De Profundis: Alexander Haig

December 2 1924 - February 20 2010

"The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood. "

De Profundis: Walter Morrison

January 23, 1920 – February 9, 2010

Walter Fredrick Morrison died on February 9 aged 90.

He invented the Frisbee, originally known as the Pluto Platter, out of a desire to make cake tins fly more smoothly when he threw them at people.

The name came from the Frisbie Pie Co., a California bakery whose empty tins he used to toss.

A Single Man

Fade to Black Productions, Tom Ford (Producer, Director & Screenplay), 2010

Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Nicholas Hoult, Matthew Goode;
David Scearce (Screenplay), Chris Weitz, Andrew Miano, Robert Salerno, Jason Alisharan (Producers); based on a novel by Christopher Isherwood

The Tom Ford film. “A Single Man” resembles an animated version of a Gucci catalogue. Every frame is like a page from one of those gentlemen’s magazines in which $2,000 shoes and $500 ties are laid out on a finely threaded throw while in the background, in soft focus, a slinky blonde reclines before a fireplace.

I have never seen a university English Department that resembles the first class lounge of Etihad Airways before, but no doubt they do in Ford's world.

I quite enjoyed the film as it is certainly makes a unique contribution to cinema because of its eccentric obsession with the form of the frame rather than what is actually going on inside it. I also enjoyed some of the effects of the script, such as the implication that the character of the boy played by Nicholas Hoult may be more than a mere student significant in the metaphysial schemeof things.  While the script certainly does its bit, this implication is most strongly conveyed by the use of a deliciously fine, off-white boat necked mohair sweater, with just a hint of the texture of feathers about it.

Afterwards I read the reviews to see what the movie industry made of it. Most were sycophantic, pusillanimous paeans of praise. Even “Variety” glossed over a serious review and simply said Tom Ford was a genius.

I had no idea he had such power but it is clear that Hollywood is terrified of upsetting him. The New York Times, which doesn't give a damn, simply dismissed the film, saying it was pretty and dull. It was more than that, as it effectively conveys something of the emotion of significant loss. It may even be great art, as original fashion and design can be, but it is not a great film.

Listen to a National Public Radio interview with Tom Ford about "A Single Man."

Watch the trailer :

Royal Prerogatives: The 10:32 to Kings Cross

The Queen takes the train home from Sandringham.

She's done it again. The Queen hopped on the 10:32 from Kings Lynn to Kings Cross on Monday after her winter break at Sandringham.

First Capital Connect said her ticket cost 44 pounds 50p.  She would have been given the pensioner's discount of 29.30 had she asked for it.

Next time she'll probably take the bus, which is 10 pounds.

Royal Prerogatives: Archduchess Regina von Habsburg

Princess Regina Helene Elizabeth Margarete of Saxe-Meiningen, Crown Princess of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia

6 January 1925 – 3 February 2010.

Had history taken a different turn, she would have been Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary. She was born in Würzburg, Germany, on January 6 1925, the youngest of four daughters of Duke Georg III of Saxe-Meiningen, and his wife, Countess Klara-Marie von Korff genannt Schmissing-Kerssenbrock. Her father joined the Nazi party in 1933 and died in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp. Her brother, Prince Anton Ulrich, was killed in action in 1940. Another brother became a Carthusian monk.

She married Archduke Otto von Habsburg on May 10 1951 at the Eglise des Cordeliers in Nancy (the burial place of several members of the House of Lorraine), with the blessing of Pope Pius XII. Although Otto was the legitimate heir to the Austrian Empire, he was unusual among "pretenders" in electing to ignore his aristocratic title and sit in the European parliament as Dr Otto von Habsburg, Christian Democrat member for North Bavaria. He never claimed the throne of Austria.

The Archduchess was Protectress of the Order of the Starry Cross, an all-female Roman Catholic order founded in the 17th century; Grand Mistress of the Order of Elisabeth, a similar organisation; and an Honorary Lady Grand Cross of the Sovereign Order of Malta. The Archduchess died at Pöcking über Starnberg, Bavaria, where she had lived with her husband since 1953.

 Watch newsreel of the wedding of Princess Regina of Saxe-Meiningen to Archduke Otto von Habsburg:

Show Business: The Road to Broadway

Dori Berenstein (Director and Producer), 2007.

Alan Cumming, Chris Boneau, Nancy Coyne, William Goldman, Rocco Landesman, Ben Brantley, Charles Isherwood, John Lahr, Patrick Pacheco, Michael Riedel, Jacques le Sourd, Linda Winer.
Jeanine Tesori (Music); Alan S. Deutsch (Photography); Richard Hankin, A.C.E. (Supervising Editor); Dori Berinstein & Richard Hankin (Writers).

