Bite this

EW's best TV sound bites of '07. Hilarious

Going for Gold

IMDb has launched its 'Road to the Oscars'. Pretty good summation of the favourites and longshots so far.

The Last Word column from today's Day and Night in the Irish Independent

If memory serves, I didn't make any New Year resolutions last year (the fact that I can't remember is surely evidence enough). In fact, I think I argued on these very pages that they are a big waste of time, seeing as nearly all resolutions made at New Year are violated faster than those passed by the UN Security Council.

This year, however, I've decided to change my attitude somewhat. I'm determined to make some changes in 2008, and see them through to the end* (*Terms and conditions apply). But I hasten to classify any of these plans as resolutions per se. Considering I've contemplated most of these things before, or have already attempted them and given up, I think it more accurate to call them New Year "resurrections".

So here are my resurrections, in no particular order either of importance, or of my level of commitment to stick with them:
Negative thinking: The one and only thing I'm definitely ditching in '08 is negative thinking, a dysfunctional form of mental hard-wiring that's kind of like smoking: a filthy, disgusting habit that poisons you from the inside. And I'm a chain-smoker (so to speak).

So from January 1, I'm going to slap on my Neg-atine patches, and think happy thoughts. Now, if I understand the gurus on daytime talk shows correctly, thinking positively will kick the universe in its big vindictive ass, and allow all the good things I know I deserve – well, want anyway – to come into my life. All of which should come in handy as I tackle my three resurrected projects, which are:

The gym: 'Oh how predictable', you cry! But wait! See, I'm already a member of a gym - quite a swanky one at that - so I'm pledging to resurrect that initial enthusiasm I demonstrated for fitness when I first joined, which incidentally lasted about 45 minutes (or however long that episode of Shortland Street was that I watched while listlessly gliding on the cross trainer).

This one is important as the gym is my only option to keep in shape, because the Lord herself knows I love food too much. Diets definitely are not for me, though I hear that several weight watchers are fans of a “regime” where they substitute lettuce for bread in their sandwiches, and replace one meal a day with a helping of cotton wool dipped in orange juice. Which serves as an unappetising segue to my plan to enrol in:

Cooking classes: Yes, I can microwave instant rice and slave over a hot take-out menu like the best of them, but 2008 is the year where I will master the foodie basics and a lot more besides. By the end of my cooking course, I plan to be the MacGyver of food, able to whip up delectable, Michelin star- cuisine with just Quorn, pasta, a duck egg, some string, and a copy of Irish country queen Susan McCann's 1991 album, Diamonds and Dreams.

Finally, learn a new language: I could be practical and make the effort to learn our second national language – you know, Polish – but I've been threatening to learn Spanish for years now, and I reckon it's time I got off my culo and did something about it. The idea is that once I master the language, a whole new world will open up to me, one rich in culture, literature, history (Okay, I want to chat up Hispanic guys in their own language, are you happy?)

Of course, despite my good intentions (is that the road to hell I see before me?), it's possible I might just pack all these in after two weeks because I just couldn't be bothered. Sorry, that’s negative right? I’ll pack them in because I positively couldn't be bothered. See, it’s working already.

Screen Actors Guild

Nominations for the 2008 Screen Actors Guild Awards are out. Always important ones to watch, as they're voted for entirely by actors, who make up the largest voting block in the Academy Awards. See full list of nominations here

Biggest surprises:

The strong showing of Into the Wild, which was shut out by the Golden Globes. Sean Penn's movie picked up 4 nods for Emile Hirsch, Catherine Keener and the brilliant Hol Holbrook, who I think will emerge as the sentimental favourite to win Supporting Actor, just shading heavy fave Javier Bardem (No Country For Old Men).

Atonement was completely ignored - this does not auger well.

Ryan Gosling makes the cut for the bizarre Lars and the Real Girl. The actors clearly love him. He could make the Oscar race.

Ellen Page nominated as Best Actress for Juno - the girl is going to go far. Perhaps even an underdog winner? Strange that the cast failed to pick up an Ensemble nod though.

No love for The Savages, and its stars Laura Linney and, shockingly, Philip Seymour Hoffman, who has 3 award worthy performances this year.

Charlie Wilson's War looks finished already.

With cheese...please!

EW's latest list: Ultimate cheesy ballads - class!

Obama: "The bridge to the 21st century"

Yes, it's Wednesday but I'm just getting around to reading the Sunday papers now. Andrew Sullivan had an extraordinary piece in the Sunday Times, in which he laid out the most eloquent argument yet as to why the only person for the job of US president post-Bush is Barack Obama. I don't need any convincing (not that it matters since I won't be voting!), but if you're one of the doubters, read on...

"Last week was a horrible one for Hillary Clinton. Her husband had thrown a wrench into her campaign to become president of the United States by declaring that he’d been against the Iraq war from the beginning - a transparent fib that reminded many Democrats of the pathological lying of the 1990s." continue

Write sentiment

AFI movies of the year

The top ten movies of 2007 according to the American Film Institute (alphabetically):

- Before The Devil Knows You're Dead
- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
- Into the Wild
- Juno
- Knocked Up
- Michael Clayton
- No Country For Old Men
- Ratatouille
- The Savages
- There Will Be Blood

Best TV 2007

EW.com has a great feature on the top TV moments of 2007 here. My personal faves were the shattering flash-forward twist ending to Lost, the Pam/Jim resolution in The Office and every moment of 30 rock.

Leon takes X Factor

Genuinely shocked. Yet kind of hard to deprive him too, right?

Path-ological disorder

Sideline from today's Irish Independent

Rage is all the rage these days. We’ve all heard of road rage and air rage, and this week, Martina Devlin wrote about gift-buying rage on these very pages. Well, I've recently started to believe that I may have path rage. One might even go so far as to call me a "psycho-path".

This blood-boiling condition of extreme frustration and anger is a year-round affliction, though it's known to be exacerbated at key points in the year - mainly summer and Christmas time, and other such periods that draw huge numbers of people and tourists onto our capital's already bursting-at-the-seams footpaths.

Those of us susceptible to path rage are fast walkers, and like to be able to get about our business quickly by manoeuvring our way through Dublin's streets and sidewalks without interruption or obstacle. How and ever, at present such ease of passage is nigh-on impossible unless one becomes an expert in the French athletic art of Parkour, as demonstrated in the movies Die Hard 4.0 and Casino Royale, where the practitioner agilely leaps over all public encumbrances with gravity-defying ease.

Oh just imagine being able to deftly avoid all the caravan-size buggies and prams, the joined-at-the-hip couples, the snail-pace, lolly-gagging tourists, the bewildered shoppers that occupy over twice their body space with bags, the gangs of school kids stopped mid-path to agonise over their latest teen angst drama, and the inconsiderate Nu-Yuppies who think a phone call is reason enough to halt mid-step, set up shop right in the middle of a narrow thoroughfare, and bray on their mobile with ne'er a thought for all of us suddenly piling up behind them. Nassau Street in Dublin, I'm thinking of you in particular as I write this.

But since that acrobatic solution isn't realistic for most of us, I think Dublin's city overlords should look to New York City and London, where the idea of slow and fast lanes for pathways and sidewalks is being seriously considered. I can't think of any other way for speed-walkers and strollers to live peacefully side-by-side. We don’t expect cyclists to have to share the same path space with walkers, so why should we speedy steppers have to suffer alongside slow coaches? I don’t like having this rage in me. I’m just looking for a simple, speedy way to take the path of least resistance.

