"There's out...and there's out." There are leads...and there are leads.

In the 1982 film “My Favorite Year,” Peter O’Toole (Alan Swann) pulls off a hilarious homage to Errol Flynn (and, in particular, Flynn’s penchant for alcohol). In one scene, Mark Linn-Baker (Benjy Stone, based on the young Mel Brooks), who is recruited to babysit Swann, asks Swann why he disappeared for several hours after saying he was just going “out,” for a while, thus causing a major delay in rehearsals for the TV show he’s set to appear on (which is based on the classic, “Your Show or Shows”).

“There’s ‘out’ and there’s ‘out,’” Swann says slyly, wink-wink, making a clear distinction to the rather innocent Stone between simply stepping outside for a few moments and, well, really getting out there.

It’s sort of the same thing with sales leads.

There are leads, which are increasingly easier to come by these days, what with the Web and the proliferation of social media. And then there are leads, or legitimate prospects who can demonstrate to sales reps that they are ready for action.

A  survey from Aberdeen Group bears this out.  The survey, which took the pulse of more than 225 end-users, found that 29% of respondents believe that increasing the quality of leads in the sales pipeline is a top strategic consideration to improve sales effectiveness.

The study, titled ‘Sales Intelligence: The Secret to Sales Nirvana,’ focuses on, among other areas, how companies can glean information from myriad sources online without spending a lot of time and/or money. It also explores how companies are using content to spur sales productivity.

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Actors, politicians and royalty pay respects to Sir John Mortimer

Celebration of Rumpole creator’s life at Southwark Cathedral one year after lawyer and playwright’s death

Memorial Service for Sir John Mortimer

Detail from the order of service at the memorial service for Sir John Mortimer at Southwark Cathedral.
For a man who did not believe in God, only a cathedral was big enough to accommodate Sir John Mortimer’s many friends and admirers for a memorial service today.

Actually, the event at Southwark Cathedral in London was billed as a celebration of the life of the lawyer, author, playwright, entertainer and wit, who died last January at the age of 85, and that turned out to be more appropriate than a service. The thing about the Church of England is that you don’t have to be religious to get your day in church.

It made for a good house as the performer in him would undoubtedly have acknowledged and, if God was not entirely absent from the proceedings, the biblical readings, prayers, psalms and hymns were outnumbered by readings from the canon of Mortimer himself, declaimed in the most actorly of ways by the likes of Edward Fox, Derek Jacobi and Patricia Hodge. Topping up the bill were Joss Ackland, with a concessionary reading from Ecclesiastes and Jeremy Irons reciting the Thomas Hardy poem Afterwards.

Mortimer was well-known for his defences of artistic free speech as a barrister in court, admired as the playwright of semi-autobiographical works such as A Voyage Round My Father, even more famous as the creator of Rumpole of the Bailey on television and then in novels and latterly celebrated as a raconteur in an indefatigable one-man show – albeit one in which he was invariably accompanied by glamorous women actors. He would have loved the show in the cathedral.

Among the audience – a more appropriate term than congregation – were Mortimer’s widow Penny and children, including daughters Emily and Rosie, both of whom are expecting babies around the anniversary of his death in the new year, the Duchess of Cornwall, and such figures as Tom Stoppard and Peter Hall, Melvyn Bragg, Anna Ford and Peter O’Toole. The former Tory leader Michael Howard came to pay his respects to the old socialist and fellow barrister and there was even a retired bishop, Lord Harries, formerly of the Oxford diocese, in the pews. Lord Kinnock, another old friend and holiday companion, gave the address and Lord Mandelson materialised beside the royal party.

As the service started, wintry sunlight flooded the cathedral, which soon echoed also with music evocative of Mortimer’s lifelong south Oxfordshire home, around the village of Turville Heath. As for the cathedral itself, even that was appropriate, Canon Andrew Nunn said, as it sits just south of the Thames, out of the grasp of the censorious authorities of the City of London and hence surrounded historically by theatres and pleasure grounds, the louche haunt of lawyers and writers out on a spree and the whores who serviced them, known as Winchester geese after the bishop whose writ once ran across the area.

“Please make sure your mobile telephones are turned off and please save any applause for the end of the service,” Nunn added as the performance began. As if to get his retaliation in first he added: “Jesus had more to say about lawyers than any other group in society. He could not stand them, though he may have had a bit more time for Sir John Mortimer.”

