The weather has been amazing of this time of year during the Saturday and Sunday on this last weekend of October 2011. It has been sunny and pleasant so that I have only needed a buttoned coat of a woollen house jacket. The new look and layout Wilkinson’s in South Shields has cleared away the gardening range for Halloween and Christmas so I had to go back to B and Q and deciding that it would be wise to do plant now in case the weather changed to unpleasant cold even for the garage I purchased a pack of large 100 daffodils for just under £7 and 70 mixed tulips got just under 10. I would have saved myself 10% if I had waited until Wednesday but have no regret, I enjoyed a documentary concert in French featuring the performances of Edith Piaf around midday..
I went of in search of bulbs around 2pm and had plated them in satisfactory way by 4pm. I have placed the four large black boxes on the main table now with two tulips and two daffodils to the rear and then the four smaller width blue planters by the side of the walls with one tulips and two daffodils together with seven daffs in a large blue pot which is also on the table with the pots of pinks. The five pots of red geraniums are now on the second table. One of the blue planters and two pots along kitchen wall are still flowering with the summer blooms and there is continuing life in the baskets although limited. I brought in the dried soil used for the attempt to grow olive trees and found the eights seeds in tact so will have another go to see if they will germinate but I might get and electric germinator for this purpose.
After a pair of decapitated and tailed kippers for breakfast I did not feel in nee do of food again until the approach of evening and put the whole chicken into roast around 4 and heated up that fresh vegetable mixture of a swede parsnip, onions 2, carrots 6 and turnip for £1 which will provide two good portions. Now to the films catch up
Route Irish is not a great film but provides an insight into the development of entrepreneurial organisations some who work clandestine in winning and working contracts in war torn countries. Le Carré’s Mission song which I am presently reading covers similar subject.
Route Irish is a Ken Loach directed film set in Iraq and Liverpool. Philip French in the Observer describes the film as covering a number of Ken Loach themes, the brutality of war, the exploitation of the indigenous population by national government and” rescuing invaders alike, state sanctioned ‘crimes.’
It is good that there are films of this nature to educate the weekend teenage and young people audience into a greater sense of reality and helping to fuel movements which counter balance the excess which states will indulge unless there are brakes applied from within as well as without.
As I age and reflect I more and more understand the nature of global capitalist economy. Faced with threats which undermine the security of an individual democratic nation I appreciate the necessity of measures being taken which in other circumstance would be judged crimes but if knowingly sanctioned cannot and should be regarded as crimes. They are only crimes when not sanctioned. The problem is that Ministers sometimes fail to separate Party political interests from those of their individual nation or that of the maintaining their personal position and power. Who Guards the Guardians must be constant cry?
This film is about the growing tendency of Government to employ agents at arms length, some under open contract and others secretly in order that if things go wrong, especially if the agents are to act outside the law or abroad in situations where the government’s role is being challenged or not made public
For the film has more personal themes such as the bond which develop betweens those who experience intense working situations over prolonged periods and that prolonged involvement in some activities corrupt and undermine the integrity of the strongest and purest of souls the recent theme of Spooks and which cause individuals to blur the actual differences between different political and religious run states to cause them to change sides.
The story is seen through eyes of Fergus Molloy and Irish rooted Liverpuddlian who with his lifelong friend Frankie (John Bishop) have become security mercenaries after doing terms with the military special services. Frankie is married to Rachel who is the only thing which Fergus has not shared with Frankie although he has wanted her but kept his distance. This includes sharing a female bar owner in Spain on R and R breaks from their tour in Iraq where they protect company employees carrying work on contracts. Fergus moved on to Afghanistan while Frankie continued in Iraq where he is reported killed in a roadside vehicle explosion and his body is returned to Liverpool for service and cremation.
Before the death Fergus comes home to Liverpool but goes on a bender and gets locked up and misses a series of phone calls from his best friend which haunts him now he is dead. He is also puzzled because his friend was the cautious one. He attends the funeral and through the man’s widow attends the briefing from the employers about what happened. The family are not pleased with his presence because they blame him for getting involved in the lucrative but dangerous work. They do not understand his questions to the representatives.
