Abduction of children for sexual purposes Film TV and in reality

My interest in the subject of captivity and isolation commenced when in 1960, because of my age, I was kept locked in a prison cell  between Saturday afternoon and Monday morning on remand having refused bail and with only two half hours of exercise with another nonviolent protestor, against weapons of mass civilian extermination, in an adjacent cell in Bedford jail and where we had to walk  round the yard with distance between us while the adults later reported having a grand time by comparison kept together on mattresses in the prison library. I hated very second without a book, writing paper or anything to do. My approach when spending the last four and half months of the six months’ alternative chosen to promising to stop protesting was to separate myself from other protestors and fit into the regime of prison life with everyone else.  That did create problems when I left, so I learned a little of the impact of being isolated and of the subsequent adjustment required when you have accepted and adjusted to the situation which in my instanced I had placed myself in. The book edited by George Mikes called Prison, includes chapters by a survivor of Auschwitz, by Rusell Braddon, Arthur Koestler and Paul Ignotus, and an older first cousin returned from his participation in World War II and prison camps in North Africa, Italy and central Europe as a man damaged, dying prematurely from his persistent need smoke.

Works of fiction only reflects the impact of reality and over the past decade there have been accounts worldwide about the experience of girls adducted and kept imprisoned for sexual purposes. Elizabeth Smart suffered for only 9 months compared to Natasha Kampusch 8 years, Michelle Knight, 12 years Jaycee Duggard 18 years and Elizabeth Fritzel for 24 years by her father with whom she had seven children and where in some instances the abductors have been a married couple.

Recently, possibly because of the commercial and artistic success of the Canadian film, The Room in 2015, there has been a sudden flux of new material, with the BBC making available on its I player all five episodes of Thirteen with the showing of the first, the second series of Missing with Donal Morrisey as the father, has 10 episodes and where James Nesbitt was the male lead in the award winning first series of the British American drama. An adolescent boy has so far been rescued in the first three episodes of the Australian series the Code which features the dark net where individual children are abducted for on demand bids, and where the main story appears to be the international UK/USA capitalist exploitation of the mineral resources of an island people involving corruption, murder, torture and political complicity.  

I saw 2015 The Room in theatre at Bolden Cineworld on January 26^th at 16.50 screen 4 and seat J3. The film stars Brie Larson in the role of the abducted teenager who survives captivity in a room with the son born through the enforced union. She is abducted and kept in a purpose created room for seven years which has a bed, toilet, bathtub, television and basic cooking area. The window is a skylight and one of the ways Joy copes is to pretend to her son that TV is all fiction and that their life is normal with the child as he has got older having to sleep in a wardrobe when the captor visits for sex. When the captor loses his job, and says he cannot continue to provide the same level of food and clothing as previously Joy devises a plan to get the son out by faking that he has severe fever and pressing their captor to take him to hospital, he only offers to bring antibiotics and the next step is for the boy to play dead and for him to be removed from the room in a carpet from which he escaped, is escapes and come into the hands of the police.

Understandably the boy is overwhelmed and disorientated by a world in which he had no previous knowledge and the police find there is no record of his existence. The police are able through credible work to locate the property and rescue his mother and reunite her and the grand child with her mother who is now divorced and in a new relationship and where the girl’s father lives at some distance. He returns but cannot accept the grandson and leaves. While the authorities do everything, they can to prepare mother to return to normality and Jack to adjust to life, both find the challenge exceptionally difficult as do all the other family members. Controlling and dealing with media is an issue which occurs in real situations and where victims have written books, given interviews and participated in documentaries.

Jack who at first refuses to communicate with anyone other than his mother and refuses his hair to be cut and for the first time begins to adjust with the help of a pet dog and boy of his own age, learning to play with other boys and to go to school.  His mother finds it more difficult to cope especially when challenged about having become complicit in the situation something with life victims have all had to face. Mother becomes withdrawn, depressed and attempts to take her own life. The grandmother can cut his hair and sending this to his mother as a reminder of his existence and adjustment so far, help the mother to survive. They both decide on the need to visit the place where they live and Jack comments that the place has shrunk. The both say goodbye to the Room leaving the audience upbeat with a sense that they will survive

Thirteen. I missed the original BBC showing of the five-episode showing of Thirteen, the fictional account of a young women who at the age of 26 escapes after 13 years of captivity for sex. The episodes are available on the BBC I Player. She is found  by the police and DNA confirms  she is the missing daughter of a couple  who have separated, the husband living with his personal assistant at work and a young daughter who  is about to marry and lives with her fiancé at the family home, Despite warnings that adjustment  back will be difficult daughter and her mother and mother insist on an immediate return  home and mother also insists on the husband moving back into the household in order to re-establish a normality as things were 13 years before. Ivy, the victim, appears as determined as her mother to recreate the situation before the adduction.

The police have questions, not the least to identify and apprehend the perpetrator and are concerned what appears to them to be a reluctance rather than an inability help find the location. When they do they find evidence of inconsistency in the story presented that Ivy was never allowed out of the basement where she was held and which has been cleared along with the rest of house to provide no evidence or clues of what has happened and where the captor could now be. Then the discovery of female clothing in any upstairs bedroom suggests that she was allowed out of the basement and then the discovery of torn passport size photo indicates she was out of the house. Ivy claims that although this happened there was never an opportunity to get help or escape.  CCTV footage from a shopping mall demonstrates this also was not true.

The next development is the identification and location of the captor’s mother to a residential home where it established she died sometime previously but had another son. The finding that there was a younger half-brother adds to concern about the story Ivy has given.  The female police detective has been the most sceptical about the story presented and works out there is more space in the cellar area that what appears and discover a false wall behind which is the skeleton of the half-brother. The evidence of his age confirms that he was present in the property during the time Ivy was captive and it is her DNA on the covering of the remains. She admits she was present when the captor killed his half-brother and is charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Through social media Ivy had contacted a boy with whom she had been close when she disappeared. It is evident she had hoped he had remained faithful in his commitment at the time to her. He hides the fact that he has married and is guilty about establishing a life for himself and where he fails to share his developing contact with his wife and which causes Ivy and his wife to distrust him when the truth emerges. Ivy was on her way to meet up with two school’s friends on the morning she disappeared and one of the friends returns, guilty at the decision not to attend the meeting and at first is forgiven by Ivy because of all the other if only events had not happened that day. What is not forgiven is failing to disclose she had stayed with the former boyfriend and his wife on returning and knew he was married.

It has emerged that the captor had worked at the school but does this fact alone account for the panic by the Headmaster at the news that Ivy has returned and over the series we discover that the cause of his guilt is that on the morning on her disappearance he was having a secret assignation with the girl’s mother.  The younger sister at first convinced the returning young woman was not her sister changes and the two become conspiratorial and this undermines the relationship with the fiancé. The programme highlights the anger victims feel with their families over having found ways to move on.

Concern by police mounts when another young girl is kidnapped and by the same captor and because of having killed his half-brother the welfare of the kidnapped girl becomes urgent and paramount. The captor contacts the police asking for a meeting with Ivy. Everyone is reassured that Ivy will be protected at the meeting in a shopping centre with 50 plain clothes officer monitoring. Despite this the captor has contact undetected and makes his escape with Ivy on the basis the new kidnapped girl is released which she is unharmed and reunited with her parents[CS1] .

