Better the Devil You Know - Remaking The Omen

The new remake of the classic ‘seventies horror movie The Omen is being released this coming Tuesday. Nearly all movies are released on Fridays, to capture the weekend date market, but The Omen is coming out on Tuesday because it’s too big a marketing opportunity to miss. This coming Tuesday, you see, is 6/6/’06 – THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST!!

Miserably, the whole project seems like a marketing exercise from start to finish – some smart boy in Twenty-Century Fox spotted the date in the calendar, and the thing began to rumble.

It’s such a pity – the original Omen was such a high water mark in horror movies. A high water mark that’s been carefully noted by the eminences grises behind this new movie – judging by the trailer, entire scenes have been lifted frame for frame from the original, with some new bits thrown in to thicken the soup.

I wonder if they had the sense to lift the most important part of the old movie? If Brian Singer can used John Williams’ marvellous Superman theme in Superman Returns, the shade of Carl Orff is hardly going to object to Carmina Burana going around the gallops one more time, as the Hornèd One tries to get the young fella a start. But it seems not – another black mark against the movie.

The casting looks pretty good – this new young fella, Séamus Davey-Fitzpatrick, looks just as sinister as his 1976 epigone, Harvey Stephens, and Michael Gambon and Pete Postelthwaite, as Bugenhagen and Father Brennan respectively, are sufficiently familiar with ham to fill the shoes of Leo McKern and Patrick Troughton. The casting of the Thorns is a little more doubtful – Julia Stiles is one of An Spailpín’s favorite icy beauties, but she’s a bit too young to be the wife of the Ambassador to the Court of St James. Lee Remick was 41 when the first Omen came out – Julia Stiles is twenty-five. A twenty-five year old Hitchcock blonde should be on a Rhodes scholarship at Oxford, not handing out the Ferraro Rochets at the ambassador’s reception and raising the infernal succubus in her spare time.

As for Liev Schreiber filling in for the immortal Gregory Peck, it’s an impossible task for anyone. The poor man is, inevitably, biting off more than he can chew. Chances are this movie will be a success, for the simple reason that as long as the boxes are ticked the crowd don’t really care if they’re being sold old rope or not – they just want two hours of fun, thanks. But it is a pity that, if you must remake a classic, you don’t try that little bit harder.

Technorati Tags: culture, movies, remakes, omen

Focal Scoir na nDealbh Sráide Uí Chonaill

Tá rún na gcoiníní faoi solas geal an lae faoi dheireadh. Fuair an Spailpín ríomhphost inné ag míniú scéal na ndealbh phráis atá suite i Sráíd Uí Chonaill, Bleá Cliath, le deanaí. Ní coiníní iad ar chur ar bith, ach giorracha. 'Sé Barry Flaherty an dealbhóir a rinne iad, agus beidh siad ar Shráid Uí Chonaill i rith an Samhradh go leir. Tá tuilleadh eolais le fáil anseo.


Technorati Tags: Gaeilge, Ireland, Dublin, O'Connell St, statues

Kneeling at Mass Banned in the OC

In Huntington Beach, California, the local Catholic Diocese of Orange County has banned kneeling during the Mass, according to the Los Angeles Times. If they banned the their parishioners from having anything to do with that rotten TV show, wouldn’t it serve them better? Banning kneeling – they’ll ban the Rosary next.

Here in benighted Ireland, this information is difficult to swallow, as kneeling remains a very popular pursuit during the liturgy. It is a poor reflection on An Spailpín that the most fun he derives during the Holy Sacrament of Matrimony comes from watching the bride and groom trying to discreetly twist their heads through 120 degrees or so, in order to get a goo at Mammy and see whether she’s seated, standing or down on her knees during specific parts of the liturgy. It’s grand at the back, when you have the whole congregation on whom to base your decision, but you have wing it up at the front on those little kneelers. And when yourself and herself are standing while all the boys are kneeling, and kneeling during one of the take-five bits, it’s fairly clear that you’re only in God’s house today because it’ll look good in the photos or else Mammy will bate the head right off you, as she used to do in days of yore, if you weren't.

An Spailpín knows one man who wouldn’t be too impressed with this not kneeling malarkey – one Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci, who was elevated to the Papacy on February 20th, 1878, taking the name Leo XIII. His Holiness Pope XIII didn’t cash out for another 25 years, making him the third longest serving Pope – he was second for a long time until JP II just edged him last year.