The woman, the friend from Spain, has received a package from Frankie which she passes to Fergus and on it there is an email in Arabic and a video. It is of the shooting of a young family including two boys. Fergus uses an Arabic contact to gain a translation and he also makes inquiries with his contact in the country to establish the official reports of the incident. There is no record.
Things begin to happen as the home of the wife and that of Fergus is trashed in the search for the videoed evidence. The Arabic speaking friend is badly beaten requiring hospital treatment and care.
The story which emerges is that the taxi was in the wrong place at the wrong time and failed to stop and a trigger happy member of the security cover had opened fire. The matter had been covered up with continuing action because the firm had entered a new major contract to help in the reconstruction of a county which they feared this would be lost if the unintentional slaughter of civilian children had become public.
Frankie’s wife and Fergus work together and develop the physical closeness he had longed to desire. But he is driven to settle the debt he feels due to his friend. He had opened the coffin before burial to see the remains as part of establishing how the friend had died. The man’s ashes had been had been smashed in the ceramic container which the wife had in her room.
He reaches the conclusion that the man had been intentionally targeted not by insurgents but by the firm because guilt had driven him to start telling people about what had happened. The man believed to have been responsible was working in Afghanistan but comes to the UK for the “clean up operation.” He is captured and tortured by Fergus but at first he denies any involvement saying that he was on his way to Afghanistan when Frankie’s death occurred, but then under more torture he confesses. Fergus feels there is closure, for himself and the man’s wife, and begins to look for a future for them together. However he is then shattered to receive confirmation that his victim was telling the truth and was not in Iraq when Frankie was assassinated.
There were several things not clear to me through out the film or which I cannot now remember not have made notes at the time of viewing, I therefore do not know if he established through a bugging device that the Managing Director and lead recruiter of the firm undertook the killing directly or had someone else do it for them. They exit a building together and another employee a young woman accompanies them at the last moment. As they enter the vehicle they notice a note on the dash board which says wrong time wrong place, the words they had used to the family to explain the death of Frankie. At that point the vehicle explodes as a bomb detonates.
Frankie has explained to the widow who has become his lover that he has to go away and they will not have further contact which she does not understand. In the closing moment of the film Fergus is on one of the Merseyside Ferries. He slips quietly overboard and disappears.
PS Rote Irish is the name given to the road leading to the airport in Baghdad.
I saw Harry Brown in the Theatre two years ago and cannot understand why there is no separate review on file. Michael Caine plays an aging former decorated soldier attempting to live quietly on an estate in London where the quick way to the pub by a canal is through an underpass which has been taken over by drug pushers and a teenage terror gang. He therefore walks the distance required to a crossing on an exceptional busy main road. At the pub he plays chess with Leonard (the splendid David Bradley or visits his wife who his seriously ill in hospital and dies. At the funeral Leonard admits that he is being terrorised by some youths on the estate that have put stuff through his letter box and written graffiti on his outside walls. He shows Harry a military bayonet he keeps with him for protection. Harry says he should leave the matter in the hands of the police but Leonard explains he has reported before but this has only made the situation worse.
The following day a senior police woman, who has elected to work on the estate where she originated, calls with a young constable to advise Harry that his friend has been killed in the underpass. Harry declines to say anything about the conversation the previous day because the man has been stabbed with a bayonet. Later the Police advise Harry that because the Bayonet belonged to Leonard the charge is likely to manslaughter at the most because of self defence.
Harry makes inquiries and finds out that local drug pusher also sells firearms. He visits and finds that the two have an office at the back on the building where they are growing pot on an industrial scale. Here he finds a teenage girl in a serious condition from a drug overdose. She is ignored and he is offered to have sex with her alongside the gun purchase. She is being overdosed so she is pliable for pornographic films. Harry kills to the young men and sets fire to the premises after which he gets the girl out and takes to her hospital.
