Let's sit down to good film

Ian McKellen in wonderful form

In between recent trips to the cinema, I’ve also managed to see a few films at home, both on television channels or discs, and it seemed too good an opportunity not to do a brief round up.

First up comes Mr Holmes, last year’s take on Sherlock – this time, with Ian McKellen as an aging and long-retired version of the iconic consulting detective.

It’s the late 1940s – a world changed utterly by the atomic bomb – and, worried that he’s losing his mind, Holmes is trying to piece together the final case that led to his retirement.

At the same time, he becomes the idol of the young, precocious son of the housekeeper who looks after him in his retirement home on England’s south coast.

Beautifully filmed and wonderfully acted – McKellen is simply a joy to watch – this gentle UK-made piece is full of hidden depths and philosophical ruminations.

Well worth a watch.

Messers Karloff, Lorre and Price

Rather different – but no less entertaining (albeit for very different reasons) is Roger Corman’s The Raven, which I caught up with a couple of weeks ago.

It’s less a case of being based on Edgar Allan Poe’s poem of the same name than having been inspired by it, in the loosest sense.

In this 1963 outing, we have three sorcerers vying against each other for magical supremacy, with Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff as the trio, engaged at various points throughout in finger-pointy duels.

It’s deliciously camp, which is possibly not the first thing that one might expect from writer Richard Matheson, who penned the zombie horror classic, I Am Legend, while a young Jack Nicholson spend most of his on-screen time looking pretty much lost in such company.

Enormous fun – Price in particular had such a wonderful voice for this sort of film – and the blu ray comes with extras that includes a German documentary about Lorre.

It’s surprisingly serious in tone given the nature of the main feature, but very definitely worth watching, providing a reminder of just what a fine actor he was, and covering his relationship with Brecht as well as offering a detailed look at his breakthrough film role as the murderer in Fritz Lang’s classic of German Expressionist cinema, M (1931).

One reviewer on Amazon decided to be snotty about Lorre  ‘wasting his talent’ because of drink. It’s the point at which you decide to respond by suggesting they inform themselves better about the German exiles in the US and the problems that many of them suffered.

Doris Day and Rock Hudson suffering misunderstandings

On a completely different note, last weekend saw me slumped in front of the gogglebox, on cat cuddling duty, when up popped Send Me No Flowers, a 1964 rom-com that I haven’t seen in decades.

Starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson – with Tony Randall in the sort of friend-of-the-leading-man character that he made his own – it’s a typical farce spun out after Hudson’s hypochondriac suburbanite overhears his doctor discussing a terminal case and soon-to-be-deceased individual is himself.

Directed by Norman Jewison, this was the final of a trio of Day-Hudson-Randall outings and while it’s pleasing enough fodder, it doesn’t have anything like the zip of Pillow Talk and Lover Come Back.

Still, it was nice enough to see again one of the sort of films I feel as though I grew up with – and Day is always wonderful.

Last in this little round-up comes Paul, a 2011 sci-fi comedy road movie that I’d managed to see bits of before, but never the whole thing.

Nick Frost and Simon Pegg with Paul

Starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, it’s about two British geeks who go on their dream holiday to San Diego for Comic-Con, followed by a road trip across the US to visit various sites of importance in UFO lore.

However, their plans go awry when they find themselves on the run with Paul, a fugitive alien who is running away from plans to dissect him.

Really good fun, with a very enjoyable supporting cast that includes Blythe Danner, Seth Rogan (as the voice of Paul) and Sigourney Weaver, who subsequently described it to Graham Norton as a “love letter to sci-fi fans” (I think she said the same of the equally enjoyable Galaxy Quest).

Very good fun, pacey, with good characters – including an alien that is far from a film stereotype – plus loads of nods to other films and pop culture, what’s not to enjoy? It was the perfect way to follow a stack of the equally geek-oriented The Big Bang Theory.

Romanticism on the high seas for World Poetry Day

Since it’s World Poetry Day – and since it’s over six years since I posted this – it seems the perfect time to share once more one of my favourite poems.

Introduced to me some years ago by a German friend, this piece of early Brecht was to serve as my personal pathway into German-style romanticism.

I’ve not really been the same since.

Last Wave by George Grie

Ballade von den Seeräubern (Ballad of the Pirates)

Frantic with brandy from their plunder
Drenched in the blackness of the gale
Splintered by frost and stunned by thunder
Hemmed in the crows-nest, ghostly pale
Scorched by the sun through tattered shirt
(The winter sun kept them alive)
Amid starvation, sickness, dirt
So sang the remnant that survived:
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

No waving fields with gentle breezes
Or dockside bar with raucous band
No dance hall warm with gin and kisses
No gambling hall kept them on land.
They very quickly tired of fighting
By midnight girls began to pall:
Their rotten hulk seemed more inviting
That ship without a flag at all.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

Riddled with rats, its bilges oozing
With pestilence and puke and piss
They swear by her when they’re out boozing
And cherish her just as she is.
In storms they’ll reckon their position
Lashed to the halyards by their hair:
They’d go to heaven on one condition –
That she can find a mooring there.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

