There have been a lot of rather snippy reviews about Johnny English: Reborn in the press and other media - the Guardian, some free press and the BBC come to mind - suggesting it was second-rate, packaged Rowan Atkinson, marketed at the French.
Nevertheless we went along to watch it in the Peckham Multiplex.
... And found ourselves in a room full of very happy English people (in all senses), laughing out loud. Not just for kids, theere was a huge amount of genuine, cheerful, adult laughter.
In fact I'd be tempted to say there was more relaxed, happy, out-loud laughter for a new film than I've heard in the last 10 years or so.
The structure and tone moves on from the first film, and there is less pure slapstick and pathos; it's more subtle and complex, while keeping lots of jokes in. And they are very funny.
These critics really need to sort themselves out.
Are we yet again seeing the endemic English habit of critically undervaluing the comic?
Monday, 10 October 2011
A New Office
On the Today programme this morning I'm sure I heard them call it the Office of Bodge-It Responsibility.
A Freudian Slip....??
A Freudian Slip....??
Sunday, 9 October 2011
Poem of the Week
After Reading a Child's Guide to Modern Physics
W. H. Auden
If all a top physicist knows
About the Truth be true,
Then, for all the so-and-so's,
Futility and grime,
Our common world contains,
We have a better time
Than the Greater Nebulae do,
Or the atoms in our brains.
Marriage is rarely bliss
But, surely it would be worse
As particles to pelt
At thousands of miles per sec
About a universe
Wherein a lover's kiss
Would either not be felt
Or break the loved one's neck.
Though the face at which I stare
While shaving it be cruel
For, year after year, it repels
An ageing suitor, it has,
Thank God, sufficient mass
To be altogether there,
Not an indeterminate gruel
Which is partly somewhere else.
Our eyes prefer to suppose
That a habitable place
Has a geocentric view,
That architects enclose
A quiet Euclidian space:
Exploded myths - but who
Could feel at home astraddle
An ever expanding saddle?
This passion of our kind
For the process of finding out
Is a fact one can hardly doubt,
But I would rejoice in it more
If I knew more clearly what
We wanted the knowledge for,
Felt certain still that the mind
Is free to know or not.
It has chosen once, it seems,
And whether our concern
For magnitude's extremes
Really become a creature
Who comes in a median size,
Or politicizing Nature
Be altogether wise,
Is something we shall learn.
W. H. Auden
If all a top physicist knows
About the Truth be true,
Then, for all the so-and-so's,
Futility and grime,
Our common world contains,
We have a better time
Than the Greater Nebulae do,
Or the atoms in our brains.
Marriage is rarely bliss
But, surely it would be worse
As particles to pelt
At thousands of miles per sec
About a universe
Wherein a lover's kiss
Would either not be felt
Or break the loved one's neck.
Though the face at which I stare
While shaving it be cruel
For, year after year, it repels
An ageing suitor, it has,
Thank God, sufficient mass
To be altogether there,
Not an indeterminate gruel
Which is partly somewhere else.
Our eyes prefer to suppose
That a habitable place
Has a geocentric view,
That architects enclose
A quiet Euclidian space:
Exploded myths - but who
Could feel at home astraddle
An ever expanding saddle?
This passion of our kind
For the process of finding out
Is a fact one can hardly doubt,
But I would rejoice in it more
If I knew more clearly what
We wanted the knowledge for,
Felt certain still that the mind
Is free to know or not.
It has chosen once, it seems,
And whether our concern
For magnitude's extremes
Really become a creature
Who comes in a median size,
Or politicizing Nature
Be altogether wise,
Is something we shall learn.
Berlin 4: Zoo
Berlin Zoo is wonderful, and huge. We spent the whole day there.
When the second World War ended, there were only around 90 animals left in the Zoo, but today there are thousands - all-in-all I took 188 pictures (or thereabouts), so these are just a smattering.
For me the obvious stars were the hippos, not least because you could see them swimming close by through the murky, green glass side of their pool, and the the floppy-eared aardvark that lived in the twilight, nocturnal animal area (hence no photo). Just like Cerebus, only not so niggled.
When the second World War ended, there were only around 90 animals left in the Zoo, but today there are thousands - all-in-all I took 188 pictures (or thereabouts), so these are just a smattering.
Fewer Shiny Things
It is very sad that Steve Jobs has died so young - just as it would be for anyone to die at the age of 56 while still very much engaged with life and creativity.
But the outpourings of various commentators on this 'Creative Genius' seem to me just so much guff. For example I read somewhere that "It’s not overstating the case to say that Jobs was one of a handful of people who created the world we know today" - Um, well, yes it is overstating the case, and massively so. I would suggest that the list of mind-boggling, major things created in the last, say, 50 years that changed the World, and with which Mr Jobs had no involvement, is vast indeed.
