Andrew Collins's Blog, page 27

Pi-eyed

I know. We’ve been here before, but I think the point still needs making, and I know I’m not the first, or only, cinephile to make it: but can we just stop with the 3D now, please?

It being the awards season, I’m doing my usual January mop-up of “awards movies” that slipped through my net, or else have not yet been released. (People are always asking me to comment on awards nominations and make predictions; this is easier if I have seen the films! If I hadn’t lost my voice, you would have seen me on BBC News possibly twice last week, but I’ve not been terribly well since making the foolhardy decision to stop working for a week over Christmas.) This week, valiantly, I’ve seen previews of Lincoln, Django Unchained and Flight, caught up with The Impossible and Argo, and I have Zero Dark Thirty booked in for Monday. Yesterday I finally saw Life Of Pi.

Why didn’t I see Life Of Pi when it came out in December? Apart from the demoralising Coldplay song all over the trailer? Because Life Of Pi is presented in, and was designed to be seen in, 3D. This, I understand, is because it’s based on a Booker Prize-winning book which is mainly about a boy trapped in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger, and was thus considered a tricky sell, and might explain why it took a decade to get to the screen. So, for all its “arthouse” credentials – directed by Ang Lee, and accordingly taken very seriously by Sight & Sound, who put it on the cover of their December issue – it’s been cooked up and marketed as a magical holiday “event” movie. By presenting it in 3D, instead of a film about a boy on a boat based on a book, it becomes a spectacle you cannot afford to miss this Christmas/New Year; an “OMG” moment. (Incidentally, the print I saw yesterday came with a teaser imploring us to “share our feelings” about the film on Facebook and Twitter, which irked me to my boots.) Result: it’s been garlanded with nominations: three Golden Globes, 9 Baftas, 11 Oscars.

Now, my local cinema has been showing it in 3D and 2D, so the option was there, and I was grateful for that. (They were equally accommodating with The Hobbit, although my reasons for not having seen that yet are because I don’t have the energy.) However, with Pi, because I left it too late, there are far fewer convenient 2D screenings left, and I was forced to see it in 3D yesterday afternoon. Also, and I’ll be perfectly honest here, it was clearly going to be such a spectacle, maybe I ought to see it as Ang Lee intended. Maybe I ought to get over myself?

Well, it was a bad decision. This is a visually sumptuous film, its first act shot in the actual region of India where Yann Martel’s novel is set. So, even before we get to the middle of the ocean after the shipwreck, there is much to feast the eyes upon. Except, the eyes are locked out of the film behind a perimeter fence; the 3D glasses. Now, I’m not going to blame “smears” this time. My 3D glasses were clean and clear. But the very act of putting them on, in order to unlock the illusion of three dimensionality, places a barrier between you and the light. The sun in Pondicherry is blazing and bright. I lifted my glasses to have a sneaky, blurred look at it: it was pure white in the sky above Pi as he went about his business. As soon as you lower the glasses, it is dulled. It is slushy grey. It’s no wonder 3D films work so badly when the action occurs at night.

The shipwreck scene, spectacularly done in CGI, with swelling waves and crashing water to make The Perfect Storm and Poseidon seem like cartoons (computer technology moves so fast), occurs at night. For all the wizardry at play, and the “depth” of the 3D, it’s so dark, you can barely make out what’s happening. The second half is where we get the meat of the matter: teenage boy and crouching tiger in single lifeboat on an often millpond-calm sea. Many amazing sights are laid on for us: flying fish, luminous plankton, a leaping humpback whale. These might be enhanced by the 3D, if the colours weren’t muddied by the 3D. I tire of wearing those specs, and I tire of watching films through them, even when the illusion has the desired effect of … well, making something look closer than it is, or making something look like it’s in front of another thing.

The benefits are far outweighed by the defects, for me. I look forward to seeing Life Of Pi on DVD, or TV, in 2D. I’m sure it will still be a visual feast. All the work that went into creating that tiger out of pixels will still be there to marvel at, and be moved by. The relationship between Pi and the tiger will still exist. The story will still be told. Ang Lee’s direction and vision will still be intact. But I won’t be wearing heavy glasses, and the colours will be glorious, instead of muted, and gloomy. It’s a price I’m prepared to pay. (Or not pay, as I understand some cinemas charge extra for 3D, which is a bloody cheek.)

I’ve seen 3D used cleverly, in Pina, for instance. And it’s used sympathetically in some of the sequences in Pi. (The effect of making swimmers look as if they are swimming in the sky is definitely enhanced by the trick.) But it’s not just muddying the colours, it’s muddying the artistic decisions being made by directors and studios.

Oh, and that tagline? I am always prepared to believe the unbelievable. It’s what I go to the cinema for. I don’t need assistance.

Ready, steady, cook

Let’s write about Breaking Bad. When I gathered up the best telly of 2012 for my roundup, a couple of people asked why I had omitted Breaking Bad? Good question. Well, this is why: I didn’t really watch Breaking Bad in 2012. Although we do have history.

I’d already devoured Seasons One and Two on DVD, having missed the first, when it premiered here on FX, because – admire my honesty here – the trailers didn’t grab me. Those astonishing images of Walter White in his underpants, in the New Mexico dessert, wielding a gun, and the pitch about him being a chemistry teacher? I didn’t think this was my kind of programme. Drugs? Pants? An actor I did not know. (Never watched Malcolm in the Middle.) It seemed too … wacky for me. So I gave it a miss.

I was encouraged to rectify this fatal error by other people, probably on this very blog. So, if I recall correctly, when FX re-ran Season One (hey, they’d paid for it), I caught up at Episode 2 and was hooked pretty much instantly. I bought the box set, so I could watch from the beginning, and I did, right the way through. This was a show so good, you could watch it again immediately. Then Channel Five did the right thing, and picked it up for Season Two, but self-defeatingly hid it late at night on imprint FiveUSA and ran it over consecutive nights. I taped and watched it all, feeling all of a sudden like I was in on a secret. (No spoilers, but Two is the one with the pink teddy bear, an indicator of the show’s swaggering, overarching confidence.)