They loot their wine and belch with pleasure
While bales of silk and bars of gold
And precious stones and other treasure
Weigh down the rat-infested hold.
To grace their limbs, all hard and shrunken
Sacked junks yield vari-coloured stuffs
Till out their knives come in some drunken
Quarrel about a pair of cuffs.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

They murder coldly and detachedly
Whatever comes across their path
They throttle gullets as relaxedly
As fling a rope up to the mast.
At wakes they fall upon the liquor
Then stagger overboard and drown
While the remainder give a snigger
And wave a toe as they go down.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

Across a violet horizon
Caught in the ice by pale moonlight
On pitch-black nights when mist is rising
And half the ship is lost from sight
They lurk like wolves between the hatches
And murder for the fun of it
And sing to keep warm in their watches
Like children drumming as they shit.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

They take their hairy bellies with them
To stuff with food on foreign ships
Then stretch them out in sweet oblivion
Athwart the foreign women’s hips.
In gentle winds, in blue unbounded
Like noble beasts they graze and play
And often seven bulls have mounted
Some foreign girl they’ve made their prey.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

Once you have danced till you’re exhausted
And boozed until your belly sags
Though sun and moon unite their forces –
Your appetite for fighting flags.
Brilliant with stars, the night will shake them
While music plays in gentle ease
And wind will fill their sails and take them
To other undiscovered seas.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

But then upon an April evening
Without a star by which to steer
The placid ocean, softly heaving
Decides that they must disappear.
The boundless sky they love is hiding
The stars in smoke that shrouds their sight
While their beloved winds are sliding
The clouds towards the gentle light.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

At first they’re fanned by playful breezes
Into the night they mustn’t miss
The velvet sky smiles once, then closes
Its hatches on the black abyss.
Once more they feel the kindly ocean
Watching beside them on their way
The wind then lulls them with its motion
And kills them all by break of day.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

Once more the final wave is tossing
The cursed vessel to the sky
When suddenly it clears, disclosing
The mighty reef on which they lie.
And, at last, a strange impression
While rigging screams and storm winds howl
Of voices hurtling to perdition
Yet once more singing, louder still:
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

Bertolt Brecht, 1919

In search of the world of the Brothers Grimm

The iconic Plönlein

The tour party flowed into the town square, streaming past their guide, leaving him standing rather lamely on the cobbles holding aloft a little paddle so they wouldn’t get lost; a 21st-century pied piper whose tune had – temporarily at least – lost its power.

There would be little time to see much. If they were quick, they’d be able to snap off a couple of selfies on Plönlein, where the road splits in two and exits the old city through different gates, and in the square itself, where the Rathaus stands on one long side and two large, half-timbered buildings make a perfect medieval corner.

It is doubtful that they would be able to make it into the Jakobskirche to see the wondrous wooden altarpiece by Germany’s Michelangelo, but there would doubtless be the opportunity to nip into one of the town’s many Käthe Wohlfahrt shops to pick up some extremely overpriced Christmas decorations as a souvenir as an arranged part of their trip, before heading back to the coach and the next stop on their whistlestop tour of Germany or Europe ...

Market place – Rathaus to the right

Such tourists bemuse me: it’s the same as with people in galleries, taking selfies in front of famous paintings – what do they honestly get out of it?

There may be a reason that Plönlein comes up as the main result in a Google image search for Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

You could be forgiven for imagining that it was the main (if not only) medieval vista in the old city. But to find some of the others, you have to scroll down further on that search – and you need to spend longer in the city itself than a coach visit will allow.

US travel writer Rick Steves has noted that, while millions visit Rothenburg, far, far fewer spend even a single night in the city.

For those who do, the benefits are obvious: whatever time of the year, after the tour guides pipe their charges back aboard buses, the city is yours as the sun falls.

Steves says that, after dark, you can almost feel the past. I beg to differ, but only ever so slightly: there were moments in the daytime when the centuries seemed to spin past, leaving me almost dizzy with a sense of times long gone.

Markusturm – complete with storks' next

Rothenburg ob der Tauber – there are other Rothenburgs, so its relationship to the river Tauber is important – is somewhat on the old side.

A prosperous, independent city state, it was besieged during first the Peasants’ War and then the Thirty Years’ War, before a subsequent burst of the Black Death effectively halted its development, leaving us with the most perfectly intact medieval city anywhere.

‘Rediscovered’ in the 19th century and, in the 1930s, it was raised by the Nazis to a semi-religious level as a perfect, idealised German town.

In 1945, bombing did much damage, but it was spared worse when the German commander defied Hitler’s orders and accepted a US army promise that surrender would spare the city.

It is one stop on Germany’s Romantic Road, a 350km route through the forests and mountains of Baden-Würtemburg and Bavaria.

Starting in Würzburg, it ends in Füssen, where we spent a few pleasant days last March, walking in the Alps and visiting Ludwig II’s Neuschwanstein – a visit that had led directly to this one.

