I spoke to James about the project, and the film that told its story.

Ollie Dabson: I wanted to start by asking you about your previous thoughts on climate change. You mentioned at the start of the film that you used to be a bit of a sceptic. Why was this, and what caused you to change your mind?

James Balog: There were lots of layers to it. One was simply that I was involved with a lot of other conservation and environment-related issues twenty years ago, and my first reflex was “Oh Christ, aren’t there enough things to think about?” Another part was that I really didn’t have it in my basic mental programming that it was possible for humans to change the fundamental operating system of the planet. Of course I knew that we could make animals go extinct, and we can deforest landscapes here and there, but the idea that we could actually change the elemental foundations of physics, chemistry and biology on the Earth really hadn’t occurred to me, and it still hasn’t occurred to most people even today. Finally, I thought that the science was primarily about computer modelling, and I’m a bit of a sceptic about computer modelling. The fact of the matter is that today’s climate models are quite good, but the climate models of twenty years ago – not so much. So for all of those reasons I was kind of rolling my eyes and thinking “Oh God, I don’t know if this is real”. It was when I took the time to keep an open mind and learn more about the science that I realised that this was not all driven by computer models, this was about real-world empirical evidence that was visible on the ground.

OD: And this realisation led to the creation of the subject of the film, the Extreme Ice Survey. You’ve now built up a catalogue of hundreds of thousands of images [of glaciers] – what was it like to see that first completed time-lapse sequence?

JB: It was staggering. It was astounding when we saw the first pictures come through in June 2007 – that was from the first cameras that had been deployed on the project which started March 2007 in Iceland. We were all gathered around the computer room watching this stuff, and we really didn’t know how dramatic the pictorial evidence would turn out to be. It was a shock –  a revelation –  and it continues to be a revelation when we download the pictures from the cameras today. We’ve just had a team up in Alaska which has just come home over the weekend; I haven’t seen the pictures yet but they’re telling me that it continues to be shocking.

OD: For me, one of the most exciting things about the film is how you bring these really distant, spectacular landscapes to people who might not normally experience them, and then you bring them to life in a very dynamic way. Did you ever have concerns that these places are just too far removed from civilisation, and that people might find it difficult to relate to the message as a result?

JB: Sure, you always have all kinds of anxieties and doubts. At the beginning, I was concerned about how people would respond to a story about glaciers, but as an artist, my number one concern is to express what’s going on in my world as I experience it. I realised long ago that if you worry about pandering to the audience, you’re creatively sabotaging yourself before you even get out the door. My concern is to do what I think is aesthetically, conceptually, experientially correct and let the audience follow me.

OD: Now you take these sequences of photographs all over the world; have you found that there’s a difference in the attitudes and responses you get to the project? Are some people slightly more hostile towards the message?

JB: Not particularly, no – I think people have been shockingly responsive. I don’t recognise any sort of national variation. The director [Jeff Orlowski] is in China as we speak, screening the film to China and Taiwan as part of a Sundance White House sponsored film tour, and it’ll be interesting to see what he hears over there, but I suspect the audiences will be quite enthusiastic. What I worry about a little bit when I’m out there on the road is that sometimes you go into audience environments where you know you’ve mostly got people who are hostile to the climate change message. I’ve screened it in front of rooms full of retired guys seventy or ninety years old who spent their lives in big corporations and so forth, and as a general rule they are not likely to be converts. And yet I find that even in those audiences, I get a lot of people saying “thank you for opening my eyes”.

OD: It’s clearly an incredible result, but it’s also been a very personal journey and you’ve overcome physical challenges, technical difficulties, even personal injury. Looking back on it all, has it been worth it?

JB: Yeah, it’s been absolutely worth it. As we speak right now, I’ve just had my fourth knee surgery – problems with my knee were a core part of the challenges and indeed those challenges have continued. And it’s still worth it, as I recognised a while ago, because doing this project has been my destiny. I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing, that’s all. It’s an accumulation of everything I have known about as an adult person – it’s about love, it’s about photography, it’s about science and it’s about physical adventure. Those have all been the main currents of my adult life and they all come together in this project. I actually feel incredibly fortunate that, in spite of all of the travails and the suffering, I’ve had the privilege of doing what it was mine to do.

