1818 Aida at the Metropolitan in 1989 and 2009 with Krajick Wondrous

Yesterday I had one of the great cultural experiences of a lifetime, visually stunning, musical perfection and I still have the tingles from the rich power of the Metropolitan Opera House New York production of Aida, relayed to the Tyneside Film Theatre in HD. Then today I bought a subscription to the Library of previous productions, some 200, and watched the original production of Aida in 1989 with Dolora Zajick playing the same role spread over two decades and to complete the excitement discovered that the Odeon Gateshead Metro Centre has over a dozen relays at various operas, ballets and plays including Carmen from Le Scala Milan an La Traviata from Madrid.

This was my first time back into the Royal Circle of the Tyneside Film Theatre which has become a contemporary auditorium of half a dozen rows of armchairs and two person settees with space between pairs of seats for wine glasses and snacks if you book the back row there is a table ledge running across the front of the seating. The is a small bar area for the occasions with chilled wines, crisps nuts chocolates and such like.

I had intended to read up on the Opera and get to know something of the cast for the performance to be experienced but other priorities prevented. I have seen one live performance of Aida in a showy production at Earl’s Court where the seat was at the back of the auditorium so I moved them to almost behind the front stage but which provided a view of the singers and chorus as they moved about the stage as well as the scene changes during the intervals

I had one record, an EP of the Rome Opera Chorus from Aida Triumphant march bought from the only record shop in Wallington and which cost a fortune, nearly as much as a Long Play record and which I cannot now find. I have also seen a performance or two on television but I always viewed the opera as a spectacle which great interaction between powerful singers and a large chorus. It has taken 70 years to appreciate that this is a masterpiece and which with the right singers can reaches the greatest heights of the art.

It is an opera about love and passion and the consequences when the love cuts across national and political divides.

The Opera is set in ancient Egypt as information reaches the court that the Ethiopians have invaded the country and Radames, a favoured soldier, is entrusted with the responsibility of leading to army to drive out the enemy. The complication is that he in is love with Aida the Ethiopian slave assistant of the Princess Amneris, the Kings daughter and heir, while the Princess is in love with him. The Princess urges her father to appoint Radames to defend the nation although she has suspicions that her slave is also in love with her hero.

In the 1989 Met Opera Production the Princess is played by Dolora Zajick, American by birth and who came to international attention as a top level performer with this role when in her late thirties and her voice with is power and range had fully developed. At the age of 57 and with the frame to match the first reaction is to be concerned at a portrayal of what is written in the libretto as a young Princes, especially if one did not know that she has sung the role to acclaim throughout the operatic world in over a score of productions and some 250 performances and that it remains as strong and yet beautiful with a remarkable range. Her solo performances are breathtaking and rightly received the greatest applause in both performances experiences and applause which broke out in the cinema which is something I have not previously experienced since my childhood.

For the most recent production the part of Radames is played by Johan Botha, a South African leading tenor who has the build to match AIDA and Amneris and at 54 is regarded as one of the great tenors of the present generation. However he cannot be compared with the 1989 production where the part was played by Placido Domingo now in his late sixties and the most well known and loved tenor in the world since the death of Pavarotti. He has sung 128 roles, more than other tenor, and opened the Metropolitan season 21 times, four more than Caruso. He was 50 when he performed with Krajick. Aprile Millo played Aida when she was only 39 and proved she had a voice to match that of Domingo and Krajick and all three had suburb dramatic presence which is often lacking in the productions which tour provincial theatres. The 2009 performance of Aida was played by Violeta Urmane, a Lithuanian -Urmanaviciute, aged 48.

Because of the same generation frames the three singers connected in terms of passion and anguish because oft he triangle of affections and conflict over nationality. What both sets of lead singers are able to accomplish is to make their performances so convincing that it should make young people re think their attitudes to the older generation and their relationships.

In the same way that Madam Butterfly which I experienced last season opened my eyes as well as ears to what lead live opera performances are about this had widened and depended my appreciation in a profound way. There are several videos on You Tube which communicates the reality which all words must fail.

Back to story and with Radames off to lead the army consecrated by the High Priest Ramfis at the Isis Temple Aida is torn between anxiety for him and for father the Ethiopian King, a fact which is unknown to the Egyptians.

The second act is in two parts before then as with Madam Butterfly there were interviews with the lead singers as they came from the stage and there was opportunity to watch the scene being dismantled and re assembled. The back stage is vast .I have been back stage of companies putting on Operas ballets and West Musicals but this is incredible in width, depth, below stage and with height which is mouth opening. There set involved major construction and a minor army of dedicated construction workers rather than stage hands.

In the first part of the second Act the Princess, having grown more suspicious of Aida tests by saying that Radames has been killed and as a consequence Aida reveals her position, but hides her distress at learning that her people have been defeated..

There is then the Triumphant March scene fames all over world because of its spectacle and which includes a dance performed by the Ballet company and choreographed by the former head of the Bolshoi for the present production. The climax is when the prisoners are brought in and Aida sees her father, the king in shackles. The Egyptian king offers Radames anything he asks and he, pleads for the freedom for the slaves who are allowed to return home with the exception of Aida and her father who has said the King had died. The Egyptian King then throws the proverbial spanner in the works by giving Aida to Radames in marriage, a gift which cannot be refused and which is to the pleasure of Amneris

The final act is in major contrast to the second an act of great emotion between the trio, Amneris’s father and the High Priest. Amneris goes to Temple to pray until dawn and thus is in a position to overhear when Radames and Aida meet and plan to run away together. Aida father has also met up with his daughter and asks her to try and find out the battle plans as his countryman have risen up and invaded once more to free their King and his daughter and gain revenge for the defeat and plundering of their country. As soon as Radames reveals the route plan, Aida‘s father reveals himself and he and his daughter beg Radames to flee with them. He however is horrified at having unwittingly given away the battle route information and when confronted by Amneris who are summoned the High Priest, he surrenders to their judgement. Their decision is for him to be entombed in the vaults below the temple and here is finds that Aida having learnt of teh verdict has hidden away and shut away with him so they can face death together. Meanwhile above teh Princess is beyond consolation for having given Radames over to the judgement of the Priests after he refused her offer to save him if he gives up Aida for her.. While everything beforehand was outstanding it is the dramatic singing of the last act which for me has taken operatic singing go a new height. It is of coincidence that the previous event in my life of this order was to hear Verdi’s Requiem Mass at the Royal Albert Hall at the age of sixteen years in the year that I left school. There have been other magical moments from the Live Aid Concert, to the stage musical Les Miserables and Miss Saigon, to the Bruce Springsteen concerts and to hearing Louis Armstrong play in the half a century ago. But as with the voice of Krajick it is only from the accumulation of a lifetime of emotional highs and lows than one can appreciate the significance of the work and teh magnificence of the voices.

Then to be able to experience the original production using the same set and costumes and libretto added an even greater dimension to the experience. I am very fortunate to have had the opportunity and to now be able to experience more.

1817 4400 second season ends and search of the day

What a morning. I awoke at a reasonable hour eightish and was all set for good working day having had a good sleep, although interrupted as usual when I something made me go in search of the credit card which I had used the evening before at the supermarket.

I checked the working desk as on return and after the evening meal I had paid the credit card bill for the month on line, but I thought I had used the required references from a written record and not the card. Nor was it the shirt pocket which was cast down on a chair outside the bathroom where I had changed into pyjamas after preparing for bed. I checked the pyjamas top pocket, surely I had not gone to bed with card? Then trousers pockets down stairs, the outer and inner coat pockets, and then the brown house jacket I had worn over the past couple of days and then did this later all over again. In between I had systematically gone through the piles of card and materials ready for set making, placing in separate piles for Household, Cultural experience, development, various family and other confidential subjects, the travel and accommodation bookings, tickets and other information related to a funeral I am attending in a week’s time and then decided to set make these before going through the bulging over in tray box. All without success but gas got myself on top of these things and the room is looking much more tidy and organised,

There was a strong possibility that I had unintentionally left the card or dropped the car with the receipt at the supermarket. There was two reasons for this. First I had removed the card from the payment machine before it has signalled that was able to do so and the transaction had to be repeated and then I remembered having the receipt in my hand but not the card. Surely if I had left the card in the machine, the assistant or the next customer would have called out as I was at one end of the store from the lift and would have been seen and called back? I had also been upset by a group of boys in their teens on bicycles who were using the under cover area of the garage which forms the ground level of the store. I do not know if these are the same gang who used dive from the back lanes across the roadway when I was visiting my mother, or who I was caught doing wheelie stunts as they headed for the sea from down Ocean Road, There were about then of them riding around between the cards at some speed and doing stunts, Not only did they ignore my request for them to leave but swore back. They were still there when I returned with my goods so I reported the matter to a staff member and waited to see if any action was taken. It was not. A group of teenage girls then entered the area from the main car entrance and made their way over to the lads who appeared to be congregating out of the store at the far side. When I passed by this area on my way home they were all congregating on the steps in the garden area close to the main road and Mill Dam.

