Bram Stoker

Last Friday was the hundredth anniversary of Bram Stoker’s death, and to mark the occasion the Dracula Society (I know, I had no idea either) held a celebratory event at the Lyceum Theatre, to which I was lucky enough to be invited as a representative of The Public Reviews, a website which does what it says on the tin.

It all lasted about an hour, and most of that was people standing around drinking, so I had to be creative in order to get a thousand words out of it, but it was worth it because now I really want to re-watch all the old Dracula films, and I can’t think of a better way of spending what promises to be another wet weekend.

The piece is here.

L-R: Wizz Jones, Robin Williamson, John Renbourn, on a crappy phone camera

When Bert Jansch died, I said here that I was going to make a list of the musicians I wanted to make the effort to see while I still had the chance. I never made the list, partly because it’s a bit morbid to try and come up with a list of musicians who you think might die soon, but mostly because I am lazy and don’t follow up on my promises.

But someone who would have been on the list, because he was a contemporary of Jansch’s, was John Renbourn, who I am delighted to say I saw perform on Saturday night at the Union Chapel, and my goodness, it was terrific. At the Union Chapel you can sit about twelve feet from the performers, so we did because when you are watching guitarists, you want to be able to see their fingers. John didn’t speak much (he had raconteur extraordinaire Robin Williamson, formerly of the Incredible String Band, to do that for him), but he made his guitar sing like a young Beach Boy, and seemed to do things with it that oughtn’t to have been physically possible. I am not a guitarist, but I had one seated either side of me, and they both agreed afterwards that there were notes in there which, even with three people playing (Wizz Jones was the third), seemed to come from nowhere at all.

There is music which is designed to take you outside of yourself – prog rock, trance, punk – and there are musicians who can transport you to somewhere entirely new (I always think that seeing Bobby McFerrin perform live is the closest thing we have to evidence for the existence of a higher plane). And then there is music which takes you deep down inside of yourself, and for me that is acoustic blues and folk guitar. Sitting in the Union Chapel with a cup of tea and my coat still on because try though they might, it is not a well-heated space, I seemed to live my life again in a series of images and memories which the music evoked. Not because they were songs I knew – less than half of them were – but just because the very sound of them spoke to a half-hidden part of me, where unremembered thoughts and feelings live.

I don’t think this is because I was a blues musician in a previous life, or because the music invokes supernatural presences: I think it’s because this is the music I heard before I heard anything else, and what it arouses in me is probably more or less the same set of feelings that any sudden sharp sensory link to my early childhood would, but that doesn’t make it any less interesting.

I count myself lucky to have been brought up by this music, because there is something timeless about it – I joked on the night that we were the youngest people there but we weren’t, not by a long way – and I’m not sure it would be the same if my earliest musical memories were of the Village People or Boney M. There are other types of music which transcend their time, of course – jazz, classical – but their time was earlier. Davy Graham, Bert Jansch and the three white-haired geniuses I saw at the Union Chapel were living, breathing artists when I first heard them, all the more so to me because the way I first heard them was not on vinyl or cassette but on wood and steel, tapped out by my dad on his own guitars. This music made me, and it was a privilege to be able to see it first-hand.

I didn’t record any of the show, because that would be rude, so here instead is a lovely video from the olden days.

Thoughful graffiti in Dublin:

A friendly notice in a cafeteria, also in Dublin:

Enjoy!

A toilet called “Laura”, in Crystal Palace:

Why would you give a girls' name to a lavatory? Why?

I’ve just got back from New York, the city where every street has a song named after it, and every vista is a still from a movie. So since I am yet to get over the jet lag and I took so many photos that I am overwhelmed at the thought of uploading them, here as a lazy alternative to a real blog post is a list of my favourite New York films. What are yours?

1. Annie Hall

I could have had any of about eight Woody Allen films, but Annie Hall is the best of them and one of the New Yorkiest, and Annie is the New Yorkiest heroine ever, despite being from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Also, it features my favourite ever line from a film, if I had to choose – you know, the one about the eggs*.

(Actually, I did have to choose my favourite line from a film recently, for work, but I thought the one about the eggs would make me look a little weird and neurotic, and I’ve only been there three months and I don’t need them to know that already. So I went for Sloane Peterson’s “Sooner or later, everybody goes to the zoo” from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which sounds profound but, I think, isn’t.)

2. Ghostbusters

Like Annie Hall, would probably make the list of my favourite films ever (actually, so would about half of this list). After nearly thirty years (I know!), still perfect. And really a love poem to New York City, as implicit in its luscious locations as it is explicit in Winston Zeddemore’s “I love this town!”.

