From the #UCFF archive : The Lottery Ticket (submitted to @BBCRadio3 as a competition entry)

The Lottery Ticket :

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11 May

The Lottery Ticket :

Six Numbers

[In homage to Stravinky’s Jeu de Cartes
(and, necessarily, Walter Mitty)]

To Svetlana

Alex frowned.

He had become captivated (again) by the writings of Jorge Luis Borges, and now he just didn’t know how to go on… In particular, he found the story ‘The Lottery in Babylon’ perplexing, and his equilibrium upset. (This was, of course, before technology would render his musings virtually redundant, but at the impossibly high cost of re-creating another Borgesian fantasy, that of a library without end or catalogue, or even meaning.)

Despite the clear reference to another of this century’s great writers in the name of ‘the sacred latrine’, which – maybe? – threatened to undermine the whole edifice as artifice, was there ironic plausibility in the claim that ‘A slave stole a crimson ticket; the drawing determined that that ticket entitled the bearer to have his tongue burned out’? After all, hadn’t he heard that the same writer, in his A Universal History of Infamy, had plundered – or rather dismembered – the Encyclopaedia Britannica in search of tales of ‘Widow Ching, Lady Pirate’ and of ‘The Tichborne Claimant’?

That being so, why shouldn’t there be a grain of truth in a lottery in an ancient land decreeing ‘that a sapphire from Taprobana be thrown into the waters of the Euphrates’, or giving rise to a world where it could be said that ‘Like all the men of Babylon, I have been proconsul; like all, I have been a slave’?

He cursed Borges under his breath at the notion that, in the simple frustration that he just couldn’t know the answer, there lay the beauty of the text, and, in search of sleep, turned over once more.

13

* * * * *

Christy woke him – too early! – the following morning, with a shake. ‘Wassamatter?’, he raged incoherently. ‘Your mother is here’, came the stark answer that brought him unerringly into the wakefulness that he sought to avoid. Christy had a knack for doing that, and for being to hand as the (logically necessary) messenger-boy in the first place.

Alex threw on some clothes, and descended into the farmhouse kitchen. There, indeed, she was, brandishing a pale pink oblong of paper. ‘Now I’ll be rid of the lot of you!’, she shrieked; ‘And you all told me, over and over till I nearly was, that I was out of my mind!’. He had no idea what she was talking about, but there was no chance to find out, because she had metamorphosed into Science Officer Spock, complete with tricorder, blue top, and those ever so slightly kinky boots, and started flying around the room.

He jerked himself awake, regretting that the act of emergence meant that, the revels being, though thankfully, ended, he would have to face the day.

And who the hell was Christy?, he railed to himself. (Or was that, as he surmised as soon as he’d said it, an unbidden consequence of listening to Beckettt’s All That Fall…?)

8

* * * * *

Across the heath, he spotted a shape on the horizon. Not having the patience for it to materialize in a long shot, like Peter O’Toole on horseback, he busied himself with some papers: if, whether or not bearing scythe, it was for him, it would be there soon enough. But where were his notes from the other evening?!

When the knock came at the door, he descended. He half-expected Maria Andreevna – although she was no horsewoman – and accordingly started puzzling at why that term conjured up a satyr-type hybrid for him, whereas the word ‘horseman’ didn’t.

In fact, it was Dr Wassimiter, ever darkly cloaked against the wind. As usual, in the six or more hours that he was with Alex, he drank tea, kvaas and vodka to excess, and consumed copious pickled beetroot and herring, but, most importantly, he had brought the love-note that was so long awaited.

Alex waved him on his way, and fell to opening it.

19

* * * * *

Her carriage came crisply for him at ten, glistening with frost. At first, he was disappointed at the thought that it had been sent to him empty after all, but the pallor of her unveiled face gave her away, when she tried to sneak a further look.

Ably helped, amidst a cloud of powder, he climbed the steps that the footmen let down for him, but, losing his balance at the summit, almost fell into the furs on top of her! Scarcely a fit way to greet your queen when she condescends to call you to have your future read – a horoscope likely cast whilst the Englishman improvised a fantasia or two, and that other saucy fellow embellished further the record of his sexual conquests!