The Guardian columnists and commentators were particularly prone to this kind of praise during the week - although I was pleased to see a strong reader reaction against all of the eulogies in the letters page.
I should be clear. I've never owned an i-Mac, i-Pod, i-Phone nor i-Pad. Nor, come to that, a Sony Walkman. I once got given an MP3 player but never used it and I don't have (nor want) a Kindle. My mobile phone is basic and I've had it for five years, refusing 'free' handset upgrades because of the impact on landfill.
Jobs and his company produced computers and gadgets - often underpowered, and frequently (not always) less function-rich than their predecessors. Just like Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita much earlier, he and his team did sometimes create - or more precisely grow - markets which hadn't really existed in the sme way before. And unlike them he locked people into proprietary models and technologies (i-Tunes, AppStore, all the upgrades) to add to company revenues. He did use good designers (often British), and got developers focussed on useability - but that all came at a price. He made shiny things.
Yet somehow that isn't enough, and to my mind it actually isn't very much at all. Not enough to justify all the tributes from the MacHeads and i-Heads. It has been said that because these are the only computers that arts graduates can understand, these are the only ones they will praise - but I don't think that is quite the case. What does seem true is that they get hooked evangelically into a pro-Apple mindset and can't see the downsides. Systems that limit developers and make innovation harder if it isn't generating Apple revenues. A company that is far from green and sustainable. A nasty, capitalist sales and marketing drive that makes lots of people want to buy stuff they really, really don't need (although to be fair that was hardly Steve Jobs or Apple's invention...)
I would argue that, however good he was at his job, he still didn't touch most people the way that a great musician or writer can. Or even a raucous belly-laugh at a Saturday night comedy show on the telly. But then I never really used his gadgets, so maybe I don't know.
He made shiny things I didn't want.
But the outpourings of various commentators on this 'Creative Genius' seem to me just so much guff. For example I read somewhere that "It’s not overstating the case to say that Jobs was one of a handful of people who created the world we know today" - Um, well, yes it is overstating the case, and massively so. I would suggest that the list of mind-boggling, major things created in the last, say, 50 years that changed the World, and with which Mr Jobs had no involvement, is vast indeed.
The Guardian columnists and commentators were particularly prone to this kind of praise during the week - although I was pleased to see a strong reader reaction against all of the eulogies in the letters page.
I should be clear. I've never owned an i-Mac, i-Pod, i-Phone nor i-Pad. Nor, come to that, a Sony Walkman. I once got given an MP3 player but never used it and I don't have (nor want) a Kindle. My mobile phone is basic and I've had it for five years, refusing 'free' handset upgrades because of the impact on landfill.
Jobs and his company produced computers and gadgets - often underpowered, and frequently (not always) less function-rich than their predecessors. Just like Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita much earlier, he and his team did sometimes create - or more precisely grow - markets which hadn't really existed in the sme way before. And unlike them he locked people into proprietary models and technologies (i-Tunes, AppStore, all the upgrades) to add to company revenues. He did use good designers (often British), and got developers focussed on useability - but that all came at a price. He made shiny things.
Yet somehow that isn't enough, and to my mind it actually isn't very much at all. Not enough to justify all the tributes from the MacHeads and i-Heads. It has been said that because these are the only computers that arts graduates can understand, these are the only ones they will praise - but I don't think that is quite the case. What does seem true is that they get hooked evangelically into a pro-Apple mindset and can't see the downsides. Systems that limit developers and make innovation harder if it isn't generating Apple revenues. A company that is far from green and sustainable. A nasty, capitalist sales and marketing drive that makes lots of people want to buy stuff they really, really don't need (although to be fair that was hardly Steve Jobs or Apple's invention...)
I would argue that, however good he was at his job, he still didn't touch most people the way that a great musician or writer can. Or even a raucous belly-laugh at a Saturday night comedy show on the telly. But then I never really used his gadgets, so maybe I don't know.
He made shiny things I didn't want.
A Poorly-Made Case
So. I've just been reading The Case for Working With Your Hands: Or Why Office Work is Bad For Us and Fixing Things Feels Good by Matthew Crawford.
He argues in favour of craft activities, of building and repairing material items, and compares this favourably with mind-numbing office work. He mourns the diappearance of US 'shop' classes (where light engineering and automotive mechanics were taught, as far as I can work out - the classes that the Fonz and Danny Zucko took).
Part of his argument is that, far from being a dumb, repetitive, uncreative activity. much of such work is highly intellectual and requires imaginative engagement with the immediate problem. He argues for the promulgation of tacit knowledge - handed down and shared by experts - rather than book-learned understanding.
Most of his examples come from his own experiences of repairing specialist, classic and high-performance motorbikes. Previously, he was a philosophy PhD, and he has the theoretical underpinnings to support his arguments.
