...becoming the first woman to do so. The 58-year-old (58!) is now on course to become the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar in the 82 year history of the awards. I don't say this lightly, but you go girl!
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Kathryn Bigelow wins the DGA...
...becoming the first woman to do so. The 58-year-old (58!) is now on course to become the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar in the 82 year history of the awards. I don't say this lightly, but you go girl!
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Gift of Life
Feature from today's Weekend magazine in the Independent.
Definitely one from the "I have nothing to complain about" file.
For Isabel Terry, this was the most important journey of her life. The Cork woman, who has lived her life with congenital heart disease, was being rushed by ambulance from Bishopstown to Dublin’s Mater hospital for a life-altering heart transplant operation.
Her ambulance had a Garda escort, and traffic was brought to a standstill in Cork, in order to allow Isabel to pass through as fast as possible. In the matter of organ transplantation, time is of the essence.
The ambulance had just reached Fermoy outside the city when Isabel’s mobile phone rang. It was the transplant co-ordinator. “They said the heart wasn’t suitable,” recalls Isabel. “It was too small. We had to turn the ambulance around and just go home.”
As if that disappointment wasn’t enough, Isabel has since been called three more times, making it to the hospital on each occasion, going through all the prep work, only to discover at the last minute that the heart wasn’t suitable after all. “It’s the way it works,” Isabel explains. “The minute an organ becomes available you have to come in, and just hope that it turns out to be useable. But it depends on tissue typing and other factors.
“It’s a horrible feeling, and it really affects so many people in my life besides me, like all my family and friends. I was very disappointed, and sad, and upset, and cross.
“The last time I was called was in January 2008. I was very frightened that time. I just had a feeling that it wasn’t going to happen. My parents were so disappointed that it didn’t go ahead. But I said to them, ‘Try not to be too upset. There are parents who have lost a son or a daughter in order for those organs to become available. I may be sick, and unable to do much, but at least you have me coming home’.”
Isabel’s remarkable and inspiring story is just one that features in a new three-part documentary that has just started airing on TV3. Now approaching her 35th birthday, Isabel has been on the heart transplant list for six years. She is living on oxygen 24 hours a day, and hasn’t been able to work in seven years because of her condition.
As a child, Isabel says she wasn’t overly aware that she was ill, and, apart from not being able to run around as much, was treated no differently to her brothers and sisters. She had her first bout of open-heart surgery at age 12, and from 18 on spent a great deal of time in Harefield hospital in the UK. In 2001, Isabel’s lung was reconstructed, and she had a shunt placed in her heart, which gave her a new, albeit short-lived, lease of life.
“I felt great for a year and half afterwards,” Isabel remembers. “I went on my first girls holiday, and then the year after I went to Turkey with my brother. The day we came back from that trip I fell ill, and developed pneumonia. I was in hospital for quite a long time, and was told soon after that I needed a heart transplant. That’s when I went on the list.”
The last two years have been particularly tough for Isabel. Her dad died suddenly from a heart attack in December 2008. “That made me realise that life is too short, and I decided that I’m going to try and do as much as I can,” Isabel says. “None of us knows what’s around the corner.”
Last summer, Isabel’s case became even more complicated. An angiogram test found that she needed to get a lung transplant too. The heart and lung transplants have to take place at the same time, but nevertheless Isabel is determined to keep fighting. “I’m not one for giving up. I’m a bit brazen. I normally get what I want. I’m stubborn and I wont give in.”
Next month, Isabel is temporarily taking her name off the transplant list so that she can visit her brother and his family in Philadelphia. “I’ve discussed this a lot with my surgeon, and he thinks it will do me the world of good in terms of boosting my morale,” Isabel says. “He knows how important family is to me, and how close we are. I’ll go back on the list when I return home.
“I’m not scared, I’m actually really looking forward to going. I’ll have oxygen on the flight, and my brother will organise oxygen for me over there. I won’t be doing anything crazy. He has a four-year-old girl, and I’m her godmother. I’ve met her and we talk all the time on the phone. But he also has two little boys aged two and one that I haven’t met yet.
“If something should happen, at least I’ll have met his two beautiful boys. It’ll be great to start back into the wait feeling positive and happy. It will give me strength to keep going.”
Another story featuring in the documentary series is that of Aidan and Noreen Mulligan, a newlywed couple who proved to be a perfect match in every sense of the word. Last year, the Mulligans became only the second husband and wife to take part in a living donor operation in this country when Noreen donated a kidney to Aidan.
Aidan, originally from Swords in Dublin, was born with polycystic kidneys in 1979, but defied medical opinion to survive and enjoy a life relatively unencumbered by his condition. “I was blessed as a baby by Pope John Paul in the Phoenix Park,” Aidan says with a smile. “If you watch the video of the Pope’s visit, you’ll see me in a yellow baby suit being lifted by a security guard to be blessed. My mother was convinced it was due to the Pope that I’m still here today.
“It never really affected me when I was younger. I was always told it would start deteriorating when I hit my 30s. Sure enough, a couple of months before my 30th birthday my blood levels went the wrong way. Last February I started on home dialysis. I’d be hooked up to the machine for eight hours at night, and work as a hospital porter during the day. But the tube didn’t work properly for me, and I was in and out of hospital a lot with it.”
At the same time as Aidan started home dialysis, his siblings started tests to see if they’d be potential matches for donation. Aidan and Noreen had gotten married in October 2008, and dated for four years before that. Noreen, a nurse originally from Kenmare in Kerry, knew they had the same blood type, and underwent tests also.
In June, Aidan was told that he’d have to begin haemodialysis in hospital, but just as that news was sinking in, Noreen found out that she was a match, and would the best option as hers was a living organ from a non-smoker.
“It took a few months for all the tests - I kept volunteering for the next one,” Noreen says. “You have to do it yourself; the doctors can’t be seen to be pressurising you into the decision. I didn’t give it a second thought. Honestly I never thought we’d be a match. I said I’ll just do it, and if it’s negative, at least I’d know I tried.”
Living donation is a relatively new option in Irish healthcare, and although Noreen and Aidan’s story seems incredibly romantic, the couple has a very grounded view of their experience.
“It’s very new here,” Noreen says. “The couple that did it before us pioneered the way because the woman in that case was a nurse too, she’d worked in America, and knew that a living donation from a non-blood related person could work. It’s not that we’re some unique match; it’s just that they’d never really tested spouses before now.”
Be that as it may, it was still a unique challenge for a young couple in the midst of their honeymoon period. For her part, Noreen didn’t give it a second thought. “We were just so happy it worked out that way,” she says. “I was driving when they called me with the news so I pulled over. The co-ordinator told me and I started crying because I was so happy. Then I called Aidan and he was crying because he was so happy. It was a big relief.”
Aidan adds: “We knew that we’d both have a better quality of life afterwards. Noreen would be awake through the night when I was on home dialysis. We couldn’t even go to the cinema because I’d have to be home at 9pm to be hooked up.”
The operation took place last July. Noreen was a textbook case and was released after a week. Aidan, however, experienced a lot of complications. “I ended up having three operations,” he says. “I had a few problems, the main one being that they found a clot in my kidney. We had to prepare ourselves for the possibility that the kidney was going to come out again.”
“That was the worst time of all,” Noreen says. “There was a week where we were just waiting to see if the kidney would start working. It was a real psychological blow. We were devastated. We tried to console ourselves by saying, ‘Ok it didn’t work, he’ll go back on dialysis, we’ll cope’. We were building ourselves up like that. The staff in Beaumont were fantastic too.”
Thankfully, Aidan’s new kidney kicked in. His blood pressure is under control, and he’s just started back at work. The young people can now enjoy the normal things in life. “For our first wedding anniversary, we booked a night in the Four Seasons,” Noreen says. “Aidan got out of hospital for one night, but he had to be back in the first thing the next morning. We’ll have to push the boat out this year.”
The stats:
According to the latest figures covering 2008, there were 81 cadaver donors in Ireland. That same year, the Mater Hospital conducted four heart transplant operations (three less than in 2007). Four lung transplants took place at the Mater in 2008, the same amount as in 2007.
St. Vincent’s Hospital conducted 58 liver transplants in 2008, while 136 deceased donor kidney transplants were performed at Beaumont Hospital. A record 12 of those transplants also included simultaneous transplant of a pancreas. Ten extra kidney transplants were conducted via living donors.
Figures for 2009 have yet to be confirmed, but it is believed that in the region of 18 living kidney donor transplants took place in Ireland, and some 150 cadaver kidney transplants.
For organ donor cards freetext the word DONOR to 50050. Organ Donor Awareness week runs from March 27 until April 3.
Definitely one from the "I have nothing to complain about" file.