Knight Fever

End of the road, Hillary?

Grim reading for Hillary. Here and here

Has The X Factor devalued the Xmas No 1?

From the Independent. Here.

Season of good film?

The London Independent critics' pick of classic Christmas movies. read here

Global domination

Yesterday's Golden Globe nominations were spread quite richly amongst many deserving nominees. The Globes may be the cinematic film prize equivalent of a McDonald's meal, but they're an important publicity tool at this stage of the race. See full list of nominations here.

Yay!

Carlow girl Saoirse Ronan (13) getting a nod for her astonishing performance in Atonement.

Philip Seymour Hoffman's double whammy in Lead and Supporting. He could also have picked up a nod for Before The Devil Knows You're Dead

Casey Affleck.

30 Rock gets several nods. Best comedy on TV

James McAvoy - the boy is gonna be huge

Ellen Page's and writer Diablo Cody's nods for Juno. Cannot wait to see this

Julian Schnabal's Directing nomination. He did incredible work on Diving Bell

Aaron Sorkin - from the biggest West Wing fan on earth.

Boo-urns!

No Once in Best Musical/Comedy, or even in the Song and Score categories? But don't worry,Shakira got nominated...

Where is Laura Linney's nod for The Savages? Many critics have her down as a potential Best Actress winner, never mind nominee

No love for Waitress, and its stars Keri Russell and Andy Griffith

No Supporting nods for veterans Hal Holbrook and Max Von Sydow for two heart-breaking performances in Into the Wild and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly respectively.

On the Fence:

Michael Clayton's success. Clooney is great in it, and Tilda Swinton is a great unnerving presence, but I felt the movie itself was a bit flat and dramatically inert. Just me?

American Gangster for Best Drama? Really?? Expect this, Eastern Promises and The Great Debaters to be filtered out from main categories by Oscar time

Anging with Lee

Interview with Ang Lee in today's Day and Night magazine

(Can be viewed at independent.ie here)

Any new work from Taiwanese director Ang Lee is now treated as a cinematic ‘event’. His proven track record, and intriguing versatility, builds a fervent degree of excitement and anticipation around his movies.

Indeed, Lee’s latest movie, the intensely erotic WWII espionage thriller Lust/Caution, was amongst the main talking points of the Venice Film Festival last September, though not for wholly positive reasons. Lee’s movie won the festival’s highest accolade, the Golden Lion (the second time he claimed that gong in the past three years), a decision that perplexed many Western critics, who were sharply divided over the movie.

In person, Ang Lee is famously soft-spoken. In fact, he’s too soft-spoken. On the day I meet him in London’s Soho Hotel, he communicates in such a polite, but barely audible way that I’m afraid my tape recorder won’t pick up his voice. He’s dressed in a neat shirt and cargo pants, kind of like a kindly university tutor (an apt description seeing as his father wanted him to be a teacher).

But though he may have a speaking voice that carries all the bombast of an angel skipping on a fluffy cloud wearing cotton wool shoes, Lee is not short of anything to say, particularly about his latest project. Set in Japanese-occupied Shanghai at the height of the Second World War, Lust/Caution focuses on a young college student, Wong Chia Chi (played by newcomer Tang Wei in a startlingly assured debut), who joins a patriotic drama group, and slowly becomes involved in a radical covert plot to assassinate a top Japanese collaborator, Mr Yee (Tony Leung). Wong is chosen to befriend Yee’s wife (Joan Chen) and lure him into an affair, setting in motion a complex game of deception, lust and murder.

Lust/Caution is Lee’s first movie since winning an Oscar (and 19 other prizes) for Best Director for his ‘gay shepherd’ love story, Brokeback Mountain in early 2006. Following the phenomenal success of that cultural landmark of a movie, every film script in the world must have landed on Lee’s desk. So what drew him to return to a non-English language project for the first time since his breathtaking martial arts epic, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2001)?

“I’ve wanted to do this movie for a while, but I was afraid to do it,” Lee explains in his charmingly hesitant English. “I think I’m on a run of impossible romances for these couple of movies! But it’s very natural for me to do this after Brokeback, because in my mind, they’re both connected. Brokeback is like heaven or paradise, an idea of love that’s whimsical and pure, while Lust/Caution is like hell. You don’t want to go down there, and if you do, you can only hope to come out alive.

“I think winning the Oscar helped me to get this made, especially because it’s almost impossible to get a permit to film in China. They allowed me to do it, without, of course, knowing what I’d do with the sex scenes, but I had a lot of support.”

Be that as it may, Lee still had to cut 9 minutes from the movie for its release in mainland China, but that’s censorship he can live with. “Everyone talked about how much the Chinese authorities cut from the movie, but didn’t talk about how miraculous it was that this got made there in the first place,” Lee says graciously.

The movie has attracted most of its pre-release attention for the aforementioned sex scenes, which resulted in Lust/Caution being stamped with a dreaded R rating in the United States. The love scenes are indeed very graphic, naturalistic and prolonged, a narrative move that at first seems at odds with the themes of sexual and emotional repression that permeate Lee movies such as the Jane Austen adaptation Sense and Sensibility (1995) and 1997’s The Ice Storm, his sharp and insightful dissection of suburban America that prefigured many of the themes of the later, and more successful, American Beauty (1999).

But, as Lee explains, there was a very deliberate styling to the three main sex scenes that made them crucial markers in the story’s bleak progression.
“Each scene had its purpose,” Lee says. “The first appears to be violent, because it’s all about the agony of lost innocence, and of how the male character, Yee, is losing his control and how the girl, Wong, is usurping it. That leads to the second scene, which for me is about scrutiny, digging for truth. He insists on looking at her. When Wong’s in bed, she’s doing the ultimate performance as her character and as an actress, because she has to withstand the scrutiny of the interrogator to gain his trust. As for the third scene, they’re in hell. They don’t know where they are at that point because they are lost to distrust and fear.”

The movie also gave the 53-year-old Lee the opportunity to delve into China and Taiwan’s, how can I put it, complicated history. “That period in Shanghai is not discussed,” Lee explains. “All sides, nationalist and communist, in Taiwan and China prohibit the teaching about that puppet wartime government which they both think is a national disgrace. So it’s good to fill that gap, to make some remark on it to pass onto history.

“The thing that fascinated me about that period in Shanghai was the collision of world cultures in the city. It was the Paris of Asia in terms of fashion, food, literature and language. Shanghai was developed by foreigners, and because the city was safe, four million people crowded into it. It was almost sickly over-prosperous. It was a very strange time.”

As for the modern resonances in the story – violent resistance against a foreign occupation: sound familiar? - Lee says: “I didn’t do it for that reason, but it’s hard not to make the connection that things have not changed that much. It’s quite sad.”

Lee’s next project will be in English, a relationship comedy-drama called A Little Game, the details of which are still secret. But having reached the top of his profession, and amassed critical and audience respect the world over, I ask Lee what have been the biggest disappointments in his career so far.

He pauses for a moment, before replying: “I don’t think there have been disappointments, not on my part anyway. When I make a movie I always do my best. In that regard, once it’s done, I’m proud of my effort, proud that I managed a crew and made a film.

“I’ve been surprised by things I did not see coming. I have no idea why people just did not go see Ride with the Devil [his 1999 western starring Tobey Maguire]. Also with Hulk [the panned 2003 comic book adaptation, a remake of which is currently in the works with a new director and cast]: why did people have a problem with it? If I knew I’d have probably corrected it. There’s just no telling how people will react. Why did Chinese audiences think twice about Crouching Tiger? That beats me, I don’t know why they’re so cynical towards that movie.”

