Tag Archive: autism


Calm horses, cruel men

Filed under: Gender, Movies, Music, Parenting — Leave a comment
May 2, 2020

CALM WITH HORSES directed by Nick Rowland (UK -Ireland, 2019)

220px-calm_with_horses_poster “I’m told I was a violent child” is the opening line in a  voiceover in this bold and bruising tale of toxic masculinity.

The narrator is Douglas ‘Arm’ Armstrong , an ex-boxer, now employed as an enforcer for an unscrupulous criminal family.  The setting is rural Ireland in a claustrophic community where conflict and violence are the accepted ways of life.

Douglas is a physically imposing presence, lumbering from scene to scene like a wounded beast. His handler is the manipulative Dymphna (Barry Keoghan) who plies him with drugs much as a dog owner might seek to placate a doberman pinscher. Continue reading →

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NICK HORNBY’S SONGS IN THE KEY OF LIFE

Filed under: Books, Music — Leave a comment
January 31, 2014

31 SONGS by Nick Hornby (Penguin Books, 2003)

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Everyone has their own personal soundtrack but few have the opportunity or desire to share them with the public at large. Why indeed would anybody else be interested in what is essentially a private relationship with the music you have encountered?

Nick Hornby makes no presumption that we will find his own favorite songs innately fascinating but they are just the same. These 26 essays are interesting for what they tell us about Hornby the man and writer. I have no idea why he hit upon 31 as a number but I’m sure he had his reasons.

Having become a little bored with the increasingly contrived plots of  Hornby’s novels  I appreciated the chatty, unpretentious style he adopts here. In my view he has never topped Fever Pitch, his first published work, and  31 Songs is in the same down to earth spirit.

It is about music in the same way that Fever Pitch was about soccer; in other words, the topic serves as a useful way to contextualize subjective observations about life and popular culture. There are plenty of sharp insights on how our tastes change as we get older and particularly touching are the essays in which he talks about the pain and pleasures of fathering an autistic son. Continue reading →

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EXTREMELY LOUD, INCREDIBLY CLOSE AND REASONABLY GOOD

Filed under: Books, Movies, Parenting — Leave a comment
February 19, 2012

EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE directed by Stephen Daldry (USA, 2011)

Having read a few reviews prior to seeing this movie (always a mistake), I was all set to entitle this post EXTREMELY LAME & INCREDIBLY CONTRIVED. This only goes to show that you should always keep an open mind and shouldn’t take what critics say as gospel.

Steven Daldry’s movie is contrived but it is not lame.

The British director actually makes a pretty decent stab at translating a tricky story on such a sensitive topic to the big screen without laying on the sentiment too thickly. It isn’t perfect but is not the turkey some make it out to be. Continue reading →

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