Kinnock told the audience that Mortimer had always been a devout unbeliever: “He was in his own words an atheist certainly, but an atheist for Jesus – he liked to say a character without contradictions is like an egg without salt.”

He praised him as a valorous champion for liberty, an opponent of bigotry and a “splendid fulminator”, a friend and admirer of women even though in his own words he had a face like a bag of spanners, and a doting father, including of the son, Ross, who he discovered in his 80s he had conceived 40 years earlier with the actor Wendy Craig.

“He was a day-star of his age,” said Kinnock. “He illuminated our lives, he lit up our times. Rejoice in him and be thankful. The defence rests but his soul goes strolling on.”

Afterwards, the cathedral rang with applause as the service ended, before the more favoured of them filed out to a marquee and to what Mortimer himself described as the unwavering attraction of cold champagne.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/nov/17/sir-john-mortimer-memorial-service
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Afterwards

When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,
‘He was a man who used to notice such things’?

If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid’s soundless blink,
The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight
Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,
‘To him this must have been a familiar sight.’

If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,
When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,
One may say, ‘He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm,
But he could do little for them; and now he is gone.’

If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door,
Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees
Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,
‘He was one who had an eye for such mysteries’?

And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom
And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,
Till they rise again, as they were a new bell’s boom,
‘He hears it not now, but used to notice such things’?

Thomas Hardy
________________________________________________________________________________________

Aunque ha participado en unos cuantos proyectos más desde entonces, es Venus, de Roger Michell (2006), la última ocasión en que Peter O’Toole, actor de amplia y muy irregular filmografía (nos quedamos con lo mejor, Lawrence de Arabia, Becket, Lord Jim, La noche de los generales, El león en invierno, Adiós Mr. Chips o El último emperador), nos ha obsequiado una vez más con una interpretación memorable encarnando de nuevo a un personaje carismático y atormentado al estilo de los que le han dado fama y reconocimiento pero con tintes mucho más amables que de costumbre, gracias al cual obtuvo una nominación al Oscar. Esta vez da vida a Maurice, un actor en los últimos momentos de su carrera que todavía realiza pequeños papeles televisivos y cuyos momentos de ocio transcurren en compañía de sus camaradas Ian (Leslie Philips) y Donald (Richard Griffiths), actores jubilados como él. Los tres se reúnen diariamente en un bar para hablar del pasado y del presente, chincharse, lanzarse dardos irónicos y tomar una copa en un ambiente de camaradería y recuerdos. Al menos es así hasta que Ian manifiesta su preocupación por la llegada de Jessie (Jodie Whittaker), la hija adolescente de su sobrina, que viaja a Londres para atenderlo como enfermera las veinticuatro horas por la falta de alicientes y de posibilidades laborales en el campo. La chica modosita, tímida y apocada amante de la vida tranquila y de la música de Bach que él espera es una joven muy distinta, devota de la comida basura, sin experiencia como enfermera y con un gusto por las bebidas alcohólicas impropio para su edad.

Curiosamente, y utilizando como metáfora de su relación la historia que rodea la pintura de Velázquez La Venus del espejo, será Maurice y no Ian quien conecte más fácilmente con la recién llegada, de manera que las cada vez más horas que comparten y que sirven a Ian para escapar de la perniciosa, para él, influencia de la joven, les ayudan a establecer un extraño vínculo que se mueve en el fino límite de la amistad, la relación paterno-filial, el nacimiento a la vida adulta, el último aliento de deseo carnal de un anciano, la necesidad de paliar sus respectivas soledades y, sí, también el amor, extraño, entre crepuscular, ingenuo y morboso, pero amor. Así, Jessie se abrirá a un mundo que desconoce (los teatros, los museos, las tiendas caras de la City) y Maurice sentirá nostalgia por un tiempo que ya hace mucho que pasó, volviendo a sentirse joven al internarse con una chica joven en la vida nocturna de Londres; sólo su trabajo y su mujer (Vanessa Redgrave), con la que ya no vive pero con la que sigue manteniendo el trato, pone un punto de sensatez en su vida.

