Say Sorry, but not for this

Benedict Cumberbatch apologizing for using the phrase “coloured people” is as absurd as it gets. First of all, he was talking in the defence of black people who can’t find work in the industry as easily as white people. And if the term ‘black’ which is preferred to ‘coloured’ isn’t even more obnoxious a term, I don’t know what is.

I remember Oprah saying years ago that she found the ‘nigga’ used by coloured/black guys offensive and Terence Howard trying to convince her that the term ‘my nigga’ was a term of endearment. She wasn’t buying it. Like I don’t buy into the suffocating political correctness of the times we’re living in. You know what’s really offensive? That we see humans in terms of colour first, and their humanity or lack thereof, second. Be judgmental by all means, (is there a more loathsome lot than the people who say, “I’m not here to judge”? What are you here for, then? If I wanted a teapot for a friend who will only soothe and not speak the truth, I’d buy one), but judge others for their acts, not the phrases they use in speech or in books or in cartoons.

Speaking of which, this entire ‘free speech’ thingy is so depressing – because it depends entirely on who’s delivering it. In America, Seth Rogen and Michael Moore have been ostracized for saying ‘American Sniper’ sucked big time. If you read what Chris Kyle has written, and you don’t shudder, irrespective of class, creed and country of origin, you need a padded cell, my friend. In Texas, they have a Chris Kyle Day instead.

How does patriotism and dishonesty merge and so few see it happening? How can so few lack the courage to accept what is wrong with their country and try to fight against it, no matter how unpopular it makes you. Not even God occupies a place impregnable to criticism. Unless you follow a very strange God indeed. Then again, I follow @TheTweetOfGod and he does no wrong in my book, so mea culpa.

The dangerous thing when some lines blur is that the lone voices that attempt to be raised will be extinguished one by one, either through 50 lashes a week or by people saying after seeing ‘American Sniper’ that all they want to do is go out and kill as many ‘ragheads’ as they can find. Come to think of it, that's not patriotism, or dishonesty, it’s deep-seated neurosis.

The Theory of Men

It’s a pity that not one but count ‘em TWO people were snoring in the cinema hall half-way through The Theory of Everything about one of the greatest thinkers in the cosmos. This is less a reflection on humanity and more a sad glance towards director James Marsh. An homage to the dude who tackled the concept of Time and you are responsible for making it lag? I wouldn’t want to be you, James, any time soon.

I understand the movie wanted to focus on the relationship between Stephen and Jane but where is the work this man is renowned for? You can’t give me a clichéd image of cream swirling in a coffee cup, yes, yes, brilliant morphing into the Milky Way, and even present the dynamics between the Hawkings as the most milk-and-water bilge running down the drain, and expect me to be satisfied.

But the extraordinary portrayal by Eddie Redmayne lifted this experience to the realm of unforgettable, it has to be said. There is just one scene where I think Marsh showed a certain grasp of his subject matter, and that’s when Stephen/Eddie uncoils at a lecture and imagines an act as simple – and undoable, for him – as bending down to get a pen and return it to its owner. It’s a point where you see both how Eddie transformed himself for this role and how Stephen suffers every single day.

Charlie Cox was wonderful, the emotional suffering he presents almost matches Stephen’s physical one (almost, because nothing can ever do that).  I’ll never forget Firdaus Kanga asking Hawking, “What do you think is the best thing about being disabled?” And Stephen replying, “I don’t think there is anything good about being disabled.” You want to believe there is some reason for the fresh horrors that rain down on your head every other day, but you know what, there isn’t. It’s all a random collision of matter and circumstance, much as the beginning of the universe that Hawking has roamed to its farthest reaches in his mind, while his body has remained so cruelly tethered.
So unfortunate, then, that all this movie showed me was 1. The smartest men are seriously dumb when it comes to women, and 2. Harry Lloyd is hot.

Sweeter than sweet

Sticky notepad I found while browsing at Landmark, made in China, cheaper than a cup of coffee and gives much more lasting pleasure.

