The People versus Roman Polanski

I wonder what LA's district attorney Steve Cooley thinks he's up to with the renewed pursuit of Roman Polanski; and I suppose we'll find out soon enough. Perhaps he thinks he's reminding us that justice never sleeps, even when, as in this decades-old case, the crime no longer has a plaintiff, the victim Samantha Geimer having moved on with her life. Perhaps, too, Cooley, a reputedly resolute and conservative ex-policeman, wants the world to know that Los Angeles is not merely a bolthole of liberal Hollywood types who want their excesses and turpitudes forever excused without retribution.

Cooley is reported by the Telegraph as saying, '[Polanski's] been trying to get it resolved on his terms but it's going to on the terms of the Los Angeles County justice system. Some form of justice will finally be done... He received a very, very, very lenient sentence back then which would never be achievable under today's laws." So what now? He wants Polanski to be sentenced anew with the power of hindsight, befitting the manners and mores of the 2000s rather than the 1970s?

Well, of course I can't know the lawman's mind, but I guess he feels the 76-year-old filmmaker has certainly made his own bed in that respect. Does he feel that the 42 days Polanski spent in Chino jail back in 1977, locked up alongside 'incredible murderers' (as the director once recalled to Martin Amis), cannot stand as adequate penal servitude for the crime? That the role played in Polanski's decision back then to skip bail by the capricious and dishonourable Judge Rittenband can be, essentially, overlooked? That, since the law and not the victim determines what punishment fits the crime, Samantha Geimer's opinions are immaterial? Again, on all counts, we shall see.

The Telegraph also reports that Cooley "is facing questions in California over the cost of pursuing Polanski when the state is having to release 40,000 inmates because of prison overcrowding." But I doubt that will perturb DA Cooley for one moment if, as it seems, he's a man who believes the sword of truth may indeed rust in its scabbard for however long it takes to get the blade out and the lopping done proper.

My own second-rate opinion, as you may have guessed, is that this is all a colossal waste of time and endeavour over a wrongdoing that was admitted to and paid for long ago.

The famous image of Polanski above is by and (c) Harry Benson.

Labour: The vastness of the North devours us

The last days, the bunker days... and tonight BBC1's Question Time fielded a quite conspicuously skewed-right-of-centre panel, there to jump up and down on a cut-out of Gordon Brown, cheered to the hilt by a rowdy audience. But, then again, since Harriet Harman was the allotted speaker for Labour, I was indeed minded to vote for Anyone But.

So, has this been as ghastly a day for Brown as his detractors would desire? The Lockerbie blowback continues, and for sure the Government's inability to say what it thought about Scotland's choice (and why) is rather shameful. As for the Baroness Scotland - the debacle serves her right, though I wouldn't have wanted her to go until her high-handed third-rate attempt at an apology - like the expenses thing, can none of these people feel the gorge of their own hypocrisy rising up to flood their throats?

Shriti Vadera? Well, I see Robert Peston rides in manfully to say that her new job is all of a piece with Gordon's wishes. And I hope that is so, because the vultures of the press were squatting over that story all bloody day long, hoping perhaps that Vadera would flounce out in high dudgeon and give Gordon a hard boot in the sporran on her way out.

I admire Charles Clarke MP and can't argue with any of what he said the other day. I admire the serial Brown-basher John Rentoul too, have done ever since reading his outstanding biography of Tony Blair, but while I find it noteworthy that Rentoul "admired [Blair] more at the end of his time in office than he did at the beginning" (since I did too), I rather feel he's now going a tad overboard on this same sentiment. Still, I remain his fan, and we are likeminded too in wanting Alan Johnson for Labour leader.

But what really preys on me is this headline today from the FT: "Labour’s support in north collapses." Without serving up any hard data from their new research that I can see, the paper nonetheless warrants that "The Tories have built a narrow four-point lead in the north, eradicating the 19-point Labour lead in the region that underpinned Tony Blair’s last general election victory." Dear me how, the shame of it. I suppose it partly depends on how you define The North. In the Spectator David Blackburn looks at things in the round, arguing "the evidence that Middle England is not fully behind Mr Cameron will cause a few headaches in Central Office. But if the Tories win in Newcastle, a marginal victory in Redditch is of no consequence."

Had away, bonny lad. I guess conceivably the Lib Dems could turn their municipal success in Newcastle into a dominance of Tyneside's Westminster seats too. But the Tories? Truly I would gan to the top of our stairs. Not that there aren't Tories in NE1, mind you - but in the main they either travel by chauffeur or hide behind mansion walls; and that has never seemed quite sufficient to win a polling majority.

None of this, I know, is any comfort to Brown, or "The Wolf", as I ought really to call him were I to extend the entirely regrettable WWII analogy of this post's title and opening lines, occasioned probably by there being a new biography of the appalling Alan Clark going round... Divvint get wuh started on that one.

There goes PoliticsHome...