Season Two is everything Season One was, and more. (I’m assuming you’ve seen it. If you haven’t seen it, stop reading this and go and see it. Seasons 1-4 are now boxed.) And after that, UK television stopped showing Breaking Bad, a case of criminal negligence that has yet to be rectified. As it hits its fifth and final season in the US, it is a long-running, award-winning, lauded drama series of which only 20 episodes have ever been broadcast in this country. A cable insider me told that it was just too expensive for a niche channel to buy, considering the tiny audiences it drew here on FX and Five. (Even the hype that now trails it has had no appreciable effect on the numbers for Seasons 1-2 re-runs.) There is a suggestion that AMC have priced it out of the market.

At the beginning of 2012, I found myself in a sort of sado-masochistic relationship with what might well have been my favourite programme, had I been able to legally view it. It had, by then, gone overground in terms of column inches, overtaking The Wire and Mad Men in chatterati approval ratings, and yet, not even shown on an obscure cable network in the UK. In the States, where it has a home, the aforementioned AMC, it had reached Season Four. I hadn’t even seen Three. In May last year, it finally became available on Region 1 DVD and I leaped at it. But, weirdly, for me, I found it difficult to get back into, knowing that we would always be one season behind.

Well, in the gaping maw between Christmas and New Year, we rescued Season Three from cupboardly exile, and started again; we saw 2013 in with it, pretty much. With unusually large periods of free viewing time, we were able to watch it as nature intended: back-to-back, binge-style. (Each episode is around 47 minutes long; a commercial “hour”, and they cram a lot in.) We did Three in a couple of days’ flat, ordered Four, and then watched that in two sittings. Gripped. Transfixed. Hooked. In constant awe at how the writers and directors keep up the pace and the intrigue. Although many directors pass through, BB has a distinct house style. Shot on 35mm, and characterised by the blinding oranges and yellows of a boiling New Mexico skyline, you know you’re watching Breaking Bad if a POV camera angle puts you at the bottom of industrial vat when chemicals are decanted into it.

Often, an episode will begin with an extreme close-up, almost abstract, from which clues may be gleaned, but only 47 minutes later will you fully understand the significance of this elliptical, impressionistic flash-forward. (In many ways, the whole of Season Two plays this trick. There’s also a clue in the titles of four episodes of Two that, taken together, hint at the story arc’s conclusion.)

I would seem odd to go too much into the plot, but it all kicks off with mild-mannered Albuquerque chemistry teacher and family man Mr White (Bryan Cranston) learning that he has terminal lung cancer and opting to cook a batch of pure crystal meth in order to take care of his family – wife Skyler (Anna Gunn), teenage son Walt Jr (RJ Mitte), and as-yet unborn baby Holly – financially. He hooks up with ex-student Jesse (Aaron Paul), a known amateur meth cook and dealer – as well as a user – and the mismatched pair attempt to pull off the scheme without alerting Walt’s family, or the authorities, emblemised by his gung-ho DEA brother-in-law Hank (Dean Norris), a stand-up guy who becomes their unwitting nemesis, as well as being close family. Here’s my thinking:

If creator Vince Gilligan, alumnus of The X-Files, had successfully pitched his genius idea as a film, this story would have played out, to some kind of conclusion from which everybody learned lessons, in around two hours. That’s just over two episodes. I’m sure it could have been done, but how much better, culturally speaking, that he pitched it as a serial drama, and was able to make seven episodes. (It would have been nine if not for the writers’ strike.) It did not conclude. We were left wanting more of Walt and Jesse and Skyler and Hank. So, Gilligan and his writing team upped the ante. They turned Season Two, with its full 13 episodes, into an epic, in which, well … some very interesting things happen, and Jesse, in particular, goes on an emotional journey. (There’s no better word for it.)

Since then, so much has happened, and yet, Gilligan has kept the whole story local. We’ve been across the border to Mexico, and Hank’s been to El Paso, but for 46 episodes, we’ve never strayed too far from the White household, Jesse’s aunt’s home, the school, the hospital, a fried chicken joint of massive significance and other local landmarks. Just as a soap invites us into a fictional ecosystem, so does Breaking Bad. Minor characters – Jesse’s meth-head pals, Bogdan the owner of the car wash, Skyler’s boss Ted – hove in and out of the foreground. Seedy but well-connected local lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), gun-for-hire and fixer Mike Ehrmantrout (Jonathan Banks), and kingpin Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) have all graduated from guest-starring roles to main cast. As such, BB moves in natural, organic, concentric waves. Because of the deadly nature of the game, we never know who’s going to be killed next. It’s certainly always feasible that it might be Walt or Jesse. You never know.

I love the writing, in that I love the planning, and the storytelling. But I also love the dialogue. Whether or not it’s true to the way people in Albuquerque speak, I don’t know, but the white kids speak like black kids, just like anywhere else, even though the most significant ethnic group is surely Latino. You get a lot of Spanish subtitles, especially when you go deep into the Mexican drug cartel. But even these family-oriented gangsters feel fresh after so many of the Italian-American variety. I read an article that gave BB a kicking for being racist. What? Because its white characters are essentially good, and its Mexican/Latino characters are bad? Simply not true. Gus, a Chilean, is wise and fair and, within the boundaries of the criminal class, principled. Jesse and his white pals are losers, and idiots, by and large. I won’t go on.

Breaking Bad is not a show to knock down. Its cast is gloriously multi-ethnic, and it’s clear that casting choices are made on merit, not on star power. Aside from Cranston, and Gunn (who was in Deadwood), and to a degree Odenkirk (who’s well known in the US for stints on SNL and other comedy formats – he’s also a writer), it does not deal in stars, even for cameos. When Steven Bauer crops up in Season Four as a patriarchal drug lord, it’ll take you a few goes before you identify him as Pacino’s pal in Scarface. I read that Jesse was supposed to be killed at the end of Season One, but as soon as Gilligan saw the chemistry – ha! – between he and Cranston, they decided to keep him in. In this sense, it does operate like a soap.

Something I’ve noticed while watching Three and Four is the regularity with which characters are given monologues, stories to tell, at length. A writer’s dream. Whether it’s Jesse at an AA meeting, describing a box he made in woodwork, or Mike warning Walt about “half measures” with a tale from his days as a beat cop dealing with a domestic disturbance, or even the unnamed Group Leader revealing around a campfire how he killed someone, the writers love to suit up and cook pure anecdote. (This is terrific for the actors, too – indeed, Jonathan Banks really brought his character alive in that scene in Season Three.) It must be such a great show to act in. And all those award nominations! Cranston and Paul seem to be the most eagerly recognised by their peers, but we must remove hats too in honour of Banks, Gunn, Norris, Mitte, Odenkirk (way to give depth to an initially clownish figure), Esposito, and Betsy Brandt (Hank’s kleptomaniac wife, who gets her best season in Four). I fear they may all struggle to get better roles in the future.

