Gig impressions: Sads

Having missed out on seeing Kameleo, I was very happy to be invited by the lovely Mayumi to see Sads a couple of days later – and for free, too! Sads are a pretty big band, so the ticket prices were high, so this was an opportunity not to be missed.

I can’t say I knew much about Sads. I vaguely remember having heard their name before and thinking, ‘Is that an awkward translation of Les Miserables into English?’ But I’d never heard any of their music before. As it turns out, they seem to have been a band that was pretty successful in the early 2000s over here, broke up and then reformed in 2010 with a heavier sound. Well, I say ‘reformed’, but by the looks of it the only original member to return was the charismatic singer Kiyoharu.

The gig was actually one of the weirdest I’d ever been to. For the very extended intro, we just had the guitarist onstage solo, widdling along to some backing tracks. He had some fast alternate picking work going on, but I can’t say I was very impressed by his chops and there was nothing you’d call original there. It seems like the general idea was that the singer is a diva so the guitarist has to entertain the crowd until he feels like arriving, but from a practical point of view that seems a bit unlikely, given that the guitarist was accompanied by constant playback. It wasn’t exactly horrible, but it was very much like watching a guitarist practice in his bedroom.

The band eventually made an appearance and played a single song. I was quite surprised and amused by how old-fashioned it was – it was very Mötley Crüe, even with some flashes of Poison. The stagecraft was tried-and-true Visual Kei stuff, albeit with a harder rock edge, with lots of posturing, teasing homoeroticism between the singer and guitarist and diva-ish prancing from the aging but still remarkably youthful singer. Aesthetically they were visual-kei-cum-hard-rock, like a fashionable Japanese stylist was trying to recapture the feel of 80s Judas Priest. Yes, ultimately, it was all very 80s.

Things got weirder as after one song, or possibly two, the band stopped playing and for a good ten minutes, the singer chatted to the crowd. He was quite a comedian, and obviously the crowd would laugh politely at whatever he said (I only understood about 40%, I have to say) but it went on and on...and then after only another one or two songs, the main musicians left and the drummer played a drum solo! This felt like a band with only 30 minutes of material padding out a show to an absurd extent. The drummer was a bit bad, having learned a few Portnoy toolbox fills and milking them for all it was worth, but hey, the toms were so swamped in reverb and the triggered kick so loud that it sounded decent anyway.

After that, thankfully the show actually got started, and I’m pleased to say that it really did get pretty good! Occasionally the band would go into all-out thrash rather than pedestrian hard rock, and the vocals would get more aggressive, and they genuinely did sound good. I very much enjoyed the heaviest parts and wanted to be down in the pit, where there was an absurd amount of crowdsurfing right from the third or fourth song. There were seriously a constant stream of them, at least three at once all through the heavier songs. Hilarious in the pretty posh Ex Theater with its posters of Paul McCartney!

While the less aggressive numbers didn’t ring as true, I enjoyed the more quirky, swinging ‘Gothic Circus’, and I have to give praise to the sound in the hall: the bass was the crunchiest I’ve ever heard for a live player, and every element except those toms was clear and crisp and pleasant to hear. The guitarist seemed to have a slightly higher opinion of himself than perhaps he deserved, but at times he’d switch to something a bit more experimental, if not exactly innovative – Morello-style jagged pick-up work, tritones that brought to mind Munky and Head – and there was such obvious relish to performing these little tricks that I found it charming. Of course, the focal point was the singer, whose self-satisfied swagger, strong voice and costume changes all added to an entertaining spectacle that put me in mind of Marilyn Manson.

The plan was to go to the after-party, but as soon as I heard that the general idea was to gather lots of girls, I knew that wasn’t going to be an option for me! And indeed, as soon as Mayumi said, ‘Hey, I’m really sorry, but...’ I could finished her sentence for her, haha. That was fine, though – we went for absurdly tasty (and cheap) pizza and I made some great new friends I hope to see again soon! 

Plane Film 2: Nightcrawler

If there’s a trend for characters like Simmons’ in Whiplash – clever, driven, irascible geniuses you’d hate in real life but enjoy watching tearing others down and heading inevitably for tragedy – there’s also a fascination with characters like Louis Bloom in Nightcrawler. Bloom is a sociopath, utterly indifferent to the feelings of others and yet sufficiently understanding of how their minds work to cleverly manipulate them. Like the Fletcher character, Bloom is contemptible, terrifying and likely to end up in very deep trouble eventually, but is compelling to watch and charismatic. This is probably the performance from Jake Gyllenhall I’ve enjoyed the most, and it’s good to see him play creepy, which he does very well indeed.

