END TITLES...
It must have been ten years ago, back in the days when Southampton were consigned to playing in League One (aka Division Three of the Football League) when my season ticket took me to St, Mary`s Stadium to watch the Saints come to terms with their decline and fall. There was no pressure back then - no expectation - and so we used to sit in the Itchen Stand with a feeling of que sera sera in the hope that we might be entertained and that the game might end with a sense of optimism. One game in particular might have been against the now dearly departed Bury FC - The Shakers - but they were all much of a muchness in those days of shoulder-shrugging resignation.
My good friend, the Itchen Sitter - he chose the name as his on line moniker as he, like me, sat in the Itchen Stand - and we got to having interesting chats during the frequent lulls in proceedings on the field of play and I recall him encouraging me to watch a film he had recently seen suggesting it was the kind of film I might enjoy. The film was `Gran Torino` written, produced, directed and starring Clint Eastwood as a Korean war veteran struggling with all kinds of `issues,` not least the fact that his street had been taken over by Hmong neighbours
I eventually got around to seeing it and despite its inherent violence and culture clashes, there was much to admire - the characterisation, the acting, the feeling of authenticity, the way the story unfolded until the Clint Eastwood character committed the ultimate redemption - he was dying anyway - by sacrificing himself to a hail of bullets so that his Hmong neighbours might live in peace. It turned up again on ITV4 recently, so I was able once again to appreciate all it had to offer.
But for all that I make no apology for confessing that the best bit of the whole thing was the song that accompanied the end titles. It was written and sung by Jamie Cullum and it summed up the essence of the film, along with the difficulty of finding things to rhyme with `Torino.` Anyway, here it is in all its poignant melodic excellence:-
My good friend, the Itchen Sitter - he chose the name as his on line moniker as he, like me, sat in the Itchen Stand - and we got to having interesting chats during the frequent lulls in proceedings on the field of play and I recall him encouraging me to watch a film he had recently seen suggesting it was the kind of film I might enjoy. The film was `Gran Torino` written, produced, directed and starring Clint Eastwood as a Korean war veteran struggling with all kinds of `issues,` not least the fact that his street had been taken over by Hmong neighbours
I eventually got around to seeing it and despite its inherent violence and culture clashes, there was much to admire - the characterisation, the acting, the feeling of authenticity, the way the story unfolded until the Clint Eastwood character committed the ultimate redemption - he was dying anyway - by sacrificing himself to a hail of bullets so that his Hmong neighbours might live in peace. It turned up again on ITV4 recently, so I was able once again to appreciate all it had to offer.
But for all that I make no apology for confessing that the best bit of the whole thing was the song that accompanied the end titles. It was written and sung by Jamie Cullum and it summed up the essence of the film, along with the difficulty of finding things to rhyme with `Torino.` Anyway, here it is in all its poignant melodic excellence:-
No comments:
Post a Comment