marramgrass

After months of waiting, and of hype that seemed to get whipped up even further after the death of Heath Ledger in January, I toddled along on Thursday night to catch The Dark Knight. Along with, seemingly, half of Belfast. It was hoachin’.

Did I enjoy it? Oh yes. Was it “the best movie, like, ever“? No, not really, but a pretty fine show all the same.

The obvious question: Heath Ledger as the Joker? He was great. Folks have asked me how he compared to Jack Nicholson in the Burton version — actually, I think the whole internet was asking that before the film opened. I felt that Ledger’s unhinged nihilist (ooh, look at me) was much more menacing — and Joker-like — than Nicholson’s self-assured… Jack Nicholson standard character.

I know others will disagree, but I was also completely onboard with the handling of Harvey Dent/Two-Face.

The film belonged to Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart and Gary Oldman (an actor who we’ve never really seen enough of). It almost seemed to me like Batman was the white space around these three that let them do their thing, and do it in spades.

Criticisms? The Bat-voice, so comical as to be distracting, is one of the beats where the Nolans lost some of their intended realism. That, and some of the daft Bat-gadgetry, just didn’t seem to fit. Casting wise, I wish Maggie Gyllenhaal had had something to do other than [SPOILER]. She was wasted. If only Ms Gyllenhaal had been there last time round, then Katie Holmes could’ve handled the character’s three or four lines for this one.

I approached this one as energetic popcorn entertainment and left most of my analytical brain at home, but Glenn offers a some deeper thoughts. Batman has always been the hero who will never get an easy ride. His lack of any ‘superpower’, his difficult past and his blunter-than-normal vigilante status see to that.

It’s a characterization that lends itself to the darker, grittier kind of movie that Batman Begins and The Dark Knight have been. Batman works because he’s just that little bit closer to what might be possible, but he makes us uncomfortable because he shows us the consequences that neither Superman, Spider-Man nor the X-Men ever did. We can read life onto him much more easily. He’s a bit of white space that allows us to fantasize and moralize and perhaps question what justice might be, here in the real world.

Unfortunately, in this one, Bruce Wayne and Batman were almost (Rachel Dawes) the thinnest characters there, and it was left to Jim Gordon and Harvey Dent to hold the line.

It’s still the best movie I’ve seen this year, I think, and probably due a second viewing sometime soon.

I’ve recently read a book about writing, and I’m currently about two-thirds of the way through a book about reading.

On Writing, by Stephen King, starts with a sparse but very engaging memoir before moving into a series of tips and bits and bobs of advice “on writing”. All the usual pearls are mentioned: practise, practise, practise; expunge all adverbs; write for the love of it; briefer is better (says Stephen King?); don’t expect to make any money, never mind a living (again, says Stephen King?)…

I would say that even if you have no intention of writing for yourself, and even if you have only the slightest curiosity as to what’s behind the curtain, you’ll enjoy a read of this little book.

The Complete Polysyllabic Spree, by Nick Hornby, is a collection of columns written for The Believer. He’s giving me a growing list of books, classic and modern, to add to my pile, and doing so with a great deal of good humour along the way.

These two books have in common a deep conviction that fiction, literature, books, whatever, should be accessible, that there’s no place for any notion that reading is only for the posh. In the middle of On Writing I realised that somewhere in me I have this prejudice against Stephen King, even though any book of his that I have read has been great fun. These two books have combined to point out to me how ridiculous that prejudice is.

As Nick Hornby complains, reading’s supposed to hurt, isn’t it? Reading Stephen King (or Nick Hornby, for that matter) doesn’t hurt. It’s fun.

Where theatre, and then cinema, have moved from being looked down upon to being respectable, even cultural, books have fallen by the way. That’s a shame.

I’ve always read a lot, ever since I was able. I remember the first book my parents bought me because I asked for it. I think we were in Newtownards shopping. Either way, I recall defying warnings of car-sickness to read it on the way home. That book was The Owl Who Was Afraid Of the Dark, in big-print kid-friendly paperback. I think that was the book that started a lifetime’s habit.

These days reading is still my most common pastime, almost always for the pure pleasure of it, and it doesn’t hurt one bit.

What about you? Read anything good lately?

While in Santorini last month I took the chance to read a few books of varying quality.

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, by Michael Chabon, is a whodunit set against an alternative history where the Jewish state was established in Alaska instead of the Middle East. Very enjoyable, even when it turns strange towards the end, mixing tales of pseudo-messianic prophecy with blunt political commentary.

Superpowers, by David J. Schwarz,is a fun tale about a group of college students who wake up one morning each having developed a different superheroic ability. An enjoyable yarn, well-told but ultimately unsatisfying. Again, the politics are a bit blunt.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter, by Jeff Lindsay, is the first novel of the series on which the TV show is based. I’m afraid it did nothing for me (not, as you might guess, because I’m at all squeamish about the subject matter — more the shoddy execution of an interesting idea).

The Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick was both fascinating and enjoyable. Less plot, more situation.

Copenhagen, March 2005.

I’m still sorting through old photographs, trying to develop some sort of organisation. This one is from our last foreign holiday before we went to Santorini last month.

I don’t think I’ve posted it here before, but I could be wrong.

