Willy Wonka

Am I the only one who prefers Gene Wilder's Willy to Johnny Depp's?

Tim Burton's version is, in many ways, superior: the songs, the mise-en-scene, the special effects, perhaps even the colour. But Wilder had an uncany, unexplained aura (call it mystery) mixed with a melancholy, that was more Sickert than sick.

Depp, with his (dental) family drama is more mental than anything, weird when he should be wonderful, and poutingly adolescent when he should have been magical - next they'll be recasting Depp as Humbert Humbert, and making him the young one.

Willy Wonka doesn't need a Freudian backstory. He transgresses and transcends the Oedipal struggle.

Wilder made me shiver and was unfogettable. Depp's too lightweight here, all tics and homages to Jackson and Rogers. His greatest performance remains Ed Wood. Now that's weirdness well done.

The Oxfam Poetry Reading Series continues

The Oxfam Poetry Reading Series continues with its Autumn season, after a very successful Summer Festival.

Both upcoming events feature some of the best, most popular, and compelling poets now writing in the English language, globally, from Australia, America, Canada, Ireland, the UK, and South Africa.

Due to the extraordinary demand likely for these events, please do contact us if you are interested in reserving a ticket.

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Tuesday, September 13, 2005
7-9 pm, Oxfam Books & Music Shop
91 Marylebone High Street, London W1

Four Poets for Oxfam:

Les Murray, Lachlan Mackinnon
Isobel Dixon
and Todd Swift

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End of Year Finale
Thursday, November 29, 2005
7-10 pm, Oxfam Books & Music Shop
91 Marylebone High Street, London W1

Six Poets for Oxfam:

Lavinia Greenlaw, Sophie Hannah, Sinead Morrissey
Charles Bennett, Leah Fritz
and Briar Wood

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Admission free - suggested £8 donation - all proceeds to Oxfam.

To reserve a ticket (for a place, not necessarily a seat) call 020 7487 3570
or email oxfammarylebone@hotmail.com

Fa yeung nin wa

I consider Fa yeung nin wa (In The Mood for Love) directed by Wong Kar-wai the supreme work of art of the last decade of the 20th century (culminating in 2000), for its sublime and supreme mix of fin-de-siecle tropes, images and style, taken from both Western and Eastern cinema, literature and art.

I think it is the finest High Erotic Drama in 20th century film, after Vertigo, which is the second best film ever created, for the intense, beautiful and multiple elements surrounding love-death themes from Wagner, Freud and Chandler, which it unleashes.

2046 would be in any list of created works that might vie against Bob Dylan's album (see previous post), but ultimately is slightly weaker than its prequel, though perhaps more fascinating, even visually intricate. However, Fa yeung nin wa seems to me to have generated its own textures - moods, flavours - so as to almost invite radical comparison with so-called reality: it is, arguably, the embodiment of desire.

Playtime for Tati

I have recently seen what now must rank as one of my ten favorite films: Playtime by Jacques Tati. Following on the heels of Peeping Tom, it has been quite a cinematic week.

Playtime has it all for me (all except dialogue and plot) - ultra-modern retro design, Pan Am-style costumes, a superb soundscape, and a filmic exuberance second only to Welles. This makes Far From Heaven seem bland and colourless.

Tati's satiric, futuristic, balletic work is a delight, and I urge you to try and see it as soon as you can, if only for the wonderful set-piece routines involving glass doors that don't exist (and those that do) - and images of Jetsons-like couples in their fully-exposed living rooms.

The end of the film - so sad-sweet it aches - suddenly turns on an observation so simple only Tati could find the rhythm that shows the quotidien to be also the rare - all life is a carnivalesque cycle of loss and being found - rich in isolation and verve. To despair is to ignore what is on the other side of the (perhaps) non-present door...

Postcard from Creeley

Announcing: a pooka press postcard printed at High Ground Press, August 2005 Robert Creeley 1926-2005. See image to the left. Cost $12.00. Cheque or Money Order made payable to Nancy McLean c/o

pooka press
P.O. Box 2648
Vancouver Main Station
349 West Georgia Street
Vancouver, B.C. V6B 3W8
CANADA

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(pooka is publishing poems of mine shortly, too).

Take A Stand

Volume 6 (2) 2005 is now out. A recent issue is pictured here.

This new issue of Stand - one of the UK's most respected and long-running little magazines - features work by Peter Redgrove, Penelope Shuttle, Michael Heller, Alison Trower, and your faithful correspondent, TS.

At only £6.50, and with its trademark wider than it is tall design, well worth the wait (this one's taken longer to appear than the next ice age).

Weather Permitted

Last night's Oxfam reading in London was a success and an endurance test - a sort of Iron Man for poets. It was un unexpectedly hot and humind evening, and, without air-conditioning, and with a capacity crowd of 115 in attendance (as well as volunteers and poets) it became a sauna, as they say.

Nonetheless, eight of the best poets now out there read for over two hours, we had a long wine-soaked interval which extended half the block down the high street - and raised about a thousand pounds for the current African crisis appeal. It was memorable, and somewhat intense - and each poet read poems with a heat-related theme.