Category Archives: murder

Gord Luv A Duck, The Noo !

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In another of an occasional series of time-saving tips, I’d like to let you in on a little secret : 44″ Chest is a dreadful movie. Shocking. Awful. Nasty. Possibly the most disappointing film I’ve seen for some time.

Being a huge Ray Winston and John Hurt fan I was really looking forward to it, only to be left open-mouthed at the pointlessness, nastiness and worthlessness of it all. What a real shame. Sexy Beast II it ain’t. I can’t remember what I paid for it, but if you hang on for a little while you’ll be able to buy a ‘nearly new’ version on Amazon for next to nothing. (I’ve already posted my customer review). It’s a shocker.

Sexy Beast gave us the great Don Logan, possibly the best British gangster ever portrayed on film, played by Sir Ben Kingsley. His performance never ceases to amaze and enthrall me, especially the perfection and precision with which Kinglsey manages to pull off a cockney accent, right from his opening, immortal line “I’ve gotta change my shirt, I’m sweating like a cahnt”. Bloody well done for a Yorkshireman. I’m afraid the great John Hurt, (again from Yorkshire), fails to hit the mockney-mark in this lame follow-up, and he’s not alone. The ususally brilliant Tom Wilkinson from, er, Yorkshire borders on a Meery Puppins cockney performance all the way through. Stephen Dillane sounds ok as a Londoner, but then again he was born there. No, don’t waste your money on this movie, it’s horrid through and through, and the accents don’t help either.

But why should we expect Yorkshiremen to be able mimic the accent of The Old Kent Road, or Whitechapel? Accents are bloody hard to pull off. Just ask Russell Crowe. Well actually don’t, cos the big Aussie doesn’t like talking about it. DON’T LIKE IT AT ALL, MATE. He got very pissy with a radio interviewer who thought he sounded Irish when playing Robin Hood, the eponymous hero in Ridley Scott’s new blockbuster. What a load of old tosh ! He sounds Scottish. Or Lancastrian. Or Yorkish (perhaps Tom Wilkinson was his speech coach?).

Now given that we have no idea which accent or dialect Robin of Loxley actually had, we cannot say for sure that he didn’t sound like Groundskeeper Willie or Geoffrey Boycott or Roy Walker, but it’s safe to say he probably didn’t change his accent four times-a-day, depending on who he was talking to (as cunning as he was). What does a Lincolnshire accent sound like anyway? Buggered if I know.

Dodgy dialects have long been a source of amusement. Dick Van Dyke, of course, is the main culprit to whom everyone refers, but he is by no means alone when it comes to comedy accents. For starters, Keanu Reeves in Bram Stoker’s Dracula takes some beating for a crap Englishmen, James Coburn’s Australian in The Great Escape is one of my favourites (“what ye doin wiv me coat, mate?”), while Mickey Rooney’s portrayal of the Japanese landlord in Breakfast at Tiffany’s borders on the downright racist. The least said about Tom Cruise’s Oirishman in Far and Away, the better.

Why do they bother? Take a leaf out of Sean Connery’s book and just be yourself. Who can ever forget the Scottish/Russian submarine commander in The Hunt for Red October ? “Forty yearsh I’ve been at shea. A war at shea. A war with no battlesh, no monumensh… only casualtiesh.” Spoken like a native.
And how about his brilliant Portuguese-Jocko Warrior in Highlander ? (acting opposite a Frenchman playing a Scotsman) “With heart, faith and shteel. In the end there can be only one, Msh Moneypenny”. His Irish accent in “The Untouchables” is a thing of wonder and mystery. I defy any budding Henry Higgins to put a location to it, but I suspect it was born somewhere just outside Edinburgh.

I always thought Cary Elwes in the brilliant Princess Bride never got the credit he deserved, and as I’ve never seen (or unlikely ever to see) Bridget Jone’s Diary I can’t pass comment on Renee Zellweger’s version of the Queen’s Own. Is Hugh Laurie any good as an American in House? or did Domonic West sound authentic in The Wire? I can’t tell. Gotta be better than Bob Hoskins was in either Who Framed Roger Rabbit ? or The Cotton Club.