My personal pearly gates

I was possibly one of the worst students any teacher could ever have, not because I was boisterous but because I was not. I remember coming to life only to do my makeup before break so I could slink around but at least look half-way decent while so doing and my favourite History teacher telling me and my best friend C: "Please, girls, please, just once can you pay attention? And how many times have I told you no eating M&Ms in class. Sheba, put down that mascara!" Most of the time I would "waste time in idle behaviour" as my English teacher would rant, (although my favourite was when she wrote on the side of an essay, "Stop varnishing the gloss with your language and give me the facts!"), but there was one more time when I came alive, and that was when the subject was Philosophy. Don't ask me why. I have always had a rich inner life to make up for my non-existent real one, and there's something about the subject that makes me feel... richer. So when I came across these two books, I lit up for a brief, shining moment as the saying goes. Better to enter a kingdom of Heaven right here, right now, wouldn't you say?

An ill wind

The first thought that crossed my mind when I read the Oscar Pistorius saga was how obvious the loopholes were. Which woman, ever, locks the bathroom door at 2am? I mean, ever? Which man, ever, goes to see what the noise is in the middle of the night without checking to see if his lover is safe beside him in their bed? Ridiculous.

At the end of the day, whatever the reason for killing someone, whether it's a hit and run, whether it's “mistaking them for an intruder”, you have to pay the price for it. Even if it is a nominal price, you have to pay it. I wouldn't call 10 months in jail nominal by any means, a full 5 would have made some kind of moral sense. But from the first minute that poor legless Oscar (the whole drawing thing depicting him crawling across the floor was a gross appeal for sympathy, to say the least), entered the South African courtroom manfully trying to hold back his tears and the judge asked him if he would like to sit down, everyone knew which way this wind would blow.

It's blown by, and poor legless Oscar, being white, forget famous, will live his life. With “mercy” from the court. If he had been black, poor, nobody and had killed his white girlfriend, well, that shitstorm would have ended with a lethal injection.

Moral of the story: If you're beautiful or if you're white, you'll be up and running on planet Earth.

Not Expendable

There are two kinds of Hollywood royalty, the Meryl Streep section in private boxes, and the Sly Stallone backbenchers. A little of the former goes a long way, but there's unlimited fun to be had with the latter and The Expendables 3 shows why that is.

Age, as older people figure out, is just a number. When seated at a table with lean, muscled men in dark Levi's and leather jackets, lounging with cigars and heavy tumblers of golden liquid, looking capable of gunning the bad guys down on the streets with just a look, well, no one's going to ask them for IDs. What's the movie about? No idea. Perform what the usual arms of the government cannot, transport some heavy-duty material from some banana republic, shoot a lot of people, throw some betrayal into the mix and there you go. It's adrenaline-inducing with the added charm of being one of those movies where many of the actors are real friends in a kind of heavy-duty, members-only club that is impossible to penetrate.

Things to note: The motorcycle stunt which goes vertical, stunning. Mel Gibson, (who straddles both groups of Hollywood royalty, by the way), watching his amoral representation of the character Stonebanks you're amazed at what the man from Braveheart is capable of. Antonio Banderas' comic timing is great, Jet Li's presence is weird and the young 'uns are like faded sepia photos; sometimes, experience is not expendable.

The script is execrable, “Drummer's in the house”, “Let's mow the lawn”, “Christmas is coming...But it's only June”, although when Lee Christmas is Jason Statham, all can be forgiven.

And when it all comes with a guaranteed HEA, as romance novelists say, what more can you ask from a movie when it gives you a vacation from your life?

Thanks for the Knick, Steven

Knickerbocker Hospital, turn-of-century New York, is not the place you want to get admitted, overrun as it is by a coke addict, a brilliant black doctor who is not allowed to practice and a manager up to his neck with debt collectors. Then again, there's no place better if you get the right man at the right moment. When directed by Steven Soderbergh, how can this new show on HBO Hits be anything but brilliant. The energy, the colours, the twisted characters and best or worst, the practice of medicine in all its blood and gore (warning: you need a strong stomach to watch this), by people who are obsessed with their profession makes The Knick a precursor to Grey's Anatomy. Where it differs from Grey's is not in the baring of bones to show the skeleton of human ailments, both physical and spiritual, but in the fact that you give a damn about the people at The Knick. You feel for each one, flawed as they are, because they struggle to rise above what they seem to be.

Clive Owen plays Dr John Thackery, a cold yet committed soul with a monkey on his back that grows heavier by the day. Algernon Edwards (Andre Holland) runs an 'informal' clinic for coloured people in the basement, politics and egos clash on a regular basis and well-to-do former lovers arrive with syphilis. Good stuff.