3. The Taking of Pelham 123

A proper thriller, set mostly in the bowels of Manhattan’s subway system, with occasional glimpses above ground, where the steam jets that shoot out at street level echo the spikes of tension that increase as the film goes on. If you haven’t seen it, rent it today (I am, in case you’re unsure, talking about the 1970s version and not the recent remake, which I have not seen).

4. King Kong

The 1933 version. Not entirely a New York film, but it makes the cut for that incredible final scene. I also quite liked the 1970s version, and even the Naomi Watts version was OK. It’s just a really really great story. But the Empire State Building was only two years old when they made the original, which adds an extra frisson to the battle between nature and mankind that lies at the heart of the film.

5. Laura

Not just because we have the same name, but because this is the sexiest, dreamiest, most elegant piece of noir you’ll ever see and because it offers a glimpse of high society in 1940s New York, which might just be the most glamorous time and place that ever was. As it happens, Laura is showing at the BFI on the Southbank until the end of next week, so if you live in or near London, do try to go.

6. Dog Day Afternoon

There are films which I think are exemplary, one-off pieces of film-making and which I might watch every couple of years (2001, Badlands) and films which I watch at every opportunity because I love them like you love your slippers, and most of all I love the characters (Ghostbusters, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), and then there are films which are both, and Dog Day Afternoon is one of them. Set on a hot, steamy day in Brooklyn, it tells a short but brilliant story which is laden with atmosphere, and it’s one of the films I always immediately lend to people who haven’t seen it, because it is a film everyone should see, today if possible.

7. Crocodile Dundee

There’s a dispoportionate number of 80s films in this list, but that’s because the 80s were an exciting time to be in New York City. When I first saw Crocodile Dundee I was half-entranced, half-terrified by the androgynous, highly-hairsprayed characters making up some of the supporting cast, but as an adult I just find them impossibly alluring, and it breaks my heart a little bit that I will never go clubbing in New York in the 1980s.

8. Coming to America

Like Crocodile Dundee, this film is better now than it was when it first came out, because it speaks so elequently and appealingly of a particular New York that doesn’t really exist any more. Plus, the mean Queens apartment that Prince Akeem rents now looks like a palace compared to the eggbox-sized spaces that people really live in. And, well, it’s just still funny.

9. Q: The Winged Serpent

Monster! In New York! I can’t tell you precisely why this is so good; you just have to watch it.

10. Splash

Slash was in competition with Big and Arthur for the tenth spot, because like those films it shows you the New York we all grew up with; the fantasy version of the city that we knew before we ever went there. But it wins because when I saw it I, too, thought “Madison” was a beautiful name for a girl, and couldn’t understand why Tom Hanks didn’t agree.

Not making the cut are films I love which use New York as their backdrop, but which aren’t really about New York (Synecdoche New York, The Royal Tenenbaums, Rope, The Apartment, Rear Window, West Side Story) and films which make New York look like the worst place in the world (Taxi Driver, Mean Streets). I also haven’t made room for Goodfellas, which would have been eleventh if I had been making a longer list.

*  “I thought of that old joke, y’know… this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doc, my brother’s crazy; he thinks he’s a chicken.” And the doctor says, “Well, why don’t you turn him in?” The guy says, “I would, but I need the eggs.” Well, I guess that’s pretty much now how I feel about relationships; y’know, they’re totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and… but, uh, I guess we keep goin’ through it because most of us… need the eggs.”

This, I promise, is my last Oscars post for 2012. It’s the one where I compare my predictions to the results, although I can already tell you that I wouldn’t have won the million. The calculations are complicated by the fact that I made two sets of predictions, so I’m only counting the newer ones where I was specific, and not the one where I said “Hugo will win a load of technical categories”. On that basis, I accurately predicted the winners of eleven of the 24 categories, although if I wanted to be generous I could award myself an extra point for saying of the VFX category that I thought Hugo would win if the opening shot counted as a visual effect, and since awarding myself an extra point would give me a 50% hit rate, I think I’ll go ahead.

(Although I was so adamant that Woody wouldn’t win Original Screenplay that I almost think I should deduct another half-point.)

How did you do? Anyone win a million?

Full predictions and results in this attractive table, if you really don’t have anything better to do:

On the other hand, there were quite a lot of fantastic dresses, and because I have only had four hours’ sleep and I have to go to work soon, I am going to make you talk about them so I don’t have to. Here are the four which really knocked me out: tell me which you like best, or if I’ve left out your favourite.

