(0) (25)

Well, this does not come as a great surprise, to be honest:

The US television audience for the 78th Academy Awards was down by eight per cent compared with last year. The ceremony, which saw Crash shock the favourite Brokeback Mountain by taking best film, was watched by 38.8m people, the third lowest audience in 20 years.

I do not know to what extent this decline has been caused by the decline in the number of adults watching movies, as has been reported in various parts, or the increasing refusal of ordinary people to sit watching preening showbiz types mouth platitudes while receiving their gongs. Probably some combination of the two, I think. The film industry is fracturing, partly I think because of technologies that mean you can watch great films in the comfort of home in tremendous quality. A friend of mine recently bought a high definition big screen television for just over one thousand pounds and the quality was magnificent. And there were no annoying chatty couples sitting behind me, bad air conditioning and annoying preliminary announcements and adverts.

(0) (35)

The Oscars are nearly upon us. (Okay, please try to keep reading) One thought prompted by this circus and what goes on in films is how films can carry messages very different from the intentions of the film-maker. A classic example is the 1987 film, Wall Street, in which Michael Douglas gave what I thought was his greatest performance as Gordon Gekko. Gekko is what your average lefty Hollywood producer imagines is a capitalist: incredibly greedy, callous and crooked, stamping the lives of good honest hardworking people, blah, blah, blah. And yet we know that in the course of the speech, Gekko gives his tremendous "greed is good" speech, which I sometimes think reads like Ayn Rand on acid.

A friend of mine, Libertarian Alliance founder Chris Tame, once told me that during this stage of the movie, he burst into applause, much to the surprise of the other cinema-goers. I wonder how many other folk have had the same reaction to a speech or line in a film where without realising it, a pro-capitalist point has been made in a way the director probably had not intended? Has anyone got any examples?

(0) (3)

What European unity really means to most people.

(0) (2)

Very nice writeup here of a vast retrospective of the paintings of the Frenchman Ingres, who worked around the time of Napoleon Bonaparte. Even as I put aside my distaste for Bonaparte, I cannot but admire the man who painted so much of life in Napoleon's era so cleverly. A good excuse to take that long weekend to Paris and check out some art (not that I usually need many excuses). And meanwhile it is the 400th anniversary of the birth of Rembrandt. A nice appreciation here by Robert Hughes.

Oh, and I can seriously recommend this to China art fans.

(0) (21)

I watched a bit of The Apprentice on the BBC last night, the show featuring UK tycoon Sir Alan Sugar, who among other things owns a large stake in Tottenham Hotspur FC. The programme, like the American version, is engrossing and it nicely builds up the tension as Sugar confronts his teams of wanna-be businessfolk with their performance and fires one of them.

I have mixed views overall about the show. As pure entertainment, it succeeds in drawing the viewer in, although I am not sure in fact how well it really explains the qualities needed to be a good entrepreneur. The message seems to be that business is a dog-eat-dog, zero-sum game in which if some people win, others must lose. Which is wrong since everyone benefits from trade, otherwise why else trade in the first place? If a person who is smarter than me gets a job I covet, then the overall economic pie gets bigger than it otherwise would, so we all benefit, even though I might feel disappointed.

The Apprentice also seems to celebrate aggression to a considerable degree, and yet businessmen and women in my experience come a cropper if they stop listening to what their customers want and refuse to learn from experience. A degree of humility is actually smart. A quality I do not see much of in the show is that of sheer courage in taking business risks, something that is not sufficiently appreciated except by writers such as George Gilder.

I wonder whether Sugar (what an ill-suited surname he has!) is really a great advocate of business, at least as far as this show goes. Yes, I can admire how he rose from nothing in London's East End to become one of Britain's richest men (he has a net personal worth of 800 million pounds, according to the TV commenter), but he comes across as a bit of a braggart, the sort of bore one might encounter in a pub bragging to his mates about how 'ard he is and how ruthless he can be. Yawn. I suspect that many of the greatest businessmen, while undoubtedly workaholics, ruthless and driven people, have to be able to rub along with other people. Maybe in Britain's anti-business culture someone like Sugar stands out and he feels the need to put himself about.

