Baby, Baby, Baby I Love You…

I was thrilled and privileged to be Best Man at my brother’s wedding to Kate last weekend. It was a terrific day, complete with even a couple of small fires during the reception…! My abiding memory of the occasion was the overwhelming sense that Mike and Kate make each other smile and laugh; just being with the other is enough to make them both feel better.

One of the readings at their marriage ceremony really summed this up.

A Lovely Love Story – by Edward Monkton

The fierce Dinosaur was trapped inside his cage of ice. Although it was cold, he was happy in there. It was, after all, his cage.

Then along came the Lovely Other Dinosaur. The Lovely Other Dinosaur melted the Dinosaur’s cage with kind words and loving thoughts…

I like this Dinosaur, thought the Lovely Other Dinosaur. Although he is fierce he is also tender and he is funny. He is also quite clever, though I will not tell him this for now.

I like this Lovely Other Dinosaur, thought the Dinosaur. She is beautiful, and she is different and she smells so nice. She is also a free spirit which is a quality I much admire in a dinosaur.

But he can be so distant and so peculiar at times, thought the Lovely Other Dinosaur. He is also overly fond of things. Are all Dinosaurs so overly fond of things?

But her mind skips from here to there so quickly, thought the Dinosaur. She is also uncommonly keen on shopping. Are all Lovely Other Dinosaurs so uncommonly keen on shopping?

I will forgive his peculiarity and his concern for things, thought the Lovely Other Dinosaur.  For they are part of what makes him a richly charactered individual.

I will forgive her skipping mind and her fondness for shopping, thought the Dinosaur. For she fills our life with beautiful thoughts and wonderful surprises. Besides, I am not unkeen on shopping either.

Now the Dinosaur and the Lovely Other Dinosaur are old. Look at them. Together they stand on the hill telling each other stories and feeling the warmth of the sun on their backs.

And that, my friends, is how it is with love. Let us all be Dinosaurs and Lovely Other Dinosaurs together. For the sun is warm. And the world is a beautiful place.

Being there was a joyful experience, and reminded me how lucky I am to be married to my favourite friend and person in the world, and to have two wonderful daughters. All three make me smile and laugh and feel better just to be around them.

Congratulations Mike and Kate. May you always feel the sun on your backs.

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It’s not about you, it’s me…

I’ve always believed that marketing and advertising works best when it delivers some kind of emotional connection between whatever is being ‘sold’ and whoever is supposed to be doing the buying. Like Don Draper gets it in this fantastic scene from the first series of Mad Men.

I can’t think of too many car adverts that I like, except perhaps this absolute classic from Audi…

IMHO this is blindingly good, subverting our expectations until the final frames. The emotional connection resonates all the more strongly… BMW drivers are w**kers. You’re not a w**ker. So drive an Audi. Lovely. It has humour, style and personality. Taken alongside the years of tremendous ideas that brought vorsprung durch technik to life, it connected with the soul of its audience (I’m NOT a BMW w**ker) as well as the engineering-led design beauty…

Perhaps it was the years of this sort of perception (the Audi ad was true in the 1990s and probably still is…) that persuaded BMW to create the execrable “Joy is BMW” advert, which I first saw a few months ago. I hated it the moment I saw it.

I dislike this most of all because I can so clearly see the brief writ large all over the screen. There’s every demographic in the book (many of whom could barely afford to hire a BMW, let alone own one), there’s every location in the book, there’s sunshine a-plenty, there’s old retro-models (must display our heritage), there’s a designer and wind-tunnel (technology), there’s Patrick Stewart (full of gravitas yet human and approachable), and there’s the godawful script. It’s an internal corporate video that should be playing in reception at BMW HQ, that is shown to new employees to fire them up. It’s not a bloody advert because it says NOTHING about who it wants to buy the cars. It doesn’t seem to care who buys the cars, as long as someone does. It’s all about how bloody marvellous BMW is.

I’ve always thought The Ultimate Driving Machine was a perfectly excellent  idea for BMW, that appealed to the ego and self-importance of the BMW driver as well as showcased the terrific technical achievements of their engines. A car for drivers by drivers.

And then this week, I saw something potentially even worse. Renault’s Drive for Change campaign…

Rather than simply crowing about how great their cars are, Renault associates itself (through the car itself) with the progress of human history, and then starts preaching about how it’s not fair that some people don’t have cars. Which made me think, well you could always donate some of your massive profits or the cost of your Formula 1 team to improve the state of the planet and humanity. Don’t get me started about the big “YES” and “NO” signs. And as for the wavy-haired guy at 1’10″, shouldn’t he be driving a BMW?

