The Muppets Take Manhattan (Movie Review)

     The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984) Not the best Muppet production. It tells the trite but true story of the show-biz group that tries to conquer Broadway, fails on first try, eventually gets a break, and puts on a smash hit. But the movie moves so slowly I sometimes wondered why one should call it a movie. It also lacks the Muppet zaniness, has no satirical edge whatever, and generally disappoints the seasoned Muppet expert who, like me, has watched their TV series over and over again. In the end, Kermit and Miss Piggy get married. This should’ve been an opportunity for a madhouse wedding reception, but no, the movie just stops. Mildly amusing, with a couple of bits that approach the expected standard, but overall a disappointment. Perhaps the slow pace is designed to appeal to young children. ** (2000)

Small, Smart & Practical Trackplans (Iain Rice)

     Iain Rice Small, Smart & Practical Trackplans (2000) A very well written book. The title misleads, as Rice has here designed layouts, not mere trackplans. He makes this point in the introductory chapters: that one should design a layout, not merely draw a trackplan. He also provides useful tips on construction of ultra-small layouts and staging methods, eg, the train cassette, a brilliant idea. I wonder who invented it.

     The layout designs he offers are very well done. They each have a charm of their own, are definitely practical (some are of layouts he has built), and the overall philosophy is just what’s needed, now that people are discovering that the basement-sized layout demands a club of some sort (even if only a group of the builder’s friends). I wish the book were as well designed as written. It’s a perfect-bound book with very narrow gutters, which results in slices cut out of several trackplans. Also, a spellchecker has been used to proofread the text, and it shows, from stray words in strange places, to the potentially damaging misprinting of ‘uptight’ for ‘upright’ on p.78 (in the chapter about Lake Wobegon.) These minor flaws irritate all the more as Kalmbach usually produces impeccable books. Content **** Production *
      Footnote: When I look back at the layouts I tried to design some 30 years ago, I realise that I had half-formed some of the ideas Rice presents here. They build on John Armstrong’s principles, the major change being the attempt to balance all aspects of a layout.
     Armstrong designed operating model railroads, but did not make as much use of staging as is now the norm, and sometimes skimped on scenic effects in order to get sufficient trackage for ‘real’ operation. Rice emphasises that the scene we see is all that matters, and that the trains that pass through it are like actors in a play, a point first made by Frank Ellison.Staging tracks can take the place of a basement full of railroad. Armstrong’s layout designs led to the railroad that fills up a basement. Rice’s reinterpretation of Frank Ellison reminds us that a small railroad can offer as much operating interest as a large one; and, because the layout can be finished in a reasonable time, may offer even more modelling pleasure.  (2000)

Trent's Last case (E C Bentley)

    E C Bentley Trent’s Last Case. (1913ff) With an essay by Dorothy Sayers. This is a classic, so they say. It apparently demonstrated how to open up the detective story genre, and in some ways I suppose it did. It actually blends love romance and crime novel, for the central plot point is not who done it, but will the ‘tec, Philip Trent, find true love? He suspects that his lady love, Mrs Manderson, is implicated in the murder of her husband, you see, and being the chivalrous dog he is he can’t bring himself to pass his deductions to Inspector Murch, the copper with whom he conducts a friendly rivalry. As it turns out, he needn’t have worried, for he was wrong, and his lady is innocent – as is her putative lover Marlowe, although he is the one who has discovered that Manderson has tried to frame him, and so tries to make what looks like suicide look like murder by person or persons unknown and unsuspected – himself least of all. But the real murderer is Cupples, Mrs Manderson’s uncle, and he doesn’t reveal his part in the story until the very, very end. Trent quite properly makes him pay for dinner.
     This is an interesting story, but it is terribly dated all the same. I don’t think it’s just that we’ve had the same sort of double and triple plot twists over and over again, for we don’t in fact tire of plot twists. The style is quite amusing, in the somewhat laboured Edwardian mode. It’s the sexual morality that dates the book. The purity of womanhood was a given in those days, and Mabel Manderson and Philip Trent just don’t ring true anymore. The lover tortured by moral scruples about imputing impurity to his beloved is definitely a creature of another century.
     The puzzle was quite good, but Bentley isn’t as good on the process of solution as he should be. One can see that, if this was indeed the first of its kind, it was a ground-breaking work, and why Sayers claims it set later crime writers free to write novels, not mere puzzle stories. Nevertheless, the book was a pleasant read. **1/2 (2000)

