Last Saturday

I guess I should finally get around to what I did last weekend. It was a full Saturday. In the morning I went to see the film Ratatouille, which I think merited four out of five. It's the latest film from Brad Bird, who cut his creative and comic teeth on The Simpsons, and like The Incredibles, his previous movie, he knows how to make people laugh. Ratatouille, however, is not quite as sublime as The Incredibles, since it challenges the perceptions of the film characters more than the audience; we've been here before with this kind of anthropomorphism - after all, how long has Mickey Mouse been in business?
The high concept that a rat can cook is a one-thought, throwaway gag and they've made it into a feature-length film. But what a film! Bird keeps the jokes coming faster than orders from a hard-pressed waiter, while not neglecting plot development. French-baiting is, admirably, kept to a minimum though Collette and the imaginary Chef Gusteau are the only French-sounding people allowed to shine. This leads me on to the heroes, of which neither, rat nor human, are particularly Francophone, which I guess for a primarily Stateside audience is the way it has to be; nor is the fastidious food critic, whose cut-glass pronounciation reflects American stereotypes of those with an English accent. The other gripe is that you can see some parts of the plot coming before it happens, which I guess isn't the intention. Aside from these quibbles though, it is a thoroughly enjoyable and fun movie, which also teaches you about aspects of the chef's kitchen that a layman might not necessarily know. Altogether, a culinary treat.

That was the morning and early afternoon. I then went up to London for a theatre production. It was "Alex (live on stage)". It was a matinee performance that started at 5.15pm. A one man show by Robert Bathurst, out of Cold Feet, it was based on the cartoon series in the business section, formerly of The Independent, now of the Daily Telegraph.
When I saw a newspaper advert I was determined to see it and then I heard a preview on the Today programme on Radio 4, in which Bathurst in character explains the sub-prime market in far more lucid terms than Newsnight's Stephanie Flanders with her brown bags. Simply, the banks are like music companies and their debt payments are like releasing a compilation album. On their books, the music honchos have some excruciating artists (the sub-prime 'bad credit' people), but to make people buy the compilation album they put some of their best artists on it too (the super-prime, brilliant credit people). Now, the bad artists have released some songs worse than even their previous low standard and it just puts people (other banks) off buying the compilation album, even with the good artists on board. So, the music companies are left with loads of unsold stock that is rapidly depreciating in value and hence they don't want to buy the compliation albums of others. This is how the dreaded credit crunch came about because no-one wants to lend to each other or specifically buy each other's albums.
The play wasn't quite as topical as that and could have come from the 1980s or 1990s as much as today. It was the penultimate performance of a limited season at the Arts Theatre in Great Newport Street off Leicester Square (the final one being that night) so I reckoned that they would put in a lot of effort to go out on a high. It was tour de force by Bathurst as he played Alex as well as voicing the other characters most of the time (or summarisng via an Alex aside what they said). The other characters (and backgrounds to indicate a change in scene) appeared on projection boards as the cartoons drawn by the two guys behind Alex the strip. The jokes were good, but the play also had a decent plot to hang them on as well, such as Alex telling us in an aside "people say I'm a terrible snob. That's not true. I'm rather good at being one actually." It was very funny throughout its running time and would be worth a repeat viewing had this not been the second-to-last showing.

Afterwards, I went up to Highgate to see Alex, of the Goff variety. Dropped off my Christmas cards which was my original intention, but then I stayed longer and cracking open a big bottle of premium cider I had with me, carried on chatting to Alex and his flatmates and he made a great chili con carne meal for the both of us. I then popped of home having had a wonderful Saturday.