For Isabel Terry, this was the most important journey of her life. The Cork woman, who has lived her life with congenital heart disease, was being rushed by ambulance from Bishopstown to Dublin’s Mater hospital for a life-altering heart transplant operation.
Her ambulance had a Garda escort, and traffic was brought to a standstill in Cork, in order to allow Isabel to pass through as fast as possible. In the matter of organ transplantation, time is of the essence.
The ambulance had just reached Fermoy outside the city when Isabel’s mobile phone rang. It was the transplant co-ordinator. “They said the heart wasn’t suitable,” recalls Isabel. “It was too small. We had to turn the ambulance around and just go home.”
As if that disappointment wasn’t enough, Isabel has since been called three more times, making it to the hospital on each occasion, going through all the prep work, only to discover at the last minute that the heart wasn’t suitable after all. “It’s the way it works,” Isabel explains. “The minute an organ becomes available you have to come in, and just hope that it turns out to be useable. But it depends on tissue typing and other factors.
“It’s a horrible feeling, and it really affects so many people in my life besides me, like all my family and friends. I was very disappointed, and sad, and upset, and cross.
“The last time I was called was in January 2008. I was very frightened that time. I just had a feeling that it wasn’t going to happen. My parents were so disappointed that it didn’t go ahead. But I said to them, ‘Try not to be too upset. There are parents who have lost a son or a daughter in order for those organs to become available. I may be sick, and unable to do much, but at least you have me coming home’.”
Isabel’s remarkable and inspiring story is just one that features in a new three-part documentary that has just started airing on TV3. Now approaching her 35th birthday, Isabel has been on the heart transplant list for six years. She is living on oxygen 24 hours a day, and hasn’t been able to work in seven years because of her condition.
As a child, Isabel says she wasn’t overly aware that she was ill, and, apart from not being able to run around as much, was treated no differently to her brothers and sisters. She had her first bout of open-heart surgery at age 12, and from 18 on spent a great deal of time in Harefield hospital in the UK. In 2001, Isabel’s lung was reconstructed, and she had a shunt placed in her heart, which gave her a new, albeit short-lived, lease of life.
“I felt great for a year and half afterwards,” Isabel remembers. “I went on my first girls holiday, and then the year after I went to Turkey with my brother. The day we came back from that trip I fell ill, and developed pneumonia. I was in hospital for quite a long time, and was told soon after that I needed a heart transplant. That’s when I went on the list.”
The last two years have been particularly tough for Isabel. Her dad died suddenly from a heart attack in December 2008. “That made me realise that life is too short, and I decided that I’m going to try and do as much as I can,” Isabel says. “None of us knows what’s around the corner.”
Last summer, Isabel’s case became even more complicated. An angiogram test found that she needed to get a lung transplant too. The heart and lung transplants have to take place at the same time, but nevertheless Isabel is determined to keep fighting. “I’m not one for giving up. I’m a bit brazen. I normally get what I want. I’m stubborn and I wont give in.”
Next month, Isabel is temporarily taking her name off the transplant list so that she can visit her brother and his family in Philadelphia. “I’ve discussed this a lot with my surgeon, and he thinks it will do me the world of good in terms of boosting my morale,” Isabel says. “He knows how important family is to me, and how close we are. I’ll go back on the list when I return home.
“I’m not scared, I’m actually really looking forward to going. I’ll have oxygen on the flight, and my brother will organise oxygen for me over there. I won’t be doing anything crazy. He has a four-year-old girl, and I’m her godmother. I’ve met her and we talk all the time on the phone. But he also has two little boys aged two and one that I haven’t met yet.
“If something should happen, at least I’ll have met his two beautiful boys. It’ll be great to start back into the wait feeling positive and happy. It will give me strength to keep going.”
Another story featuring in the documentary series is that of Aidan and Noreen Mulligan, a newlywed couple who proved to be a perfect match in every sense of the word. Last year, the Mulligans became only the second husband and wife to take part in a living donor operation in this country when Noreen donated a kidney to Aidan.
Aidan, originally from Swords in Dublin, was born with polycystic kidneys in 1979, but defied medical opinion to survive and enjoy a life relatively unencumbered by his condition. “I was blessed as a baby by Pope John Paul in the Phoenix Park,” Aidan says with a smile. “If you watch the video of the Pope’s visit, you’ll see me in a yellow baby suit being lifted by a security guard to be blessed. My mother was convinced it was due to the Pope that I’m still here today.
“It never really affected me when I was younger. I was always told it would start deteriorating when I hit my 30s. Sure enough, a couple of months before my 30th birthday my blood levels went the wrong way. Last February I started on home dialysis. I’d be hooked up to the machine for eight hours at night, and work as a hospital porter during the day. But the tube didn’t work properly for me, and I was in and out of hospital a lot with it.”
At the same time as Aidan started home dialysis, his siblings started tests to see if they’d be potential matches for donation. Aidan and Noreen had gotten married in October 2008, and dated for four years before that. Noreen, a nurse originally from Kenmare in Kerry, knew they had the same blood type, and underwent tests also.
In June, Aidan was told that he’d have to begin haemodialysis in hospital, but just as that news was sinking in, Noreen found out that she was a match, and would the best option as hers was a living organ from a non-smoker.
“It took a few months for all the tests - I kept volunteering for the next one,” Noreen says. “You have to do it yourself; the doctors can’t be seen to be pressurising you into the decision. I didn’t give it a second thought. Honestly I never thought we’d be a match. I said I’ll just do it, and if it’s negative, at least I’d know I tried.”
Living donation is a relatively new option in Irish healthcare, and although Noreen and Aidan’s story seems incredibly romantic, the couple has a very grounded view of their experience.
“It’s very new here,” Noreen says. “The couple that did it before us pioneered the way because the woman in that case was a nurse too, she’d worked in America, and knew that a living donation from a non-blood related person could work. It’s not that we’re some unique match; it’s just that they’d never really tested spouses before now.”
Be that as it may, it was still a unique challenge for a young couple in the midst of their honeymoon period. For her part, Noreen didn’t give it a second thought. “We were just so happy it worked out that way,” she says. “I was driving when they called me with the news so I pulled over. The co-ordinator told me and I started crying because I was so happy. Then I called Aidan and he was crying because he was so happy. It was a big relief.”
Aidan adds: “We knew that we’d both have a better quality of life afterwards. Noreen would be awake through the night when I was on home dialysis. We couldn’t even go to the cinema because I’d have to be home at 9pm to be hooked up.”
The operation took place last July. Noreen was a textbook case and was released after a week. Aidan, however, experienced a lot of complications. “I ended up having three operations,” he says. “I had a few problems, the main one being that they found a clot in my kidney. We had to prepare ourselves for the possibility that the kidney was going to come out again.”
“That was the worst time of all,” Noreen says. “There was a week where we were just waiting to see if the kidney would start working. It was a real psychological blow. We were devastated. We tried to console ourselves by saying, ‘Ok it didn’t work, he’ll go back on dialysis, we’ll cope’. We were building ourselves up like that. The staff in Beaumont were fantastic too.”
Thankfully, Aidan’s new kidney kicked in. His blood pressure is under control, and he’s just started back at work. The young people can now enjoy the normal things in life. “For our first wedding anniversary, we booked a night in the Four Seasons,” Noreen says. “Aidan got out of hospital for one night, but he had to be back in the first thing the next morning. We’ll have to push the boat out this year.”
The stats:
According to the latest figures covering 2008, there were 81 cadaver donors in Ireland. That same year, the Mater Hospital conducted four heart transplant operations (three less than in 2007). Four lung transplants took place at the Mater in 2008, the same amount as in 2007.
St. Vincent’s Hospital conducted 58 liver transplants in 2008, while 136 deceased donor kidney transplants were performed at Beaumont Hospital. A record 12 of those transplants also included simultaneous transplant of a pancreas. Ten extra kidney transplants were conducted via living donors.
Figures for 2009 have yet to be confirmed, but it is believed that in the region of 18 living kidney donor transplants took place in Ireland, and some 150 cadaver kidney transplants.
For organ donor cards freetext the word DONOR to 50050. Organ Donor Awareness week runs from March 27 until April 3.
High Society?
My news feature on head shops and legal highs from today's Review in the Independent
Head shops are just like any other retailers - except that their stock-in-trade comprises legal pills, powders and herbs that get you high. This week, John Curran, the Minister of State with responsibility for drugs, stated outright that he wants to ban the sale of products sold in headshops that simulate the effects of illegal drugs.
Speaking to the National Regional Drugs Task Forces in Mullingar, Mr Curran added that he would also examine issues around planning permission for head shops, public liability insurance, product liability insurance and consumer protection, all in a bid to close the shops down.
