUT EDWARD, BELLA OR JACOB IN THEM! CAN IT BE? made a more well-rounded film. Admittedly, as soon as I saw the camera zooming in on Edward and Bella in the meadow, I left to get popcorn. But it could have been worse. What couldn’t possibly have been worse: the red of the Volturi’s eyes, the teddy-bear quality of the wolves.

On Wednesday, I went straight from school with the guys (and Georgia) to see Toy Story 3. I don’t remember the original (not even sure if I’ve seen it all the way through), and never went near the second one, but all the same I have grown up with those plastic faces smiling benevolently from merchandise, bus posters and Channel 4′s countdown of the best family films of all time. I can see why people (mostly my generation) view Toy Story as one of the great classics, and believe the reason for this is *DUALFOLD*. On the one hand, the idea in itself was a great one, which everyone can relate to (I too had a wall of drawings of my animals, and my family has a running joke about the guys partying while we’re on holiday). On the other, as Pixar proved with Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Monsters Inc and so on, there is no condescension. Just because it’s rated U doesn’t mean there is no real plot. There is plot, character development, motif and real humour — beyond the much cited “jokes for adults” which are in themselves fairly patronising. A rich experience which left many of the audience, including me and Georgia, struggling not to cry over our lost youth.

In the meantime, I have begun to analyse Les Petits Enfants for French, and have still not ordered Les Quatre Cent Coups off Amazon. I have ignored all piano, Greek and Latin until After I Get Back From Canada, that horribly large heap of To-Do. I have bought a dress and survived. I have undergone the wince-worthy experience of being forced to watch, forty five minutes at a time, how LOST went from a great show to a colossal joke (otherwise known as Season Four). I meet people every now and then. I am progressing with my Sticking Book.

I’m shuffling along.

Well, some are complaining about the generic plot. The sort of good-versus-evil-culminating-in-a-huge-battle thing is, admittedly, hardly original — but when everything else about Tim Burton is entirely singular, can’t we let this one slide? His specialty has proven, over the years, to make boring generic films with boring generic plots into interesting, “bonkers” films to revitalise the plot. If one reads some of the press surrounding its release, it quickly becomes clear that the actors thought a lot more about this than perhaps they were supposed to.

Depp took the mentality of his Mad Hatter – which could so easily have just become an orange-haired incarnation of Jack Sparrow, and emerged the most memorable and beloved character of the picture — very seriously, trying (and succeeding) to find a place within the Hatter which could generate both insanity and something entirely real to which the audience can relate. Hathaway’s White Queen, while on the surface as dull as any motherly, beautiful, ivory-clad goodie, was in fact intended to be a combination of Blondie, Greta Garbo, Dan Flavin’s art and the bunny magnets with the caption “Cute, but pscyho.” Such is Hathaway’s skill — which hasn’t been tested in a while — that there is no doubt from her performance that she is related to her tyrannical sister, Bonham Carter’s Red Queen; there is something rather unsettling about her floating confidence, coming only in small part from the clash of her well-known dark features and her hair, which is dyed white. Those snatches at a disturbed core could tell a story in themselves.

The other major criticism has been that Mia Wasikowska’s performance as the nineteen year old Alice leaves the viewer cold. It is true that, unlike Depp and Hathaway in particular, she gives us nothing spectacular. But perhaps the more kindly members of the audience would remember that Alice is not meant to be spectacular. Her journey of self-discovery (sorry, English Lit coursework ironically eroding my capacity for independent thought over here) is designed to be one of a girl who does not believe she can be the person she is supposed to be, both in the real world, where she is the standard Victorian teenager faced with an awful — but prudent — marriage proposal, and in Underworld, where she is told from the off that it is her destiny to slay the Jabberwock. Carroll’s book changed the fact of children’s literature and encouraged the increasingly stagnant imagination of a restrained era, showing us the impossible through the entirely possible eyes of a normal girl. Emotional depth — far more prominent in the Mad Hatter and even the Red Queen — does get lost somewhat in the larger-than-life characters and sets and the action of the plot, but it is not to the detriment of the film’s overall sentiment.

Cinema is an art of escape. Whether we are content to pretend that we are taking New Moon seriously, or whether we require something as deep and incomprehensible as The Unbearable Lightness of Being, we are all seeking the same thing — to be absorbed. Tim Burton’s sky-high genius combine with his child-like worlds in films which fulfil this purpose time and time again, proving that he himself wants nothing more than to enter places to which only the imagination of such a talented director can take us. Perhaps this is why he and Bonham Carter are the nation’s favourite “bonkers” soulmates: she loves to play make-believe, and explains her love for acting (which seems at times almost synonymous with her love for Burton): “that’s what makes me feel liberated”. And perhaps this, in turn, is the reason why I have a near-fatal girl crush on her, the woman who describes her work as “getting as far away from myself as possible”. That’s what she’s looking for when she makes the film, that’s what I’m looking for when I watch it. The only thing standing between us is the need for a director who understands the concept.

Thank God for Tim Burton.

When I suggested, since I was supposed to help organise a failed November trip, that we all go off au cinema to see the new Jeunet film next week, I had kind of assumed that Mme T, a fellow childless mummy and one with much less free time than me, would let me do it. This was going all right until the ever pleasantly surprising democratic approach of Mme J kicked in, and suddenly, in addition to me, we had two teachers, eighteen students and one French assistant organising the trip. Of course, as often happens in such situations, it has ended with me sorting it out anyway, which suits me just fine (now I get to do my extremely unattractive “I told them so” smile to myself) . But it got me thinking about my role as Mummy, and what it means.

