Recently in England Category

"[N]obody knows who the faceless figures, who often appear as motionless couples are, or why they are turning up at high profile events. Theories include the possibilities that they are limelight-seeking pranksters, performance artists or that they are at the centre of a viral marketing campaign for an as-yet unknown product of forthcoming horror film." I, for one, welcome our new faceless overlords.

"This is a very unusual theft and I am confident that someone locally will have knowledge about who is responsible or where the memorial stone is at present." By way of Ted, someone has walked away in silence with Ian Curtis' tombstone. (Here's the scene of the crime.)

"When she saw William playing a game after lunch at Sandringham she thought the Nintendo looked tremendous fun and begged to join in. She played a simple ten-pin bowling game and by all accounts was a natural." Hey, Helen Mirren, how much ya bowl? By way of Web Goddess, it seems Queen Elizabeth has taken to the Wii. "Although she is 81 the Queen's hand-eye co-ordination was as good as somebody half her age...She showed all the signs of becoming a Nintendo addict."

"If you're really worried about Iran, do you want to put your faith in the United States, the country that bungled Iraq? If you really care about Islamic fundamentalism, do you want to be led by the country that, distracted by Iraq, failed to predict the return of the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan?" Why has the world soured on America of late? The real reason, argues Slate's Anne Applebaum and the data she surveys, is that, thanks to seven years of Dubya, we're starting to look incompetent. "And even if the surge works, even if the roadside bombs vanish, inept is a word that will always be used about the Iraqi invasion."

Speaking of US-international relations, with Frost/Nixon, The Queen, The Last King of Scotland and rewrites of State of Play and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy under his belt, British writer Peter Morgan now plans a sequel to The Queen "which will examine former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's relationships with U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush." Michael Sheen is set to reprise his role as the PM, although director Stephen Frears is not returning.

"This man has advanced Communist views, and several of his Indian friends say that they have often seen him at Communist meetings. He dresses in a bohemian fashion both at his office and in his leisure hours." Big Brother was watching him: Ralph Luker of Cliopatria points the way to the recently-released UK Security Service files on George Orwell (as well as those on folk music archivist Alan Lomax and others.) "[W]hile his left-wing views attracted the Service's attention, no action was taken against him. It is clear, however, that he continued to arouse suspicions, particularly with the police, that he might be a Communist. The file reveals that the Service took action to counter these views."

"I wish everyone, friend or foe, well. And that is that -- the end." So long, Tony (and good luck in the Middle East.) 'We're very glad to see him go, because he's the most dangerous opponent that we've had in a couple of hundred years,' former Conservative leader William Hague told the BBC afterward.'" That may have been true for awhile, I guess. Too bad Blair decided to pull an LBJ and mar his otherwise-sound progressive legacy with an exceedingly ill-advised foreign war. But, time marches onward, so, with that in mind, Hello to Gordie and the New Labor Order.

"I am going to say something that few people in public life will say, but most know is absolutely true: a vast aspect of our jobs today - outside of the really major decisions, as big as anything else - is coping with the media, its sheer scale, weight and constant hyperactivity. At points, it literally overwhelms." In his final weeks as prime minister, Tony Blair addresses the problem of the media, calling it "like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits." (Full text of remarks.) "The result is a media that increasingly and to a dangerous degree is driven by 'impact'. Impact is what matters. It is all that can distinguish, can rise above the clamour, can get noticed. Impact gives competitive edge. Of course the accuracy of a story counts. But it is secondary to impact. It is this necessary devotion to impact that is unravelling standards, driving them down, making the diversity of the media not the strength it should be but an impulsion towards sensation above all else."

