COVER CHALLENGE: Day Two

I've accepted the challenge for posting the cover of 7 books I love. One a day, no explanation, no review - just the cover.

Fast & Furious: Hobbs and Shaw (2019)

These Fast & Furious chapters are a bit like the Ferrero Rocher ads in that, as Ben Elton put it, the proverbial piss has already been taken out of them in their very production. In other words they are sufficiently detached from reality to owe the viewer only the barest nods to real world verisimilitude. You start thinking ‘No, that wouldn’t...’ and then almost inevitably pull up short. 

The original films found their audience by pitching a group of B-list actors from varied ethnic backgrounds as a sort of on-screen action family. Eventually they were joined by two men who had genuine, lasting A-list status in the form of the Rock and the Stathe, so spinning them off this way makes considerable commercial sense. 

The first half (roughly the running time of any normal film) is highly enjoyable, but after that it turns into a series of endings that aren’t. Though the best line in the film does come fairly late on, when Hobbs’s Samoan mother says to him ‘you’re all skin and bones’.

Looks familiar...

How much does this schnauzer look like the late Duchess of Alba? 

COVER CHALLENGE: Day One

I've accepted the challenge for posting the cover of 7 books I love. One a day, no explanation, no review - just the cover.

The Munchies, Top Ten

These, I have decided fairly arbitrarily, are my top ten favourite restaurants in the world.

I have had a bizarrely fortunate, privileged existence which has allowed me the opportunity to stay at some of the world's finest hotels and dine at many of its most celebrated eateries, including a handful with Michelin stars. Yet none of those made the cut for this list, because it is far more personal than an attempt to fanfarronear some sort of objective, solipsistic scale of culinary quality. 

Instead, here are the places I would simply run to if ever I were to find myself once more in one of the relevant locations. There are memories to be satiated. 

There are ten of them, but there is no particular order. 

Pétrelle, Paris (France)
My wife and I got into the habit of avoiding Paris in the noughties. We'd circumnavigate it, stay in Rouen or Orléans and breathe a sigh of relief. But then in the early part of this decade I discovered the Eurostar out of St Pancras. In three hours I could be at the Gare du Nord and shortly afterwards at the Anvers metro stop, just a short walk away from Petrelle, which is everything one could ask of a small restaurant in this lovely, if occasionally abrasive city. It seems it may be closed for refurbishment right now, which is a pity because shamboliic kitschiness is its very essence. 

The African Queen, Beaulieu (France)
A permanent reminder of a movie I have always meant to watch. An absolute favourite through choldhood, adolescence and early adulthood. My mother could make me smile just by mentioning it. There's always something special about eating in a small port. 

Sylvain, New Orleans (USA)
This is such a good city in which to eat and drink, but this bistro is the place that most caught my attention. Set in a seventeenth century carriage house in the French Quarter, Sylvain sits on the funky gastropub end of the serious eating scale. 

El Bar Liguria, Santiago (Chile)
I've made three trips to Chile in the last few years and I'm starting to think of Santiago as my favourite destination in South America. Liguria might even be the place I'd choose to teleport to right now over all other contenders. It was the first location I settled at in SCL — a meeting place suggested by a Guatemalan entrepreneur who'd spent some time in the city — and I can't quite pinpoint now what the enduring appeal has been, other than the fact that it resembles in many ways a joint that I frequented in London in my youth called Wheelers in St James's. Sitting at the bar and interacting with the eccentric types who served the food and wine was always a key part of the experience.

El Yantar de Baco, Cenes de la Vega (Spain)
Back in the early noughties we criss-crossed the Iberian peninsula in our car on multiple occasions, trips that almost inevitably involved many fine meals, often surrounded by highly-animated families with children close to midnight. Yet the one that sticks in the memory took place in this packed little bar-restaurant with its sawdust-covered floors in a small town quite close to Granada.

Umakyu, Tokyo (Japan)
This spot in Shinjuku's Piss Alley encapsulates for me the very essence of Japan. First taken here by V's old friend Satoshi, with whom she studied in London back in 1991, I have returned again and again. The first time Satoshi ordered up horse sashimi, on the grounds that this was possibly the best way to amusingly vex an Englishman. I consumed it without undue protestation and then returned and ordered the same dish on my return, alone, in 2015.  

Kito Kito, Kyoto (Japan)
There are so many places in Japan where one can sit at a long bar and partake of a series of small, exquisitely-prepared dishes. This just happens to be my personal preference. 