It is possible, of course, that this is a sign that I am destined to become a real mother. Indeed, the main reason I have always recoiled from the idea of having children is because I can’t stand the thought of any more responsibility. My own mother is of the view that if you want something done, you give a great sigh, are secretly grateful for the lack of response from your companions (be they friends, colleagues or family) and, martyr-like, sacrifice yourself for the completion of the task youw anted done in the first plcae.  Mine has less self-confidence in my own ability to do it, more along the lines of if you want something done and you can do it, why not just fucking get it done before anything goes wrong? Such impatience and inexorability probably do not make the list of Top 10 Motherly Qualities. Or even the top fifty. However, it might come in handy every now and then when you have one kid at band practice, one going prune-like in the bath and one in tears over their trigonometry homework, with another one tugging on your sleeve in the awful, rubbery, death-smelling waiting room at Barnet General and your husband on the phone saying he can’t find any food to shovel into the other one.

It’s for this reason that Ricky and I have arranged theoretically our five test-tube babies. It’s perfect. We will both love them. He will inspire them. I will manage them. Thus we will raise them. It’s unfortuante that Ricky and I would most likely murder each other within a week of starting such a project, that we’re not attracted to each other and that we have no money for IVF or a house big enough to fit five children into it. Because it would be a beautiful family. In any case, the point is that a nature such as mine is incompatible with anything other than a laid-back, lenient, fun parenting persona, unless you want your children to be total disasters. Since I couldn’t stand living or working on something (I would love them, I promise, but I’d always work on them) with  a laid-back, lenient, fun parenting persona, it looks like I am destined to remain eternally, if not bitter and alone, then at least childless.

The second, rahter more popular, theory among my associates is that I am destined to become a teacher. I have been fighting this suggestion for at least the five and a half years I have been at MHCHS, and seem to remember it coming up before that too. Well, at least, my Year Six teacher apparently told my mother on Parents’ Evening, “Lara sometimes is at risk of organising people.” My mother, being the source of the anal genes which expose me regularly to this risk, replied something along the lines of, “Well, somebody has to.” The jobs of teacher and mother are both excuses to organise a person. The difference is that in a mother, this quality may be at the detriment of the other aspects of being a mother, such as liking your child. In a teacher, organisation is both desirable and limited to one aspect of the child’s life, their education — as opposed to 18 entire years of their existence. Logic worked through: the problem now is that I don’t know if I want to be a teacher, or if I’ve spent half of my life being told I will be one, and therefore when the idea is put forward, I think, “Yes, that makes sense”. My psychological laziness — the dislike of change coupled with the unwillingness to try and come up with anything else — needs no encouragement. I suppose I’d better hope to God that I can actually teach.

The only other explanation I can think of for the Childess Mummy Syndrome (hereafter known as CMS) would involve some very long psychobabble. This might revolve around the successful precedent of my own mother (who, incidentally, also passed on the CMS gene to my sister, an equally skilled mother and manager, in equal and related parts). Or it might concern my own life, my feeling that I cannot control the things which happen to me, the traumas I experience and the travesties which I witness, and so transfer this frustration onto things which can be organised, such as a trip to the cinema or a school project. It’s a well-known fact that the vast majority of Type As in fact feel more than the general population that their lives are spiralling out of all recognisable control. I’m not disagreeing with that statement.

Oh, God. I hate it when I go profound.

Let’s move onto lighter topics. I watched Wanted at last, as I have been *wanting* to do since it first came out, because, simply, watching the trailer I thought (as did everyone, I think), “That looks fucking awesome.” I can now confirm for a fact that it was. It probably didn’t make any sense, but it just looked SO FUCKING COOL. I wish I had a more elegant way to say it, but there you are. However, though amazing action sequences often feature in my list of awsome films, this was not all that I liked about the picture. We all thought at the time of the release two years ago that it was just about bending bullets. It is about bending bullets. And it is cool. But, contrary to my expectations, there was also a plot, with, if you consider it, some fairly deep psychological questions. We have everything ranging from daddy abandonment to the destruction of perception, the extent to which you are slave to something you believe in and whether that’s a choice, a fair few mind games…Well, I’ll let you watch the film.

All this added to a window into the humour of the excruciatingly normal life of hypochondriac protagonist Wesley (played perfectly by James McAvoy), a little sex appeal (anyone alive in 2001 will understand if I simply state, Jolie & weapons), quite a few genuinely unexpected twists… And, of course, the amazing visual and sound effects which would have made this movie as ridiculous as it sounds on paper, were it not for the stunningly high quality of CGI that we have come to regard as normal from the industry today. 

This has absolutely nothing to do with what this post was originally about. Except, I suppose, that if I were a real mummy, watching such films might be a bit difficult. Which leads us on to an entirely different post, the one where it transpires that I only love movies so much because they constitute a complete distraction from the awful responsibilities and problems of every day life. I think I’d better save us from this by ending the post now.

