Les Derniers Jours du Monde.

The Last Days of the World is a French film, made a few years ago by the Larrieu Brothers. Part of it was filmed in Toulouse, so when I saw the DVD in the library the other day, I felt I had to see it. I remembered how certain props - like burnt-out police cars and black marias - had littered my route to work for a couple of weeks, but then again there's nothing particularly unusual about that in urban France. I read the synopsis and noted the little green oblong on the back bearing the legend Tous publics - the French equivalent of a 'U' certificate - the natural habitat of Disney and Pixar - realised I wouldn't be getting my desired quota of naughtiness but nonetheless checked it out and put it in my bag for a quiet evening in (like every day in Château Fingers, but hey…), tucked up in bed with the missus. Having watched it last night, I suggest you don't let little Timmy stay up to watch it with you…

If the American Board of Film Censors can toy with the idea of giving The Choristers (Les Choristes) an '18' rating because one of the boys in it is filmed smoking, you'd have to be at least 146 years old to watch  Les Derniers Jours du Monde. Practically the first image is a full-frontal nude shot of Mathieu Amalric (after he's attached his prosthetic arm) and back-up shots, so to speak, are not slow in coming. His first encounter - and cunnilingus - with Omahyra Mota appear a mere five minutes later. This actress actually spends most of the film butt-naked, displaying her perfect (and I mean perfect) body to anyone who cares to watch and salivate. Amalric subsequently goes up and down on Catherine Frot and Karin Viard (this one actually spectacularly explicit) while the world continues to disintegrate around him. The idea of wall-to-wall shagging, supping fine wines and visiting the opera (actually my local one, as is happens) a mere 48 hours before armageddon makes a great deal of sense, to me at least. In fact, we shouldn't wait for that particular deadline to enjoy these pastimes. It's a wonderful piece of cinema, improved by the fact that it feels so here and now, especially for those of us who live in the area where it's set. I gather the English title is Happy End, but you'll struggle to find the right one on YouTube. Grab it on DVD if you can, it's a great couple of hours' worth of bunkum, but make sure your kids are in bed, first. Here's a taster, so to speak:

Happy New Year!

Wishing you a very happy New Year and thanking you for checking in even though I've been doing nothing but the blogger's equivalent of trading my high-ranking cleric these last two months. We all had nearly three weeks in England over Christmas and the New Year, a holiday period unheard of in my 25-odd years of professional activity. The eczema stayed at bay (just), but has since started to bang on the inside of the door of the cupbaord conventional medicine shoved it into, unceremoniously, last autumn. We even had a day in London just before Christmas, the first time I'd been back to my home town for over fourteen years and the Fingernails got photographed by a bloke from Reuters as they stepped off the new Routemaster show-bus in Trafalgar Square. I've not seen it crop up on the internet, yet, so I can only presume the photographer decided not to use it (having run two hundred yards to catch us up and ask if we'd mind if he did). Also popped into Crawley, the town where I spent most of my childhood. After all these years of flying into Gatwick Airport we bit the bullet and had a little tour of my youth. I was astonished as to how little had changed and how incredibly liveable the town still is: everyone has two gardens, the pavements are broad and there's green everywhere. The opposite of urban France, in other words. England is half the size of Gaul with the same number of inhabitants but gives the impression of being far more spacious (as does Germany, with its inferior surface area and 20m+ population). Yup, urban planning is not what the French do best. And, according to the news this morning, nor is their ability to keep their AAA-rating, whatever that will really mean to any of us. After all, whoever talked about these things even a year ago? Now it's THE statistic to maintain. We're being taken for fools, again…

Got to run off to work. Verdi is OK, but really pales in comparison to Wagner, Strauss, Debussy Ravel and Puccini. Compare O sink hernieder with the Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore and weep. I do. Pretty much daily, in fact.

April of this year. And Pilar Donoso.

Sorry, I'm still not ready to post again but if you want a laugh, have a browse through the videos I posted in April of this year. There are some stonkingly funny ones.

Why don't I feel the urge to write at the moment? Because I'm neither angry or emotional enough. The former brings on my eczema, the latter is induced by excess, so it's verily a no-can-do at the moment, even though there is a subject I'd like to share with these virtual pages. No wonder professional authors are basket cases and prone to premature death, like Pilar Donoso. Born in Madrid in 1967, she died this week in Santiago de Chile, leaving behind three children, one of whom found her. The most touching part of her testimony was the feeling that she almost expected and understood why her mother had ended her life so early, as if she'd been waiting to become an orphan for a good number of years.

While I'm riffing on writing, here's a bit of news: my brother has been shortlisted for the Montreal International Poetry Prize. We all love organising words on a page in our family, though my dear bro is the best, and certainly a lot better than many who do it professionally. If he wins, I'll let you know, though you probably won't give a shit, and that's OK, too.

So whip your pens out and do it yourselves, just like this delightful lady below.

Strange...

...the less I write, the more visitors I seem to get. That's a good business strategy in anyone's book. I'll get back to my old stream of verbal diarrhoea fairly soon; haven't felt particularly 'creative' these past few weeks.