Wimbledon, Day 4 (aka TOW Tim Henman lost. Again)

Heard in and around Court 2:

"Tim's gonna lose, isn't he?" (Tim Henman is two sets and a break down in the third)
"Yeah, a large part of Canada's electricity comes from hydroelectric power."
"Was he asleep the first two sets, or what?" (Some girl to her mother on Tim Henman, who's just fought back from two sets down to level the match)
"Yeah, these look like kids. I think that 'dj' guy is serving. They're just nameless faces." (Some annoying guy, speaking about 4th seed and current world number 5, Novak Djokovic. The Serb defeated American world number 67, Amer Delic)
"Bloody Henman, that's it, he's not gonna win, is he?" (Tim Henman has been broken twice and is 1-5 down in the fifth)
"Yeah, those are the VIPs, the suits and ties. We're the masses. I way prefer to be the masses." (Same annoying guy, expounding his blue-collar pride)
Silence. (Tim Henman has just lost to Feliciano López 6-1 in the fifth)

Meanwhile, elsewhere around Wimbledon....

Serb superstar, Ana Ivanovic, beat American Meilen Tu 6-4 6-3, Svetlana Kuznetsova beat extravagantly-dressed American Bethanie Mattek 7-6 6-4, Slovak 10th seed, Daniela Hantuchova, defeated Russian Elena Likhovtseva, and Chinese Taipei's third seeds Chan and Chuang beat Ivanovic and Hantuchova 7-6 6-4 in the ladies doubles late in the day.

Amuse Queues

Those of you who are not yet convinced that the English have made a sport out of queuing should try lining up for the Wimbledon tennis championships. Forgetting about those individuals who camp overnight, who clearly need to have their head examined, people get there at 5am to score Centre Court tickets, waiting for some five hours for the gates to open. The queues at Wimbledon have a degree of organization unseen in any other facet of English life. You get a queue card with a number, so you can leave the line and go to the numerous portaloos or patronize one of many refreshment stands. Newspaper vendors walk up and down the line offering you your paper of choice. You get a free fan/hat/raincoat (as climatically appropriate) with your copy of the Daily Telegraph. You get enthusiastic offers of free Rachel's Organic yoghurt and Tropicana Original samples. There are even people collecting donations for various charities. By 8am, stewards walk down the line offering colour-coded wristbands to Centre, Number 1 and Number 2 courts for those insane enough to make it sufficiently close to the front of the line (being the lightweight that I am, I only got there at 6.30am, so only managed tickets to Court 2). Despite the fact that people queue there for as long as it takes to fly to Turkey, the wait itself is surprisingly bearable (provided, of course, that it's not pouring). For one, stewards go around waking up all the overnight campers and asking them to pack their tents so that, despite the fact that it takes some four hours to progress the 800 metres from the car park at Gate 10 of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club to the turnstiles at Gate 3, you do find yourself advancing slowly to take up the space occupied by campers' sleeping bags. A good, long, playlist on your iPod obviously helps, and I survived thanks to the prologue and first two chapters of Anchee Min's excellent Becoming Madame Mao.

You would think that queuing for five hours would be enough to satisfy even the most ardent queuer, but once inside the grounds, there's all manner of queuing to be had. You can queue for seats on courts 3, 13 and 18, the larger of the outside courts, queue for a 2GBP bowl of strawberries and cream, or a 4GBP crayfish and rocket sandwich, or a jug of Pimm's, you can queue for the restroom, and you can queue at the ticket re-sale booth to try and get returns for Centre Court. And once you've had a satisfying day's queuing, you can queue at the gates to leave the grounds, queue for a cab or a bus of your choice, or form one long queue all the way down Church Road, until you get the Southfields tube station, where you can queue for a tube ticket, queue to get through the turnstiles, and join another queue at the platform to get onto your train. Queuing truly is an endurance sport. I hear it will become an Olympic event in 2012, for which team Britain might actually have a chance of winning a gold medal.

From the favelas to the future (via Hackney...)

