Thursday 18 February 2010

1880 Inglorious Basterds, British Islands and a mislaid phone

What a day Wednesday 17th February 2010 has been so far. I stayed up last night watching on Sky Box Office having invested the princely sum of £3.99 for the privilege, Inglorious Basterds, the latest Quentin Tarantino film, and had intended to write about the experience, completed the notes on Martin Clunes visit to a handful of the 1000 islands which surrounds the British main island, and completed the boxing and display shelving reorganisation of completed sets, together with identifying the 50 to 75 incomplete volumes of work in hand into some order for action.

Having switched on the computer and checked my mail in box the screen stuck momentarily then went to Luxor Majong which was not my intention, but where I had reached the last stages of the game for the fifth time in succession, and although having lost a couple of lives, I did not anticipate overtaking the highest score to-date, I hoped to get close to indicate the improvement in visual acuity and prolonged attention which I have sharpened as a consequence of the game and my work activities in general.

It will be evident that the intelligent and worthwhile thing to have done is to have closed the game and continue with planned activity, however the interaction with my existing operative system and programmes is that it continues to run in the background but without my usual ability to reopen until I restart the computer which takes time. Before playing the game therefore I decided to make my I am alive daily text but could not find the phone. Given that I had made the call yesterday morning and had not been out of the house it should have been a simple task to locate the phone which is usually on the desk, which admittedly had become cluttered, being charged behind me on top of some lever arch files with sets in the making, and sometimes falls between, or at the back of them, or is one of my outside coat pockets.

It was not at these places, and I would have sworn an oath before a magistrate or judge to this effect. I then made a quick search of everywhere I had been in the house the previous day. I then made a quick search of everywhere I had been the house the previous day, which included two rooms on the second floor, three rooms of the first, the bathroom off the landing as well as the areas of landings themselves, together with all four rooms on the ground floor as well as the hallway. No it could not be found, so much for improved visual acuity but a lot of dust and need to tidy was evident.

I spent a good hour on this task, used the land line to make the call and completed the Luxor Majong, reaching 16 million points for the second time only, made a chicken salad lunch which I did not enjoy, while watching the tale end of bargain hunt and then found the phone on the cleared desk under my nose. I did not consider the stupidity a complete waste, but they did changed from that planned. Freedom is the ability to change plans at a moment’s notice.

I made a note to buy a second inexpensive phone to cover for this periodic event and completed the boxing and sorting on the second floor for the day, having almost completed this phase of the task overall before moving onto completing the fifty to seventy or so albums and files of work in hand. A cup of coffee and a few liquorice twists and I was set to begin writing or was I?

It is now 2.20pm and I feel tired but will press on if I can. I remind myself that I can change my mind and decide to finish the sorting in hand papers in this room, and check the TV watching over for the rest of the day after perhaps forty winks on the settee. Quentin Tarantino and Martin Clunes can wait.

It is six pm afternoon after a relaxed afternoon with some working followed by a High Tea of chicken drumsticks, a diet coke and a mix of green and red grapes. I did not enjoy the meal as much as I have in the past.

I am still not sure what to make of Inglorious Basterds a violent fiction film about the second World War. I begin with the story.

SS Colonel Hans Lander, brilliantly portrayed by Christoph Waltz, has been assigned to located known missing Jews and calls upon a farmer and his three teenage daughters previously investigated by the local forces because of rumour he was hiding one of the four known Jewish families in the areas. The man exudes charm and Bonhomie and also shows his a clever and cunning persistence. He slowly forces the farmer to identify where the family is hiding below the wooden floors of the house in exchange for the lives of his daughters. One of the daughters of the Jewish family escapes and although she is seen fleeing across the field Landa allows her to escape.

Somewhere else a group of ruthless Americans, headed by Brad Pitt, have assembled to kill Nazi’s behind German lines after the allied invasion is met with resistance. Pitt wants each member of the group to acquire 100 scalps, literally, He also marks all the victims with a Swastika on cut out in the forehead.

In Paris, three years after the murdering of her family, the daughter who escaped, Shosanna, is the owner of small cinema in Paris which she runs with her partner who is a negro. She is pursued by a young German private who is holidaying in Paris after becoming a hero of the Third Reich, a sharp shooter who manages to kill some 300 American soldiers before they give up and bypass the town he is defending.
Dr Goebbels, Minister of propaganda, has made a film of the event with the private playing himself the her. The film was to have had a premier in the main cinema in Paris attended by the Nazi Top brass but at the suggestion of the private, Goebbels is persuaded for the event to take place at the cinema run by the disguised Jewess.

