Of reading and watching DVDs

The three books I ordered from Amazon at the start of August arrived early (they weren't supposed to get here until September, but they turned up in mid-August), so for a while I found myself in the highly unusual (for me) position of reading three things at the same time; two of the Amazon arrivals and Nelson deMille's The Charm School, an old favourite I was in the middle of rereading when the Amazon parcel arrived.

I've since polished off the DeMille and Werner Herzog's Of Walking in Ice. The latter, an account of the film director's 1974 journey on foot from Munich to Paris, was a little disappointing. At first I found the unusual writing style refreshing. Some of Herzog's antics also brought a smile to my face. For example, at night he usually sought shelter in barns or broke into abandoned houses or deserted holiday homes, always careful to cause as little damage as possible. In one of these homes he found a partially solved crossword puzzle on a table, which he completed before leaving the next morning. Many of the descriptions (of encounters with people he met or observed along the way, and in particular of the sense of separation that often accompanied such encounters; of aspects of the slowly passing countryside; of the state of his feet and groin) I could identify with. Some, like the following, verged on the poetic.

At the market was a boy on crutches, leaning against the wall of a house as my feet refused to cooperate anymore. With a single, brief exchange of glances we measured the degree of our relationship.

Once the novelty wore off, however, the writing style (and at times the translation) became a bit off-putting. Often it was difficult to distinguish real-time events from dreams, hallucinations, and memories of past events. Take the following passage, for example, in which Herzog describes reaching the Seine.

I could swim the rest of the way. Why not swim along the Seine? I swam with a group of people who fled from New Zealand to Australia - in fact I swam in front, being the only one who knew the route already. The only chance the refugees had of escape was to swim; the distance, however, was 50 miles. I advised people to take plastic footballs with them as additional swimming aids. For those who drowned, the undertaking became legendary before it even began. After several days we reached a town in Australia; I was the first one to come ashore, and those who followed were preceded by their wristwatches, which drifted half underwater. I grabbed the watches and pulled the swimmers ashore. Great, pathetic scenes of brotherliness ensued on shore. Sylvie le Clezio was the only one among them whom I knew. When it started to rain very hard again, I wanted to seek shelter in a roofed bus stop, but there were already several people there. I hesitated before creeping over to a school for cover.

Speaking of Herzog, so impressed was I with his documentary Encounters at the End of the World (which you'll remember I saw at the International Film Festival) that a week or so later I went out and hired two Herzog movies on DVD: Grizzly Man and Rescue Dawn. The former was quite amazing. Full of stunning landscapes, touching encounters with wild animals, one very strange protagonist, and the same heavily-accented, dry narration by the director that I so enjoyed in Encounters. I love it that a conspiracy theory has emerged that this documentary is in fact a fake. You can read a bit about it at IMDB.

Rescue Dawn I didn’t really enjoy. I've been a fan of Christian Bale ever since I saw him in American Psycho, but he seemed miscast in the role of Dieter Dengler, and the acting in general (or maybe it was the script) I found less than convincing. There was a so-so "making of" documentary on the DVD, which showed that Herzog (now in his mid-60s) is still a very "hands on" director who doesn't like making his actors do things he himself isn’t prepared to do, whether it be eating live insects or swimming in rapids.

Along with these Herzog movies I also rented Ed Sullivan Presents The Beatles, a two-DVD set featuring the four episodes of the Ed Sullivan Show on which The Beatles appeared in 1964 and 1965. You may recall that one of the other Amazon books I ordered was Revolution in the Head, a song-by-song analysis of all The Beatles' songs, so with this by my side I was able to read about each song as it was played on the show. Although I don’t remember ever seeing The Beatles "live" on TV as a youngster, some of the other acts they performed with on these shows definitely brought back childhood memories. There was Soupy Sales, familiar to me as a panelist on What's My Line, singing a corny song called "The Mouse". And there was Cilla Black. When I was a young boy, our whole family (perhaps with the exception of my rebellious eldest brother) would gather around the TV to watch her show, Cilla.

One thing I never knew (until reading about it in Revolution in the Head) was that that show's theme song, "Step Inside Love", was a Paul McCartney composition. In fact Cilla's connection with The Beatles was quite deep. According to Wikipedia, she started out as a cloakroom attendant at the Cavern Club in Liverpool where she used to give impromptu performances. John Lennon eventually introduced her to their manager, Brian Epstein, and persuaded him to give her an audition, where she was accompanied by The Beatles!

I still haven’t finished Revolution in the Head. When I took back the Ed Sullivan DVDs to Alice in Videoland I noticed they had The Beatles Anthology on DVD, so what I think I might do when I have some spare time (it's a five-DVD set) is hire that and read the entries for the songs as they're introduced in the documentary. This probably won’t be for a while. I started rewatching The Wire a few weeks ago, and I'm only halfway through season 3.