The fact is, we are fascinated by monstrous people, and the quiet unassuming ones chill us more than the insane babblers. And Bloom has been given a clever and funny quirk – he made a study of business, so often regurgitates trite marketing buzzwords, which is actually a small bit of brilliance.

At first, Bloom is just a petty criminal, stealing and selling on whatever he can. But he encounters the freelance cameramen who follow police radio calls to get footage of accidents and scenes of violence, which can be sold to local news stations. These stations have realized that gaudy violence is what gets viewers, especially when they can directly relate – ie, violence enacted on people just like them. When a sociopath who cares nothing for breaking rules, rearranging crime scenes or letting violence he likely could have prevented unfold for the sake of a better shot. The tension ramps up as Bloom gets involved with something bigger, and can begin to actually manipulate how the story will unfold – and get there for the footage.

The film is a simple one, with a simple premise and a very pessimistic attitude. It taps into the fascination with the American psycho, though Bloom acts indirectly. Its main target is the superficial fascination for violence that feeds TV news bulletins, but of course its entertainment factor derives from a similar desire to be morbidly fascinated.

An enjoyable film with strong performances, but without characters to really identify with and no real closure, it isn’t one I would rewatch

Plane Film 1: Whiplash

I’d hoped this film would be on my plane – and, indeed, it was. I was very keen on the film from its trailer, and of course its profile was raised substantially by its triple Oscar win, including best supporting actor for J.K. Simmons. This has been the year’s small-indie-movie-hitting-the-big-time success story, and it’s about a subject very close to my heart – playing the drums. So of course I was going to love it.

Drums are really only the medium for the actual story here, though. This could easily have been about any high-intensity pursuit, and actually has a lot in common with sports stories. What this is really about is the relationship between a very unpleasant mentor and a determined young acolyte who wants to be the best. But the drums provide for great visuals, those blood blisters can burst and dramatically stain the drum skins, and jazz drumming is probably the best place in music to find a musician having to go through a physically very challenging ordeal while also being subordinate to someone else – the band leader. Sure, there are forms of drumming and other performance that are arguably more intense, but they don’t have the dynamic of someone else forcing them.

So I loved the premise. In more detail, here’s the set-up: in an elite musical school, the ‘studio band’ is recognized as where the best of the best play. They win competitions and alumni go on to impressive careers in the jazz world. And its leader is the formidable Terence Fletcher (Simmons), a man who can just swan into any of the school’s other bands and poach members, and who is generally arrogant, unpleasant and quick to tear people apart psychologically because he believes that’s how musicians can be pushed. Because he’s produced great results and his institution needs him, his behaviour is tolerated and thus he continues to push the boundaries. It’s the same compelling set-up as House: MD, and I’d say these were in fact very similar characters. They’re in a powerful position, intelligent and confident with a cutting wit and a willingness to bring others down, celebrated in what they do and yet inevitably headed towards disaster.

Into this band comes young Andrew Neiman, played by Miles Teller. Initially rejected when Fletcher sees him practice, he is given a chance as an alternate, and that’s when the abuse begins. The stressed Neiman doesn’t lock into Fletcher’s tempo, and Fletcher’s transformation from warm and paternalistic at first to physically abusive is brilliantly done. Prefering to endure abuse than fail, Neiman persists, but soon becomes obsessive. When Fletcher brings in the obviously inferior drummer of Neiman’s previous band, very obviously only to mess with Neiman’s head, Neiman begins practising until he is bleeding badly, punching through the skin of his practice kit and breaking up with his girlfriend – a character really written in only for this gesture of Neiman dumping her because he thinks she’ll get in the way of his art. Neiman is being influenced by an unpleasant person and becomes unpleasant, but that only makes the drama more compelling.

Being late to a performance turns into a huge drama when Neiman ends up in a car accident but still attempting to play. The layers of drama build until one last twist where there’s a devilish attempt for one character to screw another over. But from the start, the story has been about pushing to a higher musical ground, and maybe it remains possible.