Or perhaps Sugar is just hamming it up for the cameras and is a delightful fellow. You can never tell with these sort of 'Reality TV' shows. I would certainly watch some of the other shows in the series.

(0) (31)

Here is a powerful new rationale for gun control from the macho actor, Daniel Craig, who is playing 007 in the upcoming James Bond release. Perry, it is time to change that Samizdata banner pic. Argument over:

I hate handguns. Handguns are used to shoot people and as long as they are around, people will shoot each other <...> Bullets have a nasty habit of finding their target and that's what's scary about them.

(0) (20)

In 1982, Disney released the movie Tron, the first film incorporating large amounts of computer graphics. (Actually it only included about 15 minutes of actual graphics. The rest of the film was drawn art designed to look like computer graphics, whereas today's films are often full of computer graphics being used to look like more naturalistic things). The film was not successful at the box office, possibly because as well as being made by computer nerds, the film was also about computer nerds, and what might be referred to as the Silicon Valley culture was at that point extremely marginal, particularly in pop cultural terms. (Having said that, the film was set in Los Angeles, but I will forgive it that). However, for those of us that saw it, the film was rather mind blowing. It became a tremendous influence on many people working in computer animation and special effects today, and on people who were inspired by that technological culture in general. When these things did become mainstream, many of the people who were behind the scenes were people who had loved Tron.

However, the people who made Tron itself generally did not prosper from it. The film was too far ahead of its time, and Hollywood did not know what to make of it or what to do with the people who had made it. In what now seems staggering given that this is possibly the most groundbreaking film ever made from a special effects point of view, the film did not receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects. This was partly because the film was perceived as a failure, and the academy doesn't often reward failure, but it also had to do with a peculiarity of the Academy Awards nomination process, which is that (usually) the people who nominate films in a particular category are those who have been nominated in that category before. In 1982 "Special Effects" meant mattes (ie drawn artwork) and models. Using computer graphics was seen almost as "cheating", and as a minimum an entirely different thing from what members of the Visual Effects branch of the Academy did. So, no nomination. (Things have changed since then. A couple of years ago I made an observation to another blogger that Master and Commander had excellent effects, and in response I was told that they were "not special effects", because it was done with models in a tank in Mexico rather than with computer graphics.

To many people today, "special effects" means computer graphics, and that is that). That said, Master and Commander does use some computer graphics, just nowhere near as intensively as, say, The Lord of the Rings). However, as far as I am concerned Master and Commander does use special effects, computer based or not, and in fact it uses them dazzlingly, as I felt that a 19th century ship in the Royal Navy was really like that. Getting this kind of thing right is breathtakingly hard, which is why that film a couple of years ago deserved the visual effects Academy Award. But (although it was nominated) it didn't get it. (It did win a very well deserved Academy Award for cinematography, however).

If Tron had been nominated for an Academy Award when it was released in 1982, it might or might not have actually won. And this may even have been fair. It would have been up against Blade Runner, possibly the greatest achievement ever in matte based special effects. However, although that film was nominated, it didn't win either. (Steven Spielberg's E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial won). Such once again is the academy's reluctance to give awards to movies not perceived as successes. But in retrospect the lack of a nomination was a travesty.

And as sometimes happens in Hollywood, it has been decided to acknowledge retrospectively that it was a travesty. Gary Demos, who was largely responsible for the computer graphics in "Tron", has been awarded an honorary Academy Award this year. This may be ultimately unimportant and trivial, but it is nonetheless about time.

(0) (10)

From the ever informative Dave Barry blog, I learn that a Hollywood type superhero is joining in the fight against al-Qaeda:

Batman may utilise his extensive knowledge of caves to fight his latest foe - al-Qaeda.

Batman writer, Frank Miller, has told a comic-book convention that his upcoming novel, "Holy Terror, Batman!" is a piece of propaganda.

"Batman kicks al-Qaeda's ass," Miller said.

Miller said the comic was: "an explosion from my gut reaction of what's happening now" and "a reminder to people who seem to have forgotten who we're up against."