La película está construida a la medida de O’Toole, existe por y para él. Tras más de veinte años en papeles menores o secundarios, incluso en producciones mediocres y malas, vuelve por todo lo alto para dar una lección de lo que significa interpretar, manejando su espléndida voz y su todavía mejor dicción a capricho (se recomienda encarecidamente más que nunca la versión original), y haciendo de su rostro un mapa de emociones. Consigue dotar a su personaje de una fuerza difícilmente igualable, quizá porque en cierto modo se interpreta a sí mismo y cede al personaje de Maurice buena parte de su propio bagaje para componer ese actor prácticamente acabado que lucha por ofrecer la mayor de las dignidades al menos una última vez, tanto en su carrera como en su vida personal.

Como complemento, un guión acertadísimo, tanto en los aspectos más dramáticos como con los toques de humor y sarcasmo, incluyendo fragmentos y réplicas desternillantes que explotan las manías, rarezas de los ancianos, y también sus carencias y remilgos a la hora de adaptarse a los nuevos tiempos, en el que la mayor virtud consiste en tratar temas espinosos, o que en otras manos daría lugar a aspectos morbosos, con elegancia y tacto, consiguiendo salir más que airoso. Con alguna que otra debilidad en el aspecto visual, predomina en la película la atención al texto del guión y a la caracterización de los personajes sobre cuestiones como el diseño de producción y la ambientación.

Bordeando, sin pringarse, aguas pantanosas como el morbo, saliendo indemne de los peligros del sentimentalismo o de la lágrima recurrente, la película es un acertado ejercicio de equilibrio entre drama y comedia en la que la ironía somardas y algunos momentos descacharrantes se alternan con una emotividad que en ningún caso es fácil ni gratuita, que conmueve sin apelar a lugares comunes o tópicos sentimentales, y cuya mayor expresión tiene lugar cuando Ian y Maurice visitan en una iglesia londinense, con nostalgia contenida, las lápidas de algunos de los más célebres actores británicos de todos los tiempos y se detienen ante los nombres de Boris Karloff, Laurence Harvey o Robert Shaw. Un homenaje más que merecido a la vida y obra de tantos actores y actrices que nos han hecho un regalo inmejorable: la oportunidad de disfrutarlos para siempre en la pantalla.

Carved pumpkins in Portland, Maine

It’s hard to believe that Halloween has already come and past. As I write this the midnight hour has already passed and all Saint’s Day has officially begun. That’s all Halloween is anyway the last day of the Celtic New Year. November 1 is the first day of the new year and Halloween is just a contraction from the phrase All Hallow’s Eve, the night before All Saint’s Day when lost or departed souls return for a visit. That is why food is often left out so as to appease the spirits on the one day when they are allowed to roam around their old haunts.

sexy ghost costume

I can’t believe how big a holiday Halloween has become even approaching Mardi Gras status in such places as Salem, Massachusetts and Austin, Texas. Here in Maine Halloween parties seem to be as popular as ever but I decided to spend the evening at home watching  appropriate videos.

My choice of movies included the Assasination of Jesse James, Millers Crossing and the delightful High Spirits, a fun tale that takes place in a fictional castle in Ireland on Halloween.

poster for the Haunting

I was presently surprised by High Spirits and enjoyed the fine performances by Peter O’Toole and Daryl Hannah. Not the deepest movie of all times but a fun spoof on ghosts and castles. The special effects were excellent and helped make the movie an enjoyable ride.

Midnight signifies another milestone for me. It is the now officially the 1st of November and I can start my NaNoWriMo novel. I think I will put off this literary endeavor until tomorrow during the day when I have more energy. Besides I don’t want all the ghosts and goblins looking over my shoulder while I writr my great American novel.

Pin up for a Halloween Witch

Jag har nu betat av den första Allen-filmen i serien. Efter att tänkt noga om vilken jag skulle se, föll lotten på Woodys första film. Den filmen som han gjorde debut med som manusförfattare: “What’s new Pussycat?” (1965) – titlen kommer förövrigt från Warren Beatty (som sade detta till sin dåvarande flickvän)

Jag kan säga att jag ännu är skeptisk. Visst gillar jag Peter Sellers som har en av huvudrollerna, men i den här filmen blir det bara för mycket. Peter O’Toole gör inte heller saken bättre, trots att han är en bra skådespelare.. Uppenbarligen ska filmen vara en komedi, men jag skrattade fan inte en enda gång. Kanske det blir bättre i nästa film som jag väljer att se, detta är ju trots allt debuten.

