"Dancing with Demons" by Penny Valentine and Vicky Wickham (2000)

Dusty Springfield passed away in 1999. and the very next year her biography was published, authorised by the lady herself and written by two close friends who also happen to be music industry insiders and quite important in their own right. Both Valentine and Wickham were there in the swinging sixties, shoulder to shoulder not just with Springfield but to everybody who was part of the Ready, Steady, Go! and trans-Atlantic exchange between The British Invasion and Motown. So while in the future we might get different authors writing about Springfield, we can't get better witnesses than these two who were actually there every step of the way.

Right now I must say that I discovered Springfield relatively late - when Pet Shop Boys invited her for a spectacular duet that brought her back in the spotlight - I was too young to know her glorious 1960s days, You don't have to say you love me and Dusty in Memphis - by the time I discovered music, Springfield fell in almost complete obscurity and she became symbol of another, earlier decade. Ironically, Rita Coolidge was doing just fine singing slow-burning ballads in a intimate, breathy voice that Springfield perfected long before her. So I had to go backwards and do a little research trough her music to find out what was the fuss all about - this is now the time before Internet so all the informations were in actual books and on the records, one could not just simply click the button and check youtube. If you wanted to hear Dusty Springfield, you had to buy the CD (and hope there is one). At the radio where I worked, they didn't have one single Springfield LP in their archives and it looks as her albums were never even issued in my country. So she might have been big deal in UK but in my part of the world you couldn't find her music. 

I bought this book immediately as it was published, still weeping in my beer because Springfield just died and my annoyed girlfriend inquiring why am I so upset about somebody I have never met. Initially, I was horrified with "Dancing with Demons" and found it indiscrete, too revealing and not fair towards somebody who spent the whole life behind carefully created image. Back than, I simply didn't want to know about what was going on behind the scenes. Curiously, I have re-visited "Dancing with Demons" again, two decades later and just like I expected, this time around I didn't find it nasty at all - now I think its affectionate portrait of a person and times, written with understanding and perhaps even a bit of idolisation. Both ladies admired Springfield and it was because of this that they helped her trough thick and thin, later when she became very exhausting attention seeker who would suck the energy of people around. Basically Springfield was a huge star of the 1960s who slowly sunk into depression and oblivion in the 1970s - the second part of the book is like a Twilight Zone and although the ending is uplifting (she managed some sort of professional comeback and even personal equilibrium) the overall impression is about somebody who would probably be draining in the real life. In the right hands the story might be made into an interesting biopic movie but I am wary of presenting people as tragic figures - according to her friends, Springfield was a wonderfully funny, entertaining and lighthearted person who loved to laugh at herself and people around her, so it would be completely wrong to focus on just one part of her personality - the movie will eventually be all about melodrama, drinks, drugs and loneliness but on the other hand, it was a life in a fast lane, with a lot of great highlights and impulsive trips to Rome so she deserves to be remembered for the joy, not for the tears. 

"The Secret Garden" by Marc Munden (2020)

This turned out a beautiful surprise, just what I needed. 

Its magic is only partly due to classic children's novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett (curiously, during her lifetime it was by far eclipsed by another of her novels, "Little Lord Fauntleroy") and also due to the very capable talents of director Marc Munden and producer David Heyman (Harry Potter film series) but where it works 90% is in a beautiful outdoors location so everybody who was locked inside during Corona epidemics can finally feel the breeze and smell the flowers in a beautiful and magical secret garden. Its truly a coincidence that I went to see it, because my last cinema visit was a traumatising and heavy "La Madre" where I kind of lost appetite to watch the movies at all but since I have cinema membership, it became almost pointless why am I paying this membership with unlimited visits to cinema and not even using it, so today I forced myself to go and randomly selected this.

The story is familiar and re-told many times in different media, but it seems there is something timeless about it, so different generations grow to love "The Secret Garden" for various reasons. After both of her parents passed away, little orphan Mary is sent away to some distant relative who lives in a huge manor in England - here she discovers a secret garden that has a healing properties and it changes lives for everybody involved. This latest 2020 version uses a lot of special effects and computer animation that previous generations were not able to do - nowadays it became almost a standard routine but once upon a time people had to depend on their own creativity. There is a tiny, perceptive Disney atmosphere that balances at the edge of sacharrine (little birdies flying above Mary's head, but ultimately not really having other role in the movie) and occasionally it felt as combination of "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Rebecca" but this is now grown up me, criticising a children's movie. The real audience - kids - would not know about about this anyway.

I have approached "The Secret Garden" the way I mostly love to approach most of my movies, like a Tabula Rasa without any previous knowledge about it. In fact, I don't even remember have I ever read the novel? It could be one of the things that were never even translated in my country - otherwise I would have read it for sure. If you are raised in the Eastern Block, your literary diet depended on Eastern European authors and occasional politically correct classic. And it was a extremely hot afternoon so I escaped into cinema for some cool air - enjoyed the movie very much, it was just what a needed as escapism from the reality and even though some details were twisted and changed, I still found it all very pretty and magical. It might be a tiny bit too serious for the kids really, because it deals with grief after parents death and some very heavy subjects, but than again, its not for toddlers, I would say its for a young adults perhaps, kind of Harry Potter audiences.