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Lone Star

30/5/2012

If I had a top hundred list of favourite films (which incidentally I don't and what's more don't ever plan to have), Lone Star (1996), directed by John Sayles would most certainly be on it. It is the first film in which I ever recall seeing the superb Chris Cooper. My wife and I watched it first on British TV after it got a five star review in that week's Radio Times Film Guide, and which I suppose must've been some ten years ago now. The film made quite an impact on both of us and over the subsequent years I tried and failed repeatedly to obtain a copy of it on DVD. For years it only appeared to be available in Region 1 format and was therefore unsuitable for our DVD players in the UK.
But wait a minute! It suddenly became available! Hurrah! Hurrah! Although only at a fairly high price for a relatively old movie on DVD.

Being very careful not to write a plot-spoiler: the film starts when two off-duty soldiers uncover a human skull in the desert near their army base. Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper), the relatively new sheriff, is called in to investigate. After some forensic tests it is soon established that the skeleton is that of Charlie Wade (terrifyingly played by Kris Kristofferson) who was himself sheriff of Rio County many years earlier. (As you may possibly have guessed after my last sentence, part of the story is told in flashback!) Wade, a widely-despised, violent and corrupt bully, had disappeared after a public quarrel with his deputy, and Sam's father, Buddy Deeds (Matthew McConaughey). Buddy Deeds is something of a local hero and as Sam investigates Charlie's murder it becomes more and more likely that his own father was the man's killer.
However, the memory of Buddy Deeds is held in very high esteem in the community, which is about to name its new Court House after him. Sam, who we are led to believe probably only achieved his current office as a result of his late father's good standing, is constantly warned off from digging too deeply - nobody has ever missed Charlie Wade or regretted his passing!

During his investigation, Sam meets up again with Pilar Cruz (the always excellent Elizabeth Peňa). Pilar was his high school sweetheart and is the lost love of his life. This relationship had been forbidden by his father, Buddy, which Sam puts down to racist prejudice, and we sense that he still carries a bitter resentment against his father for this interference in his life. Lone Star is a powerful film about the unstated tensions often present in relationships between mothers/fathers and their offspring.

This film is, in my book, outstanding. It has an intelligent, engaging story and an interesting mixture of central and peripheral characters, who you feel each live a life beyond whatever scene you meet them in. What's more, this story is never what you expect it to be and touches the heart without ever becoming sentimental. The film manages to be romantic too but in an extremely off-beat kind of way. Most definitely not a mainstream movie, although I believe it was described by one critic as "almost commercial". The acting, direction and writing for my money is top-notch. I would have no hesitation in ranking this movie as one of my favourite films - if ever such a thing existed! Heaven forfend!

(Update: the competition I ran last week to win five copies of Niedermayer & Hart has resulted in the book being about to be sent to Spain, Portugal, Sweden, UK and the US - frankly, I was quite amazed!)

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Niedermayer & Hart Competition

23/5/2012

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Online Competition

Win one of five first edition copies of Niedermayer& Hart by M J Johnson (Trade paperback. 448 pages, worth £12.99/approx $20.54). Each copy will be signed by the author and also included will be a limited edition Niedermayer & Hart business card (complete with bloody fingerprint!).

You can read the first fifty pages of the horror/thriller for free on this website - just go to the Niedermayer & Hart page and click Sample the Book from the drop-down menu.

HOW TO ENTER

Find the answers to six questions.

Create a 'word' by taking the first letter from each answer.
(example - What colour is the van in the book's prologue? Answer: white - so letter W)

Now do the same with each of the following six questions:

1) In which East Sussex village does the character Erich Ledermann live?

2)  In the stop-motion animation 'A Gripping Tail' which you can watch on the Home page of this website - what is the colour of the cat?

3)  Which UK city is the hitch-hiker travelling to in the book's prologue? Watch the filmed prologue to discover the answer on - Niedermayer & Hart -Video of Prologue page.

4)  The surname of Jim Latimer's old friend Bob?

5)  In the animation 'A Gripping Tail' what food item does the mouse drop when it sees the cat?

6)  The first name of one of the main characters? (Clue: originally from Austria. Bigger clue: he's named at the top of page 18).

Send your answers by email to NHcomp@mj-johnson.com (don't forget to include your name).

Competition closes at midnight (UK time) on 29 May 2012. Entries will be accepted from
anywhere in the world. The five winners will be drawn at random from people who have presented the correct single word answer. If you're one of our winners we will contact you by email - your book will then be posted to you shortly afterwards.

Good luck!

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How I Came to Traditional English Folk via Abba

16/5/2012

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Huh?

No - you read it right - vision's okay!

It's true. The ultimate Spandex clad pop band, the Anti-Christ of traditional music, was largely responsible for introducing me to English Folk. I have to admit that up until then Folk had always conjured up in my mind a bygone age, hand-rolled cigarettes, thick woolly sweaters, hats festooned with gaily
(traditional useage) coloured ribbons, women in long skirts and men in shabby, ragged-arsed jeans.

