Film Geeks

Saturday sees us make a return to Forest Rec for a parkrun where the Lad and I set a new PB for Forest Rec but its nearly a minute off our blistering pace of three days ago.

In the evening we stay in albeit with my tub of Hobgoblin that I got for Christmas from my Brother. I’m good and only have one pint which has less to do with Sunday’s run as to do with beer overload due to Christmas falling midweek.

It's always good to get in a run between Christmas and New Year, so on Sunday we return to the Gerald Storey Memorial which starts at Worksop College.

We did this last year for the first time and somehow I manage to shave nearly two minutes off last year’s time, taking 36:00 dead for the 4.8 miles despite not being able to do it aided by dog power and it being on the dreaded 'mixed terrain'.

It's not an event to get particularly excited about but it's a useful training run and all in aid of a good cause.

In the evening, we are at the cinema to see what is apparently the 7^th film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and like the previous six it isn’t a film for which I am anywhere near the target audience. Also, for me, doing Little Women yet again demonstrates exactly why cinema is often so dull at the moment e.g. endless repetitions of the same thing. If it’s not that it’s sequels... and/or the constant overuse of the same actors and actresses e.g. here we are again getting to watch the terrifically competent Saoirse Ronan.

Clearly studios think we don’t want originality and sadly they may be right judging by how packed it is in Broadway tonight. Not that they seem to enjoy it very much. The moment the end credits roll everyone silently disappeared without a word to anyone. No interest in the cast list, the music, the locations (ok, clearly we’re both film geeks) and no debate about the film unless they’re all rushing to the pub to do it. We start our debrief in the cinema and carry it on later in the bar.

Do you need to know the plot? Because it’s fair to say there are very few surprises. Despite this version by Greta Gerwig being a ‘modern’ version it’s still about a group of sisters whose lives revolve around getting themselves married off while ditching any career aspirations they may have had along the way. 

It is true that they now make it abundantly clear that this is their own personal economic decision and they have licence to slap away any suitor’s attentions particularly if they’re called Laurie (Timothée Chalamet) while proclaiming they’d rather ‘write’ or ‘paint’ or something else rather than get married before giving everything up to get married.

So the artist (Florence Pugh as Amy) doesn’t become an artist, the musician (Eliza Scanlen as Beth), or was it an actress, doesn’t become a musician and the author (Saoirse Ronan as Jo) only becomes an author by writing about the artist not becoming an artist, the musician not becoming a musician and the author changing the ending so that she too gets married. It is true that the housewife (Emma Watson as Meg) gets everything she wants.

The other thing is the flashback scenes... I know it’s not cool these days to make a movie that is linear but the flashbacks were quite ridiculous as they basically involved the same cast dressing slightly differently, tying their hair back and giggling a lot more. At times it was incredibly difficult to work out which period of their lives we were in. One moment we’re at Beth's funeral and then the next we’re at Meg's wedding where Beth is in attendance.

All I can say is thank heavens for Florence Pugh, who I could watch all day long.

At the end my partner confesses she was fighting back a tear or two. Of frustration I assume.

Roll on version eight.

(Sunday 29^th December)

Bail Money

Today I do my first Gedling Parkrun. I’ve been here a few times but I've always considered the surface too rough for a dog’s paws. Not that it's stopped others. Today I run it with the Lad and MD runs it with Daughter.

In the afternoon, while I’m at the match, L joins a new gym. Another one. It’s a bit like notches in your bedpost I suppose. This one is apparently amazing. So naturally I ask how the Watt Bikes were? As naturally an amazing gym must either have Watt Bikes or something better. I don’t get a conclusive answer, only that they’d be no use to L anyway. She also finally signs up for a personal training session after ten years of thinking about it.

Then in the evening we’re at Broadway to see Mary Queen Of Scots on an evening financed by Tesco. This is finance stolen by L. She says she tried to pay at their self-service machine but not only did it spit her tenner out onto the floor but also a further £25. So she just picked it all up, managed to pay second time around and then left. Although I’m tempted to ask her to hang to as bail money. 

Mary Stuart (Saoirse Ronan) became Queen of Scotland when just six days old following the death of her father James V Of Scotland. While Scotland was ruled by Regents until she became an adult, she was effectively married off at the age of five to the future King of France, who was himself only four. She subsequently moved to France for thirteen years. The last two as Queen in France to the then King Francis II, who then died on her.