OD: And finally, has there been a single moment through your journey that has especially stood out to you?

JB: Oh boy. There’s been so, so many – one really exciting point in the journey was just a few weeks ago when we screened the film at the White House for all the senior staff of the executive branch, and everybody who had any involvement in climate change, energy, technology and science, all of them leading officials, were there. That was a big moment. Out in the field there were so many incredible times – there still are, in fact. I think some of the most special moments were the really quiet moments – one o’clock in the morning on the Greenland ice sheet, when the Sun is way down low near the North Pole somewhere. The whole ice sheet freezes up and it gets really quiet and there’s no wind, and the light is this gorgeous golden pink pastel colour that washes across the landscape and it feels like the whole world is holding its breath. The midnight Sun, it’s a very special aspect of the Arctic. It’s really blissful, and I cherish that.

Chasing Ice is released on DVD and Blu-Ray on 10 June 2013.

@olliedabson

Maybe you shouldn’t read this review. Maybe my opinion as a fan-geek will not be helpful to you. Then again, I will be the first to admit that some of aspects of the franchise (Voyager, I’m thinking of you) are sometimes embarrassing and intolerable. At other times, Star Trek can be just totally awesome. Into Darkness is one of those times.

I was not that big of a fan of the previous picture, which rebooted The Original Series with new actors set in a parallel reality, thus preserving the continuity of the other Trek media while allowing J.J. Abrams to make altercations where desired. The idea of introducing the material to a new generation was a good one, but the execution was poor, losing some of the philosophical underpinnings and replacing them with standard action movie fare. A friend of mine correctly stated that it felt more like Buck Rogers than anything else.

Not here. Perhaps the greatest compliment that I can give the film is that it just plain feels like a Star Trek movie, striking just the right balance between old and new. To me, the appeal of Trek has been always a combination of endearing characters, liberal social commentary and a call to adventure in a space setting, and this movie pulls off the trifecta. It doesn’t try to do what it can’t (such as replicate the golden three way chemistry between William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley) but finds new and interesting ways for the revamped versions of the characters to interact with each other.

The previous film really only developed Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto), but this one has more time for the entire ensemble. I particularly liked the friendship between Kirk and Scotty (Simon Pegg) and the attraction between Spock and Uhura (Zoe Saldana), both of which were hinted at but not really exploited in the TV show. There’s also some material in the bromance between Kirk and Spock that is, uh, kind of moving, to the point that I heard crying in the theatre.

In terms of social comment, I have a feeling Gene Roddenberry would be proud. Essentially the film is a critique of Bush-era American foreign policy, albeit a few years too late. The message is well-taken and not too preachy, which is sometimes a problem in Trek.

Finally, the adventure aspects and actions sequences really worked this time. The villain (Benedict Cumberbatch) is actually threatening, for example. Abrams has had problems with action elements in his other films, which seemed to stop an interesting story for a dull exercise in special effects chaos. Here, all of the sequences are well integrated into the storyline and some are rather thrilling. Like the very best of Star Trek, we really get the feeling that we are in space in the future, discovering cool new things and meeting exciting new aliens.

There is one annoying quirk of the movie I feel like I must mention, and it is Abrams’ use (or abuse) of lens flares. They are not necessary and are just distracting at best, and occasionally ruin some otherwise beautiful shots. The flares are at least better here than in the last movie, in which it seemed that someone was aiming a flashlight at the camera throughout the entire film.

Setting aside the flares, this is one of the best pictures in the series, in the company of The Wrath of Khan (1982) and First Contact (1996). Abrams has grown as a film artist. Making a film like this, that could have failed in a hundred ways but succeeds in ninety nine of them, is a sign of the arrival of a great talent. It also assures that Star Trek will be around for a long time, but well, we knew that already.