One of several farcical aspects of the film is that there are two plots to destroy the Nazis attending. The first is by the Jewess owner whose partner is to lock the auditorium when the visitors are inside and also ignite all the available highly inflammable nitrate piled high film behind the screen at the point when an addition to the film is interposed in which the Jewess proclaims who she is and what is to happen.

Back in London Churchill agrees to a plan for a German speaking Englishman to attend the premier with assistants to blow up the cinema with dynamite. The assistants will include Brad Pitt and some of his group and they will gain entry via one of Germany’s leading film actresses who is working for the Allies.

For one of the many improbable moments in the film they meet in cellar bar where there is much drinking of snaps by a group of soldiers and their friends who are celebrating the birth of the child of one of their number. The internationally known actress has joined them and is playing a parlour game. She leaves them to join the English agent and two of Pitt’s German speaking assistants who are to enter the cinema with her. She is asked by the celebrating soldier for an autograph which she gives but the young man is drunk and keeps pressing his attention so that the English agent demands that he leaves in an accent which arouses suspicion of the soldier and a member of the SS also in the bar. His explanation of living on a mountain village with a unique accent and being the escort of the actress is accepted until he signals for three more drinks raising his fingers the English rather than the German way. There is a standoff as the two men and others brandish weapons followed by a fire fight in which everyone in the bar is killed with the exception of the actress who is wounded in the leg. She is rescued by Brad Pitt who at first is suspicious that she has survived but convinced he arranges for the coup to continue, especially after the news that Hitler has also decided to attend.

Unfortunately they do not take account of Landa who is given the job of providing security for the event and his investigation of the scene in the bar yields not only one shoe of the actress but also the autograph. However his approach is to allow the action to continue although it is evident that he knows what is going on when speaking in fluent Italian to Pitt whose knows a few words in an atrocious accent. He demands to see the actress privately, and strangles her after revealing why he knows she is an agent. He arrests Pitt and they leave the theatre with his two assistants still in place with high explosives strapped to their bodies,

He explains to Pitt that he knows the war is lost and will agree to the bomb plot continuing if he can secure American Citizenship, wealth and position in the United States. This is negotiated via a radio with London. Meanwhile the boyfriend of the cinema owner has secured the entrances to the auditorium and is about to set fire to the film behind the screen waiting for the moment when the owner tells the audience on screen they are to die. Unfortunately she cannot make her escape after switching the reels because the film star enters and demands her favours because of the honour he has done her by arranging the Premier at her theatre. In an exchange of gun fire, both die. Meanwhile in the Theatre, Hitler, Goebbels and Goring are enjoying the spectacle of the private systematically killing the American soldiers accompanied by a cheering audience. By brilliant timing the remaining two bomb plotters have left the main auditorium, disarmed the two guards outside Hitler’s Box just as the screen ignites into flames. After killing Hitler’s and his companions the open fire on the retreating no where audience and then the cinema explodes. Landa then drives Pitt to the advancing allied lives and surrenders to him. Pitt who is committed to the deal, nevertheless carves a Swastika into the forehead of Landa.

The film has been ten years in the making with a number of different scripts starting out on a Good, the Bad and the Ugly film noir take on the ending of World War II and hen developed into the Dirty Dozen type of thing. He had completed writing without settling on an ending by 2002 when he learnt that a number of other WW2 were in the making, The film has many guest appearances including Mike Myers of Shrek and Austin Powers fame, and some sixty on line critics heap praise on Tarantino, so again I ask the question what is really all about/ Making money folks, nothing less, nothing more. The young kids who play computer war games will love it. What German cinema audience have, is another question.

Martin Clunes is a likeable middle aged comedy actor who retains boyishness. He came to attention as one of a duo of pathetic characters in Men Behaving Badly, and then in 2004 with Doc Martin as a county Doctor based on fishing village in Cornwall also a programme which never appealed to me. I was interested to see what he did with the opportunity to visit a selection of the reputed1000 islands mostly uninhabited, around the UK. While there continues to be aspects of his personality which I continue to react negatively, the three hour long programmes are interesting and do provide an answer to the question is life on a small island different to that on the main island of England, Scotland and Wales, three countries with their cultural and historical differences as well as the significant variations within each nation, so that the cities, especially London have become unrecognisable and cultural distinct from those of my childhood and youth.

Bruce Springsteen Live In New York : My Love will not let you down; Prove it all night. Two Hearts; Atlantic City; Mansion on the Hill; and The River.