The local commander orders the senior police woman to drop her inquires about the death of the pensioner and concentrate on action to stop what appears to be an outbreak of gang land killings related to drug use. Harry conducts his own inquiries and through one of the girl friends in the gang tracks down a young man who he threatens to kneecap and who reveals a camera video of what happened to his friend. Just as he about to go for the gang leader Harry collapses from an emphysema attack and is taken to hospital where he is interviewed by the police woman who notes there is cordite on Harry’s clothing. Harry then discharges himself from hospital.
Meanwhile the local commander has ordered a drug bust on the estate and there is major rioting with the throwing of Molotov cocktails and stoning. The senior police woman and her assistant are involved in a car accident and Harry rescues them and takes them to the local pub where it is revealed that the barman is the uncle of the gang leader whose father is in prison. The uncle has been hiding the boy in the pub. Harry has another bout of emphysema and loses control and his gun to the barman who brings out the son with a view to having to kill three witnesses. The young constable is killed by Sid who orders his nephew to kill the police woman but fortunately she has got a message out. So after Harry recovers sufficiently to shoot Noel as he is strangling the police woman, Harry is shot by the barman who is in turn shot by the back up squad who arrive just in time.
At the subsequent media conference the local commander announces that the Police woman and her dead colleague are to receive bravery awards and dismisses speculation about the involvement of vigilantism. In the final scene Harry decides to use the underpass where there is no presence of teenagers but he has lost his wife and his only friend and committed murder.I will mention a film which had promise from the small advance information note but must be reported as the worst dubbed film of the past 100 years. The African Game is an Italian production with English voice overs.
Robert Hill is an assassin, the kind who is ultra professional and apparently emotionless about what he is doing. He does love his cat whose image opens the film as is the only noteworthy thing about the production. We see him conduct one such operation after making love to the female Mary Hari his immediate employer.
His next assignment is in Africa where on arrival he supplied with a satellite phone and a case of hardware. He attempts hire a jeep and finds that the only one available is driven by an exceptionally fast talkative young woman likely go down well with Italian audience, whose father was a gamekeeper killed by poachers and had planned to spend the weekend with her boyfriend also a game keeper.
She assumes that Robert is an office tourist on an adventure trip to see animals in the wild in Kenya. He insists they take an off road way to the area required used by poachers which makes it dangerous and then he insists on stopping outside the village designed as overnight tourist stop where he says they will camp and he drives off leaving the girl with a little water and food to spend the night among wild animals and poachers. He finds that the target is heavily guarded with a three vehicle armed escort so is unable to execute the mission. He returns to the camp and bribes the girl to take him to the main area for wild animal viewing, filming and photography and she shows him a quick route on the map which reduces the two hour journey by half. He again takes off leaving her alone.
He carries out the mission and they return to the capital where he pays her more to call at the Casino where the receptionist gives him a large sum of money and a case to carry out his fee for the killing. The girl gets a newspaper which announces the killing of the same man whose photograph she has discovered sticking out of the case of her client. She goes to challenge him in the Casino while the newspaper vendor goes to get a police man because she has not paid for the paper. As he leaves the Casino and the girl challenges him he suddenly realises that the case carries a bomb detonated by the Marta Hari but fortunate he flings it sufficiently away only to be injured in one arm as is the policeman called to the scene by the news vendor.
The girl takes him to a village community where his arm is treated but where they have tracked andtwo men attempt to beat out the information of there whereabouts. Robert uses his Satellite phone to send a photo of the attackers to a contact who is able to find out something of the individual before the two men are killed by the girl’s contact in the village. The information indicates that a neighbouring country has being using international aid to but arms and that the man killed was somehow involved. I could not work out if he was the gun runner or part of the UN team who were visiting to examine allegations of fund misappropriation. In any event the head man has a relative who works at the Embassy of the country concerned who they contact by phone for information but the call is traced and they are again pursued but this time by someone with a rocket launcher and they jump from the vehicle before it is hit and explodes.
