More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
28 July
Having now watched the extras from the In Bruges (2008) DVD, including the one that almost makes a sort of rap by stringing together every shit-hole, fuck, fucking and cunt, I add a few further comments to my review :
* We learn that Martin McDonagh has parcelled out the two sides of his reaction to Bruges when he spent a weekend there - Ken is the part impressed by the sights and sounds, Ray the one that just wants to get away from it all and have a beer*
* McDonagh had also been quite careful that Bruges, as I found, should be another character, and, with the city's co-operation after he had selected all the views that he wanted to include, had access to all but one
* The scene atop the belfry was shot in a mock-up, reimagining how it would have been before safety-mesh and the like had been installed
* There is confirmation for the idea that the city may be a sort of Purgatory for Ray, or, at any rate, that his negative feelings about himself and what he has done mean that he cannot enter into its and Ken's desire for him to appreciate it
* In one of the extended scenes, Ray likens the balance that Ken talks of between culture and fun to a retarded black girl (culture) outbalancing a dwarf (fun) on a seesaw, and then goes on to say how he was beaten up by a black girl as a child
* The deleted scenes show that there was scope for far more references to boys and toys that did not make the cut, and justly so (although I am not sure how good it is to have these materials presented to us with the finished film)
* Other scenes suggested Ray's emotional vulnerability more strongly : he also supposes that the priest must have had it coming as a paedophile, but it is disabused that he was supporting a campaign against a housing development in which Harry has an interest
* An extended sequence with Chloe, when she jumps up, wraps her legs around Ray, and, when he says that he wants a drink, says that they should have a fuck, shows tenderness (although the scene in bed is clearly interrupted by memory affecting performance)
* It is unclear where these scenes, relating to Harry's personnel (or their foe), fit in, but we are graphically presented with a police detective being decapitated
End-notes
* Bill Bryson reports that reaction to Brussels in his travel book Neither Here, Nor There, and he is not far wrong.
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Showing posts with label Bill Bryson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bill Bryson. Show all posts
Saturday, 27 July 2013
Thursday, 1 March 2012
True Stories (1986)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
2 March
Not (essentially because, ironically, of the story) much of a film (and I doubt that I would revisit it to be sure*), but it gave rise to what should be admitted is a great album (some people might like to say the same about The Mission (1986), released the same year, but I think that is probably unfair).
My best friend from school, for reasons that were quite hidden to me, had - probably still has - a great liking for Martinu's** music. A few years ago, and a few years on from then, he played me some favoured orchestral composition of his when we were at university, and, admittedly not intending to be complimentary, said that it sounded like film music to me. (He found, I seem to remember, some way of interpreting the comment that questioned whether that was actually a bad thing.)
I vaguely heard the concert in the first part of to-night's Through the Night announced by the very safe voice of Susan Sharpe (on the night shift yet again!), but it was only when what turned out to be Martinu's Symphony No. 1*** was playing that it struck me that it could be accompanying some action that I probably wouldn't want to pay to see at the cinema (not my sort of film), and I went to www.bbc.co.uk/radio3 to be sure that this composer was on the bill of fare.
End-notes
* Even if a whole load of Garrison Keillor (and Bill Bryson's take on small-town America) has flowed under the bridge since then. (And, yes, I do know that this is Texas, not the mid-West!)
That said, I notice (which is the reason for all this) that I missed a film last year about and showing David Byrne in live performance, and have added the DVD to my basket - somewhere - for when I feel like spending a fiver...
** Radio 3 doesn't bother with the accent on his name on its web-page, so I am not troubled to go somewhere else, only to find that I cannot reproduce it anyway (or is that the one on his Christian name?).
*** Elsewhere (work in progress) I shall be asking about how we refer to kings and queens.
In the meantime, this convention of calling works by titles such as 'Concerto No. 3' (which no one respects when talking about them - but, then, we live in a world where Tracy Chevalier made up a name for a painting and got away with it) suddenly seems very odd.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
2 March
Not (essentially because, ironically, of the story) much of a film (and I doubt that I would revisit it to be sure*), but it gave rise to what should be admitted is a great album (some people might like to say the same about The Mission (1986), released the same year, but I think that is probably unfair).
My best friend from school, for reasons that were quite hidden to me, had - probably still has - a great liking for Martinu's** music. A few years ago, and a few years on from then, he played me some favoured orchestral composition of his when we were at university, and, admittedly not intending to be complimentary, said that it sounded like film music to me. (He found, I seem to remember, some way of interpreting the comment that questioned whether that was actually a bad thing.)
I vaguely heard the concert in the first part of to-night's Through the Night announced by the very safe voice of Susan Sharpe (on the night shift yet again!), but it was only when what turned out to be Martinu's Symphony No. 1*** was playing that it struck me that it could be accompanying some action that I probably wouldn't want to pay to see at the cinema (not my sort of film), and I went to www.bbc.co.uk/radio3 to be sure that this composer was on the bill of fare.
End-notes
* Even if a whole load of Garrison Keillor (and Bill Bryson's take on small-town America) has flowed under the bridge since then. (And, yes, I do know that this is Texas, not the mid-West!)
That said, I notice (which is the reason for all this) that I missed a film last year about and showing David Byrne in live performance, and have added the DVD to my basket - somewhere - for when I feel like spending a fiver...
** Radio 3 doesn't bother with the accent on his name on its web-page, so I am not troubled to go somewhere else, only to find that I cannot reproduce it anyway (or is that the one on his Christian name?).
*** Elsewhere (work in progress) I shall be asking about how we refer to kings and queens.
In the meantime, this convention of calling works by titles such as 'Concerto No. 3' (which no one respects when talking about them - but, then, we live in a world where Tracy Chevalier made up a name for a painting and got away with it) suddenly seems very odd.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
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