More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
2 June
Our inheritance
To Alex (and, of course, Jeremy)
A dinner, with friends,
Reminds :
Of what we have,
What we hope,
How we leave
Behind...
We talk of marriage,
Tax-free
Gifts (for IHT) –
Yet ‘bunching’
Our estates,
Blithely !
Do thus we, then, wed ?
To shed
That which we leave
From taxes :
Our residue
When dead ?
Copyright © Belston Night Works 2014
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Showing posts with label Dinner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dinner. Show all posts
Monday, 2 June 2014
Wednesday, 22 February 2012
Non-Euclidean logic (1)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
22 February
They say that No news is good news
So can we infer:
All news is bad news?
They also say that There is no such thing as a free lunch
So does that mean:
Lunch is the Cinderella of meals, in thrall to ugly sisters Breakfast and Dinner*?
And is lunch, on average, the weekday meal least likely not only to be eaten at home, but to have been made there**?
End-notes
* Not to mention the hideous brothers, Supper and Snack.
When is Lunch ever celebrated? We have Dinner in the diner / Nothing could be finer, and Breakfast at Tiffany's, but Lunch is Out In The Cold, Lunch means He's Out To Lunch, or is even subsumed as 'Brunch'...
** If one can talk of making a bowl of cereal, which may be many's breakfast.
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(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
22 February
They say that No news is good news
So can we infer:
All news is bad news?
They also say that There is no such thing as a free lunch
So does that mean:
Lunch is the Cinderella of meals, in thrall to ugly sisters Breakfast and Dinner*?
And is lunch, on average, the weekday meal least likely not only to be eaten at home, but to have been made there**?
End-notes
* Not to mention the hideous brothers, Supper and Snack.
When is Lunch ever celebrated? We have Dinner in the diner / Nothing could be finer, and Breakfast at Tiffany's, but Lunch is Out In The Cold, Lunch means He's Out To Lunch, or is even subsumed as 'Brunch'...
** If one can talk of making a bowl of cereal, which may be many's breakfast.
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Friday, 4 November 2011
Funny Games v. Melancholia
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
5 November
Isn't Lars von Trier's Melancholia, perhaps, like Michael Haneke's Funny Games (1997)?
In an interview with Haneke about the original film in German (but it may be applicable to the US remake, bizarrely also made by this director, ten years later)*, and elsewhere (there appears to be, if I could find it**, an essay of his called 'Violence + Media'), he said that it was a healthy response to have had enough and (in the cinema) walk out or (otherwise) eject the DVD before the end. (Indeed, on the cover of one DVD release, on Tartan Video, one is asked 'How far is too far?')
Or, maybe, Moira Buffini's play Dinner**?
It's supposedly witty, etc., and opens the wittiness with the guests for the title's meal being served with lobster. Only the lobster under the cover is alive!
Hungry people (does no one eat something before a meal out, just in case?) faced with needing to kill / cook - for some reason, in whatever class they (are supposed to) hail from, they have not done this before.
If, however, as it is not really a culinary (but a cultural) rarity, one of them had, then no premise for all the distress, as he or she would simply have cooked for all - unless that was against the rules: I forget.
Those who found Dinner simply provocative (i.e. provocative for no very good reason, and, in that sense, like the torture and violence of Funny Games, for no reason other than 'Because I can') might not have stayed.
It was in the first half of the 2010s, but I'm fairly sure that even one of the guests does just that - or maybe that's not allowed within the rules of the evening: I forget.
Either there was a hint to take, and I took it when I could (always easier with an aisle-seat), or I vacated my seat for a longer interval than others may have enjoyed.
With Melancholia, when I came to leave its realm / influence / phantasy, was not pushing the same buttons of 'I do this, and I defy you to continue watching', but almost - far less overtly, but still something there to challenge one's continued attention.
Not entirely seriously, I wonder whether the screenings of the film were a nationwide psychoanalytic study:
By and large, because some people go to films socially (rather than alone, just because they want - or think that they want - to see the film), and one may have chosen this one without, in some cases, the other(s) even considering it, there will have been some basis on which the audience has selected itself.
If it is a screening in a multiple sense, what does it say about the people who 'stick the course', as it were, rather than giving up on it as one might Funny Games or Dinner by walking out?