“The products that are being sold in head shops – I simply don’t want them sold in this country,” Mr Curran said. “My view is that they pose an unnecessary risk.”
It certainly seems as if the momentum is now here to confront the issue of head shops and legal highs: if there was anyone in the country who wasn’t aware of the topic before, they will be now due to coverage over the past fortnight on Prime Time, Liveline and The Last Word.
But as the debate about legislation rages on, a key question keeps getting overlooked: why are young people in Ireland continually looking for the kind of exhilarating buzz and high provided by legal drugs (and that can, and should, include alcohol)? Is it something particular to us as a nation?
Shane Dunphy is a child protection worker (and Irish Independent columnist) who has extensive experience in dealing with young people and drugs. “Having a good time used to be something that required you to be some way active: you went out and did something,” Dunphy explains. “You thought up of ways to entertain yourself and make yourself feel good.
“However, now we live in a world where having a good time is something that’s supposed to be passive: you sit down, play a games console, you watch a DVD or you take a pill, you smoke something, or you snort something. People don’t want to invest in having a good time; they want it to happen to them. To this younger generation, life isn’t something they do; life is something that is done to them. It’s that mentality that drives things like the demand for legal highs.
“I think this is a universal cultural experience, and not especially unique to Ireland. A lot of young people have intellectualised this, and can argue pretty firmly about why they consume what they consume. Legal highs are a way around laws set by what they see as the ‘Establishment’, and these places are directly marketing themselves at young people who think, ‘What’s the harm in this?’
Head shops have been open in Ireland for the best part of a decade. There are currently some 30 different outlets in Dublin, Limerick, Galway, Waterford, Portlaoise, Kildare and Mullingar, amongst other places, having experienced something of a boom in the last 3-4 years.
And why wouldn’t there be a mushrooming of business when Irish Head Shop (HIS) Enterprises, which has an outlet in Dublin’s Temple Bar as well as several other locations, last year reported a profit of e1.68m? Head shops have proved to be a headache for legislators and anti-drug campaigners, because the drugs legally on sale in these shops are designed to give the same effects as cocaine, Ecstasy, LSD and hash. At the same time, as one head shop owner who declined to be named says, “we’re actively encouraging people not to break the law”.
Last week, I opted to check out one head shop in Dublin city centre to get some sense of how they operate. It’s a quiet midweek afternoon, and similar to other retail outlets, a young customer is returning a faulty product that he wants repaired - in this case it’s a hydroponic lamp (for growing certain plant life indoors). Display cases show off a range of hookah pipes, grinders and bongs.
There’s a rack of t-shirts for sale, and a shelf of books on New Age and drug-related topics. Chilled-out music pipes out of the sound system, and three customers - a man in his 30s and two women in their 20s - are looking around for their product of choice.
I approach a staff member, saying that I’m looking for a herbal alternative to hash. The assistant is knowledgeable and helpful, and suggests a resin costing e25 that’s become a big seller over the past year (according to the packaging, it has been used “for millennia in Shamanic rituals).
Meanwhile, a friend who has accompanied me asks about pills. They talk through the effect my friend is looking for (trippy, high energy and so on), and the assistant recommends two ‘smiley’ pills (costing e10 - roughly the same cost as their illegal equivalent) that are “empathetic to the feel from Ecstasy”.
Notably, the assistant seems to size me up pretty quickly. I had never even been in one of these shops before, and he can tell that I’m green. He spends time explaining to me how to take the resin safely, and in what quantities.
This gets to the heart of the problem with head shops: there is little or no regulation, meaning that there is an ongoing health and safety issue regarding their products. In 2006, Health Minister Mary Harney banned the sale of magic mushrooms in head shops in response to the death of a young man, Colm Hodkinson, the year beforehand who had taken mushrooms at a party. Colm’s brother, Paul, has since become a vocal opponent of headshops, and is running an online campaign on Facebook entitled ‘Petition Against Headshops in Ireland’ that now has almost 1,300 supporters.
Last March, the drug benzylpiperazine (BZP) - a key ingredient in certain ‘Party Pills’ - was declared illegal in this country. Minister of State Curran is looking to extend the ban on other substances with legislation akin to new laws in the UK that prohibits GBL (Gamma butyrolactone, which mimics the date rape drug GHB) and chemicals sprayed on herbal smoking products.
The Minister's comments this week about head shops chime perfectly with the long-time views held by medical experts who work in the field of drug management and rehabilitation. “They’re a real problem for us,” says Dr Brion Sweeney, consultant psychiatrist with the Drug Treatment Centre Board (DTCB).
“Yes, they are legal, but they breach the spirit of the law. Authorities can’t act against these drugs, and yet they can potentially cause some very serious problems for people. We are seeing patients presenting with problems from amphetamine-type substances that keep people awake and reduce their dietary intake. For some people who have grown dependent on them, it can become almost impossible to stop.”
Dr Sweeney says that head shops have grown in popularity over the last few years because they appeal to three distinct categories of customer. “They’re an option for drug users who don’t want substances to be detected in urine tests. Then there are the people who prefer to go the legal route to get high, and lastly young people who are not connected to drug networks, and maybe don’t want to be.
“We’re not fully clear on the extent of the use of these drugs, but our reports from clinics, needle exchanges and outreach workers indicate that there is considerable usage around the country.”
The key matter in the debate, according to Dr Sweeney, is that nobody, from the head shop salesperson to the medical community (at present), truly knows for sure what exactly these substances are comprised of. “I can’t see how head shops can give advice to customers about the safe way to take these drugs when they can’t identify what’s in them,” he says.
“There are very complex laboratory systems needed to identify certain substances in these drugs, and we are behind in that sense. But while we’re confining ourselves to defining the substance chemically, we’re open to being outflanked by the “chemists” who make these drugs.
“We banned BZP last year, but all they have to do is slightly alter the chemical structure of the compound and then it becomes legal again, and it will have very similar effects. In the US, the law has taken a more broad-stroke approach to this matter. For example, they’ve banned Ecstasy or substances that give an Ecstasy-like effect. That gives a broader remit to prosecute.”
PANEL:
Marie (not her real name) is a 29-year-old accountant, who has experimented with both legal highs and the real thing. She has been a regular customer in head shops around Dublin for the last six years. “When I first started going to the shops, I’d go in and just describe the feeling I was looking for,” she says. “They have substitutes for just about everything.
“I would usually get Party Pills. They don’t have BZP in them anymore, but there’s some other chemical used now instead. As for the type of pill I get, it depends on whether I want to be chatty, or take something high energy for lots of dancing, or something that’s going to keep me on a high for hours.
“I’ve also tried Smoke and Spice, which both give a marijuana effect, as well as Salvia, a smoke hallucinogen similar to LSD. Salvia is grown naturally, but it’s one of the strongest herbs in the world. People have gone on really mad trips, but they usually only last a few minutes.”
Marie says that she uses head shops “only as a last-resort”. “If we had a big party coming up and we wanted to take some pills, and couldn’t get our hands on real ones, then we’d go to a head shop,” she explains.
So how does she compare the experience of taking these legal drugs to the illegal ones? “The pills from head shops are definitely very chemically,” she replies. “The big difference is that they don’t give the same high; there’s no euphoria basically. Sometimes I think I’d be better off taking the real thing; at least that way I know what I’m going to get.”
What does she mean by that? “Most of these legal pills are laced with caffeine,” she answers. “You mightn’t sleep for two days. Your body is physically tired, but your mind just won’t shut down. I’ve had bad kidney infections because I get really dehydrated on nights out. Personally, it’s taken my body longer to recover from taking legal drugs than the real thing.
“The thing is that people keep taking the pills on a night out because they’re not reaching that high, that euphoria. I think people expect to get something else from it, especially if they’re coming from taking the real pills. They’re not the same, but many still substitute with them.”
Friday, January 29, 2010
About a boy
My interview with Mika in Day and Night in today's Independent
We all know it's a small world, but it seems the world of pop is even smaller. Last October, Mika was sequestered in a hotel in Los Angeles, growing increasingly frustrated in his attempts to clear all the legal work for one of his new tracks to be signed over to Boyzone to record.
"For a lot of infuriating reasons, it was very complicated to get it all approved," the British-Lebanese-American-French pop wunderkind recalls. "So I decided to go downstairs for a coffee. The elevator doors opened and Ronan Keating was standing there holding a bag of groceries. I had never met him, or any of them, so we chatted for a few minutes, and then I turbo-charged and got the song approved by the next morning."
Continue here
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Oscar predix
The nominations for the 82nd Academy Awards are announced next Tuesday, February 2. Here are my tips for the main nods...
