‘Sheer gaul’ of Obama plan triggers anger, outrage

House Republicans voted against President Obama’s recovery package yesterday, claiming that the administration was ‘trying to turn America into France’.
It is claimed that the economic stimulus, valued at close to $900 billion, is host to many parasitic ‘pork barrel’ projects – leading the GOP to assert it Mr Obama’s ‘worst abuse’ of power yet, no small feat considering the Democrat has barely been in office a fortnight.

‘I like him’, claimed one Republican, ‘but his plan to fund mime classes for all children is just part of a plot to turn us all into cheese-eating surrender monkeys, one child at a time.’

The ethnic equation was further confused by the addition of a ‘Trojan horse’, inside which the plan was allegedly to be smuggled through Congress. Mr Obama is thought to have attached solar-powered electric wheels to the horse, in order to speed its passage through the building. Blueprints obtained by News Hour show the equine to be barely two feet tall, enabling it pass by most house members unnoticed, especially during the President’s obligatory wine-and-cheese evenings. Experts have speculated that it could double as a waiter in emergencies.

The Republicans have repositioned themselves as the party of ‘back to basics’, a political position that sees no future in the maniacal excesses of the Gallic nation, where all industry is owned by the state and children are forced to smoke, drink, strike and philosophise from an early age.

Messages from the somnambulant

The attention of News Hour is drawn to sleep emailing, a phenomenon recorded by the journal Sleep Medicine – specifically, the case of an insomniac who upped her intake of the prescription drug Ambien (zolpidem), a hypnotic known for hallucinatory side effects when resisted, something which gives it tilt for the recreational junkie.

This was not a missive fired from a BlackBerry, while halfway to the land of nod – the woman navigated two password systems on a relative’s computer, and composed three emails over eight minutes. Does this mean that she was thinking? Ambien’s side effects can include amnesia, so could she have done it in some hallucinatory trance and forgot? This is important: there are legal ramifications here with regard to ‘When Sleepwalkers Attack’.

On the other hand, if one is familiar with a computer system, logging into it is as much a matter of muscle memory as anything else – after years of use, complex passwords can be typed out more easily than they can be remembered, like notes on a piano. Much of the text in the emails was formulaic, smashed together with mismatched capitals – one entitled ‘!HELP ME P-LEEEEESE!’ contained a bizarre dining invitation:

“Come tomorrow and sort this hell hole out. Dinner and drinks, 4 p.m., Bring wine and caviar only.”

While another read: “What the…”

It sounds like the sort of disparate nonsense that comes out when people talk in their sleep. Is it too much to speculate that these bolted together phrases are the product of muscle memory rather than actual cognitive thought? Is this a side-effect of our increasingly familiarity with computers, a natural evolution of the more brutal notions of sleepwalking? After all, if one can sleep eat and sleep drive on Ambien, is it too much to sleep type?

What next, sleep blogging? Sleep twittering is certainly plausible. Did cavemen sleep hunt? Still, if the unconscious brain could somehow be harnessed to write emails, imagine all the unpleasant work that could be passed on to your sleeping self…

FILM: Jazz voice, paracetamol and repression in The Reader

Dosed up on a heady cocktail of paracetamol, Polar Krush and sugar-strong Pepsi, a beleaguered News Hour correspondent was dispatched to watch The Reader, Kate Winslet’s successful scoop for a Golden Globe. The situation at the cinema was confused, with our ticket server, the emo bastard child of Matt Lucas and Barbra Streisand, being called away mid-pour from the Polar Krush machine by an important personal phone call.

Perhaps it was about the confusing state of Ms Winslet’s deserved award nominations; quite why she got the Globe for ‘Best Supporting Actress’ is unclear – she is the only woman really in The Reader and, although the story is not told through her eyes, she doesn’t ‘support’ anyone in an acting sense (the Bafta and Oscar nominations rectify this), although you could argue the case from a narrative point of view. Her character, an older woman who seduces a much younger boy in post-war Germany, stands very much alone.

