Radar: My Recent Cultural Highlights

Find out what I've been reading, watching, listening to recently.

Listening

Guy Garvey’s Finest Hour - Happy Birthday Van the Man, BBC Sounds

I used to listen to this show, which has been running for over 15 years, all the time. It was always full of tracks that I’d never heard before and almost always immediately loved. I just tuned into this latest on BBC Sounds and remembered how good it was. This show celebrated Van Morrison turning 80, and so was peppered with some of his classic tracks, but some of the best ones I heard throughout the three hours was Duke Ellington’s Blue Pepper and Grimes’ 2012 hit ‘Genesis’. Guy Garvey has a real talent as a broadcaster and if he’s responsible for picking the songs personally, well then he’s played a blinder. 

Your Place and Mine: Coney Island - It’s Astral Weekend, BBC Sounds

Growing up I used to be sniffy about Radio Ulster, preferring instead Radio 1 or, latterly and where DAB was accessible, 6 Music. It used to be what my Granny had on constantly in the kitchen with the annoyingly chirpy shrills of ‘Uncle Hugo Duncan’. However, now I’m a bit older and don’t live in NI anymore, being able to hear the accents and some of the local features is quite, dare I say, enjoyable. So it was serendipitous that the blessed internet search engine algorithm led me down a rabbit hole which ended with BBC Radio Ulster’s ‘Your Place and Mine’ hosted by Eve Blair, and in this particular episode, also celebrating 80 years of Van Morrison she traces the route taken by the singer in his famous song ‘Coney Island.’ It was a wonderful show which featured  interviews covering a wide demographic of people, and also featuring some of the quirky history of places such as Shrigley and Ardglass. Like Garvey, Blair is an effortless and natural broadcaster, who shows clear interest and fascination in the people she interviews. There was also a heartwarming cover of Morrison's 'Into the Mystic' by Matt McGinn from Hilltown to bring the show to an end - who said local radio was for old fogeys?

Reading

The Down Recorder

On the note of local news and radio, out of the blue, I was sent a copy of The Down Recorder recently. It was the local newspaper where I grew up in Crossgar, Co. Down, and, again, I never really saw the point of it or was that engaged by it growing up - it was what the older generation read and, along with Radio Ulster being played in the background, there would always be a copy of it at my grandparents home. In it you could read about local court cases, violent attacks, fundraisers, sporting achievements, and browse classified adverts. But, as Patrick Kavanagh writes in ‘Epic’ ‘I made the Iliad from such/ a local row. Gods make their own importance.’ It’s such a great line about how the universal can be found in the local, and we would do well to pay more attention to the goings on in our communities. Where is the world, I wonder, but where we find ourselves right now?

Watching

The Godfather 1, The Godfather 2, BBC IPlayer

To continue this theme of the local and the global a little further, I also watched both of The Godfather films recently, and, quite simply was blown away. At its core, this film is a family drama fixated on local rivalries and squabbles but it makes them universally compelling, with some standout performances, such as Robert De Niro’s in Godfather 2.  After I watched The English Patient recently I didn’t think another film could possibly match Minghella’s epic scope and the emotional turmoil of its ending. Enter Vito Carleone et al. Yes, there is violence in both films, but compared to films of today, it’s relatively little. But what I enjoyed most was how the film never veered from one central focus: the family. These films are built upon family dynamics and relationships; it was fascinating. The other thing I most enjoyed was the evolution of Al Pacino’s character, Michael Carleone. At the start of The Godfather he takes his prospective wife aside to explain that he’s not like his gangster family, but what unfolds over the next two and half hours is the slow epiphany that he is, more than any of his family, a true gangster, and has inherited the traits of his father more than his macho older brother Sonny. There is a wonderful scene where he has to calm another of the gangsters whose hand shakes so much he can’t light his cigarette. Michael takes the lighter and lights his cigarette without it flickering in the slightest - in that moment, we see that he has nerves of steel and was born for the turbulent life of a mob kingpin, and in that moment he's also confronted with that realisation. Moreover, so often in films now, the scenes are quick and we’re jolted from one day to another, with bright lights and colours assaulting our senses, but what I loved about Ford-Coppola’s direction was the slowness of some of the scenes allowing us to savour what was in front of us, such as the hills and towns of Sicily, or a New York cafe at night before a murder. The directing was genius, the story was compelling, the acting was first class - it’s a masterpiece and I want to watch it again.