7

* * * * *

All at once, she was Leni to his Josef K., betraying the advocate with her passion, toppling and crushing the piles of paperwork over and over under her willing back.

Or Frieda, bringing the odour of the slops and swill into Klamm’s private rooms at the Herrenhof, into which K. and she had penetrated to avoid the tiresome attention of the assistants – and now found themselves alone, as never before since his arrival in the village, with the luxury to enjoy (rather than snatch at) sex.

He came close behind her, nuzzling the side of her neck and covering it with kisses, as he crossed his hands under and embraced her breasts.

Yes, to-night was the night!

29

* * * * *

As he drove her home the next morning, she caught him unawares, just after he had taken the gentle S-bend by the church.

‘What are you looking like that for, like you’ve won the lottery?’, she said, slyly.

46

31 January

Copyright ® Belston Night Works 2010

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

We are two flowers in the same pot

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19 November

A rating and review for Cutie and The Boxer (2013)

96 = N : 15 / M : 16 / C1 : 17 / C2 : 16 / E : 16 / F : 16

N = narration / script

M = material / use of material

C1 = cinematography

C2 = cohesiveness

E = effects / music

F = feel


9 = mid-point of scale (all scores out of 17, 17 x 6 = 102)



The best documentary-makers know that audiences can be trusted to wait for whatever information / explanation comes (or for things to be left uncertain), and that they do not need all things spelt out : the art must be to stand back from one’s film, see it with another’s eyes, and imagine what would be understood by saying this, mentioning this here…

Early on, it just comes out of what Ushio and Noriko Shinohara are doing domestically that it is his birthday and he is 80, with individual cakes and candles. They are clearly Japanese, largely not talking in English except for emphasis, a good word, wit (but the subtitling is simply maintained as a constant), but we may not be aware (or may have read) that they are in New York.

That never needs to be conveyed as a statement (nor whether they have ever tried or wanted to live elsewhere in the States), although some excerpts from a documentary talk about Noriko arriving from Japan with support from her parents, and the early part of Ushio’s career. From where we see them, we come to conclude that it is their home, and many a feature film would benefit from allowing provisional beliefs to be made by their viewers.

Cases of artists – in the widest sense – married to other artists give us Mahler not letting Alma compose, Schumann cramping Clara’s career, and, in a friend’s life, a husband (they are now divorced) who thought himself a genius (as Ushio does), and that certain things did not merit him spending his time on them.

Here, we see the lives together of Noriko and Ushio, and their traumatized son Alex, with whom she became pregnant six months after arriving in New York from Tokyo – it seemed that, unlike the cat whom we see compliantly being washed, he just visited (or, if not, he must have been hiding, or dead drunk, earlier on). When she met Ushio, she was 19, he 41.

Now, the nature of female ageing typically being what it is, the age difference initially seems less apparent – also because he boxes paint onto canvas, with pads attached to gloves, and so seems very fit and energetic. Nothing is made of it as an explanation, but there is a beautifully tranquil, intense and bubble-laden scene where we see him swimming, and elsewhere we see his physique.

The film shows us two recent shows of Ushio’s, the first solo (we never hear whether anything sells, though the opening of the documentary has Noriko estimating that they need $1,000 and the money for the rent to keep afloat), the second jointly with Noriko, which is near the end. In between, there is questioning about (from Ushio) whether he should have an assistant, and (from Noriko) any assumption that she is his assistant, and that she helps him other than because she wants to. Then, in Noriko’s painted-in drawings, we see the emergence of the characters Bullie and Cutie.

To begin with, they tell Cutie Noriko’s own story, soon pregnant and having an alcoholic to contend with, and financial support stopping from her parents when they learn of the drug- and alcohol-informed parties. She works out, in the drawings, her feelings, one of which is that of having been delayed being able to be creative again in her own right for so long, because of the cares and concerns of motherhood. However, in the mural for the joint show, she turns them into less identifiable polar characters with more general desires and impulses.

