Off Topic The Review Thread

Saw them last night at Hope & Glory festival in Liverpool - a great idea for a city centre festival, but appallingly organised.

The queues for entrance, beer and toilets were chaotic, all the bands were running over 2 hours behind schedule so had their sets cut short to try and catch up, and James had over 30minutes of their set curtailed as they were unceremoniously kicked off the stage at the end of the evening (what they did manage to cram into a 50minute set was excellent though)

 

Hope & Glory Festival, Liverpool = total ****s - cancelled day 2 of the festival this morning having forked out over £500 on tickets and hotel I am not amused. Organisation was chaotic, total shambles.

Will NOT be coming back next year....

 

Has anyone read Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari?

I thoroughly enjoyed his Sapiens, a version of human history, some arresting and convincing ideas, especially about credit and limited companies, and how imaginary human society is, though I found it repetitive and with a rather odd focus on animal welfare (not that I have anything against animal welfare). How did you get on with it Ninesy?

I have started Deus, his predictions for the future (though he is careful not to call them predictions). I think I have the big ideas about AI, genetic modification etc in the first couple of chapters, and very convincing they are too. But then he sets out his plan to delve deeper into this stuff over hundreds of pages and immediately started using animals as a way to show how 'higher' creatures treat 'lower' ones (to show how AI and super humans will think of ordinary old humans). At which stage I sighed and shut the book.

Is it worth persevering with, any other big ideas in it?

 

I can't help Stan with his request, but, at a somewhat lower-brow level, I can highly recommend a film that's on Film 4 this afternoon - Sunshine On Leith. A wonderful feel-good movie for a Monday afternoon, or on catch-up anytime later.

 

Sunshine on Leith is what the Hibs fans sing. I like Leith, it's authentic, unlike lots of Edinburgh (which is still a nice city). Sadly the Annfield pub, an old fashioned (not to say Spartan) one room pub, run by an ancient Hibs player who I suspect is now no longer with us (to my shame I can't remember his name), is now closed. Was a great place to start hangover recuperation. Before moving on to the Volunteers Arms (the Volly) on Leith Walk, as featured in Irving Welsh novels. In the old days this was like walking into a diseased lung (fortunately I smoked in those days). Now also closed, replaced by a trendy whisky bar. Pre and post match drinks at the Cabbage Patch. Closed. No food available at any of them. What the **** has happened to ordinary boozers up there?

 

This is spine-tingling.....

 

Outstanding. I used to go up there once a year with a bunch of Gooners for drinking and a Hibs match. We may revive the tradition if my daughter is successful in her aim of going to Edinburgh University, so we can embarrass her in public. Though where we will drink could be an issue (see now sadly redundant pub reviews in addition to my original post.)

 

Have you seen the film I mentioned? Life-affirming stuff.

 

I think I've seen bits of it. Sadly I have to work this afternoon, as the Yanks start waking up and asking me stupid questions.

 

Fab film, and a brilliant stage show if you ever get the chance. Also, The Proclaimers live are brilliant and very uplifting.

Stan, when in Edinburgh give the Grassmarket and Rose Street a wide berth unless you enjoy the company of stag and hen parties, big groups of pissed rugby fans and dodgy locals who are expert pickpockets! Personally, there are a few good pubs on the Royal Mile (the further away from the castle the better). My personal favourite is Whistlebinkies, a cellar bar that has live music 7 days a week til 3am!

My son is aiming for Napier Uni in Edinburgh in abour three years time.....but no tuition fees for us up here (sorry Stan!!)

 

For Thomas Hardy fans (I may be a little lonely here) very good version of Far from the Madding Crowd on BBC now, with the delightful Carey Mulligan. But my favourite adaptation will always be the John Schlesinger film with Julie Christie, Terence Stamp, Alan Bates and Peter Finch. Stunning cast. Great novel for learning about nineteenth century Dorset agriculture. Sgt Troy remains a ****er in any version you like. And having just seen to the end I am reminded that the heroine and central character is extremely irritating.

I haven't actually read any Thomas Hardy for probably 30 years.

 

Restaurant/wine review. Wandered to the Tamed Hare in the metropolitan elite hub of Leamington Spa on Thursday. Worryingly deserted, which the really good waitress (i.e. She knew both the menu and the wine list very well) said was very unusual. Reviewed recently, and positively, by Giles Coren in the Times. This place was excellent, chef set up after leaving a Michelin starred place, very local ingredients, startling and very tasty combinations. None of these things look good on paper but they were delicious - starter of tomatoes, raspberries, goats cheese curds, balsamic, main of lamb cutlets, lamb kofta, fregola pasta, Aubergine, apricot and other stuff, dessert of coconut mousse, lemon curd and pea sorbet (including frozen peas). £55 a head including tip pre dinner drinks and a large glass of wine each.

The white wine was Picpoul de Pinet, chosen because one of our Irish mates says 'everything from Languedoc is good'. A first for me, absolutely bone dry, very good indeed. I'm off to buy some now. You can get it for less than £7 in Majestic, though the top brands (Visite) are more like £16 in the shops. I'm aiming for something in between.

 

Tesco do a decent Picpoul de Pinet for around £7.

 

Far from the Madding Crowd is my favourite Hardy novel, and Hardy's first major work. He got controversial thereafter, and a bit morbid, and by the time he'd completed Jude, was being heavily criticised. Unjustified, but the greatest novels sometimes are not recognised contemporaneously. Wuthering Heights (to my mind, the greatest novel in English literature) was vilified by "right thinking" members of the public. Fortunately, Emily Bronte had no interest in making it a commercial success and so was indifferent.

Agree with you about the Schlesinger film. The Christie/Bates combination made for magnetic viewing, and was repeated in The Go-Between, another masterpiece, book and film.

 

To my shame I have never read anything by any of the Brontes or Jane Austen. Somehow just never appealed. I have read plenty of George Eliot aka Mary Ann Evans, so it's not an anti classic women writers thing. Should I make the effort?

 

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole - a great read. Published some years after the authors suicide but not a dark novel at all, just a very strange main character. Do try.

 

Emily Bronte is a million miles from the civility of Jane Austen. Here's the extract in Chapter 3 where the narrator, having been forced to spend the night at the inhospitable Wuthering Heights, is half asleep and pulls a ghostly child's wrist across broken glass in a window pane. No wonder the Victorian ladies spluttered over their afternoon tea...!

"This time, I remembered I was lying in the oak closet, and I heard distinctly the gusty wind, and the driving of the snow; I heard, also, the fir bough repeat its teasing sound, and ascribed it to the right cause: but it annoyed me so much, that I resolved to silence it, if possible; and, I thought, I rose and endeavoured to unhasp the casement. The hook was soldered into the staple: a circumstance observed by me when awake, but forgotten. ‘I must stop it, nevertheless!’ I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch; instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand! The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, ‘Let me in—let me in!’ ‘Who are you?’ I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself. ‘Catherine Linton,’ it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw twenty times for Linton) ‘I’m come home: I’d lost my way on the moor!’ As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child’s face looking through the window. Terror made me cruel; and, finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes: still it wailed, ‘Let me in!’ and maintained its tenacious gripe, almost maddening me with fear."

 

That's not what I expected at all (I haven't even seen, at at least concentrated on, film of tv versions of the book) more like Gothic horror, I might give it a go, cheers.

 

Just seen what I thought was an American movie from a few years ago called 7 psychopaths
Turned out it was funded by the British film institute and the national lottery
If you haven't seen it it's worth a look
I enjoyed it anyway