I’ve not even bothered to argue whether or not it’s a comedy or a drama: it’s a drama. There are moments of comedy – black comedy, at least – even farce, but these never detract from the gravity of the situation. And people die. They die horribly.

There’s a scene in Season Four – no details – where a character breaks into an office by throwing a brick through the glass door, but the bottom panel of the glass door, via which he enters. There is pure physical comedy in the way he effects this, but the situation is life-or-death, so there’s no time to laugh. You just appreciate it, and file it away. Because you’ll be watching it again. (That’s why I do not resent paying for Breaking Bad.)

So, here’s where we’re at. Unless you live in America, or have Netflix, or don’t care about piracy, you’re playing a waiting game. The first batch of Season Five have aired on AMC, with the second batch to air this summer? That means we won’t get the DVDs until the end of 2013. Thanks, UK broadcasters, for being stingy. Thanks, AMC, for hiking up the price. Thanks, UK viewers for failing to watch it when it did air, thus enabling UK broadcasters to wave their calculators rather than make a qualitative decision. Mind you, some things are so good, they’re worth the wait.

The rest is silence

We’re back, for Year 3 of Telly Addict, and, after an unprecedented two-week break, during which I allowed all the germs of the season to infect me while my immune system was off guard, my voice is on the way out. Thankfully, we managed to squeeze the last few drops out of my larynx before silence set in, and thus, here is an unplanned BBC-only review, with Borgen‘s welcome return to BBC4; the arrival of Ripper Street to BBC1; a very good documentary series, Queen Victoria’s Children, on BBC2; and finally, the latest Attenborough epic, Africa, on BBC1. I accuse Sir David of “husky hyperbole”, but wrote that, during the day, when I had no idea how husky my own voice would turn out to be. I hope you can hear the words I am saying, and that you feel my pain. Normal service will be resumed next week. And a haircut, I think.

(My full review of Seasons Three and Four of Breaking Bad will follow separately.)

25 Years in showbiz: a prelude

Right, Here’s a splendid photo of me and three-quarters of the band Cud, backstage at Brixton Academy in November, to put us all in a happy place at the end of one year and the tentative, under-par beginning of another one. In other words, let’s just clear up 2012 before we really get stuck into 2013. By my calculations, 2012 was my 24th year in Showbiz. Which is a glib way of saying that I’ve been working in what we must, without irony or sneering, call “the media” since the summer of 1988, when I first stepped foot in the NME office, and wangled a part-time job in the layout room.

It was, of course, through working as a journalist for the NME that I met Cud, along with countless other bands. Without the NME, I might not have played the drums for them for one song at a soundcheck at Wakefield’s Rooftop Gardens in May 1992, thus setting a precedent. Having kept up genial diplomatic relations with the band ever since, I was invited to go one better, 20 years on, and if the notion hadn’t been wiped from history in 2012, I’d have called it a middle-aged man’s “Jim’ll Fix It moment”. I wrote about it here. When you reach my age, milestones come less often. To have played the drums onstage at Brixton Academy, for one song, was one of them. It will forever nail 2012 to the map. As will my appearance, in January, on Celebrity Mastermind (it was filmed in 2011), where I scored 23 points but still only came second.

This was a milestone in the sense that I crossed the Rubicon and became further proof of the dire elasticity of the word “celebrity.” (Watching this year’s run on BBC2, I noted that in his call for future contestants, John Humphrys says, “You don’t have to be a Celebrity to appear on Mastermind.” No, and you don’t have to be a Celebrity to appear on Celebrity Mastermind, either. I wrote about my experience for Radio Times here.)

It is not to seek sympathy if I say that, on the whole, despite these two marker flags, 2012 was not a historic year. for me. They can’t all be, can they? While the Olympics, the Paralympics, and Euro 2012 ran a highlighter pen through the sporting summer, on a personal level, as a competitor in the rat race, I feel like I spent most of the year running to stand still. The recession continues to bite hard, and the price of everything rises at an inhumane pace, so, in line with the general outlook since 2008, it was a case of watching expenditure, travelling only when my journey was really necessary and reading books I already own, as per my New Year’s Resolution. When you’re self-employed, you do everything in your power to keep working, but it’s never a walk in the park.

Professionally, I was proud to have my name on the credits of school sitcom Gates, as co-writer and co-creator, which helped relaunch Sky Living in August, having been on ice for about eight months. Sadly, it didn’t ring the ratings bell and was not recommissioned. (I wrote about the show here.) Neither was a much more personal project for me, Mr Blue Sky, although I think we were all very pleased with Series 2, which went out on Radio 4 in April and May, and gathered some nice reviews. Not nice enough to earn us a third series, although it wasn’t through want of trying, I can tell you. (I wrote about Series 2 for Radio Times here.) I’ve written two further scripts, for two further broadcasters, in 2012, and one of them may yet prove to have legs in 2013, depending on how a January meeting goes. Fingers crossed. Actually, my fingers are always crossed; I am a writer. I’m also very excited to have made a ten-minute short film with Simon Day for Sky Atlantic; the all-star anthology of which it is a part, Common Ground, starts on January 14.

Back in January I did the finishing touches to a script I had in development with ITV which then disappeared in a puff of smoke when the in-house producer I was working with left ITV. This is what happens. Get used to it. My ardent hope for 2013 is to get a comedy commissioned.

In terms of radio, I’ve noticed a slight reduction in hours spent in front of a microphone. I had a couple of nice runs on 6 Music Breakfast, and a short go at Saturday mornings, solo, while they waited to fill the slot with someone more famous. (I was also offered Breakfast in Christmas week but I wasn’t around, to be fair.) I presented the Radio 4 documentary Oscar Sings in February, but that’s pretty much it for me as a “proper” presenter. However, ironically, via the tradesman’s entrance, I appeared in about 50 short films in 2012, further honing my Autocue skills for the Guardian‘s weekly Telly Addict review. I love doing this, so long may it continue this year.