This engaging documentary follows four major Broadway shows from conception to opening and the aftermath of the 2004 Tony Awards. As well as providing an obvious source of enjoyment for fans of "the roar of the greasepaint" etc., the film made me realise how many charlatans there are in show business and what a grind it must be to remain focused on the work while having to put up with them. The director of “Caroline or Change” is a case in point, though several other termagants fascinate with the horror of their egocentric self indulgence. Inevitably, behind-the-scenes thrills are provided by internecine conflict. Some of the collaborators HATED each other, and said so, but kept at it, loathing each other, right to the successful end.

Throughout the film, the reviewers of the New York press provide a Furies' chorus, seated at a large dinner table which they enjoy with evident appetite. Their frank exchange of opinions leaves little doubt that they believe their job is to make life as difficult as possible for anyone trying to put a play on Broadway. When some plays (such as "Wicked") succeed despite their condemation, they do not hide their self-righteous indignation, though the New York Post reviewer wastes no time regretting his misjudgements. After he condemns "Avenue Q" as a childish fantasy lacking a discernable audience, the play cleans out the 2004 Tony Awards and becomes one of the biggest Broadway successes ever; but this critic simply changes sides, saying he had liked it all along.

The most horrifying scene involves the critics' discussion of the demise of “Taboo.” Anyone who reads the New York Times will never forget the 2004 theatre critics’ press fracas over Rosi O’Donnell’s competence as a producer, which finished off the play before it had even opened. Although Ms O’Donnell certainly helped by being unable to keep her mouth shut, the critics appear to have desired little more than victory in a negative argument, irrespective of the production’s theatrical merits. Their vitriol, of course, had prematurely fatal consequences for “Taboo,” which they themselves admit with excruciating pomposity was “the play that should have been.”

At the end of the film one of the "Taboo" cast admits with the self-disciplined nonchalance of the professional actor that the failure of the play is hardly a tragedy, considering what else is going on in the world. But, he says, “it’s just that this was my entire life,” and starts to weep.

Watch the trailer of “Showbusiness; The Road to Broadway”

Royal Prerogatives: HIRH Princess Liala Farouk of Egypt

HIRH Princess Liala Farouk of Egypt, Grand Duchess of Alexandria

Princess Liala claims to be the daughter of HM King Farouk of Egypt and HRH Princess Mafalda of Savoy, who was killed in Buchenwald in 1944, 13 years before the Princess' birth.

HRH has enthroned herself in Melbourne, and her website (currently suspended by its server) shows she's having a right royal old time.

Present Laughter

By Noel Coward

American Airlines Theatre, 227 West 2nd Street, New York
January 22 2010


I broke my own rules and paid full price for an orchestra seat at the revival of Noel Coward’s “Present Laughter.” This play is the latest vehicle for Victor Garber whose manifold talents were said to brighten even Broadway’s lights. The play had a RAVE review in the New York Times and I was itching to see something truly wonderful and this seemed to be it.

All of the actors, and Victor Garber most particularly, walked through the play, speaking their lines in monotone. There was no energy, no interpretation, no acting, no presence, and no laughter.

I don’t understand it. Everyone in it, not only Mr. Garber, was a famous actor with years of experience. The only explanation I can come up with is that the play was regarded as an iconic set piece which had to be delivered with starched postures and clipped English vowels typical of the more tawdry Sunday night broadcasts on Masterpiece Theatre. In these travesties, evidence of proper delivery is provided when the performance is as stilted as an amateur production in which no one knows where to stand and takes a prompt for each line. Thus was "Present Laughter."

No matter; the success of my evening was assured because I left at the first interval, abandoning my $116 to the ill gotten gains of the Broadway machine and wantonly threw good money after bad at dinner at the luxe (and louche) Standard Hotel down near W13th Street instead. There I celebrated my relief at being out of the pit of despair that was orchestra row G seat 37.

Judging by the envious glances given by my fellow sufferers who were less brazen about making their escape, I was not the only one who felt this way.

New York City Ballet, All Russian Program

Lincoln Center, New York, Tuesday January 19 2010

I had a lovely evening at the New York City Ballet watching deliriously beautiful new works plus one old one by Balanchine who learned it from Fokine.

The mid town dame on my right said “Do me a favour and slap me if I snore” and the Polish Jew on my left nudged me and said “so far I am not asking for my money back eh?”