Casa Oaxaca, Oaxaca (Mexico)
Said to have been the favourite restaurant of Gabriel García Márquez, this is simply the best place to dine in Mexico's most mole-laden city. 

Mestizo, Santiago (Chile) 
If I didn't live in La Antigua I think I'd probably adopt an essentially pescatorian diet. For a city that's landlocked about an hour and a half by road from the Pacific, the range of fishy options in Santiago is extraordinary, starting with the Mercado Central, and leading all the way up to this, a smart and innovative contemporary seafood restaurant in the swish neighbourhood of Vitacura. 

La Vigie, Monte Carlo Beach (France)
Another childhood favourite that I know my father would probably have cited as his favourite place in the whole world. Set beneath Villa La Vigie, which was first derelict, then Karl Lagerfeld's crib, before becoming a sort of mega-premium airbnb option, this was the place that SBM in Monaco used to blood its its latest generation of potentially lifelong staff. It features the sort of summer buffet for which radical Islamists would trade in their heavenly virgins. These days, according to their Instagram feed, it has been somewhat hipped up, which may or may not be a good thing.

Mobs and Toffs

It could be said that the whole purpose of a Parliament or Congress in a representative democracy is to act as a filtration system to eliminate as best as possible the instincts of the mob. The US Constitution is almost explicit about this and it is surely the principal reason why we no longer hang people in the UK. 

Yet now, we have an executive branch, nested inside our Parliament, which is openly stirring up those mob instincts whilst asserting that ‘the people’ have some sort of moral ascendency over their elected representatives. 

This can’t be healthy. 

Noticias...

Escuchando Babosadas

RIP Michael D. Coe

'What's happened to democracy in this country?'

Given the age profile of many Leave-voters, these riots could be quite amusing. You can do a lot of damage with a compressed air tank. 

In truth this sort of thing seems to bubble beneath the surface even more in countries like Spain, where one often comes across packs of angry-looking, slightly stunted, Franco-era wrinklies out on the verges of provincial main roads. 

Knowing and Embarrassed

An update from The Spectator today...

Theresa May’s former PR chief Robbie Gibb has revealed that during government Brexit negotiations with Labour last year, senior shadow cabinet members ‘repeatedly tried to thwart attempts to find common ground and move forward’. At one meeting Brexit secretary Keir Starmer ‘opened his remarks by dismissing proposals, outlined in a discussion document, as “totally inadequate”’ but then Theresa May’s chief of staff Gavin Barwell said ‘these are Labour’s own proposals. They have been literally cut and pasted from a document you submitted to us’. Gibb says Labour’s reaction was a ‘knowing and embarrassed laugh’.

A laugh at least some of them must have practiced...behind Corbyn’s back.

Meet the Forkers

Orphan (2009) is — on the surface — yet another one of those movies where the lamentable table manners of its protagonists is unashamedly showcased. 

But hold on. The director was Jaume Collet-Serra a bona fide European, and he's gone about this dinner scene with a bit of a knowing wink. 

One of the ways that adoptee Esther's sinister abnormality is signalled is that she uses a knife and fork in the standard received, non-American way to partition her meat. 

And this does not go unnoticed...

It made me wonder whether the fact that anyone who drinks a single bottle of wine starts acting as if they have a brain tumour is another Iberian in-joke at the expense of his Hollywood hosts. 

Overall this is an entertaining bit of genre film-making, bolstered by a superior cast. It has to be said however, that it telegraphs almost every significant plot development well in advance. Almost every one. I really expected granny to get it. 

I suppose Collet-Serra is to be commended for not having provided this family with a pet which could end up dead roughly midway through. 

Prior to this he'd remade House of Wax (2005) with Paris Hilton amongst the early victims and later went on to direct The Shallows (2016) which belongs to that minority of decent movies with hungry sharks in them. He's also contributed to the Liam Neeson punching people phenomenon. 

Next up will be Jungle Cruise (2020) with Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt. Superior casting again. 

If the last film I reviewed played on a hurdy-gurdy phobia, Orphan might be said to be highly suggestive of Russophobia, or more specifically a fear of the occasionally alarming sensuality of slavonic women of the go-getter sort. 

I'd strongly recommend Andrew Miller's novel Snowdrops as one of the better treatments of that theme. 

Walkers with Seats

Referring to Parliament as ‘dead’ is not just inappropriate language, it is a deliberate and dangerous misconstruction. 