What about the fact that Brokeback Mountain was beaten at the last minute to the Best Picture Oscar by melting-pot drama, Crash, in one of the biggest upsets in the awards’ history? Lee smiles. “I was pissed for one night,” he says. “We’d won everything before that, so it was a shocker. I congratulated the Crash team the next day.” He laughs: “That might be the closest I came to ‘disappointment!’”

Duvet Day, hurray!

The Last Word column from Day and Night magazine in today's Irish Independent

’Tis the season to be sickly, what with cold, flu, chilblains, everything-itis, and, of course, raging, Herculean, psychopathic hangovers due to Christmas party mania. The mornings are dark, cold and wet. All modes of public transport are packed to the gills, and are even more intolerable than usual due to mercurial heating systems that infuse the vehicles with either Arctic chills, or doze-inducing heat. I think you’ll agree that in the face of such woes, sometimes your only bet is to chuck an old-fashioned, restorative sickie.

Like many people, I'm always wracked with massive guilt when I ring in sick (er, which I never do) — even when I genuinely am sick (er, which I always am). I just never feel like bosses believe you. You could look something like Gollum from Lord of the Rings, retching your guts up, barely able to move — and still be made feel bad about the fact that your blood, sweat and tears will not be able to oil the wheels of the great, heartless capitalist machine for one measly day.

Of course, the first task in the great sickie game of subterfuge is calling in sick — should you do it yourself, or have someone do it on your behalf? I personally feel phoning yourself is the best option, even if it does necessitate that you dig deep down to bring out your inner Meryl Streep, conjuring a voice that suggests you've been up all night curled around the toilet. I find that adding a tonal shift towards the end of the call that implies it's breaking your heart not to be able to make it in today is a nice, almost subversive touch.

If you're smart, you should pick a mid-week day for your sickie scam. Sciving off on a Monday or Friday is just asking, practically begging, to be caught out, the duvet day equivalent of OJ Simpson writing that If I Did It theoretical murder book.

But once the awkward, Oscar-worthy phone call is sorted, the day is your own. That sneaky, hard-earned sleep-in on your duvet day is amongst the most relaxing naps you'll ever have. Naturally, you can't go outdoors because you're too ill to get up and/or you can't be seen, so the only option is to then take to the couch. And as we all know, your duvet is always more comfortable on the sofa than it is on your bed, kind of like how crisps are always nicer when you're taking them from someone else's bag.

At this point it's time to build your comfy sickie fort, replete with all the resources you'll need for an afternoon of lounging. Once you have Neurofen, DVDs, soup, tea and various selections of biscuits within arm's reach, there's very little need or, indeed, incentive to move, save for wholly inconvenient bathroom breaks (at least until those adult nappies become mainstream and/or socially acceptable).

Then, as the Americans are wont to say, it's time to let the healing begin. It's amazing what a visual diet of Oprah, Aussie soaps, Blathnaid/Sheena/Joe-ige and endless Friends' repeats can do for the system. By the time your housemate(s) or partner arrives home from work, soaked through and half-dead on their feet, you'll be just slowly scraping yourself off the sofa, and probably on the verge of screaming if you hear, "So no-one told you life was gonna be this way..." emanating from your telly one more time — surely the ultimate sign that you're ready to go back to work the next day.

So go on. Don't you deserve just one day? You know you want to. Just don't all do it at once, please. After all, someone's lowly worker-monkey blood has to keep the capitalist wheels greased while you're dossing.

Is Anyone Electable?

Pretty depressing overview of the 2008 US Election from Slate

Mad Christmas

No second acts in American lives?

San Fran critics

2007 San Francisco Film Critics Prizes:

Best Picture: The Assassination of Jesse James

Director: Ethan and Joel Coen, No Country For Old Men

Actor: George Clooney, Michael Clayton

Actress: Julie Christie, Away From Her

Foreign Language Film: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Documentary: No End in Sight

Original Screenplay: The Savages

Adapted Screenplay: Away From Her

Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone

Supporting Actor: Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James

Love stinks

Whatever next? Read here

Hillary sacks Celine

The US presidential race is already the longest-running in history, so it's not surprising that the leading contenders are feeling the strain. Last week we got news of the first major shake-up in Senator Hillary Clinton's campaign, and what was it the former First Lady decided to do? Bring on a new campaign manager? Send Bill to outer Mongolia so he wouldn't keep outshining her? Get rid of that bone-chilling laugh of hers?

No, no and if only. Instead, Hillary has dumped Celine Dion's track 'You and I' as her official campaign song. In the Canadian chanteuse's place is Big Head Todd and the Monsters with their soft-rock ditty Blue Sky, which was originally written as a tribute to America's space programme.

Now, just why any politician — particularly one as savvy as Hillary —would ever think that Celine Dion was going to be the tune to win over the masses on the hustings is anyone's guess. Her only defence is that this disastrous and regrettable song choice was made by popular vote —surely an ominous metaphor for any political campaign.

And although Hillary 08's replacement tune is safely inspirational, I think Hillary botched this chance to musically communicate her message to voters. She only had to look to the rest of Ms Dion's hits to find a wealth of suitable tracks to sum up her bid for the presidency. How about Celine's 'I Want You To Need Me' or 'Show Some Emotion'?

There were also the eerily apt 'I Hate You Then I Love You' and 'Everybody'sTalking My Baby Down'. Wasted chance Hill.

Of course, her husband Bill famously used Fleetwood Mac's 'Don't Stop(Thinking About Tomorrow)' as the backdrop music for his first campaign in 1992, and keeping with those legendarily tempestuous lovers/business partners (the Mac, not the Clintons), couldn't Hillary have opted for the band's classic 'What Makes You Think You're The One?' as her official song?

Alternatively, Hillary had the choice of the Mac's 'Over My Head', or'No Questions Asked'. Also how could she not be tempted to use the songs 'Little Lies', 'As Long as You Follow' or 'Second Hand News'?

And while Republicans would pick the Mac's 'Never Going Back Again' for Hillary, there's no doubt she thinks — well, hopes anyway — that'Landslide' will ultimately be the Mac tune she hears when votes arecounted/sabotaged on November 4 next.

Washington DC Critics

BEST PICTURE:
No Country for Old Men

BEST DIRECTOR:
Ethan and Joel Coen (No Country for Old Men)

BEST ACTOR:
George Clooney (Michael Clayton)

BEST ACTRESS: Julie Christie (Away from Her)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESSWinner: Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead)

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:
Diablo Cody (Juno)

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:

Aaron Sorkin (Charlie Wilson's War)

BEST ENSEMBLE: No Country for Old Men

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM:
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

BEST ANIMATED FILM:
Ratatouille

BEST DOCUMENTARY FILM: Sicko

BEST ART DIRECTION:
Sweeney Todd

BEST BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE: Ellen Page (Juno)

Prize Day for Daniel

The New York Film Critics...

I saw Diving Bell and the Butterfly at the weekend on a BAFTA screener DVD. It's an incredible film. I cried my eyes out. Exquisite direction and cinematography (definite Oscar noms for both surely), with a riveting central performance from Mathieu Amalric, and a truly heartbreaking cameo from Max Von Sydow as his father. My vote for film of this award year so far.