Best Picture:
Avatar
An Education
District 9
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Invictus
Star Trek
Precious
Up
Up in the Air
Dark Horse: The Messenger
Best Director:
James Cameron (Avatar)
Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)
Jason Reitman (Up in the Air)
Lee Daniels (Precious)
Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds)
Dark Horse: Clint Eastwood (Invictus)
Best Actor:
Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)
George Clooney (Up in the Air)
Colin Firth (A Single Man)
Morgan Freeman (Invictus)
Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker)
Dark Horse: Ben Foster (The Messenger)
Best Actress:
Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side)
Helen Mirren (The Last Station)
Carey Mulligan (An Education)
Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia)
Gabourey Sidibe (Precious)
Dark Horse: Emily Blunt (The Young Victoria)
Best Supporting Actor:
Matt Damon (Invictus)
Woody Harrelson (The Messenger)
Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones/Julie & Julia)
Christopher Plummer (The Last Station)
Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)
Dark Horse: Alec Baldwin (It's Complicated)
Best Supporting Actress:
Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air)
Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air)
Mo'Nique (Precious)
Julianne Moore (A Single Man)
Samantha Morton (The Messenger)
Dark Horse: Melanie Laurent (Inglourious Basterds)
Best Original Screenplay:
500 Days of Summer
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
A Serious Man
Up
Best Adapted Screenplay:
An Education
Invictus
A Single Man
Precious
Up in the Air
Talkies festival
This year's Jameson Dublin International Film Festival (JDIFF) is launched on Thursday night in Tripod. Check back here or to their website for the programme on or after that date. Word has it that a few surprises and exclusives are in store...
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Unbeatable?
Sandra Bullock wins Lead Female Actor prize at the Screen Actors Guild Awards last night. She's now the frontrunner for the Best Actress Oscar, despite the fact that The Blind Side is a deeply average movie, and Sandy's performance in it is pretty unremarkable.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Mad for it
My TV feature on Mad Men series 3 in today's Weekend magazine in the Irish Independent
In the Pulitzer Prize winning novel American Pastoral, Philip Roth writes about an all-American hero whose perfect, picture-book existence is slowly destroyed in, and by, the 1960s. Roth yanks his leading man out of an idyllic post-WWII existence, plunging him into the “American berserk”, a counter-cultural movement characterised by “fury, violence and desperation”.
Similarly, the leading characters of the multi-award winning TV series Mad Men are also heading into “the berserk”. Set in the 1960s at a fictional New York advertising firm named Sterling-Cooper, the show’s deliberately playful title serves as a reference to the Madison Avenue ad men at the core of the plot, as well as providing a telling insight into their growing psychological and existential despair.
Now in its third series, which has just started on RTE1 and BBC4, Mad Men has quickly and firmly established itself as one of modern American television’s greatest artistic achievements, winning two consecutive Emmy awards for Best Drama Series.
On the surface level alone, the show is awesomely beautiful to watch, oozing classy and classic style in everything from its Hitchcockian opening credits to its ‘60s fashion and cultural references, not to mention its meticulous attention to period production detail.
The series is the brainchild of Matthew Weiner, a one-time staff scribe on The Sopranos, who originally wrote the pilot episode on spec, seemingly influenced by Billy Wilder’s classic movie The Apartment. Mad Men was turned down by TV giants HBO and Showtime, before being snapped up the small cable channel AMC. Ever since, Mad Men has struggled to make a serious impact in the ratings in the US and abroad, its survival being largely contingent on its immense critical kudos.
At the heart - if that’s the right word – of the show is Don Draper (played by Jon Hamm), a dashing, successful, square-jawed exec with movie star looks but a murky past. He’s married to Betty (January Jones, who continues to find impressive new depths to her character), a young housewife and stay-at-home mother of three, whose glacial, Grace Kelly-esque beauty can barely conceal the slow-burn nervous breakdown smouldering away inside her.
The Drapers are the perfect couple from the outside, but behind closed doors their marriage has been wracked – perhaps irrevocably – by his affairs and secretive nature, and her own quiet despair.
Meanwhile, the Sterling Cooper agency is staffed by some of television’s most intriguing characters: slimy, ruthless upstart Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), closeted art director Sal Romano (Bryan Batt), and wealthy, charming senior partner Roger Sterling (John Slattery)
Best of all, there are the ‘Mad Women’: prim, ambitious secretary-cum-copywriter Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), and Joan Harris (nee Holloway), the office manager played by the sublime Christina Hendricks, whose curvy, buxom figure has become a much-admired fixture of style and fashion pages in magazines the world over.
Through the prism of these characters, Mad Men explores the issues and fissures that have convulsed American society since the 1960s: sexism, sexuality, politics, feminism, and race. The beauty of the show is that it has the benefit of (some) historical distance to approach those themes with a knowing, deftly ironic wink of the eye. For instance, the ad men chain-smoke in the office, bars and restaurants, while every meeting and conversation is lubricated by copious amounts of whiskey and scotch regardless of the time of day.
Most prominently, the sexism shown towards women is truly jaw-dropping to behold (sample quote from season one, said from one female character to another: “It's a typewriter. It looks complicated, but they made it easy enough for even a woman to use”). For this reason, the arcs of the show’s female characters are the most interesting to watch: season two, in many respects, was all about Betty, Peggy and Joan, three archetypes of womanhood that continue to provide the show with its soul.
Season three of the show opens in March 1963, some five months after the gripping Cuban Missile Crisis-themed finale of season two. The less said the better, but throughout the season, Don’s mysterious past life comes back to further haunt him. The series concludes at the end of 1963 amidst the backdrop of JFK’s assassination as the characters – and, by extension, American society - edge ever closer to the abyss.
Though it may be fiction, elements of Mad Men certainly ring true for some of the people who worked in the industry in the 1960s. RTE Lyric FM broadcaster Donald Helme – a very Mad Men name if every there was one - is a former owner of his own ad agency, who started out in the business in Dublin in 1965.
“When I joined the agency, R. Wilson Young, Madison Avenue was the place for advertising; the very name meant advertising,” Donald recalls.
“Honestly, we thought the people on Madison Avenue were very old-fashioned in many ways. They were very institutionalised and they didn’t have much flexibility.”
What about all the drinking and socialising conducted in the name of - and sometimes in lieu of - business on Mad Men? “We certainly weren’t drinking like that every day,” Donald laughs. “Smoking was endemic everywhere of course, but not drinking.
“That said, one of the clients I remember dealing with was Castor. They would send a senior delegation over to us from the UK every two months. They would arrive in the morning, and then we’d take them for lunch in The Goat in Goatstown, where we’d have two, maybe three gin and tonics before lunch.
“You’d then have a very good lunch with all the trimmings before Holy Hour when the pub had to close. To get around that we used to decamp to a ‘bona fide’ in Stillorgan for a jar, and then go back to The Goat for a couple more. Then we put them back on a plane. That was a day’s work.”
As for sexism, Donald agrees that there were “glass ceilings” for women, but argues that advertising was one of the first places where women could gain a foothold (reflected in the show by the promotion of Peggy Olson). “Shortly after the period in which the show is set there was a very substantial breakthrough for women in advertising,” says Donald. “In fact, today most people would argue that the industry is very much female-dominated.”
At the start of series three of Mad Men, the Sterling Cooper agency is sold to a British company, which alters and upsets the internal dynamics and relationships within the organisation. In Donald Helme’s opinion, the influence of the British created a golden age of advertising from the late ‘60s and into the ‘70s.
“A completely new way of doing advertising came out of London,” Donald says. “The Americans were stunned by this new creativity, and some of the more enlightened Madison Avenue agencies turned to London and hired the very people that were making these waves. They dragged American advertising into the modern era, which I don’t think the Americans were able to do by themselves. The show is very accurate in that regard.”
*Mad Men, Monday, RTE1, 11.30pm; BBC4, Thursday. The first two series, as well as each weekly episode of series three, can be watched online on RTE Player. See www.rte.ie/player
Talkies reviews
Couple of rveiews of mine from Day and Night in today's Independent
A Prophet
Ninja Assassin (18, general release)
Two stars
Some movie titles are a puzzler, and can really only be understood by viewing the film: think The Silence of the Lambs, or The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Then there are movies like Ninja Assassin, which does exactly what it says on the tin, and much less besides.
Directed by James McTeigue, the man who brought V for Vendetta to the big screen with such mixed results, slips down another grade to helm this glorified video game that should leave trigger-happy teenage boys bouncing with excitement but cause the remainder of the audience either to look away in disgust or roll their eyes in derision.
The insanely lithe, eight-pack-sporting Asian pop star Rain – and the movie should earn an extra star just for his name alone – plays Raizo, an orphan who is taken in by the Ozunu clan of ninjas to undergo grueling training to become a ruthless killer that can be hired by various governments to carry out assassinations. Ninja assassinations, if you will.