I say this, and only this about the plot, as much of the publicity and reviews (with some honourable exceptions) give away too much and while this doesn’t spoil the film entirely, the film’s structure is loose enough to make you wish you’d had more time to spend reeling with surprise. Presumably the marketeers’ idea was that they needed to give away the premise to get people through the door to a film that screams arty Oscar magnet, but is more ordinary than it appears. Certainly, compared to last year’s big Oscar films – No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood – it’s very linear. The Reader shares a cinematographer, Roger Deakins (although there’s no credit on imdb), with No Country, and some of the later shots, mindblowing in their powerful simplicity (notably in the New York apartment) remind you of this. Elsewhere in the film’s 124 minutes, Ralph Fiennes, as the older, wrecked version of that seduced boy (brilliantly played by David Kross) has the occasional spark of comedy; his voice has the odd moment of rebellion, turning against him with vaudeville pizazz during the dinner with his daughter.

Effective in short jolts, The Reader isn’t quite more than the sum of its parts – but leaves you thinking, if only to figure out what most of the characters are repressing.

Tres Che? Marxist revolutionary charges twice, no discounts

The most incredible thing about Che, the new movie biopic of the Marxist revolutionary, is not its length – although it runs close to four hours – it is that cinemagoers are being charged separately to see each part, despite them being shown in moviehouses at the same time (and despite a cut-down, single version being in the pipeline). Wouldn’t it be nicer to reward someone for sitting through half a movie by letting them see the other half for free? Or do the filmmakers calculate that the US, its wits collectively leavened by President Obama inauguration, will pay good money to spend four hours watching anything vaguely political?

This comes as a particular insult when you consider that the source memoir is barely 300 pages in paperback. Admittedly, it has a glossary, and quantity does not equate to quality – but The Return Of The King runs to nearly 1,400 pages in a similar format and resulted in a movie overlong by about 20 minutes, and one that had to satisfy the famously protective fans of Tolkien. It’s a bit of a blunt point, but one not without merit.

Still, the $60 million movie has its defenders, and passionate ones – as this reviewer discovered. Either that, or he reaches a lot of knee-jerk liberals (if you assume that he’s right).

(On another note, the whole ‘Che’ spectacle reminds some in the News Hour office of the doomed fictional movie Medellin, in Entourage – in which Adrian Grenier’s character plays Pablo Escobar.)

‘Another man provided the voice’

A lot of deaths seem to have been postponed from Christmas this year, our ATM (‘All Things Mortal’) correspondent has noted. In 2007, the big deaths occurred over the festive season, news quirks aside; recently, we’ve had the tragic double bill of John Mortimer and Tony Hart (not to mention David Vine, the ‘face of snooker’) both treated to understandably glowing obituaries.

Then there’s Bob May, upon whose death ABC news rather unfortunately immortalised as the ‘guy inside the Robot suit on Lost In Space…another man provided the voice’. (It’s like David Prowse and James Earl Jones over Darth Vader.) May was a lifelong performer, on stage from the age of two, and a stuntman of gung-ho showbiz physicality – this is just as well, as the selection process for Lost In Space was ruthless. May recalled show creator Irwin Allen declaring: ‘if you can fit in the suit, you’ve got the job.’

Any readers who feel sorry for a diminutive note in May’s remembrance shouldn’t: The former Vaudevillian loved the part, describing the suit as a ‘home away from home’ and even smoking in it between takes (plumes leaking from the suit), something you can’t imagine happening on the soundstages of today. He enjoyed the LIS conventions, too.

Incidentally, the man who provided the voice is still going strong. Veteran announcer Dick Tufeld, now 82, is likely to be remembered in a similar fashion, at least by the media – although he also provided the memorable narrations for Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea and Time Tunnel, which provides more scope for pictures.

John Mortimer: From great loss, a question

One might almost suspect the BBC of having slipped him something. Today, the tragic death of Rumpole Of The Bailey creator John Mortimer was announced, and done so first on the BBC – rather conveniently, digital channel BBC4 have a John Mortimer Night lined up for this Sunday, and have had so for more than a week. Is this coincidence, or something more? Tribute nights usually only occur when someone dies, if it’s the anniversary of something or other, or if there’s a tie-in with a book or DVD release, none of which appeared to apply at the time of scheduling.