4.0 out of 4

Although I think we can all agree it was never in danger of rivaling Au Hasard Balthazar as a great work of cinematic art, the first Iron Man film did have its charms. It managed to avoid some of the portentousness found in other superhero movies with its hedonistic protagonist, and adopted a lightly comic tone without bordering on kitsch, which was refreshing. The eternal twelve year old boy inside me enjoyed the final showdown, where a man dressed in a robot suit fought a man dressed in a giant robot suit.

Having seen through two sequels and the character’s appearance in Marvel Avengers Assemble, I discovered that my Iron Man tolerance was maxed out with one movie. After that, Tony Stark’s (Robert Downey, Jr.) antics and snappy “witticisms” became annoying and the plotting predictable. Seeing Iron Man fly once was kind of cool, seeing him fly over and over again is just boring.

The plot of this installment involves America being terrorized by The Mandarin (Sir Ben Kingsley) a terrorist who sets off untraceable bombs in public areas and sends cruel videos to manipulate the President (William Sadler). The Mandarin is somehow related to a geeky scientist (Guy Pearce) and a pretty lady (Rebecca Hall) that Stark screwed on New Year’s Eve 1999, one metaphorically, one literally.

The release of the this film was unfortunately ill-timed due to the terrible tragedy in Boston and I found the early scenes of The Mandarin’s videos, the most effective part of the film, a bit too serious and disturbing for a superhero movie. The rest of the film is fairly by the numbers and has little originality. Even the surprises are not that surprising, if you get my drift.

This is not really a bad movie, just an unnecessary and dull one. It can be compared to the later Rocky films, which take a character that was appealing in one installment and repeat the same formula, over and over again. One thing I can’t really accuse the film of is false advertising (except perhaps in the title, as the poster uses the Arabic numeral but the title screen spells out the word “three”). The movie is pretty much what you would expect. If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.

Speaking of advertising, when I saw the trailer, before a screening of Oz the Great and Powerful, I thought about a hypothetical film where Iron Man teams up with the Tin Man. That would be an unexpected cinematic experience.

2.0 out of 4

Sometimes, being 6ft1 and female is slightly awkward. You look silly in heels. Trousers and men are often too short. However, my extra inches were a distinct advantage on the morning of April the 17th, when standing outside St Paul’s cathedral watching the choreographed pageantry of Margaret Thatcher’s funeral. I was something of a neutral observer. Though not a fan of her policies, I object slightly to the personal vilification of her from some quarters in recent days. She ended as a fragile octogenarian, gripped by dementia and living a life of luxurious loneliness, stuck at the top of the Ritz since January, waiting to die. Glenda Jackson’s excellent Commons speech seems to be the most admirable response to her demise so far. Though hyperbolic in places, Jackson successfully expresses a hatred for the policies, for Thatcherism, without turning the woman into a mythical witch. Even if she was on occasion personally vile, even if you disagree with everything she stood for and did, burning her in effigy or turning your back on the coffin won’t change what she did, and it won’t hurt her. She’s dead and cannot watch. Her family, though, are not dead and do have to watch.

There were some loudly expressed opinions both pro and anti-Thatcher yesterday, with banners carrying messages ranging from ‘We are here to remember the victims of Thatcherism’ to ‘Margaret Thatcher put the Great into Great Britain’. The journalists around us focused on these people; they were filmed and questioned and egged on by reporters clearly hoping for some ‘angry debate’ footage to put on the news. Most of the crowd, though, weren’t carrying banners, and didn’t seem that interested in discussing policies. They were there for spectacle, not debate. I struck up conversation with the people around me after taking pictures for them with my up-stretched gangly arms. When I asked why they were there, none said ‘because Maggie Thatcher was my political idol and I agreed with all of her policies’. The three most common answers were ‘respect’, ‘patriotism’ and ‘just wanted to be here’.