Now, I knew while watching this that jazz aficionadoes would be upset because what we see here doesn’t really give any impression of the real lives of jazz greats. Most jazz greats had pretty easy professional lives, doing what they do incredibly well. They loved music, and explored great depths of it. Neiman idolizes Buddy Rich – and as a drummer, pretty much all of us do, even if in the wider jazz sphere he’s considered a bit vulgar – and his idea of pushing himself as a musician is centred on faster single-stroke rolls and double-time swing. There’s a story about Jo Jones throwing a cymbal at stripling Charlie Parker that has been very much Hollywood-ized: the real story is that Parker got ahead and played the wrong part of the song early, and when he didn’t notice Jones’ cymbal cues, Jones threw a cymbal on the floor to get his attention, making him a bit of a laughing stock. Parker pulled his socks up, studied hard, got a regular gig and by the time he went back he was ready to become a legend. The film has it as some kind of James Bond villain encounter where Jones could hurl the cymbal so hard it nearly decapitated Bird. It’s for the drama!

And I believed the story about jazz because while it misses the point about music and expression and individuality, I am also totally sure there are myriad musicians and music teachers who do miss the point. This is obviously a personal story, based on writer/director Damien Chazelle’s experience in Princeton High School. There’s a scene where Neiman’s resentment that mediocre football is considered more laudable than elite jazz is meant to show him becoming less pleasant, but also I suspect is grounded in Chazelle’s feelings and a little cathartic. Band leaders do turn into tyrants and launch into ridiculous arrogant tirades, especially in big-band jazz where the musicians are more like cogs in the machine and have very specific moments to express themselves. Buddy Rich in particular was a monster to his musicians when displeased. Kids do obsess over technical chops and dumb speed, and lose perspective of artistic expression or the fact that beautiful music is uplifting. People get jazz all wrong every day, especially when competitive. It makes sense.

And besides, here are some superb performances. I’m not convinced he played all of the Rich-derived solo at the end, but Teller is clearly playing most of those drums and has strong chops as well as giving a heartfelt performance. Simmons, who I only really know from being Tenzin in The Legend of Korra, deserves all his plaudits. And even if I fundamentally disagree with this film’s depiction of music and a teacher having to be criminally cruel to separate wheat from chaff, I know there are people out there like that, and characters like that are incredibly compelling to watch. 

Jupiter Ascending

Now, I was forewarned. Everyone who had seen this film said it was bad. Really bad. But possible so bad it was enjoyable. I’d say it was indeed terrible enough to be enjoyable in parts, but mostly it sat in the middle of atrocious and mediocre, and thus was not even very fun. And oddly enough, it was when buildings were exploding and spaceships were bursting through planetstorms that the film was dullest.

To get the full disclosure and the name-dropping out of the way, I’ve actually been acquainted with two of the people in this film. I was in Oliver! with Eddie Redmayne – I may have mentioned that once or twice lately – but the film also had a very short cameo/featured extra part for my good schoolfriend Bryony.

And I’m sorry to them both, but I can’t say that there was much to admire here. Actually, Redmayne was clearly having a lot of fun in a very campy, hammy role quite unlike the ones that have been winning him acclaim lately. He’s obviously relishing putting on a silly voice and occasionally bursting into quite absurd fury every so often, but it’s not really a performance that can carry an otherwise drab film.

I’ll always have a certain amount of loyalty to the Wachowskis thanks to The Matrix and how superb it was when it came out. The Matrix was silly, I grant you, borrowed heavily from anime and of course only concluded with sequels not many people admire – but it had two things this film doesn’t. Firstly, cool. This film horribly lacks the cool factor. And secondly, the impression of a genuine menace: the machines of the Matrix and their agents are unoriginal but iconic.

The mistakes of this film are manifold. Its central character – Jupiter Jones – is both absurd and hard to like. Her empowerment story is just a step too far – toilet cleaner to princess of the universe. She also spends almost the entire film as a damsel in distress for Channing Tatum’s character Caine – genetically engineered so he can be semi-literally a lone wolf – to rescue. Their romance is horribly underdeveloped and rings false. And that Caine rushes to the rescue on horribly lame sci-fi flying rollerblades causes quite a bit of inner pain.