Alternatively, could it be an elaborate wheeze by Mortimer himself, designed to generate publicity for some daring new project? Perhaps a Rumpole revival? Hmm…

Culture sneaked, city weeps

The grimy-faced people of Liverpool were left distraught yesterday, as the last piece of culture was finally hauled out of the city by a faceless legion of robot slaves. The Merseyside concentration, once home to The Rolling Stones and Elvis Presley, had enjoyed a prominent period as a ‘European Capital Of Culture’, but its citizens were unaware of the small print in this apparently Faustian pact.

Art critics, commentators and prominent figures such as Cilla Black, Sir Simon Rattle and Les Dennis were last night loaded into cattle vans and driven across Europe by cover of blackness, in order to be repurposed as talking points in Vilnius, Lithuania – and Linz, in Austria. The fate of their hastily constructed families had not been determined at the time of writing.

FILM: The Earth Stood, but didn’t think much

Keanu Reeves’s easily blanked expression makes him a shoe-in for certain roles. Neo in The Matrix was one of them. Such eerie detachment is suitable for saviour situations, and such natural absence set him in good stead for the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still, a ruthlessly unintellectual exercise in impressive special effects (you’d have to be quite hard of heart not to admit that Gort is cool, although there’s little here to surprise) with some acting from Jennifer Connelly.

Reeves plays Klaatu, an alien on a mission to rid the Earth of humans; he slowly comes to terms with his human body, and slowly figures out that, hey, people aren’t that bad after all – it’s a performance for which Reeves has received the opposite of plaudits, but this is barely fair. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Earth_Stood_Still_(1951_film)
“>original film was a tense Cold War meditation, but had in it an intelligence that its remake wilfully shuns; a lone, heavily sign-posted scene represents the film’s limited brain processes, and wheels out John Cleese as an example of what the human race can be at its best. Klaatu hears Bach, and is amazed; he and Cleese write equations in tandem on an old-fashioned chalkboard; they talk, for a few sentences, about the world being on the brink – then the baddies come and it’s all forgotten.

The film beats an emotional path but comes up short because Klaatu’s all considered intellectualism, something that stays firmly inside his head. So all we’re left with is the special effects and Jennifer Connelly. That’s enough if you’re in the right mood, but just barely.

Doctor denial swells storm stemming from News Hour betting scoop

Confirmation (of sorts) that something fishy could well have been going on with the Doctor Who betting, if not on an organised, corporate level – that would just be idiotic – as we suspected on Friday night. Why else would Matt Smith’s name appear so prominently on betting sites when no major news source made any play of him on Friday? Another scoop…

Slings and arrows for Matt Smith – why oh why?

Poor old (or young-ish) Matt Smith. The new, 26-year-old star of Doctor Who is facing the predictable sniping that the internet provides such an easy platform for. We, for one, hope he is ignoring it. Two recent examples of neoshock should provide him with ballast. Daniel Craig, once thought of as ‘too blond’ to be Bond, is now widely embraced as the finest example since Sean Connery (and viewed by some as the lone saving grace of Quantum Of Solace). Robert Pattinson, cast in vampiric teen flick Twilight – and reportedly passionate defender of Heath Ledger’s memory – was once reviled by the books’ legions of adolescent fans. The proof is always in the seeing, and even then it’s often subjective. After all, doesn’t a younger actor open up paths that an older Doctor simply couldn’t take, much as a female Doctor would? (Leaving aside the fact of the Gallifreyan’s actual age.)

So what about Lily Allen as the new companion? Well, look at the arc taken by Cheryl Cole since that rather nasty incident in the loos – although two youngsters might be one too far. Still, why not wait and see?

Illest artists ‘could suffer’ in January

The News Hour office is home to plenty of musing today, much of it focused on the fate of Iceberg Slimm, of whom readers of a chart-following hip-hop persuasion will need no reminding (not to be confused with the novelist born Robert Beck). Had the pressure of being the ‘illest MC’, as proclaimed on his single, Nursery Rhymes, taken its toll in the harsh January weather? Apparently not. Mr Slimm is still very much alive and kicking and, we are pleased to report, something of a charity campaigner through his company, Frojak Entertainment. Big up the illness!