Favela Rising, Jeff Zimbalist (Dir.)
From the Favelas to Hackney
This is the Future, Paul Kelly (Dir.), Saint Etienne

Following brutal police massacres in Rio de Janeiro's Vigário Geral slum in the 1990s, the AfroReggae movement was born with the aim of offering a positive alternative to the drug-fuelled violence of the favelas. Jeff Zimbalist's documentary, Favela Rising, follows the movement's founder, Anderson Sá, a former drug trafficker turned musician, social activist and community leader. The film describes the structure of life in the favela, the dominant role of its drug gangs and the resultant social exclusion of its residents. Through the AfroReggae movement, Anderson Sá provides young kids with an opportunity to channel their energies more creatively by teaching them percussion and dance and holding mass social awareness parties. He makes insightful observations about the destructiveness of false hope. For many in the favelas, becoming a drug soldier provides one of very few ways of earning good money, but a drug soldier can rarely expect to live beyond 25 years. Poignantly, as AfroReggae's founder comments on the paralysis that violence imposes on the favelas, he himself is faced with his own paralysis when he fractures his fourth vertebra in a surfing accident. As AfroReggae's members consider whether to end the movement, Anderson Sá makes an unlikely recovery, walking unaided within four days of his surgery. Zimbalist's documentary is a rare film, about the power of social organization against negative influence and the role of culture in bringing hope.

In 2005, AfroReggae were invited to spend one week at Hackney Free and Parochial School to bring their experiences to inner city schoolchildren 6000 miles away and help them prepare for a performance at Amnesty International. From the Favelas to Hackney demonstrates the transforming influence of the experience, providing often challenging students with an outlet through performance, and an opportunity to focus on positive activities and enabling them to work together. The school is taking this experience forward, with performances at the Barbican planned for next year.

Completed in 1951, the newly renovated Royal Festival Hall is a historical landmark on London's South Bank. Built as the capital's showcase for the Festival of Britain, the building's post-war modernist design was a symbol of hope and a vision of the future. Following last year's hugely successful Hymns To London Revisited, Saint Etienne were invited as the RFH's resident artists. During the following 12 months, together with director Paul Kelly, the band made a film about the restoration of the hall. Much in the style of Revisited, the film is accompanied by a live soundtrack from the band, this time with a 60-piece orchestra and youth choir, and details the historic importance of the South Bank and the hall's careful refit, from the new acoustic ceiling membranes, to the hand restoration of the original Race seats and 4000 square metres of hand-woven carpet. As usual, Saint Etienne demonstrate a great sensitivity to the spirit of the city, producing a film that is both educational and compelling, and a vision of the future today.

Saturday cooking

Butter bean, chorizo and wild Alaskan salmon soup-type thing

1/2 tin butter beans
1/4 cup brown rice
2cm piece spicy cooking chorizo, diced
1 handful curly leaf kale
1 large mushroom, diced
1/4 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves fresh garlic, finely chopped
1 small fillet wild Alaskan salmon, cubed
750ml fish stock
A bunch of coriander, roughly chopped

Heat some olive oil in a heavy-based pot and gently fry the garlic, onion, chorizo and mushroom. When the onion is soft, add the kale with a couple of tablespoons of water, two capfuls of Shaoxing rice wine and cover for a few minutes until the kale has wilted. Add the beans and rice and mix well. Add the stock, cover and simmer until the rice is cooked. Stir in the cubed salmon until cooked (just a couple of minutes will do). Season to taste, throw in the coriander and serve.

The War on Democracy

John Pilger, Matthew Young (Dir.)
Barbican Screentalk, June 21, 2007

John Pilger's new film is his first (of about 50) documentaries to be made specifically for cinema release. Thursday's screening at the Barbican was followed by a Q&A from the journalist/film-maker. The War on Democracy is an unapologetic attack on US policy in Latin America. The film is widely regarded as a highly important work for being one of the very few documentaries that takes a panoramic view of US intervention in its own "backyard" and tries to draw some general conclusions from these observations. It deals primarily with repeated (and usually successful) US efforts to undermine and replace progressive, often democratically elected, governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, El Salvador and Guatemala. Pilger tracks down and interviews the main actors: presidents, scholars, businessmen, former CIA officers. Most importantly, however, he follows the lives of those most affected by the course of history - former abductees in Chile, victims of violence in El Salvador, residents of the barrios in Venezuela - and tries to understand how the imposition of power affects the poor and powerless. Despite this, Pilger insists that the message of the film is intended to be positive, highlighting the recent trend for social reform and local empowerment. Venezuela in particular is highlighted as an example. The first part of the film is dedicated to explaining the popularity of Hugo Chávez, recounting the events of the dramatic 2002 coup. Much of this uses footage from the excellent documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, and highlights the power of the private media and the gross inequality common in Latin American societies.

