Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

  Indiana Jones belongs to my primary school days (well, his first two films do), so it’s quite strange that he’s making a comeback at this late date.   However, it’s always nice to see an adventure film, although parts of this were seriously bonkers.  No major spoilers, I promise, just the basics!  It’s not as good as the ’80s films were, but it’s still worth seeing.

Three bits of real history are relevant here.  One is the Siege of Syracuse, in 213-212 BC, during the Second Punic War.  (That’s the war with Hannibal and the elephants, but they didn’t get anywhere near Syracuse.  And are not mentioned in the film.  I just mentioned them because I like the story of Hannibal and the elephants.)   Archimedes was amongst those defending Syracuse against the Romans.   But a Roman soldier killed him, even though the proconsul’d said that his life should be spared.   Archimedes was, of course, the bloke who shouted “Eureka” when he was in the bath, but he was generally a great inventor/mathematician/scientist.   Another is the discovery of the Antikythera, an ancient Greek dial which is thought to have been used to predict the movement of the sun and the moon.   It was found in 1901 by divers investigating a 1st century BC shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera.  No-one really knows exactly how old it is, who invented it, or what it was used for.   And the third is the fact that Wernher von Braun, the chief architect of the space programme which brought about the 1969 moon landing was a former SS officer.  The Nazi space engineering team were sent to, of all places, Oberammergau, in April 1945.  Most of them were captured there by American forces, but von Braun and some of the others escaped.  Von Braun was later captured, and he and some of the others were transferred to the American space programme.  Unlike the fictional engineer in the film, he was loyal to the US for the rest of his life.

So that’s the real history.   In the film, we start off in the last days of the Second World War, with Indiana Jones and British archaeologist Basil Shaw trying to stop a Nazi train carrying a vast amount of antiquities plundered from across Europe and the Middle East.   The train’s blown up, but our two guys escape with the Antikythera.  Or, rather, half of it.  In the film, the Antikythera can be used for time travel, because it finds “fissures in time”.  And was invented by Archimedes – who hid the other half if it somewhere.   Fast forward to 1969, and, in the middle of a ticker tape parade (meant to be in New York, but actually filmed in Glasgow) to celebrate the Moon Landing, Indiana Jones, now a university professor, is about to retire.  But he’s being hunted by a Nazi space engineer, who wants to be able to travel back in time and change the course of the war, and Basil Shaw’s intensely annoying daughter, who wants the Antikythera in order to flog it at a dodgy auction at a hotel in Morocco.  As you do.

There’s a lot of action, a high body count, a cute kid, some horrible creepy crawlies, and, of course, the good guys win out in the end.  (That’s not a spoiler.  You know that the good guys are going to win out in the end).   It’s all rather bonkers.    Oh, and it’s three hours, including the adverts and the trailers, so take some food and drink with you.  As I said, it isn’t as good as the Indiana Jones films from the ’80s, but it’s still quite entertaining, and the fact that it is an Indiana Jones films gives it a nostalgia factor.   And the cinemas are showing it umpteen times a day, so they’re obviously expecting *everyone* to go and see it!

 

 

Greatest Days

  The best thing about this film was that it featured an orange bus.  OK, it was a 1970s orange bus, when it was supposed to be 1993, so someone didn’t do their homework properly; but, nevertheless, it was an orange bus.  I do miss orange buses.  When Andy Burnham said we were getting new buses, people asked if they could be orange; but they’re yellow and black instead.  Oh well.

The orange bus actually appeared twice – once in a scene set in 1993, and once in a scene set in the present day, when everyone was dancing through the streets of Clitheroe.   A lot of the film was set in Clitheroe.  (Although it wasn’t quite clear why the main character had an Irish accent when she seemed to have lived in Clitheroe all her life.)   In the stage version of this, entitled “The Band”, the girls were from Frodsham, which was quite a nice touch because that’s Gary Barlow’s home town, but this showcased Clitheroe quite nicely, and it’s always great to have a film set in any part of the North.

Other than featuring an orange bus, the film wasn’t actually that exciting; but it was all right, and it featured plenty of Take That’s classic songs.   The story is that Rachel, a woman in the present day, wins tickets to a reunion concert by “The Boys” (a band name’s never actually given), and has flashbacks to 1993, when she and her schoolfriends were all obsessed with Take That and went to see them live in Manchester (which was how they came to get on an orange bus.  I’m going on a bit about this orange bus, aren’t I?).   Although they’ve long since lost touch, she decides to invite them to join her for the concert – but one of them’s missing, and we learn about the tragedy which happened all those years ago and has affected Rachel’s life ever since.