Newspaper goes cinematic with global diamond heists, bribery

For anyone who ever doubted you could find a good story in the style section, try this from the New York Times – an account of the ‘Serbian Pink Panther’ jewellery heists. The NYT brings it that evocative, cinematic edge it often leads with (see also the Siemens bribery scandal, a similar example for those who would discard the business pages), but it scarcely needs it. In Biarritz, the thieves painted a bench to deter possible pedestrian witnesses to the heist; in Paris they wore wigs; in Toyko, their $38 million haul took three minutes to secure, and included a 125 carat necklace with 116 diamonds; the Paris store put out a $1 million bounty on information leading to their capture; Boban Stokjovic, one of Panthers now serving a sentence, is described as a ‘gentleman bandit’ who committed robberies with the ‘minimun of violence’. These quotes come from his lawyer, of course – and one should always be careful about romanticising crime – but there is something zesty and very Ocean’s 11 about the whole thing.

Here are some escaping the Dubai heist on YouTube – and here some being arrested, and here’s more of a timeline.

Let’s just hope that the NYT isn’t one of the casualties of the ‘recession’ – as it’s hard for News Hour to imagine the world without it.

News Hour probes the Turner Prize

News Hour headed for London’s Tate Britain to visit the soon-to-close Turner Prize 2008, with attempts at an open mind. Many of the works mirrored each other in principle, giving the exhibition rather more of a curatorial aspect than we expected. Goshka Macuga‘s room reflected this again on a micro scale, being comprised mostly of other artists’ work, placed out of context; most arresting was a spiralling collection of glass sheets that resembled two halves of a revolving door moved aside, their edges just touching. One of those pieces you can just walk around for hours, that picks up your eyes and flings them in unexpected directions – a bit like a zoetrope without a picture, and called Deutsche Volk, Deutsche Arbeit.

Room two, home of Cathy Wilkes, had a linked concept, arranging objects from the real world in manners that you wouldn’t expect – both in terms of combination and size. It has the jarring effect of a surreal jumble sale, with mannequins attired in things that aren’t attire, an effect at its best with the two centrepieces – they look like kitchen counters but turn out to be supermarket checkouts.

Runa Islam‘s collection of films are strangely beautiful, and complementary. The first deals with slow motion falling crockery, poked and prodded by a woman who regards them as alien items. The framing of the shots is magnetic, and the carpet by several strides the most comfortable to sit on in the entire exhibition. The carpet becomes less comfortable for the next film, that fetishises mechanical processes; the room is most unwelcoming, and hastens you toward the honest wooden floors that support viewing of The First Day Of Spring. This third work, mostly silent apart from the odd bird, shows us a park of halted rickshaws and quiet men, one of whom resembles Fidel Castro. They seek respite from the city, which we can (kind of) hear – as the mechanical noise from the previous room, filtering through the adjoining hallway. In our humble opinion, this simple pleasure made it the winner.

The actual winner was Mark Leckey‘s mixed media meditation on image in unusual contexts, hyperfocused or simply in an odd place – a similar concept to Cathy Wilkes only replacing the object with the image, although much more intellectualised. Leckey is the only artist to talk directly to the viewer, through a video lecture that links to the other works surrounding his main film. These include strangely compelling, fast-flipping slide closeups of a wall mirror – and a sinister video of Felix the cat. The play on perceptions is entertaining, and this is by far the most popular room. Whether this is because people want to focus on the winner, or because they genuinely enjoy it is unclear – but the separation of pieces allows for a lot of punters at once. Leckey’s video presence also lends a sense of humour to proceedings, which can be welcome, especially at the end of an exhibition. Arguably the most complete and enveloping work, largely because of the lecture.

Should you visit, it’s worth studying the letters of appreciation and disgust that cover the walls of the room just outside, next to the cafe (you can enter it without paying). Choice messages from a global collection of punters include:

‘I am not entitled to this opinion’
‘I really wish people would learn how to spell. Won’t learn here’
‘Took the red eye from Vancouver and fell asleep in the leckture’ (sic)

…plus grumblings about the lack of a French language audio guide, helped by the inclusion of a French ‘tube’ ticket.