Despite the positive intention of the film, The War on Democracy is ultimately somewhat disappointing. Although at times both moving and enraging, some snappy editing and a lack of factual information leaves the viewer wondering about the integrity of the material presented, even if it's clear that The War on Democracy is a thoroughly researched piece of work. Former CIA officers and the wealthy, portrayed as being directly, indirectly or, at best, passively complicit in the plight of Latin America's poor, come off worst, although given what they have to say, one isn't compelled to feel sorry for them. There is, for example, the Chilean woman who denies that torture could have occurred during Pinochet's time because "why would you torture someone when you can shoot them?" By contrast, Hugo Chávez comes across as a guy you wouldn't mind having round for a Sunday barbecue. Pilger's interview with the Venezuelan president is interspersed throughout the film, and Chávez expounds his ideals for a new kind of democracy and the redistribution of power, recounts his experiences during the 2002 coup, and tells anecdotes about his first English lesson.

To his credit, Pilger has produced a highly informative, thought-provoking work, while at the same time managing to make it entertaining and emotive. I found his narration rather awkward and he comes across as being a little facetious during some of his interviews. I suspect that those with the same disposition as some of his interviewees will not be stirred by this film, which is probably more an exercise in preaching to the converted. As a documentary against the United States' foreign ventures, I don't rate it as highly as, say, Oliver Stone's Comandante or Jehane Nujaim's astounding Control Room.

Wild Alaskan salmon wrapped in pancetta with fennel and mushroom risotto

1 cup risotto rice
1 fennel bulb
2-3 slices pancetta/streaky bacon
1 large mushroom
1 wild Alaskan salmon fillet
750 ml stock

Trim the stalk off the fennel bulb, keeping the trimmed bits. Cut into halves lengthwise and cut leaves into medium-sized square pieces. Spread over a lightly-oiled baking tray and roast at 180 Celsius for about 20 minutes. Leave to cool slightly and cut into thin slices.

Heat two tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy-based pan. Add a small piece of butter. When the pan is hot, add the fennel and thinly sliced mushroom and stir-fry until the mushroom is soft. Stir in the rice and add one ladle-full of stock at a time, stirring constantly until rice is cooked.

For the salmon, remove skin from fillet and wrap the fish in the pancetta. Arrange fennel trimmings in the centre of a baking tray and place fish on top. Cook for 15-20 minutes at 180 Celsius. You might wanna put it on grill for the last couple of minutes to crisp the pancetta.

The Gotan Project Live at the Barbican, London

On the tail-end of their Lunático tour, The Gotan Project performed at the Barbican a day after winning at the Radio 3 World Music Awards in the Club Global category, which sounds more like something you might want your airline to upgrade you to. The set was a slightly toned down version of their Paris gig and suffered from being in a seating venue and an audience that had probably never heard the band live before. Row K was particularly boring. Despite this, the performance was a typically cool Gotan Project affair, with the white suits and silk gowns, slightly bizarre visuals and irrepressible mix of crazy DJing, virtuosic playing and tango.

The band finished with an encore of Libertango played over the backtrack of Diferente, which was, well, different. The extended Lunático album with three bonus tracks and two videos is now available. Everyone go out and grab a copy!

Yui: Can't Buy My Love

Let me confess now that I'm new to the whole J-Pop phenomenon, but I picked up this CD in Hong Kong and I'm hooked. Yoshioka Yui is a 20 year-old singer-songwriter from Fukuoka. Her second album, Can't Buy My Love, made it to the number 1 spot on the Japanese Oricon charts back in April and has so far sold more than half a million copies worldwide. Yui is like Avril Lavigne, Kelly Clarkson and No Doubt mashed together and sung in Japanese (and let me apologize now for mashing No Doubt and the other two together). I know this doesn't sound particularly appealing, but the album is great, full of catchy riffs, catchy lyrics (I imagine, if you speak Japanese), hummable tunes and songs that could win the Eurovision song contest. Rolling Star, It's Alright, CHE.R.RY, and Winding Road are my favourite songs (why are the titles in English, you ask? I dunno.....). You can catch I Remember You and Goodbye Days on YouTube.