Worse is to follow because the captor can escape further to an unknown destination by causing the chasing vehicle with the two detectives to crash, seriously injuring one. We switch to house where Ivy is being half again and we learn that she had been pregnant at one point and the man appears determined to reinstate their previous relationship. She manages to escape from the house which explodes in a burst of flames in a planned suicide attempt by the captor as the police who with the help of the recovered girl have located the property. What is also clear is that the substance of Ivy’s story is proven. The outline of the story fails to convey the insight into the complex impact of being taken, raped and held for years has had on Ivy and need to block out and go back to the girl and situation as before. While there are some credibility issues in the storyline there are several excellent other performances. I am still left with the question Entertainment no so what has been the point?

I remember well the first series of the British American Missing with James Nesbitt seeking to recover an abducted boy so I decided to watch the second series which commenced on October 12 with the 3^rd episode on October 26th. I am covering some of the work of James Nesbitt when writing about the latest series of Cold Feet after an absence of over a decade.

As with Ivy in Thirteen, a daughter Alice, aged 11 years who disappeared while her father, an army officer was stationed in Germany in 2002, dramatically reappears when she walks out of a forest 12 years later and where it emerges she has held with another girl Sophie Giraux, a crime investigated by a French Police detective Julien Baptiste. He had promised to do everything to find the child but without success, he had failed to prevent Mrs Giraux committing suicide from a building in the presence of her husband who understandably has never forgiven Baptise for his failure, something which Bapriste has also failed to do.

Alice is disorientated and in bare feet when she is discovered and from the outset there are questions about her and her story. The father is played by the established actor David Morrissey who has had a long and outstanding stage, TV and film career and plays an officer no longer on active duty because of incident which has left him disfigured from burns. While he is immediately convinced the girl is Alice, his partner is not convinced.  As with Ivy the father and the victim want to return to their home but her behaviour is intended to alert us that something is not right. She persuades her brother to lock her in the garden shed at night she cannot cope with the normality of heated room, soft bed and family sleeping times. I briefly had a similar experience after months of hard bed in a cell with a light always on so a check could have been at intervals throughout the night. It also brings back the hours I spent as child kept in room and told to be silent while visitors from the homeland of my birth and care mothers were in their home and were not to know of existence.

With help in which the Amy can join forces with the German police the place in which for a time the two girls are believed to have been held together in a WWII bunker. There is a private meeting at one point between Alice and the commanding senior officer and from their conversation it is possible to say that he was somehow involved with the disappearance. A receipt discovered at the bunker leads them to a local butcher whose wife had served in the army with history yet to be revealed but where the commanding officer appears to have some hold over her. Alice identifies the butcher from a series of photos. The man is arrested and subsequently convicted and imprisoned.

The French Detective retired and suffering from terminal cancer abandons his wife determined to fulfil his promise to Mrs Giroux and her husband and persuades the parents to allow him to talk to Alice and given the similarity between the two girls when they were abducted he begins to question which girl has reappeared, doubts which the mother has already tried to voice. He speaks to the girl in French but she appears not to understand. He suggests to the mother a DNA test which Alice overhears. Baptiste contacts Mr Giroux to persuade him to go with him to Germany. Understandably he refuses.  Alive kills herself by setting fire to the garden shed with herself inside.

The series switches between 2002, 2014 and the present when the son appears to have become embittered and right wing carries out a request from Alice to visit the man she accused in prison and say sorry on her behalf. Baptiste is in Iraq in search of an army officer who he had met at the time of the original disappearance and who has joined one of the warring groups.  He persuades a journalist with connections to take up into an area of conflict and on their way from a deserted   village where there was evidence the army officer had been present they are taken by the Peshmerga soldiers and brought to their frontline where they meet up with the army officer who although appears to know something refuses to help. Back in Germany the mother comes across a video which appears to show her daughter, alive. The first series had eight episodes.

The Code is an Australian drama series taking over the Saturday evening BBC Four slot usually reserved for a drama in another language than English. We are now midway through the second series of six programmes which features a computer technocrat genius on the autism spectrum, Jesse and his journalist brother Ned. Both series cover the same basic issues of government complicity and duplicity, turning the blind eye and cover up, as officials engage in crossing the line activities to protect the interests of International corporations who are not opposed to using, often at arm’s length, killing, violence, intimidation, blackmail, corruption and cover up to protect and further their commercial interests.

I am including the Code at this point because the first three episodes of the four shown to-date of the second series involves a dark net service in which children are kidnapped and trafficked for sex. The computer code break skills of Jesse is demanded by the Australian government when two of three male Australian citizens are murdered in West Papua, New Guinea, controlled it is alleged by the Indonesian Government through the tactics of a police state, opposing demands by the indigenous people for independence and freedom from exploitation by an international mining consortium with Australian, British and USA financial interests and where the ability of outsiders, particularly journalists to visit is strictly controlled.

This aspect of the fictional drama series is accurate as in the early 1960’s the Netherlands gave up its control of New Guinea with West Papua absorbed by the Indonesian Government during a period when Indonesia conflicted with its enforced involvement in the proposed new Malaysia. The conflict resulted in the defeat of the left of centre political movement and decades of right wing military dictatorship during which time the population has more than doubled to over 200 million with nearly 60% on the largest of its 13000 islands, Java, and to becoming one of the more prosperous world economies (16^th). There is no political freedom of expression allowed in West Papua with anyone opposing exterminated and the rest of the world tolerating because of its capitalist interests, including arms sales.

The Australian government coerces the involvement of brothers with the threat of agreeing to extradition to the United States because of  the hacking involved  in the first series but then gain the willing participation of Jesse when he learns that the survivor of the three men attacked by the militia is the fugitive founder (Roth) of a dark net site part of which includes the children kidnapped on demand and trafficked for sexual purposes and that a male adolescent has been kidnapped and was available for the right price. Jesse contacts the service with help of the government cybercrime chief and team and offers to provide Roth with the encryption key to the Government’s internal network which enable Roth to find out the names of the undercover intelligence people after him. There is agreement to meet in the far north of Queensland  and Jesse is accompanied by his girlfriend Hani Parende, a student computer expert who in the first series is blackmailed by the national cyber unit to befriending Jesse to protect her father (whose visa is under threat and where a return to his homeland would mean torture and death) and where he was and remains opposed to her friendship with Jesse and a proposed marriage.

The couple are taken by Roth in his boat to his base hideout in the jungle of West Papua where they meet up with Roth’s indigenous wife and daughter and whose brother in law is an activist in the freedom movement. The purpose of Jesse’s visit is to plant a programme which opens the back door which all computers have and which enables direct control of content with permission, which I had once agreed and witnessed, and which can also enable authorised government operatives to use, even when devices are turned off, to turn on and monitor content. 

The two brothers, the elder Ned, are first contacted at the funeral of their mother and where the funeral also brings contact with their estranged father who previously had abandoned his wife and children. A feature of contemporary TV and film series is the dysfunctional family as the norm of family life, and which together with the increasing worldwide mobility, as much for work as leisure, means that the several generation of care and support family networks used to provide have broken or are breaking down further at the very time public service provision is being shrunk and the availability of other forms of community support is very much a lottery of geography and who you know.

Ned whose required support role for Jesse throughout the first series has been replaced by Hani, is nevertheless concerned about the disappearance of his brother who fails to return from the North Queensland meeting and starts his own investigation with the help of an estranged former girlfriend who works within the government structure. Obtaining the names of the two murdered men he notes the connection with a photographer and activist who is in fact working undercover to expose the role of external governments, the Indonesian government and the Mining Company.  She lets Ned know that Jesse is on the island and safe. Although this may have been true at the time, Roth, the undercover journalist, Jesse and Hani go into town to view the body in the morgue of a colleague who has been killed and framed for the murder of the two Australian citizens thus officially closing that aspect of the case. As they leave they are attacked by gunmen on a motor cycle but escape unharmed.