Holy frackin’ crop, Russ.  I guess I should have expected that the hate crush issue would set you off, but geez!  So, um, can I just state for the record?  That the opinions expressed by Russ?  Are, you know, not necessarily those of Dave?

k thx.

I do agree with you that those Jezebel girls fracked up the concept of the crush and its beautiful antithesis.  But I think that they got close, which is why it’s all so maddening.

Take the crush.  The “seeing my best self reflected in your eyes” experience is a real romantic phenomenon, but doesn’t that come later?  Crushes exist completely independent from any relationship that you might have with the other person.  Because he/she has to know you exist before he/she can make you feel sparkling and witty and Peter O’Toole-ish.  Unless you’re totally crazy.

The hate crush, though — maybe a little trickier?  I think you’re right that it’s about what you fear others may see in you, but can you really draw a clear distinction between that and what you genuinely dislike or need to suppress in yourself?  How is your loathing of the beret-wearing Bizarro Russ really different from hating something in yourself that could sprout into beret wearing if you weren’t careful?  I don’t think it really is.

But that, imho, gets at what they’ve got wrong about the hate crush.  How is it a bad thing to use your vision of someone — however cartoonish and ungenerous — to try and figure out what you don’t want to be like?  I would argue that it can be really, really great to realize — with or without the dry heaving — that you don’t want to be the kind of girl who’d fall for that kind of guy, or the kind of guy who’d be into that kind of book, or the kind of guy who’d make that kind of art, or the kind of girl who’d post that kind of picture?

Check out Luann and Tiffany.  Does Luann have a hate crush on Tiffany?  Probably. Does Luann hate herself? Go figure. Is this hilarious? Yes.

Are hate crushes for reals? Whatever!

Whoever is selling the hate crush meme should go stick her head out the nearest window and vomit. That’s what she makes me want to do.  But I didn’t make it that far…  Blech.

Oops!

Not for the first time and definitely not for the last, I’m totally with you on this one, Dave.  Do these people have any clue what they’re talking about?  The hate crush marketeers have the emotional finesse of “I love my fiancee, but I’m not in love with him.“  To quote again what you brought up:

If a crush is about seeing the best version of yourself as you envision it, a “hate crush” is about the worst.

Two things.  One, I have not heard that BS about you hate in others what you don’t like about yourself since — like — fourth frickin’ grade!  Two, must we explain everything through the prism of narcissism?  I think we’ve spoken before about the odd and subtle generational disconnect between us and the Jezebel crowd, namely manifested in matters of sentiment — where there is, on the part of a latter, a certain tendency to take themselves waaaaaay too seriously and to, in general, dismiss nuance and casuistic. Is it because they have been brought up on wonky non-fiction and the Internet?  I won’t speculate.  All I can say is — again — if these chicks read anything like Stendhal we would not be having this conversation. I mean, not only did they get the hate part wrong — put they even fracked up the much more traditional concept of the crush.

Yeah, I give up, folks:  I really hate the fact that I’m a wannabe fetish model.  I’m extremely insecure about how I look in leather.  I fear, at times, that my love of hip radical European Marxists militias who kill people combined with my healthy, thoughtful skepticism of affirmative action, may not necessarily express a coherent weltanschauung.  You’re right. It’s all about me.

Look at Luann.  Yeah.  Up there.  At the top of this post.  Does she hate Tiffany because she hates the superficial broad in herself?  No, she hates Tiffany, because she’s a stuck-up, preening, lousy lady who is acting all possessive of the Australian exchange student and — worse than that, she looks enough like Luann, that this latter worries that people will associate blond cartoon characters with a fracked up sense of community service.  Her position, then, is two-fold:  1) It is a proud, confident disassociation with the superficial similarities shared with Tiffany, while at the same time 2) a strict sense of moral censure best expressed with the word “scoff.”