The decision to drop Politics, which has been viewed (often verbally) by most as a disastrous, whimsical mistake that I would hasten up to the sixth form block to rectify on Monday morning, definitely makes the list of best choices I’ve ever made. This week has been every bit as relaxing and enjoyable as the summer holidays were — and 2009 was the best summer of my life — not just because, like then, I had minimal work to do. It’s not that simple. I was able to properly relax, because, unlike every holiday since then — culminating in the weekend in Paris — I could face the thought of its end. The summer, because it stretched on forever and because I was looking forward to Year 12, which represented the apparent discovery of some semblance of control over my own life. This week, because having had the sense to just bloody give up, I have regained that mental — and physical — control. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that apart from two essays I have essentially had no homework set. But that wouldn’t be enough for me to properly enjoy half term if I knew I was going back to five subjects.

Self-satisfied paragraph dealt with. The more recent complaceny stems from, as I said, the outing I just had with Amirah to go and see The Lovely Bones. I hadn’t been all that impressed by the book, though I thought it was an interesting idea — a murdered tween narrating from heaven the collapse of her family and the antics of her killer. However, as happens not all that often, the noise being made about the film has been exactly the right volume and in exactly the right places. Films which combine spot-on scripts, performances and direction are always unique, and The Lovely Bones is no exception. In terms of the writing, I felt the film had achieved what the book had so clearly attempted and not quite managed: to make something poignant and original out of something unnecessary, pointless, awful and unfortunately, dirtily, common. The script was helped in no small part by Peter Jackson’s visionary mind and the resulting perfection of the CGI afterlife. The line between pretentious and innovative is extremely, microscopically thin, above all in cinematography: things either just work, or they just don’t. The singular beauty of the otherworld Jackson and his team created captured perfectly the mood of this film: one of wonder. No one, though, is under any illusions about what we’re dealing with here: the rape and bloody murder of a fourteen year old girl. To take something so ugly and transform it with such grace that the audience walks out hopeful and uplifted, and have it not seem a gigantic cop-out designed to please the BBFC and reel in the half-term families — that’s what the fuss is about this picture.

It’s arguable that it still would have been a fairly good film on this basis alone, but great films need all three: script, direction, performance. The latter is, of course, 99% Saoirse Ronan (that’s sear-sha for most people, serr-sha for people from her town) and Stanley Tucci, whose combined sackful of nominations speak for themselves. Ronan proved herself beyond all doubt in Atonement at the tender age of thirteen, and once again takes centre stage, narrating the film, playing the character around whom the actions of all the others revolves and, most impressively of all, acting with pure truth something none of us, including her, can ever know: being dead. Susie Salmon is simultaneously normal and special, and Ronan plays her in both worlds — the everyday, earthly family crises she now watches and the extraordinary In-Between she now walks — with understanding and curiosity.

Stanley Tucci as George Harvey, sinister serial killer, is now very high up on my Top Five list of the creepiest people ever. As soon as you look at him you know he’s the one. With such a level of spine-shiver already going on before he’s even moved, it’s pretty impressive that he tops it with his acting. He, like Ronan, has the impossible job of trying to get inside the mind of the incomprehensible: a taker of life. An archetypal, Always The Quiet Ones disturbed murderer with beige jumpers, big glasses and a weird moustache. But Tucci is diverse enough to take on this role, a world away from his other famous,  turns in The Terminal and The Devil Wears Prada, and play this subtly, subtly. Well done Stanley. He normally looks so harmless…

Not much else has happened recently since I’ve been at home for the last two days, clearing out my French folder. And anyone who has taken French for at least GCSE will know that yes, this is a two-day task. I have managed to reduce the Random Crap section (it was literally called that) from approximately 30 sheets to 6, through heavily condensed notes. This may not sound like an achievement compared with the week’s earlier triumphs of writing the impossible brutality essay, finding something to say about downloading music and eating an entire tub of Ben & Jerry’s Cookie Dough with Cloe, but the fact that my French folder no longer weighs more than all of my others put together…To me, at least, that’s made this week worthwhile.

The fact that such a small task has left me feeling so contented sums up this post nicely. It was mostly because I wanted to ramble about The Lovely Bones, but it’s good to add in some personal details for those who have no interest in the film, just as it’s good to ramble about cinema for those who have no interest in me. Life is so nicely balanced these days…

This all contributes to my vastly augmented hatred of reality TV shows from the past year. They’ve been on the rise for a decade, but this year we seem to have gone overboard. Every other new show is So You Think You Can [Insert Something They Can't Do Here]? (The most recent of which, incidentally, is to be judged by Arlene in the BBC’S attempt to prove they’re not outrageously sexist.) At least when the media — and, by extension, the world — was obsessed with Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston, they were obsessed with people with some talent. Now it’s about Cheryl Cole and Dannii Minogue, neither of whom have any, both of whom are yes, very pretty, but with rather annoying accents. Davina McCall and Simon Cowell between them dominate the world once ruled by Oprah Winfrey and George Clooney. I’m not singing the praises of Oprah Winfrey and George Clooney (though Oprah is a massive inspiration to thousands of women, blah blah blah, and George Clooney is fine), but at least they were famous for doing something, as opposed to standing around watching something. We’ve become fascinated by people just existing. Maybe that is fascinating. Maybe it’s even more worthwhile a project than wacky Coen brothers films or whatever. But it’s sure as hell less creative. And for those who cite SCD as being “an entertainment show”, I think it’s pretty hard to make a television programme entertaining without any creativity.