Old bridge

We left London early on a Thursday evening, and spent the night comfortably in a hotel at Stuttgart airport before setting off the following morning by train – first to central Stuttgart and then, from there, to Bavaria and Rothenburg ob der Tauber itself, via three trains.

Our hotel was in the centre of the old city, just above an ancient gate leading to a park and, after unpacking as rapidly as possible, we set off for a first orientation.

It’s impossible not to be instantly struck by the city. Plönlein actually feels rather understated in medieval terms, such are the other sights to be encountered, but in general, this is like walking through a fairy tale.

Hardly surprising, indeed, that MGM’s Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm was filmed here in 1961, while the village scenes in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang were also shot in its streets.

A view from the city walls

The latter, incidentally, also saw filming at Neuschwanstein, adding another sense of continuum to this trip.

If Neuschwanstein gave Disney the template for its castle, then Rothenburg gave Hollywood as a whole an architectural aesthetic for fairy tales.

The half-timbered, slanting, sloping, tiled buildings are what you expect. You’ve seen it all before before – on a small or a big screen – but wandering around, you have to keep reminding yourself that this is no theme park, but a real, living town, full of real, living people.

The Markusturm is one of the city’s gates, surrounded by half-timbered buildings in bright colours. Perched atop an adjoining roof is what looks to be a metal wheel, lying horizontally.

Burgator, leading from the garden to the city

In fact, it’s a frame for a stork’s nest: these huge birds have returned to the area in recent years and a couple of days before our arrival, a pair had just returned from their winter sojourn to Africa, triggering excitement among local people.

The previous year, “Mr and Mrs Stork” had produced four chicks, to the evident delight of the community. Another nest, opposite our hotel room, was still awaiting birds when we departed, but the sight of the birds taking off and returning to their nest at the Markusturm could only add to the magical sense of the place.

Anyway, after that initial stroll into the past, our first night’s repast in Rothenburg saw us dine at an old tavern, filled with local people and with a waitress dressed in a dirndl, serving properly hearty German food.

For me, that was a piece of pork shoulder, flaking off the bone and accompanied by red cabbage, gravy and potato dumplings, with a dunkel (dark beer) on the side.

And then we slept in the peace of our centuries-old hotel, dreaming the dreams of fairytales all around us.

Hail the Coens' homage to the golden age of Hollywood

Even a sense of renewed enthusiasm for viewing moving pictures in their natural environment cannot budge me from thinking that Grimsby looks grim, while a reliable source described London Has Fallen as “a horrible, hateful, jingoistic, badly scripted, awfully acted film”.

But not all the latest releases are bad – indeed, there’s one indie peach of film out there to love: the Coen brothers’ latest love letter to the golden age of Hollywood, Hail Ceasar!

To be honest, a first look at the trailer a few weeks ago was enough to grab my interest. I grew up with those films; musicals, westerns and thrillers were the fodder of my teenage fantasies.

And Joel and Ethan Coen have created a camp, funny, deeply loving homage with their latest venture.

It might not have a particularly dense plot, but it doesn’t suffer for that.

Josh Brolin is Eddie Mannix, a studio fixer in the early ’50s whose personal problems involve trying to quit smoking, and being head-hunted by Lockheed.

In between dealing with a pregnant Esther Williams-style star and trying to fit a young cowboy actor into a sophisticated drawing room drama, he finds himself plunged into difficulties when the disappearance of the star hits filming of a Biblical epic – the Hail Ceasar! of the title.

But if it initially seems that Baird Whitlock has gone on a bender, a ransom message sets them straight.

By the time we hit a wonderfully recreated On the Town-style musical number, I could feel my eyes sparkling.

Mind, it gets off to a great start with a neat little riff on The Big Sleep, and if truth be told, I didn’t stop smiling from then until the final credits rolled.

There are things to think about if you’re looking for something a little deeper – the nature of propaganda for one; technology and the future is another.

But that’s not really key to enjoying this film.

It is a wonderful ensemble piece. Brolin holds it all together with a very nice performance as Mannix, but George Clooney is in wonderfully gormless form as Whitlock.

Alden Ehrenreich impresses as cowboy Hobie Doyle; Tilda Swinton is great as bitchily competitive twin gossip columnists modeled after Hedda Hopper, and Heather Goldenhersh does a nice turn as Mannix’s unnamed secretary.

Channing Tatum prove he can sing and dance and Coen Brothers’ stalwart Frances McDormand also crops up as a husky film editor.

In fact, famous and familiar faces abound, including an uncredited Dolph Lundgrun, Wayne Knight – who stole the dino DNA in the original Jurassic Park, and Robert Picardo, who will be familiar to Star Trek: Voyager fans as the holographic Doctor.

Here, he’s a cynical rabbi, in a delightful scene where Mannix tries to convince faith leaders that the studio’s Biblical epic will be spiritually uplifting and theologically sound.

And the casting of Michael Gambon as the narrator is inspired (think Singing Detective).

So, if you want something to put a grin on your face and a spring in your step, take in Hail Ceasar! Because whatever the churlish might claim, it ticks all the boxes on those score.