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Guardian Unlimited -
1 days and 13 hours ago
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width="1" height="1" //divpOn screen, we expect Robert Carlyle to be a particular type of man:
damaged and disenfranchised; the loser; the loner; the archetypal tortured soul. "These are the
kind of characters that crop up time and time again throughout my whole career," says the
47-year-old Scot. "The question is whether they are pulled towards me or whether I am pulled
towards them?"/ppAn answer of sorts came when Carlyle was sent a script for the 2006 BBC
homelessness drama Born Equal. He says he felt his heart sink when he looked at the role picked out
for him, a troubled ex-con trying to get his life back on track. "I thought, I've played this guy
before, it's too similar. Then I thought about it. I thought, is there anything wrong with that?
What's wrong with re-examining that? Going back to that person again, shooting it slightly
differently./pp"My first love is art and I see a lot of things in an artistic way. And this is like
a series of self-portraits in a sense. This is painting an image of me on a different path, a
different road. That's interesting. If that has to be my fate, I'm happy with that, to play these
kinds of guys. A lot of the characters I play have problems, they are marginalised, they have
serious psychological problems, problems with relationships, with childhood. These are big
subjects, big subjects. You can't balk at work like that. As an actor, that's as good as it
gets."/ppAnd so it is with Summer, Carlyle's next project. Directed by Kenny Glenaan, it tells the
story of two schoolfriends facing up to loss and disillusionment in middle-age. Carlyle plays
Shaun, labelled a violent bully by the education system that cast him adrift, a man whose response
to dyslexia was to crush his own hand in a vice. The role won Carlyle a Bafta Scotland best actor
nomination, and the PPG award for best performance in a British film at this year's Edinburgh film
festival. The jury called it a "flawless performance in a great, uncompromising film"./pp"I'm 47. I
understand Shaun," says Carlyle. "I understand that man. I don't have any regrets in my own life,
but I can sympathise and empathise with this guy who wakes up and realises his life is past and
gone and what has it been for?"/ppWe meet in Glasgow, Carlyle's hometown, where he lives with his
wife, makeup artist Anastasia Shirley, and their three young children. We're not so very far from
his birthplace in Maryhill. The hotel is just round the corner from his house, and so thickly
carpeted you move without sound. He is in the lobby before you notice him, a slight figure in jeans
and old leather, a scarf wound tight around his neck. /ppCarlyle hopes people will see past the
deprivation and frustration of Shaun's existence to a man sustained by a deep, abiding friendship
and harbouring a hidden sense of self. He's always looking for what lies beneath, he says, even in
the most unhinged of personas. "He has had a bad hand in his life, has Shaun; he has been dealt a
bad fucking hand. He tries his best, he knows, shit, he shouldn't have crushed his hand. But in
these films, even in Ken Loach's films, there's always a heart; there's always a human heartbeat
behind it. Kenny is a bit like the spawn of Ken Loach, you can see that in his work. It is the
people. They tell the stories."/ppLoach gave Carlyle his first break, casting him in Riff Raff in
1991. Roles in Cracker, Trainspotting and The Full Monty followed quickly and made him a star.
Summer, was filmed in Bolsover, not too far from Sheffield, where The Full Monty was set. As Gaz,
unemployed steelworker turned stripper, he had been the heart of one of the biggest British films
of all time. /pp"I had forgotten Bolsover is very close to Sheffield and Sheffield is the eye of
the storm for me. I was like the fucking prodigal son. It was extraordinary; I felt I am actually
theirs. That film, The Full Monty, was their film, therefore I'm their actor and I'm back home
again." Carlyle was mobbed. Every day on set he was surrounded by kids, slapped on the back, asked
for autographs. "It was a fucking great experience," he says./ppAs with The Full Monty, Summer's
backdrop is bleak (even if the story, ultimately, is not), that of a land and people hollowed out
by industrial decline. "We were in the back of this one house filming," says Carlyle. "If you had
said it was derelict and no one had lived there for a year I would have believed you. There was a
family there. You could not see the fucking floor for rubbish. It was horrific. As a person, it
reminds you of the shit that some people have to go through on a daily basis. It's all too common
somewhere like Bolsover and well beyond that. There is nothing there for these people any more. You
can't escape the politics. It's in the landscape. That's what the film shows, why these guys are
here doing fucking nothing because all this was taken away. /pp"I think it is one of the few
locations that would have really, really worked for this film because of that backdrop, that
background. Do you know, I used to think they were all fucking hills, these things - didn't realise
they were slag heaps. It looks like a lunar fucking landscape. There are very few places like that
that show the desolation, the emptiness."/ppCarlyle grows animated, hands sketching what he
witnessed. But that's as overtly political as he gets these days. Last year, it emerged that
Carlyle had voted for the Scottish National Party in the 2007 Holyrood elections and he was
dismayed to discover himself painted as something of a poster boy for the nationalists. "I voted
SNP because of the war," says Carlyle. "I'm not someone who believes in wasting my vote. I looked
at all the parties and thought, 'Fuck it.' At the time, even the Liberal Democrats were not saying
enough for me in terms of the antiwar stuff. I was not hearing it. That was why I went that way. I
don't know if I would go that way again. I don't like to get pulled into it. It's too easy for
people to talk about this; he's this or he's that. I'm apolitical in that sense. I don't take a
great deal of interest in party politics. Social politics interests me a great deal more." /ppWhere
he is prepared to speak out is about Scotland's film industry, or lack thereof. He'd love to work
more north of the border - it would mean he could go home to his kids every night - but the recent
Stone of Destiny was Carlyle's first film in Scotland for 12 years, and it took a Hollywood
director and Canadian money to make it happen./pp'We don't have a film industry here. I would argue