These films feel like corporate arrogance to me, barely even acknowledging there are any people who matter. The Renault script is full of cliches, it’s trying way too hard. Hint: show me how you’re making a difference, don’t just make vapid assertions and expect me to believe them.

I’ll take Don Draper over this expensive, meaningless rubbish every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

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Call me (anytime)…

Sorry, but this is another tale of customer dissatisfaction.  I don’t mean to bore you, but surely we shouldn’t have to put up with this sort of sh*t. How can it be so hard?

Today, a tale in 2 parts.

Part 1: Sales Prevention Officers

We recently spent over £350 on curtains and cushions from Dunelm (that’s in Part 2). When practically the next day our wall-mounted coat racks fell off the wall, Rachel remembered some nice looking furniture she’d seen there that would be great for storing all our shoes and boots. So she went back on a mission to spend another £150 or so.

However, the only unit available that she wanted was slightly shop-damaged with a small, virtually invisible crack near the base of the unit.

Can you spot the crack... nope, me neither

The following is a recreation of the conversation she had with the Dunelm sales assistants (no, honestly, that’s their real title).

Never mind about the crack, can I still buy it?

Yes.

[long pause] Er, I don’t really expect to pay full price for a damaged item.

[deadpan] It’s not our policy to discount shop-damaged goods.

You’d knowingly sell a less-than-perfect item for full price?

It’s actually not our policy to sell shop-damaged goods at all, but if you do want to buy this one, we wouldn’t discount it.

[long pause while Rachel absorbs the fact they are deadly serious] So what are my options?

[optimistically] You can buy it online, and it could be delivered within a couple of weeks.

But I’m here now, and I’d like to take this one home in the car. I’ve driven 30 miles to get here and you have something I want to buy. Did I mention I’m still waiting for my £350 curtains? You’d rather write this stock off at its full value than sell it to me with a discount…?

In the end Rachel walked out. I’ve never been more proud of her (except maybe at the births of our daughters). But then (and I’m proud of this too) she went back… to speak to the manageress, who phoned Head Office and eventually came back with a 20% (£30) discount. Rachel would have accepted £10 (it’s that small a blemish) if it had been offered at the start…

Sheesh.

Part 2: In time for Christmas … (next year?)

“Order curtains before 11^th December for delivery in time for Christmas” said the signs instore, and so did the man on the phone. So we ordered on 8^th December, for the sole purpose of having new curtains and our revamped open fire in time for Christmas.

By 23^rd December the chimney was swept and the new grate had been made by the very nice people at Cherington Forge (in time for Christmas). But there had been no contact from Dunelm, so we called them. Noone could trace our order. Noone could tell us when the curtains would be ready, but we were promised a call back. But noone called back.

We called again between Christmas and New Year, and received the same chaotic response, as though Dunelm was shrugging its shoulders, staring at the ground and mumbling “er, I dunno” like a child standing over a broken toy. The workshops are closed for the festive season, and evidently their ‘system’ (a massive overclaim if ever there was one) is so prehistoric that noone except the workshops have any idea if our curtains are still just rolls of fabric, and if or when they might ever be completed.

We’ve left more messages, but we’re still waiting for a call. By now it’s also evident that had we waited until after Christmas to order the curtains, as in fact we didn’t really need them for Christmas, we could have saved 20% as there’s now a sale on. We have every intention of getting at least 20% discount on the full price we paid… I’ll keep you posted.

Update: 24th January 2010

If anyone even cares any more (Rachel and I are close to giving up, and I’m certain that Dunelm have), the saga has rumbled on. A couple of days after the last post, we called Dunelm, where I spoke to someone who seemed to be listening to our discontent and took our complaints seriously. He investigated and actually called us back. It transpires that when our order was placed, the fabric was out of stock. Either noone thought to tell us, or indeed the Dunelm systems weren’t up to it, and so the order just got swallowed.

Anyway, we were told the curtains would be ready by 20th January. At this stage we informed our New Hero in customer service that (a) we wanted the 20% discount, and (b) we wanted something else on top of that for all the hassle we’ve had to go through… He said he would get back to us.

But he didn’t. We called the store. They would honour the 20%, but anything else wasn’t their fault. In fact they’re right. The staff at the store have been pretty good throughout this saga. We called Our Man (no longer a hero) again. He had been away for a few days, but our case hadn’t been picked up in his absence. We told him again about our demand for a further discount. He indicated he was sympathetic to us and would arrange for vouchers in time for us to collect the curtains.