I wouldn't say the feral beast metaphor gets right at it -- until last year, most of the major news media, in this country at least, was rather well domesticated: It let Dubya lie his way through just about anything, including building a case for war in Iraq on false pretenses, with impunity. But, clearly something is broken with "this relationship between public life and media," as Blair put it. In the midst of a conflict that's been dragging on longer than World War II, you're still likely to hear more about Paris Hilton's jail travails (Prison sucks? Our criminal justice system tends to favor the wealthy? Who knew?), Don Imus's racist bromides (A bile-spewing racist on talk radio? Wherever did they find him?), or the winner of American Idol, to take only three recent examples, than anything of use about the status of the conflict, or our actions, there. And even coverage of the horrifying tragedy at Virginia Tech, obviously a legitimate news story, descended into exploitation almost immediately (and provoked very little understanding that this level of tragedy has become virtually a daily occurrence in Iraq.) They're just giving us what they want, I suspect the comeback is, and that's almost assuredly true. But, still, it'd be nice to see a little more daily recognition from our major journalistic outlets that the mass media in our society performs a crucial -- if not the crucial -- function in informing the electorate on current events and providing the information indispensable to maintaining an active, responsive citizenry, and that other factors should come into play in their coverage than just the corporate bottom line. Update: From the press box, Slate's Jack Shafer cries foul.

So I'm still catching up on movie reviews of flicks I saw a few weeks ago, and, while I don't really care about letting Pirates 3 languish without comment for a fortnight, I do wish I'd written something faster about Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's surprisingly excellent 28 Weeks Later. I thought Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later was a so-so enterprise, a very chilling and effective first forty-five minutes undone by the poor decision-making and Col. Kurtzian tangents which comprise the second and third acts. But this outing holds together much better, I thought, and remains intelligent and fearless from frightening beginning to inexorable end. As my brother aptly noted, this installment is the Aliens of the franchise -- everything's been taken up a notch, and the military training of some of our heroes and heroines this time around is, as per Cameron's flick, only intermittently useful. And, if you like your zombie films awash with social commentary, as they've tended to be from Night of the Living Dead to They Live to even Shaun of the Dead, there's plenty of grist for the mill here, no matter what your political persuasion. If it's still playing in your neighborhood, run to catch it if you can...just watch out for the fellow sitting next to you.

If you didn't catch 28 Days Later, no worries: The eerie prologue of this film, which takes place back in the early days of the "Rage Virus" outbreak, will give you the basic gist. We begin with a couple (Robert Carlyle of Trainspotting, Catherine McCormack of Braveheart) holed up in an English cottage somewhere in the countryside, counting their canned goods and waiting, with a handful of other survivors, for the storm to pass. But, pass it doesn't, and soon enough the virus, which turns one almost instantly from well-meaning human to ferocious, bloodthirsty monster (Think the Black Smurfs. Gnap!), is extant in the cottage, and tough split-second decisions must be made. Flash-forward to 28 weeks later, as this couple's two children (Mackintosh Muggleton, Imogen Poots) -- thankfully at summer camp in Spain during the outbreak -- are returned to the "Green Zone" of a nearly-empty London. England's capital, as it turns out, is now being run and reconstructed by the United States Military, under the auspices of a no-nonsense Gen. Stone (Idris Elba, a.k.a. Stringer Bell. No Slim Charles around, tho', which is too bad for everyone else.) Life proceeds somewhat normally in the Emerald City, thanks to the watchful eyes of army snipers such as the Cpl. Hicks-ish Doyle (Jeremy Renner of Dahmer) and savvy military doctors such as Scarlett (Rose Byrne of Troy.) But, partly due to an ill-advised expedition by the children to their old home -- you just knew somebody was going to do something stupid -- the Rage Virus breaks loose in London again, and the American military presence finds that really drastic actions may be necessary to win the worldwide war on zombies...

Reconstruction, an American occupation gone horribly wrong, Green Zones irrevocably infected by viral terror from the surrounding areas...I don't really need to draw a map, do I? Still, one of the strengths of Fresnadillo's 28 Weeks Later, like BSG and the best in sci-fi social commentary, is that it doesn't really align to any easy 1-1 reading of current events. When the US army stops distinguishing between zombie and civilian and shoots at will, or firebombs the city in an attempt to stem the outbreak (not a huge spoiler -- it's a major selling point in the trailer), it's hard not to grimace ruefully and think of other occupations-gone-bad in our recent history. Yet, things aren't so simple here: One of the things I admired most about this very dark film is its sheer remorselessness. From its opening moments and throughout, it instills a visceral fight-or-flight dread in the audience and refuses to let us off the hook, inviting us less to tsk-tsk about the hubris of American military overreaching and more to ponder what measures -- moral, immoral, amoral -- we might take to ensure our own survival in this nightmarish universe. Time and time again in 28 Weeks Later, compassion is absolutely the wrong answer to the problem at hand, and -- though there's less of this as the characters crystallize into horror-movie stereotypes over the course of the film -- people surprise you with the decisions they choose to make with their backs to the wall. Maybe the scariest thing about Fresnadillo's film -- and the zombies are at times pretty damn scary -- is its dark take on human nature, and what it ultimately suggests about the usefulness of good intentions under extreme pressure. To wit, they're not very useful at all -- if anything, they're the road to Hell on Earth. So before you offer that helping hand, the relentlessly grim 28 Weeks Later suggests, buy some good running shoes.