In the subsequent fight Robert is mortally wounded and the girl has to kill one of the attackers to survive, Robert pleads with her to go to London to look after his cat that will by starving because he is away longer than anticipated giving her a wedge of notes before he dies. She does so and finds his stash of money in cat food tins sufficient for her to do the training she had mentioned to him for which she was saving working for the Jeep hire company.
Even in Italian the film is a million miles away from that created by Ken Loach in Route Irish.
I went of in search of bulbs around 2pm and had plated them in satisfactory way by 4pm. I have placed the four large black boxes on the main table now with two tulips and two daffodils to the rear and then the four smaller width blue planters by the side of the walls with one tulips and two daffodils together with seven daffs in a large blue pot which is also on the table with the pots of pinks. The five pots of red geraniums are now on the second table. One of the blue planters and two pots along kitchen wall are still flowering with the summer blooms and there is continuing life in the baskets although limited. I brought in the dried soil used for the attempt to grow olive trees and found the eights seeds in tact so will have another go to see if they will germinate but I might get and electric germinator for this purpose.
After a pair of decapitated and tailed kippers for breakfast I did not feel in nee do of food again until the approach of evening and put the whole chicken into roast around 4 and heated up that fresh vegetable mixture of a swede parsnip, onions 2, carrots 6 and turnip for £1 which will provide two good portions. Now to the films catch up
Route Irish is not a great film but provides an insight into the development of entrepreneurial organisations some who work clandestine in winning and working contracts in war torn countries. Le Carré’s Mission song which I am presently reading covers similar subject.
Route Irish is a Ken Loach directed film set in Iraq and Liverpool. Philip French in the Observer describes the film as covering a number of Ken Loach themes, the brutality of war, the exploitation of the indigenous population by national government and” rescuing invaders alike, state sanctioned ‘crimes.’
It is good that there are films of this nature to educate the weekend teenage and young people audience into a greater sense of reality and helping to fuel movements which counter balance the excess which states will indulge unless there are brakes applied from within as well as without.
As I age and reflect I more and more understand the nature of global capitalist economy. Faced with threats which undermine the security of an individual democratic nation I appreciate the necessity of measures being taken which in other circumstance would be judged crimes but if knowingly sanctioned cannot and should be regarded as crimes. They are only crimes when not sanctioned. The problem is that Ministers sometimes fail to separate Party political interests from those of their individual nation or that of the maintaining their personal position and power. Who Guards the Guardians must be constant cry?
This film is about the growing tendency of Government to employ agents at arms length, some under open contract and others secretly in order that if things go wrong, especially if the agents are to act outside the law or abroad in situations where the government’s role is being challenged or not made public
For the film has more personal themes such as the bond which develop betweens those who experience intense working situations over prolonged periods and that prolonged involvement in some activities corrupt and undermine the integrity of the strongest and purest of souls the recent theme of Spooks and which cause individuals to blur the actual differences between different political and religious run states to cause them to change sides.
The story is seen through eyes of Fergus Molloy and Irish rooted Liverpuddlian who with his lifelong friend Frankie (John Bishop) have become security mercenaries after doing terms with the military special services. Frankie is married to Rachel who is the only thing which Fergus has not shared with Frankie although he has wanted her but kept his distance. This includes sharing a female bar owner in Spain on R and R breaks from their tour in Iraq where they protect company employees carrying work on contracts. Fergus moved on to Afghanistan while Frankie continued in Iraq where he is reported killed in a roadside vehicle explosion and his body is returned to Liverpool for service and cremation.
Before the death Fergus comes home to Liverpool but goes on a bender and gets locked up and misses a series of phone calls from his best friend which haunts him now he is dead. He is also puzzled because his friend was the cautious one. He attends the funeral and through the man’s widow attends the briefing from the employers about what happened. The family are not pleased with his presence because they blame him for getting involved in the lucrative but dangerous work. They do not understand his questions to the representatives.
The woman, the friend from Spain, has received a package from Frankie which she passes to Fergus and on it there is an email in Arabic and a video. It is of the shooting of a young family including two boys. Fergus uses an Arabic contact to gain a translation and he also makes inquiries with his contact in the country to establish the official reports of the incident. There is no record.