On the positive side they are off the streets where they would be a greater risk to themselves and other travelling motorists and it is evident they regard being under cover as an improvement to use the now vacant large car park areas at the old supermarket site. Large concrete blocks prevent the car being used by motorists for free. Responsibility rests with Asda as it is private property and by condoning the behaviour they are negating the usual vehicles are left at the owners own risk notice. The solution is for the store to rope or barrier off half the area every evening so that the lads can mess about at no risk to others than themselves. I have advised the store through the Internet and await to see what happens.

But to day Friday has been different. Lots of work and lots of film experiences, beginning with the last three episodes of the second season of the 4400 Lockdown, The fifth Page and Mummy’s Bosses and all three episodes are part of the build up to the Finale.
In Lockdown the HQ of the Government 4400 centre is attacked by a cerebral wave which makes everyone aggressive and homicidal which as the episode ended appeared to have been caused by a 4400 due for quarterly assessment who protected herself by wearing headphones. It was never clear why this attack was made but my guess is a war by the future against further Government action against 4400 members. It was not until the next two episodes that we learnt the nature of action.

Maia came out in a rash was being treated as Hives or an allergy. Which given my own recent condition and now in the process of clearing. What was I writing a couple of days ago about coincidences Shawn also came down in this rash and lost his power to heal and tried to keep what happened to him secret. In the next episode an increasing number of the 4400 are similarly afflicted and the government orders them all to be placed back in quarantine. This provides the opportunity for two people to return to the series. The first is Dennis Ryland the former head of the Unit who we now learn had been promoted to Washington but had been told to take charge again when his replacement is incapacitated from a gun shot wound during the Lockdown incident. The second is the originator of the theory about the potential power of the unused areas of the brain, Kevin Burkhoff the scientist in the mental institution who inspired the building of the communications device which broke his catatonic condition. He has been working on attempting to unlock the brain power through scientific method and is highly critical of the methods of Collier centre in inviting normal people to pay for a process which has no hope of giving them 4400 powers.

He has accepted an invitation from the Collier Organisation to work for them trying to understand and replicate the special abilities but understanding and unlocking the power within the brain
He brings his research to the government centre on learning of the extent of the spread of the infection among the 4400 in the hope the government will also share its knowledge with the common purpose of finding a cure. His help is we

After Diana and Tom or Tom and Diana obtain the secret medical files Kevin reveals that the 4400 are afflicted not by a disease but the side effect of a synthetic substance that has been placed in their blood stream named Promicin inhibitor and that is gathering in the lymph nodes, In Mummy Bosses we are taken through a flashback to the early days of the series and the aggressive telekinetic behaviour of a returnee. The Scientist doctor working at the centre Doctor Max Hudson is explaining to Dennis Ryland that the body produces four neurotransmitters and that the aggressive telekinetic returnee Orson has five and which enables him use those parts of the brain dormant in every one else and that as a consequence it can be assumed the other could have similar powers with different outcomes. He develops the synthetic substance which is designed to inhibit restrict the development of such power called anti Promicin and Dennis with the approval of a range of people in Government decide to inject the substance into the 4400 during the their quarterly medical check ups without their knowledge and approval and therefore an illegal action according to the constitution and current legislation. (Promicin is fictitious)

Kevin Burkhoff then works out that the side effect can be eliminated by the blood of a returnee who has not been subject to the quarterly medical checks. This is the daughter Isabelle born to Lily and Richard after she returned and which is obviously why Jordan Collier regarded her as the salvation of the 4400 and the future, There is a sub story in this respect as Lily ahs become possessive over her daughter when she finds she can no longer communicate has she been, as the anti Promicin takes effect but instead the daughter can communicate with Richard. When Shawn is also afflicted and loses his power and has to enter quarantine Richard is appointed temporary head and he organises a safe house for some of the key returnees when teh government orders them into quarantine and Lily runs off with her child and seeks the help of her first husband, There is a situation where eh says his new wife and departed and he still has feelings for Lily and wants them to get together, When he tries to take her by force she kills him but Isabelle makes the body vanish and then reappear as if nothing has happened.

After Kevin create the anti anti Promicin he uses it first on Shawn who with his power back is able to cure everyone at teh centre, Isabelle had cured her mother beforehand and the series ends as Lily having returned to their home at the centre HQ finds he daughter has gone and we switch to the Jordan centre where Shawn is in his office and a young woman enters and says she is Isabelle having been transformed overnight!

A second sub story is that Kyle becomes tormented by the fact that teh person charged with the Collier murder could face a life term of imprisonment. He gets to know the girlfriend and brother of the accused and decides to give himself up something which his father is opposed to. When teh crisis is over Kyle visits Shawn and admits he killed Jordan and Shawn uses his power to free Kyle of the alien power still within him. This enables him to find the inner peace and stability to insist giving himself up for the murder,

Tom has become even more emotional irrational at times during the three episodes. Yet he is also the one to understand what has happened in Lockdown and tries to remove all guns and other weapons to prevent killings under the influence. His condition is also affected when Alana is other dimension wife of eight years begins to slip between dimension as she is afflicted and has to go into quarantine. She is one of first to be cured by Shawn.

Diana is also having her moment as first she nearly shoots Tom in order to protect her daughter who is one of the first to become afflicted and lose her ability and then she rewards the geek Marco Pacella who has a crush on her and who worked out how to counter the cerebral attack and also helped to steal the medical papers which led to the cure. She invites him to dinner to celebrate the end of the crisis, but Maia warns that it has only just begun.

Tom was able to enable the cure to be used by blackmailing Dennis to call off the removal of everyone including Isabelle, from one of the safe houses. He and Diana have managed to find a secretary witness to the use of the anti Promicin inhibiter and kept a copy of all the key papers. The outcome is that Denis Ryland and the other who authorised the action are arrested and the doctor who behind the action is found dead in his car.

At the very end we also see a tramp returning to the site where the 4400 returned and this is Jordan Collier! Whatever next?

1816 The Celestine Insights, the 4400 and the Ascent

Tuesday the 20th of October 2009 was an in between day in which I progressed plans to attend a funeral, had no inclination to go out after staying up late sorting out arrangements in my mind and through the internet searches. Yesterday the 21st is proving an almost identical day and my impression, inaccurately is that it has rained, sometimes hard for most of the time until shortly ago, after 4pm on Thursday

Ideally I needed to be occupied without challenging thoughts but as often is my situation what I chose to do was the opposite. I switched on the TV to relax and found what appeared to be a stock Sci Fi channel film called the Celestine Prophecy. This proved to be a bad film with poor script, second level acting and third level sets and is organised filmmaking construction but the ideas on which the film is based exceptionally interesting and fitting in with many of my own thoughts over recent years although with significant variations

The Celestine Prophecy was published in 1993 in the United State and is an attempt to explain the purpose of human existence through the ideas of Eastern religious beliefs and sold 20 million copies world wide. The author James Reffield has since published two more volumes on the same subject and is working on a fourth.

I begin with challenging the idea that human life has a purpose other than to live and live as well as its possible for an individual given their inherited body and personality and such abilities and capacities as their nature and nurture provides in the era and particular society and social circumstances in which have been. I am therefore in conflict with fundamental aspects of many faith systems which have arisen because the founders did not understand matter, energy, time and space, the infinite nature of the universe and the capacities and abilities of human beings, let alone of other beings which are likely to inhabit an infinite universe. We can all speculate and imagine and construct from the existing knowledge base of our particular human time but the bottom line is that without having the capacity to communicate and see across the universe we can never know and unless there are infinite sentient beings no being can ever know.

The big idea of the Celestine Prophecy, or more accurately Celestine Insights, is similar to the 4400, in that within every human being there are powerful forces, energies which can be unlocked and which enable individuals to establish a harmony and a connection with the universe, time past and present and yielding an insight into the nature of a heaven and hell experience within the human self conscious awareness and but which can also be shared with others. Having promoted ideas about the infinity of space and time, and that we inherent individual memories of ancestral experience and that we are all directly connected with time past as we are to the accumulation of good and bad thoughts and deeds and to the pull of such forces in a dialectic metaphysical as well as material. (Marx‘s failure of not understanding the true nature of matter as static energy and the nature of metaphysical energy?) , I was immediately interested and encouraged to find a film which dealt with some of these matters, however bad the cinematic film! I have not read the books or plan to do so.