So how many Batman movies have there been so far? Is it four? What's the betting that the next one does not feature al-Qaeda as the villains?

(0) (35)

As a bit of a diversion from fretting about Britain's slide into a police state, take this quiz and see which sci-fi series you would be most comfortable in. Perhaps not surprisingly, Firefly turned out to be the one for me, followed closely by Battlestar Galactica. I feel comfortable about that. Thank goodness it was not Star Trek.

(Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the pointer).

(0) (22)

I have always had a particularly soft intellectual spot for David Friedman, the economist, for it was he who wrote the first book I ever read which seemed really to describe for me how I wanted to think about the world. It is called The Machinery of Freedom. (David Friedman has a father, called Milton, who also dabbles in economics.) And I now like David Friedman's blog, which he calls simply Ideas.

However, I do not always agree with David Friedman. Here are some recent thoughts of his:

Finding presents for friends and relatives is often a problem, made harder by the economist's puzzle of why one should give presents instead of giving cash and letting the recipient, better informed about his own preferences, decide how to spend it. A possible answer is that although I know less about the recipient, I know more about the gift. Acting on that principle, I occasionally pick a book that I and my wife particularly liked, buy a bunch of copies, and give them out as Christmas presents.

What giving money and giving the same book to several different friends have in common as present giving strategies is that they both exhibit an unwillingness to think about the individual desires of the person receiving the gift. "It's the thought that counts" is no empty slogan. And the particular thought that matters is: "What particular kind of person is he, and what might he really like?"

In one of my very favourite movies, The Apartment, the Shirley MacLaine character's rich and uncaring married man lover, chillingly played by Fred MacMurray, gives Shirley MacLaine a twenty dollar bill as a Christmas present. He does not even put in a pretty envelope. He just gets it out of his wallet and hands it over. Soon after that, she dumps him, and quite right too. Why? Because this moment proved that he did not care enough about her to give any thought, before meeting with her, to getting her a real present, of the sort that she would like, and which would show that he had thought about what she would like. He simply hadn't been thinking about her.

Were I one of David Friedman's friends and I got the same book last Christmas from him that several of his other friends had also got, I would feel ever so slightly slighted, and for the same reason. "He has thought about his own opinions, but he has not thought about mine." (A copy of The Machinery of Freedom with a carefully composed and hand-written message inside the front cover would be another matter entirely.)

Blog postings, however, are different. Those, like Christmas presents, also come free of charge to the receiver. Yet I do not feel in any way slighted because a blogger has failed to craft an individual thought entirely for me, but has instead given the same thought away to all his readers. On the contrary, incoming emails full of individual thoughts, just for me, can be rather scary, because, like Christmas presents, they can imply an obligation to reciprocate, also individually, which may be unwelcome.

However, notice that a similar principle applies, and in a good way, to blog postings with which one happens to disagree, by thoughtful people like David Friedman, as applies to Christmas presents. A present that shows that the giver has done some thinking is welcome, even if one already has that CD or that book, or happens not to like that kind of chocolate. The "wrong" thing is still right, because it's the thought that counts. I feel the same way about David Friedman's occasional wrong (as I think) thoughts in his blog. These mistakes, if mistakes they be, show that he is at least always thinking. Far better lots of thinking, and the occasional consequent disagreement between me and him, than no thinking, and a mere string of truisms.

(0) (15)

"You can't fight in here - this is the War Room!"
- Peter Sellers, playing the President of the United States in Dr Strangelove.

(0) (34)

Big selection of essays, some long, some short, about the great composer who was born on this day 250 years ago. Even if you care little for the rather overblown commemorations in Saltzburg and the associated commercial circus, it is hard not to join in the Mozart mania if you are a music fan, as I am.

I particularly enjoyed this essay by Terry Teachout. He asks the question to which there is probably no easy answer: how did such a man churn out such a fantastic and enduring collection of music?

Out of balance, there is also a rather sour piece by Norman Lebrecht . He obviously feels the need to break wind at the party, so to speak.

