The last book but one

While looking for reviews of my new book online, I accidentally turned up some reviews for my last book, Blockbuster, over at livingsocial.com. They come from real readers, not those pale, doughy creatures of the night known as critics. Thanks, guys.

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fotini douglas, 10 months ago

As I was a film major at uni this was just like a big film geek flashback that I really enjoyed!
Academic, insightful and witty! No cinematic diatribes here - a great background into the growth of the 'summer' blockbusters in Hollywood and how it has evolved/mutated over the years. Its all about the money!
A film geeks dream - with all the facts and figures on ET, Alien, Star Wars, Indiana, Arnie, Empire, Lord of The Rings - its all there- every biggie ever made!
There is some fantastic insider information collected from years of interviews with the who's who of the film industry. Useful for film buffs and academics alike (a rare mix!) it will inspire you to support the independent film industry and cinemas of the world.
There is some scary $$$$ being spent!

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Mark, 10 months ago

An intelligently argued case, by someone who grew up with the first wave of blockbusters (and is pretty much the same age as me, as it happens - he comments on how great it was to be a teen when “Raiders” first opened and, like him, I remember coming out of the cinema and wanting to be an archaeologist!), that attempts to put right the myth that Spielberg and Lucas, between them, killed decent films in Hollywood. Apart from a few niggles (he used “Skywalking” as a source, but makes some elemental mistakes regarding “Star Wars”, which bugged me), this is a good book, encompassing a wide range of films and talking indepth with a lot of directors. Well worth a read.

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Doris, about 1 year ago

Hilarously written ... A great read. It's taught me, that whenever I make a film, the characters better be adaptable to toys and other marrketing merchandise for it to make money! But seriously ... a must read for Spielberg and Lucas fans.

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Facebook User, about 1 year ago

It's fast-paced, easy to get into, and a thoroughly engrossing story, charting the history of the modern-day blockbuster from Jaws through to Lord Of The Rings.

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Facebook User, about 1 year ago

I loved this book. It felt like vindication for all the critics and art movie fans about how what they like is better than everyone. Shone took me back to the joy of seeing Star Wars, Raiders, and Titanic in the theaters. Good stuff.

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Susan Pierce Sloan , about 1 year ago

A call to arms for the great blockbuster movies of the 70s and 80s to return and a swift rebuke to anyone who claims that only 'art' movies are any good. I really enjoyed the refreshing approach of this book.

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Facebook User, about 1 year ago

Enjoying the background to films of my childhood and which I still love. Looking forward to finally reading 'Easy Riders and Raging Bulls' to allow contrasts and comparisons to be made. Biskind is made to look very selective in the conclusions he draws. Only a quarter of the way in so can't make to much of a judgement...Having completed the book I would recommend it to others although obviously the story of blockbuster films has not yet reached a conclusion as this year's slate of summer films (heading over the $150 million mark, budget-wise) shows.

"Shone manages his difficult task beautifully. In terms of critical analysis, I found his approach much more nuanced - and certainly better written - than Biskind’s "the barbarians have taken the castle" approach. He is eloquent and evocative in his description of the early blockbusters of Lucas and Spielberg, reminding you what was great about the blockbusters of the period. Yet he is equally convincing and entertaining as he charts the gradual debasement of the form those directors pioneered.... late in the book he admits that "the audiences who trot out of Spider-Man seem content enough, and doubtless one of them will one day write a book rubbishing this one, pointing out what a bunch of bores we first-generation blockbuster fans are, still banging on about Raiders of the Lost Ark after all these years." He may well be right, but he is sufficiently rigorous in his approach that whoever tries to do so will need to be thoughtful and convincing if they are to debunk this analysis." — Cinephobia

"If this was food, it would be a giant tub of fresh popcorn, covered in hot, molten butter, with an old-school choc top for dessert... Shone has the eye of a journalist and the discerning aficionado (one each); he treats us as he would wish to be treated. ... check this out. If you're a film fan and you want an alternate perspective on late-seventies, early-eighties moviemaking to Biskind's anti-blockbuster work "Easy Riders and Raging Bulls," then this is what you need." — Illiterarty.com

"It makes a pleasant change to come across a book on film that treats popular cinema as something to be celebrated. Even rarer for that book to treat its subject with intelligence... Shone articulates perceptions I’d not come across before, and which mark him out as a singularly astute commentator... an excellent book." — Youdothatvoodoo.com

The avalanche begins

“An intricate and paradoxical tale about innocence and experience, and the dangers and rewards of being truthful, to thine own self and otherwise” — Keith Miller, reviewing In The Rooms for the Times Literary Supplement

"It is rare for a writer to exhibit such bravery" — Toby Young, The Independent On Sunday

"Readable, amusing... well-written" — The Daily Mail

“[A] cutting comic debut” — Phil Baker, The Sunday Times

So many movies, so little time...