Each morning, driving into Belfast (not so bad when the schools are on holiday), we listen to BBC Radio Ulster. It’s the only time in the day when I receive the news via a human voice rather than through the blue-on-white of Google Reader, but I’m getting fed up with it.

Take this morning as an example of why. Yesterday the Air Traffic Control radar at Dublin Airport fell over causing delays, diversions and cancellations to mess with the plans of many a holiday-maker. This morning a representative of one of the airlines was being interviewed on the radio. The first question he was asked: “Who is to blame?”

The was no acknowledgement that sometimes these things happen, and only a passing reference to the fact that the decision to take the system down was intended primarily to ensure the safety of flights in and out of the airport. The interviewer’s main concern seemed to be who would be held accountable for this terrible, awful, atrocious turn of events where no-one at all was injured.

I’m coming to despise that phrase, “held accountable”, and all the other variations that express the same idea: this was someone’s fault, and they shall pay.

It shows in the journalism, where interviewers seem to believe that their job is primarily to make their interviewee, whoever they may be, squirm as much as possible. Sometimes the desire to ask a tough and hard-nosed question is necessary, often it’s just silly and irrelevant. It shows in the phone calls, emails and text-messages from listeners, as the new, interactive BBC lets everyone throw in their two pen’orth. And you can see plenty of it — more, even! — online where the communication is oh-so-easy.

Of course society needs to ensure that everyone from government to grocer deals fairly, honestly and safely with each other, but I wish we could recover the shrug of the shoulder that recognises that sometimes stuff just happens, you know?

Again I think about something I’ve seen or heard, and I wonder about grace. When I encounter a mistake or an inconvenience, I do my best to remember to acknowledge no harm and let it go, but it’s tough when everything I listen to in the morning is focussed on assigning blame.

Do you think we could manage, as a society — especially in this little corner of the world where so much real harm and hurt still casts it shadow — to try for that grace?

I’m maybe half-way through the task of sorting and organising the almost 60 gigabytes of photos stored on our slowly-dying Windows desktop. This is from September 2004, of now-defunct Third From The Left playing the Bongo Club in Edinburgh.

Waterfront Hall, Belfast, July 2008.

(See the first, second and third posts in this series for what I’m doing.)

This series is exploring a bit more widely than I intended. It was conceived when I started wondering about how ‘the media’ (including those that operate mainly offline) and other commentators place such emphasis on the internet as a venue, a forum and a significant influence on society. I began to wonder if this was all just a little bit closed, a little self-important and short-sighted — especially as I am someone who has been fascinated by technology and by online goings-on for years.

Technology has allowed me to have contact and conversation with many people who I would otherwise never be in touch with. I have learned from them, laughed with them, shared in the little corners of life they choose to share, and I hope to continue to do so. However, by far the most meaningful contact I have had online has been with those with whom I have some form of relationship in the real world. Previously I posted about my infatuation with Twitter — it’s most fun with the folks I know in real life.

Beyond that, though, what connection has all this with ‘real life’?

Every now and then you’ll meet someone who goes all misty-eyed and smiles in an unnerving way when they talk about the internet and the good it can do. Maybe it can’t do much good in itself, but access to information is generally a good thing, and when it comes to making info accessible you generally can’t do much better than the internet. Ish.

The question is availability. Broadband uptake in Northern Ireland is high (Alan in Belfast recently provided a deal of analysis of this), but there are still plenty of folks who, if they have internet access at home at all, rely on dial-up. Even for those with a high-speed connection, cable covers a small area and DSL is a fragile technology that needs you to be pretty close to your telephone exchange. And it does cost money.

Theoretically the network of public libraries provides internet access for all, but even if we accept that then there is still the issue of capacity. Just because I’m completely comfortable using the web to find out what I need to know, communicating by email and IM, doesn’t mean my gran is.

Of course, this has changed (progressed?), is changing and will change, as long as no-one slips through the gaps.

Useful (powerful?) as technologically advanced communications are, perhaps it’s best to remember that they are as well as rather than instead of everything else we already had and relied upon. I wonder, generally as well as from my own experience, if more and more people will find it takes a conscious effort to write a letter, pick up the phone, drop by and say “Hi” rather than send an email or a tweet, or leave a message on a Facebook wall?

That’s at an individual level. For society, I doubt that there’s any going back. Commerce, government, entertainment… the change has happened, and corporately nothing is the same. Just remember that ‘society’ and ‘community’ aren’t necessarily the same thing, and what works on one level doesn’t always work on others.

Belfast, July 2008.

It seems that one of the marks of a modern European city is public art. I’ve seen some that is strange (the five-foot square matrix of 4-inch umbrellas in Athens airport, say), but the first time I came off the ferry in Belfast and saw the Beacon of Hope (as I’m told this is called) lit up I thought it was simply tremendous.

I suppose, like most art, she will connect with everyone slightly differently, but I did find something eminently hopeful about this structure standing over the Lagan.

The sign by the base reads:

This female figure represents various allegorical themes associated with hope and aspiration, peace and reconciliation and is derived from images from Classical and Celtic mythology.

This symbol creates a tangible first statement of our long term objective in bringing people together to foster a happy and fulfilling life for all and a sense of gratefulness for all that life has given us.

Symbols can carry great power — as everyone in Northern Ireland witnesses from time to time — I like to hope this one does, too.