Tuesday, 25 January 2011

2004 Is everybody fine?

Having re-established the body clock to get me up for the morning swim after 6 to 8 hours sessional sleeping I need to change the rest of the day so that I read and write more and watch TV films and other programmes less. For the moment controlling the food to a level that I reduce weight is in abeyance as long as here is no increase

Sunday and Saturday followed the usual pattern of sport, TV, and food but I did swim on both days and having established that the itchy shins was due to a chlorine reaction which others have experienced I am recommencing the sauna which cleans and clears the skin, but this time showing after as well as on getting out of the pool.

I defrosted the freezer which had been runs down to an extend that a major investment was necessary on Monday to restock, but with the consequence that I have more than one month of main meals with sufficient tinned and frozen veg for over half divided between fish mat and poultry including 2 Chinese and using some of the poultry for curry’s.. For breakfasts there is cereal every two days followed by a bacon roll or a prepared cooked breakfast and to accompany the salad there are mainly fishy dishes...prawns in shell, salmon, crab meat, sardines and smoked mackerel with meat alternatives such a meat bits or chopped pork or a bean salad.

The sport was a mixture with Sunderland having a great win at Blackpool which led the travelling supporters to chant who duck was Bent or words to that effect following the departure of Mt Bent to Aston Villa for a fee in excess of £30. I was not sorry to see him depart because the team seems to function more as a team without him and it was evident since his recovery from injury following the game at Newcastle that he had lost form or was on his way. He goes from a proud old club that has not finished higher than 7th in the Premier League but is now 6th with a good gap with lower clubs which should see them finish in the top of the table at least, as here are some tough games ahead. They should also finish higher than Newcastle. Andy Murray continues to win his matches in the Australian open in straight sets. She should make one of the semi finals with Nadal which if he can with takes him to a final with his other nemesis, Roger Federer. The disaster was a third England defeat in the one day series.

I delayed watching Dancing on Ice until Monday after the recording of the Murray game and it is evident that there are three or four couples with ability out of the dozen who have reached the stage where the judges contribute half the points. On Sunday night Sir Terry Wogan who has retired from a regular BBC radio slot returned to his native homeland and in his avuncular fashion had some pith barbs about his Catholic Education and the English in Ireland as only he can get away with it in the sense of not arousing a Fatwa from the Catholic, Protestant and anti Irish fanaticals. Less successful has been Andy Gray from Sky who created intelligent football analysis who kept his microphone on while commenting with Richard Keys the other Sky sport’s stalwart on the shortcomings of female linesmen and other women who are actively involved in football administration. They had been suspended while pressure builds up for them to be replaced.

Larkrise was also enjoyable centring on a Curate having a major role with the Vicar away ill. His help to Emma was misinterpreted by others and he antagonised teh lay preacher and constant bible reciting postman in raising a mirror to his growing uncertainty over his faith, a least for a while. The Antiques Roadshow provided a few more amazing finds including a gold bracelet found at a Charity Shop and an 18th century piece of furniture work over £30000 were among several treasures.

Diverted is a 2009 made for TV film which engaged my attention because although a fictional story, the background was factual. Because of 9/11 airspace above the USA was frozen with over 200 planes flying over the Atlantic at the time and tens of thousands of passengers diverted. Factually 39 planes with 6 600 passengers and crew descended on the Newfoundland Island town of Gander airport with a population of 9000. There were only 500 hotel beds so schools and halls had to be converted as well as the provision of meals, sanitation and communications. The film concentrates on a few of the passengers and crew members of one flight, a young flight controller, two female employees and the Mayor. The flight controller meets and provides accommodation for a young woman on her way for a job on Wall Street. The flight controller is content with his small town life in which he plays the drums in a rock band and enjoys the scenery, although he has travelled the world. They have a relationship at the of which the girl agrees to go to New York and take up the job and then decided after if she wants to give up her ambitions and come to live with the unambitious flight controller.