Selected Writings (Oscar Wilde)

     Oscar Wilde Selected Writings. (Selection 1961) Several essays, the fairy tales, and the two great plays – a pleasure to read. Wilde’s great gift is to express a morally serious point of view through in elegant epigrams. He is always a pleasure to read – and that pleasure exhibits Wilde’s greatest weakness. Unfortunately, many people believe that a funny saying cannot be meant seriously, and so don’t listen to the satire, even if they hear it. I read most of the selections this time round. The Importance of Being Earnest is a joy. ****

Reflections on the Psalms (C S :Lewis)

     C. S. Lewis Reflections on the Psalms (1961) Lewis is not at his best here. He writes, he says, as a neophyte for other neophytes; he aims the book at fellow Christians. And there are difficulties in doing this, but they don’t arise from Lewis’s pretended theological innocence. Lewis is a moral theologian of no mean skill, and his reflections convince most when he reflects on the psalms’ moral lessons. But underlying the whole book is an odd literalism, which often makes his arguments seem designed to conform not to logic but to some predetermined external standard of factual truth. Lewis doesn’t accept such special pleading elsewhere, so I think there is an unreconciled conflict between the need to believe that the Bible is God’s word, i.e., the Truth, and the knowledge that it is after all a collection of very old books, rife with errors, omissions, mistakes, and obvious and not so obvious redactions, let alone the inherent translation errors, and the inevitable mistakes in interpretation that come from our ignorance and prejudices, and differences in culture or worldview between ourselves and the writers.
     Lewis is disturbed by a number of things in the psalms, not least the hate-psalms, and twists and turns every which way to explain them away. His explanation essentially amounts to this: As a believer, I am bound to find some good in these horrible things, since they are inspired by God. Therefore, some good must be found. And the good is that it is a horrible example. In other words, Lewis has certain values and the Psalms must be interpreted to conform to these values. I always find this a problematic mode of argument, even when, as here, it suggests useful insights.
     Lewis would never take this approach with other literature, and I am disappointed that he does so here. It would be better in my opinion if he had said he had no explanation, that these psalms are there as much by reason of ancient reverence for ancient texts as for any spiritual reasons. Such reverence often amounts to superstition, not only in the past but nowadays, too. I also believe that the Bible is inspired, but I don’t have as literalist an interpretation of this concept as Lewis apparently does. I think the Bible should be read like any other text. That is, we need to understand as best we can what the texts meant to their writers, and distinguish that from what they might mean to us. Lewis does some of this, but unlike me he doesn’t build on what our ancestors (probably) thought they meant, instead he adds meaning from a new frame of reference, the Christian one. From time to time, his argument reads more like reading into the text than reading out of it.
     There is also more than a whiff of the Only Truth syndrome. Lewis occasionally hints that pagans and other non-Christians have a dim understanding of God’s revelation by the grace of God, but Christians have the whole thing, and pure, too. It seems to me that he is the True Believer personality. When he found atheism wanting, he went to the opposite extreme. This makes me think about exactly what I believe. First of all, I think that to say "I believe" means something quite different from "I know." Belief is about meaning (and therefore about purposes). Knowledge is about experience. One could rephrase this as, we know what we have experienced, but as soon as we try to explain it, we enter the realm of belief. EG, we know that our instruments measure certain energy flows. We believe that this means there has been a change in the energy content of electrons in the atom. The fact that we have checks on our beliefs doesn’t make them knowledge. One consequence of this: accounts of our experience are true or false (someone else can confirm or disconfirm them), but accounts of our beliefs are not. A belief is consistent or inconsistent with our accounts of experience – but consistency is not the same as truth.
     The question is, what is religious belief as distinct from other beliefs? I think it is the claim of what they cover. Simply, religious beliefs claim to explain the meaning and purpose of our existence. They don’t answer the question, How did we come to be here? but the much more serious question of Why did we come to be here? I affirm the Christian belief not because I think it is true but because it is consistent with my experience on a grander scale than any other I have encountered. Does that mean the others are any less worthy of affirmation? Not from my point of view, but that merely means that I have built (and continue to build) my Christian belief system so that it makes sense to me. No doubt other believers have done the same with their belief systems. The fact that religions have so much in common suggests that they are all, so to speak, inspired by the Spirit.
     Can a belief be true? As I said, I don’t think so. But one can test a belief’s consistency. A beliefs should be consistent with itself, and it should be consistent with experience. Related beliefs should be consistent with each other. Science is a method of testing beliefs about the meaning of ordinary experience. What’s significant here is that over time scientists affirm the same beliefs, and agree that tests show errors, that is, inconsistencies in these beliefs. Scientists also have methods of building beliefs. That is why their beliefs are called theories, or more recently models (since the word theory has lost almost all its useful meanings in everyday language.)
     Can religious belief be tested? Of course. Jesus said how: "By their fruits ye shall know them," he said, and spent a lot of time pointing out the hypocrisy of his coreligionists. If one doesn’t act consistently with one’s stated beliefs, then clearly something is wrong, either with the beliefs, or the claim that one is following them. Lewis is in fact very good on showing the fruits of belief and unbelief. His strength is moral theology. Where his book focuses on these questions, I find it convincing and helpful. Overall: *** (2000)

