Claudia Jean vs. the media moguls

Is there anyone out there who doesn't love C. J. Cregg? The White House Press Secretary in the parallel universe and not-quite-perfect-but-better-than-most American democratic government of The West Wing as played by the consummate Alison Janney, and pictured above with Martin Sheen's toweringly charismatic President Jed Bartlet, is witty, incorruptible, sharpshooting, sassy (I can pick up on that though I'm probably not the world's best expert on female sexuality) and compassionate but never in a gooey way. And the reason I mention her today is because we're up to Episode 19 of Life After Aaron Sorkin, that's to say Series 5, and C. J. is hot on the trail of a Federal Communications Commission decision which turns out to be in cahoots with big corporations controlling the media. Sound familiar?

I wonder if I can explain the specifics half as well as she does. In short, the FCC has reduced the proportion of local media purchase by the big guys from 45 per cent to 39.37 per cent, 'a number that ought to come with a decoder ring* and a jar of Ovaltine'. Why the magic figure? Because that was the limit (over)reached by 'Mert Media' when it purchased nine TV stations, and the FCC has just in effect 'posted bail' for this and the other giants which reached similar quotas - cited as Viacom, News Corp (yes, there it is), GE, Disney, Clearchannel - for 'illegally gobbling up TV stations like greasy hors d'oeuvres'.

The select press to whom C. J. wants to give the exclusive aren't interested, and she quickly twigs why: 'you don't want to write about this because it's about your corporate owners'. One says 'I'm not a media critic'; 'no-one in the media is', she shoots back, 'that's the problem' (of course everyone in the non-Murdoch-owned press is now). She's told she's partisan but insists she doesn't 'have a take' when 'one company can now own stations in 199 of the nation's 210 media markets and one company can influence the decisions of 98 senators and 382 house members' (don't you love it when your telly heroes can reel off figures like that as so few real-life politicos can?).

C. J.'s revenge is short but sweet on all those who kowtow to their 'media mogul robber baron bosses' in 'the biggest media conspiracy since William Randolph Hearst was starting wars and crushing filmmakers'. She simply brings in carpenters to the briefing room to see to it that only 39.37 per cent of seats go to the representatives of their corporate owners, one each. Everything has to go quickly back to what it was before, but she's had her victory. STOP PRESS (17/7) Where C. J. led, Miliband follows, with Clegg behind him. You saw it first, as usual, on The West Wing.


Series 5 so far has by no means been as disappointing as critics claimed the show became after visionary scriptwriter Sorkin left the scene. OK, so there's much less of the dizzying baroque wordplay, but one cast member described it as down to solid work after the honeymoon, and the way an idealistic if necessarily compromised White House functions can still spring a few surprises. We lost another sassy feminist as played by Mary-Louise Parker in, was it, Episode 5 but Glenn Close breezed in for Episode 17 - more, please - and Mary McCormack has just surfaced as a stylishly tight-lipped new Deputy National Security Advisor. We even had a likeable gay press assistant pop up in Episode 18, and he's just been glimpsed again, so there's hope. But - with the dreamy but character-hazy Rob Lowe replaced by the very definite Joshua Malina - the core team is full of people you'd want to be your best friends. Or I would. Now going off to order up Series 6.

One snag - on the evening or two in a week free at home we now watch wall-to-wall West Wing, so the last three LoveFilm movies have all been sitting unwatched for months. As I had an agonising day and a half of not yet diagnosed leg pain - the most excruciating physical incapacity I've experienced, some say sciatica, gone now, thank goodness - I took late Tuesday afternoon off work and caught up on the one J had already seen.


We love Ferzan Ozpetek almost as much as we love C. J. His visually ravishing films have immense charm and frequent lightness of touch, but at some point they all seem to evoke serious issues and a sense of what's beyond the normal parameters of life. Loose Cannons (Mine vaganti)is no exception. Set like Cuore sacro and Le fate ignoranti (surely everyone's favourite) in his adopted Italy, it's a pretty good advertisement for the beauties of Lecce and the surrounding Puglian landscapes.

Character, though, is as paramount as ever in Ozpetek's singular world. How are 'loose cannons' like a fiercely conservative patriarch's two gay sons and his mother, whom we see choose duty over love in a series of luminously-filmed flashbacks, integrated into their traditional but subtly evolving society (the Meistersinger question)? I won't spoil the plot twists except to say that one of the most touching moments is when the nonna describes how she wakes up every morning alongside the man she loved and sacrificed to marry his brother, in other words that he's always with her in spirit - and the wonderful Ilaria Occhini says this with immense dignity and no false sentimentality. In the final credits, there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it image where you see the old woman reading in bed, and the young man as he was lying beside her. Not to give too much away, there's also perhaps the most exultant cinematic death since Thelma and Louise hurtled over the cliff. Here's Occhini (seated) with the other female stars Of Mine vaganti Elena Sofia Ricci, Bianca Nappi and Lunetta Savino.