Best Picture: (tie)
There Will Be Blood & The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Best Actor
Daniel Day Lewis for There Will Be Blood

Best Actress:
Julie Christie for Away from Her

Director
PT Anderson for There Will Be Blood

Supporting actress:
Cate Blanchett for I'm Not There

Supporting Actor:
Javier Bardem for No Country for Old Men

Breakthrough Performance:
Ellen Page for Juno

Debut Director:
Sarah Polley for Away from Her

Ensemble Cast:
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Screenplay:
Wes Anderson, Jason Schwartzman, Roman Coppola for The Darjeeling Limited

Documentary:
Sicko

Foreign Language: (tie)
The Lives of Others & Persepolis

Animated:
Persepolis

Cinematography:
Robert Elswit for There Will Be Blood

Film Music:
Jonny Greenwood for There Will Be Blood

Top Ten Films:
1 Atonement
2 Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
3 The Darjeeling Limited
4 The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
5 I'm Not There
6 Juno
7 Michael Clayton
8 No Country for Old Men
9 Persepolis
10 Sweeney Todd/There Will Be Blood

Bloody victory

The Los Angeles Film Critics prizes...

BEST PICTURE: There Will Be Blood
Runner-Up: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

BEST DIRECTOR: Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood)
Runner-Up: Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)

BEST ACTOR:
Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood)
Runner-Up: Frank Langella (Starting Out in the Evening)

BEST ACTRESS: Marion Cotillard (La Vie En Rose)
Runner-Up: Anamaria Marinca (4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Vlad Ivanov (4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days)
Runner-Up: Hal Holbrook (Into the Wild)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead)
Runner-Up: Cate Blanchett (I'm Not There)

Continue reading here.

Men are made gay by the child within

Er, okay. From The Sunday Times.

The Accused

Andrew Gumbel on Jodie Foster's (apparent) coming-out last week - and why the reaction to the news vindicates the actress' decision to keep it private for so long. Read here

Potty politics

Guest Column from today's Weekend magazine in the Irish Independent

Lately my parents have started to say there's no such thing as children anymore. By that, they mean that kids seem to be born "wise" these days, and are able to buy and sell you whilst you're still consulting the parenting manual to figure out how to fasten their nappy.

They base most of these assumptions on their dealings – an appropriately business-like term – with their seven grandchildren, my nephews and nieces, who range in age from 12 down to just two months. You've heard of Generations X and Y? Well, post-millenium kids should be called Generation ABC: they're toddlers, but ones who nevertheless deserve a socio-economic tag due to their all round savviness...

Continue reading here

Party favours

This Life column from Day and Night magazine in today's Irish Independent

Good news folks (well, for me anyway). After spending last weekend rummaging about — and eating my way through — the Christmas markets in Manchester, I can report that I'm now officially after getting into the Christmas spirit. Or should I say spirits?

Yes, all it took was a full Saturday afternoon faffing around in seasonably chilly weather, getting increasingly buzzed on gallons of mulled wine and specialist German beers, all while munching on plates of bratwurst, fresh giant macaroons and mini pancakes to fully awaken the festive beast in me.

And for the next three weeks, that beast will call the shots (sometimes literally). The party season is now in full swing, and who are we to fight it? After all, one of mankind’s oldest Christmas jingles practically insists on us donning now our gay apparel and spending the entire season in a jolly state. To do otherwise would be like affront to Santa (or something), and what monster would want to upset Santa?

Every year, it never ceases to amaze me just how many Christmas parties you can pack into one month. Then there are the endless house parties, liquid lunches, sneaky afternoon tipples, after work sessions, Kris Kindle parties – the whole period really is just a merry old assault on the senses (not to mention the liver).

Naturally, the flagship event is the official Christmas party, that great levelling institution that unites CEOs, managers and their lowly worker monkeys on the one even plane for a night of good-natured, festive fun. There are no barriers that night, no distinctions of superiority and inferiority. On that one night, they are all buddies, they are all equals, and all your actions are inconsequential, covered as they are by gentleman’s agreement that what happens at the party, stays at the party.

Of course, only an idiot believes those last few statements to be true, and that’s usually the same idiot who will end up insulting the boss and/or their loved ones, or walloping said employer after getting a bit too rambunctious as he/she animatedly sings along to Fairytale of New York, or who gets the bright idea to jump on the table for an impromptu performance – with corresponding dance routine – of You Can Leave Your Hat On.

For no matter how cool and “call me by my first name” trendy the higher powers are, you can never, ever forget that they are ultimately the hire powers. The Christmas beast I mentioned earlier will want you to disregard all your usual corporate caution in order to feed its insatiable appetite for seasonal mischief. You must learn to resist it and drown it out, perhaps by way of a simple censorious statement that you can say aloud to cancel out the wicked thoughts it’s putting in your mind.

So, for instance, you’re at the party and in the middle of a chat with the managing director when the beast stirs up and demands that you suddenly reach out and toss their hair and/or challenge them to a drunken pantsless dance-off. “Yes Bob, it is great news that the weekly estimated net user systems have been statistically…NO! DOWN BEAST! DOWN!... stronger that last year.” True, you may come across like you have some kind of Tourette’s, but just consider the alternative.

With some careful management though, the beast should ensure that you have a fun few weeks ahead. And, as I say every year, take full advantage. The party season may be exhausting and potentially ruinous, but it will be January soon enough - the dark, miserable hangover of months - where you’ll have more than enough time to recover mind and body, and where you’ll be only too glad to have a few merry (or, at the very least, fuzzy) memories to shore you up.

On the Run

Scary story about the two young Afghan actors who starin the forthcoming movie adaptation of The Kite Runner.

An award season for Old Men?

The Coen Brothers' No Country For Old Men has been named the Best Film of 2007 by the National Board of Review. Award season is in full swing, with the Golden Globe nominations out next Thursday.

Other winners include George Clooney and Julie Christie, who won Best Actor and Actress for Michael Clayton (which got mainly sniffy reviews over here) and Away From Her, respectively. Good to see Casey Affleck getting recognised for his astonishing performance in The Assassination of Jesse James. See all the winners, and the NBR's Top 10 movies of the year, here.

Couldn't you give us a few more careless whispers?

From today's Irish Independent

By Declan Cashin

Thursday

December 06 2007

Last August I was one of thousands who packed into the Point Theatre in Dublin to see George Michael perform as part of his 25th anniversary tour. That night, my friends and I -- who were all in nappies when George himself was strutting around in open Hawaiian shirts in the Club Tropicana video -- sang along to every lyric alongside die-hard thirty-- and forty-- somethings reliving their not-- so--distant youths. George was on brilliant form, uniting us all across the pop generation divide. Continue reading here.

The sister is watching that brother...

Who's afraid of Barack Obama?

Great piece about Obama in New York Times. Momentum is building baby.

Let me get this straight...

Sideline from today's Irish Independent

For a while there, it seemed there had been a backlash against the so-called 'metrosexual' culture. A breed of raw action man — epitomised by the lean, mean and detached style that Daniel Craig brought to the James Bond role last year — appeared to be metaphorically raiding the metrosexual's bathroom cabinet and throwing out all those wimpy male moisturisors, exfoliators and face packs.

Yes, the grunts and knuckledraggers tried to convince us that the 'retrosexual' was now the dominant male archetype in popular culture, and we had better all start getting used to it. Or not. Feel however the bloody hell you like — retrosexuals don't care about girly-man things like feelings.

But this week, it seems the metrosexuals have claimed back lost ground — if not evolved into something else entirely, something bigger, stronger and more metro than ever before.

