Revenge Served Cold

We have a dog show today near Newark but our first run isn’t until around lunchtime so I let L talk me into running the Newark parkrun first. I had only intend to ‘support’ as it looked a bit muddy to me and that’s not my sort of thing but I coped ok in the end. This was L’s 50^th parkrun so celebrations all round for that. MD had to support of course as he’s competing later.

When we get to the dog show it is parking chaos, which is somewhat worrying as my club are using this very same venue next week. We will have to do better with the parking.

MD’s first run is a bit of disaster when he misses a contact point and I am asked to leave the ring for manhandling my dog. I was gentle honest. Our other three runs are not much better, we miss two lots of weave entries and have several poles down. It’s early in the season, that’s my excuse.

Later we head to Broadway for food and a film.

 

The definition of a 'Revenant' is a person who returns. So now I’ve spoilt the plot for you.

'The Revenant' is a western style ‘epic’ inspired by the exploits of frontiersman Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) engaged in fur-trapping in the wilderness of the northern Louisiana Purchase in 1823. It is directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu brought us 'Birdman', enough said.

Glass's party are repeatedly attacked by the local natives who decimate their numbers. Having to abandon their boat, they end up journeying back to their camp at Fort Kiowa on foot.

While out scouting, Glass is attacked by a grizzly bear after disturbing her cubs or perhaps she thought he was after her fur. The attack is brutal and leaves him seemingly mortally wounded. Taking into account his injuries and the fact that this is the middle of winter and the temperature is well into the negatives, his crew assume he’ll be dead within hours. However Glass is so highly respected that his boss Captain Henry (Domhnall Gleeson) pays for the mumbling mercenary John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) to stay with him until he dies to give him a proper burial. Along with him are Glass’s half-Pawnee son Hawk(Forrest Goodluck) and his friend Bridger (Will Poulter).

Fitzgerald is not happy when Glass does not die quickly and tries to hasten the process but Hawk catches him. In the ensuing fight he kills Hawk as Glass watches on. In the end Fitzgerald abandons Glass in a shallow grave, still alive and now determined to avenge the death of his son. At which point Glass crawls out of his grave and heads for home...

In real life Glass really did survive being mauled by the bear but I think his story has perhaps been passed down and repeatedly re-embroidered over far too many glasses of wine over the years. From here on in his journey to exact revenge becomes more absurd with each scene. 

Glass takes a trip down the river and is swept over the rapids. This would have drowned most man, let alone someone who has just been savaged by a bear. Not Glass though, as for the hypothermia that would surely have followed this dunking. Nope, not Glass.

He is then attacked by another bunch of natives and gets shot before he and his horse plunge over a cliff to what is surely certain death this time? Nope. Well the horse didn’t survive it, which is fortunate for Glass who has the strength to gut the dead animal and sleep inside it. Ewwww.

Eventually our Revenant hero returns to camp and Fitzgerald, who has already made it back, legs it with the contents of the camp safe. Incomprehensively just two guys go after him but this ably sets up the revenge finale.

I suppose the Revenant is not supposed to be a film in the normal sense, it is an ‘experience’ and an impressively bleak one at that. It is also an extreme case of style over substance. It has a great cast, stunning locations, amazing cinematography and the ‘how the hell did they film that’ factor but also practically zero character development together with a ridiculous plot.

In theory all of the good points above should have been able to deliver a great film which could all have been done and dusted in a lot less than two and a half hours but I think this is minimum running time for an Oscar nominee.

If DiCaprio gets an award for his two and a half hours of crawling and grimacing then it will probably be because they feel they owe him one. We already know he’s excellent at crawling and grimacing from The Wolf of Wall Street. Also if he wants the gong that much to put himself through all this, then for God's sake just give the man his Oscar and let's all move on. I’m assuming he didn’t use a stunt double because if he did he’d hardly have ever been on set and that man should get the award instead.

Recommended, if you like that sort of thing.

Time for a few pints of Buttermuch at the Borlase me thinks.

(Saturday 23^rd January)

Italian Plumbers

The new 50m pool (that isn’t) is open at Harvey Hadden, so we all go for a swim. They have the whole 50m at their disposal but attempt to cram everyone into a quarter of the pool. I think they are taken aback that opening on a bank holiday is popular and before long they open the whole of one 25m side. By the time we leave they are opening part of the other side as well.

From there we head straight to the train station where we drop Daughter off for the trip back to Manchester.

We head to Broadway later for a couple of beers, food and the film ‘Brooklyn’.

 Based on Colm Tóibín's novel with screenplay by Nick Hornby, Brooklyn tells the story of Ellis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan), an Irish lass who emigrates from her home in Enniscorthy, County Wexford to New York in 1950s. She goes at the behest of her sister Rose, who she leaves looking after her mother (Jane Brennan), in search of a life with better prospects.

