I was a threat to National Security yesterday: I took a photo in a public place.
This time I managed to avoid detection, slipping the pocket camera back into my bag before the SWAT team swooped into action. Others haven’t been so fortunate, as The Independent reported on Thursday:
November BBC photographer Jeff Overs stopped and searched while he takes sunset photographs of St Paul’s Cathedral.
November Andrew White, 33, is stopped after taking photographs of Christmas lights on his way to work in Brighton. He is asked to give his name and address.
August Police order trainspotter Stephen White to delete images of train carriages taken during a holiday in Wales. CCTV near an oil refinery monitored him taking the pictures and alerted local police. Mr White refused.
July Alex Turner, an amateur photographer, arrested under anti-terrorism laws for taking pictures of two officers as they question him for photographing a fish and chip shop in Kent. Later released without charge.
April Two Austrian tourists told to delete pictures of Walthamstow bus station. Unaware that police have no right to enforce deletion of images without a warrant, they comply.
I have been stopped twice; once outside a shopping mall (where the CCTV boys had ‘caught’ me and sent an enforcer, even though I was standing on a public highway) and once along the Embankment. In one case, I was trying to make art, in the other, wanting to celebrate my culture. Fortunately, unlike Mr Overs, I wasn’t trying to earn my living.
As Henry Porter in his Guardian blog today so eloquently puts it, this is an outrageous infringement of a civil liberty, and – whether you’re a happy-snapper or a committed shutterbug – an issue that should concern everyone.
Popularity: 55% [?]
MIAMI VICE
Where is the noisiest place on earth? Times Square at New Year? Trafalgar Square during a Poll Tax protest? Perhaps a South American football match or the Tokyo Grand Prix?
It’s none of the above. The world’s noisiest place is in Michael Mann’s head.
Watch any 10 minute segment of Miami Vice for evidence. It is not the product of a quiet mind. Mann fills the screen with information overload that creates a busy, cacophonous world that’s untidy, random and confusing.
Like life.
That’s not to say that Mann doesn’t know how to shoot a picture; go back to ‘Manhunter‘(the original Hannibal Lecter movie) and you’ll find a director who knows exactly how to frame images in classic proportions.
But having mastered the rules, he has spent the past twenty years finding ways to break them, creating worlds that get busier, messier with each picture. Compare Ali and Heat (a personal favourite); The Insider and Collateral. There is an intensity to a Mann picture that envelopes the viewer and demands attention. He is the thinking man’s Ridley Scott.
Of scriptwriting, Alfred Hitchcock once said: “First we will write the script, then we will add the dialogue”. In Miami Vice, Mann dispensed with the second half of that statement. For much of the film, the speech is virtually indecipherable. But it doesn’t matter; the characters could all be mute, and the story would still be told.
It adds to the intensity, which is for the most part is achieved by a dark tidal wave of scale, contrasted with claustrophobic close-up. That’s at the heart of Miami Vice; for all its violence and ambiguity, it’s really a buddy picture, built upon the complete trust between two undercover cops (Colin O’Farrell and Jamie Foxx) operating in a very dangerous world, with ever-shifting loyalties and doubtful motives. And we spend a lot of time ‘in the faces’ of Crockett and Tubbs.
Those names – like the title – conjour up white Armani jackets and Jan Hammer’s driving soundtrack: the 1980s precursor to CSI Miami. Well forget all that; Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas are bantamweights compared to O’Farrell and Foxx. The glamour is still there, but it’s nocturnal and grubby, you can smell the money and you can feel the threat of violent death.
It’s not an easy film to watch; neither is it an easy listen. And that’s the point, because that’s the world in which Mann entraps his characters: Less Miami, more vice. A place of threat that they cannot bring themselves to leave.
Miami Vice an intelligently-made police thriller that asks you to work hard to keep up. It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s worth the effort.
Popularity: 41% [?]
If you’ve hit a brick wall, and are faced with a blank screen and no inspiration, steal someone else’s idea…
A lot of music magazines now use the ‘10 random tracks from your mp3 player’ as a standard filler.
Of course, this only works if the respondent is totally honest – even with the guilty pleasures that show up, and the ‘what on earth is THAT doing on there?’
So, without fear or apology, and at the risk of losing all credibility:
1 Sweet Talkin’ Woman / Electric Light Orchestra
Not my favourite ELO track, but not a bad place to start.Listening to it as I sit here, and it zips along with big production, multi-tracking, soaring strings. If nothing else, it reminds me of a hapless RE teacher at school who played the viola and who claimed to have been an ex-girlfriend of ELO’s cellist.
2 All Or Nothing At All /Frank Sinatra
With over 100 tracks from the great man, it’s not surprising that one has come up. Not in my top 20, but like all his best work, this benefits from a Nelson Riddle arrangement, which could make even a Eurovision entry sound interesting. Sinatra first recorded this song with Tommy Dorsey, and it became his first ‘hit’ during the 1942 musicians strike. The version I’m listening to now is from ‘Strangers in the Night’, Sinatra’s only platinum album.
34 Shoplifters of the World Unite / The Smiths
I can relax now; whatever else follows, at least this gives me cred. Have to say, I’m a latecomer to Messers Morrisey, Marr et al, mostly thanks to Paul Morley’s incessant championing of the cause. There’s definitely a ‘Children of the Revolution’ theme in here.
5 Up in the Sky / Oasis
Now this is starting to look like a finely-honed selection, prepared for Desert Island Discs. Where’s my Doris Day collection or Dean Friedman’s Aerial? This track is an OK filler from Definitely Maybe (mind you, last year readers/customers of Q and HMV voted it the greatest album of all time. Obviously they’ve never heard Bobby Darin singing The Doctor Doolittle Collection.)
6 Norwegian Wood / The Beatles
I’d forgotten that this was the track that started the whole sitar thing for Harrison. We now know that Lennon wrote it about an affair while married to Cynthia. Quite a dark lyric, counterpointing the da da-da-da da tune.
7 River of Dreams / Billy Joel
I was due an uncool track by an uncool artist. Possibly this falls into the guilty pleasure category – but he is a terrific songwriter, and great value live. Title track of his last studio album, with highly evocative backing vocal. Made at a time when he was having a deep falling out with his manager / ex-brother-in-law, who he accused of fraud. What is it about artists and their ex-managers (see Leonard Cohen, Sting)?
8 Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic / The Police
How spooky is that? No sooner do I invoke the name of the Geordie troubadour, then he turns up. Counted my musical taste chickens too soon - where’s my World Music collection? My Alt Country? My Jazz? My Gregorian Chant? My Thrash Metal (well, actually my son’s thrash metal, but you wouldn’t know that). Sting is terminally self-important, but he does know how to write a great pop song. The video brings back great memories: I was a double bass player in the school orchestra (the bloke at the back who never had a solo) and here I finally saw my instrument get associated with a rock star! As always, this is driven by fantastically complex drumming from Copeland who, it is little known, has an extra arm. (In an attempt to regain cred points, I’d like to point out that I also have a cover version by Shawn Colvin.)
10 Night in my Veins / The Pretenders
Not sure this ‘random play’ is that random, as this played first thing the this morning. Not that I’m complaining: Hynde has one of THE great pop-rock voices, and this (from ‘Last of the Independents’) a perfect example of the band’s oeuvre. Big guitar sound creating space for Hynde’s earthy-yet-vulnerable vocal. Great place to end.
So come on; take the risk – plug in, push random play, and let me know what you discover.
Popularity: 4% [?]
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