She had been a personal inspiration to the woman next to me, who remembered feeling, as a school-girl, that if Maggie Thatcher could make it, so could she. From shop-keeper’s daughter to Prime Minister. That really isn’t bad. A man nearby had a transistor radio, so we heard the service as it unfolded. When the Dean of St Paul’s spoke about the funeral being not about politics but about the universal truths of death, family and (for him and Thatcher, at least) faith, the crowd around me murmured in agreement. There seemed to be some widely shared values among them; a respect for tradition, patriotism and achievement, a thirst for ceremony. They wanted this woman’s death to have meaning, dignity and purpose. What with all the marching and music and silly hats, it was easy to forget the cause of the event – a death. We watched the stomping soldiers, listened to the brass bands, and tried to spot famous politicians. Even when the coffin itself appeared, it was natural to focus of the pained faces of the blokes maneuvering it rather than to consider what it was they were carrying. All the energy, ambition, daring and heartlessness of Margaret Thatcher, all that has made her a heroine and a hate-figure, a mother and a wife and leader, all that ended, leaving some snappably frail bones in a box.

This truth was not the focus, really. It was the event people had come to see, not the person or the remains of her. Despite my height, the view was constantly impeded by a terrifying lady dressed all in navy blue, who proudly declared that she had arrived at 8am with her (small) son and a step ladder. She also proudly declared that she had used said step ladder at both the Royal Jubilee and Olympic parades. I internally christened her ScaryToryWoman. She had printed Margaret Thatcher’s Wikipedia page for her son, and was asking him questions about it. There was a similarly Dursleyish presence nearby in the form of a moustache-wriggling man who kept barking things like ‘keep your back straight lad’ when soldiers marched past. Despite being not my usual cup of tea, the marchy ceremonial stuff was quite impressive, and she had chosen some good hymns.

It gave me something of the euphoria you feel at a huge and amazing gig, when Elbow or Mumford or whoever reaches your favourite song and you think ‘YES! I’d follow you anywhere!’ But I didn’t properly get this feeling. Maybe it was the mizzling rain, or ScaryToryMum’s distracting back. Mostly, though, I never launched fully into such a delirious Numembergian state because there was too much to disagree with; when the Queen arrived, I started clapping before I remembered that I’m a republican and stopped. When the Bishop spoke about how personally kind she’d been to people in distress I remembered her policy of ‘care in the community’, which condemned so many thousands to homelessness. In any event, I think it was the chance of that collective feeling which subconsciously drew so many people there, including me. We humans like to feel united, we like to share things. We like to be able to tell people afterwards, ‘I was there’. I was at the party, the riot, the funeral. I saw. But what exactly did I see? I’ve tried to tell you in this article, but I’m not entirely sure myself. I saw lots of things, many conflicting. All of the emotions on display, though, stemmed from the same desire – the desire to matter, for ‘it’ to matter, whatever ‘it’ even is. Rationally, I can’t believe that all the ceremony and old words said that day will speed Lady Thatcher’s passage to the afterlife; I can’t believe that there is an afterlife. Rational conclusions, though, won’t stop those same crowds gathering again, when the Queen dies. And they won’t stop me surrendering myself to music sometimes, when I’m caught unawares.

Any musical ensemble, no matter what the style, is faced with huge conflicts due to the fact that there are so many personalities and egos involved. It’s like a three-, four-, or five-way marriage. This odd, multiplicative psychology was on my mind as I watched A Late Quartet, a drama about a string quartet that has played together to acclaim for twenty-five years, apparently with no serious problems, and suddenly seem on the verge of disintegrating.

A Late Quartet is really a quintet, a drama between five characters. The nominal leader of the group is the cellist, Peter (Christopher Walken), a good-natured and kind man who is near the end of his career as a musician due to a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. Daniel (Mark Ivanir), is the first violinist, an arrogant and cold man who approaches music in a methodical, almost scientific manner. Not much warmer is the violist, Juliette (Catherine Keener), who is an introvert and guards her emotions. Her husband, Robert (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), the second violinist, is her polar opposite, warm and somewhat impulsive. The fifth character is Robert and Juliette’s daughter Alexandra (Imogen Poots) who has begun a relationship with Daniel.