He was a provider of easy listening, a progenitor of Muzak"

Oh, what a magnificent put-down! After all, great music is supposed to be difficult, not easily understood by the great unwashed (sarcasm alert). But why should 'easy-listening' music be inferior to the supposedly hard-listening sort? He also argues that Mozart was not an innovator in the way that J.S. Bach was. Now Bach was a genius, but I am not aware that originality - assuming we take Lebrecht's argument at its face value - is always the virtue that it is cracked up to be.

Anyway, I think that attempts to define some kind of objective judgement on music is fraught with difficulty, but I do know in my own heart that the Austrian composer has the capacity to speak to me as he does to millions of people, and I rather suspect that is likely to remain the case as long as music is played.

Quick quiz: which of Mozart's pieces of music do you like the best?

(0) (29)

One of my favourite actors, Michael Caine, achieved one of his early breakthroughs in the film, The Ipcress File, based on the Len Deighton Cold War thriller of the same name. (I love the fact that Deighton, a fine historian of the air campaigns in the Second World War, used to write a cookery column for the Observer. Very hip). Anyhow, without spoiling the plot of either the book or the film, it hinges around the use of “brainwashing” techniques to make people do one’s bidding or erase the memory of certain information.

How much of this could ever be based on fact or indeed, did either side in the Cold War use such techniques? There is a long entry in the now-indispensable Wikipedia site on this topic, pointing to the origin of the word “brainwash” in the early stages of the Cold War during the Korean campaign. The entries raise some doubts about how widely used such techniques were, or whether the term simply refers to a particularly fierce form of propoganda. I have come across the term in various films of the period, such as the first version of the Manchurian Candidate (forget the remake, which is a pale imitation of the original). But to what extent were such techniques really all that effective in moulding minds? Steven Pinker’s “The Blank Slate”, which I have just finished reading and enjoyed immensely, queries the idea of an infinitely malleable mind, arguing that there are limits to how the brain can be influenced by certain techniques.

If this is true then it is encouraging that there are limits to how far the mind can be moulded in any way that those in authority, whether benign or malign, wish.

Anyway, I can strongly recommend readers rent out the Caine movies based on the Deighton books. Highly entertaining.

(0) (15)

"As for sneering at the bourgeoisie, it is a sophomoric grab at status with no claim to moral or political virtue. The fact is that the values of the middle class - personal responsibility, devotion to family and neighbourhood, avoiding macho violence, respect for liberal democracy - are good things, not bad things. Most of the world wants to join the bourgeoisie, and most artists are members in good standing who adopted a few bohemian affectations. Given the history of the twentieth century, the reluctance of the bourgeoisie to join mass utopian uprisings can hardly be held against them. And if they want to hang a painting of a red barn or a weeping clown above their couch, it's none of our damn business."

Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate (page 416), hitting some practitioners of Modern Art between the eyeballs.

(0) (10)

Since we are talking about MP3s, music and the like - okay, a degree or two of separation exists here - I want to point out a rather fascinating music video clip that I saw recently. It is a dance track by British group Faithless, called I Want More (link for streaming video). The song will not be to everyone's taste, but the video clip offers a pretty remarkable view of the preparation and execution of a North Korean propaganda spectacular. Parts of it are surprisingly candid - in one shot of the Pyongyang skyline, the viewer catches a shadowy glimpse of the sinister-looking Ryugyong Hotel.

I am led to believe, by a fellow I know who has visited the North, that this monument to collectivist misallocation of resources officially does not exist in the Hermit Kingdom (despite the highly convincing optical illusion) so it is surprising to see it turn up in a clip that must have been sanctioned by the authorities. I like the way the vision of a gymnast with a sore back is juxtaposed with an onlooker writing down presumably critical pointers in a notepad. The expression on the boy's face when he is late to turn a page in his giant colour display book made me laugh. I also like the shot of the utterly bored and po-faced military brass clapping along like robots.

As the track rolls on, the show starts getting highly impressive. However, by the time the song's over the sinister and tragic undercurrents are resonating the most. So much talent - such potential - is wasted celebrating the hideous reign of men who routinely deny their people the basic necessities of life, like food and freedom. It surprised me how such a dazzling display of skill and synchronicity could provoke such a combination of fascination and revulsion.

