Footloose Vs Footloose

A crime has been committed. That crime is an unforgivable one: that of an ill-considered remake.

The idea of remaking Footloose was not offensive in itself. A big city boy comes to a small town in Hicksville USA, a very strict and joyless place where kids may not congregate and do any dancing within the town limits. He likes a good old dance so sets about challenging this law.

The original was good: a beloved coming of age story of struggling against conformity and recognising kindred spirits. It also had some cracking good tunes and a lovely bit of anger-inspired dancing. It could be attempted once more, a reminder or call to arms to the current generation of Rens and Ariels, needing a cause to unite them against hypocrisy and bigotry.

The remake didn’t do any of this. A lot of the dialogue was exactly the same but the things or scenes which made you identify and care about Ren (was Kevin Bacon, now Kenny Wormald) and Ariel (was Lori Singer, now Julianne Hough) were sadly missing. What saddened me most of all was the reduction of Ariel to arse-barer extraordinaire. Granted, the original character was known to be a bit of a wild child but you could see that she wanted to believe in something. The updated Ariel has no such discernable cause. Her main scenes involve her taking her clothes off, referring to other girls as sluts, having sex or dancing in not a lot of clothes. Gone were the heartfelt, recognisable discussions with her father (was John Lithgow, now Dennis Quaid) and any hope of a character with more than one dimension. Ariel’s mother, originally played very sensitively by Dianne Wiest, is also reduced to a token couple of lines for Andie MacDowell.

Is it too much to ask Hollywood scriptwriters to actually focus on creating believable and well-rounded female characters instead of reinforcing already well-held prejudices?

I was at a loss to see what director Craig Brewer was trying to achieve with this film. Some things were changed but mainly the superficial details – the focus on the dead teenagers (motive for dancing ban) was more about the shrine in the high school hall than a grief you could see in the eyes of their parents. Some of the supporting characters changed colour - got a ‘racelift’ - to reflect our supposedly more diverse acting talent 20+ years on and some of the songs were changed to make room for more booty-shaking scenes. Update complete.

The court scene was disappointing too – these lines were changed but not for the better. Ren makes his case by trying to convince the town lawmakers that he understands why the adults were protective and worried about their children. Parents are there to worry. Teenagers are there to dance and have fun. Translation = young people are fun but anyone with children does not want to dance and have fun. Their life is over so they can worry about their kids. Youth rules supreme.

Part of the appeal of the original soundtrack was also removed. The ‘teaching Willard to dance’ scene was still there; replicated almost exactly, complete with the little girls and their cute karaoke microphones. It was otherwise quite lacking in the toe-tapping department. The only time I felt like moving my feet was the final scene where everyone is finally allowed to ‘cut loose’. Sadly, Ariel cannot cut loose until she changes the ludicrously high heels she was originally wearing; any dancer knows you would never be able to get your groove on in such inappropriate footwear (the kind that forces your feet down into the peep toe and cuts off any circulation you might have had).

So, makers of this film, please go directly back to your drawing board and create some characters we actually have a chance at identifying with. And keep your hands off our film treasures.

Equal opportunities...and Beer!

Before we begin, I’d like to make one thing clear; this post is only tenuously about equal opportunities.

The title is about my attitude to alcohol, namely that I believe in equal opportunities for all alcohol. No beverage left behind. I started off with whiskey when I was a teen, gradually moving to vodka, JD, wine, cocktails....you get the picture. No, I never drank bad cider behind a wheelie bin or in a park, so glad I missed out on that disgusting ‘rite of passage’. Yuck.

My current love affair is with good old ale – the kind worshipped by beardy colourful jumper wearing train and coach spotting men since long before I were born.

Ale surprised me. I wasn’t expecting to like it. I had spent my whole life post-18 avoiding any sort of lager: fizzy, no taste, urine resembling nastiness. I had a brief sojourn with a famous American lager shortly after turning 18 and that put me off for life.

The love of ale crept up on me gradually; I’m not ashamed to say that it was Belgium which opened my eyes to the joys of beer. The fruit beers were just sweet enough to amuse my young palate and strong enough to provide a respite from the pocket-damaging effect of spirits. The first beer I ever loved was Mort Subite Gueuze (Morte Subite = Sudden death), a love which has continued to this day.

Now I drink beer all the time. The first week in August is always beer festival time – the Great British Beer Festival in Earls Court, a festival I have now been attending for 5 years. At first I was apprehensive and not sure if I would like it, I had heard as many as you probably have, that beer festivals are full of socially inept weirdos but that’s quite enough about the politicians (har).

I soon learnt that the festivals are almost churches of beer worship where people cheer each time someone loses control of their pint glass and it plummets to the floor. Ladies – I know you’ve spent many years complaining about having to stand in line for the loo but if you come to a beer festival the likelihood is there’ll be a queue for the men’s instead. There’ll be many opportunities to laugh and point. That’s not the only good thing though.