What emerged from the three programmes is that continuous living does require individuals who are hardy, self reliant and can live without the requirement most of us depend on, easy transport, access to a supermarket and entertainment activities from cinema and theatre, to international and fast food restaurants and spectator sports, as well as Television, the Internet and electricity and running water.

In the first programme Martin commenced with the Northernmost part of the UK, the Outer Hebrides, and the lighthouse Rock of Muggle Flugga, no longer manned and with a heady and dangerous vertical 360 steps with unkempt and dangerous handrails. For someone who has a problem with heights, he bravely struggled to reach the top to start the programme.

He then visited the northernmost populated island of Unst which has more in common with Scandinavia than the British main island and were he met the elected Chief Viking and his family. There are the remains of thirty long ships on the island which was under Norwegian control for 600 years thereafter. I may have confused this island with another where the emphasis is on a strongly religious community which until recently had padlocked the children’s playgrounds on Sundays.

He also dropped in on the eccentric southern Englishman from Bromley who has bought a lump of rock the size of a football field and declared independence from the British and Scottish governments the grounds that there is no evidence of the UK or Scotland having been granted sovereignty. You are required to have your passport stamped before setting down on Forvik unless you purchase land or become a full citizen with the price recently educed form £200 to £20. The Island is officially known as Forewick Holm and comprises 3,5 acres or 10000 square metres and is in disputed ownership between the eccentric sailor Stuart Hill who lives in Cunningsburgh in the South of the main Shetland Island and Mark King of Papa Stour. Stuart Hill is known as the former village blacksmith in village in Suffolk for 20 years before trying to sail round the UK in a 15 foot dingy and having to be rescued with 5 separate Life Boat launches and 2 Helicopters at public expense. He has a primitive construction on the island and which in addition to citizenship he is attempting sell small plots at he sea shore entitling owners to have sea access. His main aim is to establish independence for the Shetland whose local administration is therefore kindly towards him

Bruce Springsteen Live in New York: Youngstown; Badlands; Out in the Street; Born to Run; Tenth Avenue Freeze out, Land of Hope and Dreams. Switch to Music player and Jungleland, Born in the USA, Don’t look back.

The main interest of the second programme is the Isle of Man with a population of 80000 has an independent Parliament of 24 with a full range of Ministers and judiciary and local government, its own currency and low tax economy with no inheritance tax, corporation tax, except banks at 10%, stamp duty or capital gains and income tax at 18% together with a ceiling on the maximum which any individual or capital can pay. There are not members of the EEC and have no speed limit on some roads. As with Jersey it is a place which attracts rich tax avoiders.

The other visit which appealed was to the Piel island at one end of Morecombe Bay off Barrow in Furness. It is half a mile offshore and can be reached across the sand at low tide similar to Holy Island here in the North East Coast. It only has one building a pub, restaurant, now owned by the local council and who held a competition to become the new landlord which includes the ancient right to be crowned kind and his daughters to be known as princess and have the right to self style themselves including their bank accounts. The successful couple had visited the island since childhood family outing visits. The 50 acre island is in the shadow of the eight largest inhabited Island in the UK and bird sanctuary of with a population of 13000 in its 13 square kilometres and connected to the mainland by a road bridge since 1908.

For the third programme I thought Martin was visiting the Isle of Wight but this turned out to be Guernsey of the Channel Islands which also has semi independent status followed by Sark with is feudal leadership of some 80 families and where the only motor vehicles are licensed tractors. Interest on Guernsey centred on a multi millionaire who commuters to the city by his private jet at a cost of £2000 a day.

At least Martin did to one Island I have visited, St Mary’s of the Scilly Island. I have observed another closely, St Michael’s Mount in Mounts Bay Cornwall a quarter of a mile off shore by a low tide causeway and with a castle and a small village of employees on this privately owned island in association with the National Trust. The Scilly Islands cover 5 square miles at southern tip of the British Isle with five of the 140 inhabited, mostly rock falls. The journey by ferryboat takes several hours from Penzance and the wealthier residents some 1600 on the main island use planes or helicopters. I anticipate this is the first of a further series depending on what was the original viewing figures. In addition to avoiding the Isle of Wight there was no Caldy in Wales, Skye in Scotland, Sheppey on the south east coast or Holy Island here in the North East.


From My space music player Bruce Springsteen live in New York Land of Hope and Dreams, Tenth Avenue Freeze Out, Badlands, the River, Atlantic City, Prove it all night and out on the Street, Youngstown. Mansion on the City, Atlantic City.

No comments:

Post a Comment