Okay. No time to waste. Going Haiku. (Like Going Rogue. Only more poetic).

500 Days of Summer. Time-hopping sometimes arbitrary. But loved the idea. Loved the Hall & Oates song. Suspicion Zooey Deschanel would have been a little crueller in real life. Always loved her singing voice. Foxy. 

The Hurt Locker. Unbearable suspense. Best film about Iraq. (Not saying much.) Love all bomb defusal movies. But this one best. Guy deserves an Oscar. Never seen him before. Reminded me of Steve McQueen. Unlike most movie tough guys, he's nuts. Suspicion more tough guys are nuts than movies normally let on. Got lost in Whole Foods afterwards. Wandering. Numb. 

Bruno. Laughed like a drain for five minutes. Then felt my soul being slowly sucked out of me. Scenes shorter than Borat. People's hackles raised faster.  Prefer the promotional stunts. Interview on Australian "Rove", for instance. Vatever. 

Life beyond the bottle

No other word will do. For that’s what it was.
Gravy.
Gravy, these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving, and
being loved by a good woman. Eleven years
ago he was told he had six months to live
at the rate he was going. And he was going
nowhere but down. So he changed his ways
somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?
After that it was all gravy, every minute
of it.

— Gravy, by Raymond Carver, from my piece about sober novelists for Intelligent Life.

Some thoughts on healthcare

I recently had kidney-related reasons to sample the best and worst of what the American / British systems of healthcare have to offer. My conclusions are as follows: the British system is a bit like being dressed by Snow's White's tweeting bluebirds, the American system more like waking up in the middle of a five-lane highway.

I exaggerate, of course, but that's healthcare for you: help takes on an almost sacred dimension when you are in genuine need of it. I recently came off the plane at Heathrow with swollen ankles and within a few hours was checked into the ER, moved to a hospital bed, where I stayed for three nights, and from there moved to a renowned kidney specialist unit, where I received expert care for the next two weeks, leaving with as many medications as I could stuff into my suitcase. All for nothing. Free. Gratis. Paid for by the tax-payer dollars which here would have paid for the tiling on the tailfin of a single Patriot missile.

The only cloud on the horizon was what I was going to do when I returned to the US. Would my wife's insurance cover me? She'd just started a new job: would they exclude my kidney disease as a pre-existing condition? I began to wonder whether I would even be able to return at all, without being bankrupted by the medical bills. Eventually we found out that for the next few months at least, the bills would be covered, but it was not easy getting to see a specialist; after a round of calling, precisely zero called back. After much faxing, petitioning, auditioning and tap-dancing, we finally convinced one of these mythological creatures to take a look at me, but the fact remains: If I had not been married, and if my wife had not had a job, I would have been unable to return to the US, period.

As my old editor Andrew Neil argues in this week's Daily Beast:

The NHS is regularly dismissed by U.S. critics of American reform as "socialized medicine." This is strange to trans-Atlantic ears. Most Brits don't think there's anything "socialist" about the NHS—it enjoys all-party support, including all right-of-center parties. The British Conservatives, who gave the world privatization under Margaret Thatcher, are totally committed to a national health service, tax-funded and free at the point of use (and Mrs. T never challenged these principles either). The parties disagree about how to run it—the Conservatives and the Blairites want less central control, more patient choice, less bureaucratic distribution of resources—but all are agreed on the basic principle behind it.

And that's not just true of Britain. The fact is that all mainstream right-of-center parties across continental Europe regard some kind of national health service covering everybody and largely free at the point of use as not particularly "socialist." There is broad consensus on the left, right and center about this. Most people don't think of it as socialized medicine—just a key feature of a modern, rich, civilized society. When you try to explain this to those opposing a health-care overhaul in America, either they don't believe you or think you're making it up. It is striking just how far apart America's Republicans (and anti-reform Blue Dog Democrats) are from what should be their natural European allies, like the British Conservatives, the French Gaullists, and the German Christian Democrats on this issue.

The fact is health care on both sides of the Atlantic is rationed: in Britain, it is rationed by queue (though with the billions of pounds thrown at the NHS in recent years the queues are diminishing) and in America by price (no health insurance, no right to health care). Americans might like to ponder that it is better to be in a queue for health care that not qualify for any at all—which is the plight of those 47 million Americans who have no health insurance.