(4) (36)

I have been poking around AllofMP3.com, a Russian music site with a huge catalogue and an excellent interface and even better prices (a typical track can be downloaded typically for around 12¢). The way the system works is you pay 'by weight' of the music file: the tracks are coded-to-order to your exact specifications via a vast CD jukebox, thus if you download an mp3 file with a bit rate of 192 (excellent sound quality), you will pay more than if you download the same file in smaller size at a bit rate of 64 (fairly crappy sound quality). The system can be accessed either via a web front-end or an excellent browser application.

It occurred to me that I more or less stopped buying music CD's about eight years ago and went from someone who maybe once dropped $2000 per year on music to someone who spent pretty much nothing. Yet in the last month, I have spent $70 at AllofMP3.com because the service is good (and secure: they use Chronopay who are totally above board), the interface is intuitive and the price per download makes hunting around fly-by-night peer to peer networks simply not worth the hassle. I have no pecuniary interest in this operation (sadly) but I cannot recommend them highly enough.

This is the future of the music business and it does not matter a damn whether or not Sony or BMG like it. It is here and it works really well.

Music business: adapt or die... music buyers: enjoy like never before!

(0) (9)

The other night, while getting better from having been rather ill (which was why I contributed so little here over Christmas), I channel-hop-watched TV.

Here were the two best things I heard on my travels up and down the channel numbers.

First, during a reshowing of an earlier Dr Who episode, a very anxious person said:

"That Dalek just absorbed the entire Internet! It knows everything!"

And the second fun snippet I heard was from a show about crumpet, i.e. nice looking and happy looking ladies with fine cleavages but not much to say for themselves in seventies comedy shows and horror movies. The unashamedly excited interviewer asked the one and only Ingrid Pitt if she ever had any reservations about taking her clothes off? Replied La Pitt:

"Only if it was cold."

I am not yet a hundred per cent. Still coughing, alas, and with my ears afflicted by tape hiss, although the headache is largely gone. But those two snatches of chat did help me get a bit better.

TV also tells me that I am not the only one thus suffering. The cold cure adverts do not sell anything that will cure you, but they do provide definite evidence that you have only got a dose of what lots of other people have also got.

I could have had it far worse, and far scarier. Patrick Crozier was recently struck down by appendicitis. In Japan.

(0) (7)

He was controversial for other reasons, too. Brubeck's music was too optimistic for the critics' taste. There was and still is nothing cool about being an optimist. Cool, rather, is supposed to be about seeing the dark side, the essential absurdity of life, and taking pains to numb yourself against the existential angst of modern civilization. But here was modernism with a smiley face. Crazy Daddy-O.

Excerpt from a delightful piece marking jazz legend Dave Brubeck's 85th birthday. The great man is still playing live gigs decades after many of his supposed "cooler" contemporaries have faded from the scene.

(0) (39)

Yesterday, while briefly surfing Britain's terrestrial TV channels in hope of something amusing to watch, I came across a film based on the old UK "comedy", On the Buses, which chronicles the life of a bunch of London bus drivers and conductors. Made in the late 60s and early 70s, the series adopted the leery, bawdy humour of the Carry On Films, although unlike the Carry On movies at their best, (like the wonderful Carry on Up the Khyber) lacked the sort of great gags that to this day can make me laugh out loud. On the Buses can be safely relegated to a footnote of British television history, thank goodness.

It was quite a shock watching the film. It was a reminder of how greatly Britain has changed since the early 70s. For starters, the constant leeriness towards women, the assumption that any vaguely attractive woman was nothing more than mattress-fodder, makes even yours truly - no fan of political correctness - feel uneasy. One of the main themes of the story is how the manager, in a drive to improve the efficiency of the layabout male staff, decides to hire a group of women drivers. The men regard this move as a disaster and a threat to "their" jobs (probably correctly). What is particularly striking is how the shop steward of the bus-drivers' union makes it clear that as far as his union is concerned, women have no place in a bus, except either as a customer or as someone he can molest. For any trade unionist watching this film today, the message must be most uncomfortable in that it reinforces the important idea that free markets and competition are in general good news in particular for women as well as racial groups often subject to discrimination, as noted U.S. economists Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell have pointed out.