Ellis arrives in New York seasick and bewildered. She works as a salesperson in a department store and takes night classes in accounting as advised by Father Flood (Jim Broadbent). Initially she misses home but gradually adapts to her new environment.

At an Irish dance she meets Tony Fiorello (Emory Cohen), an Italian plumber who admits he is partial to Irish girls. Tony turns out to be not only persistent and an avid baseball fan but also quite charming. The new and improved Eilis finally starts to enjoy life in Brooklyn.

Then tragedy strikes back home as her sister dies and Ellis is suddenly heading back to Ireland. Tony is smart and a bit cheeky in that he gets her name on a marriage certificate before she leaves in hope that this will ensure her return.

Despite intending that her return to Ireland would be brief, her stay extended to include a friend's wedding and she reluctantly settles back into life in Enniscorthy along with its small-town mind set. She gets offered a job and another husband, as she is pursued by an old friend in Jim Farrell (Domhnall Gleeson).

The film tries to have us believe that she is torn between the familiarity of her old life in Ireland and the excitement of her new one in Brooklyn. That is as well as being torn between the two men in her life, one of which she’s already married to. Unfortunately while the film presents a pretty solid case for Brooklyn, the Irish case is far from convincing and, quite rightly, Ellis eventually legs it back to America. Anything else really wouldn't have been believable.

Overall though the film is excellent, nothing flash just good old fashioned filmmaking of the kind that a lot of film makers seem to have lost the ability to produce without resorting to special effects and multiple plot twists.

It is without doubt Ronan’s film although kudos to Julie Walters, who as Ellis’s landlady Mrs Kehoe gets to deliver most of the best lines of the film around the dining table of her boarding house.

We round off the night with a beer in the Lord Roberts.

(Monday 28^th December)

Whimpering In The Corner

As if I haven’t already caused the credit card to hide whimpering in the corner, L asks ‘please please please can we have a new cooker?’. It was officially condemned a while a go.

She says that if the current one explodes it will damage all the new insulation as well as harm the dogs. She says she had to fetch one of the control knobs out of Doggo's jaws this morning when it fell off the cooker and he thought it was a bonio.

Did I mention we may be having new insulation? Although that will be very safe, inside the wall.

I order a new cooker, new curtains, a curtain pole and hoover bags. I just need to nip to B&Q for the rope and the duct tape now. Sorry, just having a 50 Shades moment.

Talking of films, we head to Broadway. Although not to see 50 Shades. On the way we pop in for a gym session. I do 10k on the bike, mainly standing up, and a one mile treadmill run. My calves seem ok, so plaudits to evil Mr Physio.

Tonight, Ex Machina. Nathan Bates (Oscar Isaac again, this time hiding behind a bushy beard), the wealthy CEO of the world's leading search engine BlueBook (aka Google), is a recluse living out in the wilderness (aka Norway).

Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) is a young whiz kid who works for BlueBook and wins the company lottery with the prize being to spend a week with Nathan at his luxury home aka research facility. A place that can only be reached by travelling for many hours by helicopter. 

Nathan is a one man research project into the development of Artificial Intelligence. That’s robots to you and me. Caleb has been summoned (or more correctly selected) to perform the 'The Turing Test' on his creation, to see if it can genuinely pass itself off as human to another human.

Nathan introduces Caleb to the beautifully assembled Ava (Alicia Vikander again, this time hiding behind a lot of wires and cables) because, of course, Nathan only makes female robots. 

The only other person in the house is Nathan's maid Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno), who speaks no English but seems a dab hand with a duster, a frying pan and at providing other essential ‘services’.

Through a series of meetings Caleb interrogates and tests Ava, whilst Nathan watches on CCTV and get drunk. However it is soon Ava who ends up being the one doing the interrogating and testing. 

Caleb finds himself constantly manipulated by both the increasingly eccentric Nathan and his pretty machine, and ends up underestimating both of them. He begins to lose his mind as he finds out more about Nathan’s research and as Ava starts to flirt with him.

The film as the combination of a robot with amazing self-awareness that is determined not to have its plug pulled, your archetypal mad professor type and the classic confined/remote location scenario. This was never going to end well.

Oh and there’s a lot of full frontal nudity which could be shocking to some if these were actual real women and not robots of course. Although Ava does seem to have a bit of a problem with her own shrinking assets as the film goes on.

It’s another excellent film, we seem to be on a roll at the moment. Lots of philosophical plotting, very thought provoking and tense in places. Quite similar in many ways to last year’s ‘Under the Skin’ but miles better.

Both Isaac and Gleeson are good but its Alicia Vikander, seemingly a bit wooden in ‘Testament of Youth’, who steals the film. Unlike the script for ‘Testament’ she has much more to work with here and is infinitely better.

Ultimately the film shows that you just can’t trust women even when they’re robots and perhaps that men can be persuaded by anything, if it’s attractive enough.

(Sunday 8^th February)