In England, Ive seen a sister treated for cancer, a grandfather receive a hip replacement, a mother hospitalized with a slipped disc. Ive been treated for a corneal ulcer and kidney sclerosis. And I can't remember anyone having to wait for any of it. I didn't once encounter a bureaucrat or feel the government inserting itself between me and my doctor. In America, however, I spent a full year trying to get reimbursing for my medical expenses by a company whose primary purpose in life, it seemed, was to give a no answer. By the end of that year, I had both my medical expenses and my insurance costs. One was bad enough but both? And yet this is the system that has Republicans beaming with pride — what they call "the best healthcare system in the world". Everything else is "socialism." They remind me of Plato's cave-dwellers, convinced that nothing lies outside their cave, openly mocking all this hearsay about "sunlight" and so-called "fresh air."

Where is the Situation Room?

The Situation Room is a show on CNN, hosted by Wolf Blitzer, named after the room in the white house where the president goes to huddle with advisors and make important foreign policy decisions. Beyond that, all is confusion. On some occasions, Blitzer invites viewers to join him in the Situation Room, thereby implying that it is the studio in which he stands, boasting an impressive bank of TV screens. Very Situation Roomish. But on other occasions he will say to viewers "You're in the situation room," implying that the viewer is in the Situation Room, or maybe that the room is more a state of mind than an actual place. So which is it? The room in which Wolf is talking or the room in which I am watching Wolf talk?  

Why my cat is like Chauncey Gardener

There I was, thinking that my new kidney disease had allcomers beat. It's lifelong. Its rare. It put me in hospital for three days and the diagnosis features the word "sclerosis". You can't get more serious than that. And then I get home to find that my cat has cancer. Even I can see that cancer beats funky kidneys. I have been upstaged. Hannah is now the centre of attention, lording it up while we scurry around her, feeding and tending and petting. She's not nearly as alarmed as I would be if I woke up to find a strange tube up my nose, a big plastic collar around my neck, making me look like a futuristic Elizabethan, and my owners injecting me with strange-smelling fluids. She doesn't look at me with accusation in here eyes. She doesn't implore me to take the tube out or the collar off. She is either incapable of blame or causal reasoning (maybe the one comes with the other). She seems to regard our trips to the vet with much the same equanimity with which Chauncy Gardner regards the elevator in Being There: "This is a nice room". As far as she's concerned, it's just one of those things. Which means that not only does her disease beat my disease but her attitude is a lot better than mine too.

Maybe I should try living a week without any causal reasoning whatsoever. X will not cause Y. Y will simply be Y. X is not responsible. X is too busy being X. All I will be able to say is that X is X and Y is Y. Beyond those two unbudgeable facts lies only painful and self-punishing speculation. 

First blood

From the New Statesman:

"soap-operaish predictability... tawdry prose.... not only is [Shone's] novel patronising, it is emotionally redundant, inaccurate and, worst of all, unamusing".

He thinks all that was easy?

I am, of course, going to be taking a leaf out of Sylvester Stallone's book: I will cauterise the wound with a piece of still-smoking shrapnel, then climb into the branches of the nearest tree where I will sew myself back up again, using a segment of my own gut, before loping off into the forest with a cold hard flame of vengeance in my eyes and a hunting knife strapped to my thigh.

A stampede of unicorns

Publius is arguing that Bad is the best Michael Jackson album. I applaud the attempt to upend received wisdom, and I know how tempting and easy it is to bore of Thriller, but that's the point: just because we're bored of the front-runner doesn't stop it being the frontrunner. Therefore I must respectfully disagree. There are really only fourgreat tracks on Bad — the title track, The Way You Make Me Feel, Another Part of Me and Smooth Criminal — whereas you can't move for great songs on Thriller. Listen, too, to the production on Bad —all those tinny snares and over-reverbed bass drums, clanking  away. Its cumbersome, angular, noisy production which clearly apes the more mechanical, ritzy sound made fashionable by Bobbie Brown — the first time Jackson and Jones had followed trends rather than setting them, and the beginning of the end. It's all knees and elbows when placed next to Thriller, or the first 16 bars if Don't Stop Til You Get Enough. But then nothing sounds as good as the first 16 bars of Don't Stop Til You Get Enough, except maybe the gathering hoofs of a stampede of unicorns. 

Sobriety and the Arts

"It was a bold enough experiment, you have to admit, lasting the best part of a century, in which any suffering artist worth his salt was systematically deranging his senses before noon, getting into the kind of bar fights that make a man feel truly alive, before shrugging off his mastodon hangover the next morning to pound away at his typewriter..."

From my piece about sober artists in the Sunday Times.