The plot is overwrought and overlong. In the sci-fi world of Jupiter Ascending, the Earth exists only as a breeding ground for humans. When it reaches a population the planet cannot sustain, a harvest will be ordered and everyone will be processed into an elixir of life that lets the aristocrats of the universe – who all have English accents, of course – live forever. However, if the exact genes of any aristocrat repeat themselves in any human born anywhere in the universe, they are considered a reincarnation and honoured – these are even factored into the wills of the extremely long-lived elites. And of course, Jupiter is one of these: the ‘recurrence’ of the head of the most powerful family of all. This makes her the true heir to a fortune that includes the planet Earth. Redmayne’s character, the eldest son of this matriarch, wants Jupiter dead, but his siblings have other plans for her, and thus she is passed between the three of them until violence can solve all her problems. And when she is put in a position of incredible power, does she try to shut down the system that so horrified her and dedicate her life to stopping the ridiculous amount of death she now has the influence to affect, where planet after planet is harvested? Nope, only Earth matters, apparently, and she doesn’t even think about the other similar planets that will still be harvested, even if one plant on Jupiter has been destroyed.

There were things I liked in the film. There’s a tribute to Terry Gilliam that is so blatant that they had to get Gilliam himself in for a brilliant cameo to ensure that everyone knew this was an homage rather than a rip-off. But it’s a wonderful little take on bureaucracy that sadly is far above the rest of the film. The absurdity of Caine busting in to stop a fake marriage at the last moment took the high-camp to enjoyable levels. The dynamic of the Russian immigrant family worked well as something peripheral. The costumes were of course wonderful, and the three bounty hunters who kind of represent ideas of ‘ethnic minority badass traits’ in the States admittedly bring some of the coolness that’s deeply lacking elsewhere. I also liked Sean Bean’s grizzled, fallen soldier character, even if he was very much underused. Plus of course the makeup, prosthetics, sets, effects and designs were superb. It was a good-looking film, even if some of the spaceships looked a little clunky.

But the whole thing feels half-baked despite being over-long. What happens to the other siblings in the end? How can Jupiter live knowing the industry is still going on, even if Earth is safe? Surely she’s still a huge target for assassination/ coercion into marriage/business deals? Is Caine able to hang around her as a bodyguard? What about Sean Bean’s daughter? Aren’t there people out for revenge after the head of the most powerful family in the universe is killed?

Limited fun, eye candy and some snatches of (other people’s) brilliance can’t stop this film being anything other than an absurd waste of money – and a very poor echo of the brilliance of The Matrix. 

Ex Machina

While I really liked Alex Garland’s books in school, when The Beach was all the rage, I always felt like he fancied himself a good bit cleverer than anything demonstrated in his writing. That wasn’t a problem in the straightforward, uninventive screenplay for 28 Days Later, with this foray into being writer and director, it was at the centre of why I didn’t like this film very much. It’s had excellent reviews so far – 94% ‘fresh’ on Rotten Tomatoes – but it really says nothing new about A.I. paranoia and sadly remains predictable and ponderous to the end.

It’s a kind of open secret that one of Google’s aims are to create very advanced A.I. That seems to have inspired this story, in which a genius coder behind the world’s premier search engine has created an incredibly advanced robot named Ava. This coder is an enigmatic alcoholic named Nathan, played by Oscar Isaac – soon to appear as Apocalypse in the X-Men films – who for some reason very much reminded me of Dream Theater’s Mike Portnoy. He owns a vast research facility and runs a competition to find someone within his company to take part in a kind of modified Turing test – the test being whether the person chosen can over the course of a week decide that Ava is conscious even though she is demonstrably a machine. The one chosen is the bland everyman Caleb, played by Domhnall Gleeson, son of Brendon and Bill Weasley in the Harry Potter films.

The plot thickens as Ava is able to turn the cameras off and talk to Caleb directly. She is clearly an incredibly advanced intelligence, and able to detect lies as well as warn Caleb not to trust Nathan. Nathan, it turns out, has used information harvested from all the world’s internet searches and facial scans from all the world’s webcam calls – and of course selected Caleb based on the information gleaned by that sort of invasion of privacy rather than based on his abilities or at random. Caleb inevitably gets a bit nutty when he starts developing feelings for Ava, discovers that there are a number of previous discarded prototypes and rather unconvincingly gets so paranoid he slices his own arm open to check he’s not another of Nathan’s machines.