Within the last five or so years, a lot of American dramas have hit our screens. Now, I’m a sucker for American dramas, so be prepared for some bias here. But the arrival of Desperate Housewives, Numbers and Name Any Third One You Like signified an era in which yeah, we all wanted to escape and be sucked into a world where one baby can have three mothers and five fathers and two terminal illnesses, because the more incredible it was, the more normal our own lives seemed, but an era in which we also thought about people, instead of watching them. I remember in Year Eight we were studying Picasso and the Cubists and the disturbing way they drew faces, and our homework was to find a face, cut it up and reassemble it. I chose one of the Channel Five ads. Five’s decision to buy three hit American shows — Shark, House and Grey’s Anatomy — was probably their best ever. Of course, these have all been bought off by Rupert Murdoch now, but for a while there they had me going: I was channel hopping and happened to catch the first episode of the second season of Grey’s, staying on it because I had found the trailer intriguing. Thus was born a major obsession. House used to air right after Grey’s, so I ended up watching that too. When I chucked out all my school books after Results Day this summer, I found the cut-up picture. It was Chase. Three years ago, I’d had no idea who that was.

To go back to Murdoch, who has bought, one by one, every single one of my TV shows (with the exception of the disastrous Strictly, probably because he couldn’t repress a shudder at the thought of being responsible for Bruce Forsyth), maybe he’s the problem. Maybe the American drama hasn’t died in this country; there certainly seem to be a couple advertised every time I go to watch Sky at my sister’s (if House won’t come to me, I must come to House, which I’m sure he would turn into a wonderfully clever sexual joke). In which case, all he’s mercilessly left us proles with only 80 channels with is the soaps that came before the dramas, and the ridiculous So You Think You Cans that came after them. It’s a sad state of affairs, only slightly improved by the imminent pulling down of the figurative Big Brother statue which has, fittingly, towered over us all for the last decade.

It’s at times like this when I can understand how Max can bring himself to watch the Discovery Channel and programmes with titles such as What the Chartists Did For Us (…nothing). Until the return of real television, however, I can take comfort from DVDs (long live the box set!), for films are every bit as awesome as shows. This would be the cue for a long-winded post about the evolution of the film industry, but a) long, b) I have to finish up my Latin Lit for the day and c) I’m pretty sure I ramble about that sufficiently every time I come back from the cinema.

My heart is swollen with relieved elation, exhausted joy.

*SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU HAVEN’T READ IT, DON’T READ THIS!

Concerning the title of the post, I did not wish to thank God, as St John has severely turned me off God, not that I’m particularly fond of St John either. Why the hell does the novel end with him? As those who have shared English classes with me will know, I’m generally pretty good at making up bullshit, which is all that’s really required to do well in English Lit. I have sat at desks in all possible locations for set text annotation: classrooms, the library, the study area, my room, various buses — and pondered this question. I have now read this novel three times, despite the fact that I dislike it. And I have still not come up with an answer.

Jane feels no regret at the novel’s end for not becoming a missionary. She’s having a WONDERFUL time wrapped up in her bubble world of Mr Rochester and walking in the woods and organising the house-cleaning and everything. It’s Mr Rochester who keeps annoying everyone by stopping to kneel and praise God mid-sentence when all we really care about is what he’s saying vis his awful existence without Jane. St John was important as the anti-Mr R, and now we have the latter back, who really gives a flying CRAP what St John is doing in India? Of course, as Jane is recounting the happy endings of everyone else of import in the novel, he can hardly be ommitted as he has dominated the last eight chapters. But through Brontë’s bizarre decision that the last page should mention nothing but him, he also dominates the reader’s impression of the whole novel.

I don’t object to this because Jane is the protagonist — frankly I’ve had quite enough of her own brand of serious flightiness and endlessly hailed strength, when in fact she shows consistent weakness in her inability to choose between what she believes in and who she is, this only being resolved finally because even Jane isn’t stupid enough to think that dying of loneliness and heatstroke in India for the sake of spreading God’s love trumps needy, severely impaired, extremely depressed, now available, suddenly reformed ex-fiancé. I have no desire to hear more from Jane, her greatest redeeming feature being that she is finally ending her tiresome account. No, my problem with St John ending the book is that if, as some of my friends (hem Olivia and Amirah) and many of the world’s teenaged bookworms do, one were to read the final page of the book before beginning it, one would get the impression that Jane is full of religious zeal and completely ready to die and go to Heaven.

Admittedly by the time she leaves her ghastly boarding school Jane has worked out God, and by the time she leaves her governess post she has found God, and by the time she leaves St John’s house, she has seriously considered picking everything up and devoting her life to Him. All the same, religion has never really been Jane’s thing, and Brontë conveyed that in no stronger form than in Jane’s negative interaction with two strong, male, institutional characters: the pastor Mr Brocklehurst when she is a small child, and the zealous St John when she is an independent young woman. Every conversation with St John has been fraught with their differences over how one should love God, and the novel is able to conclude the way it does because Jane literally runs away from her last conversation with St John, from his proposal that she join him in India, in order to be with her love. Since Chapter Ten, Jane has loved God, but she has never loved St John’s approach to God. For the novel to therefore close with unadulterated, almost hysterical praise for it seems more than a little odd.

