Wednesday 11 November 2009

Juno and, Diablo Coady

This afternoon needing to post a couple of communications, visit B and Q and shop at Asda, I decided on impulse to travel to the Bolden Asda and then see the six pm showing of Juno. I do not usually go to see Hollywood films aimed at teenagers and their parents and continued to be hesitant about Juno despite the awards of an Oscar and a Bafta for Diablo Cody, together with other awards and nominations, and the nomination of the film and its star performance actress Ellen Page and a great review by Mark Kermode on Five Live.

II was in the theatre about fifteen minutes before lights out and was joined by around twenty others mostly adolescent girls, a few adolescent boys and one mother with an adolescent and a younger daughter. There was at least three decades between me and the others.

Juno is not a great film and it will be of interest to see where it fits in with other Oscar and Bafta films over time. The script is genius, funny, clever, insightful, empathetic and memorable, which also describes the performance of Ellen Page. I was also interested to see how former West Wing Media front woman and then Presidential chief Executive CJ Allison Brooks Janney, winner of two best lead Actress Emmy's, one for best supporting actress and one Screen Actors Guild for outstanding performance by a female actress. It was a difficult transition to being a different character actress.

Although it is not a great film it should be seen by every Westernised adolescent and their parents but separately. It will be far more effective than any sex education lectures in schools on the need for abstinence or contraception, and many times more effective that the government sponsored cautionary films about unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV infection.

He story is a simple on, adolescent girl, sixteen years of age has one off sex with school mate who plays in the same music group, he loves her but the sex is more out of curiosity and adolescent experimentation than uncontrollable passionate desire. Her first reaction si abortion, but then she hits on the idea of giving to the child to a childless couple and with the help of her understanding father attends a meeting with a wealthy professional couple, and their lawyer to formally arrange a surrogate birthing.

She rejects the interest of the baby's father and takes an interest in the adopting husband only to discover that he does not want the child and has decided to leave his wife and go back to his bachelor prolonged boyhood. This precipitates a crisis for Juno who has coped with the difficulties of staying in school throughout her pregnancy and is disillusioned with the realities of love life and adult relationships. I only suspected part of the ending which can be described as bitter sweet.

During my training as a child care officer, the course was taken to the local family planning clinic where the realities of contraception options was explained with clinical intimacy which had the most profound effect on the whole course as anything we experienced in other tuition and practical work experience. The message in this film is softer and more sensitive to the emotions of adolescents but treats them as independent insightful new adults .

Diablo Cody the Screen writer, in real life Brook Busey, started life as a Catholic graduate with a media studies degree, started work as a secretary and writer until an amateur night strip and liked making an exhibition of herself and entered the world of sleaze sex with enthusiasm, and leading to a short lived marriage with a musician met through the internet and writing about her experiences as a Blogger. I suspect no one will be more amazed than she by the success and what will have happened to her since the films release and recognition.

I still think and Marion Cotillard's performance in La Vie En Rose merited the Oscar because of the way she transformed herself into looking like Edith from girlhood into her last years, but Ellen Page runs her close because she also transformed herself back into an intelligent, independent and insightful adolescent. Ellen was far being a raw actress taking to acting from an early age, appearing in in a teleplay at the of 10 which was then made into a TV series and then did new work throughout her adolescence. She was 20 when playing Juno and already as four new films scheduled for this year and next. The future work of Diablo and Ellen will be worth making the effort to experience.

This morning I awoke early and attempted to begin on my major work writing for the year, but instead of jotting everything that came to mind down and then organising and reworking, and I wanted to see clearly from A to Z, and became frustrated when after writing A the rest did not automatically follow and understood that I was not yet ready to give the prolonged attention required until the work was well underway.

Yesterday I had decided that the refrigerator from my former home had reached the end of its natural life after fifteen to twenty years. There have seen indication that terminal failure was in the offing but I resisted the inevitable until switch on again the frost free fridge freezer I had inherited with the property and finding that it was working decided to make my move once there was evidence of effective ongoing working. My assumption that both parts of the unit were working was later found to have wrong because this morning I moved the fridge items and cleaned the old fridge to take to the tip. I might with effort have got the thing into the back of my car but held back until checking about Council collections. The next task was to make better use of the freed space having assumed that a replacement was not immediately required, for although the available fridge space has been reduced, with better organisation is should be adequate with the freezer space increased by 50%.

The rest of the morning was taken with moving the remaining items in the day room, the tumble dryer, the freezer, the 4th and 5th black four drawer ground floor confidential cabinets, and the double overflow of videos with one containing sports, mainly of Newcastle United, but also some cricket and athletics and the other music. I break off to go and bring the first video from the top shelf of the music cabinet and after discovering that it contains recordings of programmes about Edith Piaf, I decided to runs these though while I had lunch and did other things.

The task of moving the furniture this morning took longer because the floor between and under items needed a sweep and scrub with the opportunity to also dust and wash down sides. The rearranging enabled the under stairs door cupboard to be opened fully, and the gas fire built into the adjacent wall be used if required. I continue to be able to afford central heating the whole house as I am confident this helps to maintain and keep the place overall warm throughout Winter. I broke off to have lunch, a chicken salad and some prawn from shell with a little later two slices of brown bread and some coffee. I also watched an edition of Flog It in which the highlight was an antique table which fetched £2800, more than £2000 above the top estimate, a batter Hornby Train set with fetched nearly £300 instead of the £100 anticipated an a large Poole pot which also trebled the estimate. I inherited a Poole dish, brightly coloured and signed but it appears to be of little value.

There is a build up of e mails with travel and accommodation offers, £1 one way coach journeys. Time to do some project work before a trip to BQ for some more filler to finish the kitchen floor. I am going to have to get used to going into the kitchen for the fridge, It is a little longer walk and much colder room which will hopefully discourage going for a snack. Well one can hope.

The opening recording of the Piaf video is a French drama about her life with Marcel Cerdan, the married with family world middle weight boxing champion, who died in a plane crash from New York to Paris, having been persuaded by Edith to take an earlier flight than the one planned. after being woken by friends who assemble in her Paris flat. It is a better film than La Vie en Rose, I remember, I remembered when I saw the La Vie En Rose, but did not remember that I had the video, what more surprises are to come. I have not played the music videos for years, having been determined to catalogue and transfer to DVD once I had found time to set up the software and connection from video to computer. There was also an English documentary on her life and one in German which I included because of the music performances. There is also a documentary on the life of e Glenn Miller and his band.

It emerged on the Teletext news as I go to bed that the former Children's Home on Jersey was used as the police station for the Bergerac series. It is not the kind of information which sends me to bed relaxed and in good spirits although it has been a good mixture of a day.

1 comment:

  1. Thank you. I write for me as a form of performance art as part of a contemporary art work project which will take up the greater part of my remaining years of self aware consciousness so it is a bonus when someone reads and then tyakes the time to make a comment.

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