Better than a kick in the kidneys

Toby Young, myself and Cosmo Landesman at the launch of my novel, In The Rooms, at Daunt's Bookshop on Fulham Road last week. It was a lovely evening, as they say in Jennifer's Diary. I saw a lot of friends I haven't seen in ages: the poet Craig Raine, Cosmo and Toby, with whom I used to work on The Modern Review, a contingent of the Sunday Times gang, headed up by my old boss Harry Ritchie, and a clutch of other fellow writers, most of whom have committed the cardinal sin of writing bestsellers, at one time or another, some of them repeatedly. I can only imagine how tiresome a string of unblinking megahits must get after a while, how insulated from the real world. Most of them have lost all sense of every day reality, and have only the scantiest grasp of basic right and wrong. Nick Hornby is a vicious, hooded creature these days, snarling over the top of his beer bottle at anyone who dares come near him, and Helen Fielding last smiled some time in 1992, I believe. As for Gavin Pretor-Pinney, who seems able to write popular science bestsellers almost at will — I believe his new book is a history of dust — the less said the better. To see the effects of fame and success in such vivid close up is... well, it's a salutary experience. 

The only downside to the whole evening was that somewhere between getting on the plane at JFK and getting off the plane at Heathrow, I appeared to have contracted a rare and debilitating kidney disease that required three days in the ER, a series of blood tests, daily injections and enough pills to fell a small bison. This put my guests, some of whom hadn't seen me in several years, in the uncomfortable position of having to choose between congratulating me on the publication of my book and inquiring as to the state of my kidneys. It is a measure of the sophistication of my guests that most managed to pull off this impossible task with a minimum of fuss and some grace, I thought. There is no question in my mind that were the positions to be reversed, I would make a complete hash of it. Congratulate them on their kidneys, and commiserate over the book, or some such. 

When the revolution comes

"When will it come, Ma?"

"Soon. It's inevitable."

"Will I be seven years old?"

"Well, now. That revolution is going to take a little longer than that."

"Will I be 10?"

"No."

"Will I be 11?"

"No."

"Will I be 18?"

"Yes, Saïd. You'll be 18. When you're 18 the revolution will come."

My interview with Said Sayrafiezadeh about his strange Iranian-Jewish-communist childhood here.

The Brits discover hyperbole!

I've only been back in London a few days but my overriding observation is how widespread — how humungously ubiquitous, how overpoweringly omnipresent, how gobsmackingly knock-my-socks-off pervasive — the use of hyperbole has become. Everyone on the TV is caught up in a competition to out-do one another with superlatives. Is the Michael Jackson story big? Its ginormous. How ginormous? Its massively, unbeliveably globe spanningly massive etc etc. The same goes for the Odeon cinema chain's boast of being "fanatical about film." I'd always assumed that went without saying: the enthusiasm of a cinema chain for the medium of film. But no. Everything goes to eleven now. I'm guessing it has to do with a forcible expulsion of the English reputation for understatement but its coming across as if someone at the BBC has sent around a memo instructing all presenters to give it a little more oomph,  a bit more welly. There's something a little over-compensatory about it, to this Brit's ears, but then maybe I've been away too long. 

Unbelievably depressing

Not just terrorists, note, but "terror suspects." Almost half the population of America believes that torturing innocents — which is what the torture of suspects must necessarily entail — is acceptable. The fact that the numbers so closely map the partisan divide is the only kind light I can think of to shed on this. Left to their own devices, most Americans are surely not in favour of the state inflicting pain on powerless and potentially innocent individuals. Rather: they've heard their party tortured some folks, were told it helped make them safe, and now they're simply being loyal to their party. That's my hope, anyway. 

Still with us

"I know what side I'm on," McCain cut in. "I'm on the side of the people. I'm not on Ahmadinejad's side or Mousavi. I'm on the side of the Iranian people and I'm on the right side of history. And I'm not going to walk on the other side of the street while people are being killed and beaten in the streets of Iran."

McCain seems genuinely oblivious to the propaganda victory he would be handing Ahmadinejad. But he can't be: he utilised that very same trick himself during the 08 election when he seized on foreign support for Obama as a sign that he was not to be trusted. Maybe that's why he isn't willing to acknowledge the tactic's existence. The possibility that America may be demonised is anathema to anyone who spends so much time demonising other countries. Its like swahili, bat sonar, birdsong — it just  doesn't register.  

At the press conference today, reporters seized on the fact that Obama appeared to have taken a tougher tone on Iran. "What took you so long?" asked one. Another asked if McCain's criticisms had prompted the new tone. I would have thought the answer for the difference in tone is obvious: between Friday and today upwards of 19 people have died.

Quote of the day

"All I would say on the subject, besides the standard line that it was a highly regrettable incident, is that nothing is as it seems" — CNN broadcaster Richard Quest, talking to the Guardian about the incident back in April when he was arrested for possession of drugs after being found in Centra Park, after dark, with a rope around his neck tied to his genitals with a dildo in the boot of his car.