However, Jesse is psychologically affected and it is Roth who gets him back to his encampment safely. Therefore, Jesse discloses the purpose of his mission and Roth appears to be horrified that his services are being used for the paedophile network and offers to help by returning to Queensland where an associate looks after a mirror/branch server on Roth’s family farm. As they are about to arrive the boat is intercepted by the Australian border patrol and they jump overboard to go in search of the missing kid. The second episode ends.

The third episode begins as the two survive the swim ashore, recover and make their way to meet up with Roth’s associate who has effectively kidnapped the boy through grooming using a non-existent female friendship and has taken him to a property where the buyer is arriving to rape and murder and which appears to have been the fate of other children in the past. When Roth meets up with his partner he rages about his server being used for paedophilia, demands to know the location of the boy and then brutally murders the man in front of Jesse who runs off in horror and panic but can return to Canberra, the seat of government and assist in locating the premises and rescuing the boy who is reunited with his parents, and the buyer having been identified is arrested on arrival at the airport.  At this point, everyone should be congratulating themselves over a job well done. Certainly, the Foreign Minister is reassured that a politically difficult situation has been sorted.

Then three actions by the government change everything. The visa of Hani’s father is revoked and he is taken into custody. Jesse and Ned are told that the extradition to the USA is back on the agenda. The leader of the West Papua freedom movement and his family are arrested and deported from the island and the only chink in what appears to be a cover up process by the government is that Ned with visual information provided by the undercover friend on the island (Meg Flynn) is able with the help of his former girlfriend to gate crash a meeting and make direct contact with the female Foreign Minister.

Ned Jesse and Meg flee Australia and go to West Papua by plane where they head for the Roth compound. Forces who do not want the Foreign Minister making further inquiries arrange for her daughter to be given a university scholarship when all the Minister has done was to plead with the university to be flexible when the girl misses the registration date. At a subsequent meeting between the Minister and the cyber unit head, knowledge of the scholarship is mentioned and we interpret this as one other measure to stop investigation to what is going on.  Back at the compound Roth is surprised by their arrival but accepts the reasons and after getting Jesse stoned gets Jesse to break the Code for a USA security programme which enables them to affect the digital system including cameras operating in the prison where his brother in law is being held. Roth heads off to town to rescue the brother in law whose wife is already there with Ned and his daughter protesting at the imprisonment.  A motor cyclist then arrives shooting indiscriminately at protestors and Ned witnesses the shooting of Roth’s daughter as the episode ends. I will complete the review after the conclusion and say more about the first series and more about politics and big business in land of Rupert Murdoch

Although the three series The Fall is about the capture of a brutal serial killer of young women in Northern Ireland as the series reached its conclusion it emerges that the killer had been placed in children’s home where he had been selected to be sexually abuse every day for year until another victim was selected and in a situation where the boys had to strip at assembly masturbate themselves and the staff. I became interested in the series only recently when I recognised that the lead female role was being played by Gillian Anderson who made her name in the over 200-episode TV series the X Files along with David Duchoveny and which led to one off cinema films and a short season (11) resurrection 14 years later of six episodes earlier this year.

Gillian plays an investigative senior police office heading a special task force on the track of  Paul Spector played by Jamie Dorman and from the episodes viewed there is an emotional and psychological intensity which is powerful and extraordinary in the  two lead performances and also the head of special psychiatric unit in which the killer is placed in very secure condition in order to establish if he is faking  short term amnesia allegedly caused by being shot when in police Northern Ireland custody and being transferred. The series is very disturbing and not for those likely to be triggered by scenes of great physical violence. Jamie Dorman is brilliant at communicate a man who is adored by his daughter supported by his wife, able to attract the obsessional devotion of a teenage girl who assaults a young woman claiming to be in a relationship with Spector, who is also able to gain sympathetic attentions from medical and nursing staff who save his life hospital, and sympathetic attention for a female lawyer assisting someone who revels in the opportunity to represent the killer and beat the state. For her persistence in proving he is faking his memory loss he made to inflict physical pain and damage on the senior police woman, kills someone at the secure unit who he manipulates to cause a riot so he can almost kill the psychiatrist in charge who has also penetrated his psychological defences. Spector can cheat years of imprisonment, psychological probing and having to face the reality of himself by committing suicide.

There is no single response in terms of later behaviour by those who have been sexual and physical abuse in childhood with Spector at one end of the spectrum. To be able to get around the alleged memory loss, the team are provided with information about a crime he has committee several years previously and for which someone has confessed and imprisoned. The explanation for this extraordinary behaviour is that the individual in question had been with Spector in the home and when Spector was asked to select the next victim to replace himself he had walked passed and selected another, although the boy new he was the likely target. He owed Spector in a way only victims who have been in similar situations can understand and akin to those in the Nazi concentration camps who could survive by assisting in some off the chores involved in the camp which included harvesting hair, gold teeth, spectacles. and anything of value from the prisoners before their extermination.

In complete contrast, I consider very funny in a healthy kind of way, the Comedy Series Damned set in the Children’s Services Department of the fictional Elm Health Council with Jo Brand and Alan Davies among others coping with the realities of their own lives. Jo’s mother has psychotic severe recent memory loss, there is a receptionist straight out of the Vicar of Dibley, a questionable acting senior and a team head under constant pressure from them above.

Damned is shown well after the watershed at 10pm which is welcomed and deliberate because of the understanding Jo has about triggering.  Jo Brand is the daughter of a social worker and she studied for a combined social science degree with mental health nursing and practiced for ten years before becoming a stand-up comedienne, writer and starring in TV shows, a personality and a minor national institution for her acerbic put downs of those who take themselves too seriously in terms of attempting to project an only one sided presentation of themselves. Her republican views and open support for the Labour Party means she is unlikely to graduate into a major institutional figure. She visited South Shields before David Miliband decided to leave Parliament and the UK to give his annual” lecture” to Party members.

She is perfectly partnered in the series which ends this evening (November1st) by her co-writer Morwena Banks and Alan Davies, another with stand-up comedy experience, best known for his role as Jonathan Creek and a permanent member of the QI team.  I was reminded that their strength is acting as mirrors to funny side of human frailty while watching a splendid TV biography of the Mr Stand-up himself the unique and brilliant Peter Kay, another who writes, plays and directs his work and continues to live in the lace(Bolton) where he was born with his family.

However, the short series of damned is unlikely to change the need for a radical think again about how we provide child protection on behalf of the state but is does gently draw attention to the dangers of overreaction and the limitation of the case conference with its inherent problem of bring together people with a range of abilities, understanding and training and whose everyday focus is very different and at times incompatible.  In one episode, a teenage girl admits to having made up accusations against a teacher for media cash while the police want to engage the anti-terrorist squad when girls disappeared and it is the Vicar of Dibley innocent who works out the that the text of a note found t at the home of one of the girls is that of a current song of band and where the girls are identified from CCTV waiting to get into a concert after Alan Davies uses the Internet. There is a splendid last series episode with a wonderful outburst at the impact of a hundred George Osbornes on the ability of the department to cope with all the demands being made. The boss scares a teacher at the son’s school who texts him inappropriately and the mother forgets where she puts down her child in the supermarket from tiredness is given a warning (being middle class).

