It’s been some week, though, rivalling 2016 in that regard.

First Tony Bennett, then Vince Hill and and lately Trevor Francis have all also left us.

I knew that Bennett’s signature song I Left My Heart in San Francisco hadn’t been a big hit in the UK but was still surprised to see it had only reached no 25 and also that he had so few hits here.

Vince Hill of course had a no 2 with Edelweiss, riding on the back of the success of the film of The Sound of Music with a song whose title my young self had no idea how to spell until I finally saw it written down.

Trevor Francis was simply one of the most talented footballers of his generation.

Anthony Dominick Benedetto (Tony Bennett;) 3/8/1926 – 21/7/2023. So it goes.

Vincent (Vince) Hill; 16/4/1934 – 22/7/2023. So it goes.

Trevor John Francis; 19/4/1954 – 24/7/2023. So it goes.

Everybody’s favourite girl-next-door at least until she released Physical in 1981,) Olivia Newton John, has died.

Her earliest hits were in the country and western style but she was a relatively minor star until she got the part as Sandy in the film Grease, with which she will forever be associated. I confess I found that film to be not as good as the hype surrounding it. (It did have its moments – the wink from Stockard Channing at the lyric “did he have a car” was priceless – but its ending seemed to imply that the only way to win a boy’s heart is to dress more than a little ‘obviously.’)

Not that that can be held against Newton John.

This title song from a later film which was not such a success is reputed to be writer Jeff Lynne’s favourite of all the ones he wrote.

Olivia Newton John: Xanadu

Olivia Newton-John: 26/9/ 1948 – 8/8/ 2022. So it goes.

In my review of Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens I suggested that Owens may have had an eye on the film rights when she wrote it.

If that is the case then her hopes have been fulfilled. A film has indeed been made.

On 22/7/22 I read Peter Bradshaw’s review of that film in The Guardian.

He articulates about the film many of the reservations I had about the book – even down to its resemblances to To Kill a Mockingbird.

Mind you, the good lady thought there was some good writing in the book – descriptions of the marshland and such.

I must confess I missed that. It had too many plot holes and downright unbelievable aspects for me, which overshadowed any good aspects.

I said in that earlier post that it might make a good film. Bradshaw is clearly of the opinion it doesn’t.

Published as Straw Dogs by Bloomsbury Film Classics, 2003, 157 p. One of the 100 best Scottish Books.

I have not seen the film into which this was made and which provides the title for this reprint of the original text of Williams’s novel. The subject matter did not attract me. It still doesn’t. I only read this for completeness, because it’s on that 100 best list.

In the run-up to Christmas a snow storm cuts off the village of Dando Manchorum in the English West Country. At a do in the village a young girl, Janice Hedden, goes missing. Search parties are organised. George Magruder, a US citizen, decides to take his English wife Louise and daughter Karen back home to Trencher’s Farm for safety before returning to the search. In the meantime Henry Niles, convicted child molester and murderer, has been thrown out of the van in which he was being transported from a hospital procedure back to the local prison for the criminally disturbed and is wandering the roads. Magruder’s car hits him and the family takes him back to the farmhouse till a doctor can come out to see him. When George finds out who Niles actually is he phones the police but due to the snow drifts they won’t be able to get there for hours.

Several of the locals, especially Tom Hedden, the missing girl’s father, convinced Niles must have abducted her, hear the news Niles is at the farm and they decide to take justice into their own hands. The siege of the title is their attempts to get in and those of George and, less so, Louise, to resist them. The beseigers are partly inspired by the tale of Soldier’s Field when some of their ancestors collectively killed the rapist and murderer of a young local girl but as none would talk weren’t subsequently prosecuted.

Niles himself, portrayed here as a bewildered, inadequate soul and of course totally innocent of abducting or killing Janice Hedden (though not the crimes for which he was incarcerated,) plays an off-stage part for most of the novel, locked in the Magruder’s bathroom before being stuffed into the loft.

The relationship between George and Louise is gone into in some detail but in the end reduces to the kind of sexual politics reflective of the decade in which The Siege of Trencher’s Farm was written (the 1960s.)

