Mike Huckabee? Who the —- is he?

British people take great interest in the politics of the USA. It’s not that we’re necessarily interested in them, we just know from experience that we can’t avoid thinking about them. The recent flurry of press about the forthcoming leadership nominations of the Republican party caught my eye, and one name in particular stood out.

Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, who has appeared almost out of nowhere to become the front runner in the race to be the Republican party’s presidential candidate. But how on earth do I know this man’s name? I’m not a republican, I’ve never been to Arkansas, and devoted though I am to American politics, I’ve never paid much attention to that particular corner of republican activity.

But now I remember.

Courtesy of Youtube is a clip from CBC Television in Canada, and from broadcaster, comedian and satirist Rick Mercer. Mercer has worked on shows such as This Hour Has 22 Minutes and The Rick Mercer Report. One of his more successful stunts has been repeated visits to the US to meet the good people of the US, and to expose their generally woeful knowledge of a) Canada and b) the world. So hit play, and watch out for Governor Huckabee in the first two minutes.

If any Republicans or Arkansites are watching this, please accept my humble apologies for reminding you of this moment. But frankly, if I don’t show it to you now, a canny TV producer will be reminding you of this incident very soon.

The cinemaphile’s best of 2007

It is that time of the year - the almost measureless drag between Christmas and the New Year - when British media outlets love to fill airtime with largely meaningless but cheap-to-produce programmes that offer us a low down of the “best” of the past year. Books, television, celebrities, technology, cars and, of course, film.

2007 has, for me, been a fantastic year for new films. I’ve dotted about the place and watched many films in many cinemas in several different countries. Some cinemas, like the basement screen of L’Odyssée in Strasbourg were tatty, uncomfortable and poorly designed boxes in which to savour a good film. But as we all know, those are often the ideal specifications for a cinema; if you happen to fancy snuggling up with your companion during the film, you appreciate the fact that the arm rests have begun to fall off the chairs, many of which now recline further back than they were ever meant to. Other cinemas, like the Scotiabank Theatre in Edmonton, were just stupidly priced because they know that in a -30ºC snowstorm, once the customers are in the door they’re very unlikely to turn around and go somewhere else. Close to my heart is my long term love affair with the Showroom Cinema in Sheffield. This four and a half screen arts cinema is arguably one of the best independent cinemas outside London, perhaps made even better than those in the capital because the cumulative effect of the Showroom cinema, the Showroom café-bar, the Showroom restaurant and several excellent festivals and events throughout the year contribute a tangible year-round buzz to Sheffield’s arts scene. So proud am I of the Showroom, I’m also a student member, and I’m there at least two, if not three times a week when I’m in town.

The outspoken but rarely ‘off’ film critic Mark Kermode passed judgement on a number of films over the last few weeks on Simon Mayo’s BBC Radio 2 programme (and also on his own podcast), and tonight on BBC television the arrogant and unjustifiably expensive Jonathan Ross threw in his two pennies on the final Film 2007 of the year. Together, these programmes reminded me of some the entertaining, intriguing and stimulating films that I’ve enjoyed in cinemas this year.

The Lives Of Others was, with a cast unknown outside Germany, earth-shatteringly good and well within the realms of being classified good enough to buy on DVD. The Last King Of Scotland was brilliantly told and justifiably stolen by two incredible lead performances - Forest Whittaker had every reason to expect the BAFTA and Oscar he received. Control blasted into cinema screens across Britain and united audiences who were old enough to remember Joy Division and those who will now go out and buy the albums in chronological order. Not in a long time has a British film evoked such emotion or made me proud to recommend it to friends beyond these shores. Michael Clayton surprised me, as did George Clooney in the lead role. Established Holywood stars don’t have to work too hard to maintain an income once they’re successful, so for every Clooney who makes an effort to keep pushing the envelope, I am grateful. The first installment of Marjane Satrapi’s brilliant series of graphic novels Persepolis has been brought to the screen with both faith to the original and an inventiveness which builds on the book - I thoroughly enjoyed the original version in French (as will anyone who has read the book, regardless of their French) and look forward to the English version coming out in 2008. The love story (and unashamed publicity vehicle for Frames frontman Glen Hansard) Once was so sickly sweet it could cure a sore throat, but at least it was that most precious of things - a deftly constructed but beautifully simple love story that didn’t need anger or sex scenes to justify its purpose. Children Of Men was one of the first films that I saw this year, and it was also one of the last: it is that good that I have broken my normal standards and seen it twice in a relatively short space of time. Technically unprecedented, it compensates for some unforgivable indulgences with ambition and remarkable vision.