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Box office failure of Queen of Katwe an indictment of British cinema audiences

My second visit within two days to the Cineworld Bolden (26 October 2016) was for the film Queen of Katwe which has received a good review on the Friday afternoon film  institution with Simon Mayo and Dr Mark Kermode.  The film is set and made entirely in the Uganda of the present day, a country with no welfare state as we have come to expect in the UK, no free education, no free NHS and no public welfare system, with population half that of the UK, entirely land locked, corruption rife and poor and with a UK heritage, political framework and one of the countries with the poorest populations on the planet and where oil will transform the economy over the next decade. I will return to the reality of the country and its people as I consider the film as a film and as commentary on some of the issues which the film raises. I am also reading the book upon which the film is based and will reconsider, add and perhaps revise this first review when the reading is completed

The film has been advertised as about a school age child from Uganda, Phiona Mutesi, now 20 who has become a chess champion as a school age child of a single parent when her partner dies of Aids and forced to find a new life renting a hovel with no energy, no water and no toilet in one of the horrendous shanty town of Kampala, more familiar to us from those in South Africa or India dominated by drugs, prostitution and other forms of crime.

For me the heroine is the mother played by Lupita Nyong’o, Academy award supporting for her performance in 12 Years a slave, a woman born in Mexico of Kenyan parents and who now has roles in the Star Wars films, in the latest Jungle book, has commenced to write, direct as well as performances on TV and the theatre. She portrays the mother as someone with good standards, protecting her children, unwilling to take the routes offered by men and putting the welfare of the children before her own.

The film is also about a Robert Ketende whose story merits as much attention. He was an illegitimate child brought up by his grandmother, living in the bush for three years during one of the times of internal conflict in his country, He was reclaimed by his mother, a nurse but she died after two years. He could get and education and to graduate as an engineer but unable to find work because of the lack of family background and connections. He could pay his way as a young man through football skills and had some talent until injury turning to being a coach working for a government outreach programme, he also decided to use his ability as a chess player to teach life skills, thinking ahead, strategy, and confidence. In the films, it is first the brother of Phiona who attends his chess project in Katwe and soon she is beating everybody including Robert through the natural ability to remember moves and predict ahead.

Although the children commenced to have success, they could not read or write so he became a maths teacher and through this activity met his wife who comes across as an important rock upon which his subsequent life is based. Through the success of his work with Phiona he has progresses in his role working for the government on its outreach programme, also spending time in Kenya and in the USA adopting his methods. In the film his role is played by David Oyelowo who is now best known for his role as Martin Luther King in Selma

The films show how difficult Phiona find her life hustling the streets of Kampala to earn the money to help pay for the rent and family food and her world changes when she follows her bother and finds that he has joined the chess club and then that she has an aptitude. The film charts her amazing progress and overcoming the obstacles which come their way. The family becomes homeless when the rent money is sued for hospital, care, treatment and medicine. For her bother who is hurt in a road accident. Her eldest sister rebels and joins up with a man with dubious income and intentions, despite mothers warning and threats. For a time, the young woman can buy clothes and hair styles and through Phiona she can financial help the family.

Because of the progress of Phiona they can move into a new home, albeit primitive and because of the rains and flooding everything is lost again with the life of a younger brother in doubt for a time. Mother is resistant and suspicious about the involvement of her children in club and even more so when there is travel out of the country to the Sudan and then by air to a chess tournament in Moscow. The promise of education for children makes the difference and in the credits at the end of the film all the children except the eldest daughter are progressing through further education, she is discarded and becomes pregnant and continues to bear children although the circumstances of this is not stated.

The break through comes because of the relation David has with the chess federation in Uganda, his government work and a relationship with one of top schools at which the team and Phiona can shine after learning some of the basics of social behaviour.  Phiona becomes national celebrity and a heroine in Katwe. The film ends with family being able to move to a proper home with fertile grounds providing a regular income for the family. David rejects the offer of a position as an engineer during the film, supported by his wife, to pursue the outreach work for the government. There is some relevant enjoyable African music throughout the fim shot on location and the failure of the film to make the top ten box office is very worrying for what is says about British cinema audiences. I will be disappointed if the film and its actors are not recognised   worldwide as an important inspirational work based on fact. I am looking forward

The Angry John Osborne and his Entertainer with Mr Branagh

On Thursday October 27^th October, I made a third visit in three days to Cineworld Bolden for a relay of the Kenneth Branagh Theatre series in which he stars as Archie Rice, John Osborne’s Play the Entertainer, a role which Sir Lawrence Oliver made his own on stage and in a film production. The play has been part of my life for over 50 years first with the touring production at Croydon in 1958 with John Slater as Archie Rice. I also remember the 1960 film with Lawrence Oliver and which was subsequently shown on Television which I watched earlier on Amazon Prime.  There was a subsequent TV production but I only had brief visual memories of all previous experiences so the crude directness of the stage play performed by the Branagh company was something of a surprise, particularly racism, homophobia, anti-foreigner lecherous right-wing Archie and his nostalgic father, and where much of it was removed from the 1960 film version.

Archie Rice and his father are part of the traditional musical hall which ended in the fifties and the end of the pier Summer show which was revived in 1970’s and 1980 with performances by stars who made their names in television. My childhood seaside memories including being taken to the seaside shows, the De La Warr Pavilion at Bexhill on Sea comes to mind and in my middle age I went to shows at Scarborough and Great Yarmouth. Although the 1960’s film was made at Sheperton a large part of the film is at a coastal resort and at one of the huge open air swmming pools with tiered seating for spectators to watch shows and the beauty competitions. The end of prolonged second world war austerity, the temporary popularity of traditional jazz, the growth of rock and roll, the growth of television, the end of the Empire, the boom in cheap continental holidays, especially to Spain, the more discerning to Greece, Italy and the South of France, the British summer weather were all issues in this play which the play which coincides with the time of the ill-fated Suez War.

Archie discloses to his daughter Jean (played by Joan Plowright in the film for whom Olivier left world famous second wife actress Vivien Leigh wife of twenty years) that his first wife walked out when she found him in bed with his present wife and during the play Archie begins an affair with a girl the same age as his daughter because her father has the money to back his latest show venture. The actress Shirley Ann Field plays a beauty Queen with stage ambitions who Archie chases as just another conquest until finding out that her father is a businessman with money (this man’s wife is played by Thora Hird although what the trio are doing staying at a holiday camp is odd).

The play begins with the arrival of Jean to visit her father and grandfather having run away from a planned weekend trip with her fiancée because of perceived irreconcilable difference. The fiancé only appears at the end of the play but in the film, he takes centre stage, ridiculing his fiancé’s work, critical of her family and her opposition to the Suez War, having joined the in large central London protest at the time against the action of Prime Minister Anthony Eden jointly with France but not supported by the USA after Egypt’s nationalist leader Colonel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, recognised China and made a bid to become the leader of the Arab States. The lack of USA support and opposition at home led to the withdrawal and a major blow to the standing in the world of the UK and national pride until the success of the Falkland’s venture although this came at a high price.

Archie has two sons played in the film by two of the UK’s finest film actors who also had careers on stage and on TV. I have seen nearly all the thirty fiveish films of Alan Bates who was born five years before me and died in 2003. He had first made his in mark on stage in John Osborn’s successful launching the era of the Angry Young Man play Look Back in Anger and Alan became a household name with his film performance Whistle down the Wind with the daughter of John Mills, Haley. In the Entertainer Alan plays a national service conscience objector sentenced to six-month imprisonment and who works as a hospital porter and in the film, he is a stage manager. I have seen Alan Bates in one London Stage play Still Life

The other son who is doing his national service is not seen in the play but is given a role in the film with a send-off at a station by his sister and fiancé. This is the first film role by Albert Finney in a part as a carefree fatalist what will be will be. The capture of this son becomes national news and his execution by Egyptians make him into a national hero, and brings welcome attention to the dysfunctional struggling family. Albert Finney made his international name in the film Saturday Night and Sunday morning in a career which continued with appearances in the Jason Bourne films of the past decade and the Bond movie Skyfall.