Of course there's a fair bit of well-made feelgood about the film, too, and though its soundtrack can be insistent, I did love this disco sequence to 'Sorry, I'm a lady' by the outrageously camp Baccara (the ladies of the 70s hit 'Yes sir, I can boogie'). It doesn't evoke the general tinta of the film - though it does go all innig when the protagonist watches the girl who's fallen in love with him and his boyfriend splashing about - but it's good, simple fun. You'll need to double-click on the moving image to get the full screen effect (and the best body). Enjoy.



As a bonus for those of you whose Italian is good enough - the YouTube clips are all without subtitles - here's a scene featuring the two sisters in the extended family. They're walking through the town trying to deal with the gossip and looks following the revelation that one of them has a gay son who was supposed to inherit the pasta business. The mother gets her own back on the bitch in the shop by telling her that the girl she's so proudly announced her son is about to marry is a 'spiaggia libera' (public beach) into whose sand all the boys have poked their umbrellas. Result.



*I think that's what she said (there's no script, so I wrote it down off the telly). It sounded to me like Dakota ring, which I thought must be a kind of donut, but in an earlier episode Sam talked about a 'secret decoder ring', and this makes most sense.

A heart in winter

You never know what each film of Ferzan Ozpetek has in store. In Sacred Heart, he tries the visionary line. It's unsettling, beautifully filmed, challenging in every frame - even when most of what his extraordinary leading actress, Barbora Bobulova, does is simply to stare blankly. She can age or become youthful just by a flop of the hair, a widening or glazing over of those mesmerising eyes. She moves from reluctant hard-nosed businesswoman with buried family sacrets


to a confused being with a conscience - saint or schizophrenic?


I can't really say more without giving the film's totally unpredictable trajectory or mysteries away. Ozpetek's usual gay themes don't feature (though the cast does include the most unreally handsome priest I've ever seen). It's a gem: watch it in a double-bill with Le Fate Ignoranti, which would have to follow as redemptive romance. That's a desert island gem of the alternative society. But this one bored itself deeper in my unconscious and gave me very strange dreams. And Ozpetek's up there for me, among living European filmmakers, with Julio Medem and Arnaud Desplechin.

I'm not fishing for connections when I say it just struck me how like our shadowlands heroine were the features of Lynne Walker. I had such a shock when a mutual contact at the Halle told me she'd died last week. He'd already alerted me that she was quite seriously ill; I presumed chemotherapy might be doing the trick, didn't contact her as he didn't really want her to know he'd told me. And now I wish I had.


Lynne has been quite a companion in our profession over the years. She never much liked me pointing out that I was a mere student when she ran the press affairs of the Scottish National Orchestra - that aged her somewhat, she thought, though she always looked attractive and youthful - yet it was through her open arms that I got to interview Neeme Jarvi for the student newspaper ('an Estonian with SNO on his boots' ran the headline).

Subsequently Lynne took on a lot of editing work to complement her own lively writing, and we had such a healthy working relationship. Looking fondly through our emails, I'm amazed how many from her are titled 'thanks': she always responded to copy, which is sadly rather rare in the business. In fact we agreed between us that one should always tell someone if a piece or a performance has had an effect (I'm still harping on that theme).

We also shared a few pre-performance talks - she was quite a forceful interviewer - and a panel discussion at the end of the momentous Prokofiev celebrations at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, in 2003. How it makes my heart ache to look at the below picture and to realise that of the four personalities featured only Prokofiev's composer-grandson Gabriel is still with us. That, of course, is Ted Downes with Noelle Mann to his left, a lovely shot of both of them.


And here's the whole line-up, since Fiona McKnight of the Prokofiev Archive sent these pics over on request. Also in the 'cast' are Sasha Ivashkin at the end of the table, David Fanning to my right and my hero Michael Kennedy on my left.


Happy memories, but now a great sadness. There are some farewells, like the glorious Westminster Abbey thanksgiving for Joan Sutherland on Tuesday, where you can't feel too regretful because an existence has had its natural span. Lynne's and Noelle's hadn't, though both lived full lives. My thoughts to Gerald Larner.