That was the news that a quarter of Irish males aged between 18-25 own a GHD hair straightener. The very idea that any man would use such a taboo beauty appliance to tame their unruly mops was just too much for the retros to handle. As news of the survey broke, there was surely a collective shudder felt throughout the land as these last bastions of pure manhood punched a wall or a nearby well-groomed metro in sheer frustration, horror and disbelief.

Of course, the automatic accusation/taunt that was flung around was that men who used a GHD were "gay". What would the retros do without that default, catch-all insult, eh? But I would be very interested if researchers somewhere delved a little deeper and found out what type of men have GHDs. Is there one lurking in the changing rooms of, gasp, a GAA club? Does that burly builder working on that site opposite your office have one stashed in his bag in case he gets caught in a shower while working and the rain plays havoc with his carefully maintained curls? Does the Taoiseach's hefty make-up bill include a miracle hair straightener?

The GHD, it seems, has the same stigma today that moisturisor or male waxing kits had back pre-Beckham. But seriously, what's so shocking about men using a hot tongs to straighten their hair? It's not exactly as if these guys are wearing glittering nail polish or stilettos with their suits, now is it? To you 'tuft' guy retros, I ask: how can we help you get over this post-traumatic 'tress' disorder?

Shopping mad

This Life column from Day and Night magazine in today's Irish Independent

Morning radio is supposed to light, perky, and should have some content that has potential to inspire in you some kind of good will towards mankind. Otherwise, how on earth could you get up out of bed on a freezing, wet November morning and face the world? Morning radio is not meant to make you feel bad about yourselves and others, as happened to me last week.

There I was, minding my own groggy business, sleepily tucking into my porridge, when this woman popped up on a morning radio show and pronounced that she had all of her Christmas shopping done since the end of October. All that was left for her to do now was enjoy the festive season’s abundant opportunities to be jolly.

Thankfully, the presenter was in tune with my thinking and told her, ‘You seem nice, but I hate you’. I can’t even begin to fathom the organisational skills and commitment it would take to be that prepared for Christmas – or ‘Chrismoween’ as it’s now apparently known ever since our capitalist overlords decided to merge the world’s biggest pagan festival and the most important date in all of Christianity into one convenient, if hard-to-dress-for, holiday season.

I’m not a fan of shopping at the best of times. Don’t get me wrong: I love having, you know, clothes and stuff, but whenever it comes to actually having to venture into town to buy them, I revert to my default state as a whimpering four-year-old, tugging on my mother’s sleeve, wailing that I want to go home as she drags me into yet another shoe shop.

Now that I can no longer rely on my mother to buy all my clothes – and if anyone old enough to read this is still in that position, put the paper down, and slowly back away- I try to make my own shopping excursions quick and painless. Well, as painless as something that’s so easily hindered by the random and infuriating behaviour of the general public can be.

My plan always is: get in early, wear clothes that are easy to change in and out of, have your Laser card and/or all ATM needs sorted out first, and get the heck out before the hordes of merciless consumers arrive en masse like an invasion of zombies from a George A. Romero horror. And whatever you do, for the love of all that’s holy-pagan, don’t attempt to shop at weekends.

But in the two-to-four months that constitute the Chrismoween period, all those rules disappear faster that a pot of mulled wine and your dignity at the office party. Every day is like a weekend in terms of trying to navigate shopping centres. There’s no such thing as ‘early’ because everyone else now plays by that game too. ATMs have queues long enough to rival a run on a Northern Rock branch no matter what time of the day it is. The list of festive mood-sapping shopping hurdles just snowballs.

So what’s one to do? Internet shopping seems like the best option, but you better get clicking now. Also the problem with that plan is that you really have to know what you’re buying for the person beforehand. Otherwise, you’ll end up doing the cyber equivalent of running around Dundrum frantically trying to find the right PJs and Brut toiletry set for your dad.

As for me, I think I have no choice but to resurrect my adoringly charming, if not very well-received, gag from my impoverished student days when I cheekily gave people imaginary “boxes of love” as gifts. Or maybe I’ll give them “my time” or send them “best wishes”. Anything but brave the crowds and go shopping. I don’t wanna Mammy, I wanna go home!

In the blink of an eye

I woke at 5.30 this morning after a really restless night, so instead of lying their frustratedly trying to get back asleep, I grumpily started work on a book I've had beside my bed for a few weeks. Having just read this book the whole way through, I don't feel I can ever be grumpy, or complain about anything ever again.

The book is called The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly, written by the former editor-in-chief of French Elle, Jean-Dominique Bauby. In December 1995, Bauby suffered a debilitating stroke that left him utterly paralysed with a condition known as 'locked-in' syndrome. The only movement he could make was with his left eyelid, and through a laborious system of blinks, he dictated this remarkable, profoundly moving account of his life as a 'locked-in' patient. Bauby describes the condition as like having your body trapped and held down under a giant diving-bell, while at the same time your mind retains the ability to flutter like a butterfly.

The words 'life-affirming' and 'inspiring' cannot even begin to describe the effect this book has on the reader. Through his insightful, often funny, often unbearably sad prose, Bauby (who died in 1997) will be able to make you fall on your knees in weeping, grovelling gratitude for being able to even fall on your knees, or even swallow your own spit. Without any self-pity, or preachy, Tuesdays with Morrie-esque sentimentality, Bauby will forcefully remind you just how so very, very blessed you are to be able to go about the routine things in your life, for good and for bad.

The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly will - should - encourage you to live the life you want, to take chances, to not take anything for granted, and to not miss out on any of life's opportunities, no matter how massive or how insignificant you might think them to be. Reflecting on his lost chances by reference to a racing bet he never placed on a sure thing, Bauby says that, from his current vantage point, life looks like "a race whose result we know beforehand, but in which we fail to bet on the winner".

The book had been made into a movie directed by Julian Schnabel, which will be released next year, and which understandably has attracted attention as an Oscar darkhorse. Please, please read this book. It literally shook me to my core with its message that your entire life could be gone in the blink of an eye.

A Sight to See

Movie critics are prone to say, "If you only see one movie this year, make it this". However, rarely has that term been more appropriate than in the case of Charles Ferguson's self-financed documentary, No End In Sight, a brilliantly edited, calm and lucid, but utterly devastating examination of how the Bush Administration mishandled the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

You know most of the reasons for the chaos in that country, and No End doesn't present you with any new facts. But the concise and precise manner in which this documentary chronicles one catastrophic decision after another from an unfathomably incompetent, arrogant, intransigent and just plain idiotic US Administration, and the way it is so clearly and incontrovertibly argued, makes the film literally jaw-dropping to behold.

No End is compiled from interviews with military experts who were there on the ground, all of whose concerns and advice were largely ignored by the Bush Administration before, during and after the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Their insightful contributions are intercut with footage of press conferences held by former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was in effect running the operation. I didn't think it possible, but you come away from No End with an even lower opinion of Rumsfeld than you had before. On foot of the arguments here, history is sure to regard him as arguably the worst Secretary of anything in all the history of the United States. But then again, there are a lot of figures in the Bush Administration jostling for 'Worst Ever' positions, including the president himself.