So in 1561, at the age of eighteen, Mary moved back to Scotland to claim the throne in her own country. She was also next in line to the throne in England, unless her cousin Elizabeth I (Margot Robbie) produces or names an heir.

Her reappearance creates alarm on both sides of the border. As a devout Catholic, she was regarded with suspicion by her mainly Protestant subjects. Not even her half-brother James Murray (James McArdle), who is the stand-in monarch, trusts her. While Protestant cleric John Knox (David Tennant) can't even abide a woman being in charge.

Then there’s Elizabeth, ravaged by the pox, who is completely unhappy at having a younger, much better looking queen eyeing up her throne. Yet Elizabeth sees no other viable option and the two come to an agreement of sorts in a dramatic meeting between the two that apparently in real life never happened. Unfortunately hardly anyone else likes this idea and the plots against her mount.

Mary seems naive, she chooses her allies and her husbands badly. Her second husband, Lord Darnley (Jack Lowden) is a severe disappointment, who ends up murdered but with whom she had a son. Her third, the Earl of Bothwell (Martin Compston), is a ‘nice’ chap who is not only the suspected murderer but who abducts her and also rapes her as a sort of marriage proposal.

None of this goes down well with people and she is forced to abdicate the throne to her one year old son and go into hiding. This ends with her imprisoned for eighteen years before finally being beheaded on the orders of her cousin. 

In The Favourite, we saw two women vying for the affections of Queen Anne while here, we see two women vying against the men and for the throne of England. It’s interesting and complex stuff but in the end probably not that great a film. 

(Saturday 19^th 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)

About As Easy As A Nuclear War

It’s a traumatic park session this morning with MD forever taking the ball off in the wrong direction. Once up on a time, pre-MD, Doggo and I used to do a long walk down to the lake for a paddle (for Doggo) and we’d still be back within an hour. Since MD we don’t even make it a quarter of the way there. I tell MD we’re not coming tomorrow. I can see from the look on his face that he doesn’t believe me but I’m serious.

At the match in the afternoon, our first 3pm kick off against Leeds for years, Derby win 3-1 and the McClaren era is up and running.

Then as I’m having a Sunday off running we go for a Saturday night out.

First a Film. How I Live Now is based on a book by Meg Rosoff which has won several awards for Young Adult literature, so it’s a book for teenagers.

The film comes with a 15 certificate, plenty of bleakness and its own teenager, an American lass called Elizabeth (Saoirse Ronan) or rather it’s Daisy; she would rather be called Daisy. See, I told you she was troubled but then aren’t all teenagers.

Her father sends her to stay in the English countryside and she’s not impressed but if that wasn’t enough to piss her off, the fact World War III breaks out during her stay certainly was. 

She’s not impressed by much actually; in fact the only thing she is impressed with is Edmond (George Mackay). He sucks her finger after she’s cut herself and she swoons. Most likely because she is terrified of germs and infection and here is someone sucking her blood. Ewww, my hero.

Edmond is one of the young cousins she is staying with along with Isaac (Tom Holland) and Piper (Harley Bird). 

When their mother disappears off to Geneva to possibly help stop the coming war, in which she clearly fails as a nuclear bomb is dropped on London, the kids are left home alone. Martial law is declared and the kids decamp to the barn, where they Daisy and Edmond consummate their friendship.  

Then the military move in, seize them and evacuated them, splitting the boys and the girls up. Daisy and Edmond vow to escape and reunite back at the cottage. After awhile sorting potatoes, Daisy flees with Piper in tow. Steeled by the need to be strong for her younger cousin and also by her desire to be re-entangled with Edmund, Daisy deals admirably with the situations thrust at her and proves to be no mean shot with a pistol.

It’s a long journey home and they witness many things before they finally make it back where hopefully Edmond is waiting for her, along with another freshly ironed outfit for her to wear.

It’s an entertaining film and I enjoyed it but it has to be said it all seemed very unrealistic in parts. Right from the opening scene where 14 year old Isaac drives Daisy home from the airport through an unlikely land war amidst a nuclear fallout to the kindly eagle who ultimately guides them home.

It does clear up one thing though. If you want your own teenager to buck up their ideas, let go of their moods and remove that huge bag of chips off their shoulder, the quickest way to do it is to start a nuclear war. 

We are sat in the Peacock later, drinking the Old Peculiar when the emails start raining in on L’s phones. We’ve put the kids’ bikes and L’s old Peugeot up on Freecycle and the entries went live at 10pm. By five past we’ve had a dozen enquiries.

 
(Saturday 5^th October)