Every day for about the last 18 months I've been clicking on PoliticsHome.com to get their digest of the day's main news and news-related comment, curated and sorted in links gathered from across the gamut of the daily UK papers.
While moving about the site I've tended, too, to take a gander at their live, rolling bulletin board of what they rate as the best blog posts on politics - the calibre of which is decidedly more variable than the print-standard news, but quite often refreshingly candid and original, when not ravening for the ascension to power of Her Majesty's current Opposition...
The sort of Web 'aggregation' practised by PoliticsHome happens to suit both my ideological mindset and reading habits these days: I speak as someone who takes the FT when out and about but otherwise finds the other daily papers a bit demographically skewed, irksomely predictable in that sense, and generally incapable of satisfying the real range of one's interests in the current affairs. The pick and mix of PoliticsHome makes for an enviably diverse reading experience, though, of course, all it is doing is enabling a promiscuous cruising of the fruits of the writerly/reporting labour of others. On that score, for a long time I've been of the guilty feeling that papers need to be extracting exchange value for the content they make available online; and so I back what I suppose we must call the Murdoch position on this matter.
Anyhow, much of the foregoing was instantly outmoded as of today by the resignation from PoliticsHome of its editorial chief Andrew Rawnsley, this in response to... oh, I'll just let the BBC explain:
"Deputy Conservative chairman Lord Ashcroft has bought a stake in the grassroots website ConservativeHome. ConservativeHome and its non-partisan sister site PoliticsHome will both be part of a new media company in which Lord Ashcroft owns a 57.5% stake. ConservativeHome editor Tim Montgomerie said he was "satisfied" with assurances the peer did not want to interfere with the site's editorial policy. But PoliticsHome editor-in-chief Andrew Rawnsley has resigned. Mr Rawnsley, who is also associate editor of The Observer newspaper, said he took the job on the basis that PoliticsHome was "clearly independent of any party both editorially and financially". He told the Guardian: "It was essential for users of the site that they could feel absolute confidence in the political independence of PoliticsHome. I do not believe that can be compatible with being under the ownership of the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party."
Am I just being Minerva's owl now when I say that for quite a while I had been feeling that PoliticsHome was a bit too cosy to the Cameron project in any case? Maybe all I was picking up was that tiring and oft-noted NuBlue tinge to most UK politics coverage online - evidence if nothing else of the part-effectiveness of Cameron's 'modernising' of 'his' party.
In fairness it's PoliticsHome (through the medium of the aforementioned blog-roll) that has enabled me tonight to easily follow the course of its own regrettable 'becoming the story', as a hefty chunk of its cross-party-sympathy Panel of 100 analysts have duly resigned in sympathy with Rawnsley's concerns. But, nonetheless, per those very concerns, for me as a reader it now must be 'Goodnight Vienna' (or 'Goodnight Saigon'?) too. Anybody know of another good current affairs aggregator out there?

NUFC: Playing for pride, but quite knackered

A sluggish return to points-winning ways for the lads today. A week ago we'd have been fancied to give Plymouth a good hiding. A month ago you'd have got short odds against Amobi hitting six. Tonight we'll take 3-1 and forget about it, cheers.

But the lessons of the midweek Blackpool loss keep coming. We can scarcely afford to be more than one man down at any given time. Only a pair of central defenders to spare (though I'm not sure where the Georgian lad newly loaned from Blackburn is meant to fit - I'd be as concerned for the want of a lefty other than Enrique, frankly.) The midfield showing its age in Butt, its shortage of puff in Nolan and its utter lack of moral fibre in Barton. Upfront, much as I'd love us to start Carroll and Ranger every game, I'd be biting my nails for fear of some rash gadgy going into the back of either. Lovenkrands went straight into the XI today but was clearly off the pace and got stick for it from half the team, it seems. Guthrie and Ranger ought to have started, really, but since they came on as subs and did what they did for the second goal instantly then nee point harping about it. And the mighty Andy Carroll might have had a five-minute hat-trick at the death, but we'll take the one he lashed in, for he seems to be getting into his stride, albeit so long as there's someone faster and tricksier playing off him.

West Brom looked good today in their crushing of the Smoggies but we've already been round theirs and had a point. So with our best first XI week in, week out, and a fair wind behind us, we could bank on one of the automatic leg-up places. But, this being the Toon, I can say only that I'm not thinking about relegation anymore.