There isn’t really much insight into the human condition in these pages. The locals are depicted as very insular (which may be true to life) but the besiegers are more or less unthinking yokels – or else disturbed. I wouldn’t recommend the book to anyone unless they like descriptions of violence. It’s yet another crime book on that 100 best list. Presumably it’s only on there due to its – or the film’s – notoriety. It certainly hasn’t much by way of literary merit.

Pedant’s corner:- “worked as a mechanic as the Compton Wakley garage” (mechanic at the Compton Wakley garage,) hung (several instances; hanged,) Niles’ (Niles’s,) “‘he won’t say nothin’. all right.’ “ (comma after ‘nothin’’ rather than a full stop.)

One of those sixties songs that speak of their time, mainly due to the fact it was used in the film Easy Rider, from which the video here is an extract.

Steppenwolf: Born To Be Wild

Syncopy Inc. Directed by Christopher Nolan.

Since our move to Son of the Rock Acres we’re now close to a “proper” cinema, the Kino. It’s not a separate building though but part of Glenrothes town centre, though accesssed from outside. We still don’t go often but the good lady took a fancy to the new film about Dunkirk so off we toddled.

The film dispenses with any preamble or scene setting about the situation leading up to the retreat to Dunkirk and starts with a group of British soldiers moving through the streets of Dunkirk with paper leaflets falling down around them. One looks at a leaflet to see the phrase “We Surround You” and arrows pushing in towards the English Channel – presumably a facsimile of a real German propaganda leaf drop at the time and probably where Dad’s Army took the idea for its opening credits from. Suddenly the men are fired on and they start running – and dropping like flies. Eventually one reaches the beach and the hordes of men waiting there.

We then move to the situation at the Mole (Dunkirk harbour’s long pier) which features Kenneth Branagh as Commander Bolton, in charge of naval affairs there.

The action then switches to the “small boats” being requisitioned by the navy with particular emphasis on one boat. (Mark Rylance puts in a fine performance as the boat’s master but all of the acting was convincing.)

Then we are transported to an RAF patrol of three Spitfires flying to the Dunkirk area with the leader warning his team to keep an eye on fuel levels.

The film intercuts between these four scenarios at (ir)regular intervals and repeatedly shows the same incident but from the several differing viewpoints.

Most of it, though, displays a distinct lack of heroism, men fetching for themselves, queue-jumping, arguing, though others (Royal Engineers contstructing makeshift jetties out of whatever is lying about on the beaches for example) are trying their best to muddle through.

But that is how it would have been. For a soldier Dunkirk must have been anything but heroic. A frantic mixture of hope and fear and endurance with even rescue from the beaches no guarantee of a safe journey home what with the gauntlet of bombers and U-boats still to run.

If anything it is the efforts of the RAF pilots that the film emphasises – despite the complaint after a Stuka attack on the beach of “Where’s the ruddy Air Force?”

I could have done without the swelling strings (a very slowed down tempo for Elgar’s Nimrod) when the small boats started to make their appearance off the beaches, though.

It also seemed odd to me that Rylance’s small boat took its cargo back to Dorset – that’s a long way from Dunkirk and far from the nearest point in Britain. And I had the impression from my reading that the small boats were mainly used to ferry men from the beach to destroyers etc lying off-shore.

The film touches on the point of the soldiers feeling that they had let the country down and dreading the reception they would get on arrival only to find they were being greeted with cheers. It is still strange that the “Dunkirk spirit” is invoked by those who wish to big Britain up. As Churchill said at the time, “Wars are not won by evacuations.”

The second last image – of a burning Spitfire on the beach – seemed emblematic of a Britain that has lost its way and won’t easily find it again. At least in 1940 it only took four years for Britain to get back into Europe.

I saw in the credits at the end the name of one Harry Styles. I knew of the name of course but could not have put a face to it.

I don’t watch the Oscar ceremony. It’s an event which garners publicity way beyond its actual significance or importance for weeks beforehand and I’m not much into films anyway.