(Click on the pictures for bigger versions)

1. Penelope Cruz was stunning in a soft blue. She’s gone from kookily pretty to old-school glamorous without me noticing:

2. George Clooney’s escort Stacy Keibler effortlessly outshone her ageing squeeze in a dress that made her look exactly like an Oscar, only better:

3. Viola Davis combined gorgeous green Vera Wang with red hair au naturel and a breezy confidence that made me wish she was my friend:

4. J-Lo looked (as always) like a sculpture of the perfect woman:

(I will compare the actual Oscar results to my various predictions later. I think if you combine both sets of predictions judiciously I got about half of them right, including precisely none of the technical categories.)

Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo in The Artist

Happy Oscars Day! I’ve changed my mind about tonight’s big winners. The momentum behind The Artist appears to be unstoppable, and I think it’ll win best picture after all, and Michel Hazanavicius best director. Hugo will win some of the technical categories in which it’s nominated, including cinematography (the one it deserves the most), but Jean Dujardin may well beat George Clooney to best actor, not because it’s a better performance, which it is, but because in the last few weeks he has gone on a charm offensive which could put even Clooney to shame. This is his time, and he knows it.

Streep is still a shoo-in for best actress, naturally, and I stand by Bérénice Bejo and Christopher Plummer as best supporting actress and actor. I can’t remember what I said about any of the others and it’s too early and I am too lazy to check, but I expect I was right.

See you over at Mostly Film from 11.30pm for live! Oscars! updates! – in the meantime I have a lunch date as well as an Oscars-themed quiz this evening, so for now please excuse me while I go and put some clothes on.*

*I am not writing this naked, you understand, but I feel like my lunch hosts deserve better than a Primark nightshirt, jogging pants and woolly snowman socks.

Any excuse for a photo of Sophia Loren

If you are in the UK and want to follow the action from this Sunday night’s Oscars ceremony, there are lots of ways to do it that don’t involve taking out a Sky subscription. One of them is illegal so of COURSE I shan’t mention it here, but lots of them aren’t. Here are my picks:

• The Oscars website has a “buzz” section showing an aggregation of Oscars-related tweets which is already trotting along at a healthy rate, leading me to suspect that it might start moving so fast as to be unreadable on the night. For a more streamlined view, try following @TheAcademy, tweeting from behind the scenes, @OscarInterviews for glimpses of the stars and @OscarGoer for an audience-eye-view of the ceremony.

• The red carpet is being shown live on E!, which I think is on Freeview, although half-hearted attempts at independent verification of this have failed, because I can’t work the internet. Anyway, it’s definitely available through Virgin cable packages, and you can always come over and watch it at mine. Bring popcorn.

• Host Billy Crystal is on Twitter, and is promising to tweet live during the ceremony.

• If you want to go meta, follow @LostRemote, who will be tweeting all of “their favourite social media moments” on the night.

• Finally, an all-woman team featuring Jo, Tindara, Concetta and your correspondent will be live-blogging the whole affair from 11.30ish on Sunday evening over at Mostly Film, as well as taking over the Mostly Film twitter account for the evening (I have promised not to tweet every thirty seconds, but who knows where the mood will take me?).

Clue: the answer is not "facial hair"

Give up? You might as well, because you’re not going to guess. It’s that they all brightened up my lunchtime today, courtesy of the always-fascinating Letters of Note and its upstart sibling Lists of Note. Stop what you’re doing and read all three of them: it’s worth it.

Stanley Kubrick’s list of titles in search of a script

Thelonious Monk’s advice to musicians

Groucho Marx’s letter to the Franklin Corporation

You’re welcome.

Do you watch a lot of period drama? I don’t, generally, but as it happens I have watched several hours’ worth this weekend, and I have noticed that there is a way people talk in (most) period drama which has nothing to do with the script: a mannered, diffident style which seems to transcend both character and chronology, so that it doesn’t matter if it’s rural Edwardian England (hello, The Woman In Black!) or 1950s London (howdy, Call The Midwife!) or – well, frankly, I have no real idea when Upstairs Downstairs, currently playing at a screen near me, is set, nor where, but everyone is speaking that way.

It wasn’t always like this. Nobody speaks that way in Room With A View, nor even in the 1990s TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. It seems to have sprung up since the early 2000s, which leads me to suspect it’s probably mostly Keira Knightley’s fault.