that vehemently. An industry is something that feeds itself and grows. We make one film every 10
years that gets any kind of notice. You can't call that an industry. Over the past 12 to 15 years I
have probably had about five or six scripts that have been Scots films shooting here. Not one of
them has fucking happened. I don't know the answer to that. It's got to the stage now with my
agent, if something Scottish comes in it has to be financed, otherwise I'm not going to read it
because it depresses me."/ppPart of the frustration comes from Carlyle's involvement in The Meat
Trade, a darkly comic retelling of the exploits of Edinburgh's notorious grave robbers Burke and
Hare. The screenplay is by Irvine Welsh; Carlyle, Samantha Morton and Colin Firth are all on board,
and Antonia Bird is directing, but it has still been a struggle, he says, to try to get the film
made in Scotland - production has now been postponed until next year. /ppHe's been luckier with
another of his projects. A chance remark in a previous interview that he has always wanted to play
Leonard Rossiter has led to an approach by a film company considering a biopic of the late
comedian. "I love comedy, and he's a fucking genius. I would love to play him. And, would you
believe, I get an email from a guy in London saying they were starting to make a biopic of Leonard
Rossiter, so I'm going to see the treatment." /ppAfter Summer, Carlyle will next be seen in a
feature-length version of the cult US TV series 24. He spent part of the summer filming in South
Africa with Kiefer Sutherland. The two have been friends since appearing together in the 2001 POW
movie To End All Wars, and Sutherland had been trying for some time to get Carlyle involved in his
hit franchise. 24 was everything that Summer isn't: big, showy, fast-paced. Carlyle, who plays
agent Jack Bauer's best friend, had a ball, even though he is on record as saying the bigger the
budget, the less a film is about./pp"Something like 24 is enjoyable for an actor for entirely
different reasons," he says. "What are you supposed to say? That it's not right to enjoy it? Why is
that not right? Something like 24 is incredibly popular. Thirty to 40 million people watched it in
the States. You have to take that. I don't have any snobbery about that./pp"You know, I have never
really approached them in different ways; big or small budget. The same honesty is required whether
a film is big budget. I enjoy that. I'm fortunate in my career I'm getting the chance to do that,
that I can play across the genres. I have got to be grateful for that."/pp· Summer is
released on December 5./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/drama"Drama/a/lilia
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/kenloach"Ken Loach/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a
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Media Matters for America -
1 days and 15 hours ago
During the November 19 edition of Fox News' Studio B, Fox News senior judicial analyst
Andrew Napolitano, a former New Jersey Superior Court judge, baselessly claimed that Minnesota
Secretary of State Mark Ritchie (D) is a "former member of the Communist Party." Discussing the
members appointed to the Minnesota State Canvassing Board, which oversees the recount in the
Minnesota Senate race, Napolitano stated: "The fifth member of the committee by statute, is the
secretary of state, who is a Democrat and a former communist -- former member of the Communist
Party." Napolitano provided no evidence to support his claim that Ritchie is "a former communist"
or a "former member of the Communist Party."
Napolitano was taking further a smear advanced by the National Republican Senatorial Committee,
which, as Media Matters for America noted, put out a "background document" suggesting a link between Ritchie and the Communist
Party. In that document, the NRSC reprinted an assertion in the Minneapolis Star Tribune
that "The Communist Party USA wrote encouragingly of [Ritchie's] candidacy."
The Star Tribune article making the original claim that the "Communist Party USA wrote
encouragingly of his candidacy" did not provide any evidence for this claim. According to a
search of the Communist Party USA's website, in a June 24, 2006, report, CPUSA political action committee chair Joelle Fishman wrote: "In
Minnesota the DFL [Democratic-Farmer-Labor, the state's version of the Democratic Party]
candidate for Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, of the League of Rural Voters could play a
valuable national role."
Moreover, Napolitano falsely claimed that "the governor appoints a committee of four people" to
serve on the canvassing board. In fact, Ritchie
named the board members on November 12. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) has stated that he approves of the
composition of the canvassing board, but did not pick the board. Additionally, The Associated
Press reported on
November 13 that "Fritz Knaak, [Republican Sen. Norm] Coleman's lead lawyer, said he was
comfortable with the board's makeup." The AP quoted Knaak as saying, "The people of this state
should feel good about who's on the panel."
From the November 19 edition of Fox News' Studio B with Shepherd Smith:
SMITH: The Republican incumbent, Norm Coleman, holds the slightest of leads -- 215 votes over the
Democratic challenger, Al Franken. And election workers are now beginning the laborious task of
hand counting -- like that's more accurate than the machines -- all 2.9 million ballots cast.
Hand counting -- you go, Minnesota.
But what's a recount without a lawsuit? Al Franken, who's on Capitol Hill today, filed one to
determine what to do about some rejected absentee ballots. Our senior judicial analyst, Judge
Andrew Napolitano, is here. What's going on?
NAPOLITANO: Well, the governor appoints a committee of four people: two Republican judges, two
Democratic judges. The fifth member of the committee, by statute, is the secretary of state, who
is a Democrat and a former communist -- former member of the Communist Party.
Five people will rule on all contested issues. They don't physically do the counting. They hear
arguments from one side or another about whether a ballot should be counted. There are many, many
permutations here, because some counties use the old-fashioned mechanical vote, some use
electronic, and some use paper ballots. I just finished reading the rules, and there's all kinds
of ways.
For example, if a voter circles the name on a paper ballot instead of filling out the block, does
that count? Yes. Every benefit is given for every conceivable way to find a vote to count.

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