This weekend saw the book launch of Verbatim Winkleman Transcription: The Collected Film Criticism of Claudia Winkleman hot on the heals of "The Winker"'s appointment to head-talking-head on Film 20whatevertheyear. Winkleman's unorthodox brand of film criticism has earned her widespread noticed. The lengthy book gathers together verbatim transcriptions of Winkelman's Film reviews from her television show along with low resolution phone-camera images of food, pictures of her throughout her life and drawings of people she has met.
"When I made the book, it's made of paper and... some of it isn't just paper, what's cardboard? Is that just lots of paper squashed together? I've always had books in my house but I don't... I don't... what do you think of the book? I love it." said Winkleman whilst rubbing the book rapidly and shaking hair out of her face. "I love that I have it and you can have it too."
Coinciding with the launch of the book is an iPhone App, iWinkleman giving users the opportunity to check short, pithy reviews of movies on the go. Example reviews include the following...
Drive Angry 3D: When I go to the cinema I drive there in a car sometimes but I'm rarely angry because I love the cinema but this film is not why I love the cinema. It is because of other films. Like Tarkovsky.
Howl: I've read many poems so I already knew.
The King's Speech: I don't know what I think.
Never Let Me Go: We have the same hair. But I've had it longer.
Brighton Rock: I feel like I've seen this before but everyone looked different.
The Green Hornet: What I thought was, look, when I was a child my family and I used to play a game and when we went to see a great piece of art or theater or read a work of great literature we used to have to describe it in one word but the only problem with this film is I don't know how to spell 'meh'
[The last review actually makes more sense written down than it did on screen where she didn't need to spell 'meh' because it was television and not a written review. This counts as bonus material.]
Winkles' review style has caused much debate in Critical Circles, a bar where critics go to criticise each others criticism. While some viewers revel in Winkleman's long digressions about family holidays and favourite types of cloud, others find her stream of consciousness reviews to be distracting and sometimes infuriating. Said Alan Cliffe; "Winkles seems to have watched the films in question, and even understood them in the most part, but then it all falls apart when it comes to expressing what she thought about them in actual words. I'm all for digressions, I once bought a boat called "Salty Gambit" just of the coast of Jersey, but you need to come back to your point eventually rather than just talking and talking until a thin man with a side-parting cuts you off."
It's clear on reading Verbatim Winkleman Transcription that Winkleman approaches films in a different manner to Cosmo Landesman. Winkleman's reviews are far more subjective; for instance during a review of The Bourne Vasectomy, Winky-dinks spends the last four paragraphs essentially reviewing her own face noting that "It's really, really,eh really hard to see anything when I'm... squinting, squinting through all of this dark eye make-up and my fringe, on my head, makes it virtually impossible to get a good look at anything in the top quarter of the screen... eph!"
Already, rumours from disgruntled cinema staff suggest that Winkleman may not be taking her duties as seriously as she should. Clifford Allen from the Vue cinema in Harrow recounts one particular incident "As she came to the counter clutching her ticket, she fixed me with a curious stare and said 'If I can keep my eyes closed all the way through, will you give me a tub of Haaaaagen Daaaaaz for nothing?', that's how she said it as well; Haaaaagen Daaaaz. I said yes because I didn't think she'd do it, True Grit is quite long, she didn't manage it in the end but she almost did. I sat with a torch shining in her face right until the end when she opened her eyes and said Buggers."
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Whatever the thoughts of these popcorn shovels, it seems Winkleman is here to stay, Verbatim Winkleman Transcription has already sold more copies than any book ever made and a sequel is in the works.
Verbatim Winkelman Transcription is available at all good book stores for £17.99.9