Colin Buchanan, he of Pascoe & Dalzell, is also on the flight sitting next to woman of his generation and they are both trying to get over failed relationships. They start and stop a romance and then as the plane takes off one holds the hand of the other and it is held back. David Suchet of Poirot plays an obnoxious businessman who demands a room at the hotel allocated to the place crew members but gains the sympathy of one of the front of house managers/housekeepers/receptionists after she learns that he is concerned about his son who was attending a meeting at the World Trade centre just after the planes struck and who he has not spoken with him for several years since the divorce. He learns that the son perished and did not attempt to ring his father although he attempted to contact his mother and a friend. Suchet is critical of everyone and at one point turns on the Arab looking Muslim on the plane who quickly realises that public attitudes towards him will change although he works hard and cares for his family in a small community in the USA. It is not clear why he is on the flight but he found by the Mayor on walkabout who shows him a welcome and asks him to check out the civic photocopiers. Another passenger learns that her mother who works at the building is safe when she appears on the TV. A young stewardess finds difficult to cope. The two hotel employees “show what two skirts can do” as examples of the service which was no doubt provided at short notice and on a voluntary basis.

For me the film of the week was Everybody’s Fine, the 2009 remake of an Italian film which I would now like to experience as it features that great Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni Everybody’s Fie covers an important subject, the relationship most parents, and in particular, father’s have with their children.

Robert De Nero is retired and a recent widower lives on his own with a comfortable middle class existence in the former family home, He believes all his children lead successful lives, in part seeing them as he wishes to see them, in part from information relayed and filtered by his wife when she was alive and maintained direct contact with her children. He has arranged for a weekend for them to be all together but when one by one they cancel he decides to surprise them by travelling across the United States, against the advice of his General Practitioner because of an ongoing heart condition.

His first visit is to New York to see one of his sons who is a visual artist. There is no one home but he does sees one of his sons paintings in a nearby gallery window. Unbeknown to him his son has been arrested in Mexico on a drug’s charge. The next visit is to married daughter and mother, played by Kate Beckinsale whose excuse for not coming for the weekend was the illness of her son. He is told the visit has not come at a good time and he realises that the son was not ill and used an excuse. He has an uncomfortable meal with the couple and son and when his daughter sees him off in the morning after visiting her work place she introduces him to a co worker accidentally met at the station. Afterwards he works out the marriage had ended, the husband had visited in an attempt to keep up appearances and that the daughter is in a new relationship with her co worker. The reason for not asking him to stay is that she is on her way to Mexico to find out what is happening to her brother.

His next stop is Denver where the father believes his son conducts the City orchestra when in fact he is content as the percussionist. He explains he is leaving on tour the next day but this is a lie as the son feels he has nothing in common with his father and does not know what to say to him. Because of different time zones he misses the planned bus to see his fourth daughter and is then mugged by a drug addict he tried to befriend and who in return destroys his medication just because he is able to do so.

Di Nero is able to get a lift with a female truck driver who takes him to a railway station where he can continue his journey to Las Vegas where his daughter has said she is a showgirl. Although the visit was to have been a surprise the children have been relaying the progress of his visits. This daughter lays on a stretch limo to meet him at the station and takes him to an expensive apartment where she is asked to baby sit for a friend. He hears an answer phone message which reveals that the apartment is borrowed and he works out that the baby is that of his daughter. He wants to know why his children never initiated talk with him yet told their mother. He subsequently appreciates that his wife was also given the picture of their lives they believe she wanted to hear as well as she edited what they said to fit into the his needs and beliefs.

Having failed to get a new prescription for his medication he decides to fly home and has a heart attack. His three children visit him in hospital and are forced to reveal that their brother has died from a drug overdose attempting to digest drugs rather than be caught with them

After recovery Di Nero returns home believing he has been a failure as a parent. He visits the grave of his wife and tells her all the children are fine and visiting him for Christmas except for David who will be having Christmas with her.

Before the gathering he returns to New York to see if he can buy the painting of his son and leaves his name in case others come on the market. Only after leaving the assistant realises the family name link and rushes out to say that his son had talked to her about his father stating that without the pressure from his father he would never had become an artist which had brought him great personal satisfaction. She also shows him another of his son’s pictures which is a landscape with a special feature power lines made of glue and macaroni as a tribute to the work of his father whose spent his working life putting up PVC covered power lines. The final scene is Christmas with the family present and participating in the preparation of the meal. The main discussion is over the cooking time for the Turkey and the father reveals that his wife overcooked but he kept quiet from not wanting to upset her. We learn from the presence of the friend who pretended the baby was hers that they are raising the baby together as a couple (this daughter is played by Drew Barrymore) and the married daughter is now openly living with her co worker. The children are able to be themselves as they are and the father has what he wanted bringing the family together in part out of continuing love for their mother. Paul McCartney wrote the song “I want to come home.”

The film is not as sharp cutting edge to have made it into an award winning all time recognised outstanding film despite the excellent performance from Robert Di Nero but contains many truth about parent children relationships when they become adults.

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