A feature of Billy and Archie Rice that they bring nationalism and Patriotism into the their acts through their songs representing a Britain finding it difficult to adjust to the world as it rapidly changed and finding that gunboat diplomacy is not only ineffective but has come back bite through the execution of son. It has taken another fifty years before the public through the parents and relatives of the men who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, those who pressed for the Iraq Inquiry and who questioned the proposed decisions to enter the war between Syrians in what will appear too many to be another forsaken failed state.

Both men are bigots who ought to know better and I can only assume that some of the offensive words used are in the original script and deleted from the film making Roger Liversy who plays Billy appear a warm, understanding and tolerant of his son and grandchildren, nostalgic clinging to the standards of his generation where the truth of life are not mentioned even especially within families. Archie is portrayed as honest in his willingness to save his career and pay the wages of the company by sacrificing his wife who he has used in his stand-up comedy. The word coloured in the 1960 film become black in the play but if this an acceptable modernization to the original text why is reference to wogs retained and used more than once? Are the several references to Poles in the original text or is this also an attempt to bring Archie up to date as a UKIP/national front supporter?

His wife, Greta Scacchi with Branagh, Benda De Banzi with Olivier, and who in the film retains her big explanation of why she has become alcohol dependent, is presented as all the wives who have put up with womanizing men, because of gifted kindness, and from her perspective being a good father, from guilt at having set her cap at him and from fear that being without him, she would be without anyone. Or maybe the underlying reason is more simple, that she did not enjoy sex, she was content for him to get that satisfaction elsewhere if someone else did not do to her what she had done to his first wife. The modern women in 1956 is played by Joan Plowright t and a less worldly accepting in 2016 by Sophie Mcshera-  Daisy of Downton Abbey.  In the film, she invites the fiancé into her bed whatever the landlady’s rules reminding that in childhood we stayed at one family holiday where after breakfast we were not allowed back until time for the evening meal.  Plowright does not batter an eyelid at some of the sayings of the men, you do not look at the mantelpiece when you stoke the fire which are the time had the same impact as the bun in the oven comment in The Cruel Sea.  Mcshera is not happy with a lot of the men talk and in the latest production she rejects the fiancé when he comes calling at the end of film with the position at best ambiguous in the film. I cannot remember if it was the surviving son who makes the comment about a servile public content with the wave of a gloved hand from the golden coach.

In both productions, it is Jean who tells her father the proposed marriage is not acceptable when father seeks to gain her blessing and in both instances, she tells grandfather and he contacts the parents to explain that the suitor is already married with a grown-up family.

Archie and the family are still offered a way out as his wife’s brother has emigrated to Canada and made such a success of a running a hotel that has opened another which he wants Archie to run. In the play the offer includes the air fares while in the film it is Archie’s brother who offers to pay the fares and meet the outstanding debts    having been told of the offer.  The  present play production takes a swipe at Gateshead and Hartlepool of the  950’s, probably justified  given the position of towns in the early 1970’s was town where I first  arrived in the North East  as likely venues for  the end of pier Salad days  type of musical or even the Good Companions of J B Priestley although the stand-up  comedy of Bobby Thompson the Little Waster remains legendry and who made a point of trying to make me belly laugh one evening doing a turn for a Councillor friend at a home for the Elderly, and where in  fact northern comics did turns at the male  dominated social and working men’s club at weekends  when wives and girlfriends were encouraged to also attend.  It was the pubs in the North East who took up the strippers and pole dancing as clubs would have found acceptable the posed nudity with which Archie commenced to dabble to try and get the punters to keep coming through the doors

Archie goes to London to try and get the funds to keep the show going, a new show with a headliners and new costumes but the impresario in question wants to see the goods before putting in the cash for a tour. This reminds reading that it cost a quarter of million to move the original production of Miss Saigon from theatre to theatre. When the deal involving a new wife as a headliner collapses, the grandfather suggests his name is still able to draw in folk and offers to go back on the boards but Jean’s premonition that this will kill him is proved right.  It is as this point that Archie admits he has signed a cheque for the new production on the strength of the withdrawn investment which means he will go to prison, and miss the opportunity to celebrity 21 years of not paying any income tax.

The play ends with Archie making what he knows is his last performance and having rejected the opportunity to go to Canada with his wife and son he accepts going to prison to see if it will bring him to life being dead behind his eyes. In the most revealing admission of the play and using far more crude language than permitted in the film script Archie tells Jean that it was the singing of a blues/gospel black woman at a club when after war he visited Canada that she brought home to him real ability to communicate the emotions of a life through a voice in a song. He tries to do the same on learning of the death of his son but he and we know while a good attempt there something missing in his makeup. At one level, he hopes going to prison will change him although he jokes about it. Those of us who have had the experience know that it can have the opposite outcome destroying without recreating or hardening into the life long criminal.

Those who are critical of the work, pointing out that it is not a great play with music song and dance fail to appreciate that it marks not only the end of an era between Britain’s past and future but was part of a whole genre of theatrical works reflecting life as it was and not life as the middle class wanted it to be portrayed. The Hollywood of the twin-bedded rooms for married couples or the sophisticated interactions of Noel Coward’s Private Lives and Terence Rattigan’s Deep Blue Sea. I have been struck recently how white the audience at Bolden always is. This brings me to the second of the three visits in three days to see the Queen of Kitwe in Uganda.

The wages of sin Don Giovanni. Don Juan Casanova

On Saturday 22^nd October 2016, I went to see a relayed production of Don Giovanni from the Metropolitan Opera House at the Lincoln Centre New York, having previously seen a relay from the Royal Opera House, in London in February 2014, shortly after I had written to Secretary of State for Education, Northumbria Police and Sunderland Council that I had become aware of moves to hold a comprehensive inquiry into past crimes against children in care and giving my views on what was needed.

I published the following notes on the experience beginning not knowing much about the opera by Mozart which I had experienced for the first time by relay to the Cineworld, Bolden on a cold and windy evening and where on I arrival we were told that strong winds   were affecting the world-wide relay and that interruptions could be anticipation. During the first half of the opera there were three breaks, fortunately of no longer than 3 mins and a loss of the subtitles in two instances. The management rallied providing little cups of chocolate during the intervals was not hot and I did not enjoy but then issues a free pass in compensation for another event of similar cost which was splendid.

The opera is extraordinary with eight principal roles and in true Mozart style there are several instances where almost everyone is involved in groups, in couples in quick succession so while there is no great aria compared to Puccini, Verdi one sits marveling and at times overwhelmed. For once at least six of the singers had the physique and were of an age to reflect the roles they were playing and the other two were passable., The set was also one of the most extraordinary if not the most extraordinary and creative then experienced. A mansion on several floors which revolves close to the front of the stage and upon which there were constant projections throughout successfully reflecting the mind of Don Giovanni based on the legend of Don Juan supposed taking to his bed, so to speak over 2000 women of all ages and descriptions during his short life before he is left in the hell of isolation.

The set at the Metropolitan Opera was similar in terms of the three-level building, but darker and with the imaginative projects. In the past, I have said that I thought the Met always looked for ways of providing a spectacle where greater confines of the Royal Opera House meant less special effects with consequently attention focused on the singing and actor, although the comment was intended to suggest the acting and singing was any less but that there were distractions the Royal Opera House.