At interval the mid town broad woke up and put on her lipstick and said of the ballet we’d just sat through “that was DISGUSTING.” The Polish Jew’s wife yelled at her husband how appalled she was that she saw the rabbi eating a ham sandwich in the diner on 2nd Avenue and the mid town woman said “WHERE on 2nd Avenue, where EXACTLY?” and then leaned across me and discussed tuna melts for about ten minutes before she said to me “and what’s YOUR story?”

One is never alone in New York, yet never intruded upon. E. B. White said it all.

Save Me

Robert Cary (Director)

Drama, USA, 2008, 1 hour, 36 minutes.
Robert Desiderio (Screenplay), Rodney Taylor (Photograph), Phillip Bartell (Editor), Jeff Cardoni (Music), Christopher Racster, Herb Hamsher, Chad Allen, Robert Gant and Judith Light (Producers).

“Save Me” is a brilliantly written, acted and directed screen play about all the people involved in an evangelical centre devoted to curing gay men of their homosexuality.

This is a topical subject in the USA where mainstream politicians openly proselytize the religious righteousness of anti-gay attitudes while an extraordinary proportion of them are themselves caught participating in sexual practices which are at the least deviant (by their own standards).

However the film deftly addresses both sides of the story in a way that links the motives of all parties involved to the pursuit of the highest forms of love. The evangelists who run the centre, the men who live there, the family members who commit their siblings and children to its care and even one father who damns his gay son to hell shortly before he expires and makes his own merry way to that destination, are all exposed as humble humans trying to do what they think is best.

Yet the film makes no excuses for its characters. It reflects the bitter divisions that exist between people who are gay and those who condemn them, but its greatest achievement is in bringing understanding to the motives of those who truly (if preposterously) believe they can cure homosexuality through a life lived in reflection of Christ. The role of the mother played with exacting fortitude by Judith Light is a moving expose of a mother’s anguish, the denouement of which is slightly reminiscent of the end of Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.”

It’s an engaging and touching film which makes its point without risking reason through vitriol, from which emanates a droll kind of compassion for the perpetrators of the tyranny of Jesus even as the heroes, mercifully, ride off into the sunset (together).

December 2009

Unmistaken Child

Nati Baratz (Director and Screenplay)

Documentary, Israel, 2008, 102 minutes, Ilil Alexander & Arik Bernstein (Producers) Yaron Orbach (Cinematographer), Ron Goldman (Editor), Alex Claude (sound), Cyril Morin (Music)

At the age of seven Tenzin Zopa was called to be a lifelong disciple of the Lama Konchog. Lifelong for Zopa, that is. When the Lama died in 2001 the Dalai Lama told Zopa to wander wherever he had to go until he had found the inheritor of Lama Konchog’s soul. The film begins at the cremation and ends at the Dalai Lama’s recognition of a tiny boy as the late Lama’s reincarnation.

It’s a remarkably objective documentary which passes little obvious judgement. The staggering scenery of Nepal is beautifully and closely photographed as are the events going on in the villages precipitately mounted about its ravines and high altitude pastures.

Through these scenes wanders Tenzin Zopa, alone with his mission, which he is not permitted to fail. The discovery of the perfectly un-beguiling boy and the inevitable separation from his parents is given an appropriately poignant but not cloying treatment, and the film deals frankly with the boy's remarkably swift recognition of the late Lama’s possessions, which helps to prove him to be the reincarnation.

Soon the child is enjoying his new life while his grandmother paradoxically plays with the toys he has left behind. By the end of the film the child Lama is ceremonially borne to his throne there to expertly bless the thousands who come to praise him as if he has been doing this for years. However it is not the reincarnation of Lama Konchog which leaves the strongest impression. As the grief, self doubt and despair he experiences at the begining of his mission evolve into dignity, wisdom and authority, it’s Tenzin Zopa, the disciple from the age of seven who is the real “Unmistaken Child” of this beautiful film.

U. N. Climate Conference

Copenhagen, Denmark, December 6 - 19 2009

It's almost impossible to remember how hopefully the world anticipated the UN Climate Change Conference. It turned out to be a complete failure, a terrible example of bad faith posturing as global leadership. 

It also turned out that neither the United Nations Organization nor the Danish Government were able to manage the process with anything like the degree of discipline required to produce even a moderately acceptable outcome.

The UN Secretary-General distanced himself from the conference after the first week and the Danish government sacked their own chairperson when the meeting broke down soon afterwards. In her place they substituted the Prime Minister in the vain hope that he would be able to produce a cogent result once the heads of government arrived for the final 48 hours.