Notwithstanding that I couldn’t avoid the aftermath of this year’s do and its wrong envelope saga. Lead item on both the radio and TV news all day.

So the story that was to be the big thing from the Oscars this year didn’t happen: overshadowed by an apparently inexplicable mistake.

My first thought on hearing of what transpired was to wonder if any of this year’s award winners made any anti-Trump comments in their respective acceptance speeches. If they did I haven’t heard a word about them. And naturally it occurred to me that anyone behind the scenes wishing to avoid any discussion that such comments may have caused would have reason to feel very pleased indeed at the actual turn of events.

It may just have been an almighty cock-up (the usual explanation for bizarre occurrences) but if it was a conspiracy to deflect any possible criticism of the recipients and the so-called Academy from T Ronald Dump and his supporters it worked beautifully. I still don’t know the content of any of the winners’ speeches – at least one of which usually makes the news.

If this was a dead cat it was certainly a beezer. Possibly the most dead cat* ever.

Pedant’s corner:- *Yes, I know if a cat is dead, it’s dead and can’t be any more dead. There are no degrees to death after all.

Given she was 84 it’s not too surprising that Debbie Reynolds has died. That it occurred the day after her daughter, Carrie Fisher, must make it harder for her son Todd, though.

As Kathy Shelden in Singin’ in the Rain she was not overpowered, as given her youth she might have been, by the male leads Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor. Her performance in that alone would have secured her a place in public affection.

Here’s a song she recorded in 1959 that also became a big hit later for Engelbert Humperdinck. I prefer Debbie’s version.

Debbie Reynolds: Am I That Easy to Forget?

Mary Frances “Debbie” Reynolds: 1/4/1932 – 28/12/2016. So it goes.

I had intended to publish remembrance posts today in the one day this year between Armistice Day and Remembrance Day but 2016 just keeps piling it on.

Now it’s Leonard Cohen who has left us.

Not to mention actor Robert Vaughn – aka Napoleon Solo in the Man From U.N.C.L.E. but whose best performance was as a conscientious German officer, Major Paul Kreuger, undone by circumstances in the film The Bridge at Remagen – and, earlier in the week, a voice from my youth (though he was too soft-edged to be a anything like a favourite,) Jimmy Young, once a stalwart of BBC Radio 2.

I suppose everybody will be using Hallelujah to sign Leonard Cohen off. Here instead is one of his songs from 1992, Closing Time.

Leonard Norman Cohen: 21/9/1934 – 7/11/2016. So it goes.
Robert Vaughn: 22/11/1932 – 11/11/2016. So it goes.
Leslie Ronald “Jimmy” Young: 21/9/1921 – 7/11/2016. So it goes.

Gravier Productions, Perdido Productions. Directed and written by Woody Allen.

Off at the unusual hour of 11 am to the local “Art House” cinema where about thirty to forty brave souls were gathered to watch Woody Allen’s latest.

And what a treat to the eye it was. From the first scene – a Hollywood party – we were drenched in Art Deco and the thirties. Lovely sets and costumes.

Booby Dorfman moves from New York to find work. After first being given the run around by his uncle Phil, a powerful agent, he is eventually given a dogsbody role. Phil asks his secretary Vonnie to show Bobby the town and of course Bobby falls for her. Vonnie is though, embroiled in a clandestine affair with Phil. Meanwhile back in New York Bobby’s brother Ben has forged a career as a gangster.

The working out of the relationships eventually leads to Bobby returning to New York to run a (legitimate) nightclub for Ben, where a few years later the past in the form of Vonnie and Phil intrudes to complicate things.

This is no Blue Jasmine but was a worthwhile experience all the same. A few Allen style jokes are thrown in though I was slightly disturbed by the ethics of playing gangland murders for laughs.

Once again from the opening titles this could not be mistaken for anything other than a Woody Allen film, the font of the titles, the (wonderful) jazz soundtrack, the worldview. It was none the worse for that.

It was unusual to see Ken Stott (playing Bobby’s dad) as a Jewish New Yorker but all the performances were excellent.