Is journalism a trade, in the sense of something one learns as an apprentice, and works at until old age? The only specific skill, shorthand, that journalists are supposed to need has become of even less importance since the advent of tape recorders. It is a trade in the sense of “know the tricks of the trade,” in obtaining information, conducting interviews, and putting an article in the right order, but even these cannot be taught except by experience. The three most important qualities for a journalist–curiosity, quickness and writing still–cannot be taught at all.
–Richard West, An English Journey

Woodward, Bernstein: Neither went to ‘J-school,’ as it happens

It is, I believe, one of the few dangerous forms of eccentricity, a highly contagious mania, to be precise, of the rampant social variety! In your friend’s case, we may not yet be dealing with out-and-out insanity . . . No . . . Maybe his trouble is only exaggerated conviction . . . But the contagious manias are well known to me! . . . I’ve known a good many sufferers from conviction mania . . . Of many different types . . . And in the last analysis, those who talk about justice seem to be the maddest of the lot! . . . At first, I must confess, I took a certain interest in justice fanatics . . . Today those particular maniacs annoy and exasperate me more than I can tell . . . Don’t you feel the same way? . . . Human beings show a strange aptitude for transmitting this mania. It terrifies me, and we find it, mind you, in all human beings!
–Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey To The End Of The Night

The Hangover

Now that “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” has gone from municipal marketing slogan to national organizing principle, the success of this is best understood not as a tribute to its virtue as comedic romp but rather to its power as allegory–and prophecy. Moral hazard? It is as nothing compared to the salvific majesty of the do-over. And so it is written; America, Fuck Yeah!

Grade: C+

The Hangover: And a nerd shall lead them

‘The 21st Century, with its meaningless logos and ironic veneration of tyrants’–Peep Show S04E01 (Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain)

The Boat That Rocked AKA Pirate Radio

No one expects realism from Richard Curtis, so it would be otiose to complain that pirate radio wasn’t like this, and neither was England. (No, I wasn’t there, but neither was he.) More to the point: this movie is both trite and interminable, its whimsy enervated and its wit crass–a civil servant called Twatt, a secretary called Clitt and the station itself called Radio Rock. (They called it “pop” in those days, but here I am caviling about accuracy again.) Curtis has a rep for working with actors, but you wouldn’t know it from this. Bill Nighy and Rhys Ifans manage to amuse against the odds, but Phil Hoffman is wasted; Ralph Brown is effaced; and Kenneth Branagh is seemingly under the impression he’s in the sequel to Valkyrie, only this time playing for the other side.

None of this is meant to suggest that TBTR has nothing to offer. Students of bad filmmaking will revel in a final scene (nay, apotheosis) that must be endured to be believed and in a coda that is truly sick-making. (Rock ‘n’ roll never died, yeah? It’s pretty much a straight line from Otis to the Black Eyed Peas and from the Small Faces to Take That, yeah?) And this movie puts paid to The Great 1960s Debate. Of all the crimes that can be ascribed to that decade, the worst is this–it enabled the retrospective triumphalism of smug tossers like Richard Curtis.

Grade: D

The Boat That Rocked: ‘What japes!’ etc

Take One: Hey Peter, the 70s called; they want their hair back.
Take Two: Wait a minute, I thought Fred Flintstone was a cartoon
character. Does this mean Stock Day was right?
Take Three: You can lead a man to Osgoode Hall, but you can’t
lead him from Supercuts.
Take Four: It was after the Flintstonians achieved political
awareness that people began to speak of the End of Days.

Colby Cosh: Machine-gunning drugged
strawmen in a barrel since 1995

Photo taken by Jay Currie, outside Christie’s Carriage House, Victoria, 13 March 2009; hair by Jimmy’s Barber Shop; coat by Aquascutum; cigarette by Pall Mall

Philip Glass, ‘Islands,’ from Glassworks (1981)