It’s not a classic, and TBH I think I preferred the “The Band” stage show, but it’s quite a fun way to spend a couple of hours.  And it features an orange bus.   Have I mentioned that?

Gods of Tennis – BBC 2

So, here we are, in the grass court season.   It’s only five weeks, although at least now it’s five rather than four, so make the most of it.   The clay court season’s special, although it’s not the same with Rafa out injured 😦 , and the hard court and indoor seasons have their appeal, but there’s something about a grass court that you don’t get with any of the other surfaces!   And the BBC kindly decided to treat us to a three part series on … mostly the late 1960s and the 1970s, although it did go into the 1980s, and finished in 1990 with Martina winning her record ninth Wimbledon singles title.  I remember watching that match, but I was so stressed out over the men’s final the following day that I’m not sure I quite took in what a great achievement it was.

The series focused on Arthur Ashe, Billie Jean King, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe.   It started off with the important work done by Arthur in helping to break down racial barriers in the US, and also the significance of his appearances in South Africa, and the huge role played by Billie Jean in promoting women’s sport.   Tennis really did help to change the world then.   But the world changed tennis too, and we heard about how Bjorn and John, in particular, were treated like rock stars, and the amount of press attention that they got.  Of course, we got *that* tiebreak and the “You cannot be serious” moment.   And we heard about the great rivalry between Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert, and what Martina went through when she left her family and friends to defect to the West.

It was a lovely nostalgia-fest.  Well, the bits in the 1980s and 1990 were: the early part was before my time!   But it made some important parts too, about the role of sport in the world and the way in which a changing world changes sport.

Enjoyed this.  Now could we revisit the late ’80s and the ’90s, please?   Please 🙂 ?!

 

Great British Railway Journeys – BBC 2

Hooray – this week, Great British Railway Journeys has been *here*!   We’ve had the East Lancs Railway, MOSI, that bit of Ancoats that’s been done up, the Oldham Coliseum – before it sadly closed at the end of March – and even a visit to Coronation Street, complete with a chat with Ken Barlow.

The emphasis in this series is on the post-war years.  We started off in Preston, where Britain’s first motorway, the Preston bypass, was opened in 1958.  It’s now that bit of the M6 where you crawl along as the traffic heading home from Blackpool meets up with the traffic heading home from the Lake District, and you wish you could just get to the M61 and get moving; but apparently it was extremely exciting back in 1958.   People used to drive on motorways for fun!   To be fair, it is quite nice going north on that bit of the motorway if you’re out early on a Saturday and a Sunday and it’s quiet, but the thought of the M60 at rush hour being “fun” … er, hmm!   We also heard from men who’d done National Service in the 1950s, being sent to serve in conflicts which are rarely mentioned now.   Then it was on to Blackburn, to hear about the formidable Barbara Castle and her work in overseeing the Equal Pay Act.

Then on to our own local heritage railway, the East Lancs Railway, running between Bury and Rawtenstall.  Someone had obviously coached Michael in the correct pronunciation of the latter town’s name.  It’s ROTtenstall, but Southerners usually say RAWtenstall … but he got it right!   We did hear at this point about one of the downsides of post-war Britain, the Beeching cuts to the railway network.  They actually made it sound as if Bury lost all its railway lines in the Beeching cuts, but the Bury to Manchester line carried on operating until the early 1990s, when it was replaced by the Metrolink.  But so many lines were lost.

The next episode started off in Urmston, home of Trafford General, where the NHS was inaugurated.   Does everyone know that the NHS was inaugurated there, or is it just people from Manchester who know that?!   Anyway, Michael met a lady with whose family Nye Bevan had stayed on the night before the inauguration, which was nice.  And then, yay, he went to Coronation Street (OK, the Granada film set, at Salford Quays), and had a chat with Bill Roache in the Barlows’ living room.   That was followed by a visit to MOSI (the Museum of Science and Industry) to hear about the Manchester Baby, the world’s first electronic stored-programme computer, which began operating in 1948, and the ongoing computer research work being done at the University of Manchester.