Although it may not seem like it on the surface, this kind of film is among the hardest to make as it requires total knowledge of the five character’s interactions with each other. What is Peter’s relationship with Juliette? What is Robert’s relationship with Daniel, before and after he starts “dating” his daughter? How is Peter’s reaction to this tempered by the fact he knows that Robert also wants to play first violin, and wants to group to continue after he retires as his legacy?

The complicated natures of the relationships make this a film for multiple viewings. The director and co-writer, Yaron Zilberman, avoids taking anyone’s side on almost any issue. Does Daniel’s methodical style hamper creativity, or does it perfect it? Is Juliette a lousy wife, or is Robert a lousy husband, or were they a bad match from the start?

The movie watches with interest as the characters interact with each other, only to end in an extraordinary and moving final scene that could be a manipulative trick in a lesser film. A Late Quartet is a drama that works because it trusts that its audiences will care about the lives of its characters, a correct assumption.

3.5 out 4

War is hell. People around the globe are widely in agreement on this simple statement, which is pretty impressive, seeing as we can barely agree on the day of the week most of the time. And yet, for some reason, we’ve only managed about three years without war since WWII. We’ve seen the Greek civil war, The Jewish insurgency in Palestine, the South East Asia conflicts, the Malayan emergency, the Korean war, the Anglo-Egyptian war, the Mau Mau insurgency, the Cyprus emergency, the Suez/Sinai war, the Muscat and Oman intervention, the Jordan intervention, the Indonesia conflicts, the Ugandan army mutiny, the Aden conflict, the Northern Ireland conflict, the Falklands war, both Gulf wars, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, the Former Yugoslavia peacekeeping operations and the Libyan war, and those are just the wars that Britain has been involved in. And it looks like things are about to get pretty intense in North Korea soon, but that’s another kettle of fish entirely.

These wars have always been about the deaths of individuals. The number of young men your country is able or willing to put forward to defend an ideal, attack an ideal, protect your territory, or invade someone else’s has ultimately always been the deciding factor in who gets to claim to be the winner. The science of warfare has grown around two simple premises. You can improve your chances by making it less likely that the bad guys can kill your guys, or you can make it more likely that your guys can kill the bad guys.

Today, I came across a video of a laser cannon mounted on a US ship destroying a US drone. It wasn’t as spectacular as I was hoping – I wanted an explosion, the drone to evaporate into thin air. That said, it was still pretty impressive. The drone burst into flame, and lost control, crashing into the sea. The video’s below, and regardless of what you think about this article, it’s worth watching.

But you see, it got me thinking. There’s been a move to using UAVs in a number of theatres recently to minimise casualties among soldiers, to allow dangerous areas to be reconnoitred before troops move in, or, in some cases, to actually launch strikes against the enemy without our troops ever moving within rifle range. It is, no doubt, an incredible feat of engineering. The drones themselves are sophisticated, and the amount of work that has gone into trying to ensure our troops’ safety is phenomenal.

Think about how far we’ve come since the first battles were fought. One man against another for a hunk of meat developed into a group of men against another group of men for land and resources. At some point, it is believed that the Sumerians were the first to train and equip what we would call an army. This was significant, because it was no longer citizen against citizen, it was trained and armed professionals fighting against each other to demonstrate their superiority. In a sense, this created the first “civilians” in the sense that we use the word today. There were now people who didn’t fight, because others did the fighting for them. Society has benefited immensely from this. People could get on with making the world around them a better place, and could specialise in skills like science, mathematics, agriculture. And it has led us to the point we find ourselves at today.

Warfare has always been relatively symmetrical. Introducing this level of machine-versus-machine technology into warfare makes for some interesting philosophical questions (if a drone falls in the woods, and no-one notices it’s gone, does it matter if it was shot down or if it was ‘operator error’?), but most significantly, it forces the opponent to make a choice. They have three options:

1. Continue to send young men to their deaths, despite knowing that they will never get close enough to a real live enemy to have an effect on the outcome of the war.
2. Adapt, and develop machine weapons of their own, which abstracts the conflict into a question of “who has more resources”, that could in fact be answered without any material losses for either side.
3. Adopt an asymmetrical strategy. Begin a campaign of terror. Start to target the public. The number of civilian casualties would drastically increase, but the number of soldiers who die in combat would plummet.