My understanding is that the book and film are about the discovery of ancient scrolls, going back 600 years before the time of Christ in the former civilization of Peru and then hidden by the Catholic Church as the middle ages ended because of the challenge what they said posed for the religion as it had then developed. The discovered Scrolls consist of eight translated insights which have to be experienced in sequence before an individual becomes sufficiently enlightened to grasp the next and so on. Other scrolls are thought/known to have existed.
The First insight is that a new spiritual awakening is occurring in human culture: an awakening, a journey, in which we are led forward in mysterious coincidence. An Awakening brought about by a crucial mass of individuals who experience their lives as a spiritual unfolding. We are asked to accept that it was no accident that the insight came to someone 600 years before the Christian religions from a small Jewish sect promoting the idea of not being phased by every day realities including the persecution, torment and execution by the state and using non violent acceptance to combat the forces of violence and injustice in society. The hiding of truth then occurs before the age of Enlightenment in Europe and North America. However these truths have to be experienced before they can be understood and this implies that they are not truths for everyone.

I have never been happy with the concept of mystery because of its emotional connotations and believe puzzle is a more legitimate expression. I am at ease with coincidence because I believe that all events have a history related to each particle of matter of beings, human, animal fish etc. Because each event has a history it becomes predictable through the collation of all the information relevant to it.

The second insight appears created only for the present world in that it argues that through the awakening process human being will learn to break away from their increasing dependence on secular survival and technological progress and by turning away from the secular path individuals can learn their truth purpose and the nature of he universe. Now I doubt if in 600 BC there was the concept technology or dependence on consumer materialism. I also challenge that the majority of human being are dependent, including those in economically developed countries.

For most of the experience of humanity the belief was in a physical world which was static from an overall flat earth with starts and heaven above and the fires of hell below and that one would fall off into space if one reached the edge of the known world.

For the third insight the author uses the awareness of energy to argue that individuals can interact and harness energy in a constructive way. He does not appear to also make the point that such energy can also be harnessed in a destructive and negative way. This fits in with the 4400 belief that within the brain there is the capacity to use energy to move objects, and therefore rationally it should be possible for individuals with the developed ability to collectively harness such force into greater to both concentrated and distributed power.

Not having read the book it is difficult to criticise aspects of the propositions which he may have covered but the basic premise of the film is that modern day Catholicism joins forces with the military power seeker in Peru to destroy the insights so their power to create a new age spiritual world will be lost if not for ever, for the foreseeable future. This clearly is rubbish because throughout the history of the human kind while it is true that the already enlightened, as well as the powerful, tend to suppress knowledge and change which threatens their position there are those who also appreciate that the advances can be used to reinforce and widen power with evil intent as well as for good, with atomic and hydrogen energy the most obvious example. The last thing any tyrant would do is to destroy something which could aid their power and at the end of World War 2 Russia and Comrade Stalin used German Nazi scientists to the same extent as did the USA and the UK.

The Fourth insight concerns the nature of human interaction based on the natural inclination of human beings to influence and control, to lead and to dominate others in order to develop out a sense of worth security but which also results in other becoming weaker and provoking retaliation which is the root of interactive conflict.

This brings me to one of the one off episode of the 4400 called Carrier in which a woman who has been dominated all her life, experiencing disappointment, frustration and failure is a 4400 returnee who suddenly finds that when under psychological and emotional attack her metabolism changes and her hands explode into a virulent venom which first kills all 270 odd citizens of her immediate community, then an unmarried lorry driver who attempts to make her into an instant born again Christian is found and then the biologically protected suited government agents sent to help her, demonstrating that her force when roused is more powerful than any existing defensive system known to humans. At first she attempts to kill herself and the order is given to incinerate her in the vehicle she travels when she refuses to respond to the request to be helped, and then when she somehow escapes from this fate and is located moving into the most populated area she can find, believing the intention of the 4400 is that she should beg Armageddon, Diana manages to shoot her in the heart as Tom tries to reason with her.

Regarding the fourth proposition while I have sympathy as with the previous I do not accept that human brings are by nature intent on dominating each other and our history continues to be full of collective and individual collaborative relationships which improves the lives of those participating as well as of those who do not.

The fifth is that is security and violence ends when we individually experience the inner connection with the divine energy within, a connections described by mystics of all traditions. A sense of lightness and buoyancy along with the constant sensation of love are measures of this connection. My only issue is with the understanding of divine.

The sixth argues that the more we become and stay connected the more we become acutely aware fo those times when we lose connection, and usually arises in condition of stress, and it is through the connection that we come to understand our individual path in life and spiritual mission and which is the way we contribute to the future of the world. The author then argues that human tend to seek to become interrogators, Intimidators, aloof and Poor me at times as means of taking energy from others. The author called this stage Clearing the past and learning how to avoid continuing to travel along paths which take us away from our individual missions. To some extent this is what my work installations has been about although it is entwined with the overall mission itself.

The seventh is that when we know our mission and keep on the pathway and there will be a flow of mysterious coincidences to guide to our destinies but this is not an easy progression and we will have to understand and follow dreams, day dreams and our intuition and these insights usually come synchronistically through the wisdom of other human beings. Mumbo Jumbo alas although there are aspects which have a relevance

I find the eighth whimsical in that the basic proposition is fine that we are helped in our individual mission by helping others in theirs but we have to watch out for the problems which arises from romantic relationships and we need to be especially kind and loving towards children.

The ninth where the film ends is fanciful in that as we evolve and progress in the spiritual mission the technology will automate what we need to survive this free us to evolve into a higher form of life transforming the body into a spiritual force and enabling a unity with after life dimensions and thus ending the cycle of birth and death.

It will be appreciated that writing this cycle into a mystery thriller is quiet a task and which one will have to read the book(s) to come to a judgement. The author acknowledges the influence of the work Games People Play by Dr Eric Bernie which I acquired in paperback soon after publication in 1964. (The work is also said to touch on Zen, Chi, New age spirituality and other mystic and philosophical thinking0.

The film story is in the form of an adventure in Peru although the artificiality of the locations with their absence of bird and insect life is astounding as well as the use of colour filter lens to depict heightened vision and sensation is laughable. However there is a brave attempt to translate the propositions into cinematic action moments but it is understandable that unlike the book, the film flopped and has been consigned to free film channels.

So far there is yet to be any connection between the one off mini stories of the 4400 and the development of the main story and its characters and the series appears to be becoming vehicles for raising moral and social questions of the day. In Rebirth Richard is invited to the funeral and wake of one of his group in the Korean War and he sees this as an opportunity to confront the former colleague who was the main racist responsible for his being framed and beaten up. The others appear apologetic to varying degrees having adapted to present day North America. When he confronts his adversary he finds an unrepentant old man dying. But Richard is nevertheless able to close the door on this aspect of his past. It remains unclear what his power and mission for returning is other than acting as the Joseph figure for the Virgin Lily, Virgin only in the sense that she has been impregnated by Richard while they were away without either knowing of any previous contact.

In Hidden the issue is the position of War criminals who can make an important contribution to the future of mankind. On of the returnees is a Rwandan doctor who works as nurse in a USA hospital and uses an ability to repair brain damaged babies before their birth. He agrees to be assessed by the 4400 watch unit as long as his anonymity is protected. However the Collier Foundation also get to know of the development and its new managing director/communication/publicity Director leaks the information and the man is identified as a war criminal in that he was aware this his clinic used a sanctuary and for those being murdered was about to be raised and he did nothing to prevent his patients from visiting or to protect them when the military led mob arrived. The publicity outs his background but the government then decides that his curative powers are more value than his extradition to be executed by the present government in Rwanda. It is something which all governments have done throughout time

There was also no further major revelations. Alana, Tom’s other dimension wife of eight years now carries on where the couple left off although I am not clear if she has moved in permanently or is keep her own home as well as art gallery. She is not listed in teh Wikipedia information which suggests she either objected to the Wikipedia articles or had her credit removed from the series. I shall have to check the official site if there is one.

The continuation of another dimension relationship takes Kyle, Tom son, some getting used to as he becomes more and more brooding when he begins to realise that he was the killer of Jordan Collier. He runs off and is hidden by his natural mother, Eventually Tom works out that Kyle was involved during a blackout and manipulated by the 4400, fortunately just before other members of the unit begin to follow leads which brings them to a station left luggage locker in which they find a weapon bought at the same time as the riffle and also containing a photo of Jordan C. Alana finds the key for the locker hidden in Kyle’s room and they are able to remove and hide the incriminating weapon before the 4400 investigation unit arrives. Tom, his former wife and Alana then arrange for Kyle to hide in Mexico where Alana has family but someone else who also fits the identity picture is then arrested and brought to the unit and Kyle is told he can return home, which is obviously a stupid thing to do without knowing why he is having the black outs and recent memories of what he has done during them,

Diana had been warned by her psychic daughter Maia not to continue to be involved with the search for Jordan’s killer as it will lead to someone close to her being hurt. When the suspect is apprehended he pulls a gun out and Diana pushes Tom and the bullet misses by a micro second in freeze frame. Diana assumes this it what Maid has seen but when she says that Tom is safe, Maia comments, For now.