I believe I've mentioned elsewhere in the pages of this blog that it can be a dangerous thing in my house to express approval for any product or gift item capable of being gift-wrapped, placed beneath a spruce-like tree or can slip nicely into a Christmas stocking. One unqualified yummy sound might produce a ripple effect in my house that could see me eating beans on toast every Saturday lunchtime for a decade (causing a potential ripple effect you'll appreciate in far more ways than one!).

I recall the moment quite clearly. We were driving along (don't actually remember where) when one of Abba's songs came on the radio. I don't recall which one, and I know better than to list the titles of the ones it might have been, or I'll only end up humming along to it for the next seventeen days!

Anyway, this song was on the radio - and perhaps because I was driving and it was a lovely sunny afternoon, I remarked quite casually, "Funny how time works ... it's actually quite enjoyable listening to this ..."

My guard was down, or else I should have immediately retracted the statement and added a disclaimer like, "However, this opinion is totally off the top of my head, and although I've enjoyed listening to this single Abba track, it adequately fulfills my Abba quota for the next decade."

I really should've known better. From that moment on my festive fate was sealed!

There's no real disguising the shape of a CD case and as I drew my pressies together into a pile on Christmas morning I wondered what it might be? The new Norah Jones album, Tracey Chapman, Van Morrison perhaps? Or even an old favourite like James Brown, Ray Charles or Otis?

I admit when I peeled off the packaging I was momentarily lost for words. Abba Gold had not until that moment owned any part of my conciousness. Was I having my leg pulled? I looked
for signs of twinkling around the eye area.

Huh? ... Huh? ... and Huh again!

I quickly covered my tracks, "Abba Gold! That's brilliant!" I lied.

An hour later, unable to remove the cellophane wrapper, fully aware that if I actually lobbed the thing into a CD player I would be doomed to those pop anthems rattling around in my head until the Spring, I 'fessed up. I'd chosen my moment; it was after Christmas lunch, which I'd cooked
(always a good time to approach my wife after a nice meal!)

"That's okay," she said, "I was quite surprised when you said you fancied some Abba!"

I was down the HMV shop as soon as they opened after the holiday. I'd recently caught the last ten minutes of Peggy Seeger's Desert Island Discs on Radio 4 and had been much taken with The Joy of Living sung and written by her late husband Ewan McColl. I came across an album of his called Black and White. It was a complilation album, a kind of "Best of ...". I loved
it and so did Jude as well as our son. Around that time one of Jude's brothers, Jeremy, was discovered to be terminally ill. We visited him regularly throughout his illness and he and his
partner Sandra, who were both quite knowledgeable about folk music, introduced us to singers and bands previously little known or totally unheard of. I recall they had just discovered Karine Polwart and one of her songs in particular became very important to them both throughout that difficult time. We got to know something of Tim Hart and Maddy Prior, Martin Carthy, Dave Swarbrick, Bert Jansch, Annie Briggs, Jake Thackray, John Spiers and Jon Boden, Richard Thompson, Kate Rusby, the Waterson family and dozens more whose names are equally worth a mention.

So you see, gentle reader, out of that scorned copy of Abba Gold I discovered a whole new world of pleasure - it literally opened up my ears. Who knows, perhaps one day I may even open up my mind to Abba.

Huh?

(Coming soon to this blog page - fun competition - to win 5 print copies of Niedermayer & Hart)

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Dark Matter by Michelle Paver

9/5/2012

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I know Michelle Paver's writing mainly through her children's series Chronicles of Ancient Darkness (Wolf Brother). I don't tend to read a lot of children's fiction but occasionally I find time - this is generally after a strong recommendation has come from my wife, Judy, who reads about three times as fast and therefore puts away about three times the number of books I do in a year and likes to keep up with every possible category that interests her. The Wolf Brother books are terrific, and if I ever find myself in conversation with anyone under the age of twelve I always angle the conversation round to whether or not they've read them. I find it surprising how often kids and their parents have never even heard of the stories. If you know any children with birthdays coming up, I reckon you can't fail to score a hit by introducing them to these great tales about a boy, a girl and a wolf set at the end of the Stone Age.

However, I digress! This blog post is about another piece of writing by Michelle Paver, Dark Matter, her ghost story for adults published in 2010. Personally, I've always been a sucker for a good ghost story. It's definitely not an easy genre to succeed with; I've certainly read
more that didn't quite hit the spot which makes you squirm inside than actually did the trick. That sense of creeping dread that should cause bristling sensations at the top of your cranium and which should be part and parcel of any self-respecting ghost story isn't an easy thing to achieve or sustain.

Michelle Paver shows her command over the written word by racking-up the tension to an almost unbearable pitch before she finally hits us with the inevitably horrible denoument. She has clearly taken a good hard look at the genre, studied and understood the ghost story's form before presenting this tale to her readers. The story has the psychological undertones which are generally present in the best ghostly tales, with a main character who's appropriately on edge from the very start. She has managed to set the book in a period and place (an Arctic expedition in 1937) that perfectly achieves the isolation desirable for kick-starting the imagination into all kinds of feverish contortions. I don't go in for spoiling plots, so you'll have to read it if you want to find out what happens, how and why.