Like, a lot of the people I hate are people who resemble me — say, picture a slightly shorter Peter O’Toole (when young, of course) with a nose for fresh bread and fine truffles and a certain ability to speak French and other languages, not least while talking about the weather in fine metaphoric terms that beget dreamy expressions in the eyes of the ladies.  Well, so, you take that kind of person: Lovable, right?  But then, say he learned his French in Quebec, drinks fine wine instead of manhattans, thinks Arcade Fire rocks, and thinks that Obama compromised liberal ideals when he let Van Jones go.  And throw in a few carrots and chicks in the mix.  This, my friends, is the perfect recipe for a hate crush:  Again, not the incarnation of your worst faults but, rather, everything ersatz and pretentious that one fears could potentially be associated to your charming person and everything morally wrong that occurs in your vicinity.

Now it would be nice to pathologize and to remedy our capacity for moral censure.  But then who would be there to do such a tough job?  Do we just let these stupid poseurs hang around with a bunch of carrots and chicks without pointing and laughing?

Hate is fun!  Hate is cathartic.  And it keeps giving.

Oh, and a couple more points, Dave.  There was no like, and, thus, no dry-heave-inducing epiphany.  Just another joke gone too far.  That’s my official version, and I’m sticking to it.  Also, I think there is something odd about the fact that I don’t Google stalk my friends.  I thing you’re right that that should be the exception, not the rule.  Whatever.

Our good friend has started a new blog with lots of cool things on it… Already featuring some top notch northern graffiti in the gallery section, and I would reccomend checking out the new necro video on the blog …SICK!

Go check it out. It might just save your life.

Sick-Note

Click on the links below to read these excerpts from Robert Sellers book, Hellraisers:  The Life and Inebriated Times of Burton, Harris, O’Toole and Reed:

Last man standing:  How Peter O’Toole outlived cinema’s biggest hellraisers

Born to Raise Hell:  The reckless passion that drove four of Britain’s most extraordinary film stars on

Amazing photographic works of coloured water by artist Mark Mawson, view the full set here on Behance network.

Click the image to goto the Facebook page for full details.

I must tell you how important it is to have enough space. As many you are apartment dwellers, you’ll be able to identify with this. Eventually you run out of storage space. You may out-grow some of your clothes, or you just tire of them, so you buy new clothes.

Meanwhile, your books, CD’s, and DVD collections continue to grow. Your collection is too big for your present set of bookcases and storage racks for your media. So the overage gets moved into your closets, competing for space with your coats and shoes, etc.

But someday, you will have to let them go.

Why did I toss them?

Here’s why. The need for space is paramount for a city dweller. And when one’s girlfriend complains about not being able to walk into the walk-in closet and hang up her coat, something had to be done, and something had to go. Would you believe four boxes of videos?

Yup, they’ve been carefully carted away by the New York Sanitation Department. No doubt a good many of you have similar issues with your magazine, VHS, and DVD collections. You too may have to deal with this question of space someday.

Speaking of spaces — and most of us need more — I’m reminded of two major films, both of which were epics, and both directed by David Lean, and both won Oscars. The titles are Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and Doctor Zhivago (1965).

In these films, Lean positions his cameras in places where the magnitude of the open spaces and the majestic scope of the land dwarf individual men as well as mankind. You can see it in these images.

Scenes of shimmering deserts, soaring mountains, frozen tundra, and majestic forests all serve as backdrops to the stories of T E Lawrence and Dr. Zhivago and his love, Lara.

These films carted off many Oscars, and unlike my recently discarded videos, have withstood the test of time by retaining spaces in our hearts and minds for about 48 years for Lawrence, and only a few less than that for Zhivago.

I still need more space, but the situation is no longer critical. Our usual array of topics may or may not take up more page space than we thought going in.

Other topics may also may have distinct spatial problems — specifically asking me to find them after they been stored for so long in some dark and hard to reach recesses or synapses of my brain .

However don’t be dismayed. To have a look at some fine examples of subjects in and about the arts, you won’t need to trek across frozen Siberian wastelands, nor the Arabian deserts – just read this column on occasion.

La paz entre Troya y Grecia es frágil. Bien lo sabe Héctor, príncipe de Troya, quién debe ir con sumo cuidado en lo que concierne a sus actos para no ofender a sus “aliados”. Y bien lo sabe, para su desgracia, Agamenón, rey de reyes de Grecia. Su tiranía y ambición buscan conquistar un punto clave en el Mar Egeo, Troya.