Diana is not fit for purposes in many respects as having an inbuilt second carer with her sister while she spend the greater part of the time in her work, she then throws the sister out who tries to use Maia to predict bets so she can made some money. Diana is also prepared to allow a colleague to fake Maia’s Diana. While I have sympathy about her guilt at having broken her daughter’s trust in reading it the diary in the first instance she was prepared to disclose its existence when it came to trying to prevent the death of Jordan Collier and then she decides to sit on whatever else the book reveals. I would have no hesitation in dismissing Diana on the spot and slapping a confidentiality order on her after gaining possession of the diary and the idea that the government would accept whatever she submits without first authenticating with the child is ludicrous.
The disappearance of Jordan Collier’s body, did he suddenly come alive and go to ground? Question is left in the air while Shawn is finding his role as centre Godfather and faith healer impossible and wants a sabbatical to heal himself and adjust to his new role as the Messiah. It is at this point that that a publicity communications’ man, a friend of Jordan, steps in to say it was Jordan’s intention that he should take over as Shawn’s MD and quickly establishes himself as more single minded, ruthless and devious in the cause than Collier himself, although he also confides that he is not a believer!

One of his first acts is to promote Lily as his Director of Human Resources and persuade Shawn not to go off but to restrict his healing to one case a day and to set up a Foundation with an international committee to decide on which deserving cases among the millions seeking help should be chosen. Shawn has made up with his young brother and his mother but when the brother is shown around the centre his tour guide is Liv. The attractive young woman Shawn rescued from street life poverty, drugs and prostitution and has become a study disciple at the centre. She steals some drugs which she uses to tempt the brother into a relationship but they are caught after Shawn has warned his brother from getting involved with the girl. However this is not out of protection for his brother but because he fancies herself himself. The MD steps in and warns Shawn that he is being unrealistic in contemplating having a relationship with the girl given her background. Shawn retaliates that teh role did not stop Jordan bedding every willing female in sight. The MD points out that Jordan was not the faith healer messiah that Shawn has become and that he better sooner than later get used to the demands and restrictions which are intrinsic in this role.

The effect on judgement and potential misuse of official position over a pretty face and yielding body is the subject of the great War time film find of the decade called The Ascent.

This 1994 film stars Ben Cross as the bitter widowed Major Farrell who is put in charge of a British POW camp in the foothills of what I thought was Mount Kilimanjaro which came to the attention of British cinema audiences in the 1952 film The Snows of Kilimanjaro with Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Susan Hayward. However on looking up the mountain and remembering something said in the film I realised the mountain was Mount Kenya, the highest in Kenya 17000 and the second highest in Africa to Kilimanjaro 19000.

The film centres on the Italian POW’s with records of opera in background and in particular the young handsome loner Franco Disassti played by Vincent Spano who has already made three escapes to the consternation of the camp commander and is recaptured on his fourth attempt after stealing a vehicle and crashing into another in which are Patricia Rachel Ward and her father who runs a local rural business which includes providing the camp with the timber for its construction and development. He fixes their vehicle and Patricia takes a shine to the young man but this does not prevent her father returning him to the POW camp. When the Commander, Major Farrell learns of this development when he comes a courting the daughter who is also a young widow he scurries back to the camp to punish the escapee with a further period in solitary confinement in a crude tin hut with only a grill for lighting and air.

The exploits of the escapee are also a thorn in the side of most of the other POW’s who want a quiet life, hoping the allies will quickly win the war so they can return home to their country and families. The major was away from the camp at the time of the escape following his ambition to climb the mountain but he has failed on this occasion as he has done on others. Franco lets it be known that he is an accomplished mountaineer and the one of leading Italian officers Aldo- Tony Lo Bianco hits on the idea of a small group breaking out of the camp, climbing the mountain and planting the Italian flag and breaking back into the camp in order to gain their self respect having surrendered and become POW’s and make a point to the Commanding Officer. Franco at first refuses to participate but then agrees giving a promise to return to the camp rather than go down the other side into Somalia.

The camp rallies around he enterprise giving rations to the Franco to build up his strength and making the equipment and clothing needed for the climb, setting up an Italian choir and band to mask the noisy work involved.

Then the Italian made saw mill breaks down and Patricia ask for the help of Franco a qualified engineer and reluctantly the Commander agrees proving his Sergeant as armed escort. However during the visit Patricia arranges for father to provide the guard with food and drink and while he is away she and Franco become lovers and he fixes the machine in such away that it will break down and require further attention in the future. The guard is suspicious about what has happened while he is away and works quit the machine has been fixed to break down again because of he use of materials and on return expresses his concerns to the Major adding that he believes the daughter is aware of what has been done. The Major gets drunk and threatens first Franco and then goes to the home of Patricia and her father to confront her in the middle of the night. Although her father comes to see what is happening, she is able to get the major calm and takes him to a room so he can sleep the drink off overnight and to have a serious chat with him in the morning after telling her he has planned to propose marriage to her.

When the Major returns to teh camp he finds that Franco, Aldo and German POW have escaped, the German POW has become the third member of the project offering his military compass as an incentive. However once outside the camp he breaks his word and goes along the road but is caught trying to steal a vehicle from Patricia’s home stead as one of the first places the escapee were expected to raid. The German POW is given the impression that the other have been caught and he unintentionally reveals that they are making their way to the mountain. The Major and Sergeant then travel by road to base of the mountain thus are within a short distance of them when the serious climbing begins. Aldo starts to be affected by the atmosphere and suffers from climber’s altitude sickness. He is found and taken back by the Sergeant to the homestead to recuperate before going back to camp.

Meanwhile the Major follows the Franco up the mountain. Franco then use a rope and within the camp to lasso himself from the peak he has climbed over to a point where the highest peak can be climbed and the Major uses the rope to follow him and then threatens to shoot him with a revolver as he starts to climb the last stretch. The major does not do this although he liked top saying he will not let Franco take her, Franco says no one can have her so beautiful she is. He reaches the summit and plants the Italian Flag and contemplated the freedom over the other side. But he returns down to the Major and offers himself as the prisoner just as it looks the major is considering killing himself. They return to the camp and Franco is allowed into the compound without punishment and the film ends as Aldo looks with his telescope to see the Italian Flag. The acting is excellent and script and story credible. My own quibble is the ability of Franco to lasso across to the peak which would have required a remarkable throw at the distance shown in the film

1305 Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Those with a heart will take the bride, Casino Royal and rhe Big Game

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Those with a heart will take the bride, is regarded as one of the great films of Bollywood, first released in 1995, and was still running in one cinema in April 2007 completing 600 performances. Given how Indian cinema had developed by that date, the film broke new ground, featuring the life of British Indian young people as they attempted to balance the traditional family life and expectations with the freedoms of their non Indian contemporaries. The story is a simple one. A young girl dreams of falling in love and is appalled when her father announces that she is to marry the son of his best friend back in his Indian homeland and which he has not visited for many years. She has never met her the young man. On the promise that she will marry his choice and not do anything to dishonour the family he allows her to go on a holiday in Europe for a month, and as she sets off on the journey she encounters the son of a wealthy Indian who has integrated fully into the Western way of life, and who rewards his son for failing to graduate with a degree at university, thus keeping the family tradition of being poor in education and successful in business. The young man behaves as other western teenagers and during one escapade upsets the father, unknown to him, of the girl also having an adventure before settling down to marriage and domesticity in a country she does not know. Unknown to either the girl or her parents future her husband to be a playboy gang leader who plans to leave his wife from time to time to enjoy the freedoms of London.

In the long standing tradition of such relationships the girl cannot stand the behaviour of the young wealthy Indian determined to sow a few wild oats before joining in his father's business, and the girl does her best to discourage his attention, well at least in the beginning. At core she is much more a passionate and wilder young woman than he is a young man. There relationship develops into love as they become separated together from their rest of their travelling companions as they journey through Switzerland. The girl explains about the engagement and despite his outward behaviour he understands and respects the Indian traditions, and is prepared to accept the situation until encourage to follow his heart as well as his dreams, by his father.

The young man then finds that angered by learning what he has been told of her falling in love, her father has taken the family straight back to India to begin the preparations for the wedding. This is an elaborate and long procedure involving both extended family networks. The wealthy and talented young man who can play the piano, sing and dance also makes his way to India where he deliberately makes friends with the family of the groom and begins to establish a relationship with the father of the his true love, admitting his shortcomings and their previous encounter to the man. The young man plans to persuade the father to shift from the long standing commitment to his friend's daughter, but this falls apart when the marriage is brought forward and then the two male heads of household find out that the couple have had an affair dashing all hopes of as amicable settlement.. The father of the young man has come to India to help his son and the girl's, mother also becomes complicit, urging the two lovers to elope because she believes her husband will never give his permission. This appears to be how the situation will end but in a dramatic fight in which the young man takes a beating, the girl's father relents and allows her to go off with her life's love back to England.