Things begin to happen as the home of the wife and that of Fergus is trashed in the search for the videoed evidence. The Arabic speaking friend is badly beaten requiring hospital treatment and care.
The story which emerges is that the taxi was in the wrong place at the wrong time and failed to stop and a trigger happy member of the security cover had opened fire. The matter had been covered up with continuing action because the firm had entered a new major contract to help in the reconstruction of a county which they feared this would be lost if the unintentional slaughter of civilian children had become public.
Frankie’s wife and Fergus work together and develop the physical closeness he had longed to desire. But he is driven to settle the debt he feels due to his friend. He had opened the coffin before burial to see the remains as part of establishing how the friend had died. The man’s ashes had been had been smashed in the ceramic container which the wife had in her room.
He reaches the conclusion that the man had been intentionally targeted not by insurgents but by the firm because guilt had driven him to start telling people about what had happened. The man believed to have been responsible was working in Afghanistan but comes to the UK for the “clean up operation.” He is captured and tortured by Fergus but at first he denies any involvement saying that he was on his way to Afghanistan when Frankie’s death occurred, but then under more torture he confesses. Fergus feels there is closure, for himself and the man’s wife, and begins to look for a future for them together. However he is then shattered to receive confirmation that his victim was telling the truth and was not in Iraq when Frankie was assassinated.
There were several things not clear to me through out the film or which I cannot now remember not have made notes at the time of viewing, I therefore do not know if he established through a bugging device that the Managing Director and lead recruiter of the firm undertook the killing directly or had someone else do it for them. They exit a building together and another employee a young woman accompanies them at the last moment. As they enter the vehicle they notice a note on the dash board which says wrong time wrong place, the words they had used to the family to explain the death of Frankie. At that point the vehicle explodes as a bomb detonates.
Frankie has explained to the widow who has become his lover that he has to go away and they will not have further contact which she does not understand. In the closing moment of the film Fergus is on one of the Merseyside Ferries. He slips quietly overboard and disappears.
PS Rote Irish is the name given to the road leading to the airport in Baghdad.
I saw Harry Brown in the Theatre two years ago and cannot understand why there is no separate review on file. Michael Caine plays an aging former decorated soldier attempting to live quietly on an estate in London where the quick way to the pub by a canal is through an underpass which has been taken over by drug pushers and a teenage terror gang. He therefore walks the distance required to a crossing on an exceptional busy main road. At the pub he plays chess with Leonard (the splendid David Bradley or visits his wife who his seriously ill in hospital and dies. At the funeral Leonard admits that he is being terrorised by some youths on the estate that have put stuff through his letter box and written graffiti on his outside walls. He shows Harry a military bayonet he keeps with him for protection. Harry says he should leave the matter in the hands of the police but Leonard explains he has reported before but this has only made the situation worse.
The following day a senior police woman, who has elected to work on the estate where she originated, calls with a young constable to advise Harry that his friend has been killed in the underpass. Harry declines to say anything about the conversation the previous day because the man has been stabbed with a bayonet. Later the Police advise Harry that because the Bayonet belonged to Leonard the charge is likely to manslaughter at the most because of self defence.
Harry makes inquiries and finds out that local drug pusher also sells firearms. He visits and finds that the two have an office at the back on the building where they are growing pot on an industrial scale. Here he finds a teenage girl in a serious condition from a drug overdose. She is ignored and he is offered to have sex with her alongside the gun purchase. She is being overdosed so she is pliable for pornographic films. Harry kills to the young men and sets fire to the premises after which he gets the girl out and takes to her hospital.
The local commander orders the senior police woman to drop her inquires about the death of the pensioner and concentrate on action to stop what appears to be an outbreak of gang land killings related to drug use. Harry conducts his own inquiries and through one of the girl friends in the gang tracks down a young man who he threatens to kneecap and who reveals a camera video of what happened to his friend. Just as he about to go for the gang leader Harry collapses from an emphysema attack and is taken to hospital where he is interviewed by the police woman who notes there is cordite on Harry’s clothing. Harry then discharges himself from hospital.