This Parliament is not some sort of undead creature left over from the antediluvian past before the ‘largest democratic exercise in British history’. 

It was constituted little over a couple of years ago and is a direct (and well deserved) consequence of the government calling a general election in a wholly opportunistic manner. 

It is thus appropriate they they should still have to live with the consequences and not try to appeal beyond this sovereign body to ‘the people’ (the mob) — by which they seem to mean 52% of the eligible types who turned out to make an uninformed decision three years ago, many of whom may never have voted Conservative in their lives, and even now may not choose to do so. 

Many of whom may also be the real zombies in this protracted apocalyptic narrative. 

Nada Apetece

Antigua has plenty of previous when it comes to under-appetising food advertising. This one definitely goes into the archives. 

Aguacate shuco? No thanks. 

Midsommar (2019)

We came to this with a degree of of trepidation as Ari Aster's last film, Hereditary (2018), widely praised as a masterpiece, hadn't really worked for us. Visually stunning and otherwise inventive yes, terrifying...not really. 

It was the old The Exorcist problem for agnostic horror fans such as ourselves: the supernatural alone won't unnerve us sufficiently. 

Fortunately the genre as a whole encapsulates all kinds of other non-metaphysical phobias. Fear of the dark, of monsters under the bed, of birds, of children etc. 

Midsommar's angle is the fear of over-intense, difficult-to-read Scandinavians. I've had it myself since my brief stint in the NGO department of the UN in New York. 

A group of American grad student anthropologists head off to the far north of Sweden (actually Hungary) where one of them introduces them all to his 'family', a sect-like commune consisting of the sort of people you would more commonly come across selling kombucha in one of Antigua's eco-farms.  

They are there to indulge in a nine day celebration of the solstice in the midst of a pagan pastoral idyll called Hårga.

Cleverly, the first really disturbing thing to occur sits right on the edge of what can be rationalised, especially when subsequently soothingly elucidated by someone who looks a bit like Jane Goodall. 

This is a scary movie that deliberately eschews darkness; at least the sort brought on by a lack of solar radiation. 

There's a trippy Eyes Wide Shutiness about these people and their runic rituals, yet the elements of black comedy are far more to the fore.

Florence Pugh now has that early Emily Blunt quality of improving almost any film she's in. 

Five stars. 

Iconic Lady

I've parked my car in that very space. Unfortunately, it wasnt that car. 

They seek him here, they seek him there...

I might not be, in the words of Ray Davies, a dedicated follower of fashion, yet I grew up on King's Road in the 70s and my mother modelled for Christian Dior, so I might be said to have, willy-nilly, assimilated the codes and critiques of both street and catwalk. 

It seems that Donald Trump is not the only President sporting offspring keen to show off the newest wrinkle — whilst recklessly signalling a shabby, upstart sensibility. 

Morales Jnr here must have purchased this item a few years ago, abandoned it in a closet and then donned it rather hurriedly for his excursion to our city. 

His left hand artfully disguises the fact that the top button has surely already popped off. 

Ser Barry of Uddersfield

Oh, how I've missed this lot. It's as if angry viewers got a court order forcing HBO to release a few extra episodes of Game of Thrones. 

MP Barry Sheerwell gave Attorney General Geoffrey Cox precisely what he had coming this morning. 

Saint-Émilion

We once had one of our most confounding moments at the end of a long car journey when arriving here. 

Entering the village before dusk, we decided to follow the narrow road, which became narrower and narrower and led ever deeper into an ascending labyrinth in which all opportunities to go back quickly vanished. 

In fact we were only able to turn around and retrace our route once we had reached the summit of this little town. 

Gloria and Greta

Gloria Álvarez has been using Greta's burst of fame this side of the pond to have another bash at the socialists and their environmental record. (Chernobyl bla, bla, bla.) 

Being both a right-leaning libertarian and an environmentalist, the Greta phenomenon must be exposing some of the crevices in her weltanschauung. 

On one level though she's kind of right. 

Greta, like many other slightly jarring individuals throughout history is bringing an important issue to the top of the agenda in a way that well-meaning, anodyne politicians would never be able to. 

Nevertheless, there's a danger that she will be co-opted and ultimately smothered by the wider wokeness programme, with climate change joining immigration and identity as areas of the discourse that are muddied by partisan sentiments. 

The hard left has made a habit of presenting certain things as indisputable facts when they are not, at least not in the same way that man made climate change essentially is. 

We need to find a way for action on the climate crisis to be placed safely outside the cultural battlefield.