Cultural Highlights of the Year

With Oscar Fever all over the place at the moment, here's a different kind of award that I'd like to share with you.

In the BBC's Late Review (aka. Newsnight Review) the regular reviewers at the end of each year would be asked for their cultural highlight of the year - their choices were often varied, eclectic and sometimes unusual: Tom Paulin in 1997 for example selected the speech given by Earl Spencer at the funeral for his sister Princess Diana.

The idea set me thinking of whichever cultural event or landmark was the one (or more) that made the most vivid impression on me each year - some are sport-related, others a little more obscure such as amateur plays I've been involved in, and in the case of the early 1990's working back, a certain amount of scratching my memory banks was required; dangerous, because nostalgia can give one a better impression of the year than the actual immediacy of the time does.

Here they are, roughly from remembered years:

1975: going to school at St. Joseph's RC, Aylesbury
1976: family holiday at Paignton
1976/77: The Nativity Play - I played my namesake patron saint
1978: Star Wars (surprise, surprise...)
1979: Superman The Movie
1980: The Empire Strikes Back
1981: Ipswich Town's UEFA Cup winning season
1982: holiday in Hastings
1983: Essex v. Middlesex: Benson and Hedges Cup Final at Lord's
1984: Tour of Wembley Stadium
1985: The death of Jason Ellis & Bradford City FC fire
1986: "Kids Aid" at St. Benedict's School
1987: The Mission & Return of the Jedi (video)
1988: Who Framed Roger Rabbit
1989: breaking of the Berlin Wall & Dead Poets Society
1990: England v. India - First Test at Lord's & resignation of Margaret Thatcher
1991: Return to Ypres & 75 Not Out
1992: JFK
1993: Jurassic Park
1994: Star Wars Trilogy Day (Elstree) & Cabaret (Harlequin Productions - Walton-on-Naze)
1995: Nasty Neighbours & Countdown (featuring Teresa Sales)
1996: Brighton Beach Memoirs
1997: Eating Avocado & Star Wars Trilogy Special Editions & Hobson's Choice & The Merchant of Venice
1998: John Williams in concert: Barbican Centre
1999: Teresa Sales in Talking Heads: Cream Cracker Under the Settee
2000: Napoleon
2001: The Herbal Bed
2002: Miss Julie
2003: Russian Ark
2004: The Passion of the Christ
2005: Revenge of the Sith & One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Making Waves)
2006: Journey's End & I Have Been Here Before
2007: Alone It Stands & King Lear (Headgate Theatre)

For cultural highlight(s) of 2008, see previous blog.

Now There's Something You Don't See Too Often...2

Unpretentious adverts.


(I'm not expecting any freebies from Nationwide for this.)

Oscar material

If Kate Winslet does have the good fortune to win the Oscar for Best Actress for The Reader, she may do well to acknowledge Ricky Gervais in the acceptance speech. For it was Gervais, in his comedy series Extras, who cast her in a guest appearance (as herself) playing a nun in a World War II film, who is doing the role only for the purpose of winning an award. "Nuns, suffering, Holocaust...definite Oscar", she quips at one point.

And now unnervingly, she is winning awards left right and centre for playing a German Concentration Camp guard - during the Holocaust. The recognition won't be undeserved, as she's always worked jolly hard in her other (perhaps better) films. I particularly enjoyed her performance in the bleak Jude, she was the youthful spirit and joy of Iris, and even the trashy Titanic has its good moments.

So often, relatively inferior films win awards usually because of the subject matter or the fashion.
Uncle Oscar often has a funny way of rewarding his children.

Snowed under....(?!)

The United Kingdom defied the Luftwaffe in 1940, kept Napoleon and many others at bay, and was at the centre of an Empire over which the sun would never set. As an island, she has enjoyed a moderate climate at best, and hardly suffers from extreme weather.

How is it then, in face of so much past triumph in adversity, that the people of this nation in February 2009 stand around like sheep because of a little snowfall.

Most of the snow around the country has already melted, but that hasn't deterred most schools from prematurely cancelling lessons and businesses from ceasing trading, and unforgivably, the London buses (pioneers in transport in their heyday) chose not to run.

In days gone by we just mucked in and carried on, but complacency and too much familiarisation with mild winters has left most people taking the easy way out, and others moaning about the bad weather. I personally love the sight of the snow, and how it is such a great leveller at slowing the pace of life down to a more manageable level. The only drawback is that it leads later on to ice, and the slush - which has already materialized from the minor thaw-out this afternoon.

Oh to be in England, now that winter's here...