Of Swallows and Wine

Swarms of swallows outside the hotel were relentlessly trying to make mud nests on the underside of the awning despite their efforts being periodically hosed off. I say let the swallows take over.

Meanwhile, humans were getting married, namely my sister, Chelsea, and her new husband, Alex (no, he's not Petyr Baelish). I made a nuisance of myself trying to get pictures of people when they weren't posing for pictures.

My little cousin, Ava, the flower girl.

Guests gathering, spotlight on friends of the couple, Erica and her boyfriend whose name I think is Eric unless my brain is assuming couples generally have similar names. I've had a lot of wine this weekend.

My sister's pen pal from Atlanta who was wearing my favourite outfit at the wedding. I learned later the dress and shoes were actually my sister's.

The difference between zoom and closeup, if you want to know.

My hat I was forbidden to wear during the ceremony.

Wistful flower girl, perhaps remembering.

Going up.

And coming back down.

The Doctor and the Omega

To-day's important for two reasons--my sister's getting married to-day and, of course, it's Saturday so I need to talk about Doctor Who. I only had time to listen to one audio play this week, 2003's Omega, a Fifth Doctor story that follows the television episode The Arc of Infinity. It nicely follows up on the potential only slightly tapped into in the final episode of Arc of Infinity when Omega, the Time Lords' one time hero and now foe wandering Amsterdam in an unstable clone body of the Fifth Doctor as part of a desperate attempt to escape from his antimatter universe. There's a nice contemplation of how history makes heroes and villains of people reflected in the Doctor's personality overwhelming Omega at times and the actual Doctor revealing another horrible mistake he's made.

I'm writing this morning from the hotel room at a winery where my sister's getting married. We had rehearsal yesterday so I wandered around taking pictures. There are so many lizards here, it's great.

My sister (right) and her friend Kelly contemplate the coming of the dreaded grape storm.

Scotland's Hammer

Of all the movies that have been shot in Scotland there may be few prettier than 1955's Geordie. Made by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, filmmakers I normally associate with broader comedy, Geordie comes off a bit like Scotland's answer to The Quiet Man, a charming vision of a small, rural community living among fantastic hills of heather, unabashedly presenting the ideal Scotland. The story itself lacks the complexity of The Quiet Man but it's easy to love Geordie.

We meet the title character as an undersized youngster, teased relentlessly by his classmates. After a dangerous trip up a mountain with his friend, Jean, ends with him unable to peer over the edge of the bird's nest that had been the object of their journey, he decides finally to do something about his height. He spots an advertisement for a body building correspondence course in his father's newspaper.

One expects the poor kid to be scammed but I love the fact that the course actually works and we watch wee Geordie grow up into a giant young man, now played by Bill Travers.

He follows in his father's footsteps to be come gamekeeper for Alastair Sim, who's credited only as "The Laird". Sim was a Scot so it must have been nice for him to play one for once. He cautions Geordie never to shoot kestrels somehow under the belief that kestrels never harm chickens, despite Geordie presenting him with clear evidence to the contrary.

The movie loses its way a little bit when Geordie competes at hammer throwing in the summer Olympics in Australia but I love the scenes of Geordie in the hot weather intercut with the people back home in the snow where the Laird is trying to put Johnnie Walker in everyone's tea.

Twitter Sonnet #737

Ostrich leg legions topple mountain stills.
Inverted beards tickle the secret jaw.
Orange juice dribbles from yellow savage bills.
Dry ginger crumbles in the horrid maw.
Battery scrolls simmer with acid glare.
Wayward rubber balance beams bounced the check.
Sweetness was shade tree's token to the pear.
Pinstripe woodchucks'll vicuna coats peck.
Diverse lids kept returning to-morrow.
Gelatinous vines inveigled a grape.
What new watches need they have to borrow.
Time's ribbons and fame showed the maiko's nape.
Forehead ended ties surprise the hairline.
Jehovah's jackfruit in lace cap's divine.