In the past, war has been an effective (if rather uncivilised) way of resolving disputes because the stakes are so high. We roll the dice against each other, and the losses are painful. By introducing technology like this, we are effectively changing the stakes, and what’s worse, it’s only those who can afford the big losses who have access to the technology and resources to allow them to avoid them.

This doesn’t mean that wars will cease to occur. It means that the nature of war will change. The Goliathan countries that can afford the technology will soon be faced with Davids who can’t compete in terms of might, and so will attack where the armour is weak. There are a lot of parallels I can draw with the story of David and Goliath, but the most important is to remember that David wins … and he was the good guy (well … despite going on to have more than ten wives and another ten concubines, sleeping with Bathsheba, the wife of one of his top men, then trying to get him killed so he could add her to his hareem).

Terrorism will become the only way for a vastly outnumbered and outgunned opponent to resolve issues outside diplomatic channels. We will blame it on the opponents being cruel and inhuman, as we have done for thousands of years, but the truth is that we will have brought it on ourselves, by taking away the possibility for armed combat to inflict serious losses.

“It’s the army’s job to die for their country”, is often countered with the rejoinder that “it’s the army’s job to fight for their country”. But this simply doesn’t make sense. As long as people are prepared to kill for what they believe in, we need people who are prepared to die for what they believe in too. Because if we swap our battlefields and armies for drones and cruise missiles, then the people that die will be ordinary civilians.

The New York boys are back, and what are we expecting from the five-piece? The cover art’s a little drab, the title’s verging on downright depressing, but The Strokes’ fifth studio album is certainly no comedown.

The beautiful irony of Comedown Machine is that it marks an uplifting moment in the band’s journey. The Strokes have been around for 12 years now, and it’s natural for their sound to have changed over this time. However, their two most recent studio albums seemed to lack the vivacity and energy that Is This It? and Room on Fire had to offer us. Comedown Machine brings this vivacity back. No, Julian Casablancas is no longer the scruffy, denim-clad scallywag screeching ‘Last night, she said…’ into a microphone, and this album is by no means another ‘Is This It?’; but it spans genres, it’s mature, and has also simultaneously revived some of the fun and boyish charm that the band had to offer us back in 2001.

It kicks off with 80s-infused ‘Tap Out’. The song’s catchy, it’s got a killer guitar riff that Phil Collins would be proud of, it’s a powerful and controversial start to the album that none of us were expecting, and I love it.

The synthesiser riff is powerful and Julian’s falsetto is in full force in ‘One Way Trigger’. Whoever knew he could hit those notes? ‘Welcome to Japan’ is another insatiably catchy one with some lovely key changes and just a hint of The Black Keys. The slower, more subdued ‘80s Comedown Machine’ is synthesiser heavy and reminiscent of guitarist Albert Hammond, Jr.’s solo work. ‘50/50’ reminds of garage-rockers The Hives, with Julian temporarily returning to his muffled, screechy vocals. There’s already an array of variety on this album.

‘Slow Animals’ marks a change as the mood mellows and the tempo slows significantly. The sensitive ‘Chances’ includes slower drumbeats, gentler guitar riffs and Julian crooning to his audience “I take my chances alone// Get on your horse and be gone”.

The Strokes’ lyrics have always been a touch on the metaphorical side (‘The room is on fire as she’s fixing her hair’, anyone?) but they’ve definitely taken an even bigger step towards the abstract. One of the catchiest of the album, ‘Happy Ending’ includes the refrain: ‘Baby, show me where to go, //Some things I don’t want to know.’ I’m not sure where they need directions to, but it quite aptly sums up the band’s current position in the music industry; suffocated by their own yesteryear image, it’s been difficult for Casablancas et al. to break away from their self-defining, and genre-defining debut, and choose a direction to carry on pleasing their fans. They’d be pleased to know that this album’s sure done it.