However, Raizo goes rogue, and vows vengeance on the clan that killed his one true love. He proceeds to assist a Europol agent (Naomie Harris) in her bid to catch the clan and its sinister leader Lord Ozunu (Sho Koshugi), and as the nunchaku, shuriken and swords start whizzing through the air, so too does any narrative logic.
That said, anyone going to this movie will only be there for the blood and guts, and by gum does it deliver on that front. A bravura opening sequence revels in early-Sam Raimi levels of gore as one character’s face – yes, their actual face – is sliced off. Minutes later, a decapitated head is seen swishing around in a tumble dryer.
That giddy carnage soon collapses into dimly-lit fight sequences, filmed with endlessly swerving cameras, making the movie increasingly difficult and tiresome to watch. I have no objection to gore; just as long as we can see it. At that point the only mirth left for the viewer comes from the transcendentally awful dialogue. Give me the Ninja Turtles any day.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
SAG predix
My tips for the Screen Actors Guild Awards this Saturday...
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role
JEFF BRIDGES / Crazy Heart
GEORGE CLOONEY / Up in the Air
COLIN FIRTH / A Single Man
MORGAN FREEMAN / Invictus
JEREMY RENNER / The Hurt Locker
Winner: Jeff Bridges
WIld Card: George Clooney
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role
SANDRA BULLOCK / The Blind Side
HELEN MIRREN / The Last Station
CAREY MULLIGAN / An Education
GABOUREY SIDIBE / Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire
MERYL STREEP / Julie & Julia
Winner: Meryl Streep
Wild Card: Sandra Bullock
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role
MATT DAMON / Invictus
WOODY HARRELSON / The Messenger
CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER / The Last Station
STANLEY TUCCI / The Lovely Bones
CHRISTOPH WALTZ / Inglourious Basterds
Winner: Christoph Waltz
Wild Card: Woody Harrelson
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role
PENÉLOPE CRUZ / Nine
VERA FARMIGA / Up in the Air
ANNA KENDRICK /Up in the Air
DIANE KRUGER / Inglourious Basterds
MO'NIQUE / Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire
Winner: Mo'Nique
Wild Card: Anna Kendrick
Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
AN EDUCATION
THE HURT LOCKER
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
NINE
PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL "PUSH" BY SAPPHIRE
Winner: Precious
Wild Card: Inglourious Basterds
TELEVISION AWARDS:
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries
KEVIN BACON / Taking Chance
CUBA GOODING, JR. / Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story
JEREMY IRONS / Georgia O'Keeffe
KEVIN KLINE / Great Performances: Cyrano de Bergerac
TOM WILKINSON / A Number
Winner: Kevin Bacon
Wild Card: Jeremy Irons
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries
JOAN ALLEN / Georgia O'Keeffe
DREW BARRYMORE / Grey Gardens
RUBY DEE / America
JESSICA LANGE / Grey Gardens
SIGOURNEY WEAVER / Prayers for Bobby
WInner: Jessica Lange
Wild Card: Drew Barrymore
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series
SIMON BAKER / The Mentalist
BRYAN CRANSTON / Breaking Bad
MICHAEL C. HALL / Dexter
JON HAMM / Mad Men
HUGH LAURIE / House
Winner: Michael C Hall
Wild Card: Bryan Cranston
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series
PATRICIA ARQUETTE/ Medium
GLENN CLOSE / Damages
MARISKA HARGITAY / Law and Order: SVU
HOLLY HUNTER / Saving Grace
JULIANNA MARGULIES / The Good Wife
KYRA SEDGWICK / The Closer
Winner: Glenn Close
Wild Card: Julianna Margulies
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series
ALEC BALDWIN / 30 Rock
STEVE CARELL / The Office
LARRY DAVID / Curb Your Enthusiasm
TONY SHALHOUB / Monk
CHARLIE SHEEN / Two and a Half Men
Winner: Alec Baldwin
Wild Card: Steve Carell
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series
CHRISTINA APPLEGATE / Samantha Who
TONI COLLETTE / United States of Tara
EDIE FALCO / Nurse Jackie
TINA FEY / 30 Rock
JULIA LOUIS-DREYFUS / The New Adventures of Old Christine
Winner: Toni Collette
Wild Card: Edie Falco
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
A Bush the GOP Can Be Proud Of
The new Senator from Massachusetts. Good lord.
Bad nudes for Obama as new Republican 'pin-up' takes centrefold, I mean, centre stage
Good analysis from Huff Post
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Obama : Year One
Tomorrow marks Obama's first year in office - and the critics are out from left and right.
Coverage from today's Guardian...
However, I firmly believe in the rolling analysis from Andrew Sullivan: that Obama is a patient pragmatist, a quiet revolutionary aiming for long term benefit rather than short term gain. It's a risky strategy, but at a time when his political opponents grow more unhinged with every day that passes, and when elements within his own party seem to be going cold, it could stand him in good stead to maintain his cool, steady, confident path.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Globes reaction
YAY!:
- Jeff Bridges is gonna be this year's Best Actor winner
- Mo'Nique: powerful stuff baby.
- Meryl: glorious Meryl. The Oscar is hers for the taking (PS: How HAWT did Colin Farrell look?)
- Christoph Waltz: worthy winner.
- Ditto Jason Reitman
- Glee wins Best TV Comedy
- Drew Barrymore: a sweetheart.
- Ricky Gervais' Mel Gibson-drink gag. Gervais did well overall, though I know he's an acquired taste anymore.
- Michael C Hall wins TV Actor. On the road to recovery too.
BOO-URNS!:
- Avatar for Best Picture Drama?!?! Wow, I guess it really is changing Hollywood forever: from now on 3D will be used to disguise how shit your movie is.
- James cameron wins Director ahead of the far more deserving (and his ex-wife) Kathryn Bigelow. Even he had to admit in his speech that the award should have been hers.
- Sandra Bullock wins Best Actress Drama. Nice to see her breakthrough, but I still think she's this year's Sharon Stone. Shazza, you'll recall, won Best Actress Drama for Casino in 1996, but lost the Oscar to Susan Sarandon. Similarly, I think Sandy will lose to Meryl this year.
- Jane Lynch wuz robbed I tells ya!
- (500) Days of Summer should have won Best Comedy
Friday, January 15, 2010
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Globe predictions
My picks for the Golden Globe awards this Sunday....
Best Motion Picture, Drama
Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious
Up in the Air
Winner: Up in the Air
Watch out for: Avatar
Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy
500 Days of Summer
The Hangover
It's Complicated
Julie & Julia
Nine
Winner: Nine
Watch out for: (500) Days of Summer
Best Director
Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
James Cameron, Avatar
Clint Eastwood, Invictus
Jason Reitman, Up in the Air
Quentin Taratino, Inglourious Basterds
Winner: Kathrn Bigelow
Watch out for: Jason Reitman
Best Animated Feature
Coraline
Fantastic Mr Fox
Up
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
The Princess and the Frog
Winner : Up
Watch out for: Fantastic Mr Fox
Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama
Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
George Clooney, Up in the Air
Colin Firth, A Single Man
Morgan Freeman, Invictus
Tobey Maguire, Brothers
Winner: Jeff Bridges
Watch out for: George Clooney
Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama
Emily Blunt, The Young Victoria
Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side
Helen Mirren, The Last Station
Carey Mulligan, An Education
Gabourey "Gabby" Sidibe, Precious
Winner: Gabby Sidibe
Watch out for: Sandra Bullock
Best Performance by an actor in a Musical or Comedy
Matt Damon, The Informant!
Daniel Day-Lewis, Nine
Robert Downey Jr, Sherlock Holmes
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, 500 Days of Summer
Michael Stuhlbarg, A Serious Man
Winner: Michael Stuhlbarg
Watch out for: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Best performance by an Actress in a Musical or Comedy
Sandra Bullock, The Proposal
Marion Cotillard, Nine
Julia Roberts, Duplicity
Meryl Streep, It's Complicated
Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia
Winner: Meryl Streep (Julie and Julia)
Watch out for: Sandra Bullock
Best Supporting Actor
Matt Damon, Invictus
Woody Harrelson, The Messenger
Stanley Tucci, The Lovely Bones
Christopher Plummer, The Last Station
Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
Winner: Christoph Waltz
Watch out for: Woody Harrelson
Best Supporting Actress
Penélope Cruz, Nine
Vera Farmiga, Up in the Air
Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air
Mo'Nique, Precious
Julianne Moore, A Single Man
Winner: Mo'Nique
Watch out for: Anna Kendrick
Best Foreign Film
Broken Embraces
The White Ribbon
The Maid
A Prophet
Baaria
Winner: A Prophet
Watch out for: The White Ribbon
Best Screenplay
District 9, Neil Blomkap, Terri Tatchell
The Hurt Locker, Mark Boal
Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino
It's Complicated, Nancy Meyers
Up in the Air, Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner
Winner: Up in the Air
Watch out for: The Hurt Locker
Best Original Song
Crazy Heart
Everybody's Fine
Nine
Brothers
Avatar
Winner: Brothers
Watch out for: Avatar
Best Original Score
The Informant!, Marvin Hamlisch
Up, Michael Giacchino
Where the Wild Things Are, Carter Burwell, Karen Orzolek
Avatar, James Horner
A Single Man, Abel Korzeniowski
Winner: Up
Watch out for: A Single Man
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Snow joke
The Sunday papers are scathing in their assessments of the Government's response - if that's the right word - to the weather crisis in Ireland.
