TMI – or TLC ?

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14 November

In imitation of do (or did) they know what, maybe people still dismiss others with ‘Too much information’ (or write TMI), a retort to interrupt further revelation of the preceding speaker’s (or writer’s) sex-life, personal habits, or feelings, but I like to think that those days may be past.

If they are, it will just have been through boredom, through the phrase becoming passé, not because of those so confronted coming back – as they should have done ¬– with FBR, where ‘R’ stands for ‘Rude’. When the information really is ‘too much’, because someone is talking about his latest Bob Dylan CD when no one has any interest in it, the phrase seems strangely inapt.

Then, though, it would really be information, about the use of guitar on track 4, or Dylan’s lyrics or vocal style, whereas I never heard the blunt use of the words to silence someone boringly talking about a topic, only as a put-down in mock horror for what had been divulged.

What is really bad about it is that it cannot bother to be a full sentence, e.g. You are giving me too much information, as if one would say Corny old joke, rather than That’s a corny one !.

So it is the smugness that I object to, the outright declaration that it is TMI, not just, in some cases, that person’s interpretation. And, for me, the impact that it might have on someone who does not find this world easy to live in.

If people still said TLC, perhaps they could employ that instead as an approach…


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

Bob Dylan is 70 (2)

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When I said previously that Dylan in Don't Look Back was 27, I meant 24.

The day after seeing it, I looked out David Hadju's positively 4th street, from which it seems most apt to quote from a letter dated 5 May that Joan Baez wrote to her sister Mimi from the Savoy Hotel:

Dearest Mimishka - I love you.

We're leaving Bobby's entourage. He has become so unbelievably unmanageable that I can't stand to be around him. Everyone traveling with him is going mad - He walks around in new clothes with a cane - Has tantrums, orders fish, gets drunk, plays his record, phones up America, asks if his concert tonight is sold out - stops all three limousines every morning to buy all the newspapers that might have his name in them. [...]

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Bob Dylan is 70 (1)

This is a Festival review of Dont Look Back [sic] (1967)

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20 September

This is a Festival review of Dont Look Back [sic] (1967)

So, as my interlocutor suggested earlier, he was 27 at the time of the film, and I have been reminded that he is really a Zimmerman (or room-man).

One thing that he was asked was whether he was religious - he took issue with the word, and, on another occasion, didn't seem abundantly audible when he was asked if he read the Bible.

However, when the same questioner asked if those who bought his records knew what his songs were about, he stated that he knew that they did (and wanted no truck with the suggestion that he could not know, because he hadn't asked them), so no communication problems there, with words meaning different things to different people.

Remarkably also, when we are given these bogus statistics about how little (as a precise percentage) is communicated by the words that we use, shout 'Fire!' (admittedly in the right tone of voice), and then try substituting 'Conflagration!' (or vice versa)! (Equally, at the bar, no other formulation quite has the same effect as 'My round!')

Why we need books, not just the Internet : A Festival response to Dont Look Back (1967)

This is a Festival response to Dont Look Back (1967)

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

This is a Festival response to Dont Look Back (1967)

Yesterday's double-bill included Dont [sic] Look Back (1967), following Bob Dylan’s pivotal UK tour in 1968 with the still relatively new handheld camera: I am left wanting to check two things, one of which any web-site will tell me (how old Dylan was then, because I’m hopeless with ages and couldn’t be sure), the other being how the film was received by those who had started following his career, which is best done by consulting a biography: there is the reassurance not only that someone has taken the trouble to research the subject, but that a publisher will have checked it for accuracy.

I shall come back to why, but first to say how beautiful Joan Baez’ voice was at that time (she is seen arriving with Dylan, and was around for the earlier part of the tour), and what a pleasure it was to see footage of the famous concerts in the Royal Albert Hall (it was not identified which songs (or parts of them) were from which). His career has lasted so long that it is refreshing to see him at this time, although it is what true fans (and I know about a few) would know all about (and have multiple takes of the audio and visuals), and to hear him trying out audiences in Manchester, Nottingham and Liverpool.

The interest in Dylan’s age and the film’s reception are linked, and I got into conversation afterwards, because I had found it quite a revelation to see three encounters : one at a hotel, when it seems that one of Dylan’s party (or his or their guests) had thrown a glass into the street, and two when he meets a science student (as he calls himself) who had wanted to meet him before a gig (and, maybe, to write about the meeting), and then with someone from Time magazine before going on at the Albert Hall.

