Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America and American in Iran by Azadeh Moaveni is a lively biography from someone of an unusually tender age for this type of thing. But Moaveni is a wise 24 and her story is a colourful one - so it's well worth a read.
Compiled from the reality TV show episodes, The Armstrongs: The Movie is obviously very funny, but I didn't expect to find it as sad as I did. Perhaps because I was feeling ill when I watched it, I remember it as very queasy viewing. Wikipedia has collected up some marvellous quotes from it, though.
"We could get rid of Sally and make the others think 'shit'. It’ll be like taking dynamite to a naked flame festival."
"Fame is a funny old business. It can open doors for you. Me and Ann went for a meal recently and Ann got extra mash and I got an egg. I thought 'I like this'."
"We're trying to make paper airplanes out of concrete."
"You're really smart, you're like the man from Burtons. I'm like the man from ... not Burtons."
"What was was, and now what is is, and is tomorrow a new day? Yes it is."
Never mind high culture, I got stuck on a long train journey yesterday and I'd finished my book - so I downloaded The Sims 2 onto my mobile phone. I've never played the proper game, and obviously this was just a very simplistic java game for phones, but it was great fun for about an hour. Mildly addictive for another half hour after that. And boring after that. But better than reading 'The Metro' or something.
Ranting from Pinter aside ("boom, boom, boom boom... boom boom boom") Lebanon, Lebanon is a lovely collection, although it suffers from a little raw sentiments towards Israel in places.
Very impressed with the new BBC3 documentary series Sweet Sixteen so far. Tonight's was brilliant and yet rather sad - a documentary about a sixteen year old Turkish boy in London who was very clever but going off the rails; it showed his school and his sisters trying to steer him through his GCSEs, but having to combat the fact that he was absolutely obsessed with - not girls or gangs or drugs - with being famous.
He said he already thought of himself as a celebrity, and was bunking school to attend X-Factor auditions, appointments with modelling agencies. It quickly became apparent that he was neither talented nor anything approaching good looking enough to be a model. Neither of his parents engaged with him and spent most of their time in Turkey. Eventually he tracked his dad down (he thought he was working in a shop in Archway but it turned out he was in Istanbul) and convinced him to pay for him to have a (completely unnecessary) nose job.
He missed three weeks of school as a consequence and nearly missed his exams (although luckily he was intuitively bright enough to pass them in the end); then went back to all the agencies and drama schools that rejected him, confident that they'd say yes this time. Of course, none of them did. Awful.
Another really sad thing was that he was so obsessed with his career and used it as an excuse to keep saying "my mum and dad want me to get married but I've so much to do first that I'm not marrying 'til I'm 40". Couldn't help wondering if so much of his attraction to the world of drama was influenced by the fact that he seemed quite obviously to be gay, but of course in his traditional family couldn't probably even consider facing up to it.
It ended with one of those painful, defensive rants we're becoming so familiar with: "I will be famous, and everyone will be sorry - I'm totally unique, there's no-one like me, my name should be the first and last thing everyone says every day" etc... agh.
Six Feet Under is an odd one; I've been watching it a lot, as More4 is showing one a night, and my initial apathy has progressed through wild enthusiasm to furrow-browed ennui. Perhaps its the effect of watching an episode a night, but it's a show which seems to age rapidly.
Pamela Hansford Johnson is one of my very favourite authors, but I've picked up 'The Holiday Friend' on several occasions without it sticking. I don't suppose it will now either, as I picked it up this morning as a diversion from weightier stuff. Still, PHJ is a wonderful writer.
The last film by the makers of last night's 'The Trial of Tony Blair' was last year's Blunkett satire, 'A Very Social Secretary', and given that that piece was a bit of a disappointment - a kind of blunt, heavy Adrian Mole - I wasn't expecting too much of the new film, although that instinct was tempered somewhat by the knowledge that by far the best aspect of that film was Robert Lindsay's unexpectedly brilliant portrayal of the Prime Minister. Last night Lindsay took on the lead role and the film was, rather surprisingly, rather brilliant.