Matt Cooper in The Sunday Times
Sindo editorial rips into the Government
Matt Cooper in The Sunday Times
Sindo editorial rips into the Government
Saturday, January 09, 2010
Freaks and ‘Gleeks’
My feature on Glee in today's Weekend magazine
As a new decade dawns, it seems fitting that the hottest show currently airing on American TV is one that has brilliantly co-opted, tweaked and distilled the winning formulas that have driven the most zeitgeist-tapping and commercially successful pop culture behemoths of the past 10 years.
Glee is a coming-of-age musical comedy-drama that has just started airing on TV3, but it has become a phenomenon across the pond ever since its pilot episode aired last April and subsequently began its debut season run last September.
The show’s 13-episode first series averaged between 7-9 million viewers every week in the US, and its buzz grew even louder due to the popularity of the show and its musical numbers on internet sites like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. By the broadcast of the seventh episode, some 1.7m Glee songs were bought by fans - known as ‘Gleeks’ - on iTunes, five of which made the iTunes top 10. Two soundtracks have subsequently been released.
In addition, Glee has gotten rave reviews in everything from the Wall Street Journal to Vanity Fair. The cast sang for President Obama at the Human Rights Campaign dinner last October, and the show was named as one of the top 10 TV shows of 2009 by the American Film Institute. What’s more, next Sunday night it will compete in four categories at the Golden Globe awards, including Best Comedy Series.
So what is the show about, and what exactly is the secret of its success? The weekly plot of Glee revolves around the Glee Club (which, to the non-US viewer, is a musical/singing society) of William McKinley High School in Ohio. The club used to be at the top of the show choir world, but years later, a series of scandals have turned it into a haven for misfits and social outcasts.
When Will Schuester (played by Broadway star Matthew Morrison), a former pupil and glee club member himself, joins the staff as the idealistic, optimistic new Spanish teacher, he opts to take on the Herculean task of restoring McKinley’s Glee Club to its former glory.
This proves to be a tall order indeed when the brightest stars of the glee club include Kurt (Chris Colfer), a camp, nerdy soprano with a flair for the dramatic; Mercedes (Amber Riley), a dynamic diva-in-training who refuses to sing back-up; and Tina (Jenna Ushkowitz), an awkward girl with a stutter.
Will’s only hope lies with two true talents: Rachel Berry (Lea Michele), a perfectionist firecracker who is convinced that show choir is her ticket to stardom, and Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith), the popular high school quarterback with movie star looks and a Motown voice who must protect his reputation with his cheerleader girlfriend Quinn (Dianna Agron) and his arrogant, MILF-loving team-mate Puck (Mark Salling).
As Will’s personal problems mount - including an attraction to sweet, neurotic colleague Emma (Jayma Mays) and dealing with a borderline insane wife (Jessalyn Gilsig) who is faking her pregnancy - he grows ever more determined to prove that the glee club can triumph in the state finals.
Essentially the show’s premise is a carbon-copy of High School Musical, the 2006 Disney tween-targeted musical romance starring Zac Efron that exploded into a multi-media extravaganza incorporating three movies, stage adaptations and multiple albums worth almost $1bn in total.
But Glee builds on the formula, tapping into - as well as critiquing - the seemingly insatiable popular thirst for emotionally-exploitative, fame-fixated reality shows like American Idol and The X Factor. At one point, Rachel remarks: “Being anonymous is worse than being poor. Fame is the most important thing in society” (incidentally, the show will air straight after Idol when it returns to US TV screens in April).
Glee’s musical numbers are the main selling points of the series, encompassing everything from Amy Winehouse’s Rehab, to Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin, to a storming mash-up of Beyonce’s Halo and Katrina and the Waves’ Walking on Sunshine.
The musical numbers are polished and note perfect, often with imaginative musical re-arrangements, and offset with elaborate, high energy choreography. Its extraordinary and wildly eclectic musical renditions haven’t gone unnoticed in the industry either. Broadway star Kristin Chenowith (Wicked) guest stars in the first series, while singers Eve and Josh Groban also make guest appearances. Additionally, Madonna has granted permission for the show’s producers to use her back-catalogue, and indeed a full episode in the next series will be devoted to Madge’s music.
But the music isn’t the sole reason behind Glee’s popularity. It also has a sharp, sarcastic and wicked sense of humour, so much so that it allows the show enough wiggle room to also wear its big, thumping, often cheesy heart on its sleeve as it simultaneously celebrates both musical theatre and its central characters all of whom grow to revel in being seen as misfits.
Glee is the brainchild of writer and producer Ryan Murphy, the creator of the increasingly twisted plastic surgery drama series Nip/Tuck. But a closer look at the 43-year-old’s CV should give some idea as to why he was able to conjure the magic that has helped Glee to strike such a chord with viewers.
Murphy was also the creator of Popular, which ran for two seasons between 1999-2000. The similarities to Glee are quite pronounced: Popular was also set in a high school, populated by eccentric staff, and had as its focus the tensions and mutual rivalries and jealousies between the unpopular, nerdy kids and the cool clique of cheerleaders and football players.
In both shows, Murphy specialises in finding the common ground between these warring factions, blurring the lines to make the point that there is no such thing as a “typical” teenager, and that being “different” can often be as great a blessing as popularity is a curse.
But if an unashamed love of music and dance, and communality with those who proudly fly their Freak Flags, are not good enough reasons to get you interested in Glee, the show has one more ace up its sleeve in the form of the school’s cheerleading coach - and the glee club’s chief antagonist - Sue Sylvester, played by the glorious Jane Lynch (Role Models, The L Word), a Golden Globe nominee for the role.
At the risk of overstatement, Sue is, hands down, the best villain - if not the best character - currently on any show on television. The tracksuit-bedecked Sue is harsh, unsentimental and obsessed with winning, and she is determined to destroy the glee club in order to build up more funding for her own cheerleading club, the Cheerios.
Jane Lynch devours the role, calmly but venomously spitting out lines like, ‘All I want is just one day a year when I'm not visually assaulted by uglies and fatties’, and, ‘I can't stand the sight of kids getting emotional, unless it's from physical exhaustion’.
All in all, the show goes out of its way to be entertaining; as Vanity Fair commented last month, Glee has arrived at a time when we all rely more on entertainment to “chase our cares and woes into somebody else’s backyard”. What better reason is there to tune in?
*Glee, TV3, Wednesday 8pm
Eat, Pray, Love...and remarry
Interview with Elizabeth Gilbert in today's Weekend magazine in the Irish Independent
January is the month that many of us vow to undergo a complete personal overhaul. It might be a pledge to lose weight, eat healthier, change jobs or perhaps finally put a flailing relationship out of its misery. Some might decide to travel; to find themselves by getting lost somewhere. Others may commit to cultivating - or discovering - their spiritual side.
Writer Elizabeth Gilbert is one person who more than understands the attraction of these impulses for self-reinvention and self-discovery. At age 31, she realised that her six year marriage was over. A bitter, shattering divorce ensued, followed closely by a destructive rebound affair with a younger man, all of which, by her own admission, caused Elizabeth to consider ending her own life.
Instead, she managed to pick herself up off the floor - literally - and escape to Italy to learn the language, eat the food and absorb the culture. From there, she moved onto India and Bali to deepen her newfound interest in meditation and spirituality, where she found both enlightenment and a new love.
In 2006, Elizabeth, published her account of those experiences in a memoir entitled Eat Pray Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything. The book struck a nerve and gradually became a phenomenon (see panel), spending 57 weeks at the No 1 spot on the New York Times paperback nonfiction best-seller list, and eventually selling almost 7m copies in 40 countries worldwide. Time magazine named Elizabeth as one of the world’s most influential people in 2008, and later this year a movie adaptation of the book is due out, starring Julia Roberts as Elizabeth, along with James Franco and Javier Bardem.