The Bracing Bliss

Is marriage a good idea? Seems an innocent question but it's enough to cause chaos in Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat's 1953 film Folly to Be Wise, an entertaining though not brilliantly hilarious comedy. It does have the virtue of not doing anything wrong.

Alastair Sim plays the anxious and fastidious Captain William Paris, an army chaplain put in charge of entertainment. Finding the usual engagements of local string quartets and choirs have failed to draw the uniformed men and women away from the pubs, Paris hatches an idea to hold a Brain Trust--a panel of educated and knowledgeable volunteers who will take questions from an audience. The always wary of scandal Paris recruits a local children's author, Angela (Elizabeth Allan), her painter husband, George (Roland Culver), an announcer from the BBC named James Mutch (Colin Gordon), an M.P. (Edward Chapman), a viscountess (Martita Hunt), and the local doctor (Miles Malleson). It seems like a conservative enough selection (despite the M.P. being Labour) so what could go wrong? As a precaution, Paris forbids questions relating to politics or religion anyway.

He probably ought to have had misgivings from the moment he mistook Mutch for Angela's husband because he came upon them kissing. At first congratulating the two on "carrying their courtship into marriage" he seems to blot out what he'd witnessed by means of sheer mortification when he learns the man's real identity.

Perhaps he ought to have had further misgivings when, having asked the volunteers to join him for a sherry before the show, he saw George going straight for the Johnnie Walker.

Added to this the fact that the doctor is all but deaf and turns out to enjoy telling graphic medical anecdotes and the M.P. of course tries to turn things into a political rally, the cards seem firmly stacked against things turning out as Paris' fragile nerves desperately demand. When his own secretary, Jessie (Janet Brown), asks the question about marriage because she's considering getting married herself, all other problems are eclipsed by the boiling triangle of Angela, George, and Mutch.

Nothing becomes intensely funny but the characters never do anything forced, which is nice. Even hopelessly drunk, George tries to keep a lid on his family problems at first and the viscountess tries to save the day with a (seemingly inaccurate, based on my attempts to google it*) Tennyson quote about how marriage is give and take but naturally things only get worse. George Cole has a pretty great cameo as a man in the audience who guilelessly at the end stands up to congratulate the chaplain on a thought provoking presentation.

*Google says it's actually from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, "A friend should bear his friend's infirmities," to which the viscountess adds something about how more one should bear a husband's. And yet it sounds so familiar, I wonder if it really was a commentary Tennyson made on the Shakespeare quote--I can't find it anywhere if it is. I hope someone hasn't decided they have a copyright that entitles them to scrub Tennyson from the internet.

Close Inspection

He walks into a strange home or business, seeming to see everything and nothing at the same time, distracted totally with a business from outside he's also keenly and intimately obsessed with the territory he's casually invaded. He's the brilliant detective or inspector archetype, call him Sherlock Holmes or Philip Marlowe. Usually a character who appears in mysteries written like puzzles with a definite answer to the problem arrived at through a logical sequence of reason, 1954's An Inspector Calls uses this character for a slightly different purpose. Still a mystery film, An Inspector Calls is intriguingly uncanny, a virtue diminished only partly by the film's heavy handed morality.

A wealthy family and their daughter's fiancé gather in the patriarch's home to celebrate the upcoming nuptials. And then suddenly Alastair Sim as Inspector Poole appears in the room without being announced.

He proceeds to question each member of the family one at a time, showing each one a photograph of a young woman--careful not to let two people see it at once--and in so doing revealing how each one has committed an injustice through direct malice or thoughtlessness to the woman of lower class. And now that woman, Eva Smith (Jane Wenham), is dead, apparently from suicide.

It seems unlikely, as members of the family point out more than once, that each of them should have encountered this same woman in completely unrelated circumstances. Is the Inspector pulling a prank? Or is something even weirder happening?

Alastair Sim is perfect casting here. He keeps his cards close to his chest, his bug eyes under sad lids keenly watching each member of the family in turn, a slight smile occasionally coming to his lips suggesting sadism or sorrow or both.

Humans are Babes

Does Alastair Sim look innocent to you? Well he is, in 1953's Innocents in Paris, a comedy that's more leisurely stroll through mild sweetness than particularly funny.