As Pope, Leo XIII knew what he liked. And one of the things he liked best was kneeling. Audiences with His Holiness Pope Leo XIII were conducted with His Holiness seated on his Papal Throne, Cathedra Petri, and ever other person in the room on their two knees with the head down. Suppose His Holiness were to use that new fangled telephone – Pope Leo XIII, in fairness to the man, was fully in favour of new technology – then you had to hit the knees as soon as you recognised his voice coming down the line, and stay down there until he finished talking, and not before. There were right Popes one time, and long before the age of the beardy priests and the banjo Masses. And An Spailpín isn’t making this up either – he read it in this book here.

Of course, there are some rebels in Orange County, CA, who refuse to stay standing, and get down on their knees just like they always used to. They’ve been threatened with excommunication. Excommunicated for kneeling at Mass – the world is just gone plumb crazy.

Technorati Tags: culture, religion, Mass

The First Mayo Team of the Summer

The first Mayo team of the summer has been named at last – kinda. With typical efficiency the County Board has let confusion reign, and even now there is doubt over who will start at corner-back, Trevor Howley or Dermot Geraghy, in Mayo’s first Championship outing against London in Ruislip.

An Spailpín has chosen to reserve judgement on this Mickey Moran era – good start to the league nothwithstanding, Mickey’s china plate Mr Morrison remains a cannon so loose that he makes a nineteenth century Scotch Presbyterian look like Dr Timothy Leary. The big innovation is the Ulstermen’s “star” full-forward formation - it might make Morrison sound like a Saoi, or “wise one,” among the more gullible of our scribes, but An Spailpín can’t shake the idea out of his head that such choreography would be more at home in London’s West End at a revival of 42nd Street than on the playing fields of Erin when the summer is high.

But no matter. Though London might be seen as lowly opposition, there is always a tingle when the first team of the Championship is named and, with the great risk of leaving a hostage to fortune, An Spailpín really likes the look of this one. David Heaney has finally been freed from bondage in the last line of defence and moves forward to the thick of midfield battle, like Don John of Austria advancing to the war. An Spailpín’s dream midfield pairing is David Brady and Ronan McGarrity, but Heaney and Harte should prove able understudies.

The full-forward line is heavy with folk heroes, with neither Austin, McDanger nor C-Mort having to stand their own porter in their own towns, where each is hailed not as man, but god. Ciarán McDonald is the only one of the three to regularly deliver on the national stage, but it remains to be seen how he plays at full-forward, a position to which McDonald is unaccustomed. However, whatever doubts may be entertained by the always faithful support of the County Mayo, Moran has made it fairly clear that he is building his church on Ger Brady at centre-forward, and as such McDonald must serve the greater need. All Mayo will pray the experiment works during the summer, and that Austin and Conor deliver on their rich promise.

Doubts have been expressed about the size of the full back line, with the trauma of 2004 still biting deep in the Mayo psyche. An Spailpín is not that concerned; Heaney was clearly under pressure at full-back, and there have been problems finding a midfield pairing all year – the moving of Heaney is an eminently sensible decision. As for Liam O’Malley guarding the square, that same square that has been guarded by such forces of nature down the years as Mick Lyons, Sean Doherty and that punishing primose, Pat Lindsay, An Spailpín is not worried. In his last two outings for Mayo, O’Malley put stern shackles on Tyrone’s Stephen O’Neill and Galway’s boy-king Michael Meehan, two of the more dangerous desperadoes that one meets while patrolling the green and red redoubt. An Spailpín also noticed, from his eyrie in McHale Park, that when Stephen O’Neill attempted some funny business, O’Malley, for all his size, was not slow to chastise the Tyroneman, and show him the error of his ways.

Ger Loughnane told his troops that the referee would not protect them; a fact as sad as it is true. Liam O’Malley will be alright, and how could he not be, for what is O’Malley if not one of the proudest family names in Mayo’s long history? The song about Captain George O’Malley, that seafaring hero related to Gráinne Uaile herself, is never far from any Mayoman’s lips and, in the hope of a long and glorious summer, An Spailpín takes his leave with the final verse, and wishes the team all the best against London and further. Maigh Eo abú.

Nár mhór an clú is an t-ádh dúinn an bealach úd a shárú,
Is gan againn ann ach namhaid romhainn is inár ndiaidh,
Bhí water-guards san airdeall agus póilíos lena sála,
Revenue na háite is gach spiadóir dá raibh leo.
Bhí cutters, beag is mór ann, píolótaí santacha leofa,
Loinseacha Rí Sheoirse sa tóir uilig i mo dhiaidh,
Ach is mise Seoirse Ó Máille, fear maith de chineál Ghráinne,
A chuireadh i dtír mo lucht go sásta, is ná raibh maith acu dá chionn.