Cuando la actitud pasional del hermano menor de Héctor, y también príncipe de Troya, Paris, le conduzca a fugarse  con su amada Helena, reina de Esparta, rumbo a Troya, la guerra habrá comenzado. Una guerra marcada por el amor y el honor en lo superficial, por los intereses comerciales e imperiales de Agamenón en el trafondo.

La guerra será dura. Un ejército impresionante de griegos llegará a Troya. Entre ellos Aquiles, el mejor de todos los griegos, pero un hombre cruel y sangriento. Un hombre guiado por la gloria y capaz de retar al temido Agamenón. Sin él en batalla y subestimando a su rival, los griegos pese a su superioridad numérica, caerán a las puertas de Troya. Los troyanos, obviando lo terrenal y refugiándose en los dioses, también decidirán plantar un contraataque en la costa a los griegos, siendo ellos, esta vez, los que subestimaban al enemigo. El primo del temido Aquiles, Patroclo, morirá en combate a manos de Héctor en dicha batalla.

A partir de ahí, se desencadenarán los sentimientos y emociones. Viviremos un combate noble y por el honor entre los dos mejores guerreros, Héctor y Aquiles. La guerra habrá cambiado su destino, y ya no habrá vuelta atrás para los troyanos.

‘Troya’ nos regala dos horas y media de efectos especiales, acción, grandeza y un montón de caras conocidas. Una historia épica en manos de Hollywood que no acaba de agradar. Se queda a medias, superficial. Las historias de amor y pasión no son profundas. No se siente el dolor de Aquiles tras la muerte de Patroclo. Ni se me caen las lágrimas con su trágico final entre Paris y Aquiles. De hecho, los dos personajes más pasionales, Paris y Aquiles, no me los creo. Son un lastre. A los únicos que me creo son a Bana en el papel de Héctor y a Toole encarnando a Príamo. También Diane Kruger como Helena de Troya. Sus rostros y figuras indican la caída de su pueblo, indican el horror de la guerra, la pérdida del honor.

Nobleza, amor, honor y ambición marcan el trasfondo de la película, su esencia. Batallas, acción, sangre y adrenalina ocupan, sin embargo, la primera plana, sin profundizar en la esencia. Una lástima. Buena, sin más.

The Lion in Winter: yes, yes; a classic for generations; brilliant performances, pristine dialogue, etc. It’s a phenomenal movie. We know that. Rather than give it a review, which would be silly, I’ll attempt some critical analysis in the style of Todd Alcott (albeit not as well).

Here we go:

The Lion in Winter is about the faces we present to the world: both the literal composure of our face, and the facade that we present. The movie starts tight on Henry II’s face (Peter O’Toole) – “Come for me!”, he challenges: fifty years old but still hale enough to practice swordfighting with his youngest son, John. We see these same wild eyes and hear this same challenge in the climax of the film, when Henry faces off against three opponents at once. In that fight, as well, the camera stays tight on their faces rather than backing up to take in the footwork: Henry’s snarl; his opponents alternately terrified or stoic.

Richard, Henry’s eldest son, rides a joust in full armor when we first meet him; only after unhorsing his opponent does he remove his helmet, showing us his sweaty and driven face as he contemplates killing his fallen foe. Jeffrey (the schemer, the middle child) sits atop a beachside cliff, conducting war games. His face isn’t obscured, but it’s not his face that indicates his actions: it’s the men below, charging and wheeling and dying on his nod. These pawns are his body; the mailed form attached to his neck is just a vehicle.

(Also note: each of his sons is summoned in the same way: Henry’s steward has to call their name at least two or three times to break them from some reverie, signified by a crown-to-chin closeup. These men constantly scheme behind the masks that are their faces; when called to interact with the real world, it takes them a second to break free)

When we first meet Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katherine Hepburn), Henry’s wife, it is at a great remove: she sits by a window in her sumptuous prison cell as a herald near the door announces the Christmas court in Chinon that starts the story. She arrives via river longboat, a grand slow shot that starts with the boat distant and ends with it passing right by us. We do not have many close shots of Eleanor’s face until she and Henry have begun to spar, and even then no extreme close-ups (as Henry had) until her plots have fallen apart at the end of the first act. She regards herself in a hand-held mirror, her coiffed hair pulled out of its pins, and despairs. She is eleven years his senior; age has been worse to her than to Henry.