“I don’t think I’ll ever know what was behind it,” says Elizabeth (now aged 40), speaking exclusively to Weekend from her home in Frenchtown, New Jersey. “But from talking to people who were passionate about the book - women especially - it seems that it acted as a kind of permission slip for them to be who they are and to vocalise certain things about their own lives.
“It’s not even that it gave permission for everyone to get divorced and flee to India, but I’m really moved when women tell me that reading the book caused them to remember themselves, and to rediscover a joy that they had lost along the way.”
Considering how burned Elizabeth was by her first marriage, it might surprise fans to learn that her new book focuses on her decision to walk - hesitantly - down the aisle for a second time. Committed: A Sceptic Makes Peace with Marriage covers an 18 month period from where Eat Pray Love left off. Elizabeth is blissfully in love with her new Brazilian-born paramour Jose Nunes (known to readers as ‘Felipe’), a fellow “divorce-survivor” 17 years her senior whom she met in Bali.
Having resettled in America, the couple swore their commitment and fidelity to one another, but vowed never to get married. However, in 2006, Felipe was detained by the Department of Homeland Security, having used his three month-at-a-time visa waiver once too often. He was ordered to leave the country.
The couple were told the easiest way for him to be allowed re-enter was to get married. They spent the next 10 months in exile in Australia and south-east Asia as they waited for Felipe’s paperwork to clear the bureaucratic maze. During that time, Elizabeth decided to study the institution of marriage, interviewing friends, relatives, and people from different cultures, largely as an act of self-persuasion before marrying Felipe in a small ceremony in the US in 2007.
“The title is a reference to Mae West’s line that, ‘Marriage is a wonderful institution, but I’m not ready for an institution yet’,” she explains. “I went into my research for this book seeing marriage as a rigid, ancient, outdated institution that people are shoved into and in which they must conform.
“I came out of it having developed an admiration for marriage almost on a Darwinian level. It has an amazing capacity to change itself in whatever ways are necessary in order to stay relevant. I think marriage today is at another point of evolution where it’s going to gave to do what it’s always had to do which is to shift and become relevant all over again. The institution always finds a way, or the couples do, or sometimes the courts in any given land have to do it.”
Elizabeth adds that many people rush into marriage without fully thinking through the consequences. “I don’t know what it’s like in Ireland, but here in the States there is a fetishisation of weddings. It creates a lot of confusion for young women in particular where they can’t separate ‘wedding’ from ‘marriage’. There are a lot of people who believe that they want to get married when in fact what they really want is to have a ‘dream wedding’, and there’s not a lot of thought about what comes after.”
This time round, marriage seems to be working for Elizabeth, though, as she jokes, “it’s only been two years so it’s still a little too soon to be making huge projections.” She continues: “I choose a much better husband this time, but also I’m giving him a much better wife than I gave my first husband. I’m a grown-up now, he’s older than me, financially we’re more stable and artistically I’m more confident. Also there were pressures in my first marriage that are not in my second.”
This is a reference to having children, or indeed not having them, which was a major factor in the demise of her first marriage. Elizabeth writes very proudly in Committed about her decision not to have children, even though a lot of people don’t understand or respect the position. “It’s as big a decision not to have children as it is to have them,” she says. “What I found in my research which is very revealing and very comforting is that it’s not a new thing for women to decide not to have children.
“If you look across human history, you’ll see that consistently, in population after population, there is a steady percentage- around 10pc - of women who never reproduce. It’s such a high number that it suggests to me that maybe, as a species, we need a few women who never have babies and whose energies are not depleted by child-rearing; that there’s some other role that we’re meant to play in society. I call us the ‘Aunty Brigade’. There are some of us who are meant to be moms and some of us who are meant to be aunties.”
Elizabeth Gilbert was born and raised on a Christmas tree farm in rural Connecticut. She moved to New York to study at age 19, and worked nights as a barmaid in a famous East Village pub called ‘Coyote Ugly’. Years later she turned that experience into an article for GQ, which was then made adapted into a hit movie in 2000.
She went onto publish three books all with male subjects at their core (The Last American Man was a finalist for the 2002 National Book Award). Then came Eat Pray Love, and, one can only assume, a huge amount of pressure to deliver a follow-up of equal impact.
“Honestly, I think I’ve been granted a little bit of a reprieve just by nature of the fact that it was so ridiculously, out-of-sight successful,” she says with a chuckle. “I’d be crazy to even try that twice. I plan on writing many more books. My next one is going to be fiction, and I’m under no illusion that there will ever again be anything else in my professional life to match Eat Pray Love, and there doesn’t need to be either.”
Given the extent to which it penetrated popular culture, the book inevitably drew its fair share of critics and detractors who accused Elizabeth of ‘abandoning critical thinking’ and encouraging ‘unrealistic shortcuts to happiness’. That must have stung?
“Well, you don’t love it,” she replies with a wry laugh, “It’s never easy when people attack you or your work. The thing is I’m truly sympathetic to the criticism of Eat Pray Love because I think it leaked into an audience it was never intended for, people who had no business reading it. I’m sorry for them but there was nothing I could do about that.”
Another potentially unpleasant side-effect of her success could arrive in the form of a book that is reportedly being penned by Elizabeth’s first husband, Michael Cooper. Displaced, which is due to hit the shelves around the same time as the release of the Eat Pray Love movie, will tell his version of the events surrounding their painful separation and divorce.
“I don’t know an awful lot about it,” she admits. “I don’t have any contact with him and I don’t have any way of stopping it or controlling it even if I wanted to. That’s what it means to be divorced. He can do whatever he likes and there’s nothing I can do about that. It will be what it will be. I’m really not that agitated about it. I don’t know what his intentions are so it doesn’t make sense to worry.”
In the meantime, it’s safe to assume that Eat Pray Love-mania will kick off all over again once the movie opens. “It’s a dream to see your life reconstructed with a much more ideal human being than yourself,” she laughs. “I was in Rome watching a scene on a street where I had been standing six years earlier hearing Julia Roberts speaking words I had said. I was thinking, ‘It’s so familiar, she’s just like me - except thin, and with incredible hair, and 36 inch legs’.”
As our interview time ends, I ask Elizabeth if, in all her years travelling the world, she ever made it to Ireland. She laughs - indeed, cackles is probably a more accurate word - in response. “Funnily enough, I came to Ireland for my first honeymoon,” she reveals. “The marriage didn’t end that well but we had a great honeymoon.” She also imparts some sage advice she received on that holiday. “I remember we were in a pub in Galway, and this old man said to us, ‘Just married huh? Don’t worry: it’s just the first 20 years that are the hardest’.”
Panel:
Word-of-mouth and book club recommendations were the big reasons for the slow-burn success of Eat, Pray, Love, but Gilbert also owes a debt of gratitude to the most powerful woman in television, Oprah Winfrey.
The talk show titan - famously a fan and supporter of spiritual and self-help works - twice invited Gilbert on the show in 2007, which was enough to make her little tome go supernova.
Oprah was also an early advocate of Rhonda Byrne’s positive thinking juggernaut, The Secret, helping to propel it to the top of the New York Times bestsellers list.
Most recently, the Almighty O has made a superstar of spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle by heavily promoting his book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. To give some indication of who holds the real power, sales of Tolle’s book reached 3.5m within four week’s of Oprah’s endorsement.
Lastly, it’s worth mentioning that Elizabeth’s book has inspired its own satirical spinoffs. Writer Andrew Gottlieb put a boozy, mid-divorce male character at the centre of his ‘bloke-lit’ novel Drink Play F@#k: One Man’s Search For Anything Across Ireland, Las Vegas, and Thailand. Similarly, comedienne Sarah Silverman has published her own Gilbert-esque adventure entitled Eat Pray Fart: Life Lessons from the Sarah Silverman Program.
*Committed: A Sceptic Makes Peace with Marriage is published next week by Bloomsbury.
January is the month that many of us vow to undergo a complete personal overhaul. It might be a pledge to lose weight, eat healthier, change jobs or perhaps finally put a flailing relationship out of its misery. Some might decide to travel; to find themselves by getting lost somewhere. Others may commit to cultivating - or discovering - their spiritual side.
Writer Elizabeth Gilbert is one person who more than understands the attraction of these impulses for self-reinvention and self-discovery. At age 31, she realised that her six year marriage was over. A bitter, shattering divorce ensued, followed closely by a destructive rebound affair with a younger man, all of which, by her own admission, caused Elizabeth to consider ending her own life.
Instead, she managed to pick herself up off the floor - literally - and escape to Italy to learn the language, eat the food and absorb the culture. From there, she moved onto India and Bali to deepen her newfound interest in meditation and spirituality, where she found both enlightenment and a new love.