I had a great time at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, hosting Q&As with Charlie Brooker, Steven Moffat, Victoria Wood, Robert Popper, Frank Spotnitz and others, and this is an area I’d really like to develop. Having sensibly put stand-up behind me, this feels like a far more age-appropriate and far less egomaniacal way of talking in front of an audience: this is the job of the facilitator. You get to meet amazing people, doing it, too. (It was cool to meet Todd Solondz before doing a Q&A with him at the Curzon, Soho, in the summer. You should never get blasé about this kind of privileged proximity.)

Socially, 2012 was quiet, but deliberately so. I avoided parties, as a rule, although the Radio Times covers party presented its annual opportunity for me to play Zelig with the stars of TV, unashamedly. Here I am with two of the ladies of Downton (and some mad-eyed feminist), and Vic Reeves and Vicky McClure.

While we’re talking about magazines, 2012’s greatest loss was surely Word magazine. You can read my requiem here, although it’s worth stating that its sudden closure in June – another victim of the advertising revenue downturn and the general decline of print – was twice the loss for me. I miss Word as an employee and as a subscriber. It leaves a void. (It also means I am probably doing more prose-writing for free, on here, than I might have done previously. Sign of the times.)

Sad, too, to see Karaoke Circus go, after all these years of good-natured, have-a-go entertainment. The final showdown, at the 100 Club, on 29 October, crowned the run in suitable style, even if my overambitious rendition of Jay-Z’s 99 Problems was one of my worst. Nobody complained. And that is why we shall miss it. (The following shot of the final finale is by Russell McGovern, whose full set of pics are here.)

On the whole, 2012 was less about evenings, more about mornings and afternoons. More about meetings. I’ve had tons of them. Some have led to work, most have not. Some have been administrative, others more sociable. Some have been script meetings, as a script-editor – which, again, is a much less egocentric job to have on a TV programme. I had a brilliant time at the end of the year working on Secret Dude Society for BBC3, an actual, six-episode commission, with the beloved sketch trio Pappy’s, and although it has yet to be filmed (that happens in Glasgow in February), the majority of my editing work is done, so that ought to be a satisfying thing to look forward to in 2013.

When I look back over my 25 years in showbiz, as I am bound to do, I recognise that the bulk of my work has been entirely egocentric and self-centred; whether it’s being an opinionated music journalist, a DJ, an author, or a stand-up. It’s all been about my name at the beginning or the end. The past few years have seen me settling down into a quieter life, whereby my work is often out of the spotlight, behind the scenes, in meetings. This can only be a good thing. There are enough people out there vying for your attention with loud voices. I’m happy if you catch an episode of a sitcom I’ve written for Radio 4, brought to life by professional actors.

I’d certainly be happy if you bought the new edition of my Billy Bragg biography, Still Suitable For Miners, which Billy and I have been working on updating over the last couple of months, starting in MediaCity, Salford, where I accompanied him for his John Peel Lecture in November. The new edition is due out, in physical form and as an eBook, in the early part of this year (no fixed date as yet). Revisiting his stirring lifestory – and in order to write a new chapter, it is advisable to re-read the existing ones – has reignited my leftist fury. The Tories continued to drive me round the bend in 2012, with raids on the public sector whose bare-faced audacity would have made Mrs Thatcher blush, and a general, all-round dismantling of the state whose ease merely exposes the historic failure of New Labour to do anything to reverse the trend while they were in power.

In this sense, 2012 was an angry year for me. The reelection of Barack Obama provided some relief from apocalyptic thoughts – at least the world is spared a Tea Party in control for another four years – but the news has been ostensibly depressing most days, from ecological disaster to corporate tax avoidance to widespread child abuse hidden in plain sight. Billy Bragg reminds me that hitting your fifties, as he has, does not have to denote giving up, or tuning out, or logging off. He was as fired up by bankers’ bonuses and the Bullingdon Club cabinet in 2012 as he was about the miners and Reaganomics in 1985. We should look to people like him for inspiration.

Maybe Still Suitable For Miners is a perfect example of a project that isn’t primarily about me. It’s about Billy Bragg. I am merely facilitating its existence. That’s got to be a more dignified way forward.

Twenty Twelve: Books

It’s a fair cop. I haven’t read many books this year. The blame for this we can lay squarely at the door of the New Yorker, which continues to hog my reading time. In fact, how I managed to read anything else this year remains a mystery. Word magazine commissioned me to review a couple of novels – prequels to Trainspotting and The Godfather, by Irvine Welsh and Ed Falco, respectively, neither of which was up to much – and I fear that without Kate Mossman slinging a paperback my way, 2013 may see even less in my book pile. (I did promise not to buy any new books in 2012 until I’d finished reading all of my unread books, and I broke that resolution three times.)

The 9/11 Wars Jason Burke (Allen Lane) This came out in hardback in 2010, but I used a voucher to buy it in early 2011, and I confess I’m still reading it, but after Burke’s definitive Al-Qaeda, I knew I’d love it, and I do.

Pity The Billionaire Thomas Franks (Harvill Secker)

Driving Jarvis Ham Jim Bob (The Friday Project)

The History of the NME Pat Long (Portico)

How Soon is Now?: The Madmen and Mavericks who made Independent Music 1975-2005 Richard King (Faber)

Keynes: Return of The Master Robert Skidelsky (Penguin) This came out in 2010, and I haven’t finished it yet, but it’s a great primer for the economist whose name has been most quoted since the crash, sometimes in vain, sometimes not.

The Road to Serfdom Friedrich Hayek (Routledge) And this came out in 1944, but I was moved to pick up a lovely old secondhand copy in order to try to understand right-wing thinkers. (Hayek is named as often as Friedman and Rand by free marketeers.) It’s hard going, and again, I can’t say I’ve finished it yet, but I’m afraid right-wing thinkers are still alien to me.

The Great Unwashed Gary and Warren Pleece (Escape Books)

That’s nine books. Must try harder. Well, I would try harder, but that would involve cancelling my subscription to the New Yorker. It’s not as if I’ve been playing computer games instead of reading. And I must mention the redesigned BFI Film Classics, which came out in August, and the BFI very kindly sent me. They now look as good as they read.

My favourite book of 2013, so far:

Bedsit Disco Queen Tracey Thorn (Virago) I’ll write about this honest, evocative memoir in February, when it’s actually published.