A thought I've long nursed (at 5:24)

White House slam

Tony Hawk takes a glide through the corridors of the  white house. "Here is my exit," he tweeted. "Supposed to return at noon for the First Father's Event if they let me back in." 

Letting off steam versus winning

"The demonstrators are fighting on their own, but they await just a word that America is on their side. And what do they hear from the president of the United States? Silence.... The Khamenei regime is deciding whether to do a Tiananmen. And what side is the Obama administration taking? None... Our fundamental values demand that America stand with demonstrators opposing a regime that is the antithesis of all we believe. And where is our president? Afraid of "meddling." Afraid to take sides between the head-breaking, women-shackling exporters of terror -- and the people in the street yearning to breathe free. This from a president who fancies himself the restorer of America's moral standing in the world." — Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post

I've been listening to the chorus from the right demanding Obama come out with a stronger denunciation of the Iranian regime with growing incredulity. I have yet to find an expert on Iran who thinks that aligning ourselves with Mousavi would do anything but ensure his defeat — as well as unifying a crumbling regime, and retilting the balance of power back to Ahmadinejad. It would have the exact opposite effect to the desired outcome. On the plus side, of course, it might have some therapeutic value for those politicians wishing to let off some steam. It confirms what I have long thought about the Republicans when it comes to foreign policy: they don't actually want to win. They would prefer to sound good. Or rather: they start out wanting to win, but somewhere along the line, they come up against the competing desire to open their mouths. The speed with which they give in to temptation is almost comic.*

*I've been thinking about this. The following in the New York Times gave me second thoughts.

During the Bush years, Iran’s regime was able to coalesce support by uniting the country against a common enemy: President Bush, who called Iran a pillar of the “axis of evil” in a speech that alienated many of the very reformers whom the United States was trying to woo. For much of his administration, even as he strengthened Iran by toppling Iran’s nemesis Saddam Hussein, Mr. Bush struck a confrontational public line against the Iranian regime. The result, according to many experts here and in Iran, was that Iranians, including reformers, swallowed their criticism of the hard-line regime and united against the common enemy. Iranians with reformist sympathies even began advising Americans to stop openly supporting them, lest that open them to attack as pawns of America.

This is why the Republicans actions seem to lend themselves to helping the the hardliners. On some level, they want them in power. When McCain shoots off about how evil the regime is he is not giving vent to anger so much as confirming his identity: I am the enemy of that. Ahmadinejad complete him. It's still self-defeating as a long-term strategy, of course, but the motive is a little more understandable.

Who? What? Where? When? Why?

What are the chances that Moon is a good movie? If I told you that it was a debut feature directed by David Bowie's son, Duncan Jones, its chances would have to sink sharply. First time director? Son of Major Tom? Working out whatever weird inter-planetary issues he has from the strange alienated, sci-fi infused childhood he surely had? If I tell you that the movie was financed by Sting's wife, Trudie Styler, the movie's chances surely drop off the chart. With the exception of Time Bandits, no movie funded by a rock star has ever turned out to be good, let alone the rock star's wife, who probably knew the kid when he was growing up and was happy to give him any money was lying around her husband's tudor mansion slash yoga studio while he was in the middle of one of his five-hour Tantric orgasms. It was with some perplexity, then, that I announce that Moon is not just a good movie, but a very good movie, beautiful and haunting and original — the best sci-fi movie I have seen since Blade Runner.

Let me just check that against my hyperbole meter... hang on a minute.... Yep..... It checks out. We're good. The best sci-fi movie I have seen since Blade Runner, although I should distinguish between two type of sci-fi movie, here. There's the type we get every year — exciting and fast with laser guns and exploding planets, with a lineage that stretches back to Star Wars. And there there is the other, much rarer kind — thoughtful and strange and sad, with a lineage that stretches back to Alien and 2001: A Space Odyssey. That is the kind of movie Moon is. Nor is it shamed by that company.

I'm not going to tell you a thing about it. I had the good fortune to see it blind, attracted solely by the cool poster and the beautiful stills I had seen in the paper, which exactly resemble those dusty haunting shots of the lunar surface taken by the Apollo crew with those fancy cameras that everyone wants but whose name escapes me right now. I will tell you that it stars Sam Rockwell, and only Sam Rockwell, which is fine by me because he has just become my favorite actor. I thought he was mesmerising in Snow Angels, which blew my mind on a transatlantic flight last year. There he played a charming wastrel so heartbroken by his ex-wife that it takes a while to realise that he is, in fact, psychotic. It takes the whole movie for you to realise that, in fact: it's one of the more subtle unraveling of one man's mind ever put to film. (Someone should get this man a copy of David Gates Jernigan — he's already got the narrator's rueful sarcasm down to a tee). Moon starts out in similar territory, with a character you suspect may be losing his sanity, and then..... but I'm not going to say anything. Just see it. It's one of those movies you wander out of going "where did that come from? Who made it? How? Where? When? Why?"

