Apples, Moles, Movies

2015 was a good year for apples on the farm, so 2016 isn't. (Apple trees only really go for it biannually.)  I'm told we could get an big annual crop by pruning the trees but I don't want to force them out of their natural rhymn. Besides, when there's a glut we never manage to consume everything- and, this being a fruit growing area, you can't give apples away. I'm picking what there is and making pies. We had one yesterday and we're having another today.

What 2016 is proving very good for is moles. I get the gardeners to disperse the mole hills but they can't keep up. I'd do the job myself but it crocks up my back.

Now that the weather is getting colder and the nights are drawing in I propose spending more time with my DVD collection. I watched Bringing Up Baby the other afternoon. What a sweet film. I love how Katherine Hepburn's character goes sweeping through the conventions like a buzz-saw. Judy and I were discussing the relative merits of Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday and she prefers the one and I prefer the other, but one shouldn't have to choose. Bringing Up Baby is pure silliness and His Girl Friday has a vein of darkness running through it but they're both among the fastest, funniest movies ever made.

Confidential Report aka Mr Arkadin

The world's a small place- and one man can bestride it like a colossus.

One man in a preposterous wig and only slightly less preposterous false beard.

Wherever you go- whichever continent you fleetingly visit- you'll find he's got there before you.

Big man, big money, big hair.

But does he have any substance- or will a breath of ill-report simply blow him away?

This is one of several movies Welles walked away from before it was finished.  Why? Because he was a perfectionist and sometimes just couldn't face the weeks and weeks of fiddling away in the editing suite that he'd have imposed on himself. (Well that's how I account for it anyway.)

There were, after all, expensive dinners to be eaten.

So it's a botched job: Welles hadn't intended the narrative to be so linear, chunks of story are missing- but...

There's so much to like. The deep focus photography, the locations, the magnificent set pieces- a  ball in a Spanish castle with people masked as monsters out of Goya, a snowy Christmas in Munich complete with melancholy carollers- the expressionist camerawork, the playfully grotesque cameos from Michael Redgrave, Akim Tamiroff and Katrina Paxinou, Welles himself hamming it up as the monstrous Arkadin (and powerful men do flaunt silly hair- witness Donald Trump) and a wonderfully shouty, sweaty performance by Robert Arden as the least attractive, most despicable leading man ever...