All you can do is watch in disbelief and increasing anger as the damning evidence mounts: how there was zero post-war planning; how the Department of Defence ignored all advice from military experts with combat experience (unlike the cretinous quartet who planned the war, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz); the Administration's reliance on, and indeed pursuit of, dodgy and plain false intelligence to bolster their case for war; the failure to halt the looting in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam; the disastrous policy of De-Baathification that left most of the country's public sector unemployed and disenfranchised for life; the failure to guard ammunitions dumps; and, most calamitously, the decision by the Coalition Provisional Authority (who had never even visited Iraq at that point) to disband the Iraqi military not only without consulting those people trying to contain the chaos on the ground, but without even informing the State Department or even Bush himself. As the documentary spells out, this move put 500,000 soldiers on the streets, unemployed, impoverished and furious, fuelling an insurgency that they could have helped to prevent.

No End in Sight is shattering stuff, that in its profoundly depressing but essential examination of just how insanely rotten the last eight years of American "leadership" have been, predicts an even more dispiriting future for the US, the Middle East and the world, regardless of who takes over the White House in January 2009. This is almost unbearably sad to watch, but No End in Sight could legitimately lay claim to the title of film of the year - if not the decade.

Going down the tube(s)

This Life column from Day and Night magazine in today's Irish Independent

I have been living without TV for the past three months. Seriously, it’s been a whole 90 days and counting. Well, kind of. I should explain. I moved apartment recently, in the course of which I splashed out on a glorious 37 inch LCD screen that came highly recommended from that increasingly popular website, moremoneythansense.com.

But when it came to getting a TV cable package, the wheels came off the wagon. After a series of infuriating and blood-vessel popping encounters with a certain cable company who shall remain nameless (let's just say they are Not Too Laudable), my housemate and I decided to see how long we could go without any channels.

As it happens, this isn't the first time I've undergone such an experiment. While in college, a friend and I moved into a place with four others. None of us had a TV set, and what with us being scroungy, broke students, none of us bothered our fundaments getting one either.
On that occasion my friend and I lasted two months, and only finally cracked after we found ourselves not only doing the crossword in a daily broadsheet, but actually taking the more complicated crossword, redesigning it with markers, and devising new clues to create our own, new super crossword to distribute amongst friends. As you can imagine, it takes a spectacular kind of boredom to drive two sane people to such an activity.

This time it's different though, and it's not just down to the fact that I work when most quality TV (a paradox in terms) is on. Thanks to downloading, my housemate and I can watch our favourite TV without ever having to switch on a box. So whereas before I might have watched 3 hours of TV just to catch an hour-long show, now I can just access said show in its stripped-down, ad-free, time-saving 42 minute form.

So when I say I'm living "without television", I guess I mean I'm living without everything else that comes with having access to TV land — namely the endless stream of soaps, reality shows, daytime dross, makeover programmes, self-consciously zany adverts, property vehicles and Vernon Kay-fronted pap that could only charitably be referred to as the fat clogging up the arteries of the televisual body.

Do I miss all of that? On the whole, no. Working in a newspaper, it's pretty easy - in fact, it's unavoidable - to keep abreast of soap news and reality TV’s goings-on, whether you want to or not. Otherwise, I genuinely have not seen an episode of Corrie or EastEnders since last Christmas Day.

The only things I can hand-on-my-heart say I miss watching regularly are X Factor (though by the sound of things, this year's version sucks) and, on fragile Sunday mornings, repeats of 8 Simple Rules, which gets my vote for the most perfect and infinitely comforting hangover TV show in history.

Mind you, while at a fancy dress party over Halloween, a male friend, who was gussied up as a disturbingly attractive version of Tyra Banks, led a chorus of horrified and increasingly violent abuse against me when I admitted I wasn't watching, nor had I ever seen a single episode of, America's Next top Model. When instructed to “smile with my eyes” for party photos, I could only reply with a bewildered, “Ya wha?” Never have I felt like such an outcast from the telly-watching world.

Since then, I’ve been considering just caving in and getting my TV package back. That America's Next Top Model backlash at the party has instilled a fear that my lack of the TV bare necessities has sent me hurtling (further) towards the bottom of the social ladder. And I want to be on Top! There Tyra, I said it. I guess I’m all yours.

Quote of the day

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by" - Douglas Adams.

Amen brother.

Na, too easy

Congrats Bertie, yours is no longer the worst Government in Europe

Wow, just when you thought Bertie's Amazing Technicolour Dream Vote Government was the most incompetent in Europe, along come New Labour with the biggest security blunder in British history. Frightening stuff.

Oprah-Obama dream ticket

Oprah's to hit the campaign trail to stump for Barack Obama in the crucial final few weeks before the January primaries. Read here.

The Decline of the American Empire

Good piece from Salon.

Obama makes gains on Hillary...

It's heating up. Read here.

Weekend's 10th birthday

My contribution to the 10th anniversary feature of Weekend magazine in the Irish Independent, 17/11/2007

From the vantage point of 2007, it’s almost inconceivable to believe that the same laws that were used to persecute Oscar Wilde in 1895 were still on Irish statute books in 1993. But in June of that year, Ireland’s first female Justice Minister, Maire Geoghegan-Quinn, courageously introduced and pushed through legislation to decriminalise homosexuality.

With that most fundamental hurdle overcome, the past ten years have seen a flourishing of equality legislation that extended further rights to gay people. A year after Weekend began, the 1998 Employment Equality Act was introduced that outlawed discrimination in relation to employment and the workplace on 9 grounds, including sexual orientation.

I don’t think that the effect of this can be overstated. Since that law was first implemented by the Equality Authority in 1999, it has helped to usher in a crucial, trickle-down change in attitudes towards hiring practices, as well as issues of respect and dignity in the work environment. Today, it’s so much easier, and indeed common, for many gay workers to be out in the workplace, with some more progressive companies even having their own LGBT societies! The glaring exception in this regard is religious-owned organisations, which are exempt from the equality legislation, making life as an out worker more difficult for some teachers and medical staff.

The law has also changed life for Irish gay people in a wider sense since 1997. The Equal Status Act 2000 looked beyond the workplace to outlaw discrimination in the provision of goods and services on 9 grounds, again including sexual orientation. Even though decriminalisation was in place since 1993, it was still possible 5 and 6 years later for gay people to be refused an apartment, a hotel/B&B room or even to be served a drink in some establishments. This, again, seems unbelievable in 2007, but there are many gay people of a certain generation who will be painfully able to recall meeting such hostility, even in the late 1990s.

This all seems like a history lesson to me, even though I’m only 26, and this has occurred in the past 10 years. Mine is the first Irish generation to come of age at a time when homosexuality has become ‘normalised’ by rapid social and legal change, so much so that many of my peers, and younger, see the proposed Government civil partnership legislation as a given right, and cannot understand the current delays and hesitation. Things are not perfect, but that sense of innate worth that seems to be instilled in gay people today has only been achieved by reaping the benefits hard won over the past decade.

Set for Life

Sideline from the Irish Independent, 17/11/2007

Did it really come as that much of a shock to us this week when Barnardo’s reported that one-third of five to nine year olds had a TV set in their bedrooms? Television sets are to modern Irish homes what Sacred Heart paintings and JFK shrines were to the dwellings of yesteryear: ubiquitous must-haves (that can also be quite creepy).

The TV in the bedroom debate normally gets aired in a more adult context, when some sexpert adorns newspaper and magazine feature pages warning about how the presence of the goggle box can put paid to a healthy sex life. But, as Helen Lovejoy would cry in The Simpsons, won’t somebody please think of the children?

I love TV as much as the next person, but even I have my limits. Nothing irks me more than when I’m watching MTV’s Cribs or one of its carbon copies, and you see some smug, empty-headed celebrity showing off their TV sets in their wardrobes, bathrooms and even their showers.