See the trailer here.

The Uighurs go fishing

Uighurs Salahidin Abdulahat, 32, left, and Khelil Mamut, 31, go fishing in Bermuda, where they're now living after almost eight years in Guantanamo Bay.

A.I. reconsidered

I saw A.I. again on Showtime last night and finally realised the problem with it: you don't believe the mother loves the robot boy. We believe in Joley Haley Osmont's love for her, but never hers for him. It's hard to know what the actress, Frances O Conner, could have done exactly — the part pulls her all over the place. She has to first reject her surrogate son, then grow to love him, and then abandon him when her real son returns. The rest of the film — in which Osmont embarks on a long quest to be reunited with her — seems heartbreakingly misguided. Maybe that's why it feels so desolate. I doubt this was intentional: the final ten minutes, in which the boy finally gets to spend just one day with her, is one of the more heartbreaking ideas Spielberg has ever come up with. It's almost a complete movie in itself. I wish he had decided to make it.

Quote of the day

We've now seen several different occasions when [Obama]'s been on the international trips, where he's not willing to say, flat out, 'I believe in American exceptionalism. I believe unequivocally, unapologetically, America is the best nation that ever existed in history, and clearly that exists today.' — Liz Cheney, CNN

Hmm. Most odd. I wonder why he didn't say that. I've generally found that reminders of one's innate superiority are the best way to start any conversation. Say I meet a stranger at a dinner party. They ask for my name. I tell them. They ask me what I do for living. I tell them, but before they can carry this inane conversation to its stultifying conclusion, I cut in, quick as a flash "I believe unequivocally, unapologetically that I'm the best person that ever existed, and clearly that exists today." It never ceases to get conversations off to a flying start. Frankly, I'm beginning to wonder if Obama is really as smart as everyone says he is.

Knocked up

Letterman offered no apology, but more of his usual postmodern, I'm goofy; feel sorry for me; "got the wrong daughter;" I'm Dave after all junk. The fact remains that in three separate references he slurred the female governor of Alaska and her 14-year-old daughter on a recent visit to his New York. And when he tried to contextualize it, all he did was make it worse by suggesting that he meant instead Governor Palin's 18-year-old daughter, who recently delivered an out-of-wedlock child.

Oh come on. The joke only works if it's about Bristol. There is no joke unless it's about Bristol. She's the only one of Palin's daughters who was knocked up. And it was her mother who then pushed her into a ludicrous public position as an advocate for abstinence. The humbug is self-evident. The joke makes itself.

Its fun to see Palin back in the spotlight, though. I've missed her immensely.

Jive talking

'Travolta's Ryder is not your average villain. He’s that modern type: the brainy sicko, an all controlling puppeteer who uses his vast knowledge and power to manipulate others into jumping through a series of ever more difficult hoops. Frequently, he calls out of the blue, using the public payphone system to pose a series of bizarre riddles to the hero. It normally ends with a mad race across town in the middle of rush hour. Cultural critics are in disagreement over the precise roots of this phenomenon — the plunging Dow, the rising tide of alienation and anomie in today’s cities — but agree that it allows audiences a good working knowledge of what it is to go to lunch with Ari Emanuel.' — From my piece for the Daily Beast about OCD villains

Tom Shone, novelist!

A finished copy of my novel arrived in the post yesterday. I opened the package, took it out, placed it on the chest in the living room, and haven't moved it since. Occasionally I will go and have a look, like a caveman creeping up to a refrigerator, give it a poke, cry "oogga-boogga" and flee to a safe distance to peer at it again. I'm not sure why it should fill me such primordial dread but it does. It's like someone has sent me a chicken foot in the post, or a set of nuclear codes. Clearly I am going to have to pull myself together before promoting it in London later in the month. It's not so bad, really. The cover looks great; the pagination is neat; the dimensions, to my mind, just right — not too onerously long, not too skimpily short. My worries about it looking too dialogue-heavy have been eased; inside it I find pages, sometimes whole consecutive pages, of uninterrupted text, just like a normal book. And yet it makes me feel like a perfumed imposter — like Inspector Closeau in that Pink Panther movie, grinning and gurning his way through a Bluebeard impression while his fake nose slides down his face.