Nathan has the most advanced technology in the world available but still uses keycards carried in the pocket to access restricted areas for some reason, which ends up crucial to the plot. While Nathan is drunk, Caleb sets Ava free in a classic cheesy scene of one person thinking they have the other in the palm of their hand but it being the opposite – and I won’t give away the ending, but this is after all Alex Garland.

There were some lovely acting moments, and the CG gives the impression that this is a glorious high-budget film instead of quite a small-scale production with a bare minimum of cast members. But overall this was a pretty soulless and self-important film that gets all its heavy moments from the overdone cliches of the genre. How do we know what intelligence is in another? When can a machine be called sapient? How do we truly know we ourselves are what we think we are? Can a man love a robot? Do androids dream of electric sheep? It’s really nothing very new or inventive, and nor is the plot able to elevate it.

Towards the end, the music is so heavy-handed and the full-frontal female nudity so gratuitous that the whole thing comes over as extremely juvenile. It feels like what a sixth-former would produce given $20 million, thinking himself so very profound. But I seem to be in the minority thinking this. This film lives or dies on whether it impresses. And for me, it fell well short of that. 

Into the Woods

In some ways, the time was ripe for Into the Woods to have a film adaptation. In others, it was perhaps a little early. But as only a passing fan of the musical, I was glad this was made: rather as with superhero films, I consider it an alternate universe that doesn’t infringe on the original. And the darker, more complex, longer Sondheim musical is still around, still very popular and still often revived or performed in the amateur musical world – which is where I was first introduced to it.

So why was it both a good time and the wrong time? Well, this is a good time for Sondheim in general. The Sweeney Todd adaptation was a hit, and the man himself is still around to write new music and drum up publicity. There’s a craze for fantasy and most of the component fairy tales that make up Into the Woods have had recent adaptations or reimaginings, from Jack the Giant Slayer to Tangled. And though I’m sure a few decades from now this will seem a bit of a joke, but there are good enough special effects to make the fantasy scenario impressive and epic-looking.

And why was it a bad time? Well, because cinema isn’t yet ready for the adult connotations that Sondheim highlighted. Disney didn’t want Rapunzel to have children and die, so she rides off with her prince and exits the story feeling like an afterthought – never learning her true parentage or who her brother is, never having to question if her love for her prince is actually based on anything substantial, and subject to a very weird moment where most of her hair is cut off and taken by the Baker’s Wife, yet is just about full-length the next morning. Disney didn’t want the Baker’s Wife to explicitly have an affair, so she is (probably) just kissed a lot before blaming it on the influence of the woods and quickly and almost randomly dying – apparently at the expense of one of the best songs. And the initial casting of Red Riding Hood had to be changed because the child’s parents were uncomfortable with the (well-known) sexual connotations of her story – the way the wolf eyes up her flesh and the lines afterwards about having become experienced in new ways. We would have a better film if the musical made it to the screen intact – a musical that after all skewered the idea of love at first sight and happily-ever-after long before every Disney film tried to do the same.

That said, this remains highly enjoyable and has an excellent cast. Meryl Streep is wonderfully capable of the mixture of understated sarcasm and grand gesture the Witch requires, as well as being able to be more glamorous now post-transformation than she could ever manage in Death Becomes Her. Her exit is a little abrupt and odd, though. Johnny Depp’s short cameo is just right for him, hammy and creepy and smug yet very likeable, and Chris Pine occupies a very similar place – utterly contemptible, pathetic and extremely fun to watch all at once. For the first time ever, I did not hate James Corden, and this straightforward role that doesn’t suggest with every line that he thinks he’s utterly hilarious suits him much better than his usual persona. He does the normal, likeable, friendly, ordinary middle-aged man role very well and should stick with it. Emily Blunt is a great mix of forcefulness and sensible understatement, though it’s sad that there isn’t more exploration of what her infidelity means for her marriage. Frances De La Tour appears once again as a giant woman, and Simon Russell Beale appears for a pleasingly serious and heartfelt cameo – though of course his character lacks the impact or considerable twist of the narrator in the musical.

The kids are great, too. Lilla Crawford is a delightfully precocious and somewhat annoying Red Riding Hood, oddly complimented by her American accent, and while he essentially does the exact same performance he did as Gavroche in Les Misérables, Daniel Huttlestone is very cute as Jack and is basically getting to be everything I wish I could’ve been!