As with all the Bollywood films I have seen, they are very colourful, with long musical numbers involving lots of dancers, reminding of the heyday of the Hollywood musical; the behaviour of the young people leads to romantic kissing and sexual behaviour is inferred but not depicted. It is the kind of film one can enjoy with grandparents and grandchildren. The films are also technically of a very high and latest standards, and acting is also skilful, if ritualised . Hopefully I will live to see the development of a new cinema on mainland China.

Later in the day I could not resist also viewing the latest Casino Royale Film, I have the Fleming novel and saw the original 1967 spoof film made with a host of stars including Peter Sellers and Peter Ustinov. There are interesting aspects of this later film in some fifty years of 007 including that it also opened in China, in slightly amended version. The story begins at the outset of the Bond career, enabling a new depth of character and the development of relationship from their usual superficiality and avoiding references to the anti Russian and China cold war situations.

This is the second film of the week which also tries to avoid alienating Muslims by the device of painting the terrorists as commercially orientated criminals exploiting the beliefs of extremist and fanatics. There is real violence and real pain in this film which is not suitable for children.

Of course there much unbelievable spectacular action and despite attempts to plant false trails and explanations, the outcome is predicable as Bond learns the hard way that to survive, let alone win out, he has to trust no one especially any woman who appears to fancy him and to remain professionally on guard day and night.

In terms of plot specifics, the principal baddy in this film is a man who acts as the banker for dictators and fundamentalists, and make his money by gambling with this money. His bets 100 million pounds that the shares of a company producing a new airbus will plummet after he arranges the prototype to be blown up in a terrorist attack, but this fails because of the intervention of 007 and he loses the money, temporarily, because as a skilful poker players, he does not cheat, he plans to gain £150 million in a game where the entrance sum is £10million and re-entry is only possible with another £5. Missing from this film is the throw away humour, the latest up to-date devices designed by Q and Miss Moneypenny, with M and her department relying on the latest mobile SatLap E communications. Who needs yer Baby?
During the last seven days I also saw a gambling based British film, called The Big Game. These days it appears everyone has learnt how to play poker and plays via the TV or on line, the new legal way of breaking into people's homes and their bank accounts. The amusing aspect of the Big Game is that it is a childhood board game which looks very much like Monopoly, except that the players bet a hundred pounds on four player games, with a number of games played in long sessions until the early hours. The story centres on a worker in a pie factory and his girl friend who works in a chippy saving up to buy a home of their own. The young man also studies business and the stock market and pretends he is a stock broker to his playing friends who include a professional footballer who scores a hat trick against Newcastle after spending the greater part of the night gambling and a business man whop backs the winning stock market tips. A new player in he group, friend of the friend talks of games in London where the stakes are even higher and where entry is as high as £40000, and the friends of the young man push him into representing their collective financial interests in such a game not knowing that the game will be fixed one way or the other and that their new contact is on a retainer to find suitable victims. There is a nice twist to this film which leaves everyone happy except the crooks.

I listen to a radio programme on the merits of eating porridge for breakfast and returned to my microwaves instant preparation, and kept up the good work with a roasted bream and vegetables for lunch and a small omelette for tea and then undid the good work with a bag, a small bad of chocolate covered peanuts and a large glass of red. Well it is my birthday week.

1304 The Common Touch,In the service of the Country with Lost and the Peter Green Splinter Group

Sometimes I only write my way into a theme, sometimes I write myself out of one theme into another, but this evening I am as clear as I can ever be about what I want to try and say, sparked by two very different Television programmes experienced at 8 and then 9pm. The first was about the capitalist merging of copy goods with branded goods manufactured in China as this country becomes the economic power of the world. The second was a brilliant episode of Lost which brings the 4th series into a new dimension, explaining much that has gone before and which is to come, or does it?. One programme blurring the nature of what is fake with what is real and one which created a coherent explanation for the ability to believe one is in two different dimension of actual time without any physical transformation.

I had woken early, struggling to break from a dream in order to put the rubbish bin out. The dream involved my mother in her latter days, something which I cannot recall happening before, and a building, a familiar scenario, with the building a college or residential facility which also becomes and office, occasionally department kind of store, or a large house, and while these buildings are familiar or have familiar aspects there are always problems in that I cannot ever get back to where I have been and want to be, exiting some distance away, again in territory with familiar aspects, but sometime distance away from the place I anticipated and always thinking I know how to get back and never being able to do so.
On getting up I redrafted and corrected yesterdays writing. Sometimes my days become more circular than others. It was cold as I pushed the bin out under the half opened garage back door. I boiled the kettle and only then decided on coffee rather than first thought tea, and cheese slices on toast rather than cereal. I thought if I wake up quickly and feel physically alert I will start the house clean cycle once more. What happened to the forecast sleet and snow? Perhaps the radio or TV will tell me. I did not start the house clean and failed to answer my query about the weather forecasting. I heard the bin men come and then later the recycle box run which I had forgotten as my box had not built up over the fortnight, so it did not matter than I have to wait another two weeks. I forgot to bring the bin back in until darkness remembering when taking the evening meal plate into the kitchen.

I had some of the cold chicken as a salad for lunch, another portion will suffice for tomorrow, and a tomato soup around 5 and a ham omelette around 7pm, a banana at lunchtime and too much butterscotch whip around 9 as I was then too tired to prepare some fresh pineapple, followed by strong percolated coffee at 10 to keep me going until the writing is done for the day.
I worked long and hard on my work project during the day in order to meet the new monthly out target of 125 new sets of cards, 3000 in total, my average since the autumn of 2003 when I first got underway. This work included information on the volume about scientific Matter which I quickly decided must commence with scientific creation and the 57 ( after one quick count) non scientific creation belief system from around our planet of which three are Islam, Judaism and Christianity and then the multitude of second and third sub category beliefs system which emerged as individual human being wrestled with the emerging sciences and the extent to which belief was put into practice and was not.

As I worked I first listened to a two hour set of the Peter Green Splinter Group, which I had never heard of before until I realised this was Peter Green, born Peter Greenbaum of Fleetwood Mac, who started with John Mayal's Bluesbreakers, after Eric Clapton's departure. In the beginning there was Adam and Eve, then you and me and we are all connected. He created Fleetwood Mac and with success followed the predicable route of taking drugs, particularly the hallucinatory LSD which a psychiatrist I admired used to take very disturbed adolescents and others, sinking deeper into the criminal and self destructive abyss, on a bad trip into their childhood and the precipitating experience of their subsequent behaviour, but which in his instance may have precipitated his schizophrenia, the self administered LSD trips I mean. With the help of family and friends Peter resurfaced with new music in the late 1970's/early80's and then again in the 1990's with the Splinter Group. Like Clapton he collected guitars having over 100, he should have had 101 which would have been interesting. In 2004 a further tour was planned and cancelled and then with the British Blues All Stars but this was also cancelled because of the difficulty he continued to experience with his problems, in part caused by the medication. His large body of work remains on record and some on film. It is timeless music which will be played long after much of today's output of popular music is forgotten.

In the afternoon as my work momentum flagged I enjoyed the 1941 British Classic film The Common Touch which was a romantic view of a Christian socialist capitalism in which an eighteen year old finds himself inheriting a major company, decides to investigate the effects of a plan cooked up by his chief executive to make personal profit from a deal which will evict the residents of a homeless shelter used by those who have been to prison or fallen on other hard times. He and a friend dress down to live in the shelter until they discover something to thwart the plans and convince his Board to adopt a socialist approach to the planned development. There is a sub plot in this film where a high class singer declines the proposal of marriage from an England Test Match Cricketer, of the Gentlemen public school wing in the days when the Players were the professionals who tried to make a livelihood full time from the game while the Gentlemen had separate interests which provided their income and life style. Bernard Miles had a miniscule role as a steward at Lords.

I then planned to have as background to further work what I thought was to be a World War 2 film, In the service of the country, only to discover it was a Russian language film in which their secret service set out to thwart an Arabic, Muslim, Terrorist group's attempt to launch Armageddon on all non believers commencing with bombings in Moscow, New York and Berlin city shopping centres. The hero of the civil service team is a cross between the leader of the A Team and bionic Superman Ninja, with his sidekick Lara Croft who take on Cat Woman, the brain behind what was is in fact a capitalist heist to strip some of the oil made Arab wealth, 200 million dollars to 14 accounts in Switzerland, letting off a few real bombs to cause some devastation and loss of human life to keep the Muslim extremists content, much like the American Mafia funded the attempted capitalist return to Cuba. I watched the nonsense because I became very tired and at times it was difficult to keep my eyes open to watch the action let alone read the sub titles. It was an interesting Russian perspective, given he 75% popular vote for the replacement of Putin as Prime Minister while he moves into the Presidency, well it could have been 99.99 percent like the good old days. This reminds me to mention that the Clinton succession is running out of steam which means that I hope Obama is now on assassination watch, especially as a new Presidential assassination film opens this weekend and is bound to trigger another political, Mafia. American secret state within a state, capitalist conspiracy, religious extremist, racist assassination attempt, or is their secret service that incompetent to enable a lone individual to get close enough?