The information about Don Giovanni is projected on to the building. Don Juan is a mythical figure but Casanova is not and I own a small biography by Bonomy Dobree a which attempt to separate myth from the reality of what is actual known from his writing and other contemporary documentation. The book is part of a Men of Destiny series and is mentioned because of the extraordinary speech made by the singer who plays Don Giovanni, Simon Keenlyside, who appeared to be making a calculated and planned case for the kind of sexual freedom Libiteranism which would have horrified what is known as Middle America and the bible belt. The interviewer appeared surprised by this outburst where usually there is references to the role, forthcoming roles, the excellences of working colleagues, the Director of the work and its conductor. Simon appeared to me to be making an attack on the new puritanism and, reminding of revolutionary freedoms which at one level sound a plea for sympathy for this ruthless, rapist and seducer without any regard of the impact of his behaviour on the subsequent lives of his victims, especially those from the peasant class who lack any of the protection and support given to those of his peers.

Bryn Terfil, the Welsh baritone provided the oral introduction to the two acts of the opera of 95 and 85 minutes while the programme notes to the performance at the Royal Opera House in 2014 while the Met notes provide a summary. Seville, Spain, in 1700’s and the father of the first heroine Donna Anna is describe as the Commendatore, an Italian Order of chivalry but used here I believe someone of senior nobility and therefore the rape/seduction of his daughter by a masked stranger becomes such a matter of honour that he feels obliged to fight the young man and is killed, Donna Elvira has a fiancé who she presses to avenge her father.  Another of his conquest Donna Elvira who remains in love has followed him to Seville.

The community celebrate the wedding of two peasants with Don Giovanni on the lookout for new conquests attends and his trusted manservant. Donna Anna who also attend and has befriended Elvira recognizes the voice and presses her fiancé to gain revenge. Don Giovanni focusses on the seduction of the bride inviting the wedding party to his Palatial home. The attempt to seduce the bride fails and the attack is blamed on his servant after clothing been the two men has been swapped. The two women and the fiancé attend the Palace wearing masks to confront Don Giovanni who retreats leaving his man servant behind.

This does not prevent Don Giovanni turning the head of the maid of Donna Elvira, the fiancée and young married couple finding the man servant alone and turning on him until he admits the truth about his master. He too escapes and meets up with Don Giovanni where they come across the statue of the Commendatore. As a joke the statue is invited to Palace for a meal. In the Met production, the meal is presented as a bawdy party combining food and sex, (cannot immediately remember the name of the film the film about this subject which I suspect influence the scene setting. The ghost of the murdered man arrives and gives Don Giovanni ad invitation which is refused and the womanizer is consumed by the eternal fires of health as his future form of immortality., one aspect of the film Dr Strange I was to see a few days later. The victims and their menfolk rejoice. Donna asks for more time before marriage. The impact of Don Giovanni continues to affect their lives.

Wikipedia provides the titles of the arias, duets and combinations of voice, “Don Giovanni's servant, complains of his lot ("Notte e giorno faticar" – "Night and day I slave away"). He is keeping watch while Don Giovanni rapes or seduces the Commendatore's daughter, Donna Anna. When the two appear, Giovanni is masked and Donna Anna is holding onto his arm. Something has happened and she insists on knowing his identity (Trio: "Non sperar, se non m'uccidi, Ch'io ti lasci fuggir mai!" – "Do not hope, unless you kill me, that I shall ever let you run away!"); before he can break free from her grasp she cries for help. The Commendatore appears and forces Giovanni to fight a duel. Donna Anna flees into the house. Giovanni kills the Commendatore with his sword and escapes with Leporello. Anna, returning with her fiancé, Don Ottavio, is horrified to see her father lying dead in a pool of his own blood. She makes Ottavio swear vengeance against the unknown murderer. (Duet: "Ah, vendicar, se il puoi, giura quel sangue ognor!" – "Ah, swear to avenge that blood if you can!").

Scene 2 – A public square outside Don Giovanni's palace

Giovanni and Leporello arrive and hear a woman (Donna Elvira) singing of having been abandoned by her lover, on whom she is seeking to wreak her revenge ("Ah, chi mi dice mai" – "Ah, who could ever tell me"). Giovanni starts to flirt with her, but he is the wretch she is seeking. He shoves Leporello forward, ordering him to tell Elvira the truth, and then hurries away.

Leporello tells Elvira that Don Giovanni is not worth it. His conquests include 640 in Italy, 231 in Germany, 100 in France, 91 in Turkey, but in Spain, 1,003 ("Madamina, il catalogo è questo" – "My dear lady, this is the catalogue"). In a frequently cut recitative, Elvira vows vengeance.

They leave, and a marriage procession with Masetto and Zerlina enters. Don Giovanni and Leporello arrive soon after. Giovanni is immediately attracted to Zerlina, and he attempts to remove the jealous Masetto by offering to host a wedding celebration at his castle. On realizing that Giovanni means to remain behind with Zerlina, Masetto becomes angry ("Ho capito! Signor, sì" – "I understand! Yes, my lord!"). Don Giovanni and Zerlina are soon alone and he immediately begins his seductive arts (Duet: "Là ci darem la mano" – "There we will entwine our hands").

Elvira arrives and thwarts the seduction ("Ah, fuggi il traditor" – "Flee from the traitor!"). She leaves with Zerlina. Ottavio and Anna enter, plotting vengeance on the still unknown murderer of Anna's father. Anna, unaware that she is speaking to the attacker, pleads for Giovanni's help. Giovanni, relieved that he is unrecognised, readily promises it, and asks who has disturbed her peace. Before she can answer, Elvira returns and tells Anna and Ottavio that Giovanni is a false-hearted seducer. Giovanni tries to convince Ottavio and Anna that Elvira is insane (Quartet: "Non ti fidar, o misera" – "Don't trust him, oh sad one"). As Giovanni leaves, Anna suddenly recognizes him as her father's murderer (Anna aria: "Or sai chi l'onore Rapire a me volse" – "Now you know who wanted to rob me of my honour"). Ottavio, not convinced, resolves to keep an eye on his friend ("Dalla sua pace la mia dipende" – "On her peace my peace depends").

Leporello informs Giovanni that all the guests of the peasant wedding are in Giovanni's house and that he distracted Masetto from his jealousy, but that Zerlina, returning with Elvira, made a scene and spoiled everything. However, Don Giovanni remains cheerful and tells Leporello to organize a party and invite every girl he can find. (Giovanni's "Champagne Aria": "Fin ch'han dal vino calda la testa" – "Till they are tipsy"). They hasten to his palace.

Zerlina follows the jealous Masetto and tries to pacify him ("Batti, batti o bel Masetto" – "Beat, O beat me, handsome Masetto"), but just as she manages to persuade him of her innocence, Don Giovanni's voice from offstage startles and frightens her. Masetto hides, resolving to see for himself what Zerlina will do when Giovanni arrives. Zerlina tries to hide from Don Giovanni, but he finds her and attempts to continue the seduction, until he stumbles upon Masetto's hiding place. Confused but quickly recovering, Giovanni reproaches Masetto for leaving Zerlina alone, and returns her temporarily to him. Giovanni then leads both to his ballroom, which has been lavishly decorated. Leporello invites three masked guests to the party: the disguised Ottavio, Anna, and Elvira. Ottavio and Anna pray for protection, Elvira for vengeance (Trio: "Protegga il giusto cielo" – "May the just heavens protect us").

Scene 3 – Finale: Ballroom As the merriment, featuring two separate chamber orchestras on stage, proceeds, Leporello distracts Masetto by dancing with him, while Don Giovanni leads Zerlina offstage to a private room. When Zerlina screams for help, Don Giovanni tries to fool the onlookers by dragging Leporello into the room and threatening to kill him for assaulting Zerlina. But Ottavio produces a pistol, and the three guests unmask and declare that they know all. But despite being denounced on all sides, Don Giovanni escapes – for the moment.

