Human tornadoes

It has often been said, but never confirmed, that most men with children (or human tornadoes as I sometimes like to call mine) turn to their wives and ask, in all seriousness, honey, what exactly did you do today whilst I was at work? It must be so easy to stay at home and look after the kids all week.

Never before have such misguided words been uttered, by so many oblivious fools, to an even bigger, enraged group.

You see, despite all evidence to the contrary, looking after children (full or part-time) -– as opposed to going to work, earning a crust, paying the piper, putting food on the table and other some such clichés – is a lot harder than it looks.

You might think that looking after two young ones has to be easier than dealing with the daily commute – via train, car, bus or tram – and all the drama that implies.

And yet, there is so much more involved to looking after children – especially when the father of the species is left alone with one or two or even three of his offspring – than meets the eye.

First off there are a number of things to remember. What medicine (if any) to give the children and when. When to feed them and what? Ensuring that you pack enough bottles, formula, clothes, snacks, drinks etc. (and that’s just to get you through a walk to the park).

                                                                                                                           

Yes children are hard work and sometimes you curse that fifth beer and fourth tequila that lead to the creation of these demonic delights.

Sometimes you can’t help but look lovingly upon people, without children, and wish you were one of them – free to sleep as late as you want, eat when you want, do what you want, run through the fields yodelling at the top of your voice (okay sorry only Heidi would do that!)

At least when you only have one child – usually under three years of age – and you are looking after said munchkin, on your own, you can put them to sleep for two-three hours, take a break and cry yourself to sleep.

Two children – let’s just say for arguments sake a boy under one and a girl over three – are an entirely different proposition (assuming that you have remembered to clothe them, feed them and medicate them correctly). Yes – it is all very well taking them to a park or a shopping centre – but what do you do when it is hotter than hades out there or the ride you said would be at the shops – in this case the trackless Thomas the Tank Engine – has suddenly grown tracks and magically disappeared?

You improvise by whatever means necessary and, if that does not work bribe them with promises of Vegemite scrolls (savoury rolls), baby chinos, marshmallows, Wiggles rides etc. – because once you make a promise to your child, well mine anyway, they never, ever forget.

A much tougher proposition awaits you when you get home from said outing. This is when you discover that whilst, after much begging and gnashing of teeth, the younger seed of your loins, eventually drops off to sleep, the older child is still very much full of beans and wants to chat or play.

Don’t think for a minute that I regret having my kids – I love them and my wife more than life itself – but sometimes, just sometimes it seems like it would be easier to drop everything and run screaming for the hills!

I firmly believe that every wife, partner, mother and woman in the world deserves a medal for looking after our children whilst we – the fathers – complain about how hard our job is and how easy it must be to stay at home with the kids.

Yes it’s a kid jungle out there!

Childhood revisited

Movie: The Adventures of Tintin

                       

Genre:  animated

                       

Length: 107 minutes

It is indeed a powerful emotion to be able to rediscover an important part of one’s childhood.

This is something I did, recently, when I took myself off to see Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin.

The various adventures undertaken by Tintin (intrepid journalist) and his faithful hound Snowy formed, for my brother and I, an important part of our childhood as we first discovered, quickly collected, read and reread all the comic books.

Previous attempts to bring Tintin to the big/small screen I have seen – done as straight forward, old-fashioned cartoons – were, in my humble opinion, major disappointments and captured neither the essence nor the subtle characteristics or nuances of the books various characters.

Fortunately, aficionados of the comic books will not be disappointed by this latest attempt to bring Herge’s creations to the big screen.

The film is a faithful rendition of the books. This is evident right from the opening credits, where a cartoon Tintin traverses the globe against a backdrop of newspaper headlines of his exploits (many of which are covered in the books).

The attention to detail is astonishing – so much so that one of the fonts – used during the opening credits - is identical to that used on the cover of every book.

The film certainly took me to the days of my youth and brought back so many fond memories.

Spielberg acquired the rights to produce a film based upon the Adventures of Tintin series following Hergé's death in 1983, and re-optioned them in 2002.

The movie - based on three of the original comic books: The Crab with the Golden Claws (1941), The Secret of the Unicorn (1943), and Red Rackham's Treasure (1944) – has been filmed as a performance capture film.

The same technique – which refers to recording the actions of human actors, and using that information to animate digital character models in 2D or 3D computer animation – was also used to film Avatar.

Thankfully, the use of performance capture in this movie is used to great effect.