I think, if I am right, rather more than about those who leave - those who don't get secretly tagged, and followed until a convenient point to invent a spurious medical appointment at which a more durable microtransmitter (plus, depending on your fantasy, microchip, transponder, etc.) can be inserted. (Or is that, given where we started, the scenario of one of Haneke's other films?)
End-notes
* Strangely, the two young men who - principally, but not exclusively - play the games are described on the IMDb web-site as 'psychotic' when writing up the original (in US English, if arguably not in British English, that word is a synonym for 'psychopathic') and 'psychopathic' for the English-language follow-up (and so not using the word 'psychotic', although it seems more current in the States).
** Incidentally, when a search-engine not only wants to default to what it thinks that the appropriate search-string should be (as an afterthought, offering up one's choice as an option, and only, and after protest, letting the string in the search-box be edited), but will not find a play from one's recollection of author and title, it's time to say 'Goodbye, Google - hello, Amazon!'. (As things stand, the software on the latter's web-site allowed me to find the play, despite the misremembered name.) With the Haneke essay, having the title did not even help!
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
5 November
Isn't Lars von Trier's Melancholia, perhaps, like Michael Haneke's Funny Games (1997)?
In an interview with Haneke about the original film in German (but it may be applicable to the US remake, bizarrely also made by this director, ten years later)*, and elsewhere (there appears to be, if I could find it**, an essay of his called 'Violence + Media'), he said that it was a healthy response to have had enough and (in the cinema) walk out or (otherwise) eject the DVD before the end. (Indeed, on the cover of one DVD release, on Tartan Video, one is asked 'How far is too far?')
Or, maybe, Moira Buffini's play Dinner**?
It's supposedly witty, etc., and opens the wittiness with the guests for the title's meal being served with lobster. Only the lobster under the cover is alive!
Hungry people (does no one eat something before a meal out, just in case?) faced with needing to kill / cook - for some reason, in whatever class they (are supposed to) hail from, they have not done this before.
If, however, as it is not really a culinary (but a cultural) rarity, one of them had, then no premise for all the distress, as he or she would simply have cooked for all - unless that was against the rules: I forget.
Those who found Dinner simply provocative (i.e. provocative for no very good reason, and, in that sense, like the torture and violence of Funny Games, for no reason other than 'Because I can') might not have stayed.
It was in the first half of the 2010s, but I'm fairly sure that even one of the guests does just that - or maybe that's not allowed within the rules of the evening: I forget.
Either there was a hint to take, and I took it when I could (always easier with an aisle-seat), or I vacated my seat for a longer interval than others may have enjoyed.
With Melancholia, when I came to leave its realm / influence / phantasy, was not pushing the same buttons of 'I do this, and I defy you to continue watching', but almost - far less overtly, but still something there to challenge one's continued attention.
Not entirely seriously, I wonder whether the screenings of the film were a nationwide psychoanalytic study:
By and large, because some people go to films socially (rather than alone, just because they want - or think that they want - to see the film), and one may have chosen this one without, in some cases, the other(s) even considering it, there will have been some basis on which the audience has selected itself.
If it is a screening in a multiple sense, what does it say about the people who 'stick the course', as it were, rather than giving up on it as one might Funny Games or Dinner by walking out?
I think, if I am right, rather more than about those who leave - those who don't get secretly tagged, and followed until a convenient point to invent a spurious medical appointment at which a more durable microtransmitter (plus, depending on your fantasy, microchip, transponder, etc.) can be inserted. (Or is that, given where we started, the scenario of one of Haneke's other films?)
End-notes
* Strangely, the two young men who - principally, but not exclusively - play the games are described on the IMDb web-site as 'psychotic' when writing up the original (in US English, if arguably not in British English, that word is a synonym for 'psychopathic') and 'psychopathic' for the English-language follow-up (and so not using the word 'psychotic', although it seems more current in the States).
** Incidentally, when a search-engine not only wants to default to what it thinks that the appropriate search-string should be (as an afterthought, offering up one's choice as an option, and only, and after protest, letting the string in the search-box be edited), but will not find a play from one's recollection of author and title, it's time to say 'Goodbye, Google - hello, Amazon!'. (As things stand, the software on the latter's web-site allowed me to find the play, despite the misremembered name.) With the Haneke essay, having the title did not even help!
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
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