Twenty Twelve: TV

 

Well, I’ve certainly put the hours in this year in terms of TV. My first full calendar year of writing and recording Telly Addict every week: that’s a lot of percentage in the Sky+ tank. Because I am now duty-bound to review all the exciting new stuff – and that means stuff I wouldn’t normally watch, like Red Or Black, TOWIE and The Apprentice – I find myself watching and analysing the first episode of everything, but not always bothering to watch the second episode. There are only so many hours in the day etc.

This, if you run a finger down my final list, accounts for the fact that Secret State, which I wasn’t sure about to start with, makes the list, and The Town, which I was sure about, doesn’t. I saw the former through to the bitter end, which means something, and I found myself unable to summon up the enthusiasm to see how The Town turned out, which also means something. My enthusiasm for The Great British Bake Off was entirely sincere: I couldn’t wait for the next episode. This is how I feel about the re-runs of Friday Night Lights: can’t wait. (Although the Guardian erroneously claimed that I judged The Bake Off to be “the best TV show of 2012″, when, in fact, it was simply my favourite.)

It seems obsessive and random to put these fantastic shows in any kind of qualitative order, so I’ll leave them in the order that they occurred to me. I’m not sure whether or not I ought to apologise for the proliferation of shows on Sky Atlantic. The channel has a deal with HBO; ergo, it’s where all the best imports turn up. Sorry (There, I apologised.) Oh, and by the way, I enjoyed some of the Olympics on the BBC, and Euro 2012, on the BBC and ITV, but found Gary Lineker a bit irksome on both.

The Great British Bake Off, BBC2

Game of Thrones, Season 2, Sky Atlantic

Boardwalk Empire, Season 3, Sky Atlantic

Hunderby, Sky Atlantic

The Fear, C4

Homefront, ITV1

Fresh Meat, Series 2, C4

Friday Night Dinner, Series 2, C4

Michael Portillo’s Great Continental Railway Journeys, BBC2

Sherlock, Series 2, BBC1

Borgen, BBC4

The Bridge, BBC4

Homeland, Seasons 1-2, c4

Twenty Twelve, Series 2, BBC2

Chatsworth, BBC2

Inside Claridge’s, BBC2

The Thick Of It, Series 4, BBC4

Eastbound and Down, Season 3, FX

The Walking Dead, Season 3, FX

American Horror Story: Asylum, FX

Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy, E4

Friday Night Lights, Seasons 1-3, Sky Atlantic

Girls, Sky Atlantic

Mid Morning Matters with Alan Partidge, Sky Atlantic

The Newsroom, Sky Atlantic

Veep, Sky Atlantic

Secret State, C4

Top of the Pops, 1977, BBC4

Man About The House, Series 3-5, ITV3

Horror Europa with Mark Gatiss, BBC4

Loving Miss Hatto, BBC1

Downton Abbey, Series 3/Christmas Special, ITV1

Mrs Biggs, ITV1

Celebrity MasterChef, BBC2

Modern Family, Season 4, Sky1

Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Savile, ITV1

The Bletchley Circle, ITV1

Feel free to nominate shows you loved. I fell out with Downton during Series 2, but was surprised to find myself back onboard with Series 3. I also thought that Gates, on Sky Living, came out very well, but since I was one of its writers, I am unable to trust my own judgement. We must try Sky Living’s judgement, though, and it won’t be returning for a second series.

Twenty Twelve: Music

I cannot lie. I am out well of touch with modern popular music. I watched the Christmas Top of The Pops on Christmas Day and found much of it either underwhelming or actually irritating. Of the artists who’d evidently had hits this year, I obviously recognised the big-name artists – Coldplay, Florence, Robbie Williams, Girls Aloud – and I’d seen Emeli Sandé on the Olympics, plus I did well with the middle-aged musicians on the Christmas number one for the Hillsborough families, but a lot of the newer artists were just seemingly interchangeable young men and women singing in the same, Autotuned, post-X-Factor style.

I speak as a middle-aged man. I don’t lose sleep over my disconnect with what’s in the charts. Since Top Of The Pops was taken off-air, I’ve had no connection with the charts anyway – I assume Rihanna is having a hit at any given time, but have little idea of who’s placing where in the Top 40. (I could recite the Top 30 from any week in 1977 of course, thanks to the endangered TOTP re-runs, but that speaks volumes.) As such, having worked up a very good Top 11 albums, and a healthy list of 17 tracks I loved this year, I find that I seem to exist in a parallel universe.

There are one or two big names – Lana Del Ray, Dexys, The Wonder Stuff – but most of the artists below I’ve discovered through being sent their records by the pluggers who service 6 Music and kindly keep me on their lists, even though I don’t have a regular show. So thanks to those dedicated individuals really. Hip hop has passed me by this year, not least because so much of it has been swallowed up by R&B, which I cannot connect with in any meaningful way. (I tried the much-admired Frank Ocean album: nothing.) I’m certain I’ve missed a number of albums that I might love, but that’s the case every December when I compile these lists.

These are very pure inventories, in that they are not influenced by fashion, or success, or even backstory (with many of the bands I don’t even know where they come from or what they look like). This really is just music I have listened to a lot this year. I have supplied label names with the LPs, but not the tracks, as names of labels don’t really have much bearing on downloads, right? It’s interesting, and organic, that three out of my Top 11 albums are on Fat Cat. Well done, Fat Cat!

ALBUMS 2012

1 LANA DEL RAY Born To Die | Interscope

2 THE TWILIGHT SAD No One Can Ever Know | Fat Cat

3 PETE WILLIAMS See |Basehart

4 BRETON Other People’s Problems | Fat Cat

5 MILK MAID Mostly No | Fat Cat

6 THE HEARTBREAKS Funtimes | Banquet

7 JACK ADAPTOR I Saw A Ghost | Supple Pipe

8 RUSTY BEAR Source To The Sea |Mollusc

9 ADMIRAL FALLOW Tree Bursts In Snow | Nettwerk

10 DEXYS One Day I’m Going To Soar | BMG

11 BALTIC FLEET Towers | Blow Up

TRACKS 2012

THE WONDER STUFF Far, Far Away

THIS MANY BOYFRIENDS Tina Weymouth (from album This Many Boyfriends)

FLATS Country

THE WINTER OLYMPICS I Prefer The Early Stuff

SHIMMERING STARS Into The Sea (this may well have come out in 2011, but I listened to it a lot this year)

A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS Onwards To The Wall (Onwards To The Wall EP)

THE NEIGHBOURHOOD Sweater Weather

MEURSAULT Dull Spark

FUNERAL SUITS All Those Friendly People

FOXES Youth

FOREST FIRE Future Shadows

ESCAPISTS Burial (Burial EP)

CITIZENS! Reptile

CEREMONY Hysteria

LITTLE BOOTS Every Night I Say A Prayer

KIMBRA Warrior

RACE HORSES My Year Abroad

BINARY Prisoner (I know for a fact that this came out in November 2011, but I didn’t hear it until this year, and I’m still listening to it now – I have literally no idea who Binary are!)