EXCLUSIVE: Doctor Who replacement could be anybody (but it’s Matt Smith)

Much of the British sci-fi nation is gripped by one question – who will be the next Doctor Who? Curiously, a BBC news report on the subject omits a mention for the frontrunner on Betfair: Matt Smith, one of 41 namesakes on IMDb, veteran of Party Animals, and whose odds have been decreasing all night. A theatre man like Mr Tennant, at 26 he would be the youngest Doctor by some measure – fitting the apparent cry for a box to be ticked, previously thought to be of race or gender. Smith is absent from all easily apparent news reports, which leads us to suspect that the good people at Betfair have the inside track. Speculation here, as everywhere, will have to wait until the result is revealed later on Saturday.

Unlikely outriders include Stephen Fry, Bill Nighy, and Catherine Zeta Jones – News Hour’s ears cropped up at the mention of Chiwetel Ejiofor, also a man of theatre and substance who would doubtless bring sparkle to the role. As we signed off, Paterson Joseph‘s odds had shortened past those of Mr Smith. Ramble, ramble, ramble…

[1.06pm UPDATE: Matt Smith’s odds are now better than Joseph’s. How much does this reflect information, and how much does it reflect where the public are placing their bets?]

[6.42pm UPDATE: Betfair had it – Matt Smith is the new Doctor.]

One American thinks this, the other four disagree

As the Obama inauguration drifts closer, President Bush’s approval ratings stand at 27 per cent, according to the most recent CNN poll – it’s a familiar statistic, and about average for the year. Approval in ’08 has edged as high as 39 per cent and as low as 22, which still means that more than one in five Americans supported the President at his lowest ebb, just under half of those that voted for him in ’04.

For much of its concluding 110th sitting, the House of Representatives has been evenly split between Democrats and Republicans – and it fares far worse than Bush, with an rating of just 20 per cent according to a recent Fox poll. For the year, this is pretty good – amid the economic turmoil of October it sunk to 12 per cent, and has climbed above 30 only once in ’08. While much of the ire is aimed at Republicans, this bitch-slapping, stuttering Congress is more indicative of the ‘old politics’ Obama promised to change than the outgoing administration (the 111th has a Democratic majority of 55-41).

For Obama, the honeymoon period continues – it would be odd if it didn’t, as the man isn’t even President yet – with a creep upward of three per cent across December, an ‘approval’ of 82 per cent (so that’s what the other four Americans think). This approval presumably stems from Joe Sixpack’s delight at his appointment of a basketball-crazy cabinet, and that new, less ‘scrawny‘ figure.

Johnson & Dickens, and odours of the era

Several of News Hour’s London bureau ventured out into the city’s cold, winding streets today, set on uncovering some of the capital’s literary landmarks. Among them were the curious home of Dr Johnson, a high if not wide residence with considerable subsidence. Outside lurks a bronze tribute to his most famous (if not favourite) cat, Hodge; according to the nice lady inside the lopsided domicile, Hodge was fed exclusively on oysters by the good doctor’s own hand. Inquiries as to the effect of this on the poor feline’s digestion were met with distant recollections of some ‘terrible end’ and the production of leaflet priced 70p. This was interesting if specifically unhelpful, except in saying that Johnson amused Hodge with valerian in his final hours, and that the cat was just part of an eclectic household weaved from society’s maverick element – a product of Dr Johnson’s fear of loneliness, and the madness that would surely follow. Watch out for more on the often financially imperilled dictioneer in 2009, the 300th anniversary of his birth.

The tour also took in an early workplace of Charles Dickens at Gray’s Inn – Ellis & Blackmore – where he entertained all and sundry with his impressions of the city’s colourful peasantry. At points such as this, in the enclosed legal havens of Gray’s and the like, it was easy to drift back in time. Sometimes it was even easier than the guidebook suggested.

‘Notice how clean these windings are,’ it nudged, ‘and then imagine the stink that must have pervaded the air in the 18th century, before London had a proper drainage system.’

