Two fun links: the Lonely Planet cities game and the V&A ‘Create your own modernist poster’ site.

I went to see Waiting for Godot at the Barbican last night. It was an excellent performance and I’d recommend it if you’re in London.
Johnny Murphy was perfectly physically embodied as Estragon. Barry McGovern as Vladimir was more ‘actorly’ though I think he had the more difficult role as he had to express a greater awareness of the external world and eventually of the futility of their wait. It’s difficult to know what to say about the staging and lighting because I think Beckett left quite detailed instructions, but they were simple and effective.
In a weird way, the whole thing made me very glad I’m not a teenager anymore. I was such an angst-ridden nihilist, struggling with an existentialist crisis, and plays like this didn’t help. I guess the external validation was good, but it’s nice not to care so much anymore.

And speaking of The Proposition, the Guardian travel section had a good interview with the director, John Hillcoat.
I think the final paragraph says most of what you need to know about Australia:
“Flight time: London-Brisbane 22

Last night I read Kinky Friedman‘s Blast From The Past. It’s always a joy reading Kinky.

While I’m in review mode, last week I read Playing the Moldovans at Tennis by Tony Hawks, who it turns out wrote the Beastie Boys parody, Stutter Rap (No Sleep ‘Til Bedtime). It was a good light read, and now I’ll know to carry a torch when trying to negotiate the streets of Moldova after dark.

I saw The Proposition tonight. It was a lot gorier than films I’d normally see but overall I liked it. I don’t know if it was the cinematography or the impact of the countryside itself but I was almost surprised to remember that I’d see Islington, not the outback, when I left the cinema.
The English garden and fine china were almost over-played but I think it’s impossible to really express how alien the country must have seemed to people who’ve grown up with it. I used to be irritated by the way European settlers named towns and features after places back in Europe, but now I see it as an act of hope and desperation, as if they hoped they could tame and make green a wild brown country by naming it for a settled verdant one.
The flies almost deserved a credit line. I think it’s the first film I’ve seen that captured the small but unignorable, inexorable presence of flies in such visceral detail.
David Wenham reminded me of Richard Roxburgh as the Duke of Worcester in Moulin Rouge!, which was a bit unfortunate.
The script was less about the proposition itself than the past and future choices faced by Charlie, the outlaw, and Stanley, the British trooper. It was a lot more subtle than the plot outline suggests but it was written by Nick Cave, so that shouldn’t be a surprise. Each character has moral choices, and the results can be hard to bear. My description doesn’t really do it justice, so go see it for yourself.

I read The Shadow of the Wind recently, and really enjoyed it. At times it almost veered into ‘holiday reading’ tweeness, but it was saved by some close observation and the author’s fresh turn of phrase.
Anyway, I found myself noting passages I liked, and here are some of them*:
“One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn’t have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are already too deep.”
“I realised how easily you can lose all animosity towards someone you’ve deemed your enemy as soon as that person stops behaving as such.”
There was a beautiful pun where characters were discussing the Catholic Church and the mysterious Fermin said, “let’s not mention the missal industry”.
And finally, “a story is a letter the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discuss otherwise.”
* Of course, one person’s interesting snippet is another person’s trite crap.

Some quick book reviews…
Paul Theroux’s “The Happy Isles of Oceania”. While a nice break from grey London skies, Theroux has an irritating habit of following a fresh, perceptive comment with an vexatiously inane comment. Amazingly, this travel book didn’t make me want to pack my bags and visit the countries he has. It did, otoh, make me want to start canoeing or sea kayaking again.
I’ve also recently read Ann Bannon’s “Odd Girl Out”, and “I Am a Woman”, partly because I love pulp fiction and I guess partly because it puts modern lesbian life into perspective.
Ann Bannon’s website includes the introduction to “Odd Girl Out”, which includes the fabulous phrase, “She found herself climbing down a ladder of flesh into a cesspool of Lesbian depravity”. Not so fabulous if that was the only depiction of lesbians available to society, but I wouldn’t mind climbing down that ladder now.