One question remains for all these end of year television and radio specials. Simon Mayo asked it of Mark Kermode, and Jonathan Ross asked it of his two guests tonight. What is your film of 2007? Perhaps not the best film, but what is your film of 2007?

I would have been fourteen or fifteen years old when I saw my first Cohen Brothers film: Fargo. By dint of an indulgent pre-Christmas season of ’snow’ themed films at the Showroom I recently got to see it again. The print that had been secured for the screening had obviously been projected onto cinema screens up and down the country many thousands of times. As each reel started and finished, the screen became touched a massive cloud of buzzing black specks, like insects that had suddenly swarmed on the strange snow covered towns of northern Minnesota in which the film is set. The opening sequence, in which Jerry Lundegaard towns a “burnt umber Sierra” through a completely snowed out landscape was transformed from the virginal winter purity of the film I know so well on digitally perfected DVD. The specks did not detract from the film so much as remind me of what was there beneath them.

But I digress. Even as a teenager I was sensitive to on screen violence, and Fargo sank deep inside me because of the brief moments of unjustifiable and remorseless violence. Only with time have I come to appreciate the bigger structure of the film, and the subtle character deliveries of William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi and Frances McDormand. How could have predicted that the gentle hero of a thriller could be a pregnant small town police officer who doesn’t even appear until the second half of the story?

With this in mind, my film of 2007, then, is probably going to be someone else’s film of 2008. That’s because it opens in the UK on 18 January; I just happened to catch it while killing time in Edmonton back in November. The Fargo Brothers are back, and they’re bringing with them a film that will win them some significant metalwork. If you don’t know Javier Bardem, you will very soon. He is about to appear on our screens as the most terrifying psychopath to ever stalk a film’s supposed ‘hero’. Showroom members (£16 / annum) can see it for £2 on the day it opens. I’ll be there, because a film as phenomenally constructed as No Country For Old Men deserves a second viewing.

Anti-fraud, or how the mighty are fallen

We got a phone call at home yesterday from the kind people who manage my credit card. These are the same people who foolishly extend my credit line every so often with no real consideration for my salary or ability to pay, hoping that they might be able to tempt me over the edge to the dark side of payment protection plans and 17.9% APR.

The advantage (in this country at least) of using a credit card instead of a debit card is that the law affords you some basic protection against fraud and theft, and also some significant rights if a product your purchase turns out to be faulty, or doesn’t turn up at all. The responsibility of the credit card companies, and not the card holder, to foot the bill of any card payments that were not authorised, means that almost all card companies employ sophisticated computer systems that profile cardholders and their spending patterns.

This came in very handy a few years ago when someone close to me had here handbag cut and stolen from her person as she boarded at the rear of a crowded Routemaster bus in London. Before she had even managed to report the card, the credit card company had spotted some transactions that “were not in keeping with her normal spending profile”. And it was because of just such an anomaly that I got a call yesterday. A card agent confirmed my identity, and with much more friendliness than might be expected of someone obliged to work on Boxing Day, she asked me about some “unusual” transactions that had appeared on my account.

“We noticed that there were two purchases made with your Mastercard this morning.”

