A House Well Built

Huge congratulations to Netflix for making what I think is arguably the best adapted transatlantic television show yet.  Forget "The Office," and a whole host of hit reality TV Shows, "House of Cards" is an amazing example of a show well translated.  Its a show that combines all the power struggles, posturing and intrigue of the Soprano's with the high brow content of the original series in a way that doesn't alienate the common man - I include myself in that category.  The on-line content providers have done outstandingly well with the cast, the script, and in creating a gritty and realistic plot full of scheming and conniving acts that made the British adaptation so successful.  The fact that it has been produced by an online-streaming firm opens up all sorts of questions as to the future of the industry and where things are headed, but this series has been done so well that frankly If this is a mark of things to come its a welcome change.

Series 2 is currently being filmed.

Kevin Spacey brings a real and odd likeability to Underwood who is essentially a villain, we want to see him succeed, just so the plot can unfurl and more and more of the unwitting victims become ensnared and enslaved to his biding.  Spacey really does give the character a lot of depth and his depiction of the Machiavellian Francis Underwood is a joy to watch.

The British version had a similar giant in Ian Richardson who was also sublime as Urquhart, both he and Spacey are Shakespearean actors and these are the kinds of roles where it really shows.  However the casts in each series are not so comparable.  The people at Netflix really put in the extra mile to weave together a cast that performed well individually and together Spacey is well complimented by accomplice and lover Kate Mara and on screen wife Robin Wright, whereas the British version was somewhat let down by actors in roles that were either to big for them to play or were poorly written.  The British version was very much a one man band, that's not to say it wasn't a great one man show but too many scenes were far to camp or overplayed or indeed unconvincingly played such as the balcony scene in the last episode, whereas the Netflix version really does feel gritty and real, each character has been well thought out and the approach to taking a life is much more plausible and just as sinister.

One need only compare the interesting and tragic "Peter Russo" (Corey Stoll) with his equivalent in the British series the hard on his luck Irishman "Roger O'Neil" (Miles Anderson), to see the jump above the re-imagining has made.   Russo's story is one people are able to access he has been given the background and exposure that O'Neil never had, and Underwood's actions are all at once horrific but at the same time startlingly easy to understand.

The US show has also tastefully transplanted specific scenes that further examine the difference between the two leads such as the euthanizing of the dog, watching both Richardson and Spacey in these situations as both Urquhart and Underwood respectively show how much change can be made by an actor to the same act.  Richardson was a great deal weaker showing us his vulnerability whereas Spacey demonstrates exactly how menacing and cold blooded he really is even when breaking the 4th wall, cold to the core one might say.  Both men however are experts in the art of convincing themselves of the morality and mercy of their acts, creating for themselves god-like pedestals, which in both cases works brilliantly.    

However that does not mean to say that the original House of Cards was without merit, it has dated yes, and it is a one man show but it is a very good one.  Both actors bring different qualities to their characters. Urquhart's aristocratic charms are compared with the on the surface likeability of Underwood's self-made-man of the people, both however are brilliant at showing their teeth revealing the shark in each man.  It will be interesting to see if the Netflix adaptation follows the same pattern as the British in that the following series  are renamed to correspond with the literature or whether, as with other adaptations such as Game of Thrones, no such change occurs.  Either way the story is riveting and I cannot wait to see if Zoe Barnes has her "Mattie Storin" moment.   I just hope its more convincing.

Ian Richardson as Urquhart 

Spacey as Underwood

Music of a forgotten time...

Apologies for the delay in posts - my schedule for a change has been a busy one that has not afforded me a great deal of spare time to indulge myself in my writing.  Recently I have been approached and signed by a recording company to create two original songs - and it has inspired me to write this.

For those of you who don't know I am a music geek - a man stuck in the wrong era - I have spent the week walking the streets of Bethnal Green and the surrounding area humming, whistling, singing and probably annoying and or disturbing people on their daily routines with the sounds of a singer most people will not have heard of, but some may recognise, I speak of Matt Monro.

Some brief background - he was born and lived very close by to my locale in East London, and gained a reputation as a singing bus driver before international stardom came knocking.  His voice was truly unique and his style was truly classy.  He is, in my opinion, an under rated and somewhat unsung voice of British music.  I as an aspiring singer/songwriter very much influenced by the style of Matt Monro and I dedicate this post to him, and hope I too can emulate his successes, though I appreciate the market for this particular genre of music may have dwindled in the last few decades I am sure there are those who miss it.

So - whilst I don't drive a bus - I have worked at a train station - and not to compare myself to the late great Matt Monro but I do enjoy travelling the world singing and bringing enjoyment to the masses - so if anybody out there has a vast fortune they are willing to throw my way to aid this endeavor  please feel free to, if on the over hand you care to indulge me and listen to my version of a Matt Monro classic - feel free!

Matt Monro - We're Gonna Change the World

and for any of you interested here is me singing a Matt Monro standard Bornfree at the tender age of 17.

Enjoy.

Le Miserables - Average at best

Its not a great film, its not a good film, Le Miserables was pathetically average in every sense of the word.  I am not particularly a fan of the sung-through film nor musicals but I thought given the acclaim and hype there must be something worth seeing here...there really wasn't.

When making a musical the first thing the casting team should probably find out is whether or not the leads can sing - Russell Crow's Javert may as well have been played by Shane Macgowan - lets be plane there were no stand out singers in this entire adventure - Crow was just the most noticeably bad given his characters screen time.  Some critics such as Adam Lambert have suggested that instead of using live vocal they should have studio recorded.  That is one suggestion I have a better one - why not cast actors who can sing?  Surely that is the answer?  That way it doesn't sound bad and it doesn't sound fake.  Too simple I'm sure

Asides the dreadful karaoke-at-best singing the acting was all together competent with nobody really standing out in the dramatic sense.  Sasha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter proved a fun duo on screen and Cohen's Fagen-esque portrayal of the Land Lord was highly amusing.  That rather brings me to point - Le Miserables was supposed to be tragic yet I didn't shed a tear for any of the characters, in the whole film it seemed very few people actually died.  This a film set in the backdrop of one of the most horrid periods of French history with rife starvation, disease, revolution and yet we see little in the way of pain or death asides Hathaway's.  The whole production felt contrived and manipulative prompting the viewer to cry at the appropriate time - except that's not how these things work, it has to be a natural connection with the characters which just didn't exist, perhaps the medium is the problem and not the content, this may well be a film that is better seen on stage rather than the cinema.  If you want to see somebody suffering and feel a connection to the character you would be hard pressed to find something better than this chap:

Les Miserables turned out to be The Mundane (which google translate reliable informs me is Les Banales in french).  I'd find it hard to believe that it will stand the test of time with the other great film musicals - Sound of Music, Oliver, Singing in the Rain or in fact any of the great tear jerkers.