Age is another recurring theme of the movie, though that’s not much of a stretch. People refer to their ages multiple times. “I’m the oldest man I know,” Henry laments at one point. “I’ve got a decade on the pope!” Age in The Lion in Winter is a currency, a system of accounts for a pre-banking economy. Henry’s the oldest male, so he schemes and maneuvers with great success. But Eleanor is older than he is and frequently puts him on the wrong footing with one clever word. The sons triumph in proportion to their age – Richard, the “constant soldier” and great conqueror; Jeffrey, the schemer; John, the sniveling weakling.

And yet Philip II, King of France (Timothy Dalton)^*, is younger than all of them save John, and he’s able to turn the tables on the entire family with little effort. Why? Because while the whole family craves the respect of age, they want the vigor of youth. Jeffrey wants Philip’s armies. Richard wants Philip in the carnal sense. And Henry wants peace with Philip: he (at 50) knows that Philip (at 18) can afford to start a war that France will take ten years to lose. In accounting terms, Philip’s youth gives him a great deal of credit and modest assets. Henry has substantial assets, but has leveraged himself into tremendous debt to get them.

(And don’t underestimate that debt. When Henry threatens to father another heir and disown his sons entirely, Eleanor invokes as strict a margin call as you’d ever find on the NYSE. “Suppose I hold you back for one [year]. I can; it’s possible. Suppose your first son dies? Ours did; it’s possible. Suppose you’re daughtered next? We were; that too is possible. How old is daddy then? What kind of spindly, ricket-ridden, milky, wizened, dim-eyed, gammy-handed, limpy line of things will you beget?” Henry has borrowed too much time; he’s now in too great a debt to build any further)

One last theme to touch on: the recurring presence of animals. Chinon is a Christmas court. The massive feast that Henry holds there to welcome his family and Philip requires peasant infrastructure to support. Livestock and domestic animals are always underfoot. When Henry and Eleanor emerge to greet Philip, they have to step around dogs and chickens to do so, while the trumpets sound their procession. Entering for dinner, the King and Queen pass through a pack of dogs lounging by the fire. As Henry lurches down the stairs from a confrontation with his sons, a lone dog scampers out of his way.

No one pauses or complains about, or even acknowledges, the animal presence in the castle. The animals belong there as much as the humans do. But it’s not that the animals are human (none of them have personalities); it’s that the humans themselves are animals. Eleanor calls her children “piglets.” She evaluates people like animals, examining their parts like a haggler (Richard’s eyes look “small and piggy”; Henry’s first mistress, Rosamund, had “fine teeth”). Everyone in the royal family is a wolf, constantly circling. There’s no scene which does not see the balance of power shift at least twice, if not four or six times.

And all that’s communicated through dialogue – some of the finest I’ve ever heard. Every single spoken line in the play, without exception, is an arrow pointing to the heart of the speaker or another character. There’s not a word that could be taken away. This is one to watch.

Ultimately, The Lion in Winter is about the continued evolution of humanity. Human beings share common ancestry with other mammals, yet it’s galling how little distance we’ve made from the pack and the struggle. “Of course he has a knife,” Eleanor says of her bloodthirsty son Richard. “We all have knives! It’s 1183 and we’re barbarians!” She means it as an invocation of distance – it’s eleven centuries since the time of Jesus and we’re little more than animals. Animals with human faces that we wear like masks, but animals nonetheless. And that statement creates a paradoxical reflection to the audience – it’s eleven centuries into the “Christian” era then, but it’s twenty centuries now. What progress has the species made?

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^* A James Bond, reviving a role originated on stage by a Bond villain (Christopher Walken)

Esta semana se ha sabido que la productora 20th Century Fox tiene la intención de rodar en Sevilla el final de una película protagonizada por Tom Cruise y Cameron Díaz llamada ‘Wichita’. A raiz de esta noticia, se me ha ocurrido citar algunas de las películas que han tenido como plató a Sevilla.

Escena de 'Lawrence de Arabia' rodada en la Plaza de España de Sevilla. A la izquierda de blanco está Peter O'toole, protagonista de la película.