On the other hand, I’ve just finished annotating it, so maybe I should enjoy the freedom and not think about it so much.

Sorry. This cold is going to my head.

I was most relieved at the end of Avatar (though I admit my first thought was actually “FUCK my back hurts!”, a fact we had all failed to notice until the end of the three-hour experience) because now at least I have seen a good film this year. I’m not sure about the interracial sex (don’t call me racist!) but there’s no doubt that the technology is amazing, the plot is thought-provoking (it took Daniel and Ed about three minutes after the credits rolled to start arguing about whether or not it was, in fact, James Cameron’s cry against the continuing imperialist attitude the West exhibits toward Africa in particular) and the whole thing was, as I called it before, more of an experience than just a movie. I can’t see why the people who didn’t like it felt that way — though my lower back agrees with them — and it was certainly better than every other movie I’ve seen this year, ranging from the simply mediocre to the jaw-droppingly awful. Well, no, I take that back: Harry Potter 6 wasn’t bad, and if Changeling was this year (God, my memory’s beyond help) then that was also good, if the single most disturbing cinematic experience of my life.

So it hasn’t been a good year in movies. It has, however, been a good year in TV with the arrival and completion of House Season Five, the best so far by miles, stepping up the drama while deepening the complexities of the characters’ collective and individual pscyhe and intensifying the clashes in their relationships. We saw characters at gunpoint, characters killing other characters, characters making out with other characters, characters fighting over other characters…The new additions to House’s team during hte course of Season 4 was a very risky move on the show’s part, but it paid off big time, particularly the introduction of Thirteen (Olivia Wilde), who, let’s face it, just makes the show more interesting, what with her various character motivations (being the dying one, being the bisexual one, being the one with a thing for the boss and the one who’s a girl but has none of Cuddy’s power or Cameron’s pointlessness, to name but a few). This combined with her skilled acting, best demonstrated in the episode Last Resort, makes the writers’ bouleversement of the show’s dynamic with the introduction of 3 new main characters more than worthwhile, giving the existing peeps more room to expand their own development. If this year belonged to anyone of the original cast — apart from, obviously, Hugh Laurie, who will never be anything less than brilliant in this role — it has to be Lisa Edelstein as House’s love interest, main nemesis and indomitable boss Cuddy, whose character development was essentially non-existent during the cut-short Season 4. Edelstein takes the wealth of new material she has this year been lavished with in her stride and emerges stronger, more defined, more compelling.

Now we come to the difficult part. The best books I’ve read this year. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was one of those rare modern classics that has both plot material and intellectual depth, with an unusual and relatable narrative voice in the supposedly mute and deaf Chief, who observes better than anyone the power struggle between newcomer McMurphy and straitjacketed Nurse Ratched. Said power struggle is perhaps nothing original in itself — anyone who has seen Girl, Interrupted or, indeed, House Season 6, or any other fiction set in a mental institution, will get the general gist of the thing — but rarely has the scene been so well executed, with a deliberately unsettling mix of humour and shock, with a deliberately confused narrator, with a tone of simultaneous exhaustion of the system and tension at the ease with which it can be broken, if momentarily. It is this which keeps us reading page after page, and which makes Ken Kesey’s novel intriguing and well worth the read.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt (yes, Tartt, let’s get that out of the way now) was not quite what the blurb led me to expect, but was still excellent. It follows a small group of six classics students at a prestigious New Hampshire university, studying under an elitist professor, and was written when the author was still at college herself. You can already see why I read it… One of the few novels I have read which perfectly focuses both on one specific incident and on a whole sea of circumstances, relationships, people, events, locations and ideas at the same time. The book opens with a murder, and though this is described in detail, as we read the novel — narrated by the most recent addition to the group, decreasingly the most outcast and increasingly, in some ways, the most involved, Richard — we realise that absolutely nothing about the murder is disclosed. Richard explores the intricate webs of moments and situations which have led to the murder, unravelling the mystery in his retrospective narration as it simultaneously is introduced in the real-time of the story he tells. Don’t worry, it sounds more confusing than it is, though being able to speak French, Latin and Greek, as well as having read an awful lot, would come in handy at times. Though this may sound pretentious (I admit I wikipediaed the author after I’d read it, assuming she was an Oxbridge/Ivy League graduate, which she is not) it in fact colours the narrative greatly. Richard questions everything: his assumptions, his reasoning, and consequently the relative, or perspective, truth of everything he has told us so far. The Secret History is a highly unusual novel in many aspects, including this one, but in fact as you read it all makes perfect sense. The plot in some way revolves around the fallibility of humans, and so to have a protagonist and narrator who is entirely unsure of himself even as he must carry the entire book on his words only strenghtens what he is saying. What he is saying is extremely well written, the plot well spun out, the characters well visualised and expressed as both dreamlike and far from perfect, the intellectual ideas wonderfully sewn into the more immediate and perfectly accessible issue of the drama and mystery. It sounds like a mess, and indeed the story is about a gigantic mess and how it became such, but it’s sown together with utter precision.

Sum by David Eagleman was something I devoured while ill with probable swine flu, given to me by my stereotypical high-brow, Ham & High aunt as something to make me think. (The book, not the swine flu.) It did, but it was also incredibly enjoyable. Described perfectly by Brian Eno as “a small book with big ideas”, Sum is a collection of 40 tales of life after death, each one just one or two pages in which Eagleman unveils with genius an afterlife immaculately and wholly portrayed, yet completely and utterly different from those preceding and following it. 40 does not seem like too many, but rather not enough, this tiny book of simple words and short points bursting with images and circumstances diverse, colourful and entirely imaginable. A rare delight both clever, readable and succinct.