In terms of effects, performance, cinematography, costumes, makeups, editing and effects – as well as music, of course – this is an exemplary film. Like many adaptations from the stage it suffers from sagging in the middle where the interval ought to be, but there’s enough action that the pace is soon brisk again. This is a generally rather beautiful film and a fantasy world that’s extremely enjoyable to look into, grim(m) parts and all. I just would rather none of the grimness had to be stripped away, and for the film to remain what the musical was meant to be – a funny but slightly bitter deconstruction, for a real world of adultery, philandering and even pederasty.

The Theory of Everything

This film wasn’t quite what I hoped it was going to be, but it was still an incredibly impressive tour-de-force of acting, delicate filmmaking and romanticised Britishness.

Aiming for biopic as well as Oscar-friendly study of a degenerative disease, the film is a little light on the science and heavy on possibly the strangest love story I’ve ever seen on screen. And while I’m all for something a little different from the average romantic fare, this particularly messy real-life tangle of broken relationships, infidelity and under-developed second partners left me rather uncomfortable – largely because the film attempted to frame it all as rather admirable, romantic and even beautiful with a final platonic reconciliation. When in fact it was a deeply sad study in love not lasting, falling apart and being unable to withstand challenges. I don’t mind a biopic that shows love going deeply wrong, but I found myself rather resenting the attempts to portray a deeply broken relationship as something natural and ultimately healthy – because greater things than the relationship were part of these lovers’ lives – rather unsettling.

But this is after all a biopic about two people who are still alive and will be watching the film, which is bizarre enough. Popular recently, certainly, with the likes of The Queen and The Special Relationship, but those were focused on professional lives, not a deeply personal relationship. And some reviews, presumably based on familiarity with the source material, claim this film warped the real story for the sake of more palatable drama, which for such an odd love story seems the wrong approach. It’s quite well-known that there was a lot of anger and confrontation when the marriage broke down, which wasn’t conveyed here – and it’s not even made clear that Hawking remarries his sultry nurse.

Which is why the film I would have rather seen would have been much more focused on Hawking as a professional, and how his motor neurone disease affected his work as a physicist. The man is after all most famous for his books for a popular audience. The film has a fair crack at explaining the concept of time beginning at the Big Bang, and Hawking radiation, but I’d much rather it at least mentioned the information paradox and Hawking’s eventual rather unconvincing announcement that it can all be explained by parallel universes. On the other hand, I was grateful that Dennis Sciama – played by David Thewlis – was insistent on underpinning the theorizing with mathematics.

I felt quite privileged at some personal connections with this film – and not just because I have an inkling I was in Oliver! with Eddie Redmayne. I saw Stephen Hawking once or twice in Cambridge outside Emmanuel – or was it Gonville and Caius? And it was fun to see Cambridge looking so pretty, even if it did all have to be that accursed St. John’s.

What really has to be admired here, though, is Redmayne’s towering performance. He was excellent in My Week with Marilyn and likeable in Les Misérables, but this is certainly the role that will define him, and guarantees stardom for many, many years. His performance as Hawking had to be perfect, as if the physical impersonation was anything short of precise it could have looked like mockery. His face suits Hawking’s remarkably well, but nonetheless the close study of his facial tics and ailments was both incredibly hard to pull off and also what was admirable. Redmayne embodies the progression of the disease extremely well, including in loss of speech, and never does the impersonation come across as anything but respectful and sympathetic. There is a certain taboo to an able-bodied actor portraying a man disfigured by a disease with such a physical manifestation, but the sympathetic direction and Redmayne’s superb performance make it work.

It of course overshadows everything else, but Redmayne’s bravura performance doesn’t prevent Felicity Jones’ being very impressive. Her stern yet loving performance and the increasing complexity of Jane Hawking’s feelings are portrayed delicately and without melodrama. Funny thinking back to when she played Ethel in the television adaptation of The Worst Witch. I also actually rather liked her bringing God into not only Hawking’s theories, but his everyday life – even if the pay-off felt excessively like the writer felt he was walking on eggshells and Hawking’s views were rather vague.

Awareness of Motor Neurone is higher than it has ever been, thanks to last year’s Ice Bucket Challenge, but I fancy that this film will show more of the severity of the condition and how difficult it makes lives than a thousand celebrities getting soaked. Even if, as we all know, Hawking has triumphantly defied the disease into old age.