Obviously any film that features Tony Blair being extradited to the Hague on charges of war crimes is pretty close to the ultimate left-wing fantasy, but the film was not merely a document of wish-fulfillment, but also a tightly scripted and brilliantly performed drama, which eschewed - a couple of predictable jokes at Cherie Booth aside - heavy satire in favour of a light comedic touch which saw Lindsay's Blair comically refusing to acknowledge his sins. Set in 2010, with a stubborn Blair finally handing over to a vindictive Brown (whose involvement in the plot admittedly stretches the boundaries of plausibility) and converting to Catholicism, the film's really about the denial of responsibility, although Lindsay, no fan of Blair, gives a sympathetic account of the PM's faults. The answer the film really wants to know, of course, is one we may never find out - whether Blair is haunted by guilt and by the images of the countless dead. In 'The Trial Of Tony Blair', he is. In real life, who knows?
I watched the first episode of Life On Mars again tonight - it's being repeated on BBC4. God, what a brilliant programme; well scripted and beautifully acted, but the real feat is the idea - we've got used to the idea of concept drama recently, but this is the first time that ... oh fuck it, alright, tonight I derived the most pleasure from watching Eddie Murphy in Coming to America on ITV2. There, I said it.
A slow day, and one during which I chose to do nothing much more than sit through four hours of period drama - the BBC's recent version of Jane Eyre, which was predictably wonderful; a tremendous, tremelous Jane and a Rochester whose every emotion is violently visible - cracking stuff.
More lovely writing from Laura Barton in the Guardian today:
"By the age of 16, I knew it took precisely four seconds to hop from my bed to the tape player. I knew just how long it took to rewind the Pixies' Hey. And I would make this little journey, back and forth, back and forth, the way a sparrow collects twigs, as if I were building a nest up there on my eiderdown".
Brilliant as ever.
The Odessa Files
You can't beat Nazis as bad guys in films. The Odessa Files is something I half-watched and enjoyed a year or two ago, so it was good to watch it again properly - its the kind of long, taut thriller that seems to be a speciality of 1970s cinema - it sags a little towards the end but it's still thoroughly enjoyable sick bed viewing, which is what I did with my day today.
The BBC finally got round to showing the The Good, The Bad and The Queen concert which myself, Andrew, Anne-Sophie and Jeanne attended in the autumn, and it was nice to watch it back and marvel over what a lovely new set of songs Damon has written (delicate folky hymns to london with maurauding dub basslines, ace) as well as try to ignore the fact that he had a hissy fit half-way through. Still, what a brilliant band - excited about the album in a couple of weeks.
The Klaxons - Golden Skans
Really enjoying this one, having been unconvinced by their previous singles; kind of a big, swooshing, soaring Spacemen 3 / Baby D car crash (scripted by JG Ballard) type thing. Yes, it is as pretentious as that. Ace tune though.
The Thick of It is unrivalled - the best and most accurate political programme on TV in living memory.
I loved the exchange between the beleaguered and rather old fashioned one nation tory and his savile-row suited spin doctor:
Stewart Pearson: Just wondering whether you're fully conversant with the new line, whether you're really up to speed?
Peter Manion: I don't know. Am I? Because I get people stopping me in the street and asking "are you still for locking up yobbos", and I say, "yeah, of course we are", and then I think, 'or are we?', because maybe I missed a memo from you. Maybe I should understand yobbos now. Or not even call them yobbos. Call them 'young men with issues around stabbing'.
(pause while PM gestures towards his shirt)
PM: No tie, you say?
SP: No tie.
PM: Quite a nice suit actually.
SP: So we were thinking... shirt outside the trousers.
PM: Outside? Not tuck my shirt in? I always tuck my shirt in. It's part of getting dressed.
Genius.
This Life +10 was a funny programme, in the end - not a very good idea in the first place, for one thing; these one-off reunion shows, in my experience, rarely work. If you are seeking to advance storylines and tie up ten year old threads, particularly on a show where a lot happened, then attempting to do so in a little over an hour is a thankless task. If Amy Jenkins and the five actors at the centre of her show were serious about providing a resolution to the two hugely successful This Life series in the mid 1990s, they should have done more than one show, and in doing so could - just as they did initially - illustrate their conflicting actions and emotions in something approaching detail. Instead, last night's show had the feel of a heavily edited omnibus, or - at worst - a thinly sketched out and poorly scripted attempt at a Poliokoff drama.