De las cerca de 1.000 producciones (entre largometrajes, cortos y documentales) que se han rodado en Sevilla en cien años, la primera que tuvo una fama internacional fue, sin duda, ‘Lawrence de Arabia’ (1962).  Fueron varias las escenas en las que podemos ver rincones de la ciudad, en concreto son: la Plaza de España,  la Plaza de América, el Casino de la exposición, la Casa de Pilatos, y la esquina de la calle Vicente Alanís con Calle Arroyo.

Natalie Portman y Hayden Christensen rodando en la Plaza de España de Sevilla una escena de 'Star Wars: Episodio II. El ataque de los clones'.

También en la Plaza de España fue donde se rodó otra de las grandes y populísimas producciones de Hollywood, ‘Star Wars: Episodio II. El ataque de los clones’ (2002). En ella, Natalie Portman (Padmé Amidala) y Hayden Christensen (Anakin Skywalker) paseaban por este lugar de Sevilla que simulaba ser el palacio de la ciudad de Theed en Naboo.

Escena de '1492, la conquista del paraíso' en los Reales Alcázares de Sevilla. En la imagen, Sigourney Weaver y Gérard Depardieu.

En 1992, Ridley Scott decidió rodar parte de ‘1492, Conquista del Paraíso’ en los Reales Alcázares, más concretamente en el Palacio del Rey Don Pedro. En este caso, el alcázar era la residencia de la reina Isabel la Católica (Sigourney Weaver) quien recibía – en la escena en cuestión – la visita de Cristóbal Colón (Gérard Depardieu) que venía para convencerla de las bondades y el éxito asegurado que supondría apoyarle en su empresa de llegar por otra ruta a las Indias.

Orlando Bloom, a la izquierda, en una de las escenas de 'El Reino de los Cielos' en los interiores de los Reales Alcázares de Sevilla.

Trece años después, en 2005, Ridley Scott quiso repetir y rodó en este mismo lugar, además de en la Casa de Pilatos, ‘El Reino de los Cielos’. Orlando Bloom, Eva Green y Jeremy Irons son algunos de los actores que pisaron el Palacio del Rey Don Pedro de los Reales Alcázares de Sevilla que, en esta ocasión, simulaba ser la residencia del Rey cristiano de Jerusalén allá por el siglo XII.

Sé de sobra que hay muchísimas películas más, y muy conocidas, que han sido rodadas en Sevilla (y ya no digamos si hablamos de toda Andalucía). Éstas son solamente cuatro que he querido destacar hoy. Más adelante, habrá tiempo de citar otras.

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This week in An Alan Smithee Podcast we get dreary and dreamy as Ingmar Bergman makes a horror movie. Hour Of The Wolf is full of creeptastic images and nightmare logic without ever being jump-out-at-you scary…A better film about going crazy than a true shocker.

Oddly, Hour Of The Wolf barely features the “hour of the wolf”! You know, the time between four and five AM when that term paper is due and you’re contemplating suicide in the darkest time of your soul before the next day breaks? What a gyp! Oh well, still a cool movie with many clear influences upon David Lynch and other mindfuck auteurs.

Speaking of fucking, this week’s bad movie Caligula featured hardcore pornography and that’s not even one of it’s good points. According to legend, Gore Vidal willingly sold his epic historical biopic script of Rome’s infamously crazy fourth Caesar to Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione with full knowledge that he’d include actual fucking. What was he thinking? Did he really expect some kind of real movie to result?

What we have instead is the germ of a good idea buried under ten tons of incoherent editing (including the awkwardly gratuitous sex) from Guccione and subpar direction from famous Italian titty director Tinto Brass (“Salon Kitty”). On the other hand, Malcolm McDowell is crazy as he ever was and almost makes the experience worthwhile. Also starring Peter O’Toole, Helen Mirren, John Gielgud and other English actors whose careers inexplicably survived this boondoggle.

While once as synonymous with notorious bombs as Battlefield Earth, people have forgotten about Caligula in recent years and just how bad it really was. We haven’t.

Also, check out this all-star parody trailer for a Caligula remake, the casting of which is partly ignorantly foreseen in our episode:

NEXT WEEK: BLUE COLLAR (1979, PAUL SCHRADER) & THE HAND (1981, OLIVER STONE)