If, like me, you're partial to sitting safely in a comfortable chair by a nice warm radiator reading
something that has the ability to cause an icy twinge to run along your spine from time to time, then you'll almost certainly enjoy this book.

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Family Ties

2/5/2012

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They say nothing prepares you for certain experiences in life. Parenthood and bereavement are the examples that immediately spring to mind. When you reach my age it's likely you will have experienced both. I am pleased to say the first was a blessing and a joy, the second not so welcome but an inevitable part of the bitter/sweet nature of life. Those of you who follow me on Twitter may know that I recently visited my home town, Gorseinon, in Wales. I visit my mother regularly, roughly every six weeks or so, generally for three or four days at a time. My wife and son have been supportive too and they often either come along or visit independently - it certainly makes the long drive more palatable to have a companion. I'm pleased to say I've managed to maintain this since shortly after my father died eighteen years ago. My mother has always been very brave and stoical and although she annoys me at times (hey, she's my Mam!) I most certainly admire her a great deal too.

Dad died under unfortunate circumstances. He'd had a duodenal ulcer for over twenty years which was kept in check with medication. He had been feeling particularly unwell, experiencing some pain and a high temperature, and my mother called out the doctor. Unfortunately their regular GP was unavailable and another partner in the practice came out. Despite having access to my father's medical history and my mother questioning the diagnosis, he pronounced that my father had pleurisy. He prescribed some pills and told my parents that it would be at least three days before they took effect, and that there would be no point in contacting him again until then. My parents were of a generation where authority is rarely challenged and by the time (three days later) they called the surgery again, my father was in a great deal of pain and a lot sicker. It was Dad's old doctor who visited this time I believe, and he immediately and correctly diagnosed a perforated ulcer. I drove down overnight with my son who wasn't quite thirteen at the time. I had woken him in the middle of the night on receiving the call from my mother to say that Dad had just gone into surgery. Our son was incredibly close to his grandfather (Dycu, as he called him) and I didn't want to leave for Wales without giving him the option of coming with me. His response was immediate and unequivocal. I think there may have been some criticism of this in some quarters. My wife and I had talked it over, and we both have strongly held convictions about not sheltering children completely from life's troubles. Even so, I was never a hundred percent certain if it had been the correct thing to do. So I asked him last year whether we'd made the right choice. He looked rather taken aback that I'd even bothered to ask. "Of course it was," he said, and then went on to tell me how the experience had he felt informed his life in some way. I was grateful to hear this.

The forty hours in intensive care was a difficult ordeal for everyone and when my father died he was surrounded by his immediate family. I'll never forget how the sensation of oppressive gloom dissipated almost immediately in the moments following his death. My son wasn't present at the time of death, that would have been too much for him to bear. He was outside with his mum, who had travelled down as soon as she'd been able to make arrangements for our dog and two cats. It was my mother, on his request, who took him in to say his last goodbye to his 'Dycu'. Some days later my mother's GP called in to tell her how very sorry he was to hear about 'Dan' as he called him. He went on to apologise for his colleague's diagnosis. According to my mother he repeated several times, "I don't know what he was thinking ... he must have seen Dan's notes." My mother accepted that a terrible mistake had been made but didn't consider for a moment making any accusations of incompetence or malpractice. A short while later the doctor in question tragically took his own life. There had apparently been other mistakes I believe which must have preyed on the poor man's mind.

In the long years after my father's death my mother managed to keep herself going by joining various art classes, and took advantage of her free bus pass to visit friends and family in her birthplace of Aberdare. We spent a week or two with her every summer and as she grew older we switched from visiting her at Christmas to her coming up to us in Kent. Then, just under two years ago, unquestionably due to her diminishing eyesight, she had a fall which led to her
requiring a hip replacement. It's quite a big operation for someone in their mid-eighties to bear and the ordeal took its toll. While she was convalescing over many months in hospital my wife did some research and found a sheltered housing scheme close to her home. We were very fortunate to get her a place there a short while later.

Which brings me back to the start of this blog post and what I was doing in Wales last week: the final clear-out of my mother's little bungalow, the place I moved to when I was twelve and which part of me always thinks of as 'home' or with more potency in Welsh 'cartref' - even though home has been somewhere quite different for a very long time. I stayed for nearly a month at the beginning of 2011 when my mother moved out and into her sheltered accommodation and sorted through a great deal of old stuff: my father's wartime letters from India to his sweetheart (as Mam was from age fourteen), literally dozens of photograph albums, my father's suits still hanging in the wardrobe and drawers full of all kinds of memorabilia of no remunerative value, but which often had the power to turn me into a blubbering wreck, like some passages my mother had underlined in a self-help book and the tariff card from the hotel where my parents stayed the night before our wedding kept in pristine condition in my father's wallet.

Nothing can ever really prepare you for the emotional cross-currents awaiting you when you dismantle a family home. it's a bit like gazing back over your shoulder at your childhood and adolescence whilst at the same time staring ahead at the shortening perspective of your own mortality.

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Lone Star

Niedermayer & Hart Competition

How I Came to Traditional English Folk via Abba

Dark Matter by Michelle Paver

Family Ties

M J Johnson

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