There are many, many stands containing many, many barrels of beer from all over the country and beyond. Even the USA, who would have you believe they don’t do proper beer. I now feel the need to name check my favourite west coast breweries – take a bow Rogue and Anchor Brewing!

There are those with a citrus tang, the smooth chocolate and coffee imbued dark and creamy beers, even those which taste like caramel.

Once you’ve tried a few you will know what I mean: there are as many different tastes available in the beer world as there are with the old vino.

The beers at the festival can be accompanied by a variety of tried and tested alcohol-soaking up foods. Admittedly there are the eternally unappetising pork scratchings but there are also stands with tens of pie and pasty varieties, curry, sausage and mash, fish n chips and a fresh seafood stall. It is a good night out unless you are a whingy and over-coiffed Australian male who once declared he could not be expected to eat in such a place and would never return *hic*. Not all beer festivals have such a range but similarly have a good range of traditional culinary accompaniments to beer such as bratwurst, currywurst and other European offerings. Tip: Good beer and good food often go together.

I find that it is easy to get to the bars most of the time because some of the men are not used to seeing females and gawp in shock, thereby giving up their place in the serving queue. Nah, I’m only joking, they are of course gentlemen who will jump at the chance of letting you get your drink before they get theirs.

A strange aspect of being a lady wot likes drinking beer is the reaction you get from bar staff and male ale drinkers. I’ve become used to the bemused looks from men as I carry my pint from bar to table and I am proud to shock them, maybe sometimes I even make an extra effort to look like a proper girly just so I can get even stronger reactions.

Sometimes I am annoyed. Sometimes when the bar person serving me re-confirms that I would like a pint or tries to describe a beer to me like I don’t know what I've just ordered, I feel aggrieved and wonder if they would have done that if I had been a man. Yes thank you I do know that I ordered a ‘mild’ (mild in question would be the Oscar Wilde – beer of the 2011 GBBF). Men I’ve spoken to about this say they are never asked to reconfirm if they would like a pint or, without enquiry, had qualities of beer described to them.

Anyhoo...my motto in life is now ‘Beer is good’. Next time you’re in a pub which happens to serve nice real ale or two, please consider having a go. If you’re not sure what you’re gonna like, please ask the nice accommodating barperson if you can sample one or two before you make your choice. My hope is that you will then also love it, leading to more and more pubs offering more than just the black stuff, the pale fizzy tasteless stuff and generic cider.

All hail to the ale and not necessarily a fruit based drink for the lady.

http://www.anchorbrewing.com/

http://www.rogue.com/

http://www.camra.org.uk/

Beginners.... and an ode to Ewan McGregor

I love Ewan McGregor, don’t you? Well, you should. Ever since Danny Boyle’s black ‘Shallow Grave’ (1994), Ewan has taken on a dizzying range of roles in both cult British films and Hollywood blockbusters.

We have been delighted by the quirkiness of ‘A Life Less Ordinary’ and ‘The Men who stare at Goats’, the starkness of ‘Trainspotting’, the romantic roles in ‘Moulin Rouge’, ‘Little Voice’, ‘Brassed Off’ and ‘Miss Potter’ and the brave move of taking on Alec Guinness’ role in the ‘Star Wars’ prequels. I also loved his more risqué turns in the hilarious ‘I love you Philip Morris’ and ‘Velvet Goldmine’.

He seems unafraid of judgement, which i greatly admire but do wonder what was going through his head when he took the role of the Camerlengo in the film adaptation of the Dan Brown bestseller, Angels and Demons. Despite that dodgy-accented blip, he continues to surprise with the range of roles he is willing to take on; we never know who he will be playing next, which is what you want from an actor really.

So, here we reach the reason for this look back at the Scottish one’s career, the release of a new offering. It is ‘Beginners’, starring the sainted Christopher Plummer as a recently outed older gay man and Ewan as his son Oliver, going back over the last few years they had together.

Within the first few minutes you get the feeling of this film: a hugely touching and human account of a son’s relationship with his mum and dad. His parents (who are both deceased by the time we meet Oliver) had a less than perfect relationship, like most people do, this contributing to the son having less than perfect romantic encounters.

It was easy to connect with all of the main characters, even his late father’s boyfriend. We predictably loved Ewan’s new relationship with his dad’s dog, a very knowledgeable and clingy Jack Russell. The film was engaging from start to finish, with plenty of humorous patches to lighten the sad subject matter.

We all struggle with our relationships and the general direction of our lives; the film acknowledges this beautifully. Life is hard, yep, but sometimes we have to stop getting in our own way to get anywhere. Life is funny, excruciating, awkward, brilliant and mundane all at the same time. As Anna, Oliver’s current love interest, says at one point, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing but I want to be here’, which is sometimes all you can say.

Beginners is out now...

Watch it if you liked: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, A Single Man