It helps to flesh out the characters and brings them and the story to life. Before seeing the film I had not read any of the books in over 15 years and yet, whilst watching, I recognised several of the scenes which were taken straight from the books.

The movie has – like the comic books it is based on – been created using an amazing palette of colour, action and sound.

It has lovingly recreated the comic books and the characters – such as the Captain Haddock and Thomson and Thompson – even utter the same catchphrases that they did in the books.

I honestly don’t believe that Tintin could have been filmed any other way – its subject matter was made for motion capture.

The movie is an outstanding achievement and I encourage all fans of the comic books to see it.

Rating: 9/10

My misadventures in DIY

Anyone can put an IKEA bookcase together, right? Wrong! I am what you might call Jonny the destroyer when it comes to the ancient art of DIY.

Shop attendants tremble when I enter Bunnings (or Bunnies as my mom used to like to call it) for they, like my family, friends and wife know how much I hate anything to do with screwdrivers, nuts, bolts, wood, paint, plaster etc.

So upset do I become in these vomit-inducing, nail-biting and vertigo-causing emporiums that once, after jumping up and down and ranting and raving, a young, frightened staff member, turned to my wife and said I think it would be best if your husband left the store, now!

If you want to torture me, don’t whip me or set me on fire; just tell me that we have to go to IKEA or Bunnings and that will be punishment enough.

Surely IKEA, a model of Swedish efficiency gone mad, was invented by some sick sadist – or the devil himself – judging by how hard it is to get out once you are in.

Oh yes, they are signs that say exit this way but, like a bad movie, the end never comes!

It is just miles and miles of DIY torture – a testimony to everything I dread and fear.

It once took me an entire day to put together an outdoor table and chairs, that’s right a day! I thought it was quite an achievement but, in someone else’s skilful hands, it probably would have taken an hour tops.

If I look around our house I see tables, chairs, a TV stand, a bookstand, a CD/DVD stand, a swing set etc.  put together – over the past 10 years - by our friends with such skill and dexterity you would think they were hammering out Beethoven’s  Theme from Symphony No.7.

When I start trying to put things together, there is generally a lot of cursing, gnashing of teeth and crying – and that’s just trying to get the box open!

Why is everything DIY these days? Is it just to tease and irritate me? I mean my poor daughter’s third birthday present – a trampoline – sat in our garage, unopened, for months, mocking and taunting me with its nuts, bolts, netting and springs!*

It got so bad that a good friend’s wife berated me, in front of others I might add, for not putting it together.

I am surprised that you don’t have to put together your own meals at the IKEA deli!

There are some things I can do well or am good at – read, listen to music, exercise, sarcasm and general knowledge are some examples – but DIY is definitely not one of them.

In fact I would like to propose the renaming of DIY forever – instead of calling do it yourself (DIY) I am going to call it DIFM (do it for me)!

 Any takers?

*By the way the trampoline was finally put together – thanks to the help of a good friend. I am proud to say I helped (primarily in a supervisory capacity).

Waltz with Bashir - Waltzing Matilda it's not!

Title: Waltz with Bashir

Genre: documentary                                                              Running time: 90 minutes

How does one even begin to describe the quite unique and unusual documentary that is Waltz with Bashir?

Its uniqueness stems from the fact that, unlike the vast majority of documentaries made today, it is animated – a style which perfectly suits the grim nature of the subject matter.

Written and directed by Israeli film maker Ari Folman; the documentary focuses on his search for lost memories when he served in the Israeli Army in the 1982 Lebanon War.

It all begins when he meets up with an old army friend who tells him about the nightmares he has been having about the Lebanon conflict. Bizarrely, Folman remembers nothing and yet, as he drives away, he starts to remember a key moment in the struggle and thus his search to unlock the past begins.

Folman interviews a wide range of soldiers/friends he fought alongside - and others he did not – in the war. The men seem keen to talk, to unburden themselves of the horror of the conflict they lived through and survived, and do so in grim, descriptive detail.

Some of the men he interviewed are composites of real people or play themselves.  One of the key reasons Folman chose to use animation is that a lot of the people he spoke to would not be filmed on camera or have their own voices used.

I firmly believe that, if the film had been done in any other way, it would not have been as effective or powerful.

By using this type of animation Folman has taken documentary making to another level. Never before have I felt so uneasy and moved by a film on war – it certainly hammered home for me why I am grateful that I have never been involved in a war before, as a soldier or civilian.

The animation used reminded me a bit of Francis Ford Coppola’s epic Apocalypse Now – it smacked of a type of desperation and madness and clearly depicted the futility of war.

