Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, The Two Faces of January and What If

The only summer blockbuster that I found enticing was Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. And now, some weeks later, the most memorable part of this film was the music composed by Michael Giaccino. There are so many sequences that involve just the apes and where dialogue is at a minimum that the music is so important. It doesn't disappoint. For the film to remain interesting for these vast chunks of what is almost a throwback to a silent movie is a credit to both the director Matt Reeves, and the huge (and I mean huge) team working on special effects and creating the apes. If only the actors could have matched Andy Serkis in bringing them to life. He deserves an Oscar.

In the midst of a summer of blockbusters, super hero, childrens movies and gross out comedies, I found a promising thriller on Wednesday morning Senior Screen that I had missed first time around. I never did work out why it had the title "Two Faces of January". It had the making of a very good movie. A popular novel by Patricia Highsmith, was adapted by herself with a  experienced screenwriter Hossein Amini. A good cast with Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortensen and Oscar Isaac (unrecognisable from Inside Llewyn Davis) and a perfect setting of Greece and it's islands. So why was it so boring? One reason may have been that the direction was handed to Amini, his first film in that role. So whether he had problems with the adaptation with Highsmith, or his relationship withe the actors, but the outcome was the dialogue was really poor when it could have been great. At least there was a visit to the ruins of Knossos on Crete where we went all those years ago.

What If was the opposite. The play Toothpaste and Cigars (???) by T.J. Dawe and Michael Rinaldi has been perfectly adapted by Elan Mastai. I guess it was a bit of a gamble picking Daniel Radcliffe for the lead role but he does pretty well despite the very mixed reviews. Comparisons have been made with High Grant, but Radcliffe is different. not such a good actor, but projects a strange goofy warmth that has you smiling most of the time he is on screen. Weird? The rest of the cast is OK. Zoe Kazan playing the female lead is OK, somehow it felt like her heart wasnt quite with it. Maybe she should stick to writing. Michael Dowse directs with gusto and there are plenty of amusing situations to make the most of. A quite reasonable result.

A Career in Construction - Part 17

The Holiday Inn, Croydon. Famous in construction legal circles for a judgement about the protection of retention monies. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We should have known at that first meeting in July 1981 what we were in for. For the contractor to be lambasted before we had even put a shovel in the ground was unprecedented then and since. If I remember correctly, Tony Whale had a hard job getting the tender through adjudication at head office. And the MD only relented as Tony was so keen on winning his first big contract. Mike Ellis became resident Project Manager and I got to know the route through south London pretty well.

I was enjoying my role as Divisional Quantity Surveyor. I had a dozen or so surveyors reporting to me, the Division was in reasonably good shape with a number of contracts on the go. As a result, the meetings of the four Divisonal Qs's and Chief QS every month at head office in Dronfield went very well. So the second half of 1981 was a good time. Except nothing is ever perfect, and at Croydon the cracks were beginning to show.

Mike Ellis, having previously managed Cheshunt and then the three phases of White City Industrial Park was involved in the most memorable moment on Croydon when the groundworks foreman entered his office holding a second world war bomb and asked what he wanted doing with it. It had been uncovered during excavations and the digger driver had stupidly not left it where it was. The upshot was that the site was closed, as were all the neighbouring streets while the bomb squad made it safe. It was much later the next day that we were allowed back on site. Needless to say, it made the evening news.

The problems on Croydon escalated during the first half of 1982. There were major problems in the construction of the substructures which the client was unwilling to pay for. We put together a reasonable claim document that we presented to the client and when it was rejected, we were taking legal advice. We were not only losing a lot of money in the groundworks but site overheads were also running at a loss. Some of the other contracts we inherited from the Brian Warren days were also in trouble, especially the apartment complex at Nine Elms and the Alexandra Pavilion in the grounds of Alexandra Palace. Given that it was he that pushed so hard to win the Croydon contract, it was not that big a surprise when Tony Whale decided to leave. On the 2nd June John Marshall, formerly head of Management Contracting at Head Office, took over as Divisional Director, and I was onto boss number six.

Family Connections with the First World War

As a family, we have few connections with WW1. The nearest relative who died was Charles Herbert Gordon Roberts, the nephew of my great Grandfather Vincent Littlewood Roberts. Charles was the son of Charles Augustus Roberts whom prepared the "Genealogy of the family of Roberts of Sheffield 1937". Charles Herbert must have resided in Canada at the outbreak of war as he joined the Canadian Infantry (Saskatchewan Regiment) 5th Battalion. He died on 11th December 1916 and is buried in Villers Station Cemetery, Pas de Calais, France. Grave Reference 1V.C.1. Villers-au-Bois is a village 11 kilometers north west of Arras. His parents, Charles Augustus Roberts and Emily Marianne Roberts (ne de-Castro) were living in Birkenhead, England. This information was found on the Canadian Virtual War Memorial.

My grandfather Stanley Boyd Roberts was 24 at the outbreak of war. As far as I can tell, he never enlisted, possibly because of his eyesight, or his profession of solicitor.

When I found a website on Sheffield Local History (http://history.youle.info/), one item was particularly interesting. It was a booklet called "Lest I Forget. My First Experiences At The Front" written by an Eric S Roberts about his experiences in the First World War and published on 23rd May 1918. He was a Lieutenant in the Yorks and Lancaster Regiment. This must be the same Eric S Roberts who appears on the family tree in the 1971 Edition of "Some Memorials of the Family of Roberts" where it shows he was born on 17th May 1893. He was the youngest son of Sir Samuel Roberts 1852-1926. The full text can be found by searching "Eric S Roberts Lest I Forget".

