Being (Agatha Christie's) Poirot

You might have noticed from other posts on here that a pet peeve of mine is the film or TV remake.

Sometimes this is because the new version is a reboot of an existing one in the same medium, eg. 2003's unwise remake of the 1969 film The Italian Job. I mean why do that? Why use the same character names and setting to attract fans of the original, only to ignore the very universe that they value so highly, and then act all surprised when they're not interested? It's hardly as if the actors are too old to drive any more.

It's kind of different if you're adapting a storyline from another medium though, eg. LWT's successful TV series based upon Agatha Christie's famous book series about one 'ercule Poirot. Of course you change the order. Of course you change the era they're set in. Of course you change some of the plots, right down to in some instances which character turns out to be the murderer. You do all these things because... yes actually ITV, why have you spent the last 25 years doing all of the above? I suppose it has at least kept the original audience guessing...

Back in its heyday I remember that Poirot was pretty much considered the benchmark for high quality TV drama. They spent insane amounts of money transporting entire streets back to another period, only to then use a few closeups, and go and edit the whole thing on mere 625-line videotape. Sorry about that overseas viewers, and anyone watching a repeat on a high-definition television...

This documentary Being Poirot is not about those shortcomings though. While it does try to touch on a few production matters, it's far more a celebration of the character's popularity, and just what a fine performance lead actor David Suchet has been turning in as Poirot for the past couple of decades. Since I have not read any of the original books (barring the start of Curtain a while back) I cannot possibly judge how well he has succeeded, however plenty about the man himself still impresses me in this doco.

For a start, he actually pulls off presenting and narrating a show that hangs on what a great actor he is. Surely there can be few celebrities who can wield the necessary humility to get away with this, yet Suchet does it! That it is so hard to reconcile the actor and the character as being the same person, only serves to further his success.

Even here though, it skips any mention of his first association with the canon, playing Inspector Japp in the 1985 movie of Thirteen At Dinner. I wouldn't mind but when so much time is instead invested in far more trivial footage of him doing things like meeting the real-life Belgian chief of police, you have to wonder just what makes that so much more worthy of inclusion. Perhaps again a case of showing off a budget at the expense of doing things better?

Original series producer Brian Eastman admits that he chose to reset it almost entirely in the wrong year but, in this edit at least, offers no explanation for why.

Nitpicks about a series that I didn't really follow aside, having at least dropped in and out of the show since it began in the 1980s, I have to admit that I too am one of those sorry to see the little man in the hat go. No longer will I find myself watching him for 20 minutes while I'm eating, before leaving him to continue his sleuthing while I go to another room to get on with doing something else. While I have never been able to get my head around whodunits, this show has always remained consistently watchable.

Having this year broken that pattern by actually following the whole of his final series (if not its plots), I must admit that as usual there is a part of me that thinks it might be worth sitting down and watching them all, in order, from the start.

And yet, no there isn't. Despite this programme's claim that they have adapted every Poirot story ever published, they still skipped the stage play Black Coffee. Oh well, maybe now that they all have a bit of time on their hands, that will come, and / or a series chronicling the cases of nearby Parker Pyne.

For this omission, and all the reasons I mentioned at the start, no matter how definitive Suchet's portrayal may be, the fact remains that the world is still waiting for a film/TV version of Poirot that is similarly definitive. Faithful, rather than merely inspired by.

Why do they make TV adaptations like this? I don't know.

Maybe even Poirot's own little grey cells might growl in protest that it is a mystery unsolvable.

San Demetrio London

Ealing effects movie that was pretty big upon its release, but by today has become a bit forgotten.

I'm not entirely sure why. While in this post-modern age the how-on-earth-did-they-film-that question mark no longer hangs over it, this movie's sheer intensity still matches anything I see Hollywood coming out with today.

It's a war film, based upon true events from 1940, and released just three years later while the same war was still in progress. As you know, war is grim. As you also know, it's even grimmer at sea. And at night. In a storm. When you're stuck in a lifeboat for days on end...

Letting go of the non-stop impressive visuals for a moment, the soundtrack is more of a mixed bag. People outdoors give away their actual location on a studio set by the incessant echo behind them. Conversely, people who actually have been filmed outdoors lack footsteps. However these are things that we wave by soas to not lose hold of the spectacle of the film, which thankfully retains its starkness due to the absence of much incidental music.

Unlike the real-life seamen portrayed here, the names of many of the film's production team seem to have been lost to time, although I understand that Ealing's own Bob Vloeburgh was one of them.

San Demetrio London remains a classic, although one which I'd never heard of before.

On Remembrance Sunday, it's good to be reminded of the war heroes of the Merchant Navy too.

(available for shipping here)

The Straight Story

Danny: "Even if you get that mower running again, it might still break down."
Alvin: "Well you're a kind man talking to a stubborn man. I still wanna finish this the way I started."

It's Twin Peaks for kids!

Well that's the only way I can describe the outset of this U-rated Disney movie directed by David Lynch. It just doesn't matter how innocent everything may appear on the surface of this old-fashioned American community, the cocktail of Lynch's pondering direction and Angelo Badalamenti's sad atmospheres still convince you that something very unpleasant indeed must surely be occurring just off-camera.

And... they're right! Oh, wait a minute, if they actually are right then that jokey exclamation mark won't be appropriate. And they're right. When lead character Alvin Straight's phone rings, off camera you can just make out his daughter answering and learning that his brother has just suffered a stroke. Ooh. Oh. Ah. No, that's not fun at all.

In fact, despite the family-friendly certificate, you have to wonder just how much Lynch deliberately slipped in under the censors' radar here. Alvin smokes throughout. He also accidentally murdered someone years ago, of which he has never spoken. His daughter? Man's inhumanity to man has pronounced an appalling sentence upon her too. And there's more...