Now, I expected to like this book when I bought it - it contains a strong criticism of the office world, and of large corporates (and help desks, of vanilla standard solutions to standard problems which result in no capacity to deal with the unusual or the difficult, and so on and so forth). He speaks eloquently of the challenges inherent in repairing old machines - recycling, if you will.
And yet, ironically, his argument is broken in a many places, and needs substantial repair itself.
He argues from far, far too small a set of examples - all related to the highly-specialist repair jobs he is involved with - but which aren't necessarily typical of how much of engineering works. And he links this work to the thrills of those who ride the machines 'at their limits', in a petrolhead frenzy of speed and risk. These challenges seem at one point to be just as necessary to his argument as the pleasues of the repair work itself - because only the high-performance riders can understand what he does and how knowledgeable he is at it.
While mounting a fairly standard attack on Taylorism, he misunderstands much about the world of office work - eg in consigning all of IT to the rubbish pile as mind-numbing slavery, he misunderstands the pleasures of coding, software fixing (repairing again), information analysis (for some) and so forth. He's never done it himself, hasn't checked it with others, and gets it horribly wrong. Not all of IT is wordprocessing or email. Basically, he confuses consumers and creators of digital technology - and it harms his argument greatly.
If his overall arguments are weakened like this, he is also limited in the details of his piece. He misunderstand's Godel's Incompleteness Theorem - in a manner typical of a philosopher or cultural studies specialist, who argues from analogy but fails to even attempt to grasp the nuts-and-bolts of the maths. He seems to want the language of the machine shop to filter into his narrative, luching into unnecessary crude sexism on occassions.
These are just a few examples. Overall, his argument starts, but doesn't really get going and is severely underpowered. It needs to be stripped down and rebuilt from the beginning - with some of the older, shoddier lazy parts replaced altogether. Which is a great pity - I believe there is a really good to be written on this subject, which makes a case somewhat like Matthew Crawford's.
But this isn't it.
He argues in favour of craft activities, of building and repairing material items, and compares this favourably with mind-numbing office work. He mourns the diappearance of US 'shop' classes (where light engineering and automotive mechanics were taught, as far as I can work out - the classes that the Fonz and Danny Zucko took).
Part of his argument is that, far from being a dumb, repetitive, uncreative activity. much of such work is highly intellectual and requires imaginative engagement with the immediate problem. He argues for the promulgation of tacit knowledge - handed down and shared by experts - rather than book-learned understanding.
Most of his examples come from his own experiences of repairing specialist, classic and high-performance motorbikes. Previously, he was a philosophy PhD, and he has the theoretical underpinnings to support his arguments.
Now, I expected to like this book when I bought it - it contains a strong criticism of the office world, and of large corporates (and help desks, of vanilla standard solutions to standard problems which result in no capacity to deal with the unusual or the difficult, and so on and so forth). He speaks eloquently of the challenges inherent in repairing old machines - recycling, if you will.
And yet, ironically, his argument is broken in a many places, and needs substantial repair itself.
He argues from far, far too small a set of examples - all related to the highly-specialist repair jobs he is involved with - but which aren't necessarily typical of how much of engineering works. And he links this work to the thrills of those who ride the machines 'at their limits', in a petrolhead frenzy of speed and risk. These challenges seem at one point to be just as necessary to his argument as the pleasues of the repair work itself - because only the high-performance riders can understand what he does and how knowledgeable he is at it.
While mounting a fairly standard attack on Taylorism, he misunderstands much about the world of office work - eg in consigning all of IT to the rubbish pile as mind-numbing slavery, he misunderstands the pleasures of coding, software fixing (repairing again), information analysis (for some) and so forth. He's never done it himself, hasn't checked it with others, and gets it horribly wrong. Not all of IT is wordprocessing or email. Basically, he confuses consumers and creators of digital technology - and it harms his argument greatly.
If his overall arguments are weakened like this, he is also limited in the details of his piece. He misunderstand's Godel's Incompleteness Theorem - in a manner typical of a philosopher or cultural studies specialist, who argues from analogy but fails to even attempt to grasp the nuts-and-bolts of the maths. He seems to want the language of the machine shop to filter into his narrative, luching into unnecessary crude sexism on occassions.
These are just a few examples. Overall, his argument starts, but doesn't really get going and is severely underpowered. It needs to be stripped down and rebuilt from the beginning - with some of the older, shoddier lazy parts replaced altogether. Which is a great pity - I believe there is a really good to be written on this subject, which makes a case somewhat like Matthew Crawford's.
But this isn't it.
Saturday, 8 October 2011
A Nice Flann
Just to note what I found to be an entertaining crossword, with a full Flann O'brien theme, from Puck on Wednesday. Even if it did cause a little mild controversy among those nice people at Fifteensquared.
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