Scott Pixello's Blog, page 4

BAFTAs- an afterthought

Buried in amongst all the attention for Gravity & 12 Years a Slave was Steve Coogan's win for co-writing Philomena. Could it be after years of poor choices (The Parole Officer?), Mr Coogan has raised the bar on his own performances & after several really good pieces of work (Cock & Bull etc) he has rebooted the Partridge franchise via Alpha Papa not out of a creative drought but renewed recognition of the range and depth of his writing & acting abilities? Let's hope so. As Mr Patridge himself might say, 'Kiss my face!'

Gravity- best British film?

So Gravity wins a BAFTA for best British film. British? It features George Clooney & Sandra Bullock in virtually the only two parts and a Mexican director (Alfonso Cuaron, who also co-wrote & produced). Yet the technical and post-production effects upon which the film relies- these are British-based. Co-produced by British Producer David Heyman too.
Novels are much easier to attribute. Usually. OK, so publishers arrange for the pages to be printed & stuck together (& not a lot else) before taking their 90% cut but basically most books can be attributed to one person (except for ghost/co-written projects). Films are much more problematic to attribute to a single national source. This we really know from the 10 minute credit sequences at the end of most major movies, blockbusters especially. It takes hundreds, possibly thousands top make a big budget film.
So does it matter? Well, not really but just as the Merchant-Ivory films of the 1980s were promoted as quintessentially English whilst belong made by an Indian Producer, an American Director often using a non-English scriptwriter & typical settings including Tuscany (Room With a View), maybe it should give us pause.
By this standard, is Star Wars a British film ? After all, it was shot mostly in Britain with British technicians as well as many actors in minor roles. Think of Darth Vader- we hear the booming voice of American James Earl Jones but what we’re looking at is Cornishman Dave Prowse (he of the of the Green Cross Code). So really, it ought to be, ‘The forrrce is strong in this one, moi luverrrrr’ in a Cornish accent. Would the film have conquered the world then? Perhaps.

And the award for Most Romantic Scene goes to....

The hype and the global embracing or rejection of Valentine's Day consumerism got me thinking about the most romantic scene I could remember in a book or film.
Obvious candidate- first meeting of Romeo & Juliet. However, to like this you have to buy uncritically into the notion of love at first sight and ignore the fact that Romeo was obsessing over someone else (Rosalyne) only days before.
In film? If you rule out Dirty Dancing's hideous 'Let's do the song right here' moment at the end (how many other films has that actress made?), I'm drawn to the picnic scene in Betty Blue. For a moment, everything seems possible but all the seeds of tragedy have already been sown- that momentary balance- that's romance for me but hey, what do I know?

This one's for all you lovers (of historical fiction)

Readers of my posts will know I don’t really use them as a blatant means to promote/sell my books but I’ve just released the second in my Keith Ramsbottom series and it’s made me think even more than the first one about factual accuracy in historical fiction.
Readers of historical fiction are very quick to point out errors and what they see as glaring anachronisms- the wrong kind of hat, the wheels on a carriage being too big etc- in writing set in the past. Now while I can see that ridiculous mistakes like putting a jet engine in the 15th century can destroy the credibility of the text as a historical document, such readers, even with the engine example, need to take a deep breath, step back & remember, this is FICTION. It makes things up- that’s what fiction does. If I was writing serious non-fiction, which I have done, then certainly everything needs to be sourced down to the nth degree but not in fiction. Some readers, often genuine lovers of history, need to leave their continuity detectors at the door and ‘go with it’ a bit more. Go on- you’ll enjoy the ride more if you can be more relaxed about how you get there.

'Because it's there'

For some genetic reason, British so-called 'explorers' still seem drawn to particularly pointless activities like trying to scale Everest by hopping backwards in their PE kit or trying to be the first 11-year-old to reach the South Pole blind-folded.
I was reminded of this by events last weekend at the World Sauna Championships, dominated by Scandanavian countries where saunas are a big part of the culture, especially in Finnland. Well, take a competition in which you win by enduring incredible temperatures for longer than everyone else and eventually guess what happens? That's right- someone died. Very tragic but very stupid.
There is usually a perfectly good reason why no-one has done something before- it's stupid, dangerous, pointless or all three.

AA Gill v Morrissey

Critic AA Gill has just won a top prize in the Hatchet Job of the Year competition, awarded to the most scathing review of a book in the last 12 months.
Gill profoundly hated Morrissey's autobiography, which proudly declared its hubris under the Penguin Classic label.
Now, while this makes for some amusing headlines, I'm not really convinced it does much for the status of the critic. If awards are given for vitriol, however creative, it hardly encourages better more insightful writing. Unlike the bad sex awards, which humiliate the writer, here righteous aggression is seen as a badge of honour.
Critics are increasingly seen as irrelevant in an age of multi-media instant opinions. Would it not be better to engage with something constructively & celebrate that? Be critical by all means but illuminate the topic, don't just denigrate it. Otherwise everyone loses, including ultimately the critic him/herself.

I thought we were dealing with experts

Parts of the UK are suffering record flooding. Some people have been under water for WEEKS. Eventually, at the weekend the government put up a spokesperson to apologise for their mishandling of the situation (which includes only very belatedly involving the military).
What was simply astonishing to me was the tiny throwaway line by the individual in question, the much- and very correctly hated-Eric Pickles, who said in reference to the scientific advice they'd received '...we thought we were dealing with experts...' I thought I'd surely misheard this but no, he actually said these words.
Might I suggest the best use of Mr Pickles' slug-like form is to use his Jabba the Hut-style body as a giant barrage to block oncoming floodwater as it seems little use for much else.

Blue goats and a painting that's worth shag-all

British businessman Martin Lang is not a happy man. He bought a painting in 1992 for one hundred thousand pounds. He thought the painting was by the famous Russian-born but French-sounding Marc Chagall- he of the ubiquitous blue goats.
Mr Lang began to suspect the picture was a fake so he sent it to the Chagall Committee in Paris, which passes judgement on the veracity of such paintings (hence the name- duh!). Unfortunately, the experts on the committee decided that the picture was fake. OK, thought Mr Lang, I've got something that's not as valuable as I'd thought, such is life but no! The committee moved to the next step in the process- they're going to burn it. That's right, they seriously expect people to submit paintings for verification but if they're judged as fakes, they end up being burned. It has the feel of a medieval test for whether you're a witch or not. My mum hates Chagall's paintings and wants to burn them all anyway. I've suggested she tries to get a job on the committee.

A Royal Scandal

Prince William has gone hunting in Spain a day before making a speech about preserving wildlife.
Why do we continue to indulge this unelected bunch? Release them into the wild & let's have a bit of target practice. Can't people see how this makes Britain look to the rest of the world?
If someone suggested today let's have an unelected family, chosen at random, to receive millions of pounds of taxpayers' money and allowed to live in luxury palaces for life, just so we can watch them do it, I think it would rightfully provoke anger.
Al Murray's pub landlord character tells a joke about America being the only country to have a dream becausethey're asleep. Not so- it's the Brits. WAKE UP.

The EU & what to do with it

There has been some reaction to the leaked comment by Senior US Diplomat, Victoria Nuland, who declared, 'F*ck the EU.'
UKIP is thinking about suing as she appears to have stolen their secret campaign slogan for the forthcoming Euro-elections.