"I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history." Jimmy Carter calls out Dubya's foreign policy as the worst ever. (As noted earlier, several prominent historians have already come to that conclusion.) "Asked how he would judge [Tony] Blair's support of Bush, Carter said: 'Abominable. Loyal. Blind. Apparently subservient.'" Well, maybe he'll do better at the Bank. Update: Or does he? Carter backs down.

"Within the next few weeks I won't be the prime minister of this country. In all probability a Scot will become prime minister of this country and that's someone who built one of the strongest economies in the world and who I've always said would make a great prime minister." With recent tough defeats for Labor in Scotland punctuating his closing weeks, Tony Blair announces he will make an announcement tomorrow concerning his forthcoming resignation and likely replacement by Chancellor Gordon Brown. And, across the channel, France elects Nicolas Sarkozy as its new president, a conservative who's seen as both US-friendly and Dubya-friendly. Meanwhile, E.J. Dionne wonders what recent events mean for European -- and American -- progressives. Update: Tony Blair announces his last day: June 27.

"What all of this means is not that Basra is how we want it to be. But it does mean that the next chapter in Basra's history can be written by Iraqis." While the Dubya administration continue to press for its "surge," Prime Minister Tony Blair announces the withdrawal of 1600 troops from Iraq, leaving approximately 5,500 British soldiers in the now Shiite-controlled region of Basra. [video.] "Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said though the British and American strategies appear to be opposite, they will achieve the same end: a consolidation of Shiite power in Iraq. The British have already acquiesced to a 'situation of quiet sectarian cleansing' in the south, and their decision to pull out of Basra simply marks 'acceptance of a political reality' of Shiite control in the region."

Just as I didn't have much hankering to see a film about United 93 at first, I've been presuming that not much would interest me less than a movie about the aftermath of Princess Diana's death in 1997. (Obviously, the loss of any relatively young person in a car crash, particularly one as committed to international concerns as Diana was, is tragic. But in all honesty, when I think of the hubbub and hysterics surrounding her untimely death, it reminds me of the "Baby Diego" sequence in Children of Men.) That being said, I'm happy to say that Stephen Frears' The Queen is, like United 93, a surprisingly good depiction of recent history. Less a paean to "the people's princess" than a sharp-witted rumination on changing social values and the effect of global "Oprahization" on contemporary politics, The Queen is an intelligent, discerning and enjoyable slice-of-life that's well worth catching.

As the film begins -- after a wink similar to the one opening Marie Antoinette -- the young, charming, and recently-elected face of New Britain, Tony Blair (Michael Sheen), ventures to Buckingham Palace with resolutely anti-monarchist wife Cherie (Helen McCrory), in order to request of his sovereign Queen Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren) that he be allowed to form a government. A study in contrasts, the emotive, familiar prime minister and the punctilious, reticent Queen get on less well as exemplars of New and Old England than, say, Peel and Steed. Reared and residing in a bastion of venerable tradition, where faxes are still delivered in a wicker basket and feelings are not discussed, Queen Elizabeth has little patience for Blair's studied informality and populist bonhomie. But, when tragedy strikes several months later, in the form of Princess Diana's death at the hands of the loathsome paparazzi, the Crown finds itself soon embroiled in a downward spiral of their own making, as -- the Prince of Wales (Alex Jennings) notwithstanding -- the royal family shows little inclination to convert their grief into a public display (or to honor someone they've come to perceive as an impulsive and manipulative interloper.) And, when England's people begin to surround Buckingham Palace with wreaths and bouquets that come to seem as menacing as torches and pitchforks, it falls on the prime minister to attempt to instruct the Queen on the vagaries of politics in the Tabloid era, before permanent damage is wrought upon the monarchy.