We then moved on to New Islington … a bit of Ancoats where old industrial buildings have been turned into flats and offices.   The programme was very positive about the development work, and how it’s preserved the historic architecture.  It’s actually not universally popular locally, with some people saying that the “gentrification” of what used to be a very deprived area is causing tension with neighbouring areas, but the point about preserving the architecture certainly holds true.

Then, in the third episode of the week, Michael visited the Oldham Coliseum, to hear about the end of censorship of theatrical performances in the 1960s.  It was a wonderful theatre where a lot of big names performed in their early days.

And now he’s moved on to the Peak District.  Which is near here, but not here.  So I’ll stop here!   But this has been a great few days!

Vicky McClure: My Grandad’s War – ITV

There’ve been quite a few of these “grandparents’ war” programmes, but this one was special because Vicky’s grandad, aged 97, is still alive, fit and well, and made the trip to Normandy with her, to revisit his experiences during the D-Day Landings.  I went to the D-Day Landing beaches in 2001, but both of my grandfathers were long gone by then.   It must have meant a lot to both Vicky and her grandad to be able to make the trip together – and it was wonderful to see other people, both British and French, seeing an elderly man wearing his war medals and coming over to shake his hand and to thank him for what he’d done.

We also heard about Vicky’s grandad’s experiences in the Nottingham Blitz, and how he volunteered for the Royal Navy when he was 17.   And we saw him visiting a war memorial bearing the names of all those who gave their lives in the D-Day Landings.   So many of our generation know, like Vicky, that our grandads and great-uncles were there, and how lucky they and we are that they came home.   There are fewer and fewer Second World War veterans still with us, and it was lovely that Ralph McClure was able to make this trip with Vicky, and talk to her about what happened.  Well worth watching.

 

The Gallows Pole – BBC 2

This was an interesting series, based on a novel about the true stories of the Cragg Vale Coiners, a group of counterfeiters based about 20 miles from here, in Cragg Vale, near Mytholmroyd and Hebden Bridge, in the late 18th century.  The problem was that it only told half the tale: we never saw the gang’s downfall.

The decline of the domestic system and the rise of the factory system caused problems for people who’d previously worked as weavers at home in rural areas, which was partly why so many people got involved.  It’s thought that the value of counterfeit coins paid into the Bank of England as a result of their goings-on was about £3.5 million, £515 million in today’s money, and caused a 9% fall in the value of the pound.

I could have done without all the melodramatic captions at the beginning about how factories “lay waste the land”.  I was just waiting for “dark satanic mills”!   Can we get past this idea that pre-industrial England was some sort of merrie rural idyll, please?   As was pointed out, there were plenty of jobs available in Halifax – but, fair enough, not everyone wanted to move to a town or city.  Anyway, our gang obtained real coins, clipped the edges, and produced counterfeit coins from the shavings.

The powers that be eventually sussed out that something iffy was going on, and one of the gang grassed.  The gang then got two farm hands to murder the investigating official.  The two killers were hanged, as was the leader of the gang.  However, the story never got that far.   We saw our lads and lasses celebrating how well it was all going, but there it stopped.  Half a tale.

The programme included some weird hallucinations of “stag men”, which I could also have done without, but generally it was done very well.  Apart from only telling half a tale.  The counterfeiting was very much presented as some sort of struggle against poverty and the Establishment, rather than as a crime which wreaked havoc on the economy, but that worked for the purposes of the story.

All in all, it was very watchable.  But it was just totally bizarre that we didn’t get the whole story.

 

 

 

 

Kenjiro by Pat Barr

This book, set in 19th century Japan, was OK, and contained some interesting points about changes in Japanese society, and especially the role of women.  However, there were too many characters for a book which was only 370 pages long, and I didn’t feel that anyone’s story was really told properly.

It began in 1862, when Elinor Mills, a young Yorkshirewoman, went out to Yokohama to join her brother Arnold, a doctor there.   She became engaged to a British officer, but he was murdered in one of several attacks by Japanese gangs on foreigners.  She then married Kenjiro Miyata – I’m not sure why the book was called “Kenjiro”, because he wasn’t even the main character -, a Japanese man of the samurai class.  I assumed that we were going to hear about the challenges of a mixed marriage, how Elinor adapted to life in Japan, and how Kenjiro adapted to the changes in Japanese society.  Instead, we switched to Kenjiro’s sister Ryo’s affair with Felix Coburn, the son of a corset-making family from Macclesfield, whose reasons for being in Japan weren’t very clear, and who was also having an affair (keep up!) with Honoria Rayne, a married Englishwoman, whose son Oliver he fathered.   Also, Arnold had a Japanese mistress and had children by her, and they cropped up in the story from time to time but we never really learned about them properly.