This was not to be; the meeting was literally abandoned by many delegates before a meaningless accord (to continue discussions in the summer of 2010) was finalised.  It was published to the disappointment of almost everyone and the disgust of many, including hundreds of observors who were literally locked out of proceedings and and thousands of protestors who were assaulted, arrested and imprisoned by panic stricken Danish police.

I decided to monitor the proceedings and was spellbound and horrified by what I saw. Click here to read my daily summary of the Conference.

Comfort Me With Apples: More Adventures at the Table

By Ruth Reichl

Paperback, 320 pages, April 9, 2002, $14.95, ISBN: 978-0-375-75873-7 (0-375-75873-9)

Ruth Reichl is not a great writer, nor does she appear to be a great cook. But she is a great food journalist and this, the second of her autobiographical food books, is easy to enjoy without being free of quirks which make you stop and wonder what she is up to before compulsively reading on. The book succeeds Tender At the Bone, which exposes her childhood with her erratic, imposing mother and remote, aristocratic father, and precedes Garlic and Sapphires which describes her period as the New York Times Food critic.

In Comfort Me With Apples she describes her life in Berkeley during the earliest days of the food revolution which is best symbolised by the legendary restaurant, Chez Pannise. She lived in Berkeley with her husband and many others in a communal house and eked out a tiny income to live as a food writer and cook.

Judging by her books, this seems to be the only time during which Reichl worked as a cook and it may have been this distance from the practicalities of the art she documents that ultimately led to the Conde Naste organization chopping Gourmet magazine last year. Reichl was its editor and the decision appears to have been based on the somewhat academic if not esoteric approach to food which was Gourmet’s main attraction, and ultimately the reason for its demise.

After an affair, the end of her marriage, the death of her father and her appointment as food reviewer for the Los Angeles Times Reichl ends this book with a new marriage, a hideous experience while attempting to adopt a Mexican child and, despite negative fertility tests, a child of her own. That’s about it.

Ruth Reichl with Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto  (photo by Corkery/News)

Towards the end of the book Reichl embarks on a self defeating argument in favour of her status as a serious writer, yet nothing in this or any of her other books matters which is not related to the exhilarating experiences she has every day with food. It is as if she is literally incapable of writing well about anything else.  But her accounts of food make her books compelling. They not only illustrate her expertise in the discrete, if not discreet, art of taste, but in understanding the science and technique of cookery, the influence of time, place, and environment on how we regard what we eat, the psychology of food in our society and even the increasingly significant role of the celebrity chef, several of whom are expertly drawn in Comfort Me With Apples.

Literary skill aside, every reading of Reichl is an education, every anecdote is a fascinating expose of something new and most of what she writes is underlined by a subtle irony which might not always be intentional but is always very welcome.

Visit Ruth Reichl's website

Garlic and Sapphires; The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise

By Ruth Reichl

Penguin, New York, March 2006, Paperback, 352 pages, $16, ISBN 9780143036616

Ruth Reichl is witty and informative about the complexity of food writing. I'd been waiting to read this book since it was first published in 2006 but I did not want to buy it and it took me this long to borrow it from the library.

When Reichl was restaurant reviewer for the New York Times she had to disguise herself to avoid recognition. The disguises ended up teaching her important lessons about herself as much as they fooled the restaurateurs. It's funny and poignant.

Visit Ruth Reichl's website

Royal Prerogatives: Princess Farial Farouk

HRH Princess Ferial Farouk of Egypt

17 November 1938 - 29 November 2009

Princess Farial Farouk of Egypt died on November 29. She was the eldest daughter of the late King Farouk of Egypt. Her mother was the beautiful and popular Queen Farida (formerly Safinaz) Zulfiqar (all Egyptian royal names began with the auspicious “F.”)

A year after her birth her aunt Fawzia married the Shah of Iran and she herself was proposed in marriage to the tragically doomed King Faisal 11 of Iraq when the two came of age. When the Princess was born her mother was losing out in a power struggle with Queen Nazly, Farouk's powerful mother. Her parents divorced and King Farouk then married Narriman Sadeq.

After being exiled from Egypt Princess Farial taught typing and French literature under an alias to disguise her royal identity. After marrying a Swiss hotelier she and her husband ran a hotel near Montreux.

Princess Ferial with King Farouk and Queen Farida, Cairo, 1939.

She remained a well known and popular figure to Arabs everywhere and in the last year of her life she gave several important interviews on Arab television channels about the coup d’etat which forced her exile.

She died in Geneva of stomach cancer, and was buried alongside her father and sisters in the Khedival mausoleum of Cairo's Rifa'i Mosque. Fifty eight years after the Royal Family's exile the Egyptian government remained wary of ther influence and the well attended funeral was held at night with minimal coverage by official state media.