There were a few good things about the 1970s - although it is sometimes hard to think of any - but watching this low-point of British cinema only made me realise how much life has improved since then.

(0) (9)

From all of us at Samizdata to all of you, our valued readers and commentariat, a very Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah and a Happy New Year. May the blessings of liberty shine upon your every endeavour!

Belfast City Hall Christmas display
Photo: Dale Amon, all rights reserved

(0) (10)

I am dipping into the Bach Christmas that BBC Radio 3 is now indulging in. I am not disorganising myself to listen to particular items, if only because I already have all the big stuff on CD. But I am taking in occasional gobs of what comes, whenever it is convenient and I feel in a Bach mood.

And what I am getting from it all is how extremely religious it all is. I realise that this is a very obvious thing to be noticing. But hearing cantata after cantata introduced with its German wording, and then being told in English what it all means and why the contralto aria in particular is so deeply felt and beautiful and then what the chorus will be singing about at the end, has connected all this music to religion in a way that I have preferred to – not ignore exactly – just not pay all that much attention to. Of course I know what the St Matthew Passion is about, but for me the harmonies and melodies are the reason for listening. The religion of it is, for me, merely the platform Bach used to build the thing, even as I am aware that for Bach religion was the point. Bach also wrote a lot of purely instrumental music, such as the Brandenberg Concertos, the violin and the keyboard concertos, and the solo works for violin, for cello and for keyboard, and of course I cannot get enough of those.

But if you want to understand Johann Sebastian Bach, as opposed merely to enjoying him, you cannot ignore religion. Here is yet another historical circumstance which twentieth century atheists like me are now able to understand that little bit better, now that once again we have in our midst people who really believe in this kind of stuff, and who believe in combining their beliefs with the exercise of secular power, in ways that Christians mostly now do not. Listening at around midnight, early on in the proceedings, to one march-like tune from a cantata, and remembering what the announcer had just said that it was about, I suddenly felt scared. My God, I am being attacked by an army of True Believers. In short, I got the message.

The Bach story illustrates what artistic treasure can come out of things like the current time of Islamist, er, enthusiasm. Once - although, as with Protestantism, this is a big once - this latter enterprise stops deluding itself that it can take over the world, or even very much of the Middle East or the North of England, it will settle back into its mosques and resort to more peaceful methods of propagandising, and of keeping up the spirits of its faithful. I do not say that there will necessarily be an Islamic Bach, in the sense of a great musician. For starters, I do not know just what the attitude of Fundamentalist Islam is towards music. I rather think they may disapprove. Whatever. But I do confidently believe that Great Art of some sort will result, even though I will not live to see it or hear it or read it. I know what the commentariat will say. Islamism now is about as philistine and artless as it is possible for a bunch of artless philistines to be. They do not create art, they destroy it. I know that. But first generation Protestants were little better. The point is, artistically, what happens when their original True Vision fails to materialise, and they then have to apply their energies to more peaceful methods of spreading their True Faith.

Meanwhile, the religious enthusiasm that animated Bach's inner life and which paid for his musical career goes a good part of the way to explaining his greatness. Would Bach even have been able to manage things like the 48 Preludes and Fugues, or the Double Violin Concerto, without the expressive momentum drawn from him by his God? We can never know, of course, but my guess would be: not.

For artists to be great, greatness needs to be demanded of them or at the very least permitted to them, by their surrounding culture. Art does not work properly if there is no contemporary response to it. The starving artist in his garret, his genius recognised only by posterity, is largely a myth. Almost all the great artists had at least periods in their careers when they were all the rage. Yes, they would often go out of fashion and fall on hard times, but they almost all of them had some good times as well, when they could really feel that they were getting through to people in a big way, and they could then feel inspired by that response, or by the recent memory of it, to attempt more great things.