Like Apocalypse Now, the soldiers in Waltz with Bashir tried to make the best of their situation by going surfing and watching porn in an abandoned villa in Beirut.

What is even more extraordinary about this documentary is that it is largely autobiographical. It focuses on the war and its after effects on Folman and yet it also deals with those fought alongside him.

This film pulls no punches about the brutality and madness of war - particularly the scene where the name of the movie is taken from. In this scene, an Israeli soldier is seen almost to be waltzing and firing his gun - on anything and everthing - on a Beirut street whilst surrounded by posters of Bashir Gemayel, the Christian Phalanges leader who was later assassinated, looking down on him.

  

The feeling you get is that, for Folman, the experience of making this film must have been cathartic – as I said it is autobiographical – and yet it also leaves many questions unanswered.

Foremost has to be who should take some of the blame for the massacre of the civilians of the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps? The Christian Lebanese Phalangists carried out the killings but what role, if any, did the Israeli forces play in it? Were they complicit?

It is no surprise that the film is banned in Lebanon and even, in Israel, one critic lambasted the film for going too easy on the Israeli Army.

Ultimately, I guess the mark of a good documentary is if you should come away craving more information and this I certainly did.

Waltz with Bashir was a powerful tour de force that knocked me for six.

Rating: 8/10.  

  

  

The Sport of kings or mugs?

What is it about horse races like the Melbourne Cup (Australia), the Durban July (South Africa), the Grand National (England), the Kentucky Derby (America) etc. that drive normal, sane people into fits of madness once a year?

Is it the dressing-up, the drinking or the socialising that entices ordinary folk to place their hard-earned on, in the main, a shot in the dark?

What inflames their passion so when, for the other 364 days of the year, they could not care less about our equine friends?

All of the above is discussed in D.J. Taylor's new Novel Derby Day. Taylor, one of the finest, award-winning biographers of modern times (he wrote Orwell: The Life), has penned a Victorian mystery that comes to a head at one of the greatest British horse races of them all - the Derby

He utilises the race as a backdrop and includes a wide range of characters - villains, bookmakers, wives, mistresses, thieves, etc. - for whom the result means everything.

The race, held annually at Epsom Downs, is described by Taylor (in not so many words) as a day of Derby decadence. 

And so it is, that all the characters have their fortunes, one way or another, tied up in the performance of one horse, Tiberius.

Taylor has used outstanding imagery to bring to life this fast-moving tale and even if you don't like horse racing (which I don't); this novel offers so much more - especially to lovers of a ripping yarn.

It is impeccably written and extremely well researched and if you close your eyes you can actually picture yourself in one of the scenes.

This was, for me, one of those books I could not put down and is one of the best novels I have ever read.

It was long listed for the 2011 Man Booker Prize and it remains a mystery (apt, I suppose, as the book is described as a Victorian mystery) how it did not make the short list!

It is, like Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, a masterpiece and I give it 9.5/10.

What were the odds? What were the evens?

Hi and welcome to my first ever blog entry.

For several years now; everyone - from one of my sister's ex-boyfriends to friends and family alike - have encouraged, nay threatened me, to write a blog and here it is.

What's it all about? Well I plan to focus on a wide range of topics including sport, books, coffee, running, family, children and a whole lot more!

My first topic is running and my love-hate relationship with this evil temptress.

For all of you that know me well, you will know that I used to hate running. Actually, hate is too kind a word. Despise, loath and fear would be a more accurate description.

I used to hate it when we had to run - often, for what seemed like hours at a time - around Victory Park and up and down the hill by the school's tuck shop - during rugby practice.

So when a friend nonchalantly suggested (as if it was nothing more than going out for a cup of coffee) about five years ago; that we go for a run I was, to put it mildly, horrified and filled with a feeling of extreme nervousness.

At the time I was smoking at least 30 cigarettes a day and so, after puffing away like a mad steam train before we met, the moment arrived and so we took off around Duncan Mackinnon (a reserve in suburban Melbourne, Australia).

I was stuffed at the end of the lap but I was addicted and soon began to run on my own - even buying the obligatory pair of running shoes.

So addicted had I become that I used to drive past people out for a run and wish I could join them!

This addiction continued until just after my daughter was born over three years ago. Ongoing knee trouble caused me to stop but I took up the habit again six months ago and am now going stronger than ever.

I now run every second day! Who would have thought it?! Not I!

It boggles the mind and to quote a good friend of mind: 'What were the odds? What were the evens?'