But he didn’t do that either. The vouchers never came. We have the curtains now, and we’re delighted. But as for Dunelm’s so-called customer service team, I’ve given up on them. We’re going over their heads.

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…where someone loved him best of all…

Spike Jonze started off as a director of music videos of considerable flair and no little humour. Buddy Holly for Weezer, It’s Oh So Quiet for Bjork, and the fantastic Praise You and Weapon of Choice for Fatboy Slim are up there with the very best. He was involved with the Jackass team. And then he directed a full-length feature, pretty much unlike anything else: ‘Being John Malkovich’. So when I first saw the trailer to his new film Where The Wild Things Are, I was hugely excited. The Arcade Fire song and amazing visuals make it perhaps the best music video of his career.

The original book is made up of only a dozen sentences and barely 340 words, and is illustrated throughout with amazingly distinctive images that have created massive affection among generations of fans.

Yet Jonze has taken a live-action approach with a real boy in a real world, and he’s kept the place where the Wild Things are as a real location, and used performers in suits to create the Wild Things. He’s been accused of making a glorified video, of missing the charm of the source material, and of turning a children’s book into a navel-gazing film for adults. But in my opinion, he has made a tremendously daring, original and moving film about childhood, filled with wonder and no little danger, with tremendous performances from his whole cast.

At the risk of repeating many other reviews, this is definitely not a film for younger children. My daughters (7 & 4) are pretty cine-literate and enjoy both animated and live-action films, but I’m certain I liked this much more than they did.

The central performance of Max is truly fantastic. He’s a very angry and troubled boy, filled with uncertain rage. In a very real depiction of the self-centredness of childhood, Max is convinced that everything that anyone does is a personal attack on him. The opening sequence is heartbreaking, as Max experiences the thrill of his imagination and adventure in the snow-cave he has built: then a thrilling snowball fight with his elder sister’s friends leads suddenly to despair, humiliation and rage, a retaliatory act of violence, then remorse and sorrow (all in 10 minutes). It’s one of the two best openings to a film I’ve seen in ages: the other was in ‘UP’, where the initial montage was both funny and moving, but in a very different way. Pixar’s colour palette throughout that wonderful film is astonishing, the designs are fantastical and there is always a lightness, a hope, and no little humour that keeps the film very accessible for all ages.

In contrast, Where The Wild Things Are is a pretty dark film in every sense. The colour palette is muted and quite dark, full of browns and dark golds. Deep shadows are contrasted beautifully with shafts of sunbeams. Quite long sequences have very little soundtrack. Max is often framed in close-up, a troubled, almost haunted child. We are forced to focus on his face, silent but with all sorts of emotions brimming over from within.

The excellent set-up gives us a solid platform for understanding why and how Max could envision the place where the Wild Things are. And when we arrive, still there’s no easy introductions or pandering to the audience with overt exposition. Max scales a crumbling cliff face at dusk, with only distant flickering fires to guide him. He creeps around a forest while these huge unnamed beasts bicker and argue, violently destroying what appears to be the home of one of them.

The ‘wild rumpus’ is pretty aggressive. Max and his alter-ego Carol are overflowing with violent energy, which makes for some exhilarating, but also at times unsettling sequences. They’re wonderfully filmed, with a lot of hand-held camera work highlighting the scattered, kinetic world-view of a young boy. But this sometimes makes for a tough watch on the big screen.

Similarly, there’s genuine menace from many of the Wild Things, especially Carol. They are all beautifully portrayed, with terrific CGI work on their facial tics, and the voice work by the cast is also great. Despite the pretty stellar cast, the actors’ voices never overshadowed the genuine characterisation of The Wild Things, in a much more mature and sophisticated way than most animated family-oriented films these days. Each of the beasts is portrayed as a different aspect of Max and his (real-world) environment, but this is never explicitly explained, ans is something my daughters didn’t grasp.

But amidst all this fractured energy, and unsettling threats, I believe Jonze has really grasped the heart of Max’s character:

…he wanted to be where someone loved him best of all…

The scenes with Carol’s models are simply gorgeous, their fortress is astonishing, and there are lovely moments of calm with K.W. The final scenes, in which Max ‘found his supper waiting for him and it was still hot’ is short and beautifully staged. There is hope, but it’s not overplayed: there’s certainly no Big Hollywood Ending.

If I’m honest, I’d love to watch it again without my daughters. There are many nuances and layers to pick up on. I do think the way it’s been marketed “There’s one in all of us” is a bit much, because it never celebrates Max’s wildness. Jonze’s film tells an uneasy story of a disoriented child and his struggle to connect with others. I really, really liked it.

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