Finally, Magician by Raymond Feist, rightfully called by many the Bible of fantasy literature, was, frankly, long ting. There were so, SO many points at which the novel could have ended, but it just kept stretching on. Yet as the pages turned I began to welcome this gratefully rather than tire of it. All students of literature know that there are two ways to write a fictional protagonist: someone perfectly ordinary who becomes embroiled in extraordinary things, or someone extraordinary introduced as they deal with the ordinary. Feist manages, in our servant-boy-turned-almighty-magician protagonist Pug, to give us both, weaving an intensely complicated plot drawn out (as I’ve already said) at length. Yet, maturely, Pug is not the be all and end all of the story. As has become something of a tradition of modern epic fantasy, we jump between several viewpoints, almost too many to count, yet all of these perspectives are equally rich and well thought-out. Equally originally, the magic Pug studies is nothing like that of the worlds of Rowling or Canavan, where there are schools and guilds from which characters can learn to completely manipulate it. Feist’s magic is far more enigmatic and unattainable, presented reverently as something which we will never truly understand, though it certainly exists — in the first world of Pug’s learning, the knowledge of the experts is woefully ignorant, and even in the second, once he can do great things, he still does not know how he does them. While this could come off as lazy writing or even simply confusing, it only adds to the realism of this vast universe Feist has created, the ideas of which one can so often identify as present in more recent, more well-known fantasy. What these new worlds lack, however, is the perfectly serious intelligence of Magician, which was just as much about the politics of changing government and warring nations as it was about the magic, if not more so. The ending was beautifully unromantic. Looking forward immensely to the second installment. A must for anyone who enjoys fantasy. 

To briefly cover other areas of entertainment, though not from this year, on Tuesday I saw The Phantom of the Opera, which I cannot announce as being better than or not as good as the film since they were entirely different. There were many things which I had seen in the film and not expected to be possible, yet which were done beautifully: the Christine mannequin in the wedding gown, the chandelier and the vanishing act of the Phantom all worked very well. A very strong Phantom, which is half the production in itself, a very compelling actor, though I did miss Gerard Butler’s raw, untamed power when David Shannon’s disappointingly, though inevitably, classically trained voice warbled away. Also a strong Christine in Gina Beck, though, due to the ways of the stage, entirely different from the girlish innocence of Emmy Rossum, possibly also due to the different, original writing of the character, as less under the Phantom’s spell and more willingly drawn to him. It is rare to praise the acting in a musical, but like Shannon, Beck shone. As Maia said, her line, “have turned to tears of HATE!” was almost spine-shivering. Unfortunately I missed my favourite song, Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again, due to having an absolute epic coughing fit which was actually drowning Christine out until I wisely exited, but the rest of the production more than made up for it, taking the spell-binding elements of the film’s passion, drama and tragedy from the cinematic grandeur and giving an equally valuable, more intimate performance which I would recommend.

VERY quickly music *ohmigodthispostissolongnooneisevergoingtoreadit*: I have discovered Employment by the Kaiser Chiefs which, though it all sounds the same, all sounds the same in a good way, with entertaining lyrics and pleasing melody and the usual sense of inexplicable energy which must be suppressed inadequately and released in short bursts of musical WOOPs. I also revisited the Sweeney Todd soundtrack and concluded what I have always known, that I half love, and half hate Sondheim, a selfish genius who sometimes completely hits the mark and sometimes (in my opinion) totally misses, as well as various new favourite singles, mostly courtesy of Jordan and his amazing gift CD. To name but a few: Elle Panique and L’Effet Papillon for those who both know some French and want to hear from people who see the world as opposed to a few sexual playthings lounging about on cars or whatever; You, Me & the Bourgeoisie and Anything Goes for clever lyrics in a language we ALL speak; The Show for the feeling that you’re not alone in feeling that way; Charlotte, Meccano and Walter Reed for just some good tunes. Over and out.

My trip to Finchley Vue prior to this was with Helena and Katie, to see The Proposal. My desire to see this film was threefold: I wanted to see the two aforementioned friends before they buggered off to their respective countrysides; Sandra Bullock and I go a fair long way back, Miss Congeniality being the first film that I was ever obsessed with; the pitch was an original idea. This is normally the factor which draws me to both films — such as The Matrix, Vantage Point, The Truman Show and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen — although I have been subjected (usually not of my own volition) to many brilliant pieces of cinematography which do not fit this bill (the concept of Amélie was not particularly spectacular, though it is a very beautiful film; Girl, Interrupted has been done many times before but also remains one of my favourite films).

It was largely for this reason that I was interested in The Proposal: the idea of a Canadian uptight boss forcing her American employee, terrified of her, to marry him in order to avoid being deported, apart from sounding like an awful lot of fun for the audience, is something I’ve never come across before. As is usual with such things, it wasn’t quite what I expected, but it contained much of the genuinely funny romantic comedy I have come to expect from Sandra Bullock and though it was at heart a very typical mismatched-love story, events did not unfold in a predictable manner, which I always appreciate. The one fault I could find was that Sandra Bullock, though the film Crash proves that she can do drama, also achieved in the course of The Proposal the absolute worst drowning scene I have ever seen in my entire life. (Don’t worry, she didn’t drown. But I’m pretty sure I could do a better job.)