Penny Wunnerful

When hands split through a man's chest in a revision of the iconic scene from Ridley Scott's Alien, it was easy to guess Penny Dreadful would be a winner.

Set in Victorian London, the AXN series centres on a motley crew of supernatural-hunters who themselves are not what they seem. They are ostensibly searching for a man's missing daughter but the viewer is soon entangled in everything from Dracula to Dorian Gray and this: A doctor is working on what looks like an autopsy, when the lights go off, he lights a lamp, turns around and the corpse is standing. The doctor weeps and the creature moves towards him, finger outstretched to catch a tear and rub it down his own eye. “Can you hear?” the doctor asks. The man does and the doctor whispers, “My name...is Victor Frankenstein.”

If that doesn't give you your penny's worth, nothing will. The title is from 19^th century England, referring to lurid, serialised stories printed on cheap paper that cost a penny each.

With this show, though, it's the words that carry most weight. Listen to Frankenstein's 'firstborn' sneering at him: “Were you really so naive to imagine that we’d see eternity in a daffodil?” in a nod to Wordsworth and Blake and you will get an idea of the emotional ballast headed your way. The cast speaking the lines help in no small way, although HarryTreadaway as the good Doctor swimming in emotional angst is a clear winner.

This Penny Dreadful is written by John Logan. You can just imagine him as he should be, in a dark, dank garret clutching a tawdry Christmas star bauble in his ink-smeared hands and cackling at man's hubris from his own gutter. 

Need it like now

New pad, new nook

Lauren Bacall, 89

There you go. A dame in every sense of the word, with a beauty that was timeless and a class that was unparalleled. I don't think there is another actress one can name who had what she had. Not Marilyn who was sweaty sex personified with a stunning face that was manufactured, not  Liz Taylor who somehow seemed virginal despite all the husbands and overflowing with an abundance of talent, not Salma Hayek who's the epitome of pocket Venus but doesn't spark off homage, not Scarlett Johansson who is come-hither but doesn't pull you, undeniably great though she may be as a singer, in theatre and the movies. None of them had that touch-me-not air combined with an earth-bound appeal you wanted to follow till the ends of the earth. She's gone beyond now, part of a new constellation with Paul Walker and Robin Williams. If I believed, I would say, God bless, but the sentiment remains.

A lingering music

The time has come when I read a name in breaking news and I'm thinking, no, not dead, not dead, and the next line is always “died at xx of xxx”.

When I recall Robin Williams I remember him in two things, both movies. One in Mrs Doubtfire when he says something snarky to Pierce Brosnan and I thought, Wow, that was real, no acting there. It wasn't the jealous husband he was playing at that moment, it was like he was looking at someone who had every physical advantage he did not, who was on top of that, a genuinely nice guy with no demons chasing his every waking hour. At least that's what I saw. Then in Good Will Hunting, where he plays a therapist but he's darker than his patient; again, real.

His manic but brilliant comic persona was disquieting, funny but it kept me at the edge of my seat and that's not the kind of thing you enjoy.

His problems with drugs and alcohol are well-documented and he, obviously, wanted an end to his particular suffering. That's a pain that no one, lover, friend, parent can know because each man's pain is uniquely his own. You ask, why would a man so venerated and talented, with a loving family, do such a thing? There is absolutely no answer to that question. People do what they feel compelled to do. In the dark, in the quiet, when you are alone with yourself, you may be overwhelmed by what you have become. It's something, often, that no one else can see.

Why did Tony Scott park his car, walk resolutely to that bridge and, in the chilling words of an eye-witness, jump into a river with no hesitation whatsoever? Why did Anderson Cooper's brother jump off a balcony in front of his mother? And these are famous people, not the unsung and unknown legions who have also found salvation in death.

I've always thought it's better to be dumb, self-deluded and religious-minded than grappling with existentialism. How simple life is, then. You wake in the morning thinking of manis and pedis, or the next corporate takeover where you, being naturally brilliant, will triumph, and then off you go to church every Sunday where you can sneak a look at your mistress in the pews. Simple.

For others, of course, not so much. 

I like knowing at least Robin Williams left a legacy, which is something very few of us can say. Who will ever forget Dead Poets Society and Good Morning,Vietnam? That's a lingering music that will only come to an end when the world does.