Heaven forbid they actually take a few minutes to themselves and their own thoughts (for want of a better word) without the incessant blaring of the tube! Is there such a thing anymore as some quiet time in TV-less solitude? Or should I just give up now, sell my brain on eBay, connect a USB from my head to the telly and just let it do all the work from now on?

Making kids comfortable with and proficient in technology from an early age can only be a good thing. And I’m not saying children should not be allowed watch TV. I doubt I’d be the functional, well-adjusted adult I am today (be nice) without some of the classic TV shows from my youth.

But there has to be a line in the sand, and I think TVs in the bedroom should be it. Leaving aside the fact that it makes kids giddy at a time when they should be winding down, it robs them of what is possibly the only time they have in their day to freely delve into their own heads without interruption from any external forces like parents, teachers and technology.

Someone once said that television is called a medium because it’s neither rare nor well done. You can’t control the quality of viewing, but you can control the quantity. Why not pull the plug in your Crib?

My So-Called Quarter Life

From slate.com

Co-creator of Lost: "TV is Dying"

Damon Lindelof in New York Times

Million bucks or the US presidency. Hmm

So John Kerry is willing to (finally) tackle the outrageous distortions and lies peddled by the Swift Boaters that cost him the White House in 2004 now that there's a million dollars at stake, but wasn't willing to stand up for himself when the actual presidency was at stake?? And this is the guy that Democrats thought could beat Bush three years ago??

Bush Watch...

One US journalist's countdown to the end of "the long national nightmare of George W. Bush". It's now less than one year until the 2008 presidential election. Tick tock indeed.

The Suspect

My review of the new book The Suspect: The Story of Rachel O'Reilly's murder from today's Irish Daily Mail


The Suspect: The Story of Rachel O’Reilly’s Murder
By Jenny Friel



THE trial and conviction of Joe O’Reilly for his wife Rachel’s murder in June and July of this year held the nation in morbid fascination like few cases of its kind ever have. As 146 witnesses took the stand over the 18 day trial, the Irish media lapped up every detail, and devoted mini-rainforests worth of coverage every day to an insatiable and captive readership.

Irish Mail on Sunday journalist Jenny Friel is in a better position than most to comment on the sensation that was the Joe O’Reilly trial, seeing as she interviewed O’Reilly on several occasions from the time of Rachel’s grisly murder in the bedroom of the O’Reillys’ home in north Dublin in October 2004, to mid-2006, just before the DPP instructed Gardai to charge O’Reilly.

Friel’s new account of the killing and trial, The Suspect, provides a succinct yet detailed overview of the three-year case. Friel is unsparing in her presentation of the gruesome facts, but is always careful to balance that by showing the devastating effect that the case had on mother-of-two Rachel’s surviving family and sons, a move that crucially ensures that the victim is never reduced to a mere abstraction in a case that bears many of the hallmarks of a Hitchcockian piece of fiction (from the adultery, and meticulously-planned uxoricide ultimately undermined by psychological failings, down to the propitiative letter placed in the victim’s coffin that was later exhumed).

Looming over all these proceedings is, of course, the Hitchcockian protagonist himself, Joe O’Reilly. I think it’s fair to say that The Suspect is partly Friel’s attempt to retrospectively understand how she, along with very many others, came to be taken in by O’Reilly on both a human and professional level (O’Reilly favoured Friel and the Mail because of what he deemed the paper’s fair coverage of the case).

But The Suspect is no mere self-critical, dark-night-of-the-soul piece. Friel quite rightly turns the question on the reader, and repeatedly asks: What was it about this case, and this man, that so enthralled us?

Friel posits the theory that it was the very ordinariness of Joe and Rachel’s lives that made their chilling fate so extraordinary. To the outside world, the O’Reillys were seen as the perfect couple. Teen sweethearts, Joe and Rachel were viewed by all as a deeply committed and loving pair, bound together by their love of sport and fitness. Indeed, one of the tragic and grim ironies of the case is that a gym dumbbell, a symbol of the energetic qualities that attracted the two to each other, would become the very instrument that O’Reilly used to brutally shatter the seemingly romantic idyll.

It was this unexceptional aspect of the couple’s marriage that made the horrific nature of bubbly housewife Rachel’s death, the increasing focus on O’Reilly as a suspect, and the emergence of details on how the marriage had soured all the harder to grasp.

More than anything else, however, Friel examines how O’Reilly’s contrived “perfect murder” came to unravel so spectacularly. The author recounts a series of interviews she conducted with O’Reilly in the aftermath of Rachel’s death, in which her first impressions were that “he was a lovely man” who was always polite, friendly and forthcoming (too much so). Indeed Friel’s initial assessment of, and reaction to, the man was an accurate reflection of our own: she was sympathetic, and wanted to accept his innocence, but couldn’t ignore those niggling doubts that his calm, clinical manner (mistaken for grief and shock) and later his outlandishly suspicious behaviour just didn’t add up.

Through the course of her interviews, Friel began to notice “regular Joe’s” hitherto shrewdly-maintained mask slipping. He revealed a bilious and unsubstantiated anger towards Rachel’s family, the Callellys, and, most astonishingly, brought Friel on a “murder tour” of the house. As would emerge after the trial, O’Reilly led several family members and friends on that gruesome pilgrimage to the scene of Rachel’s death, even going as far as to recreate the murder in bizarre OJ Simpson-esque ‘If I Did It’ moments of self-incrimination (that were later deemed too prejudicial to be shown to the jury).

In their tense final conversation (on the topic of a row between O’Reilly and the Callellys over Rachel’s headstone), O’Reilly chillingly joked to Friel that she must have feared for her life coming to interview him about the dispute. A shaken Friel, perhaps once and for all realising his true nature, could only reply yes.

Given her close involvement in the case, Friel’s book is a tightly-structured, informed and analytical piece of work, an impressively non-sensational examination of a case that continues to pique prurient, macabre and curtain-twitching forces in the Irish public.

The Suspect: The Story of Rachel O’Reilly’s Murder, by Jenny Friel, Maverick House, e11.99

Date with Dense-ity

This Life column from today's Irish Independent

What did we Irish ever do before the concepts of dates and dating fully took hold here? We know that people, like our parents for instance, must have "dated" at some point or else we wouldn't all be here (let's not dwell on that one too much), but you can be sure that it wasn't called a "date". They went to "a dance" or box social, and referred to their budding courtship as "stepping out" or "doing a line".

But then into this dateless backwater swept the Americans with their money and their benign cultural imperialism, and very soon, people were going on fancy "dates", seeing as we all now had the cash, resources and curious mid-Atlantic accents to ape our US benefactors' social customs and mannerisms.


One side effect of this dating culture explosion is the first date, and, with it, all its pressures and opportunities for mortifying embarrassment and drama. Friends of mine, bless their cotton socks, often come to me looking for ideas about where to go and what to do on a first date. With every one of those brainstorms, we always strive for monumental originality; otherwise you'll make no impact and the person you're trying to woo will forget who you are, possibly even while on the date with you. Or so our logic goes anyway.


Now, the Lord herself knows I'm no expert in this field, but I'm going to publicly and inversely respond to those appeals and gift to you three things you shouldn't do on first dates, little gems roughly hewn from the experiences I've had ever since my first steps into the world of romance (for want of a better word) back in my mid-90s teen disco heyday where "dates" were arranged by lining the boys up against one wall and girls along the other and some ambitious youth club organiser paired you off at random. Good times.