The Proposal was preceded by Harry Potter Six, which I’m fairly shocked I haven’t dissected already. In fact, come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I have. What the hell is going on? What happened to that post? I remember writing it! WTAF! Okay I’m emailling Jordan. And looking for the post. Okay, erm…I found it. It may have been in the post I wrote two days ago. God, I really am going mad. Anyway, I may as well take this opportunity to talk a little more about the acting, as my previous review was more focused on direction.

Top marks go (in no particular order) to Tom Felton, shooting straight back to the top of the young talent league table following his total annihilation by the script writers of Order of the Phoenix; his performance as the darker yet also more human Malfoy ordered by Voldemort to kill Dumbledore or face his entire family being killed was never exaggerated, but still absolutely believable and deserving of the praise he has received for it. Next comes Jessie Cave, the nice new find of Lavender Brown, Ron’s long-suffering yet so-annoying-she’s-deserving-of-it girlfriend for the duration of Half Blood Prince; just as Potter V was entirely centered on Imelda Staunton’s acidic simpering as Umbridge, the wonderful hysterics of Lavender hold up the romantic comedy of the sixth installment, which basically means the whole film. She is perhaps slightly more ridiculous a character than her literary alter ego, but I’d say this was well-played given the heartily comedic approach to the adaptation.

And, of course, Alan Rickman, who has always been the very essence of Severus Snape, purely for two singular, polarising  moments: his classic facial expression at the end of Lavender’s climactic outburst bordering on a nervous breakdown, in front of all the teachers including the sardonic Potions master himself; and the finger he raises to his lips when he silently reaches Harry’s hiding place at the end of the book, before he swoops up the stairs and murders Dumbledore. The former was, for me at least, the single funniest thing in the entire film; the latter was impressive because Rickman managed somehow to pour so much into that one gesture, tens of emotions and silent words spoken to Harry; and the way that these two examples, comedic and dramatic, stand out proves that Rickman fully understood and demonstrated the essence of this film.Finally, though it may seem inevitable to those who know me, Helena Bonham Carter, whose Bellatrix was fantastic and yet utterly suppressed in OOTP, but burst forth triumphantly in this film, finally granted an actual scene as opposed to a line, more than one scene in fact, managing to produce (in her still relatively brief performance) moments of humour, as well as tightening the thumbcrews on the tension and terrifying the gang (and the audience) more than adequately, in the noticeable absence of good old Voldy. Indeed, Bellatrix seemed to be the only indication whatsoever that the wizarding world currently has bigger problems than the love-octagon occupying the sixth year of Hogwarts. Given the sudden return of the Darkest wizard of all time, as well as the real world’s knowledge of the imminent battle and all its perils, this is a pretty good job for one character alone, but Bonham Carter, as always, one hundred per cent delivers.

Public Enemies, seen with the boys — all of them, before they disappeared to South Africa and India — was, I must say, a disappointment. I don’t think it was a bad film, so much as a bad story. Many will have greatly enjoyed this cat-and-mouse gangster remake, including most of the people I went to see it with, but, frankly, it bored me. I went to see it because there was nothing else out, because I wanted to see the boys, because I like Johnny Depp’s work. It was not something that I would ever go to see alone. The story — the then-newly-formed FBI hunting down charming yet uncomfortably successful bank robber John Dillinger — was not something that would ever interest me. I confess, though, it was not entirely the plot to blame; there have also been moments in other Depp films where I have found myself thinking, “Well, get on with it then.” His one fault is that he makes too much of a meal of things (probably most evident in Sweeney Todd, where he’s making a meal of singing things). We proceeded from one fight scene to one sex scene to another, and it was down to Johnny Depp to keep me engaged enough to the end of the film. He failed. In fact, I was so exasperated by the end that I actually wanted the hero dead. When they finally shot him — rather a lot of times, and a complete anticlimax — I had been on the verge of standing up and screaming “JUST DO IT ALREADY!”

My first trip to the cinema — and therefore my last review — was The Hangover, with Ed and Daniel. This was walking the very wobbly tightrope of Genuine Comedy and Disgusting Comedy, the likes of which always seem to contain the same gaggle of young, largely…well, large actors who make exactly the same crude jokes and participate in exactly the same cringeworthy scenes of physical comedy, whether that be poo, sex or…maybe there isn’t a third one. It was saved, however, by the pleasantly surprising reticence of the script, and at risk of sounding like an eighty year old headmistress, for a film which was about five guys getting so pissed at a bachelor party, in Las Vegas,that they have no idea where they went or what they did, it was all rather tastefully done. Of course, this would be worth nothing if The Hangover hadn’t also managed to be pretty damn funny. The guys wake up in their hotel suite, having lost a tooth, their memories and the bridegroom, and having gained a baby in the closet, a chicken in the living room and a tiger in the bathroom. Panic, or more accurately the typical guy’s shrug of head-scratching perplexity, ensues. I laughed out loud pretty frequently — both at the lewder of the comedy and the more restrained jokes — and would most certainly recommend it.