Regarding the glass incident, it could be construed that Dylan shows concern that someone might have been hurt, but (I think twice) he ends up (when no one says who did it) declaring that he does not want it to be his responsibility, which, in all honesty, sounds more like not wanting to be sued.

I missed the opening remarks of what we see with the student, but I think that he was asking Dylan why he doesn’t like him. As things develop, and after Dylan has said that he doesn’t know him so why should he like him and asked for reasons why he should get to know him, it felt more like he has a chip on his shoulder, picking on someone with a few argumentative ploys, and moving between them, rather in the way that someone might play with hurting or threatening a victim.

I know that I am sensitive to seeing such behaviour, because I am quite capable of intellectual showing-off and trying to take someone down a peg or two, but the display of seemingly unprovoked hostility was even more clear with the person from Time. Dylan announced straightaway that he wouldn’t see anyone after the gig for an interview, and that he would be called a folk-singer: he could explain to him what a folk-singer is and why he isn’t one, but the man would just nod and not get it, and, no, he wasn’t going to bother to do so.

He said exactly what he thought of the publication, what it was, who read it, and why he didn’t need it, because he had sold out the Albert Hall twice without it. Move over, Mr Ego! Has Dylan recanted and been on the cover of Time since, one wonders, and does he still engage in verbal fisticuffs?

Early on in the tour, he employed the technique of saying that all the words in a question could mean different things to different people, so how could he answer it? That just seemed evasive, and the treatment dealt out to the two other men seemed like a good deal more of the same – but from whom was he really seeking to escape?


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Golden sands of time

This is a Festival review of Bombay Beach (2011)

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18 September (Tweets / tags added, 3 January 2015)

This is a Festival review of Bombay Beach (2011)

Bombay Beach (2011) (we had no explanation of the name, sadly) took a little time to get used to, because it seemed (perhaps unnecessarily?) raw in the early shots, and, of course, one has (gained) expectations that what is near the centre of the frame will be - or be put into - focus. (I'm assuming that editing the film with some footage that meets this description at the start was a deliberate ploy.)

In any case, what I quickly came to experience as a real joy, since it is a principle that I try to employ in my photography, was the use of available light (which must have caused some difficulties in places). The whole emphasis on lighting, and on the flatness that gives a distinct horizon at sunrise and -set, was a hallmark of this film, as was the naturalness with which people seemed to get about their business, and come to mean something to us in the (relatively) short time (compared with Alma Har'el) that we (felt that we) spent with them.

Before I went in, Tony Jones, director of the Festival, said that I would want to see the film again when it is on release generally, and he is right - from the sounds of it, as he hopes to have Alma in Cambridge, plenty of time to think up questions before then. Until that point, what I will think about, other than listening to some of my Dylan tracks, is the hope that there was in all that I was allowed to witness, and try to remind myself that it is a privilege to see others' lives.

That said, and nothing to do with how the film was made, but I couldn't help being shocked at how much behaviour is controlled (for) by medication in the States. A young boy, clearly given ritalin because of ADHD (now quite well known in the UK), but also being given an anti-psychotic, then put onto 600mg lithium (instead of the ritalin, unless I misrember), which is one-half of the typical sort of dose for a six-foot man (the exact dose depends on metabolism). As to an explanation to Benny's parents of possible side-effects, particularly for lithium toxicity in the bloodstream, that appeared lacking.

Well, and I'm sorry that I forget his name, but as the elderly guy says who recovers from a mini-stroke, and whose appetite for life and what it is worth were wholly infectious, Life is a habit. For Benny, I hope that he may be able to form a habit where he is not overmedicated to meet others' ideas of who he should be, and the film, in its crazy phantasy ending, offered us that vision.


PS Very much an after-thought, and not intended to detract from the above, but I could not understand the point of the intermittently present and vividly yellow-orange subtitles: at first, they seemed to stigmatize the would-be college student, as if just his diction were not clear enough (although it was), but then they appeared at other times.

Sometimes, during the interactions in the Parish household, they were a help to know what was being said. However, most of the time I did not see the need for them, but, because of how much brighter they were than usual, I could not avoid three effects: they spoilt the appearance of the film, they drew me to read them when I could perfectly well hear what was being spoken, and, because of that, I could not block them out, and so missed important detail on the screen. If I could have pressed a button on a remote-control to turn them off, I would have done, and been happier.

The documentary Bombay Beach (2011), released by @Dogwoof, has this page on @IMDb... : http://t.co/gFe3jzomi5
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 3, 2015

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