Breakfast at Tiffany's

Although we went to see Breakfast at Tiffany's a week ago now, I simply haven't had the time to write a few words about until now, as I've been concentrating on finishing up my new novel (only twenty pages or so to go!)
So, after motoring down to London last Wednesday morning and catching the Tube in, we had a mooch around the usual haunts in the city, passing the Theatre store, where John Barrowman was in the middle of a signing session for his new book (which is excellent, by the way), then passing the celeb haunt, The Ivy (on the way to the Cinema Store) and passing Andrew Lloyd Webber, then onto FP and the fabulous Fopp (where I picked up season 6 and 7 of The Shield for £8 each - we're midway through season 6 and loving it - full thoughts on the whole thing soon).

While waiting for the show to start, we saw Anna Friel arriving late for the show and then settled into our seats (dead centre and about five rows from the front). The Haymarket Theatre (which recently ran Waiting For Godot) is a beautiful old place, reeking of history and grandeur. Alec Guiness performed here, as did JOhn Gielgud, Peter O'Toole, Lauren Bacall and Ingrid Bergman. Amazing history.
This version of Breakfast at Tiffany's is an adaption of Truman Capote's novella rather than taking its cues from the Audrey Hepburn movie, but it retains much of that movie's charm for those who haven't read the book.
Of course any adaption of Breakfast... stands and falls on the actress filling Holly Golightly's (doubtless expensive) shoes, and Anna Friel (whom I've long shamelessly lusted after) is more than capable. She's luminous and simmering with just the right amount of eroticism and charm to instantly illustrate why all the men in her world are falling over themselves to have her. Joseph Cross (who was in Milk, Flags of our Father's and Running With Scissors) is excellent too. He's very young and manages just the right balance of naievete and bitterness.
Of course, much of the publicity for the show has been focused on the fact that both Friel and Cross have scenes of nudity, and while I can take or leave the male nudity, it all feels fairly functional to the story. I admit, I may have pulled something in my eyes for the Friel nude scene as I was staring so hard, but Amanda was just glad I stayed in my seat and didn't start whooping.
Clearly it wasn't what some of the audience were expecting - a few people never came back after the interval. Perhaps they were expecting the light frothy romantic comedy of the film and not the rather darker, profanity littered story of the book.
But we loved it. It was well worth the trip down to London again to see such a high quality production. I just wish I lived a little closer; I think I could quite happily become a theatre buff if I did. We're back in November again for the (I'm guessing star-studded) closing night of La Cage Aux Folles and the Collectormania on the day after at Earls Court.

UP

It's easy to take the genius of Pixar for granted. Every year or so, another movie comes out of their studios, and it's visually sumptuous, technically ground breaking and furnished with a script that is filled to the brim with wit and wonder and - most importantly - a very honest, human voice, untainted by the usual studio money-men and their regurgitated ideas. Pixar are all about craftmanship and creative courage. All the studios may be following in their footsteps, but really, Monsters vs Aliens, Cloudy, With A Chance of Meatballs and Ice Age 3 are nothing more than the warm up act for Pixar's newest, UP.

And while Pixar pretty much established the form of making movies for children which came smuggling all kinds of nods and winks and sly wit for the adults in the audience, with Up, they've broken their own rules and gone in a much more subversive direction. It still plays to the younger members of the audience of course, but from the first ten minutes of this beautiful film, it's clear that Pixar want to do more, reach further.

While Wall-E similarly played with the tropes of what a childrens' animated movie could do (and Wall-E for its first half was a majesterial, Kubrickian revelation, only slightly let down by its chase-filled second half), Up goes for the grown-ups throats from the off.

Putting aside the fact that Up has at its heart a bizarre Miyazaki-like character-driven story about Carl, an old man who uses a bundle of balloons to fly his house to the jungles of South America to accomplish the dream his late wife never had the chance to, this is an immensely moving piece of cinema about marriage and dreaming for someplace else.