It's an ensemble film that follows a diverse assortment of British characters who board a plane for Paris at the beginning. Sim plays a glum government official who travels to France to negotiate with Russia over some convoluted matter of trade. His Russian counterpart is completely uncooperative until the two end up drinking together at a Russian night club after Sim's character repeatedly mistakes the other man's vodka for glasses of water.

There are seven stories, none of them connect and none of them quite feel like they get off the ground. Claire Bloom plays a beautiful woman who meets a wealthy Frenchman and they get along. Margaret Rutherford meets a man who paints copies of the Mona Lisa.

After Sim's, I guess my favourite story was of a Scotsman (James Copeland) whose kilt is torn at some kind of small amusement park where air is blown up from the floor with the design to flip women's skirts. The embarrassed young man is laughed at by the women but one, Raymonde (Monique Gerard), takes pity on him long enough to mend his kilt.

All of the stories involve British characters seeming indeed innocent and slightly, sweetly bewildered by Paris. The film is a reasonably pleasant way to spend two hours.

Twitter Sonnet #736

Mantis leg theatre seat surfeit holds.
Wordlessly clouds collect outside the zone.
Choices collapse 'twixt italics and bolds.
Baby's no enemy of David's bone.
Retreated castles claim their pins at ease.
Rumoured magicians capture all the coast.
Mild dragons a grapefruit might appease.
Stringless green balloons burst from windy boast.
Scotch tape tears have stuck to tragedy's cheek.
The chaise pursuit softens a sofa blow.
Feline nostrils select what secrets seek.
Only your noodles have a right to know.
Chamomile miles minister the rock.
Faces form across the weather worn block.

Cersei's Game of Thrones Cereal

I guess the Sparrows are the Puritans and Cersei is Charles I on the new season of Game of Thrones. That's what it looks like from the first episode, anyway. But mostly, the absence that made my heart grow fonder of Game of Thrones ended with me being reminded of the show's shortcomings. Well, maybe not really shortcomings but ways in which the story clashes with my perspective on human nature. But Game of Thrones looks more like how history is usually written than how it's actually made--a series of rulers making decisions, making mistakes, being corrupt or valiant. It's a fantasy bound up in the idea that human beings can attain meaningful positions of power. Like a lot of fantasies, it's a lot of fun.

For an illustration of the alternative point of view, and the perspective I see as much more credible, I recommend reading War and Peace. Tolstoy portrays one of history's greatest political strong men, Napoleon Bonaparte, as being more the fortunate subject of a tide public perception and motivation than the orchestrator. The story wisely focuses on individuals who are affected by the events of war rather than individuals who effect events. I would stop harping on this issue the moment I felt like people weren't looking at Game of Thrones like an actual insightful look into the way nations are run.

Anyway.

Daenerys and Cersei look like they're going to have parallel plots this season about their ability to manage public perception and how crucial it is to the ability to rule--yes, we're seeing the two kingdoms of Sarah Connor this season. I'm rooting for the underdog, Cersei, not just because Lena Headey's the one who's still willing to get naked on camera. Though I was amused by a scene of Daenerys modestly covering her bosom after sex, the supposedly comfortable when nude Targaryen.

You can hear the makers of the show saying, "Look what you made us do!" Of course, Emilia Clarke didn't make them write the scene that way. I think it's a bit silly when actors think getting naked on camera is beneath their dignity but I don't see the point in pestering someone about, especially when you have to work with them.

I prefer Cersei because she's more interesting and played by a better actress. I'll take the woman who's lived with a prophesy of doom her whole life over the doe eyed queen of blue skies and virtue. Though her story with the dragons is a nice bit of moral complication for her.

I get the feeling sometimes that Tyrion is a manifestation of George R.R. Martin's self-image and that Daenerys is his unattainable dream woman while Cersei is a representation of the way he felt women regarded him as a young man. I wonder if that's why he's having such a hard time writing the next book--the closer he gets to Tyrion and Daenerys actually meeting, the more difficult he finds it to connect with.