Naturally, if you want to recommend something – especially hip hop – I’m all ears. Here’s to 6 Music giving me some more work in 2013 so my drip to modern music isn’t completely cut off. (I so miss my old 6 Music show with Josie Long. I think after a full year of not being asked back, we must always think of it in the past tense.)

Twenty Twelve: Films

I think I’m ready to commit now. Here are my Top 20 films of 2012. From where I’m sitting – which is usually in a cinema, with a paid-for ticket in my hand, watching something subtitled, but not exclusively – it’s been a very good year: stimulating, surprising, modest and varied. (I’ve discounted reissues from the Top 20, although there are very few films I loved as much as Ordet and Le Quai des brumes.)

1 Once Upon A Time In Anatolia | Nuri Bilge Ceylan | Turkey/Bosnia and Herzegovina

2 Amour | Michael Haneke | Austria/France/Germany

3 Sightseers | Ben Wheatley | UK

4 Aurora | Christi Piui | Romania

5 The Kid With A Bike | Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne | Belgium/France/Italy

6 Marvel Avengers Assemble | Joss Whedon | US

7 Beasts Of The Southern Wild | Benh Zeitlin | US

8 The Master | Paul Thomas Anderson | US

9 The Hunt | Thomas Vinterberg | Denmark

10 Martha Marcy May Marlene | Sean Durkin | US

11 Carancho | Pablo Trapero | Argentina/Chile/France/South Korea

12 Headhunters | Morten Tyldum | Norway/Germany

13 Berberian Sound Studio | Peter Strickland | UK

14 The Queen Of Versailles | Lauren Greenfield | USA/Netherlands/UK/Denmark

15 A Royal Affair | Nikolaj Arcel | Denmark/Sweden/Czech Republic

16 Silent Souls | Aleksi Fedorchenko | Russia

17 Margin Call | JC Chandor | USA

18 The Descendants | Alexander Payne | US

19 A Simple Life | Ann Hui | Hong Kong

20 Tabu | Miguel Gomes | Portugal/Germany/Brazil/France

Now, I’m just doing the following for the record. It’s every new film I have seen this year, pretty much in order of theatrical release (although some I will have caught up with on DVD), and this includes reissues. I think it adds up to 121 films. I feel annoyed that I somehow missed Argo, and This Is Not A Film, and Ill Manors, but there are only so many hours in a day, and days in a week. I’ve been a real trainspotter about country of origin, but usually, the first country is the “nationality” of the film.

The Iron Lady | Phyllida Lloyd | UK/France

Margin Call | JC Chandor | USA

Shame | Steve McQueen | UK

War Horse | Steven Spielberg | USA

Haywire | Steven Soderbergh | USA/Ireland

Coriolanus | Ralph Fiennes | UK

J. Edgar | Clint Eastwood | USA

The Descendants | Alexander Payne | USA

The Grey | Joe Carnahan | USA

Carnage | Roman Polanski | France/Germany/Poland/Spain

Man On A Ledge | Asger Leth | USA

Martha Marcy May Marlene | Sean Durkin | USA

A Dangerous Method | David Cronenberg | UK/Germany/Canada/Switzerland

Girl Model | David Redmon, Ashley Sabin | USA/Russia/Japan/France

The Woman In Black | James Watkins | UK/Canada/Sweden

Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close | Stephen Daldry | USA

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel | John Madden | UK/USA/UAE

Rampart | Oren Moverman | USA

Carancho | Pablo Trapero | Argentina/Chile/France/South Korea

If Not Us, Who? | Andres Veiel | Germany

Michael | Markus Schleinzer | Austria

Bel Ami | Declan Donnellan, Nick Ormerod | UK/Italy

John Carter | Andrew Stanton | USA

Ordet | 1955, Carl Theodor Dreyer | Denmark

Trishna | Michael Winterbottom | UK

21 Jump Street | Phil Lord, Chris Miller | USA

Bill Cunningham New York | Richard Press | USA/France

Contraband | Baltasar Kormákur | USA/UK/France

In Darkness | Agnieszka Holland | Poland/Germany/Canada

Once Upon A Time In Anatolia | Nuri Bilge Ceylan | Turkey/Bosnia and Herzegovina

We Bought A Zoo | Cameron Crowe | USA

The Hunger Games | Gary Ross | USA

The Kid With A Bike | Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne | Belgium/France/Italy

Into The Abyss: A Tale Of Death, A Tale Of Life | Werner Herzog | USA/UK/Germany

A Cat In Paris | Jean-Loup Felicioli, Alain Gagnol | France/Netherlands/Switzerland/Belgium

Headhunters | Morten Tyldum | Norway/Germany

La Grande Illusion | 1937, Jean Renoir | France

Le Havre | Aki Kaurismäki | Finland/France/Germany

This Must Be The Place | Paolo Sorrentino | Italy/France/Ireland

Battleship | Peter Berg | USA

Blackthorn | Mateo Gil | Spain/USA/Bolivia/France

The Cabin In The Woods | Drew Goddard | USA

Elles | Malgorzata Szumowska | France/Poland/Germany

Marley | Kevin Macdonald | USA/UK

Marvel Avengers Assemble | USA

African Cats | Alastair Fothergill, Keith Scholey | USA

Albert Nobbs | Rodrigo García | UK/Ireland/France/USA

Damsels In Distress | Whit Stillman | USA

The Monk | Dominik Moll | Spain/France

American Reunion | John Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg | USA