It was while I was trying to recover from this prolonged siesta that it looked as if an hour long programme about the extent to which the major international capitalist companies were being shafted by their own greed until they worked out if you cant beat them you should join them. I have no idea when western capitalists first worked out that China would solve all their problems of squeezed profit margins and bonuses because of the accumulative effects in their countries of minimum wage legislation, structured and protected workers rights with good wage levels, good holiday and pension arrangements, and the need for higher taxes to provide social expenditure on top of that required for security. The prospect of unlimited wealth from trading with Russian and China was only identified as possibilities when I attended a senior management course in the mid 1980's, although by then the capitalists understood that one had to internationalise in order to be able to move the enterprises when political, trade union and trading conditions became too difficult to maintain and further profits in any particular country.

The allegation is a confusing film (which appeared to be on the side of capitalist enterprises who have little thought on the impact of their machinations on workers at home or overseas), is that the firms are now, at best, only going through the motions of opposing the copying of brand images, and that they are unofficially cashing in themselves where they can on the parallel manufacturing and trading.
The story in this documentary is that the companies were so keen to get into the emerging Chinese exporting market that they took up with whichever bilingual Chinese fixer that came their way, not realising that in order to maximise the profit potential and therefore speed up the economic growth of their country, the individual, often which official connections, if not outright blessing, would directly or indirectly set up other production units to create copies which would undercut the Brand and also make more profit because they did not have the same chain of profiteers to service. The reason why the Branded goods went to China more than to Russia because they could recreate the slave labour conditions of the industrial revolution, getting volunteers to work 100 hours a week in for coppers or cents, often using adolescents and children.

As with the agricultural workers driven to the Industrial revolution factories in the UK or the theoretically emancipated black and Mexican slave labour in the USA, the earnings were still better than previously, with the prospect of advancement for a few who were able to understand and use the system for their personal gain. The hoot is that many of those exploiting the Brands names by making authentic copies, are principled communists who have worked out that this is a good way to pay back the Western capitalist for their years of trying to break communist power and authority. I just do not understand how western capitalists get away with describing these goods as fake or counterfeit.
Take Burberry for example, who have closed British factories with the consequence that Burberry is now a Chinese made good and made according to Chinese labour conditions. Somewhere in China there are other workers making Burberry like goods sold in China and overseas, at less price. Top Shop in the UK sells look alike fashion goods where the originals cost £1000 for £50. I do not understand the difference. The gripe appears to be who pockets the profits. It is not about the impact of the development on British working conditions, protected through membership of the ECC and which was once hated by socialists and defended by capitalists.

The programme illustrated my point by interviewing one engaging woman who is able to frequent travel the world and who always visit her Bagman friend in Marbella who is able to provide her and her friends with bag look a likes costing a tenth or twentieth of the original where there is usually a waiting list which means that when you get your original it is already out of date. So the original manufacturing brand name must be raking it in within six months of orders making and selling bag ten to twenty to forty and fifty times the actual cost of materials and labour and others are able to also make money from silly women with too much money and just as little social conscience. This reminds me to have a moan about all those creating markets on E Bay for example by giving publicity to the mark up on scare resource items. I have long suspected the complaint was coming from those such as footballers and those associated with football clubs who planned to make money by selling their allocation of tickets to the official resale market, the companies which provide hospitality packages at all the main sporting, theatrical and cultural events. What they not like is ordinary punters getting in on the act as this undercuts the price which celebrity interests can get for their tickets, and the demand for the inflated hospitality packages. You think I am joking? On the news this day the HSBC bank was writing off billions because of its involvement in the sub prime market in the USA, but still announced record overall profits in the billions because of its gains in the Far East. I was also fascinated by a local news programme which is spending the week promoting the new Emirates route from Newcastle airport to Dubai with its links to the Australasia, nice work if you can get and afford it. It is obviously a freebie promoted by the airline and Dubai. However my complaint is not that this is the nature of society, but by the increasingly flimsy pretence of it all as the general population becomes more educated.

Earlier in the day I had planned to spend time reading what Wikipedia has to say on Time but was over taken by this week's brilliant episode of Lost, one of the best of the 70 odd so far. Earlier in the 4th series the ultra realist Sayed had set off with the true love never hath so finer an advocate, Desmond, in the helicopter to the ship, only to fail to keep strictly on its course, and for Time to slip out of Time but with significant consequence Desmond who finds himself switching with increasing rapidity between his time in the British Army (it does not have an British army feel though) and being on the helicopter and the off island moored freighter. The reason why he has been affected in this way is because his previous experience of significant radioactivity and the electro magnetic storm which the helicopter passes through on its way to the freighter. In the past series the whole issue of convergent electro magnetic polarity was explored. In this episode the communications officer on the freighter and a friend have been also affected when they take the ship to shore boat and veer off the only course portal which craft can travel to and from the island. One of the two has already died and the other is shortly to die which emphasises the need for Desmond to find a treatment if one is possible. It is because on the island there is Daniel Faraday the Oxford experimental physicist who has worked out a means of transporting the brain (not the body) into the future and back in which you can experience the realities but not alter it… a device to ensure that those watching the programme cannot conclude that the mystery of the island is about alternate dimensions and realities, especially as in this series there are forward flashes as well as flashbacks. The beauty of this programme is that it provides a coherent explanation for what is happening with a Romeo and Juliet love story

During moments of onboard ship reality Desmond and Sayed are able to communicate with the island by telephone and with Daniel Faraday, the physicist from the freighter who explains that some of those who veer of the narrow sea or air course to the island experience a mental form of time travel in which the individual inhabits their actual physical body and memory in both dimensions and in order to stabilise himself in both and not bring his present to an untimely end he has to connect with a meaningful constant from both times, and which in this instance is Penny, the love of both their lives.

On discovering that Desmond believes the year is 1996, Daniel instructs him that the next time he is back in this reality he must go as quickly as he can to find him at Oxford University where he works and is at the early theoretical and experimental period of his brain travel work. When this happens he reacts that Desmond is a set up by colleagues to who ridicule his work but he has provided in the future a key to ensure that when in the past Daniel recognises that only someone inhabiting the future could know of the detail. He then explains to Desmond that in order to survive he must make contact with someone, a constant, from both moments in time.

The beauty of this story line will not be appreciated by those who do not know the history of Desmond's relationship with Penny and that she is using her family wealth to fund an ongoing search to find out what happened to Desmond and that despite what has happened between them and the years of separation, their love has remained constant, except for the time in 1996 which is where the brain time shift has taken him. To break the chain which is quickly leading to a brain seizure an death he must make contact with Penny in the present, where there is a double complication, he does not have her phone number, and the ship to outside world communication system has been sabotaged. Sayed the communications specialist is able to solve the latter but to get the phone number he has to go back mentally to 1996,find Penny's father and persuades him to given her whereabouts, he gives her address not her phone number, so Desmond visits and persuades Penny to give her number as a means of getting rid of him, and he registers with her that he will ring her on Christmas even eight years from hence, which he is able to do, they express their undying love how ever long it will take for them to be together, if ever, and in do doing he is saved, for now. The episode ends with Faraday going through his master notebooks where eight years before he has made a note, if things go wrong Desmond is my constant. Thus the situation is circular as I believe is time, and that what is imagined or dreamt reality and what is authentic reality is all part of reality, just as what is a fake, and what is a copy, or good representation or reproduction are all valid perspective of one reality.

1303 The Children of Times Square and June Whitfield and her Comedians

Beware looking into the abyss too often for its watch into your soul is constant. The problem with method writing as with method acting, or method anything Is being able to switch back to you, especially if you begin to like the role played and then lose you all together. I suspect this is a problem for comedians, unless they are exceptionally and naturally talented, or become so, after year upon year of working as the assistant, the sidekick, the foil to all the great ones.

I write this as I watch a South Bank Programme about the theatrical, radio and TV life of June Whitfield who is 81. If I feel as I do as 69 approaches what will it be like at 70? June looked fitter, more energetic than me, despite being a decade older.