Act 2

Scene 1 – Outside Elvira's house

Leporello threatens to leave Giovanni, but his master calms him with a peace offering of money (Duet: "Eh via buffone" – "Go on, fool"). Wanting to seduce Elvira's maid, Giovanni persuades Leporello to exchange cloak and hat with him. Elvira comes to her window (Trio: "Ah taci, ingiusto core" – "Ah, be quite unjust heart"). Seeing an opportunity for a game, Giovanni hides and sends Leporello out in the open dressed as Giovanni. From his hiding place Giovanni sings a promise of repentance, expressing a desire to return to her, while Leporello poses as Giovanni and tries to keep from laughing. Elvira is convinced and descends to the street. Leporello, continuing to pose as Giovanni, leads her away to keep her occupied while Giovanni serenades her maid with his mandolin. ("Deh vieni alla finestra" – "Ah, come to the window").

Before Giovanni can complete his seduction of the maid, Masetto and his friends arrive, searching for Giovanni with the intent of killing him. Giovanni (dressed as Leporello) convinces the posse that he also hates Giovanni, and joins the hunt. After cunningly dispersing Masetto's friends (Giovanni aria: "Metà di voi qua vadano" – "Half of you go this way"), Giovanni takes Masetto's weapons away, beats him up, and runs off, laughing. Zerlina arrives and consoles the bruised and battered Masetto ("Vedrai carino" – "You'll see, dear one").

Scene 2 – A dark courtyard

Leporello abandons Elvira. (Sextet: "Sola, sola in buio loco" – "All alone in this dark place"). As he tries to escape, Ottavio arrives with Anna, consoling her in her grief. Just as Leporello is about to slip through the door, which he has difficulty finding, Zerlina and Masetto open it and, seeing him dressed as Giovanni, catch him before he can escape. When Anna and Ottavio notice, what is going on, all move to surround Leporello, threatening him with death. Elvira tries to protect the man who she thinks is Giovanni, claiming that he is her husband and begging for pity. The other four are resolved to punish the traitor, but Leporello removes his cloak to reveal his identity. He begs everyone's forgiveness and, seeing an opportunity, runs off (Leporello aria: "Ah pietà signori miei" – "Ah, have mercy, my lords"). Given the circumstances, Ottavio is convinced that Giovanni was the murderer of Donna Anna's father (the deceased Commendatore) and swears vengeance ("Il mio tesoro" – "My treasure" – though in the Vienna version this was cut).[16] Elvira is still furious at Giovanni for betraying her, but she also feels sorry for him. ("Mi tradì quell'alma ingrata" – "That ungrateful wretch betrayed me").

Scene 3 – A graveyard with the statue of the Commendatore. Leporello tells Don Giovanni of his brush with danger, and Giovanni taunts him, saying that he took advantage of his disguise as Leporello by trying to seduce one of Leporello's girlfriends. But the servant is not amused, suggesting it could have been his wife, and Don Giovanni laughs aloud at his servant's protests. The voice of the statue warns Giovanni that his laughter will not last beyond sunrise. At the command of his master, Leporello reads the inscription upon the statue's base: "Here am I waiting for revenge against the sacrilegious one who gave me death" (Dell'empio che mi trasse al passo estremo qui attendo la vendetta). The servant trembles, but the unabashed Giovanni orders him to invite the statue to dinner, threatening to kill him if he does not. Leporello makes several attempts to invite the statue to dinner but for fear cannot complete the task (Duet: "O, statua gentilissima" – "Oh most kind statue"). It falls upon Don Giovanni himself to complete the invitation, thereby sealing his own doom. Much to his surprise, the statue nods its head and responds affirmatively.

Scene 4 – Donna Anna's room.

Ottavio pressures Anna to marry him, but she thinks it inappropriate so soon after her father's death. He accuses her of being cruel, and she assures him that she loves him, and is faithful ("Non mi dir" – "Tell me not").

Scene 5 – Don Giovanni's chambers

Giovanni revels in the luxury of a great meal, served by Leporello, and musical entertainment during which the orchestra plays then-contemporary late-18th-century operatic music: "O quanto in sì bel giubilo" from Vicente Martín y Soler's Una cosa rara (1786), "Come un agnello" from Giuseppe Sarti's Fra i due litiganti il terzo gode (1782) and finally, "Non più andrai" from Mozart's own The Marriage of Figaro (1786).[17] (Finale "Già la mensa preparata" – "Already the table is prepared"). Elvira appears, saying that she no longer feels resentment for Giovanni, only pity. ("L'ultima prova dell'amor mio" – "The final proof of my love"). Surprised by her lack of hatred, Giovanni asks what it is that she wants, and she begs him to change his life. Giovanni taunts her and then turns away, praising wine and women as the "support and glory of humankind" (sostegno e gloria d'umanità). Hurt and angered, Elvira gives up and leaves. A moment later, her scream is heard from outside the walls of the palace, and she returns only to flee through another door. Giovanni orders Leporello to see what has upset her; upon peering, outside, the servant also cries out, and runs back into the room, stammering that the statue has appeared as promised. An ominous knocking sounds at the door. Leporello, paralyzed by fear, cannot answer it, so Giovanni opens it himself, revealing the statue of the Commendatore. With the D minor music from the overture now accompanying the bass voice ("Don Giovanni! A cenar teco m'invitasti" – "Don Giovanni! You invited me to dine with you"), the Commendatore offers a last chance to repent, but Giovanni adamantly refuses. The statue sinks into the earth and drags Giovanni down with him. Hellfire, and a chorus of demons, surround Don Giovanni as he is carried below.

Donna Anna, Don Ottavio, Donna Elvira, Zerlina, and Masetto arrive, searching for the villain. They find instead Leporello hiding under the table, shaken by the supernatural horror he has witnessed. Giovanni is dead. Anna and Ottavio will marry when Anna's year of mourning is over; Elvira will spend the rest of her life in a convent; Zerlina and Masetto will finally go home for dinner; and Leporello will go to the tavern to find a better master.

The concluding ensemble delivers the moral of the opera – "Such is the end of the evildoer: the death of a sinner always reflects his life" ("Questo è il fin di chi fa mal, e de' perfidi la morte alla vita è sempre ugual"). In the past, the final ensemble was sometimes omitted by conductors (such as Gustav Mahler) who claimed that the opera should end when the title character dies. However, this approach has not survived, and today's conductors almost always include the finale in its entirety. The return to D major and the innocent simplicity of the last few bars conclude the opera. “

These summaries and descriptions cannot communicate the power of the various combinations of voice with every soloist in the production appearing to vie to command our attention and admiration. Adam Plcechetka as the man servant; Paul Appleby as the loyal fiancé, Zerna Malfi as the bride, Malin Bystrom was Evira and Hibla Gerzmava- Donna Anna. Matthew Rose jealous and doubting husband while Kwangchow Youn impressive as the Commendatore

Dr Strange asks Fundamental questions in CGI

On Tuesday 25^th October, I experienced WoW twice within the space of a few hours. The DVD of the 25^th anniversary films of Miss Saigon arrived and more than lived up to expectations, although the two DVD set does not include the curtain call performance by members of the original cast shown on the recent cinema relays and the list of theatres where the production is to tour in 2017 is significantly short with six venues and none between Leicester and Edinburgh. I will review the DVD’s later. I thought there was time to go and see the film set in Africa about a school age child with ambition to become a chess champion called Queen of Katwe but as the performance was at five I booked to attend the following day, but noted there was still time to attend the new Benedict Cumberbatch Marvel Comics character film Doctor Strange and about which I knew nothing. The film also stars Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One and Cheiwetel Ejiofor both with outstanding backgrounds in Theatre, TV and Film and several other top notch actors.

