Bourneography, or, On First Looking Into Anna Chapman

Philip Noyce directed one of my favourite films, Dead Calm, an utterly thrilling (and romantic) movie about a bereaved couple and a handsome madman on an isolated yacht (based on an idea by Orson Welles for a movie). Then he directed a lot of big-budget thrillers based on Tom Clancy, some a little hit and miss. Angelina Jolie, who stars in his new film, Salt, is a curious actor - although world-famous - she has been in relatively few good films - and, more interestingly - alternates between action blockbusters like Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Wanted, and more intelligent worthy dramas like The Changeling, A Mighty Heart and fusions of the two like Beyond Borders. She worked with Noyce last century in The Bone Collector, so they have a history. Salt wants to be a franchise like the Bourne trilogy - that most influential of all genre movies of the 00s, reshaping Bond and the style of all subsequent thrillers. It has a good shot at this aim.

It's not as fun, smart, or fire-on-all-cylinders as other chase-em movies, though - one thinks of The Fugitive as the classic of this kind of pic; nor as sinister-slick as Telefon, Winter Kills, The Manchurian Candidate, or any number of sleeper-spy movies it also borrows from. I enjoyed the first act immensely - Salt's escape from CIA HQ is cool and fast-paced up to her rendez-vous with the Russian president. I had a few problems with the spider venom (far too obvious why it is needed) telegraphed by the silly detail of her having a spider-scientist for a husband (a wasted August Diehl, so good in Inglourious Basterds) - and the identity of the second Russian mole, while not immediately a dead give-away, is hardly surprising. The actual plot (or web of intrigue, natch) is too silly for words - and actually impossible to execute, based on about a million things going exactly to plan. "Day X" is kicked off in a way that, working backwards, actually makes no sense.

That being said, Jolie kicks serious butt, and does a few amazing stunts, killing a baddie in the last reel in one of the most astonishing ways I've ever seen. It is odd, but we never see this amazing killing machine in a T-shirt - her arms are always sleeved - because Jolie is sadly near -anorexic in look, and her arms have no muscles (she is no Linda Hamilton) - but she kicks and leaps and clings to walls and trucks like Spider-woman. I found the "War Games" scene at the end sort of exciting, however, again, nonsensical (the use of a machine-gun to breach a top-secure room is just dumb, and ricochets would have killed Salt). The very end is, like the Dark Knight, or the recent Robin Hood, an attempt to establish the myth of a loose-canon outlaw working beyond the margins of society and civilisation, hunted and hunting. Seen as a bit of a spoof, and with a few satisfying moments, Salt is a mid-level actioner worth paying to see on a big screen. I'd even go to Salt II. But it doesn't compete with Anna Chapman.

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se. What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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