For all that, Jenkins created a set of enduring characters (although why one of the best, Ferdy, was excluded wasn't really clear) and there were moments in the show - the interplay between Egg and Miles, Anna's rant at the dinner table - that conjured up sparks reminiscent of the old magic. Yet the characters, as befitting such a grand finale, have all become ludicrous caricatures. Egg is a super-successful novelist, and Milly a 'supermum'. Warren - presumably by virtue of his being 'the sensitive one' - is a self-help junkie. Anna is a hardnosed lawyer who specialises in getting hardened criminals acquitted and Miles is a kind of tousle-haired playboy, and a member of the landed gentry, to boot. What's more, he and Anna still have the same old fizz and - guess what - this time she's broody.
Strands of believability snake through an absurd plot. Egg has published one well-received novel but he's already having a high-profile documentary made about him, which conveniently (sorry, absurdly) means that all the characters get to do idiotic reality show style 'video diaries'. This is really stupid. And yet Egg's first novel was just a slightly fictionalised version of his flatmate's lives, and he can't write another. Shades of Amy Jenkins' writing career aside, I kind of bought this; Egg tended to be watching more than acting in the first iteration of This Life, and it's from experiences such as his that hit novels are no doubt borne.
And while Miles is still a buffoon, albeit one who has now lost any edge or believability (even, sadly, as a stooge for Anna, who is still well played by Daniella Nardini), his character gives Warren his one believable characteristic. For although Warren, one short scene in a cafe with Milly aside, is almost unrecognisable, it's through Miles that we occasionally glimpse him. Jenkins gives us just one direct example of his mental distress, but it's a shrewd one, for he is still tortured by the fact that, despite the closeness of the housemates in the orginal show, Miles never welcomed him into the group. Again, believable. Andrew Lincoln, meanwhile, through Egg, provides the occasional nostalgic lightness of touch - his brief asides, usually expressing frustration or bewilderment, are a regular treat.
Elsewhere, however, so much is wrong. It's natural given the power of Anna's character, that Jenkins should wish to return to the issue of career women and whether it's possible to have it all, but why she has to then crowd Anna and Milly into such opposing stereotypes is quite unclear. Equally, in the intervening years - not least thanks to 'The Office' - a decent scriptwriter should have learned a lot about the confusions of love and the premise of the happy ending. But there's nothing endearing about Anna or Miles' scenes together, and that's a travesty after the emotional power of their relationship ten years ago. When Miles, loopily, goes bankrupt and leaves for Timbuktu at the end of the show (I know), there's no chance of a dramatic or emotional ending, and nor does the viewer desire one. Instead, the show ends with Miles shouting 'Love you all' at his friends. Amazing and hilarious, and not in a good way. As for Anna's desperation for a baby, it's all just carried out in such a clumsy fashion - although it does prompt the worst line of the show (and there are a few zingers): "I've chosen Warren as the co-parent".
The little tics, meanwhile, are as annoying as the absurdities of the plot. In one scene Egg and Milly's son swallows a coin. They're frantic with worry. Seconds later he's forgotten and doesn't appear for the remaining twenty minutes. What happened? Did he die? Elsewhere, Egg and Miles embark on a furious argument when the former discovers the latter voted Tory at the last election. Am I the only one who just assumed that all of the characters in the initial This Life were natural tories? OK, maybe not Egg, and Anna might have escaped that burden by virtue of being a Scot, but Jenkins, looking for significance in her original series, is exaggerating things if she felt it presaged and heralded the arrival of New Labour. It was about a bunch of rich lawyers, for god's sake.
And then a few moments which crack and fizzle, a few scenes which remind us why This Life was such a great show. And then you ask, "was it such a great show?". Probably not, but it was loud and brash and rude and funny and, at the time, pretty unique. Amy Jenkins manages to stir up moments of nostalgia, but ultimately adds little to the pot. Never mind - it was nice, despite the flaws, to have it back for the evening. I don't suppose in ten years time there'll be any clamour for a This Life +20, however.