Then the story jumped to the 1890s.  Elinor found out that Kenjiro was having an affair (there were a lot of affairs!).   Ryo had become a Christian convert and a schoolteacher, and was fighting the conventions of Japanese society regarding the role of women, but we never really heard enough from her viewpoint.  Oliver Rayne had returned to Japan, which he’d left as a child after his official father committed suicide due to being accused of grave-robbing (again, keep up!) and made friends with Elinor and Kenjiro’s son Joey, and fell in love with their daughter Hannah.  Joey was then killed in the Sino-Japanese War.  Hannah became a war nurse, but we never saw any of her nursing.  Arnold died of illness during the war.  The book ended with her engagement to a Japanese man.  Oliver returned home, and we never found out what happened to him.   It was all just too bitty.   It needed either to have focused on Elinor and Kenjiro and their children, or else to have been much longer and told everyone’s stories fully.   But it was still quite interesting.  Longer would have been better!

Elizabeth of the Garret Theatre by Gwendoline Courtney

I was expecting this to be a Noel Streatfeild-type book about a girl at theatre school, but it was actually about four sisters getting used to their new stepmother.  They do some amateur theatricals at home, in a garret – but Elizabeth doesn’t have a bigger role in the book than her sisters, so I’m not sure why she gets her name in the title!

Published in 1948, it’s one of those gentle Girls’ Own books in which not very much actually happens.

The Verney girls’ widowed father remarries, to a woman they’ve never met.  They’re convinced they’ll dislike her, but within about five minutes they’re all getting on famously.  Then her brother, Nigel, comes to stay, and it turns out that he’s a famous actor.  No-one seems to have very much to do other than organise amateur dramatics, and everyone has a very jolly time.  Then the book ends with Nigel getting engaged to Alison, the eldest sister,  and Elizabeth deciding to become an actress.  Er, and that’s about it.  Not very exciting, but a nice, gentle read.

Blackbird’s Song by Katy Turton

  This book begins in 1903, when Anna, daughter of a wealthy industrialist, enrols at a St Petersburg women’s college, where she meets Rosa and her twin brother Boris, and becomes drawn into their Social Revolutionary circle.  The book ends in 1907, with Boris and Anna’s involvement in a terrorist attack.

There are several threads to the story, including a romance between Anna and Rosa, and the uncovering of Anna’s troubled history.   Most of the plot revolves around Social Revolutionary activity, though.   There are a lot of snotty remarks about Anna’s wealthy background, which I found extremely annoying because a) it was hardly a crime to come from a wealthy family and b) Boris, Rosa and their comrades came from comfortable backgrounds themselves and none of them seemed to have jobs.   They did a lot of talking about how bad conditions were for the urban and rural working classes, but they weren’t able to connect with them.  References were made to the failed “going to the people” and the oddly romantic idealising of the peasant communes, and Bloody Sunday showed that Father Gapon had far more idea of how to rouse the masses than the Social Revolutionary Party did.

What I’m not sure of is whether that’s how the author intended the reader to view Boris, Rosa and the others, or whether the reader was meant to take them on their own terms, as people who genuinely thought that they could replace the autocracy with a socialist utopia. But it’s interesting to think about it all, and it was quite an interesting book.  And it’s very sad that, 120 years after the book opens, Russia’s still effectively an autocracy, after all the hope of the late ’80s and early ’90s.  Maybe better times lie ahead.  We can but hope.

The Courtesan and the Samurai by Lesley Downer

  This is the last book in the Shogun Quartet, and it’s a bit different from the other three in that it’s about ordinary and fictitious people, rather than being sert in the Shogun’s palace.   When the civil war of 1868-9 breaks out, young samurai woman Hana, with her parents and parents-in-law dead and her husband away in the army, seeks help in Edo/Tokyo but is forced into becoming a courtesan.  She then meets Yozo, a samurai warrior.

The owners of the house where Hana works intend to sell her to an evil man, and Yozo rescues her.  It also turns out that Yozo knew Hana’s horrible husband.  It’s all a bit unlikely, but it’s still an interesting story because of what it tells us about Japanese culture at the time.   I’ve enjoyed reading these four books, and feel that I’ve learnt a lot from them.