Best news of the week

The Heavy metal band Anvil, immortalised in the movie Anvil! The Story of Anvil! will open for AC/DC when it performs at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Mass. on July 28 and at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., on July 31. This is excellent news — maybe not as important as Obama's speech in Cairo, or the subsequent defeat of Hezbollah in the Lebanese general election, or the decision by the Pacific archipelago of Palau to take in the 17 Uighers in Gitmo, but still: one of the weeks better pieces of news I've heard this week. Those who are as obsessed as I am can check out what the band got up to in Cannes here.

Boumediene speaks

What my grandfather was doing 65 years ago

"The week following the Rhine crossing got a bit hectic because the army was advancing fairly rapidly into Germany and we flew every day sometimes to attack German front line positions to soften them up for the army and other times on sweeps deep into Germany to attack the trains and road vehicles that were bringing supplies to the German troops. We much preferred the attacks on front line positions, there wasn't any flak there because it was always pulled back when the army got too near. I had had a couple or so small holes in my aircraft when I was hit by small shell fragments or by the odd bullet but nothing of any consequence. That all changed on 31 March 1945 when I was one of eight aircraft that were sent from where we were in Southern Holand on a sweep to the North to attack the German transport that was retreating from Holland into Germany.

The weather was pretty foul, the visibility was not much more than a mile and the cloud was 8/8 at 2,000 feet. We had to fly lower than that which meant we were sitting ducks for German flak. Because of the bad visibility the formation leader led us over a German airfield which he hadn't seen and they always had a lot of guns. There was flak everywhere and I was very quickly hit on the starboard wing. I climbed into the cloud to get away from it and when I was clear of the airfield I descended until I was below cloud. There was no sign of the rest of the formation and our orders were that if one was alone one went home very quickly because it wasn't very safe to be a single aircraft over German territory. I turned and headed for home flying very low so as to make it difficult for anyone to hit me, until I saw some of our army vehicles. Thinking I was now safely away from the Germans I climbed to about 1500 feet and started looking at my map to find out where I was. It wasn't as safe as I thought because there was suddenly flak all around me and I was hit in the port wing and behind the cockpit. I felt a thump behind my right shoulder as if somebody had punched me and a number of holes appeared in the perspex cockpit canopy. At the same time I saw what looked like smoke streaming back from the port wing.... My shoulder began to feel a bit funny and I could feel something trickling down my back so I realised I had been wounded. It took about 15 minutes to get back to Helmond and by the time that I got there I couldn't move my right arm and had to do everything with my left hand. It was a bit difficult to reach the undercarriage control lever and the flap lever because they were low down on the right hand side of the cockpit but it was a case of reach them or do a crash landing and I didn't fancy doing that. I figured that I had had enough risk for one day."

From my grandfather's account of his time flying Typhoons for RAF Squadron 137. Derek was 17 when the war broke out, 18 when he enlisted and 22 when he was wounded. He carried the shrapnel around in his body for the rest of his life. When I was 7 or thereabouts, a piece of it worked its way out of his knee. I remember being very impressed by that piece of metal's journey, also by how unfazed he seemed to be about the whole thing. Was there any more? Didn't he want to get it all out? What happened if he walked past a very strong magnet? When was the next bit coming? Which bit of him would it choose to come out of? I definitely knew I had something special on my hands after that. Nobody else that I knew had a grandfather with odd bits of aircraft fusillage floating around their bodies. Just mine.

Elie Wiesel at Buchenwald

Album of the summer

A strong contender. June, certainly. Two standout tracks: Girlfriend and Countdown.

Moral Equivalence: what is it and how can I avoid it?

Moral equivalence — how everyone hates it! I'd never really come across the term before but have soon learned that the quickest way to defeat an argument in American politics is to accuse your opponent of moral equivalence, then sit back and watch them unwind. So what is moral equivalence and how can I avoid it? Apparently Obama's speech in Cairo was full of it:

Another example of moral equivalency: “In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically-elected Iranian government. Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians.” That is accepting the (false) narrative of the Iranian Revolution, which holds that America’s role in overthrowing Mossadeq more than half a century ago — a development that would not have been possible had the leftist prime minister not lost support in the Iranian street — is just as bad as the campaign of mass murder and kidnapping that Iran continues to support at this very moment.

Ah. I see. It means taking umbrage at the most featherlight critique of American foreign policy. Obama did not say America's overthrow of a democratic regime was "as bad as" Iran's current day activities. He simply pointed out that America' record was not unblemished. That, apparently, is moral equivalence. Someone says something minorly critical of America's record, you jump in, infer value judgments that are not there (he's saying we're as bad as the nazis!) and then accuse your interlocutor of making them. Hmm. I will have to try it some time.