My first, and most important rule is, never go on a first date on a weekend night. Think about it: they're the busiest nights of the week where everyone you know is out. This means that chances of you two finding a quiet-ish place to talk on your own , without running into truckloads of increasingly bladdered friends are very slim indeed. You just end up competing for attention, and that kind of confidence-shaking humiliation is more suited to the third or fourth date at least.


Secondly, don't fall into the dinner trap. A simple meal can rival filming-time at Abu Ghraib for sheer horror if you're stuck with some header who drones on about his collection of pet ferrets or who texts his ex the whole way through the date. Not that that's happened to me (Declan shuffles uncomfortably). Same goes for cooking someone dinner. Associating some first date disaster with the place you call home would ruin your feng shui irrevocably.


Lastly, don't get too drunk. If you're anything like me, as the glasses pile up, the conversation will veer between rants about the Government and Britney, to babbling on with nerdy recruitment pitches for my favourite TV shows, to mocking someone who turns out to be a friend/relative/lover of theirs. Stay in control of your senses. That way, if there's a second date, there's also the added bonus that you'll remember the person's name, and what they look like (and yes, sadly both of those have happened to me).


Keep all those in mind and I think you'll get through it ok. But whether you abide by those tips or not, at the very least please remember this final little first date nugget courtesy of a wise lady friend of mine: "The face that over cocktails looks so charming can oft o'er breakfast be quite alarming". Indeed.

Eat my words

You can read my restaurant review of Kinara in Clontarf, Dublin, here. Published in Day and Night magazine in the Irish Independent today.

Greatest TV Icons

Entertainment Weekly's 50 Greatest TV Icons. A whole lunchbreak of fun.

Numbers 100-51

Numbers 50-1

Sexiest Man Alive 2007

Controversial.

It's never too early...

Nominations for this year's Golden Globe awards are announced in one month exactly, and the predictions have begun in earnest. Read here.

Elegy for Great American Novel

From today's London Independent.

John Walsh's theory that Norman Mailer's death is another nail in the coffin for the concept of the Great American Novel, which, in my humblest of opinions, is either Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby or Roth's American Pastoral.





"If any writer believed in the existence of the Great American Novel it was Norman Mailer. He believed in it utterly, called it the "big one" and dreamed of bagging it – like a hunter in search of game. Now, he and many of his fellow hunters are gone. Can anyone take their place?" Continue

Fianna Fail's 50 ways to laugh at voters

Essential reading for Irish people...correction, a certain amount of Irish people who voted a certain way last summer. Cheers, That's Ireland!

America's Next Top Spouse

Salon.com has a great guide to the partners of the main candidates gunning for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations. As with all things in this race, I'm all about the Obamas.

So bad they're good

The awful movies we love to hate to love.

Bloggers join writers' strike

Solidarity baby.

Mailer 1923-2007

Some memories of the late Norman Mailer by famous friends and enemies from Salon.com

Strike: Week 1 down

Good 'where are we now one week later?' piece on the Hollywood writers' strike in yesterday's MediaGuardian. Read it here.

Rude Awakening

Sideline commentary from yesterday's Irish Independent

By now, everyone must have seen or read about the live row that took place during a highly-charged interview on TV3's Ireland AM show thisweek. Even those of us who were sensibly not awake at that ungodly time of the morning were very quickly swamped with a deluge of texts,emails and blog links excitedly notifying us of the scrappy sofa squabble.


And it's that fervour and glee with which people greeted the news of the telly dust-up that leads me to ask: is Ireland at last ready for its own Jerry Springer-style talk show?Up until this week, we might have all believed that Ireland was too small a country, too reserved, too concerned with what Betty and Jimmy next door would think to take part in or condone the kind of hysterical, car crash television experience that The Jerry Springer Show specialises in.



Alas, as our reaction to the Ireland AM spat demonstrates, it would seem that as Ireland has become more sophisticated, our entertainment tastes have become more feral. Every TV and newspaper report on the Ireland AM row was fascinated by, and almost fetishistic in its description of seeing people attack each other live on air, a seemingly accurate reflection of the public's hunger for the story.



We might not like to admit it, but after years of watching family members, lovers, co-workers and friends lay into each other on shows like Springer, and the British equivalents Tricia and Jeremy Kyle et al, we Irish are perhaps hankering for a native talk show wrestling ring in which we can revel, and through which we can exorcise our own demons by way of those people brave/crazy/fame-hungry enough to air their really dirty linen in public.



There is a lot of anger, resentment, frustration and pain bubbling away on or near to the surface of Irish life today. It seems inconceivable that some wily producer has not considered appealing to our basic instincts and devising a TV forum that could expertly exploit that social and personal malaise for our wider entertainment.They are the shows we love to hate to love.



You have to admit that it's fascinating to speculate on what kind of content such an Irish show would include, the guests it would attract, and even on who would host it? And how fitting is it that an early morning show might just have awakened the beast in all of us?

Audiences shun Iraq-themed movies

Read about it here.

Landmark Moments in Gay Hollywood

Why I'm just shamelessly pilfering from the EW site tonight! But I just love it so! Here's another of their great lists, this time with video clips, of Landmark Moments in Gay Hollywood

Streeps Ahead

For all you fellow Streep-nuts. EW's guide to the essential Meryl Streep, on the day that her talky, ripped-straight-from-the-headlines, admire-it-more-than-like it political drama Lions for Lambs opens.

What are my favourite Meryl roles, you ask? It's like asking a not-overly loving parent to pick between children! But if I did have to, I'd pick her performance in The Hours, in which she exquisitely channelled middle-age existential angst (and acted Nicole and her nose off the screen), and her, frankly, barnstorming turn as Lindy Chamerlain in A Cry in the Dark, in which she turned the infamous mother in the "dingo ate my baby" case into a bravely unlikeable protagonist. A truly haunting performance in a so-so movie that won her an Oscar nomination and the Best Actress gong at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival.

Write on, guys!

Wild Thing

Just back from a screening of Sean Penn's new movie, Into the Wild. I've been waiting ages to see this true story of Christopher McCandless, an intelligent college graduate, who gave up all his possessions to journey across America with no money, and
just relied on his wits, and sometimes the kindness of strangers, to eventually make a fateful trip to Alaska to fully bond with the stripped-down, non-materialistic world (or nature, as some call it).

Into the Wild is a problematic movie to watch, in the same way Werner Herzog's documentary Grizzly Man was. Like Herzog's protagonist Timothy Treadwell, McCandless can be infuriating, annoying, and bewildering, but also inspiring, charming and admirable. Both men, however, seemed to be on some kind of subconscious suicide mission, and, in Into the Wild especially, lots of people just sat back and let it happen. It's discomfiting, but maybe it's supposed to be.

The movie is a bit long, at times too self-regarding and is punctuated by too many voiceovers relaying McCandless' pseudo-philosophical and, at times, pure codological thoughts. But there's no denying that Penn has fashioned a thought-provoking story, that's beautifully shot, filled with a few sharp insights, and anchored by a fiercely committed and engaging central performance by young star Emile Hirsch. And just as Christopher's story is hurtling towards its shattering conclusion, up pops Hollywood old-timer Hal Holbrook as the last person Chris encounters, and for him he develops a deep affection. Holbrook's quietly devastating performance will leave you in tears - and, no doubt, will leave him with next year's Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

This isn't for everyone, but if you approach with an open mind, and stick with it despite a gut feeling that there's something not right about this guy, you'll end up being deeply moved, but why, I can't say for sure.