And she is still working, now on the London stage, with the English National Opera company. where she began in wartime GB, with a certificate of exemption as a student actress. Would we be so enlightened today? June was brought up in South London in a wealthy middle class household becoming a stage actress after RADA. She appeared in a number of production including by Noel Coward who invited his performers into his world, for a time. Last week I think I heard someone plugging Private Lives as if it was a new play, June recalled being asked by a contemporary young player if there was some message in the work, so she told him it was written in a week as the piece of entertainment it remains, although now a historical reminder into how we once liked to see ourselves.
It was not until 1953 that she became a household name when she joined Jimmy Edwards and the rest of the cast of Take it from Here, then a radio programme which had an audience of 22 million just under half the UK population. Her most well known character then was Eth engaged to Ron Glum. She appeared with Arthur Askey on early TV and then Tony Hancock with the Blood Donor sketch. One of the classics, also just about every name comedian of subsequent decades including Frankie Howard, Benny Hill Peter Sellers, Morecombe and Wise, Bruce Forsythe, Leslie Phillips, Roy Hudd, Terry Scott, Julian Clary, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders and has become a stalwart in Britain's longest running situation comedy, The Last of the Summer Wine. There has been no elevation to becoming a Dame or the like, perhaps because she is always there, the first call, perhaps because she appears to have led a normal family life away from her work.


Well done Melvyn and his team for reminding everyone and me just what a national treasure she has become.

There was an inevitability about the lunchtime film, The children of Times Square. which I imagine is similar to the area around Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circus and Soho in London, and where the amusements arcades also attract youngster who run away from home and can quickly become prey to those offering shelter in return for work in prostitution and drug dealing. The film centres on two stories, the adolescent rejected by his step father and a mother trying to balance her adult relationship with those of her son. The films pulls no punches on the difficulties of finding someone who enters into this underworld. The second story is that of another adolescent who willingly allows himself to be drawn into this world as a solution to the family poverty which brings them to a communal shelter when their home is destroyed in fire and they are rescued by jumping from windows. The two boys are rescued because in their own ways, their mothers fight against the inevitability of fall into this abyss which happens to so many, the girl who comes to the city to escape a sexually violent domestic situation only to then sell her body to survive, or the street wise young man only too willing to take over the drugs ring when his boss and protector is killed. One wonders how many of the former children of the residential children's home in Jersey, and elsewhere, gravitated to central London who would be able to tell similar stories.

Last night I enjoyed a baked half of a side of salmon covered with Italian seasoning, which had been sawed frozen and then defrosted overnight. It was still too big a portion so what was left over was made into a salad for lunch with thick slices of brown bread, leaving the roast chicken breast with vegetables for the evening meal, deciding against roast potatoes for the second weekend running. The fresh pineapples had been reduced by half to £1 so I had bought two for afters, one portion a day with a banana for the second meal. I have taken not to having breakfast because of rising late and then having some cereal before going to bed, which is better than cheese on toast, or a salami sandwich. I have to drinking percolated coffee, in addition to tea, and orange juice, instead of Pepsi or Coca Cola, and also a little water.

Also for the second week running I opted for the second in the new Lewis series rather than the latest episode of Lost. This was a complex story with links to Morse and his love of Wagner. The amusing aspect of a various serious episode (which took us to the break up of East Germany and the problem of those who worked for the system, some 500000 estimated who have spied for the secret police on their neighbours, sending many to prison and their deaths, for the sake of some advantage and improvement in their economic situation), was that Lewis took up Wagner, which for years Morse tried to get him interested, while his graduate sidekick destined to become a chief constable or part of the Home Office police Inspectorate, makes him listen to contemporary popular records. One can see Lewis turning into Morse with every episode, now living in his own, his wife and children departed, with the occasional dalliance. There was a moment when such an encounter between Morse and another was recalled and the woman asked Lewis if he got on with Morse, responding that their interaction reminded him of a marriage. One can see the relationship between Lewis and his man developing to a marriage of convenience where this is for Lewis for the rest of his days, but the sidekick will be one of many as he marries, joins the Masons or Rotary and takes up golf.

There was further work on the canvases and on the main project as well as doing the end of month accounts. I played much chess and made a silly mistake ending my run of games at 96, five short of the target, having previously. reached 98. I thought much of mother, my aunts and my father.

There was a fierce wind outside for part of the day and the promise of cold and some sleet and snow reinforcing my mood. Around the town there are florious beds and banks of of crocus and my window boxes of daffs are in bud, and how I long to feel the Spring again.

1302 Dinner at Eight with The Sea Wife and the Man in the Grey Suit

"Change comes in excruciating small parcels for those who want to do it " is my quote of the day from West Wing, where activity has been restricted to painting three canvases in layers of black or white acrylic. After weeks of failure after reaching 98 games of level 1 chess I am at game 76. The days when I reached 101 games three occasions within a month seem very distant

Of course suggesting as I did yesterday that British and American films prior to the ending of Second World War and then up to the early fifties had a distinctly different feel to those which came afterward was a generalization. I watched two films today where good manners and the appearance of things was considered more important than how people otherwise behaved. I do not know if I saw the 1933 American comedy Dinner at Eight during the years when I went to the Odeon Cinema Wallington every Monday and Thursday, but it has become a familiar story and another viewing this morning was also enjoyable. The film featured Jean Harlow, John and Lionel Barrymore, but for me the star was Billie Burke as the apparent shallow socialite wife who holds a dinner party during the Great Depression where the principal guest does not turn up. She shows her metal first by reorganising the guest list, and then when her husband reveals that they have been ruined, she immediately cancels as many expenditure commitments as she can and says they will move into less expensive accommodation and will learn how to cope. Her nineteen year old daughter has had a privileged life and is romantically and sexually involved with the aging actor more than twice her age, played by John Barrymore, who is seeking a refuge in alcohol as his career ends, his debts mount and he is asked to leave his serviced rooms. Facing reality he sends the girl away and commits suicide. The girl is persuaded not tell anyone about the relationship when a dinner guest discloses she knew about the affair, as she lives in the same block of rooms. This is Carletta, Marie Dressler, a gossipy aging matron who has been the mistress of anyone who was anyone in society, The new world is represented by a successful, dominating and ruthless businessman who had no time for the polite world of his hosts but goes along with his wife, Jean Harlow, who wants to be accepted on the world he is has not time for. His unlimited wealth and power no longer impress her. There is no point to this film other than using a pleasant couple of hours recapturing the brief years of the USA recovering from the Stock market crash and prohibition but it entertains and all the actors care about what they are doing.

Before the football commentaries, when it was necessary to have a radio on each ear until disaster struck Newcastle again and the Boro. but Sunderland managed a valuable point at Derby, I saw one of Gainsborough studio costume dramas produced during World War II which was also previously seen at the Odeon Wallington after the War. There were four, three I now know well, The Wicked Lady with Margaret Lockwood, James Mason and Patricia Roc which haunted until late adolescence; Fanny by Gaslight, with James Mason, Stewart Grainger and Phyllis Calvert: Madonna of the Seven Moons Phyllis Calvert and Steward Grainger which is not familiar; and The Man in the Grey Suit Phyllis Calvert, Margaret Lockwood, James Mason and Stewart Grainger. In both of her films Margaret Lockwood played villains, in this afternoon's offering a scheming, ruthless, two faced adventurer who resorts to murder when her ambition appears to be thwarted. This is the story of a playboy Lord who is persuaded to take a young bride by his mother in order to secure the blood line. Any resemblance to living people was never intended. The victim, just out of finishing school, Phyllis Calvert has the right breeding but her widowed mother has just about the funds for one Season and persuades her daughter to accept the offer of marriage although the couple have no interest in each other and live separate lives from the outset, except to provide the heir. Although they work hard to present one public image everyone in London society knows the truth.

Stewart Grainger is a dispossessed gentleman who Phyllis Calvert first encounters as a travelling actor playing Othello and Margaret Lockwood his theatrical wife who Phyllis previously encountered at finishing school and both become lovers of the Lord and his Lady and which is destined to lead them all to tragedy. The film uses the device of an auction to sell off the contents of the aristocratic home, in which a young airman, Stewart Grainer, meets with a descendent of the family, Phyllis Calvert, a device designed to encourage the belief in war time and post war audiences, that things would get better in time. They also revealed something fo the reality of behaviour behind he thin veneer of social conventions.