Somehow though, this is a film in which David Lynch effortlessly soars over what may be expected of him, and proves without hesitation just what a fine director he really is. He doesn't talk down to his audience at all, having 100% confidence in us to stay with the slow narrative, and take on board every development at his intelligent level.

He coaxes utterly believable performances out of his cast, and captures them in all their tiny detail.

Alvin's big flashback to World War II is captivating, made all the more so by the length of this unbroken take. I don't know quite how long this monologue went on for - I was just too lost in the visuals that the performance was conjuring up in my own imagination.

That largo pace works both ways however. Often when an event does happen here, it then turns out to amount to nothing, just like in real life. The number of times that Alvin's lawnmower breaks down, only for it to get fixed again, is impressively high for a film.

If you're looking for an intelligent reflection on mortality, then this film should definitely be on your list.

And it's a prudent heads-up to offer the younger generation at the outset of their journey through life too.

Alvin Straight: "You don't think about getting old when you're young... you shouldn't."
Cyclist #1: "Must be something good about gettin' old?"
Alvin Straight: "Well I can't imagine anything good about being blind and lame at the same time but, still at my age I've seen about all that life has to dish out. I know to separate the wheat from the chaff, and let the small stuff fall away."
Cyclist #2: "So, uh, what's the worst part about being old, Alvin?"
Alvin Straight: "Well, the worst part of being old is rememberin' when you was young."

Available here.

London Museum Crawl

My latest visitor from down under, following in the footsteps of his own cousin six months ago, has this month been...

Nigel!

One of the things that distinguishes Nigel from most of the 100-odd other New Zealanders on my Facebook friendlist is that he's one of the few who I knew before I ever set foot in that country. Ah yes, Brighton, Wellington, Meet The Robinsons in 3D, The Settlers Of Catan, Waiheke Island, flatting with him at the seminary, Puhoi, plus other good times of course...

And now, he's just completed walking 800 km across the top of Spain! Basically, if I had any belief that catching up with this adventurer would be a chance to put my own feet up and take it easy, then I had another thing coming...

We caught up a fortnight ago at a coffee morning for the local branch of The Society For The Protection Of Unborn Children (SPUC), being run in part by my mum. After that we stopped across the road from the local abortion clinic to encourage some people from another organisation who were praying there. They've only been there a few weeks, and they've had eight people change their minds about going in. Eight lives. Wow.

After dropping in home, we headed out across Twickenham to have a traditional English fish and chip lunch, before running an errand for our friend Fionnuala and then checking out Twickenham Rugby Stadium!

Here we would have enjoyed going around the World Rugby Museum, although in the event neither one of us knew it was there. Not that this spoilt our day at all...

After a coffee, we polished off the day by taking in a performance of Julius Caesar. Despite Nigel's assurances that he was content just knocking around his old stomping ground with me, I really felt that his presence in the country once again was an opportunity that I didn't want him to miss. So I challenged him, arguing that surely there was someplace in London where he had always intended to go last time, but had never quite got around to?

Indeed there was! So the next day it was off to South Kensington for the Natural History Museum...

I came to this place once or twice when I was at school, and I saw it on TV then too. I remember a huge empty white room with arches and lots of information around it. I also seem to recall an enormous skeleton of a dinosaur on the way in...

What the...? Were we even in the right building here? This entrance hardly sums up most people's ideas about 'natural history'...

But maybe that's kinda the point. No-one knows anything about natural history from before we started writing it down because no theory about it can ever be checked, and even a lot of the earliest writings are subject to doubt for exactly the same reason.

Yet at the bottom of the escalator, before we had even gone in:

While a minute away at the top of the escalator we found:

Err, guys, you do know that the second statement disqualifies any process by which we can arrive at the first one, don't you? Well I'm encouraged that they were smart enough to present it all within that context.

Anyway, before I start sounding like I didn't enjoy this exhibition - which hadn't been put together by scientists but by exhibition organisers anyway - allow me to state how much we both enjoyed our time here. For the next couple of hours there was plenty to see, do, and of course photograph...

So with the Natural History Museum nailed, still with some of the afternoon left, we then headed straight across the road and into the Victoria & Albert Museum...

With time now definitely against us, we ironically exited the V&A's 'Tomorrow' exhibition to dash back across the road and into the Science Museum for the last hour.





Ultimately the afternoon gave way to an evening that never was. After a terrific meal at the Green Man, we traipsed around London for quite a while trying to track down a group of Nigel's friends who he hadn't seen for about a decade, unsuccessfully.

Eventually we returned to the Odeon Leicester Square where we had been hoping to catch Thor 2 on its opening night, but in the event we arrived just one minute after it had begun. I refused to miss the start of the film, and so that was that.

At this point Nigel's busy schedule required him to scoot off on a coach to Ireland via Wales, so the next time we had a chance to watch the same film wasn't until his return last night. Alas, in the event we met in Bayswater and checked him into his latest backpackers, before realising that we had once again left it just too darn late in the evening to see the movie.

Oh well, the opportunity to sit in Burger King and just chat before going our separate ways on a slightly more permanent basis was a valuable option too. With Nigel's phone broken, he's been borrowing mine for the past week. I told him to keep it with him until he gets a new one in the Philippines. Yes, the same Philippines which Typhoon Haiyan has just so tragically devastated. Avoid the zone? Nigel's planning to go live there forever. Did I mention he's also deep in training to become a catholic priest?

Before we returned to our separate hemispheres, I stood outside the London W2 backpackers and prayed for my friend. I found myself thanking God for a buddy, and asking that he be looked after on his travels, particularly as we both know that travelling often doesn't go according to plan. Then we said adios, and that really was it.

The following day Nigel disembarked from his coach in the Netherlands to find that his backpack had not arrived with him.

:(