The first five minutes which chronicle the lifetime of Carl and Ellie in a silent movie montage is hands-down one of the most beautiful, heart-breaking pieces of cinema you will see all year. It manages more emotion than most directors manage in their whole careers. The kids meet, grow into a teenage couple, they marry, buy the house they met in, work day jobs and dream of adventure in far-flung places, deal with the joys and tragedies of everyday life, then we watch them grow old, ending with Ellie's 'My Adventures' scrapbook still unfilled, dying and leaving Carl alone.

You could leave the cinema there and then and feel you'd got your money's worth.

Carl becomes a disgruntled old man, desperately clinging to his home in the face of property developers. When he's forced to give up the house and move to a retirement home, he decides to do what he and Ellie never got to do, and ties thousands of balloons to his house and sets sail for South America. And while what follows is naturally filled with the crowd pleasing Pixar fare such as a little boy-scout who happens to be on the front porch when Carl goes UP, talking dogs, mythical birds and an evil nemesis in the wilds of the South American jungle, the movie never loses sight of the huge heart of the story, and continues to wring every last drop of emotion of the journey Carl makes in memory of his wife. Seriously, certain scenes left pin-drop silence in the cinema we were in. Luckily we could all hide behind those 3D glasses.

And what 3D. Pixar have made the leap to that tech without pandering to all the usual in-your-face visuals that most of the current crop of 3D movies resort to. Instead UP is simply dripping with depth and colour and makes the absolute most of what 3D is capable of, and indeed simply becomes a tool to enhance the richness of the story. The moment that Carl's house lifts up into the sky and floats above the city is quite simply one of the most visually stunning things I've ever seen at the cinema.

Despite all this twenty-first century technical wizardry, Up is filled with a warm nostalgic glow that harkens back to the golden age of animation. But kids never had it this good; even the greatest Disney movies couldn't manage this level of laugh-out-loud wit, emotional honesty and sense of wonder. Absolutely perfect.

The Death of Bunny Munro

Finished Nick Cave's second novel, The Death of Bunny Munro today. I zipped through it in a few days as its a pretty fast-paced read. Although it's full of Cave's trademark hellfire and brimstone, it's at heart the relatively small-scale odyssey of a door to door salesman who happens to also be a sex maniac. There's a rich seam of utterly absurd comedy as Bunny takes to the road with his ten year old son after his wife commits suicide. Bunny is a monster, of course; slowly going mad with visions of his dead wife and depraved fantasies involving Kylie Minogue and Avril Lavigne (whom Cave apologisesprofusely to in the acknowledgements), as well as having sex with every bored housewife he can lay his hands on. But Bunny is on the run from his life too, from the council flat his wife died in, from his dying dad and the responsibility of being a proper father to Bunny Jr.
As absurd and depraved as it gets (and it gets very depraved at times), it's also a deeply heartfelt and poignant book; utterly unsentimental but also quite moving. In many ways it's like one of Cave's better albums, able to se-saw through comedy, horror and sadness in the space of a few lines. It's one of those books that sticks around too; like a skewed version of the world that clings to you after the book is finished. Absolutely recommended.
And here below is an excerpt from YouTube of a Q&A he did in Montreal. This bit concerns his experience writing a script for Gladiator 2 (which he titled Christ-Killer). Absoutely hilarious. Would have been a whole lot better than the original film...

An update and some classic Waits

So, finally back from four weeks in the non-internet wilderness following my move next door. Without the internet I've managed to finally catch up with the first season of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse, some Pushing Daisies and the third season of Dexter (which while the weakest season so far, does improve as it goes along. And season 4 is shaping up much more impressively with John Lithgow as the serial killer).
I've also been working my way through a splendid unauthorised biography of Tom Waits by rock journo Barney Hoskyns. It's spurred me onto filling the gaps in my Waits collection - Small Change, Foreign Affairs, One From The Heart - and it's also inspired my next bit of fiction, which'll be a full on noir tale with all the cliches included, and populated with some strange Waitsian characters.
So with that in mind, here's a very funny interview on Letterman, along with a blistering Make It Rain from Real Gone...