Goodbye, First Love | France

Monsieur Lazhar | France

Le Quai des brumes | Marcel Carné | France

Cafe de Flore | Mia Hansen-Løve | France/Germany

Dark Shadows | Tim Burton | USA

The Raid | Gareth Evans | Indonesia/USA

Moonrise Kingdom | Wes Anderson | USA

Prometheus | Ridley Scott | USA/UK

The Angels’ Share | Ken Loach | UK/France/Belgium/Italy

Woody Allen: A Documentary | Robert B Weide | USA

Cosmopolis | David Cronenberg | Canada/France/Portugal/Italy

A Royal Affair | Nikolaj Arcel | Denmark/Sweden/Czech Republic

Rock Of Ages | Adam Shankman | USA

Killer Joe | William Friedkin | USA

Silent Souls | Aleksi Fedorchenko | Russia

Friends With Kids | Jennifer Westfeldt | USA

The King Of Devil’s Island | Marius Holst | Norway

Your Sister’s Sister | Lynn Shelton | USA

The Amazing Spider-Man | Marc Webb | USA

God Bless America | Bobcat Goldthwait | USA

The Hunter | Daniel Nettheim | Australia

You’ve Been Trumped | Antony Baxter | UK

Magic Mike | Steven Soderbergh | USA

Electrick Children | Rebecca Thomas | USA

The Giants | Bouli Lanners | Belgium

Nostalgia For The Light | Patricio Guzmán | France/Germany/Chile/Spain

Something From Nothing: The Art Of Rap | Ice-T/Andy Baybutt | UK/USA

The Dark Knight Rises | Christopher Nolan | USA/UK

In Your Hands | Lola Doillon | France

Swandown | Andrew Kötting | UK

Searching For Sugar Man | Malik Bendjelloul | Sweden/UK

El Bulli: Cooking In Progress | Gereon Wetzel | Germany

Dark Horse | Todd Solondz | USA

Ted | Seth MacFarlane | USA

Eames: The Architect And The Painter | Jason Cohn, Bill Jersey | USA

A Simple Life | Ann Hui | Hong Kong

Sound Of My Voice | Zal Batmanglij | USA

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry | Alison Klayman | USA

360 | Fernando Mereilles | UK/Austria/France/Brazil

The Bourne Legacy | Tony Gilroy | USA

Take This Waltz | Sarah Polley | Canada/Spain/Japan

The Imposter | Bart Layton | UK

The Watch | Akiva Schaffer | USA

Shadow Dancer | James Marsh | UK/Ireland

Berberian Sound Studio | Peter Strickland | UK

Anna Karenina | Joe Wright | UK

Lawless | John Hillcoat | USA

The Queen Of Versailles | Lauren Greenfield | USA/Netherlands/UK/Denmark

Tabu | Miguel Gomes | Portugal/Germany/Brazil/France

To Rome With Love | Woody Allen | USA/Italy/Spain

Killing Them Softly | Andrew Dominick | USA

Untouchable | Olivier Lakache, Eric Toledano | France

Barbara | Christian Petzold | Germany

Holy Motors | Leos Carax | France/Germany

Looper | Rian Johnson | USA/China

On The Road | Walter Salles | France/UK/USA/Brazil

Beasts Of The Southern Wild | Benh Zeitlin | USA

Grassroots | Stephen Gyllenhaal | USA

Ginger & Rosa | Sally Potter | UK/Denmark/Canada/Croatia

Elena | Andrey Zvyagintsev | Russia

Skyfall | Sam Mendes | UK/USA

Keep The Lights On | Ira Sachs | USA

Rust And Bone | Jacques Audiard | France/Belgium

The Master | Paul Thomas Anderson | USA

Alps | Giorgos Lanthimos | Greece

Aurora | Cristi Puiu | Romania/France/Switzerland/Germany

Great Expectations | Mike Newell | UK/USA

I, Anna | Barnaby Southcombe | UK/Germany/France

The Hunt | Thomas Vinterberg | Denmark

Amour | Michael Haneke | Austria/France/ Germany

Sightseers | Ben Wheatley | UK

A busy filmgoing year. Perhaps this is why I’ve spent so little of listening to new music – a fact that will be apparent when I do my Top 10 Albums of 2012 – and reading new books – ergo: my forthcoming Top 3 Books of 2012!

Looking forward to your own choices. Ideally, you won’t begin your comments with “I can’t believe you missed out …”

The power of love

Ah, that’s better. I’ve finally seen the two key films I needed to see before the end of 2012. They are Michael Haneke’s Amour, and Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers, and both predictably crash into my Top 10 films of the year, which I will publish next week. In the meantime, might I suggest some similarities between what are two alarmingly different films? I love it when circumstance and the vagaries of the release schedules do this, and wish I had the time to do this in more detail. First, the differences:

Amour is an Austrian/French/German co-production, in French, set in France, and written and directed by Haneke. The fictional story of an elderly couple coping with the physical deterioration of one of them, it is apparently based upon a number of Hanake’s own experiences, and stars two veterans of French cinema, Jean-Louise Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva. It is an austere chamber piece, shot largely in a Parisian apartment, which was built on a set.

Sightseers is a British production, in English, set in England, and co-written by its two stars, comedians Steve Oram and Alice Lowe, with Amy Jump (who also co-wrote Wheatley’s previous film, Kill List). The fictional story of a young couple exploring what is a relatively new relationship while caravanning across England, the characters were created and developed by Oram and Lowe in a stand-up act. It is a bleak comedy, shot on location.

What these two disparate films have obviously in common is that neither is comfortable viewing. Amour is slow, precise, claustrophobic and on the surface, tragic, as Riva’s character, a piano teacher, is reduced to a shell by a series of strokes. Her decline is difficult to watch at close quarters. Sightseers has a comedic, self-deprecating tone, and sometimes strays into farce, but it’s driven by a string of murders committed by the couple that take it into much darker waters. Nobody in the admittedly half-empty cinema I saw it in laughed once. Although perhaps they were smiling, as I was.

