Half way through a massage from my reflexologist, Kate, the other evening, I stopped her nimble fingers in their tracks just by mentioning that Clint Eastwood was 79 this weekend. Fifty-something Kate found this hard to digest. How could someone as young as Clint be so old? I said he is about the same age as my father. She said he is about the same age as the father of Greg Hicks, the favourite Shakespearean actor currently headlining in A Winter’s Tale and Julius Caesar at Stratford. For some, Clint will always be Dirty Harry, or the bloke with the chimp in Every Which Way But Loose. For me, he’ll always be the man with no name in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Then, I was at pains to explain to Kate that, althouth I abhor violence in films, I adore Clint’s spaghetti westerns. Yet, I cannot stand the modern, gangster-loving trash of Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction, and certainly not the latest two James Bond films starring Daniel Craig. And then it hit me. I knew why the Clint Eastwood brand was better than the Daniel Craig brand. I’d answered the question that had been hanging over me these last two years about why I didn’t like these new Bond films, when everyone else did. Clint’s movies have something important in common with most of the Bond movies before Craig. Charm. Whereas the two Craig films have been dark, graceless essays in violence and abuse, no better and no worse than anything else of their ilk, the staple Hollywood fare. Quite clearly, in any brand, that much pursued and hard-to-define charm is worth its weight in gold.
Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk
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As any physicist knows there are 6 attributes that describe the core of everything. Up-ness, Down-ness, Strangeness, Charm, Truth and Beauty.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly 'charm' is part of a balancing pair of attributes - its opposite is truth.
Maybe Daniel Craig, et al, are a little to truthful to be charming.
Then I'm glad that the language of physics isn't common currency. And truth? No such thing exists, so what could possibly be its opposite? There is only subjectivity and interpretation. We are only human after all. Even physicists who do not know what 'beguiling' means.
ReplyDeleteA physicist is likely to agree. The 'observer effect' tells them that all observations are a result of perspective.
ReplyDeleteIt took physicists, or any scientists, too long to realise and admit that they were part of the experiment they were conducting. The observer is part of what is being observed. By the time scientists had realised they were human too, the natural forces of irrationalism had reconquered the outlook of human beings. Schroedinger's cat may well be alive or dead until the box is opened. But, personally, I prefer dogs.
ReplyDeleteHow alike this conversation is to those we used to have in C26 thirty two years ago!