The Sea Wife is a minor work, of interest because it featured a fine performance by the young Joan Collins before she developed into Dallas and films such as The Stud and the charismatic Richard Burton played himself. Four individuals, Joan and Richard are two, are torpedoed by a Japanese Submarine. Richard is an injured serviceman and the other two men in the dingy are the ship's captain who is a bigot and a racist and Cy Grant in his first film, Cy was a British Guiana born shot down Flight Lieutenant and RAF POW in World War II, who subsequently qualified as a barrister and then decided to become an actor, singer and author, These three men and Joan survive after a long sea journey to an island which has limited water and natural food, so they construct a raft to try and reach a more habitable island and at this point the sea captain chose to try and abandon Cy Grant (The British answer to Harry Belafonte) who is then killed by a shark as he attempts to swim out to the departing craft. They are rescued and Richard spends time in hospital and on the continuing war before discharge and coming to England in search of Joan who was nicknamed Sea Wife, and who although tempted by the attention of Richard remained chaste. He does not find her. She was a nun. The ending of this short feature film is a poor one because Richard gives up his long and expensive search on being told by the Sea Captain that the girl is dead and without making any further checks about her. In fact his failure to find out from the shipping line or from his rescuers what happened to her or what happened to Cy Grant is unbelievable. The film makers should have followed what happened in Neville Shute's A Town Like Alice which is having its annual/biannual showing at this time

The punch line of the film is that no one looks at the face of nun. This is nonsense of course. But nonsense can also become reality which is the subject of S1m0ne, the Al Pacino 2002 movie in which a computer generated actress becomes internationally famous, allegedly giving live interviews, and a holographic stage performance. As the deception becomes world wide he likes less and less his creation, so he makes the worst film he can imagine and then in created interview he makes her spout the most extreme and offensive of views but all this only makes the media and public love her more. He then decides to kill her off only to be accused of her murder. What happens next is all too believable, alas.

Before bedtime I could not resist another showing of One Night at McCool's, previously seen in theatre. The moral of this film is beware Greek that bares her gifts, especially one whose ambition is a DVD recorder and a large screen TV media centre. This leads Matt Dillon to become a thief and complicity in two killings, one directly and one indirectly by the young women in question played by Liv Tyler. Paul Resier is the lawyer relative of the bar tender Matt Dillon, married with children and a penchant for dressing up in bondage gear and being whopped, what happens to him in the last flick of the film is worth the ticket money alone. John Goodman plays a detective who she is seduced when he finds out she is implicated in one of the deaths and his willingness to lose the evidence is needed. Michael Douglas his the hired assassin who runs off with the wicked wench as the twp are as well matched a pair of villain as James Mason and Margaret Lockwood of my generation. The final scenes are farce and funny but were not worth going out to the theatre for
Happy mother's day.

1301A good woman and Prospero's Books plus Escape to Athena

“Nowadays people look at life as a speculation. It is not a speculation, it is a sacrament. Its ideal is love. Its purification is sacrifice.

Are you beginning to reform me? It is a dangerous thing to reform anyone.

Oh gossip is charming. History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite and a woman who moralises is invariably plain.

There is nothing as unbecoming to a woman as a Nonconformist conscience. That is the worst of women. They always want one to be good. And if we are good, when they meet us, they don't love us at all. They like to find us quite irretrievably bad, and to leave us quite unattractively good. The world is perfectly packed with good women. To know them is a middle class education.

People call something an experience they mean it was a mistake.

Women do not want to be understood, they want to be loved.

No love is pure and simple as the love of food.

Everyman is born truthful and dies a liar.

Girls begin by loving their mothers but as they grow they judge us. It is because of men that women distrust other women.

If a man can tolerate his own past then why should he not tolerate that of his wife.

I cannot always explain myself to myself let alone to you.

It takes practice and skill to live without regret.

In this world there are two tragedies. One is not getting want you want and the other is getting it.

London is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the fogs produced the serious people the serious people the fogs, I do not know.

I do not think now that people can be divided into the good and bad, as though they were two separate races, or creations. What are called good women may have terrible things in them, mad moods of recklessness, assertion and jealousy, sin. Bad women as they are termed, may have in them sorrow, repentance, pity, sacrifice. Ideals are dangerous things, realities are better, they wound, but they're better. There is the same world for all of us, and good and evil sin and innocence go through it hand in hand.”

Thus I spent Friday afternoon, leap year day, 29th February 2008 on the Amalfi Coast in the cinematic reproduction of Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan, called A Good Woman, seen in theatre in 2004 and now on DVD, and with the help of the Penguin Plays of Oscar Wilde, 1960 reprinted paper back edition which also includes The Importance of being earnest, An Ideal Husband, A woman of no Importance and Salome.

It was an excellent antidote to what I now regard as an even worse nauseating immoral film that the Foreigner, Escape to Athena. It is difficult to judge who was responsible for this insult to Greek people and all those, on all sides of World War II who fought and died bravely in the service of their country.

Elliot Gould can be forgiven for playing an extension of Mash, which although a comedy made out of war, restricted itself to the work of the front line medical unit, where humour is the only defence against insanity. Roger Moore and David Niven also played their normal roles, while Telly Savalas appeared to take his part seriously. I watched the film broken only by getting my lunch, taking in some parcels for a neighbour and checking the incoming mail just to see if it had any redeeming features apart from some glorious views of the Greek Island said to be Rhodes and which I have visited for a week. I must find time to do a volume of memories of that visit.

For two hours John Gielgud addresses the audience in a condensed poetical landscape of biblical, mythological and Shakespearean images conjured from his 20 books while Peter Greenaway uses every cinematic device available to him in the early 1990's to populate the rest of the screen with tableaux upon tableaux of Fellini figures out of Satyricon. Michael Nyman provided the music which merits attention on its own. Ideally one should be able to turnoff the music and vision and listen to the words, then listen to the words with the music, then just watch the images without sound, and then before experiencing the whole once more spend a day studying the twenty page study of references produced by Steven Marx of Cal Poly University San Luis Obispo and ignores the superficial article in Wikipedia. Most people will not like or enjoy the experience, or devote the time, even to watch the film, Prospero's Books from start to finish, once.

You also have to be in the right mood and frame of mind to experience Monster's Ball the 2001 film which led to an Oscar, A Bafta, a Golden Globe, an MTV award and the Screen Actors Guild award for best female performance to Halle Berry. The film and the award has had its critics among inverted racists who as with the previous film failed to appreciate its brilliance in uncovering layers of human reality. For me this is a film about two individuals deciding that they could share their lives after having to cope with tragedies wish would destroy most people. Billy Boy Thornton lives with his openly racist father whose wife committed suicide. Billy Boy, a widower works with his son, played by the late Heath Ledger who came to the fore with Brokeback Mountain as prison officers, preparing for an execution (The Monster's Ball) which affects them both, but his son more so as he finds it difficult to cope with the event and father and son row, with the consequence that the son kills himself in the presence of his father. Before these events Billy Bob satisfies his sexual needs with functional experiences with a prostitute, but then he becomes impotent and his inability to cope with his life leads him to resign from his career job.

The executed prisoner is black and has committed a crime which justifies execution according to state law and it take places because there are no mitigating circumstances. The man desperately tries to convince his son that while he is has been a bad man the boy represents everything that is good in his life. The boy finds his father's death difficult to cope with and develops an eating disorder and then is fatally knocked down in a hit and run accident in the presence of his mother. Thornton passes by, as do other white drivers, but returns to try and help, having recognised the woman as working in a restaurant he visits. He takes the boy to hospital and after his death he begins a relationship with the mother, who is losing her home, using the rent money to buy alcohol. It is only after they become lovers that Thornton finds out she is the wife of the man he helped to execute, and she only finds this out after she has moved in with him after being evicted. The relationship also faced an early crisis when she visit his home and meets his father who treats her in a stereotype racist way toward a desirable black female. Thornton reacts by placing his diseased father in a nursing home. His father pleads with his son not to be left to die in this way to no avail. The film ends as the new couple sit out eating ice cream looking forward to a future together. In the 1950's British theatre, and much of British film drama and romance was contrived and controlled with at its best the Plays of Oscar Wilde and Shakespeare. Then with Look Back in Anger and the plays of Arnold Wesker a contemporary reality was brought to stage and screen as people were shown to talk and behave as the majority. Room at the Top. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, together with Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey each concluded that one should seize any opportunity which becomes available but then be prepared to pay the price, which in some instances will last a lifetime. The combination of bringing home this reality and living with the threat of an annihilating third world war pushed people further into what is now described as the swinging sixties, although my experience was of generation who cared deeply about others and were prepared to do something about it as well as having some enjoyment with friends and lovers. The Monsters' Ball follows in that tradition of describing things as they are and despite all that had happened to them, and their own part in their respective downfalls, I felt this was a relationship that would not only last but remain meaningful. Neither would ever be able forget their past but the very experiences of pain and failure they had experienced separately would cement them together.
I write this in the early hours of Saturday as the wind howls to gale force with the prospect of reaching hurricane force in some part of the Northern England during the rest of the night. I go to bed content, not so much from the film or writing about them but from the sight of a pure black acyclic canvass. At present its seems wrong to add anything to it, even a signature of some kind on an edge. I feared this would happen. I can see myself wanting to abandon everything else and just explore what I can do and what I cannot.