And for Bach, his licence to be great, so to speak, was the greatness of his God and of his religion, and his determination to express this, to God, and to and on behalf of his contemporaries and fellow believers.

This, paradoxically, is what makes Bach so modern, to our ears. Bach had a kind of musical ambition – a demand to be attended to, as it were – that separates him from his contemporaries, and puts him, to our ears, alongside the likes of Beethoven and Wagner. In giving full voice to German Protestantism, Bach brought to his task a combination of mathematical intricacy and rigour and lyrical depth of feeling that has never since been surpassed. (When I hear the music of Bach's contemporaries, like Telemann or Vivaldi, I sometimes say to myself: I could do that. Silly I know, but I do say it. I never say that when I hear Bach.)

To his musical contemporaries and to his immediate successors, Bach was an old-fashioned figure rather than any sort of pioneer, somewhat as the Victorians were thought of during the twentieth century. All that ponderous and high-minded seriousness! All those fugues and hymns! All that intricate counterpoint! Relax old man, said those musicians of the later eighteenth century who still knew about him, as they supplied elegant musical wallpaper for the aristocracy. Actually, there is, in among all the fervour and solemnity, a lot of dance in Bach, a lot of salon gracefulness and jollity. Nevertheless those later composers were right to regard Bach as not really part of their team. He was indeed out on his own.

What we now thrill to, they found technically admirable, but also rather embarrassing. It was left, appropriately enough, to the post-Beethoven nineteenth century to rediscover Bach, and he has been adored ever since.

But Bach did not do it only for us. He could not have done it only for us. To do what he did for us, he also had to be doing it for God.

(0) (33)

Earlier this month, I wrote:

Hollywood is of course notorious for this sort of thing, where actors and actresses have their notions of their own worth and talent over-inflated by agents, publicists, and the media.

So it is only fair that I point to this welcome exception to the rule - the mediocre Woody Allen:

"I've disappointed myself most of the time.

"People think I'm an intellectual because I wear glasses and they think I'm an artist because my films lose money.

"My relationship with the American audience is exactly the same as it has always been. They never came to see my films, and they don't come now.

"I've often said that the only thing standing between me and greatness is me."

I have a similar problem with greatness, and I'm glad to see that I am not the only one!

(0) (4)

My least favourite radical chic interviewee: the talented but humourless Ute Lemper. Ensconced in a luxury suite at the Savoy, she embarked on a lecture about the downtrodden masses, and was so busy talking about how East German workers were exploited that she forgot to even acknowledge the existence of the maid who'd put a tray of tea in front of her.

- Clive Davis commenting on this.

(0) (15)

One of the oldest themes in science fiction writing has been the idea of eternal youth. Robert A. Heinlein wrote arguably the definitive book on the subject, Time Enough For Love, which I have read several times. Poul Anderson's The Boat of a Million Years also takes eternal youth as a driving theme. And in recent years techniques such as cryonics have been in movies and books such as the interesting crime thriller Chiller, by Sterling Blake.

One of the most recent treatments of the issues of anti-ageing and its impact on society is Peter F. Hamilton's Misspent Youth, which like a lot of his books is set in the near future in deepest Cambridgeshire, where he lives. I rather like that. He projects an age, set about 20-odd years from now, where our understanding of genomics and nano-delivery of medicines has partly halted the ageing process and also made it possible for some very rich folk to have decades removed from their lives. It also raises issues that are extremely relevant now: such as what happens to tax-funded state pensions if people live for far longer.

Hamilton nicely shows how a father - in his 70s in Earth-time - has decades wiped off his physique and how this affects his relationship with the rest of his family and friends. I love the twists and turns of the plot, showing how the main character, Jeff Baker, has troubles dealing with his teenage son and family. The story works so well since the technology is kept to a minimum in order not to intefere with the human story.

Hamilton also holds up a picture of an England now totally absorbed in a Euro-superstate, while much of human life is now subject to draconian environmental laws regulating things like transport and energy use. There is a violent British separatist movement and culture dominated by fear of risk and danger. Yes, it does not become all that long before one realises that Hamilton ought to be writing for this blog. If he is not a free-market libertarian then I would be very surprised.