Technorati Tags: Ireland, GAA, football, Mayo

Anthony Lane on The Da Vinci Code

The New Yorker's film critic gives the movie a most thorough kicking. Huzzah!

Technorati Tags: culture, movies, Da Vinci Code, Anthony Lane

The Future of Irish Radio

May I bring a link to the nation's attention? Those of you interested in the future of Irish radio - and with commuting times getting longer and longer and no great danger of anything practical ever being done about it, that's every mother's son and daughter of us - could do a lot worse than clicking this link to hear what the next wave - ho, ho - of radio talent will be like.

Radio Kerry is long and rightly acknowledged as one of the premier local radio services in the country, and they're doing their best to pass on that talent, experience and insight to the coming generation. They run a forty week radio training course and have a link on their website so you can listen online, and see what the future holds.

The service is called Mercury Radio, and an auspicious handle it is too - not only was Mercury the messenger of the Gods in ancient Rome, but the Mercury Theatre of the Air was the name of Orson Welles' company when he made his infamous War of the Worlds broadcast on CBS on October 30th, 1938. Big shoes to fill indeed, but An Spailpín Fánach is confident that Radio Kerry's Mercury Radio can rise to it.

It's not like the standard of Irish radio is all that stellar anyway. Only yesterday, An Spailpín Fánach was in a doctor's surgery, waiting to go in for the NCT, only for people. High on a shelf, and chained to the wall, was a radio, tuned to "fabulous" 2fm. An Spailpín had to listen to ten minutes of Gerry Ryan before finally staggering into the physician.

"Cad uait, a Spailpín Fhánaigh?" asked the doc.

"I'd like to die," I said. "Straightaway. I've just been listening to Gerry Ryan and I've completely lost all will to live."

If one of these students can remove Captain Gerry from the airwaves then he or she will have done the nation a favour. And if one of those students is that personal friend of An Spailpín Fánach currently doing the course, so much the better. Nothing is more boring than people going on about their friends, so An Spailpín will refrain from temptation. I will say though, that this is a man who supports where he's from, as I think that's the way he'd describe himself if asked. An Spailpín and he have been discussing hibero-socio-philosophical matters for these past fifteen years, and with God's good grace we shall kick on and do so until those distant (please God) days when we race our wheelchairs down the corridors of the Home for the Bewildered in which our issue have institutionalised us, and fight swordfights with our crutches on the lush green lawns when the summer is high. Treat yourself, and tune in to Mercury Radio.

Technorati Tags: Ireland, culture, media, radio

Sayonara Paddy

David McWilliams has a deeply distressing piece in this morning's Independent. McWilliams points out that all this brouhaha about getting the unions onside for Ireland's greater economic growth is a bottle of smoke. "Partnership" doesn't matter outside the public sector, where the Unions will continue to béal bocht even when their begging bowls are made of actual gold. What does matter, however, is the country's tremendous reliance on multi-nationals, and consequent dearth of native industry on which to fall back should the multi-nationals pull the plug.

Right now, according to McWilliams, Microsoft, Dell and Intel acount for twenty per cent of the Irish Gross National Product, and 87.6 per cent of our exports. Partnership doesn't matter a rooty-toot-toot to the multi-nationals. And while we're protest marching about the war in Iraq the Nike sneakers on our marching feet are paid for by Yankee dollar. It begins and ends in the States - we're only making up the numbers on a spreadsheet on someone's desk back in the States whose name we don't even know.

And back in those United States, in a back room in some steel and glass office in Houston, TX, or St Louis, MO, or even New York, New York, itself, there's a guy called Hank wearing hornrimmed glasses and a seersucker suit. All Hank does all day is sit in front of a great big set of scales with a leprechaun in one basket and a green eyed yellow god of the mysterious orient in the other. Right now the leprechaun has the balance, but as India and China get more and more computer literate that green eyed little yellow god gets heavier and heavier. Until the balance tips, at which point Hank picks up the phone and says "Mr President? Hank here. Yes sir - it's sayonara Paddy."

An Spailpín Fánach notes that his countyman, Mr Kenny, if elected, will give the bums the rush to troller sleepers, drunks and wasters - I wonder what he, or any of those other buckaroos in Dáil Éireann, are going to do about all these Irish eggs in one multinational basket?

Technorati Tags: Ireland, economics, McWilliams