DEATH!
In which Mike watches his first ever (ahhh...)
Quentin Tarantino film
This evening I watched Kill Bill Vol. 1. (What's
with the Volume bit anyway? "Part" was good enough for Shakespeare, and he was
hardly shy of making up new words if he felt they were necessary.... I suppose
it makes a Point and I'm just too lazy to try and understand it... which is a
shame, because)
It's brilliant!
Tragedy, sped up, is comedy; and Mr. T. (as I take the liberty of calling him)
seems to be fully aware both of that and of the way
Titus
Andronicus ends. No blood goes a foot when it
could go six. No one bleeds when they might...
spurt.
Probably the goriest film I've ever seen (let's not count
Bad
Taste here, a line must be drawn under things
I've never seen sober) and yet the most aware of that goriness, (ah, stuff your
Exorcist,
I've been more scared of my own underwear) aware of its physicality...
(ladidaaaaah...) but there was proper movement in bits of that, stuff with
rhythm and tempo and flow, point and counterpoint. A very well-read film,
filmically speaking. Daring to do things like "make reference" and "echo"
instead of the rather lumpen "quotation" we're supposed to swallow under the
rubric of profundity so often. Rather like a very old fluorescent light bulb,
I'm having the thought flicker into my mind irregularly that maybe this is what
Mike Leigh would produce if Brenda Blethyn were handier with a sword and Alan
Bennett had never written Talking Heads but had instead gone into samurai
films. Like most of those thoughts (and bulbs) I'm sure it will blessedly soon
subside into consistent
darkness.
Talking of which I spent five
minutes apologising to a blind chap I walked bang into in Kingston the other
day. Felt dreadful for not watching where I was going, &c.... saw him five
minutes later and noticed his guide was his wife and his white stick was
actually a striplight bulb, so no wonder he gave me a funny look as I grovelled.
Right on? Right off.
I am worried now
because "Irons" (q.v.) has convinced the deeply perfect Mrs. B. that I and irons
have some kind of opposition established betweens us, or, more specifically,
that I, who taught her that Men Love To Iron Really, They Just Don't Know It Yet
(Mostly), don't, and thus condemned the esteemed Mr. B to a lifetime of doing
the ironing knowing that he would secretly loathe
it.
Let me be crystal clear. Perfectly
perspicuous.
I like
ironing.
That to which I object is the tool itself, the iron, a prime example of a Thing
Designed By Non-Ironing Men For... Well,
Someone
Else To Use. Note that irons increasingly make
use of a) the button, b) the flashing light, c) the needless control
(variable
steam?) and d) the Go-Faster Stripe (the Rowenta Capri?), all of which indicate
that irons themselves are designed by and for men. Men are meant to buy them.
This bemuses me, because ironing I would have thought is a gender-neutral
activity. Surely we've buried "Women's Work" by now, n'est-çe pas? So why
the bells and whistles, and yet.... have you tried buying an ironing board which
will be usefully tall for a 6'2" frame? (I have. I found exactly
one.
In a week of looking.) Have you ever found an
iron (which, let's face it, is basically a hot, heavy lump of metal with a flat
bit) which lasts eight or nine years? Je crois pas! Have you found an iron
labelled, "Gets rid of creases permanently, really easily, without much fuss"?
Or are you still struggling with shirts which are crumpled no matter how
smooooooothly your HyperTeflon Ultra-Base glides over split yokes, whilst
puzzling over a mysterious and wholly unused "Vertical PowerJet of Steam!!"
feature which has yet to revolutionise your long-term plans for curtain care?
The prosecution is getting toward the point where making its case seems
superfluous.
It strikes me that it's
now the best part of midnight. This seems to me to be a reliable indication that
I should now surrender my consciousness to the inevitable and retire for the
evening. Until my next report, I wish you all a bon soir.....
Posted: Wed - November 12, 2003 at 11:58 PM