None of this sums up this neatly put-together film (which, one has to trust, does explain the poster) : the integration of the earlier documentary, the closeness to the subjects, the doubt about whether Ushio’s work is strong or just gimmick (which seems displaced for a while by a visitor from The Guggenheim, and the possibility of buying one of his boxing-paintings, but he then only tells Noriko when she asks that they had decided to buy a work from another artist this year).

What cannot be denied is that, despite the frictions, it is Noriko who knows better than Ushio where a suitable painting is to show to the Guggenheim visitor, and who can also intervene to say that a work that seems of interest had actually been given by Ushio to someone else with a promise not to sell it. Seeing her reasserting herself (for she complains, largely unheard, not only that she is a chef to Ushio, but that he then crudely gobbles something down on which she has laboured) may be a by-product of this film, but, at any rate, it is good to see her valuing her artistic creation – and having others value it.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Don't be Afraid of This Film

This is a Festival review of Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2010)

More views of - or at - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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18 September

This is a Festival review of Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2010)

* Contains spoilers *

I gather that Guillermo del Toro liked the t.v. story from which Don’t be Afraid of the Dark was adapted. It was perfectly understandable, in view of what appears to interest him, that it attracted him, but he may not have stopped to ask himself whether it would please anyone else.

For, given that he co-wrote the script, and that Pan’s Labyrinth holds together in a way that, for me, this simply did not, I have to ask why there were so many flaws, and why, with such a poorly conceived script, the film was made at all. (There may have been flaws in the original, but that was no reason to recreate them.) It is probably enough just to list some, in no particular order:

· Unless invoking magic, a Polaroid® camera that very obviously has five singe-use flash-bulbs cannot keep taking flash photographs indefinitely (for no reason, we had a shot of a collection of cameras earlier on);

· The extensive injuries inflicted on Mr Harris could not have been construed as resulting from any accident – no one, for example, could get a puncture wound (from the screw-driver) in the back of his leg at the same time as multiple lacerations to face and hands, and it is utterly implausible that the extent of the injuries and their causes would have been missed, at the scene or in hospital (end of residence, end of film);

· Accepted that it is a given of this sort of film (whatever it may be) that people just act stupidly (and despite the attempt at a sinister twist at the end), it made no sense for Kim (Katie Holmes) to go to the library after seeing Harris, rather than rescuing Sally (Bailee Madison) first;

· Creatures that can move objects without touching them (Mr Harris again, e.g. the Stanley® knife) do not need the agency of those objects to turn off light-switches, etc.;

· Sally may have been shocked (but what by? by people bursting into the library, who, as ever, seem to take a quiet eternity to do so?), but why did she show her father a photograph, not the creature that she had not been too shocked to manage to squash?;

· And what suddenly persuades him to believe her, when nothing else has happened? I did not recall the trade name, but (at her tender age – the States and child medication again!) she is probably taking an anti-depressant, and so has to be disbelieved!


Trying to set aside questions of genre, making sudden loud noises does not constitute horror (or suspense), e.g. the gratuitous thump in the soundtrack when Mr Harris apprehends Sally when she first discovers the basement window. Later, when the pace of the attack has stepped up (as, of course, it could have done at any point), there is just overloading of the senses, achieved by pounding music, other chaotic loud sounds, and confused visual displays that are typical of any so-called action film, but which, if it is one's intention, do not make one afraid, but raise anxiety.

We suspect that no one will make it out alive - anyone doing so is a bonus (but the adults have behaved so foolishly when they had the chance before). As to what the ending moments suggest about Kim, who actually cares?

True, it did seem, at one point (when she has been tripped on the stairs: these clever rhesus-monkey-like creatures, knowing how to tension wire - not there later, when Sally comes down - and which way down the stairs she'd come), that Kim was suggesting Sally as their kill instead of her (and, yawn, there may be earlier ambiguities).

Yet she does rescue Sally, she may or may not be dead (or transformed), and, if she isn't dead, who was the creatures' required victim?

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