Second post of the day, as I thought everyone who commented on this entry might be interested: Ian McKellen just tweeted the official trailer for All Is True, the Kenneth Branagh/Judi Dench/McKellen starring Old Will Shakespeare In Stratford tale:



(As for the thing that puzzled me most about the original announcement, seems that McKellen, in a blond wig, is indeed Southhampton, and not in a flashforward. Yup. That stint in the Tower after the Essex rebellion must have added decades. Otoh, this is a more sympathetic Southhampton than I've seen before.)


And while we're talking trailers, I've noticed a certain irritation in my flist/circle that the two Presidents Bush are getting nostalgia benefits due to the awfulness of Individual 1, as Mueller's investigation calls him. Now I have no strong feelings about Bush the Elder either way, though I have to say, the two Germanys would not have gotten unification without him (what with Thatcher endlessly replaying WWII movies in her head and spouting every cliché ever, Mitterand actually having lived during WWII, and Gorbachev sceptical about the larger implication re: NATO; it was very much Bush the Elder's personal support there which made the difference), which is why the obituaries in our papers all were titled with a variation of "friend of Germany" and why Merkel attended the funeral instead of sending someone else to represent the country). But my ire about the Dubya years is certainly undiminished. As for for W. himself, I stand by my theory that he's George III as characterised by Byron in Vision of Judgment -
Whose History was ever stained as his will be
With national and individual woes?
I grant his household abstinence; I grant
His neutral virtues, which most monarchs want

I know he was a constant consort; own
He was a decent sire, and middling lord.
All this is much, and most upon a throne;
As temperance, if at Apicius' board,
Is more than at an anchorite's supper shown.
I grant him all the kindest can accord;
And this was well for him, but not for those
Millions who found him what Oppression chose.


Anyway, if W. as a person certainly is preferable to Individual 1, his years in office certainly did a great deal of the damage that led to this point. That certainly seems to be the opinion of Adam McKay, who just collected a whole bunch of nominations for Vice, which appears to be a Cheney-centric pitch black satire:



Alright then. 2019 is off to an interesting start, movie-wise.

Depressing political news from the US are expectedly depressing. My sympathies, non-Republican Americans who did vote. Then again, probably jealous that the Tea Party beat his record as most absurd thing to succeed in American politics, George W. Bush made a comeback when, according to this article, he revealed that the worst moment of his presidency was when rapper Kanya West called him a racist.

....

I've seen someone, I forgot who, suggest an American midterms elections soundtrack yesterday and it included the Beatles' Revolution. Right era, wrong song, imo; clearly American politics right now are and have been for a good while Helter Skelter. (Aka Paul McCartney Accidentally Invents Heavy Metal.) (Also very useful to flummox people who are into the John = rock, Paul = ballads division.) Not, incidentally, a favourite of mine but undeniably powerful; I agree with Alan Pollack who wrote: Crank this one up some late night when you're home alone and all the lights are off, and it's guaranteed to raise the hair on the back of your neck; to scare and unsettle you. And that phenomenon has absolutely nothing to do with what knowledge you do or don't possess about the song's bizarre connection with Charles Manson. You have to look beyond the form and style here to the lyrics, vocal performance, and recording production in order to discover the roots of this song's sinister effect. Allow me to demonstrate:



That song came into existence because Paul had read an interview with Pete Townshend in which the later described the Who's new single, 'I Can See for Miles', as the loudest, rawest, dirtiest and most uncompromising song they had ever done. Quoth the ever competitive Mr. McCartney: So I sat down and wrote 'Helter Skelter' to be the most raucous vocal, the loudest drums, et cetera et cetera. I was using the symbol of a helter skelter as a ride from the top to the bottom - the rise and fall of the Roman Empire - and this was the fall; the demise, the going down. (...) I went into the studio and said, 'Hey, look, I've read this thing. Let's do it!' We got the engineers and George Martin to hike up the drum sound and really get it as loud and horrible as it could and we played it and said, 'No, it still sounds too safe, it's got to get louder and dirtier.' We tried everything we could to dirty it up and in the end you can hear Ringo say, 'I've got blisters on my fingers.' That wasn't a joke put-on: his hands were actually bleeding at the end of the take, he'd been drumming so ferociously. We did work very hard on that track.

And then a crazy cultist serial killer felt inspired to some gruesome murders, which is another gruesome crazy story. But like Pollack said, it's a disturbing bit of music even without the Charles Manson connection. And exactly what I hear in my inner ear when thinking about American politics.

What's really out of this world is that within the same album and in the same time frame, Paul also wrote this adorable bit of utter fluff, an ode to his dog Martha, which is the cheer I need to deal with real life right now.



Martha background story from the horse's mouth: Martha was my first ever pet. I never had a dog or a cat at home. My parents both went out to work, which was why we couldn't have any, even when one terrible day they were giving away free puppies! Just a hundred yards away from where we lived. We came screaming home, my brother and I, 'They're giving 'em away! We can get one if you tell us now, we can go and get one, we've chosen the one we want!' They said, 'You can't have one, son. Me and your mum go out to work and it wouldn't be fair on a dog.' 'We'll look after it, we'll do it.' 'You're at school.' 'Well, we'll come back at lunchtime. Surely?' 'No, no, no.' Crying crying crying. We just couldn't understand because they were free! We could understand not buying one because we weren't that well off, but passing up a freebie puppy! He was quite firm about stuff like that and I suppose he was right.(...)So Martha was a dear pet of mine. I remember John being amazed to see me being so loving to an animal. He said, "I've never seen you like that before." I've since thought, you know, he wouldn't have. It's only when you're cuddling around with a dog that you're in that mode, and she was a very cuddly dog.'