Comedown Machine ends with the crackly, misty ‘Call It Fate, Call It Karma’, which sounds like it should be sweeping straight out the end of a gramophone in a 1950s ballroom, with Julian’s wispy crooning and eerie piano accompaniment adding to the effect. It leaves the album on a completely unexpected note: a song totally unfitting to the rough-and-tumble garage rock of The Strokes, who once sang about lying to get to girls’ apartments, and took the piss out of New York City Cops. But nevertheless, it’s beautifully executed.

If you are looking for another era-defining Is This It?, then I’m afraid, Comeback Machine…well, isn’t. But it’s ambitious, it’s creative, it’s varied, and it has cut out the lacklustre and put the fun back into this band.

So where exactly do they go from here? I’m not sure, but this is in no way it for The Strokes. The end really does have no end for this band. Now let’s just hope for a UK tour.

Sarah Dawood

8/10 

Best Track(s): ‘Tap Out’, ‘Welcome to Japan’, ‘Happy Ending’

You might also like: 

The Black Keys

Gotye

Julian Casablancas and Albert Hammond, Jr.’s solo work

]]> http://spiltinc.co.uk/2013/04/23/the-strokes-comedown-machine/feed/ 0 http://spiltinc.co.uk/2013/04/18/the-lady-and-the-f-word-thatcher-and-feminism/ http://spiltinc.co.uk/2013/04/18/the-lady-and-the-f-word-thatcher-and-feminism/#comments Thu, 18 Apr 2013 12:52:13 +0000 Siobhain Woodhouse http://spiltinc.co.uk/?p=8074

This week Geri Halliwell declared Margaret Thatcher to be the “1st lady of girl power.” The first and only female British Prime Minister but also the very same woman who declared feminism to be “poison” and openly spoke about how she detested it.

During her time in office there was only one other woman in her cabinet. Perhaps surrounding herself with men was to prove a point that the opposite gender can be just as powerful as them – if not more. Or perhaps another woman in the cabinet would threaten her power. It is widely reported that the lady would flirt with men to get her own way, suggesting there was a manipulative streak in her. Another woman could not be so easily manipulated and could full well have been seen by Thatcher as a barrier in the way of getting what she wanted.

It is generally agreed she did almost nothing to further women’s rights to equality in the UK. She came to office at a time when the women’s movement had reached new heights yet seemed reluctant to do anything to help women progress. I do not believe that this was to do with her hatred of the feminist movement; I do not believe she did to purposely hold women back. I believe this is a reflection of her views on society. As she destroyed northern communities throughout the 1980s she famously stated there was “no such thing as society.” If the lady did not even believe in society, how could a woman expect her to be an ambassador for sisterhood.

Some of those that surrounded her throughout her Downing Street years noted changes in her. Becoming ever more confident she lost the ladylike gloves and hat – reserved only for special engagements – and would opt for a glass of whiskey over a more feminine tipple. Maybe this was in an effort to “de-feminise” herself. Maybe she thought the only way to be as powerful as only men before her had been was to act like one. Or perhaps she was fed up with her gender taking such a predominant role.

It seems that Thatcher may be a feminist icon with no choice in the matter. She may have despised the movement, but she helped little girls believe that they too could lead the country one day. However, scratch the surface and you will find she is more of an icon for the individualists among us.

On April 27th, Hoxton Docks will play host to the first ever official Shoreditch fashion show. The show promises to be “a truly immersive, dynamic and creative experience” for all guests – a promise that looks to be well kept as the show will also feature illustrations, installations and photography as well as the hottest new fashion talent. This is set to be much more than your average catwalk show.

There will be eight featured artists at the show, from Tagen Donovan whose colourful creations have been described as “Hollywood on speed” to the more feminine prints of UCA graduate, Kelly Bromfield. With such a diverse range of artists, I can already guarantee this is going to be a visual delight.

