Another week, another Best Picture nominee, this time, Gus Van Sant’s ‘Milk‘, the biopic of Harvey Milk. Harvey was a very sweet man, the self appointed Mayor of Castro eventually became the first openly gay man elected to public office in the USA, with ultimately tragic results.
I found this very uplifting and inspiring. It makes you want to present yourself to Terrance Higgins and say ‘use me, I’m here to help’.
There was something though, and Mark Simpson hits the nail on the head here – they cut of Harvey’s balls. It was a cleaned up potrail of this mans life, would the real Harvey be seen as less sweet, and more sexual deviant?
Sukhdev Sandhu also picks up on this in his blog article:
Another curious feature of Milk is the relative silence it maintains around sex. This is pretty strange as sex was a big part of Harvey’s life.
A success, nonetheless. Sean Penn and James Franco were excellent. At the end, the real Harvey got some screen time, showing just how well Penn captured the exuberant essence of the man.
The irony of the State covering the land in CCTV, then passing this law surely cannot escape anyone. The UK is now the most surveilled nation on earth, with the largest DNA database per capita.
This leads nicely onto another story today, Dame Stella Rimington’s interview in La Vanguardia commenting on Ministers ‘using fear of terror’. The article includes a very sensible quote from Former Irish president Mary Robinson:
Seven years after 9/11 it is time to take stock and to repeal abusive laws and policies enacted in recent years.
Pity people only feel they can talk sense after they are out of Office!
I have long prescribed that the UK is sleepwalking into a surveillance society [thank you Richard Thomas], and once we wake up, it will be far too late.
Of course, a nice little postscript to the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (sections 132 to 138), that was specifically brought in to get rid of Brian Haw, was that the Lords decided that it was not retrospective.
Though the Government won on appeal, Judge Quentin Purdy decided that:
I find the conditions, drafted as they are, lack clarity and are not workable in their current form.
Brian’s protest continues, though with a much reduced presence. Delicious.
A good series hosted by Jeremy Paxman on The Victorian’s began last night. Jeremy uses paintings of the time as a tool to explore Victorian society. It was a fascinating time for Britain really, they sorted out so many age old problems and set the basis for the country we live in today – puts the successive generations who have come since very much to shame.
That’s what we need now, a new Elizabethan Era of hard work, intelligence and industry. Shame that no one can really be arsed! I blame the internet!
You get the feel that Jezza would have preferred to have lived during this time – something that the Guardian noticed also:
Perhaps he should have been born 130 years before he was. I can picture him then, making more sense of a less frivolous world, one of industry and outside loos, and getting things done. Come along, come along.
I hope this is out on DVD, nice to dip into like Dimbleby’s ‘How we built Britain‘ in a similar vein.
