Yes Another One

Today it’s my birthday, yes another one.

During the brief spell when I thought I’d recovered from my post-Manchester injury worries, I foolishly asked for a race entry as a present from L. So Windermere Marathon here I come, on one leg, in just three weeks’ time.

Therefore my tight calves and I sit out parkrun as L and Daughter do Bestwood, saving the pain for tomorrow’s Longhorn.

Derby move into the final play off place by defeating nearest rivals Bristol City 2-0 in Bristol. They now just need to hold onto it through the final two games.

In the evening we go to Broadway.

Red Joan is a wartime spy drama directed by Trevor Nunn based on, but in the end baring little relation to, the story of Melita Norwood who was unmasked as a former Soviet spy in 1999.

Joan Stanley (Judi Dench) is living in quiet retirement in English suburbia and tending her garden when the police roll up to accuse her of treason. Her friends, neighbours and even her own son Nick (Ben Miles), a successful lawyer, have absolutely no idea about her dubious past. Nick thought she’d been a librarian. 

Dench plays her role admirably, as ever, but her Joan doesn't feature hugely and it is the younger version of Joan (Sophie Cookson) whose job it is to flesh out the story. This is done via flashbacks, as the older Joan digs reluctantly into her memory banks while under police interrogation.

Joan was an impressionable undergraduate at Cambridge University in the late 1930s when her conversion to the Communist cause began when an intruder appears at the window of her student flat one evening. This is Sonya (Tereza Srbova), a young lass of eastern European background who has a bus load of dodgy communist friends in tow, for whom Stalin’s reign of terror never happened.

Among these is Leo (Tom Hughes) to whom Joan is immediately attracted. He likes her too, in the sense that she’s malleable both to his point of view and to his designs on her body. Predictably Leo turns out to be a shifty, cold lover and it never really dawns on Joan that he’ll never love her as much as he loves Stalin.

After leaving University, Joan gets a job on a top secret research project developing the atom bomb. Initially she is just a secretary but her expertise in physics means her input and influence gradually increases aided by her creepy (and married) boss Max (Stephen Campbell Moore) who has the hots for her. 

Sadly the film, while well-made, lacks any real excitement or tension. Even a potentially exciting trip across the ocean to Canada under heavy military escort is underplayed but at least offers the chance for her to accede to an affair with Max, although it would appear a largely passionless one. 

The advantage of being a mere girl in 1930s\40s means that no believes she could even be involved on the atom bomb project let alone slipping nuclear secrets to the Soviets on the sly. So Max gets the blame when they suspect someone is in bed with the enemy. While Joan justifications for her behaviour ring very hollow and it is not at all clear that she believes in them herself.

Overall it is an ok film but it felt like a huge missed opportunity. It’s another of those films where the post-film googling is better than the film itself.

All Probably Isn't True

This morning both Clumber and Sherwood Pines have cancelled their parkruns because of the high winds, so we play is safe and stay local. Forest Rec is on. Then we debrief in the Jukebox café and before I head to the football. We have a home match at the unusual time (these days) of 3pm.

In the evening we’re at Broadway.

In 1613, a mishap with a cannon during a performance of ‘Henry VIII’ or ‘All Is True’ to give it its lesser known alternative title, burns down the Globe Theatre, and William Shakespeare (Kenneth Branagh) is devastated.

Seemingly with nothing much else to do he heads home to Stratford, to his wife Anne Hathaway (Judi Dench), his daughters and into retirement. 

This, however, is no peaceful retreat for our Will as his family aren’t that pleased to see the return of their absentee husband\father and want him to explain what he’s been doing for the last 20 years, and with whom. Well, apart from running than theatre thing, when he should have been spending time with them.

He simply shrugs and busies himself with moaning about his pension, updating his will to among other things leave his ‘second best bed’ to his wife but mainly he immerses himself in very belated grief for his son Hamnet (Sam Ellis) who died 17 years ago at the age of 11 while Will was off making a name for himself in the big city. He starts planning a memorial garden for him.