Colin Dexter's The Way Through the Woods (1992)

      Colin Dexter The Way Through the Woods (1992) A cold case, the disappearance and possible murder of a Swedish girl, is revived when a letter containing a poem referring to a Swedish Maid is published in The Times. Morse has just gone on holiday, so it takes a while for his investigation to get going. The puzzle’s solution is acceptable on an intellectual level, but this time Dexter’s psychology is off. I just don’t believe the motivations of the murderers (yes, there are two). Dexter tells the story in short chapters, some which are diary excerpts, newspaper clippings, and police reports. The resemblance to a video or movie script keeps the story moving, but it was the memory of John Thaw’s Morse and Kevin Whately’s Lewis that created the sense of a world inhabited by real people that I want from even the most formulaic crime story.

      There’s no question: the video adaptations of Dexter’ work are far better works of art and craft than Dexter’s novels. He’s meticulous in the placement of clues and red herrings, and scrupulously fair in the resolution of the puzzle, but ultimately the characters are thin and the motivations perfunctory. We know for example that Morse likes Wagner, but we don’t really know why. I don’t like Wagner much as it happens; I think his Ring operas are bombastic and stupid misreadings of the sagas, and much of his music is sheer kitsch (it’s no accident that Hollywood composers allude to it when reaching for dramatic ambience to juice up a second-rate movie). But some of his pieces are sublime evocations of Weltschmerz, which is enough. I have no idea whether Morse would agree with me, and without that knowledge Morse’s preference for Wagner over Gilbert and Sullivan is a mere tic of character.
      As crime puzzle, the book is first rate. As a crime novel, it’s mediocre. **

The Mirror Crack'd & Peril at End House (book reviews)

     Agatha Christie The Mirror Crack’d (1962) This is one of the best Miss Marple stories. A woman dies suddenly during a reception at the recently renovated Gossington Hall (where the body had been found in the library many years before). The psychology of the crime baffles the police. Who would want to murder this harmless busybody? As so often happens in an Agatha Christie, the past holds the vital clue. Twenty years before, the victim had hauled herself from her sickbed in order to meet her idol, a film star. Miss Marple, physically frail and mentally a little slower than she used to be, as always is able to empathise with both the murderer and the victim, and by doing so to understand both why and how the woman was murdered. The plotting is beautifully done, everything fits. There are a few nicely done digressions, which serve to show Miss Marple’s acumen, and also, I suspect, to express Christie’s distaste for the effects of population growth and modernisation. The characterisation is more subtle and complex than in the early novels, which adds to the charm of this book. ***½

     Agatha Christie Peril at End House (1932) One of the best Poirots: the murderer actually enlists Poirot in the hunt for her supposed attacker. I knew the story before I reread this novel, but that increased the pleasure: I could see how artfully Christie places red herrings amongst the genuine clues in Poirot’s path. I think she enjoyed showing how Poirot’s vanity misleads him. If he weren’t so sure of his perspicacity, he wouldn’t accept the story fabricated for him. The murderer is clever enough to build the story through apparently trivial details. The significance of apparent trivialities is Poirot’s forte, and his attention to them is therefore also his weakness. I thoroughly enjoyed rereading this book ***½