I also saw Angels and Demons during Study Leave, but it would take me another five hours to give it the thorough trashing it thoroughly deserves, and I’m getting hungry. Another time, perhaps. Or perhaps I’ve already reviewed it…

After Priestess of the White, I read Double Cross, the irritating, unnecessary and joy-killing fourth book in Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses supposed trilogy. I had really been looking forward to reading this as the original series was so good, but I should have known: like Shrek, like Uglies, like all examples where hysterical fan letters from teenaged girls begging for another book lead to the extension of a trilogy, Double Cross thoroughly killed the brilliance of Noughts and Crosses, Knife Edge and Checkmate. Following the literally explosive end of Checkmate, which saw Callie Rose’s bomb kill her evil uncle Jude and her former drunk, already terminal, now nicer gradmother Jasmine, as well as Callie’s reconciliation with her mother Sephy, Double Cross tells the story of Callie Rose’s life two months after the blast – mostly comprising her relationship with half best friend, half boyfriend Tobey and her guilt at the knowledge that she has killed two members of her family (though she does not know that Jasmine set off the bomb on purpose, with the intention of killing Jude).

Noughts and Crosses was a book aimed at teens, of course, as its protagonists Callum and Sephy were at that time adolescents themselves, and so it is expected that the events of the story have been passed on to Callie’s viewpoint. However, this felt a little TOO much like a teen book, dealing with teen issues of sex, gangs, drugs and…oh, wait, that’s it. As it became increasingly clear that there was a negative correlation between the number of the book and the number of characters still alive, we came to rely on Sephy as being the survivor of the trilogy’s incredible dramatic events. Unlike Jude and Meggie, who partially narrated Knife Edge, and Callie and Jasmine, who partially narrated Checkmate, Sephy has been there from the beginning, and we have grown with her. Double Cross sees not only her pushed to the extreme sidelines (she has two scenes) but all of the issues and themes which surrounded her story in the trilogy abandoned too. Whereas the original books were breathless dramatic novels filled with tension, violence, racism and exploration of people and how they live together, as friends and family, Double Cross has descended into a very long, very immature stream of consciousness with none of the drive or passion which fuelled the original books. Narrated exclusively by Tobey who irriates me and Callie Rose who bores me, Double Cross tries to carry through the big questions of Checkmate – love, loyalty, prejudice and how it can both bring people together and tear them apart — but in the process dilutes all the seriousness with which Blackman approached the original trilogy.

That Callie is unavailable for roughly 2/3 of the book, leaving Tobey and his idiotic comments to hold the fort alone, does not help matters, but it is not significant given the other major problems with this book. Double Cross lacks the tone and depth of the trilogy, but this was not merely a disappointment following 3 stunning prequels. This was an almost light-hearted, teenaged-boy, Noughts and Crosses Lite which would never have interested me had I not come to expect so much from Malorie Blackman. She can sustain a plot no matter how thin and unoriginal it is, and Double Cross was a page turner, but not because it was gripping as her other novels always are: simply because there was so little on one page that it took no time or effort to reach the next, in the hope that something more substantial would lie therein.

It took a little while for me to settle into Priestess of the White, I think mainly because the book is narrated from so many (third person) viewpoints. But once I did, I was pretty damn impressed. Soon becoming as addictive as Black Magician, with many of the same elements (magic, rival groups of sorcerers, unlikely young woman from nowhere who finds herself pushed right up to the top) but with the added dominant theme of religion, Age of the Five seems a more than decent follow-up to the huge success of Black Magician.

Auraya Dyer (yes, Dyer)’s tiny village, which is so insignificant I can’t even remember the name of it, comes under attack and blood is about to be shed when Auraya’s intelligence, diplomacy and manipulation manage to form a peaceful compromise. This, coupled with the fact that she is magically Gifted and has received training in using her Gifts from a local Dreamweaver, Leiard, brings Auraya to the attention of Mairae of the White. The White are the rulers of the land, the Gods’ Chosen – they are the gods’ five most powerful servants, most favoured priests. And Mairae wants Auraya to join the priesthood. Neither of them suspect that just ten years later, Auraya will have risen through the ranks to High Priestess and will be chosen as one of the White herself. Immortality and mind-reading are just two of the many perks to being a White, but Auraya does not have time to enjoy these luxuries, because war comes to the Northern continent, waged by rogue sorcerers from the South.

We watch the ruthless and violent rogues (whose power, worryingly, matches that of the White) march North and leave destruction in their wake from the perspectives of several other important characters: Leiard, who becomes both adviser to the White and chief love interest of Auraya, despite the fact that he is a ‘heathen’ Dreamweaver and she a Circlian; Emerahl, a mysterious and powerful sorceress who has lived for over one hundred years and hates the Circlians, despite having suspiciously similar Gifts to the White; Danjin, Auraya’s affectionate adviser who watches her journey as a White, a ruler and a peacekeeper; there are several others but I can’t remember them, and if I can’t remember them it is because they don’t matter. That’s a quote from The Subtle Knife, I think. Anyway.

The pleasant surprise of a fairly spectacular, if fairly short, battle at the end of Priestess of the White, only the first book in the trilogy, tells me that the hope of an epic battle in the trilogy’s conclusion is fairly sound. They can’t top Black Magician, of course (what little can?), but the Age of the Five books look to be well worth the six months they spent gathering dust on my shelves. So HURRY UP MEHDI!!!