(0) (5)

"'We're not heroes. We're from Finchley".

A line from the film Narnia, based on the C.S. Lewis fantasy adventures. Strongly recommended.

(0) (22)

The recent death of the footballer George Best has seen an outpouring of sentimental remembrance about the skill and talent of one of Britain's greatest ever footballers. It has also seen a sober reflection of the darker side of Best's life. As Sue Mott pointed out:

As a sportsman, he was ruinously worshipped as a god. As society's golden boy, gloriously handsome, funny and highly intelligent, he enjoyed all life's little luxuries in conveyor-belt quantities. He was a Hollywood film star from Belfast and while we may now lament the wine, women and song, if you had been there at the time, could you have been the one to say: 'Shall we put the cork back in the champagne, George, I think we've had enough?"

It is a common theme of society that those who are blessed with extraordinary talents at one discipline are allowed special leeway in manners, morals and behaviour that are not bestowed upon lesser mortals. Had Best not been such a great footballer he would undoubtedly have been shunned by society as a drunk and a lecher. But because he was once a truly great footballer, he was treated as something different. People tolerated his drunkenness and women gave themselves to him sexually because he was genuinely seen as being cut from a higher cloth then other men. This may seem unfair, and in a way it is, but it was also the root of his downfall.

George Best, and footballers in general, though, are hardly the only sort of celebrity to take advantage of the special rules of society that are afforded to those touched by genius. And it has been going on for a long time.

Nearly 200 years ago, the poet Lord Byron made use of his fame as a poet to indulge himself in all manner of peccadillos, most of them sexual. That was perhaps not so uncommon for a Peer of the Realm back then, but it was mirrored by the behaviour of Percy Bysshe Shelley. A more dramatic example is in the personal life of Ludwig van Beethoven. Poor health, deafness, depression, loneliness and financial troubles made him a very difficult man to deal with, but he was indulged by many people precisely because he was obviously the greatest musical talent of his day.

Poets and classical composers do not have the influence on society in this day and age as they used to. The place of Byron and Beethoven has been taken by sports stars and actors and television celebrities. Some of these people, like Shane Warne are as gifted in his field as Byron was as a poet; and Warne has been noted for womanising on a considerable scale as well. Some are, in sober fact, non-entities, but we live in a vacuous time where everyone gets their 'fifteen minutes of fame'.

Many not so talented people have also exploited their celebrity to get away with actions that would not be tolerated in others; Hollywood is of course notorious for this sort of thing, where actors and actresses have their notions of their own worth and talent over-inflated by agents, publicists, and the media. A similar fate has befallen many popular musicians over the last forty years. This sort of bad behaviour takes many forms, not just in terms of sexual self-indulgence, but substance abuse, or simply by being a difficult and unpleasant person to be around. The life and times of John Lennon reflect this- he confused his musical talent with wisdom, and spent his latter years pontificating about a society of which his understanding of seems have been very limited indeed. However, because he was such a fine musical talent, no one was willing to stand up to Lennon and tell him that he was talking nonsense.

Why? Why do we allow this select group of people, not all of whom are that talented, to get away with this sort of thing. Why can't we "put the cork back in the champagne" as it were? There seems to be something innate to many people who must feel that they can reflect the glory of the star's achievements by indulging them in their foibles. This can not be healthy for us any more then it is healthy for the stars. Just look at George Best now.

(2) (65)

If people want to make a fuss about what a cultural phenomenon the Beatles were, and comment on their innovative and interesting music, well that is just peachy and not at all hard to understand. What is a bit baffling is why so many folks are trying to suggest John Lennon was anything more than a talented musician.

I just watched part of the old recording of his peace-bed thing with Yoko Ono and I was reminded of an old Dirty Harry quip: a man's got to know his limitations.

"All we are saying is give peace a chance". And it was true, that really is all he was saying. Lennon said it over and over again. Peace, peace, peace, peace, peace, peace, peace, peace, peace... and presumably felt that just repeating the word over and over again was a b