Early Amis fiction

"Remembering the lipstick, he doubles up laughing, “I was so bad at it. At duplicity.” But he wasn’t, he was very cunning. There was a dinner at a Greek place in Charlotte Street with Clive James and the critic Lorna Sage, when I thought that Martin and Lorna were doing more than just sitting side by side, and after picking up the fork I’d dropped, had my suspicions confirmed. Tears and recriminations later were a waste of energy, because Martin’s defence tactic was to turn the tables of blame, attacking me for making an issue out of something so unimportant. This was Martin at his worst—nasty, facetious and belittling—and I didn’t have the confidence then to know that his behaviour was unacceptable, not mine.... His notes to me from this period until the end of the year are almost all alibis. All-night poker sessions with Tony Hard-On [Anthony Holden] were the most convincing, provided his tracks were covered (eg,“Don’t tell Rob abt poker ’cos he’ll bitch abt not being asked”)."

— from Julie Kavenagh's piece in Intelligent Life about being romanced and deceived by Martin Amis. The current issue also contains my article on great writer drunks but they haven't posted it online, presumably because their sales would plummet unmercifully if they they did.

Kindling

Chip McGrath has pinpointed a big drawback with the Kindle:—

As you read along, there are very few cues to how near you are to the beginning, how far from the end. You’re always in the middle.

This is a pretty big drawback. You never know how far into a book you are? That's awful. 

To pee or not to pee

Here's a great idea: a website advising the public on the best time to go for a pee during a movie. Its called Runpee. As someone with a weak bladder and an unerring instinct for a dramatic lull, I was intrigued. For Star Trek they locate no fewer than six pee moments, which me as a little harsh. For Angels & Demons, RunPee advises a single dash at around the 70 minute mark when Hanks is in the archives and the power goes out. Amazingly, this is the only moment they recommend. One of the reliefs of that movie for me was I knew I could happily go anytime and not miss a thing. That said, I chose well and came back from the toilet to find Ewan McGregor a delivering a long speech about the unseen glories of the Catholic Church.

For Terminator Salvation, they advise two: one at the 50 minute mark, when Marcus cuts down the female pilot and another at around 75 minutes when he has almost had his leg blown off by a land mine and she helps him escape. Hard to disagree with those — there's a lot of agonised grimacing between the two of them which one takes to be evidence of a blooming romance — although Runpee also claim to have found two pee moments not only in the original Terminator but in Aliens. This is impossible: those movies are like bullets. Maybe that bit where Sarah Conner says, "I had a dream about dogs" but only in a real emergency.

If you want an overall rule of thumb: chose the 50 minute mark. You are, roughly, halfway through the movie. The first act is done. The action is beginning to let up. Maybe the director feels a theme coming on; the characters are gazing at one another, trying to figure they're all doing there and if there is a larger purpose to existence. The perfect time for a pee.

Terminator Cogitation

— "Why did he invent that frequency transmitter and then not use it?"

— "Lucky his heart was the right sort. Normally it takes much longer to find a donor."

— "They always end up in the furnace. You think they'd learn."

— "That was much worse than I thought it was going to be."

Some random comments on Terminator Salvation, made by me and my friend Scott, on the walk home.

Compassion is for losers

"Empathy triumphs over excellence." That was the headline of one of the articles announcing Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. "Empathy" was one of the qualities he said he was looking for, throwing everyone for a loop. There was a rash of learned articles about why empathy was a terrible thing in a judge, how it really meant activism, and so on. It was all very surreal. To my untrained eye they might as well have been headlined, "Compassion is For losers," or  "Goodness, go screw yourself". Personally, I like empathy and consider it a great quality in just about anybody. I liked bus conductors if they are empathic. I like policeman if they are empathic. I like scuba-diving teachers if they are empathic. It follows that I like supreme court justice possessed of the quality of empathy is a good thing. Obviously, it's not the only thing. I'd like them to have some legal training. I'd like it if they knew what a gavel is, and how and when to bang it. Imagine! And empathic too! Put it this way:  I tend to avoid people from whom the quality of empathy has been expunged. I wouldn't like an empathy-free bus conductor, for instance. Imagine the hit 'n' runs he'd get into, or the old ladies he'd get caught in his doors, all the prams he'd kick into the street. Same goes for judges. The article that ran under that headline "Empathy triumphs over excellence" was written by none other than John Yoo, the lawyer who told president Bush that it was okay to crush the testicles of a small child if he deemed it appropriate in the fight against terrorism. His answer, if memory sereves, was that it would depend on "why the president felt he needed to do that." A more empathic person might have inquired into the child's feelings on the matter. 

Up, Up, and Away

My review of Pixar's Up appears in The Daily Beast today. Cliff's Notes version: I liked it.