More than United 93, the film that actually comes to mind when watching The Queen is Nixon. Like Oliver Stone's film, The Queen attempts to humanize a oft-maligned world figure for whom much of the audience may have little sympathy. Like Nixon, it portrays a government increasingly besieged by its own people, and a bewildered political leader who finds they've lost touch with their electorate or subjects (Consider the scene of Nixon at the Lincoln Memorial, or all the perhaps over-the-top talk of "the beast" therein.) And, of course, the Queen's relationship to the fallen Diana is depicted here much like Nixon's (and LBJ's) to John -- and later Bobby -- Kennedy. This holds true particularly in the later scenes of the film, as Elizabeth is forced to confront the fact that, for all her sacrifices, she'll never compete with the fallen princess in the public's esteem.

The emotions this sad realization elicits, along with many others in the film, are visible only in the margins of Helen Mirren's mask of public composure, bringing home the conflict between restraint and immodesty (or, if you'd prefer, suppression and sensitivity) at the center of the film. Mirren, as always, is excellent here, and I'd guess her Oscar is already in the bag: She invests her monarch with grace and dignity even while frumpily walking her dogs down the lane, and rises above the very occasional clunks in the script (The buck stops here, indeed.) And Michael Sheen's Tony Blair grows on you. At first, he seems off, but eventually you get the sense that he conveys Blair's more notable qualities rather well: intelligence, boyishness, a way with people, and a potentially problematic penchant for deference. (Indeed, just when it seems the movie's portrayal of Blair has grown cloying beyond words, Mirren's Queen puts him in his place, and ties 1997's hero of Labor to the more troubling Blair of today, one who could and should have more aggressively instructed his American counterpart on the vagaries of leadership in the reality-based world.)

"'What about Kofi Annan?' Bush asked Blair. 'I don't like the sequence of it. His attitude is basically cease-fire and everything else happens.'" Dubya and Tony Blair get caught (apparently) off-guard and on tape discussing the escalating crisis in the Middle East. "Bush said that he feels 'like telling Kofi to get on the phone with [Syrian President Bashar] Assad and make something happen. We're not blaming Israel, and we're not blaming the Lebanese government.'" (A lot of news sources seem to be fronting Dubya's use of the S-word -- "See the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over." -- but, really, who gives a shit about his language?) "Bush also told Blair that he would be sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region soon. 'She's going,' Bush said. 'I think Condi's going to go pretty soon.'" Update: Watch it online, just to get a sense of how boorish and out-of-his-depth our president seems on the world stage. (Exhibit B: Dubya's ill-fated and cringeworth back-rub attempt.)

"Saying, 'Bring it on'; kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal to people. I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner, you know. 'Wanted, dead or alive'; that kind of talk. I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted. And so I learned from that." In a joint press conference, Dubya and Tony Blair own up to some mistakes in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib -- "the biggest mistake", according to Dubya -- and de-Baathification, according to Blair. "The prime minister's examples appeared to be a direct rebuke of both the Pentagon's insistence that a detailed "nation-building" plan was unnecessary before the invasion and the push by key members of Bush's administration for broad de-Baathification."

"The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein." The NYT relates the details of a January 2003 pre-war meeting between Bush and Blair, and it's not pretty. Not surprisingly (and like the July 2002 Downing Street memos, the recollections of Paul O'Neill, and countless other sources), this new material confirms that Dubya and the neocons wanted a war in Iraq, come hell or high water.

"We may have been seduced into something we might be inclined to regret. Is strategic failure a possibility? The answer has to be 'yes.'" Several internal Downing Street memos, recently obtained by the Guardian, suggest that our British allies have been wary of US mismanagement in Iraq since at least 2003, when Baghdad envoy John Sawers called the US post-invasion operation "an unbelievable mess." (By way of Dateline: Bristol.)

"America, your head's too big, because, America, your belly's too big, and I love you, I just wish you'd stay where you is." Oops...watch yourself, Morrissey. On the eve of a new album, the former Smiths frontman says the FBI and British Intelligence have come 'round his door.

"We've always said that Guantanamo Bay was something that shouldn't have happened." A report by the UN Human Rights Commission argues that the US should shut down the Gitmo gulag immediately, a conclusion shared by Kofi Annan and -- apparently -- the British government. As to be expected from this gang, the White House is shrugging the criticism off.