The show’s curators – Made in Shoreditch magazine, OffBeat and The Vivid Fashion Group – have been on the lookout since January for two emerging designers to showcase their pieces on the catwalk. The judging panel, compiled of fashion heavyweights, included fashion icon Mischa Barton, the ever quirky Eliza Doolittle and Serge De Nimes founder (and Made in Chelsea god) Oliver Proudlock. The two final winners were announced last week as Runaway88 and Lily Stodel.

Runaway88 specialise in luxury outerwear and were selected by Oliver Proudlock as one of the winners, although it seems they are already a hit amongst celebs with Rosie Fortescue and Loren Ridinger both tweeting their love for the brand and its fabulous jackets. The Runaway88 have already had the fantastic opportunity of presenting their designs to fashion royalty at London Fashion Week back in February. Since then the brand has taken a more global stage, being recognised as Italy’s TheMAG.it.

Newcomer Lily Stodel was chosen by Eliza Doolittle which is no surprise when you look at her work, it’s Eliza in a nutshell – a fun and girly statement-maker. Lily’s designs, actually inspired by the Spice Girls, impressed at Graduate Fashion Week back in June last year. Lily’s collection could not be more different from Runaway88′s which I think is a hint of what is to come from the show – a range of ideas, collections and designers to meet all tastes.

What I am most looking forward to in the show is getting an insight of what the future has in store for British fashion and design. The majority of the works on show are works by current students or recent graduates. This show is set to inspire and encourage creativity and I just cannot wait!

Check out the Made in Shoreditch site here and follow winning designers on Twitter @Runaway88 and @LilyAmelia.

Now you know that you are at an adequate point in your career when your name alone can sell a film and I, among many, were sold by the beautiful phrase ‘the new Danny Boyle film.’ The power given to a single name is wholly deserved in Boyle’s works; his newest film Trance is the third time I have emerged from a Boyle-infected cinema totally awestruck and, once regaining my speech, vowing with gusto that that film is my favourite of all time. The same occurred with Slumdog Millionaire, with its outstanding soundtrack and storyline, and again after 127 Hours with its incredible observation and ability to keep me in continuous awe for ninety-four minutes. Finally Trance has made me realise that a director who can evoke such a reaction from me three times in a row deserves the upgraded status of my favourite.

I feel at some point I should say a little something about the actual film itself, without giving away anything that might taint your experience. The casting of this film is inspired, the acting is believable and completely entrancing (excuse the pun) and the story still managed to blow me away, even with my already high expectations. I would like to offer some advice on how to watch this film though. Are you one of those people who like to decipher a film prematurely? Do you tend to start a film with the declaration “she dies,” causing the fist of your fellow film spectator to clench, and conclude with the phrase “I told you,” which tend to move the already clenched fist towards your smug face? If you are or you know that your Orange Wednesday partner is one of these people, be prepared with a sock to shove into the mouth in order to prevent the sharing of this wisdom. Attempt to turn this skill off because it will prove burdensome while watching Trance. By the same token, if you are the kind of person that gives up and walks out if you are struggling to understand a film, or are inclined to employ any of the interrogative words: who, what, where, why and how in the direction of your neighbour – stick it out. Until a certain point, you are not supposed to know what is going on in this film. If at the end – and by the end I mean the credits – you still don’t understand, I give you permission to probe and clarify away. Basically, do not overthink when watching this Boyle masterpiece; allow him to take you where he takes you.

The interesting thing I find about Boyle films is they are not the kind you can watch until the words start coming out of your eyeballs, like many romcoms are for example, the aforementioned Love Actually or indeed any of Richard Curtis’ easy but fantastically funny works. Nevertheless, I would still buy the DVD after having seen it as it should be: on the big screen. This is not because I cannot wait to watch it again, but because true genius deserves that respect. So to sum up. in case you hadn’t already guessed – and forgive me for the hero worship running throughout this review – I highly recommend this film for those who love and appreciate the cinema, as long as you aren’t too squeamish.