As if out of spite both daughters create scandals for him. The married one, Susanna (Lydia Wilson), is accused of adultery with the local haberdasher and of catching a venereal disease from him while the unmarried one, Judith (Kathryn Wilder), finally gets married to a man who has just impregnated another woman.

Then to kick a man when’s he’s down, his friend and (whisper it) perhaps once his lover, the Earl of Southampton (Ian McKellen) shows up to tell him how dull he is and urges him to get back to writing but he doesn’t take his advice.

His dullness is perhaps the key point here but was it really necessary to make a film to drive home the point that what came from Shakespeare's pen was much more interesting than his own life. Branagh does manage to play the Bard as the dullest of the dull. It’s an odd casting which is obviously the director’s choice (he’s the director) as a reward for this previous Shakespearean efforts but even odder is Judi Dench as his wife, 20+ years older than him. Yes Anne Hathaway was older than Shakespeare but not that much older.

Written by Ben Elton, the whole film seems a bit of an unnecessary indulgence that mixes accepted fact with lots of ‘what-ifs’ and some stuff that seems completely made up. The film seems to hint that Hamnet was a budding writer, that may have influenced the Bard’s work but then reveals that is was Judith doing the writing all along...

I won’t be recommending it.

(Saturday 9^th February)

Lovely, Apparently

The dogs are home, pleased to see us and soon over their ordeal. Daughter is home too, pleased to see us too (any chance of some money?), and soon over her ordeal of returning to Nottingham.

The boys make a re-acquaintance with the park and in the evening we make a re-acquaintance with the cinema. Although not Broadway. Thanks to the Times, 2 for 1 tickets for Cineworld.

‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’ is not really my sort of film, it even has a terrible title, but here I am anyway... on a 2-for-1. It is based on the novel ‘These Foolish Things’ by Deborah Moggach, which is a much better title in my opinion.

We are introduced to the seven main characters, a motley crew, all of a certain age, who have all fallen for the so good it can’t be true advertisement for the ‘Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’ encouraging them to outsource their retirement to Jaipur, India.

After an arduous journey, they finally arrive and can congratulate young entrepreneur Sonny (Dev Patel) on how nicely he Photoshop-ed the advert. He has an admirable ambition to run the hotel ‘for the elderly and the beautiful’, all he lacks is the money to do so.

The guests settle in, dust off the furniture, crush the cockroaches and tuck into their traditional British roast of... goat curry.

The cast is impressive. There’s Celia Imrie as the much married Madge who’s had enough of babysitting duties back home. Ronald Pickup plays the ageing womaniser Norman while Maggie Smith plays Muriel who hates all things foreign but accepts hip surgery in India. Tom Wilkinson plays Graham, a judge who walks away from his career to return to his boyhood India and to track down a former gay lover.

Naturally we have Judi Dench, she plays Evelyn who has been impoverished by the death of her debt ridden husband and Bill Nighy who is Douglas, one half of a couple, the Astley’s, who have been bankrupted by their daughter (we know their pain). Penelope Wilton play his miserable wife Jean. Jean hates India whereas it Douglas feel liberated. You hope that eventually he’ll be liberated from her too and so it proves. She is the only one who fails to let go the past and to embrace the future. Travel is of course supposed to broaden the mind, well some minds anyway.

As a backdrop, India itself steals the show. There’s also a nice side story as Sonny tries to woo his call centre sweetheart Sunaina (Tena Desae).

As a film it’s not too taxing, well not taxing at all really. As charming as it’s predictable, with many of the jokes as old as the cast. It’s a fluffy dog story without the fluffy dog. Come to think of it, why isn’t there a dog? Fluffy or otherwise. Why didn’t one of the characters have a four legged friend? Major oversight.

It’s not a word I'd ever use to describe a film but L described the film as ‘lovely’. So there you go. Lovely. Apparently.

(Saturday 17th March)