Ritchie at his Roots

 

Thank God. One of my favourite directors, Guy Ritchie, has returned to his senses and to the genre where he shines -- the London underworld drama. The heist flick is where he began, and where he introduced British low-life actors like Jason Stratham.  

After the likes of 'King Arthur' and 'Aladdin' (delicate shudder) Ritchie is back with 'The Gentlemen' and his partners in crime are an ensemble cast led by the evergreen Mathew McConaughey as an expat American drug lord.  Or weed lord, to be precise, as the film carefully makes the distinction between recreational marijuana and the hard stuff.

One pleasant surprise is scene-stealer Hugh Grant, who -- given the chance to be anything other than the romcom silly duffer -- proves his acting chops with his portrayal of the seedy (and camp) private investigator.  Michelle Dockery trades her cut glass Downton Abbey accent for street smart on-the-way-up Cockney patter, and Colin Farrell is excellent as the earnest mixed martial arts coach.

And the director, with his own mix of blue blood (posh lineage, public school) and blue collar experience (expelled at 15, mean streets livelihood) knows exactly the right balance to strike.

Ritchie returns to his roots but keeps it contemporary with manic YouTubers, rising Asian influences in the UK and the coming legalization of weed (and the profits to be accrued thereof).

Altogether an excellent romp and a worthy successor to 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels', 'Snatch' and 'RocknRolla'.

 

 

Desi Apple

Now that’s a launch !

It pushes all the right emotional buttons and it’s the soul of simplicity. And it’s the sort of work possible when the brand name and logo merge seamlessly into a single entity. Forbes magazine has rated it as the most valuable brand in the world.

And the ‘coolness’ factor that it embodies is beyond price.  It is one of those brands that doesn’t even bother to advertise in some key markets; the product pull is so strong that customers seek information on their own, and update each other on new launches and delivery dates.

It was not always so.  The original logo was a B&W pen and ink drawing of Newton sitting under the apple tree, but Steve Jobs (whose idea that was) had the good sense – and the lack of ego – to bring in designer Rob Janoff.  After a week spent drawing apples, Janoff arrived at the minimalistic graphic that is now the ultimate branding icon.

Which leads me to think that Naomi Klein, author of No Logo, was a dangerously naive idealist.

 

 

Mumbai, 24^th Sept.

Rhea, Sara, Deepika, Shraddha, Rakul, Simone...is it a gentlemanly ‘ladies first’ policy at the Narcotics Control Bureau or is there a deeper motive ?

It has certainly left a section of macho Bollywood more than a little miffed.

“This Women’s Empowerment is getting out of hand,” complained a male action star on conditions of strict anonymity,”Not only are they starting to get paid a decent fraction of a man’s fee in this business, they have started to dominate the spotlight in cases like this. I have been using cannabis for years and years and nobody is bothering to summon me.”

Another industry spokesman commented that there was no such thing as bad publicity in Bollywood – whereas no publicity is death. “Many a flagging career has been revived by a drunken brawl or an extra-marital affair.  A drug summons and rabid network reporters chasing you down the highway to the NCB office is the new PR coup. You can’t buy exposure like that.”

Forget about ‘hash/THC/weed/doobies’ as the endearingly uninformed tabloid press put it, the men of tinsel town feel that they have put in the time and earned their reps – as Fardeen did with a possession of cocaine charge, nearly twenty years ago. And Sanju...let’s not go there.

“These young women are amateurs who want it all NOW,” is the common complaint, “They are unwilling to do the hard work, the all-night parties, the learning that comes from watching the senior druggie artistes at work. One puff of weed and they think they own the limelight.”

And the NCB ?  Well, that’s just the patriarchal bureaucracy that India excels at.  Why summon a truculent, sweaty, male star full of testosterone and arguments ?  Here they can dominate and bully pretty and wealthy women who they would normally tiptoe around.  

And for the rest of their lives, some ageing and overweight NCB officers will dine out on the stories, not of seizing heroin caravans at the Pakistan border, but of grilling Deepika for 6 hours straight across the conference table over a three-year old WhatsApp chat that mentions the word ‘hash’.

Farewell, William Goldman.

“Reading William Goldman’s prose is like watching Fred Astaire tap dance,” a reviewer once wrote.

And while I come to bury Goldman, I will not praise him for The Princess Bride, nor for Butch Cassidy.

Yes, heresy.

My point being that this prolific writer never got the credit he deserved for many other works. Like the wonderful Boys and Girls Together who tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York.  And Magic, that subtly chilling tale of a schizophrenic ventriloquist and his dummy.  This is where Goldman does with words what Hitchcock did with film.

To my mind, Goldman was part of a trio of American authors who did their best work at roughly the same time – the sixties and seventies – and who’s writing was...well, I won’t  go so far as to say similar in style, but struck a comparable chord.  And their métier was often the coming of age novel or, more usually, one stage after that -- young adults coming to grips with (sometimes sordid) reality. All three writers were inspired by and often used the setting of New York City.

One was Hermann Raucher, of Summer of ‘42 fame (Hey, forget the movie, read the book before you judge me), who also did the wonderful There Should Have Been Castles and more.

The other was Evan Hunter (as Ed McBain he wrote the 87^th Precinct police procedurals, but that’s another story), who based his breakthrough The Blackboard Jungle on his experiences as a New York school teacher. I particularly liked Last Summer and the amnesiac’s tale, Buddwing -- though neither novel is flawless.

So back to Mr Goldman. Yes, yes, great screenplays, great Hollywood memoirs...and of course the immortal line, “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father, prepare to die.” But to me his work is epitomized by Corky Withers, the ventriloquist magician sinking slowly into madness.

Farewell, William Goldman, and flights of welcoming publishers sing thee to thy rest.