“Yes…”

“One is for £12.50 with National Express, and the other is £4.50 with Megabus.”

“Oh. Well they’re both definitely mine.”

“They are? That’s fine then, sorry to have bothered you.”

Re-reading my credit card statements over the last few months, I can understand their concern. Returning to university has slowed my spending, and the only times when I have chosen to flex my rather worn plastic has been on occasions when the credit card has offered significant travel protection: airline tickets, car hire, hotels, etc. After six months of trans-Atlantic and European travel (all on the cheap, using air miles and credit from previously canceled flights) and with albeit minor purchases in Strasbourg, Paris, Frankfurt, Basle, Glasgow, New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, Edmonton and London, the folks at Mastercard had some trouble understanding what a man like me would be doing on the National Express. The spending profile that has been built up on me knows nothing of the £10 ATM withdrawals I make to survive in Sheffield, and the less-than-£5 grocery trips I make to Netto, Co-Op and my local veg shop. It’s nice to know that someone is watching over me, but it’s a shame they don’t actually know me that well.

The shelter belt

Glimpsed from a moving train, this line of bare trees along a remote road reminded me of something I had seen online a few days earlier. A young architectural practice in Alberta has supplemented an as-yet-unpublished website with a blog about the development of their company. You can read about the company at Starting Shelterbelt, or perhaps by doing what I did and cross-referencing this blog’s post category of ‘Edmonton’ with theirs. The company takes its name, and the blog takes its header image from a line of trees somewhere just off the highway between Edmonton and Calgary.

I saw these trees in the depths of the windswept Cambridgeshire Fens. It is that time of the year to retrace my well trodden ’steps’ along the slow and winding cross-country train that runs between Liverpool and Norwich, collecting me en route at Sheffield and depositing me at Thetford. I didn’t have to change trains at Ely this time, staying on board the crowded and tatty two carriage Sprinter train all the way, watching the rolling countryside of South Yorkshire and Derbyshire slip away, and the flatter agricultural landscape of Cambridgeshire emerge. When Norfolk and Suffolk appear, the train follows a path more or less along the country border for a while, with one on the left and one on the right. Since I first started taking this train there has been a re-organisation of passenger train franchises, so my train will soon change colour and already has ceased to stop at the grim little town of Brandon. Brandon is in Suffolk, but the station is in Norfolk, just inside the boundary of the country in which I spent much of my childhood.

A day or two has passed, and I am hidden away beneath the warm and aromatic eaves of home. The kitchen has become a sensory hub; scents and smells permeate the whole house and collect up here beneath rainy Velux windows. The living room is no longer decorated with torn wrapping paper, but side tables and sofas are now laden with new books and Christmas treats. In between meals we retreat to our most comfortable spot to read the books we have just given others and to muse on whether or not it’s too early in the day for a Christmas tipple (it never is).

On the recommendation of a greatly trusted acquaintance, I’m reading the paperback Solitude by Anthony Storr, a fellow old boy of ‘the other place’. It provides delightful and well argued justification for the questioning of the psychoanalytic assumption that all human psychology depends on the interaction of humans with others. We are, it seems, quite adept at confounding Freud and being extremely content on our own.

As an accompaniment to this book and to my occasional online sorties, I’ve been listening to the three hour long documentaries of Glenn Gould that form The Solitude Trilogy. At this seasonal period of retreat and contemplation, I have withdrawn from the bigger and louder scene, and quietly consider the rapidly recurring concept of solitude. It seems appropriate, perhaps even dramatically so. A line of trees noticed from my moving train and the sounds of a train rumbling north to Churchill (overlaid by Gould with the counterpoint-ing voices of his interviewees) returns me in spirit to the frozen north.

Seasons greetings to everyone who finds the time and perhaps even solitude to read this. I’m thinking of you all today, and hoping you find the peace and quiet that today should bring.

Video: paternoster

A glimpse of Sheffield before I leave for the Christmas break.