In 2006, Elizabeth, published her account of those experiences in a memoir entitled Eat Pray Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything. The book struck a nerve and gradually became a phenomenon (see panel), spending 57 weeks at the No 1 spot on the New York Times paperback nonfiction best-seller list, and eventually selling almost 7m copies in 40 countries worldwide. Time magazine named Elizabeth as one of the world’s most influential people in 2008, and later this year a movie adaptation of the book is due out, starring Julia Roberts as Elizabeth, along with James Franco and Javier Bardem.
“I don’t think I’ll ever know what was behind it,” says Elizabeth (now aged 40), speaking exclusively to Weekend from her home in Frenchtown, New Jersey. “But from talking to people who were passionate about the book - women especially - it seems that it acted as a kind of permission slip for them to be who they are and to vocalise certain things about their own lives.
“It’s not even that it gave permission for everyone to get divorced and flee to India, but I’m really moved when women tell me that reading the book caused them to remember themselves, and to rediscover a joy that they had lost along the way.”
Considering how burned Elizabeth was by her first marriage, it might surprise fans to learn that her new book focuses on her decision to walk - hesitantly - down the aisle for a second time. Committed: A Sceptic Makes Peace with Marriage covers an 18 month period from where Eat Pray Love left off. Elizabeth is blissfully in love with her new Brazilian-born paramour Jose Nunes (known to readers as ‘Felipe’), a fellow “divorce-survivor” 17 years her senior whom she met in Bali.
Having resettled in America, the couple swore their commitment and fidelity to one another, but vowed never to get married. However, in 2006, Felipe was detained by the Department of Homeland Security, having used his three month-at-a-time visa waiver once too often. He was ordered to leave the country.
The couple were told the easiest way for him to be allowed re-enter was to get married. They spent the next 10 months in exile in Australia and south-east Asia as they waited for Felipe’s paperwork to clear the bureaucratic maze. During that time, Elizabeth decided to study the institution of marriage, interviewing friends, relatives, and people from different cultures, largely as an act of self-persuasion before marrying Felipe in a small ceremony in the US in 2007.
“The title is a reference to Mae West’s line that, ‘Marriage is a wonderful institution, but I’m not ready for an institution yet’,” she explains. “I went into my research for this book seeing marriage as a rigid, ancient, outdated institution that people are shoved into and in which they must conform.
“I came out of it having developed an admiration for marriage almost on a Darwinian level. It has an amazing capacity to change itself in whatever ways are necessary in order to stay relevant. I think marriage today is at another point of evolution where it’s going to gave to do what it’s always had to do which is to shift and become relevant all over again. The institution always finds a way, or the couples do, or sometimes the courts in any given land have to do it.”
Elizabeth adds that many people rush into marriage without fully thinking through the consequences. “I don’t know what it’s like in Ireland, but here in the States there is a fetishisation of weddings. It creates a lot of confusion for young women in particular where they can’t separate ‘wedding’ from ‘marriage’. There are a lot of people who believe that they want to get married when in fact what they really want is to have a ‘dream wedding’, and there’s not a lot of thought about what comes after.”
This time round, marriage seems to be working for Elizabeth, though, as she jokes, “it’s only been two years so it’s still a little too soon to be making huge projections.” She continues: “I choose a much better husband this time, but also I’m giving him a much better wife than I gave my first husband. I’m a grown-up now, he’s older than me, financially we’re more stable and artistically I’m more confident. Also there were pressures in my first marriage that are not in my second.”
This is a reference to having children, or indeed not having them, which was a major factor in the demise of her first marriage. Elizabeth writes very proudly in Committed about her decision not to have children, even though a lot of people don’t understand or respect the position. “It’s as big a decision not to have children as it is to have them,” she says. “What I found in my research which is very revealing and very comforting is that it’s not a new thing for women to decide not to have children.
“If you look across human history, you’ll see that consistently, in population after population, there is a steady percentage- around 10pc - of women who never reproduce. It’s such a high number that it suggests to me that maybe, as a species, we need a few women who never have babies and whose energies are not depleted by child-rearing; that there’s some other role that we’re meant to play in society. I call us the ‘Aunty Brigade’. There are some of us who are meant to be moms and some of us who are meant to be aunties.”
Elizabeth Gilbert was born and raised on a Christmas tree farm in rural Connecticut. She moved to New York to study at age 19, and worked nights as a barmaid in a famous East Village pub called ‘Coyote Ugly’. Years later she turned that experience into an article for GQ, which was then made adapted into a hit movie in 2000.
She went onto publish three books all with male subjects at their core (The Last American Man was a finalist for the 2002 National Book Award). Then came Eat Pray Love, and, one can only assume, a huge amount of pressure to deliver a follow-up of equal impact.
“Honestly, I think I’ve been granted a little bit of a reprieve just by nature of the fact that it was so ridiculously, out-of-sight successful,” she says with a chuckle. “I’d be crazy to even try that twice. I plan on writing many more books. My next one is going to be fiction, and I’m under no illusion that there will ever again be anything else in my professional life to match Eat Pray Love, and there doesn’t need to be either.”
Given the extent to which it penetrated popular culture, the book inevitably drew its fair share of critics and detractors who accused Elizabeth of ‘abandoning critical thinking’ and encouraging ‘unrealistic shortcuts to happiness’. That must have stung?
“Well, you don’t love it,” she replies with a wry laugh, “It’s never easy when people attack you or your work. The thing is I’m truly sympathetic to the criticism of Eat Pray Love because I think it leaked into an audience it was never intended for, people who had no business reading it. I’m sorry for them but there was nothing I could do about that.”
Another potentially unpleasant side-effect of her success could arrive in the form of a book that is reportedly being penned by Elizabeth’s first husband, Michael Cooper. Displaced, which is due to hit the shelves around the same time as the release of the Eat Pray Love movie, will tell his version of the events surrounding their painful separation and divorce.
“I don’t know an awful lot about it,” she admits. “I don’t have any contact with him and I don’t have any way of stopping it or controlling it even if I wanted to. That’s what it means to be divorced. He can do whatever he likes and there’s nothing I can do about that. It will be what it will be. I’m really not that agitated about it. I don’t know what his intentions are so it doesn’t make sense to worry.”
In the meantime, it’s safe to assume that Eat Pray Love-mania will kick off all over again once the movie opens. “It’s a dream to see your life reconstructed with a much more ideal human being than yourself,” she laughs. “I was in Rome watching a scene on a street where I had been standing six years earlier hearing Julia Roberts speaking words I had said. I was thinking, ‘It’s so familiar, she’s just like me - except thin, and with incredible hair, and 36 inch legs’.”
As our interview time ends, I ask Elizabeth if, in all her years travelling the world, she ever made it to Ireland. She laughs - indeed, cackles is probably a more accurate word - in response. “Funnily enough, I came to Ireland for my first honeymoon,” she reveals. “The marriage didn’t end that well but we had a great honeymoon.” She also imparts some sage advice she received on that holiday. “I remember we were in a pub in Galway, and this old man said to us, ‘Just married huh? Don’t worry: it’s just the first 20 years that are the hardest’.”
Panel:
Word-of-mouth and book club recommendations were the big reasons for the slow-burn success of Eat, Pray, Love, but Gilbert also owes a debt of gratitude to the most powerful woman in television, Oprah Winfrey.
The talk show titan - famously a fan and supporter of spiritual and self-help works - twice invited Gilbert on the show in 2007, which was enough to make her little tome go supernova.
Oprah was also an early advocate of Rhonda Byrne’s positive thinking juggernaut, The Secret, helping to propel it to the top of the New York Times bestsellers list.
Most recently, the Almighty O has made a superstar of spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle by heavily promoting his book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. To give some indication of who holds the real power, sales of Tolle’s book reached 3.5m within four week’s of Oprah’s endorsement.
Lastly, it’s worth mentioning that Elizabeth’s book has inspired its own satirical spinoffs. Writer Andrew Gottlieb put a boozy, mid-divorce male character at the centre of his ‘bloke-lit’ novel Drink Play F@#k: One Man’s Search For Anything Across Ireland, Las Vegas, and Thailand. Similarly, comedienne Sarah Silverman has published her own Gilbert-esque adventure entitled Eat Pray Fart: Life Lessons from the Sarah Silverman Program.
*Committed: A Sceptic Makes Peace with Marriage is published next week by Bloomsbury.
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Ice ice baby
Dublin is covered in snow today - first time in about 20 years that I can remember any meaningful snowfall. Typically, the city, and the country, is grinding to a halt as a result
Friday, January 01, 2010
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