So in this world when there are rows about white men playing Othello, when the chinese community in Australia are up in arms over who’s portraying their War Hero, or uproar when Nick Cage is cast in a role which could have quite easily been given to a proper actor, why don’t we all agree to let anyone play anyone on stage or screen? Let’s just forget the blacking-up, or the crap makeup just as long as the role is a convincing one and acted well (and that’s Jude Law fucked on all counts.) And let’s rid ourselves of this obsession with the right accent for the right part. For example, I would like to play Rick Blaine in Casablanca with a South London lilt.

“Louis, I fink this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Nah, put the kettle on, you cahnt”

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Catching 40 Winks in the Rye

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I wasn’t going to write about the death of J.D.Salinger. Surely enough has been written? (and he never bothered to leave a comment on these pages). But then I thought I could perform a great service for anyone tempted to read him for the first time following the acres of copy written after his demise. Mr Salinger was a renowned American author, though for many of us, perhaps moreso on this side of the pond, I suspect his name first came into our consciousness via the reported antics of juvenile assassins and teenage mass-murderers.

When I was but a surly youth it seemed that you couldn’t turn on the evening news without someone having been shot down by the NYPD or similar for killing some celebrity such as Lennon or McCartney (well,you can dream) or instigating the massacre of a whole commune of cultish (spellcheck please) and religious nutcases somewhere in the Great American Midwest. Time and time again it seemed that the doers of these dreadful deeds appeared to have read Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye before they decided to pull the trigger.

A conveyor belt of judges and jurors were subjected to the flimsy defence of surviving adolescent would-be murderers, blaming Rye for tipping them over the edge, such was it’s subject matter. It’s touted as a book with “themes of teenage confusion, angst, alienation and rebellion”.Read this book, so the theory went, and you’d immediately develop a hatred of tutors, teachers and authority figures everywhere.

“That sounds the very thing for me!” thought a young me, who had already started grooming his black puppy. So I bought myself a copy of the book, fully expecting to turn into an axe-wielding homicidal maniac. There were a few teachers at school who deserved to be vapourised, and this sounded like the very accelerant I needed.

My targets, however, were saved by one small yet important fact : The Catcher in the Rye is a bag of old shite. It is THE dullest collection of self-important ramblings ever written (and I’ve read The Daily Mail). It IS , honest. There I was, aching for an excuse to end it all, and as far as I’m concerned it’s a cure from insomnia. The only people I wanted to kill after reading it were Salinger, his agent and his publisher. I may be wrong about this, but I doubt it. Feel free to tell me otherwise.

If you really want to get angry or depressed, or dabble in a spot of murder why not ingest a tome by Elizabeth Gilbert? Her brand of sickly shit chick-lit has already landed her a movie contract for the dramatisation of her first great work Eat Love Pray, a piece of celluloid sewage soon to be at a movie theatre far away from me, and starring Julia Roberts (shame on you). It’s another example of the creeping crud that is blighting all our lives. Let’s strangle this bollocks at birth.

If on the other hand you don’t live your life through Desperate Housewives or Bridget Jones, and would like to rebel against this post-feminist, Spice Girl/Anna Wintour/Alpha Female fuckfest which is infesting our arts and media (and would enjoy having a wee titter along the way) can I suggest you look no further than the magnificent drinkcursehate.wordpress.com. It’s a website written by three blokes who want to live as blokes in the world they thought they were growing up into during the 70’s, not as the cowering, emasculated sheep which a diet of Sex in the City, Strictly Come Shopping or Eat Love Pray would have them be. It hopes to be the antidote to Marie Claire and the Mail on Sunday. You might like it. Especially if you happen to be a fella.

Finally, a little self-congrats: Happy 1st Anniversary, The Sharp Single. Who said it’d never last? Tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell anyone with money who might want to pay me money to write this kind of rubbish.

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