I have commented recently on the reduction in the number of epic films in 3 D and some of the recent Marvel Comic productions which rely so heavily on CGI have failed or not attracted the level of public response to encourage the kind of expenditure which such films require especially if they are to achieve new amazing cinematograph experiences.

From an article about the film in the Guardian 22^nd October 2016, I learned that Benedict had flown to Katmandu where part of the film takes place, set shortly after completing his National Theatre performances as Hamlet and which I viewed with many others at one of the Relays which most cinema chains held. He also mentioned the impact of having become a father.

Benedict plays Dr Strange a leading surgeon using the latest technics of micro surgery who has become an arrogant and hypercritical individual with an exceptional wealthy lifestyle living on his own. He loses his ability to work following a serious road accident and spends all his time and fortune trying to find a way to regain the use of hands upon which his work depends.

This leads him to meet someone who has recovered from a disability against all rational knowledge about what is possible and this leads him to go and search for the Ancient One who is in Katmandu.  The key or pivotal momentum is when the Ancient One challenges the view that the universe is one dimensional and of singular material substance rooted in knowable cause and effect which will appeal to all those who believe in the supernatural, other dimensions, in spirit and soul, the outer body experience, the possibilities of immortality and the all seeing  all controlling  entities of good and evil personified in  a God  and in a Devil and above all of these, and the subject which has always interested me most, the power of the physical mind over the rest of the  physical body and to command or control other physical entities external to the body and which is on the spectrum of affecting perception, conjuring to  magic and it is this respect that the film attempts to make visual translation through the use of CGI.

The film does have some WoW moments through its perception and time bending effects, through its colourful visualization of other dimensions and representation of evil and the devil and of being caught up in a painful horrifying self-awareness of being in an endless repeating cycle of the same event hell, but with the possibility of being able to break out from this. The film is also about how sceptics who convert become zealots and the belief that nothing is impossible. It terms of the story the pattern of the baddies appearing to win but the superhero finding an unconventional way(s) to win at the last moment is once more repeated although the eventual victory is never left in doubt with a good twist in terms of inevitable casualty(casualties) but not in terms of the sacrifices superheroes need to make if he or she is put others before their own interests and pleasures. The jokes are clever and wry and I noted that I started to laugh sooner than most in the audience but everyone quickly caught up. A good way to judge a film is how soon the audience begins to leave, at the immediate end of the film, as the credit progress because they have been alerted there is endpiece or stay until the cleaning staff arrive. This time there was no movement until the end piece during the credit and the majority were still in their seats digesting the experience as I left with the last few pages of credits rolling. It is one of the most enjoyable of the comic book action movies and in which I was engaged throughout and experienced moments of Wow, but nothing like the same level of flesh tingling WoW, WoW and more WoW

Two rubbish films governed by the fate of a daughter

On Friday evening 21^st October 2016, I needed a break from serious activity and went to see the second Jack Reacher film Never go back which I understand is based on one of the 22 other novels. I did see and reviewed (13^th September 2013) the first production based on the first book of the 22-book series to-date by author Jack Child’s concluding that it was an enjoyable but of my childhood’s B movie tradition.  My reaction to Never Go back was mixed and has not changed over days of reflection. I liked the story line albeit familiar one of USA Military people abusing their power by making personal wealth at the taxpayer’s expense and putting the public at great risk. There have been other films on the same theme covering the aftermath of the second world war through to the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In this instance a former associate of Jack Reacher, a female Major responsible for monitoring and tackling action on the abuse of power and a series of disturbing events occur when two colleagues go to Afghanistan to investigate.  She is arrested with her life endangered I am still not clear why Reacher gets involved and how is lifestyle is funded other than he has a very good pension and ongoing sponsorship.

It is being a baddy making huge amounts of money by illegal means that a proportion is spent on hiring assassins and others prepared to risk their life and serious injury on behalf of someone else’s cause. A key aspect of the film is hiring another soldier of fortune who is a match for Reacher’s Marshal arts abilities and where there is a build-up of confrontations until the final you or me but where the outcome cannot be in doubt given the ongoing activities of the hero. To addition suspense there is an issue of whether Reacher has a daughter who became one of the targets of the clear up operation of the criminals involved and played by Danika Darosh who plays is she, is she not daughter an although her behaviour is somewhat of a stereotype and has some implausible aspect as the threat to her increases, I thought she does very well

18-year-old Danika comes from an actor family and made her name in the USA TV show Shameless and comes across as a very athletic and adventurous individual starting as a dancer learning to be a pilot, owner of a motor cycle and involved with boxing and archery, this will not be her only film.

Although Tom Cruise is now fifty, rising to public attention thirty years ago in Top Gun, he still has a young face but even the most ardent of his fans will question if Tom - you are too old for this? As was said by the male to the female couple as they left the cinema.  Yet there is talk of Top Gun 2 and he is involved in the production of the two films which I believe he hoped they would be able to cash in more than they did with the first, taking three years before the appearance of second.  The demise of the paid assassin is spectacular fashion does not result in the mystery of the disappearance of an arms shipment of not required weapons back from Afghanistan to the USA under a private contract.  At the end of the film it also looks as if assumptions about what has been going on are wrong and the General in charge is right to be indignant about the accusations. Of course, it is Tom to works out that the financial numbers and risks involved do not add up, and why. Will I go again.  Not unless I am in the same need for a couple of hours of rubbish film.

This was also the reason why I stayed up last night (24th October 2016) just to see how bad a film was called Cradle  2 the Grave  and made in 2003 and which by coincidence  featured the kidnap of the daughter of one of lead roles in the film of thieves falling out  and involves the establish Marshal arts actor as well-known as Bruce Lee called by his stage name of Jet Li a Chinese film actor, film producer, martial artist, and retired Wushu champion who was born in Beijing. He is now a naturalized Singaporean citizen.   After three years of intensive training with Wu Bin, Li won his first national championship for the Beijing Wushu Team. After retiring from Wushu at age 19, he went on to win great acclaim in China as an actor making his debut with the film Shaolin Temple (1982). He went on to star in many critically acclaimed martial arts epic films, most notably as the lead in director Zhang Yimou's 2002 Hero and the Once Upon A Time in China series, in which he portrayed folk hero Wong Fei-hung.

The thief hero is played by another well-known individual Earl Simmons (born December 18, 1970), professionally known as DMX, an American hip hop recording artist and actor. In 1999, DMX released his best-selling album ...And Then There Was X, which included the hit single "Party Up (Up in Here)". He has been featured in  other films -Belly, Romeo Must Die, Exit Wounds, and Last Hour. In 2006, he starred in the reality television series DMX: Soul of a Man, which was primarily aired on the BET cable television network. In 2003, DMX published a book of his memoirs entitled, E.A.R.L.: The Autobiography of DMX.

The school age daughter in this instance is played by Paige Hurd before she became a teenager and now over a decade later  she is an established female actor,  aged 24 year, born in Dallas to an African American father and Puerto Rican mother. She was featured in the comedy Beauty Shop (2005) starring Queen Latia^[1] and portrayed Tasha, next door neighbor of Chris in the Chris Rock-produced TV series Everybody Hates Chris,  as  Denise in The Cat in the Hat, a 2003 comedy film loosely based on the 1957 book of the same name, by Dr. Seuss. She has appeared in music videos including one by Justin Beiber.

The story of the film is about the value and the ownership if a large black diamond and its potential use and centers on rescuing the daughter after her abduction and as a vehicle for the talents of lead actors Does one care at any point what happens. No. As the films progressed one had the sense that this was start of a new franchise rather like the A Team lost of action but no gory deaths or believable physical harm. Although its doubled its money, the temptation to make another was resisted.