Meanwhile the local commander has ordered a drug bust on the estate and there is major rioting with the throwing of Molotov cocktails and stoning. The senior police woman and her assistant are involved in a car accident and Harry rescues them and takes them to the local pub where it is revealed that the barman is the uncle of the gang leader whose father is in prison. The uncle has been hiding the boy in the pub. Harry has another bout of emphysema and loses control and his gun to the barman who brings out the son with a view to having to kill three witnesses. The young constable is killed by Sid who orders his nephew to kill the police woman but fortunately she has got a message out. So after Harry recovers sufficiently to shoot Noel as he is strangling the police woman, Harry is shot by the barman who is in turn shot by the back up squad who arrive just in time.
At the subsequent media conference the local commander announces that the Police woman and her dead colleague are to receive bravery awards and dismisses speculation about the involvement of vigilantism. In the final scene Harry decides to use the underpass where there is no presence of teenagers but he has lost his wife and his only friend and committed murder.I will mention a film which had promise from the small advance information note but must be reported as the worst dubbed film of the past 100 years. The African Game is an Italian production with English voice overs.
Robert Hill is an assassin, the kind who is ultra professional and apparently emotionless about what he is doing. He does love his cat whose image opens the film as is the only noteworthy thing about the production. We see him conduct one such operation after making love to the female Mary Hari his immediate employer.
His next assignment is in Africa where on arrival he supplied with a satellite phone and a case of hardware. He attempts hire a jeep and finds that the only one available is driven by an exceptionally fast talkative young woman likely go down well with Italian audience, whose father was a gamekeeper killed by poachers and had planned to spend the weekend with her boyfriend also a game keeper.
She assumes that Robert is an office tourist on an adventure trip to see animals in the wild in Kenya. He insists they take an off road way to the area required used by poachers which makes it dangerous and then he insists on stopping outside the village designed as overnight tourist stop where he says they will camp and he drives off leaving the girl with a little water and food to spend the night among wild animals and poachers. He finds that the target is heavily guarded with a three vehicle armed escort so is unable to execute the mission. He returns to the camp and bribes the girl to take him to the main area for wild animal viewing, filming and photography and she shows him a quick route on the map which reduces the two hour journey by half. He again takes off leaving her alone.
He carries out the mission and they return to the capital where he pays her more to call at the Casino where the receptionist gives him a large sum of money and a case to carry out his fee for the killing. The girl gets a newspaper which announces the killing of the same man whose photograph she has discovered sticking out of the case of her client. She goes to challenge him in the Casino while the newspaper vendor goes to get a police man because she has not paid for the paper. As he leaves the Casino and the girl challenges him he suddenly realises that the case carries a bomb detonated by the Marta Hari but fortunate he flings it sufficiently away only to be injured in one arm as is the policeman called to the scene by the news vendor.
The girl takes him to a village community where his arm is treated but where they have tracked andtwo men attempt to beat out the information of there whereabouts. Robert uses his Satellite phone to send a photo of the attackers to a contact who is able to find out something of the individual before the two men are killed by the girl’s contact in the village. The information indicates that a neighbouring country has being using international aid to but arms and that the man killed was somehow involved. I could not work out if he was the gun runner or part of the UN team who were visiting to examine allegations of fund misappropriation. In any event the head man has a relative who works at the Embassy of the country concerned who they contact by phone for information but the call is traced and they are again pursued but this time by someone with a rocket launcher and they jump from the vehicle before it is hit and explodes.
In the subsequent fight Robert is mortally wounded and the girl has to kill one of the attackers to survive, Robert pleads with her to go to London to look after his cat that will by starving because he is away longer than anticipated giving her a wedge of notes before he dies. She does so and finds his stash of money in cat food tins sufficient for her to do the training she had mentioned to him for which she was saving working for the Jeep hire company.
Even in Italian the film is a million miles away from that created by Ken Loach in Route Irish.
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