He also signed a copy (along with all the other members of the Repertory Theatre, Sheffield) of "The Works of William Shakespeare" that was presented to my father after the production of "Sing a Song of Christmas" 1930-1931. He was 13 years old. Fourteen years later, he also was commissioned as a Lieutenant in ..... The Yorks and Lancaster Regiment.

As for my mother's side of the family, her father Ralph and his brothers James, Thomas and George were all coal miners so they were never joining up.

Tring Book Club - Burial Rites and Jamrach's Menagerie

Burial Rites is an amazing book. Iceland in the nineteenth century and Agnes has been found guilty of murder. This means only one thing, execution. Whilst waiting for the approval of Denmark, Agnes is sent to live with the family of a District Officer. (There are no prisons in Iceland.) While she is there, her story gradually unfolds and the literary device used by the author works superbly well. The book is based on a true story but it is the dramatic licence adopted by first time novelist Hannah Kent that works better than what is actually recorded about the events of 1829. Agnes is a wonderfully sad character and her relationships with the family and those involved with the deaths are expertly drawn. The hard life on the farms of northern Iceland is beautifully described, and so is the landscape. The last few chapters are very powerful but are written with care and humanity. A terrific debut.

The other choice for Book Club turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch started off so well. So I enjoyed Parts 1 and 3 set near the docks in Victorian London. The life of young Jaffy Brown is a very good read. But the long Part 2 is about his adventures at sea and this I found quite boring. It is only when he returns to dry land for the shorter conclusion that I the story is so much better. Although what happened to him on his voyage does make the last section so poignant it was worth the wait.

Skylight at Wyndham's Theatre

I have never ever paid anything like £64 for a theatre ticket. And the best seats were well over £100. But the current vogue for starry quality drama still sells out theatres and sends them live to cinemas all over the country. It was the irresistible combination of two of my favourite actors Bill Nighy and Carey Mulligan, together with a David Hare classic directed by Stephen Daldry that I could not resist. And I have to say, it was worth every penny.

Bill Nighy was even better than I had expected from the dazzling reviews. One critic said it was Bill Nighy playing Bill Nighy playing Tom Sargeant but in a really very good way. I cannot disagree. His character is articulate, powerful, selfish and witty. And Nighy is also very very funny. Carey Mulligan as Kyra (a name straight from the mid nineties when the play was first performed) seems to be a little pathetic in her early conversation with Matthew Beard's Edward, but she comes into her own as the play develops as her first class degree shines through. Another critic said she was ten years too young to play Kyra, but on my arithmetic at 29 she is spot on. It is Nighy who first played Tom in 1996 (taking over from Michael Gambon) who is slightly too old. But who cares. He was brilliant.

As for the plot, did he do it on purpose, the reason why Kyra walked out on him six years ago? A wonderful play about love, politics and trust is superbly directed by Stephen Daldry. A clash of cultures from the nineties is as relevant today as it ever was. And what a surprise. After all that intensity, the ending is sheer bliss.

Cold In July, The Fault In Our Stars and Chef

A quite reasonable character led crime drama, Cold In July ticks most of the boxes. There are plenty of twists, the main one being after less than half an hour when it seemed the story was over. The three main leads are convincing. Michael C Hall, Sam Shepard and an over the top performance from Don Johnson are all good. Regular collaborators director Jim Mickle and writer Nick Damici have constructed a thoroughly watchable movie and revel in the grubby Texas scenery.

Having watched the trailer for The Fault In Our Stars, I imagined that they had completely ruined what was one of my favourite books of the last few years, and so promised myself to avoid the film. But the reviews were encouraging so against my better judgement, and in the absence of anything better, I nervously entered the cinema. I'm so glad I did. All my fears were unfounded as the makers lovingly reproduced a great version of the novel. Most of all Shailene Woodley IS Hazel Grace Lancaster. The movie had hardly started when the actress was the girl from the book. It was a shame that the same could not be said for Ansel Elgort as Gus, but nobody could have played Peter van Houten as well as Willem Dafoe. He was everything I had imagined. Laura Dern also brought a surprising humanity to the blandly written mother. Scott Neustadter and John Green have sympathetically adapted the latter's own novel and director Josh Boone rises to the occasion. I was amazed.

Chef is not a comedy. It does have some stodgy humour but really this is a drama without the topping. There is no real story, more a confection of events. There is also some unlikely casting headed by Sofia Vergara as the delicious ex wife of an overdone John Favreau. Cameos from Dustin Hoffman, Scarlett Johansson and Robert Downey Jr fall a little flat as if they thought it was a tasty idea at the time but the script was lacking bite. But funnily enough, all together it makes for a sunny concoction. The cinematography is appetising, the dialogue is occasionally crisp  and the soundtrack is a sizzling collection of Americana. When the Food Truck hits Austin, check out Gary Clark Jr playing "Travis County". Worth going to see the movie again just for these few minutes.

It was all free at John Lewis

Free car parking at High Wycombe John Lewis of course. With the added benefit of a free tea and cake (every month) courtesy of a "my John Lewis" free membership card. But even better, they did not charge me for a pair of dummy drawer clips.

Our John Lewis kitchen is now over six years old and the dummy drawer under the sink fell after the clip on the left broke. Finding a replacement online proved fruitless, but John Lewis came to the rescue. The new clip on the right is identical to the old one, so replicated the one on the other side of the drawer front. A short struggle to slide and push the front back in, and its nice to have the dummy drawer instead of an ugly gaping hole under the sink.

I'm always pleasantly surprised when I manage to fix anything. I used to be totally useless at anything practical, but over the years I have learnt that there are practical things I can do. It is just knowing your limitations.