What they have in common, aside from the fact that I loved them both, is that they are about love, and the things love will make us do. In the case of Georges and Anne in Amour, who have been together for decades, their love forces them to face death, and to ask how far one would go for the other if the other was in a reduced state. Although the situation is sad, and depressing, the impact it has upon the couple’s devoted love is uplifting and, oddly, heartwarming. In both films, we hear an elderly woman moaning in pain. It opens Sightseers: it’s the infirm mother of Tina (Lowe), who is wailing in mourning of her dog, which was killed in an accident. Her pain is emotional. In Amour, we hear Anne moaning; the effect is just as unsettling and hypnotic. But her pain is physical and emotional. Tina and Chris (Oram) have only been “going out” for three months. Their love is new, and fresh, and thrilling. But it, too, is tested by how far one is prepared to go for the other.

I won’t go into plot details, obviously, but Sightseers builds through a series of grisly events to a point where Tina and Chris’s love has been strengthened, or so it appears. Amour begins with the ending and works in flashback, so we know the outcome of Georges and Anne’s ordeal, but it still shocks when it happens. You come out of both films with your faith in the power of love confirmed. (Sightseers actually goes literal and uses Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s The Power Of Love on its soundtrack, one of a number of pop tunes that either underlines or ironically undermines the action. Amour has no score, but classical music is key to the couple’s bond, just as, we might assume, 80s hits might be to the couple in Sightseers - Oram and Lowe were both teenagers in that decade.)

It goes without saying that Oram and Lowe, who conceived the project and their characters, bring a full-blooded sense of reality to two protagonists who might, in other circumstances, feel like Tarantino cartoons. No matter that Tina, for instance, has knitted herself some sexy underwear for the trip – including crotchless knickers – and Steve demands, “Mint me”, with his mouth agape when he requires an extra-strong mint of Tina; these comic creations live and breathe. Equally, although Trintignant and Riva are playing protagonists written from scratch by Haneke, their octogenarian skill and experience create an utterly believable autumn-years chemistry.

Although the apartment in Amour has been artificially created on a soundstage, it was modelled on an existing one, and it has been dressed impeccably, such that you could imagine Georges having sat in that same armchair for years and years. (The film actually opens in a theatre, where he and Anne enjoy what will turn out to be their last ever piano recital together, thereafter prisoners in their own home.) Sightseers makes a virtue of its locations, following Chris’s carefully-planned route from Redditch to Yorkshire, via such well-worn “quirky visitor attractions” as the Keswick Pencil Museum (it’s been used as a gag by many an observer of English life, but now, we actually see it!). It is as much an awestruck monument to England’s dark and mysterious past as The Wicker Man is of Celtic paganism. (Kill List, if you’ve seen it, draws more explicitly on pagan worship – as did Hot Fuzz, whose writer/director Edgar Wright is one of the key producers on Sightseers; both are made by Big Talk films.)

Terminal illness is not a new subject for drama. But Amour takes it to a new level, through the attitude of Georges, who rejects the hand-wringing of their mostly absent daughter (Isabelle Huppert), and refuses pity or sympathy, accepting the round-the-clock care his beloved wife needs with stoic patience. Seeing him sing to Anne, as part of her therapy, while she struggles to use her half-frozen mouth to join in, is one of the most moving things I’ve seen at the cinema this year. Sightseers doesn’t quite hit this pitch at any point, but Tina’s loyalty to Chris is no less touching. It may be played for laughs, but there’s a scene involving someone else’s digital camera that’s almost heartbreaking, thanks to Lowe’s brilliant reaction.

I’ve become a devoted admirer of Haneke’s work – Code Unknown, The Piano Teacher, Funny Games, Caché, The White Ribbon – but suspect that Amour might be his finest hour. I’m also a massive fan of Ben Wheatley’s films so far – Down Terrace, Kill List – and, even though he didn’t write this one, which skews the auteurist pitch a bit, it’s an incredible directorial achievement. The landscapes, in particular, seem to seethe with rage at certain points, while at others, they provide the primal peace and tranquility that Chris cannot get in the town. Down Terrace, made for almost no money, was physically closer to Amour, in that it was confined to rooms. Sightseers takes Wheatley out of himself, and offers a glimpse of a wider world. Meanwhile, Haneke has retreated indoors, back, perhaps, to the confinement of Funny Games. But that film’s trickiness has gone.

So, anyway, two amazing films. Go and see them both. If you’re lucky, four loud women won’t walk in during the final seconds of Sightseers, as they did last night. They thought they were walking in to see Great Expectations and – I heard them say – they assumed what we were watching was an advert.

Perhaps they were: an advert for love.

It’s not the end of the world

First: it looks like I’m getting two weeks off! So, this week’s Telly Addict, although not a review of the year, acts as an end-of-the-year, end-of-the-world edition. Under review are BBC Sports Personality of the Year, BBC1; the finale of Season Three of Boardwalk Empire, Sky Atlantic (no spoilers); The British Comedy Awards, C4; Richard E Grant’s Hotel Secrets, Sky Atlantic; Inside Claridge’s, BBC2; and Little Crackers, Sky1.

Secondly, I was also asked to promote The Great British Bake Off as my favourite TV show of 2012 (incorrectly billed as “the best TV programme of 2012″ in their more provocative headline). You can watch my little three-minute film here. Props to the Guardian website people for, once again, flagging this up on the main page. It’s reassuring to see that the commenters below the line have been instantaneous with their comfort and joy.

I watched this once. The presenters heads are completely up their own arses and it’s about the most tedious, poncy, self opinionated, piece of shit I have ever had the misfortune to view. Baking should be fun, with these arseholes it becomes a ritualised chore. More utter bilge from the increasingly bilge-producing BBC.

 

The middle-class fetishisation of food at a time of austerity – just what a PSB provider should be doing! What next … four celebrities in a big house with all the heating and electricity on talking about how warm and cosy they are?

 

FFS. We used to have telly like Kenneth Clarke’s Civilisation, Malcom Muggeridge, Face to Face, Not Only …But Also... Now we have endless cookery crap and people taking DNA tests live on air. Seriously- God help this country. It ain’t the Royals fault, either.

 

Corn syrup for undernourished brains.

 

Utter trash. Pointless competitions make for cheap nasty television. The smug presenters and contestants are horrible.

No names, obviously, as that would be playing into their evil hands. (I like the concept of “self opinionated” though.) So it’s “Goodwill to all men!” to those miserable fuckers, and “Merry Christmas!” to the rest of you. Thanks for viewing this year – in increasing numbers, so I’m told, since we moved to Tuesday mornings. Here’s to another year of me sitting at a slight angle and trying not to wear the same shirt two weeks’ running.