Handel, Simon Cowell’s Fortune, and The Strange Business of Talent

Watching a performance of Handel’s Samson broadcast from the Proms a few weeks back, I found something very suddenly affecting about the wealth of musical talent on display – not just the obvious superbity of the vocal soloists and choir, but the discipline and discernment behind every instrument in the orchestra, the concertedness of the performance, even the acting qualities of the singers, something I usually find obstructively deficient in opera.
On this business of discipline I got to thinking about what Sean Penn once said to me about why, as a young aspiring actor, he had been so inspired by Robert De Niro:
“Primarily because – besides that he was great in the films, and the films were also great – one was aware of the discipline that he had and the commitment to what he did. That was inspiring. It’s something I associate with ballet: I don’t particularly like the aesthetics of ballet, you know, but when you see a great dancer and you know the sacrifice that went into it – that is moving to me."
The same goes for that Samson by the English Concert and friends. Britain has indeed got talent.
Now then: I’m going to try to be self-critical, to speak as one among fellows in society, and assume that all of us (or a goodly proportion of us) must be held responsible for making Simon Cowell a ‘star’, and probably the best-remunerated person on television. We the people have gifted him his success, and that of his TV-talent-show protégés. What have we got back in return? Hours of listening/viewing pleasure? A deeper insight into precisely whom in Britain has really Got Talent? You tell me.
The more I think on it, the more extraordinary I find Cowell’s achievement. Here are a bunch of shows of his that urge the public at large to come along and live the dream that they could be somebody, so assuring a huge turnout of auditionees, most of whom are then, for the purpose of entertainment, subjected to sneers on the theme of ‘Whatever made you think you were anything?’ I can think of few sights on telly more loathsome that Cowell’s patented leaning-back roll-of-the-eyes. And yet this is the gleeful, sadistic ‘Gotcha!’ hit that X Factor fans can’t seem to live without.
Eventually the series proceeds to its business end, the serious stuff of selecting the acts over whom the judges will fawn or else advise with tough love on how best to shine. And what exactly are the bona fides for Simon Cowell’s powers of discernment when it comes to talent? The acts he has nurtured toward pop glory? Sinitta, Sonia, Five, Westlife, Robson & Jerome, Ultimate Kaos? No, don’t tell me – Leona Lewis?
Amid the latest blanket coverage of the latest Beatles reissues, there was room for a dissenting voice, and yet I only heard Robert Elms put the Case Against as badly as it could be made by comparing McCartney’s vocal on Let It Be unfavourably with Aretha Franklin’s later cover version. Let’s not make the best the enemy of the good, eh? What we should do is compare Aretha Franklin to Leona Lewis. The annihilation that would follow would be good for the general ecology of talent.

Meanwhile, I hope for its own sake X Factor never inflicts on us another show where the contestants line up to do Beatles covers, as this spectacle is all too gruesome a reminder of how once-glorious British pop music has sadly regressed to the pre-Lennon/McCartney era of slimy impresarios packaging hits for kids too hormonal to know better.

Esquire (October 2009) now on stands. Gotta Dance.

Mark Ronson is this month's cover star. (There's a guy having a happy life. Though his sister seems to have a complicated life.) My column is about Andrea Arnold's film Fish Tank, a picture that set me thinking fondly about the hip-hop streetdance styles of the early 1980s, as a consequence of the stupendous amateur breakdancing of the film's protagonist, Mia, played by newcomer Katy Jarvis.

"Track-suited and hooded, stomping round her turf with Arnold’s camera often hard at her shoulder, Mia has the kind of feral, ill-employed energy one often finds in adolescent protagonists of realist cinema... Not content with exclusion from school, Mia courts estrangement from her friends, their quarrel embodied by warring styles of dance. For while Mia’s (ex-) mates are all into that urban/R&B manner of sullen, would-be-sultry pelvic grinding, Mia is a devotee of 80s-era hip-hop and breakdance. Yet she keeps this passion to herself, practising her moves alone in a vacant flat with a dodgy lock. She can’t quite accomplish the spinning-on-your-head bit, possibly because throughout each rehearsal she takes her refreshment from a plastic bottle of cider. But her dancing is clearly an expression of appetite and frustration, beautifully conveyed by Jarvis and Arnold."

Adam Thirlwell reviewed in FT by RTK

My write-up of the second (or is it third?) novel from Granta-endorsed wunderkind Adam Thirlwell appeared in the print edition of last weekend's Financial Times, and was duly posted online come the Sunday.
As I say in the piece, The Escape is a work unabashedly inspired by other works from great writers of days gone by. "There’s nothing wrong with that, though the degree of pleasure one takes from Thirlwell’s text might depend on one’s fondness for his source materials..."
I go on to thumbnail the book like so: "The Escape has been warmly endorsed by Milan Kundera and it’s recognisably a work in the Czech writer’s wry, pontificating manner, whereby the wise, wistful author invites us to look at a scene and then look at it again, so that its seeming sadness or silliness reveals yet another level of meaning. Thirlwell makes frequent use of the exclamation mark, usually a misplaced attempt to sound jolly, but this he dubs “the European vocative”, a manner fit for “addressing absent abstractions”. It’s ideally suited to this example of the Euro-erotic novel. One could go further and class The Escape as a “Jewish psychological sex novel of the absurd”, which is the thumbnail description Time magazine gave Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint in 1969..."

Lucy Kelly, August 31 2009: doin' good