Due to the capital’s continuing fascination with binge drinking, it was not hard – rarely were you far from the sweet stench of urine, or decaying turkey carcasses left in uncollected bins. Stand in the right place, and you can almost hear the carriages.

STD ‘carriers’ exposed online – right or wrong?

This is really quite something. The Online STD Carrier Database was set up by Oregon’s Cyrus Sullivan, after he claimed to have been infected by a girl with herpes. Here’s the rub – other people nominate carriers, who are then listed online. In order for an alleged carrier to remove their details, a clean blood test must be submitted; guilty until proven innocent. Where is the line between information and revenge? While one can certainly understand the motivation behind such a site, the balance of data protection is a tricky one – is a greater public good served by exposing the carriage of a concealed lethal infection than by the right to privacy? Would the site be fairer if limited to untreatable and fatal infections? Should it offer a right-to-reply before publishing, or verification from more than one source? Should it exist at all? Would the responsibility be better placed in the real world? The legal page makes a forceful effort to address this.

The first listed case is presumably the unlucky lady who inspired Cyrus, and includes information that one might not consider strictly pertinent to the situation. Hefty legal warnings prevent us from reproducing any of it here, but her name is cited again on Rotten Neighbor, a posting that was under review at the time of writing. What is a matter of public record is this – Sullivan’s alleged reporting of a fellow frat member as a sex offender, a little under four years ago.

Along with location tracking services like Loopt, these sites reflect a surprising willingness for us to ‘Big Brother’ ourselves, a problem amplified by the hard-to-police nature of the internet – this has always been a double-edged sword. (A Facebook listing for Cyrus Sullivan lists him as having ‘no friends’ which we suspect may be a low-key revenge gag of some kind.)

The listing issue aside, the advertising on the site could leave a bad taste. Promos for a Penthouse-owned swinger service sit alongside ads for fetish sites and those that promise ‘free nude video chat’. It is not News Hour’s place to be prudish, only to suggest that a morally tricky exercise such as this might not further its cause by carrying such advertising (on a note of balance, there are at least as many ‘mainstream’ ads for lawyers, real estate, etc) and may be better perceived as a not-for-profit enterprise. The site has a merchandise section, a trademarked slogan that is easiest to imagine from the male perspective and a mascot who is, in our opinion, leagues beyond sinister. On a positive note, there is a page devoted to STI/STD information.

The site only went up in October, and the coverage it has generated has helped swell the number of listed carriers from six to 333 (at the time of writing), although there’s certainly one joke name among them, and many cases of celebrities and porn star names garnered from single sources such as Wikipedia (again, cross-verification might help here).

Quantum Of Solace: From page to screen, any link?

In terms of events, there is little to connect Quantum Of Solace: The Movie and Quantum Of Solace: The Short Story. In fact, there is nothing. Bond spends the latter at a dinner party in Nassau, and the former on a bloody, globetrotting quest for revenge; but there is something there in the motivation. Unlike many movie soundtracks, once could see how the story ‘inspired’ this bookend to Casino Royale.

The centrepiece of the short is a post-dinner story from the Governor to Bond, mano e mano – a winding tale of emotional brutality within marriage, which turns on an explanation of the title by the Governor, who Bond believes to be a crashing bore:

‘I think it’s the same with all relationships between a man and a woman. They can survive anything so long as some kind of basic humanity exists… when all kindness has gone, when one person obviously and sincerely doesn’t care if the other is living or dead, then it’s just no good…I’ve invented a rather high-sounding title for this basic factor in human relations. I have called it the Law of the Quantum of Solace.’

Bond then agrees, and translates this splendidly cumbersome phrase as: ‘the amount of comfort’.

The sheer size of explanation seems odd in isolation, but works in context and does stick in the mind, awkward crux and all. (It works for the character, too.) In the film, Bond thinks a dead ladyfriend may have betrayed him, which could equate to the Quantum of Solace – ‘she means nothing to me’ ‘It’s never personal’ etc – and acts with startling indifference to the drowning of starlet in oil. So, there is a link here, of sorts – some might say there is also a link in that both feature a British secret agent who kills people, but never mind…

Also see: FILM REVIEW