Seen at – or adjacent to – Cambridge Film Festival (its earlier, one-screen venue of The Arts Cinema)

Seen at (or because of) Cambridge Film Festival in the mid-1980s

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
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9 August

Seen at (or because of) Cambridge Film Festival in the mid-1980s

It was necessary to borrow Hugh Taylor’s copies of Cambridge Film Festival (@camfilmfest / #CamFF) programme-booklets from the early to middle 1980s (two of which, within Apsley Towers (@THEAGENTAPSLEY), are conveniently to hand), so one, almost necessarily, has not located ticket-stubs that could clinch whether one did watch any film, listed below as seen at around that time, at the Festival itself : hence ‘at – or adjacent to – Cambridge Film Festival’ in the title of this posting…

That said, one just knows as fact that one chose to see Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) in what, then, would have still been called a Festival gala performance (not ‘a screening’) : the Festival atmosphere – even then with enviably comfortable seats in the snug premises in Market Passage* – was so good, and one wanted to be part of it, rather than waiting for the film to come on release.

And, before anyone talked about ‘ear-worms’, that is what the catchy, jazzy principal theme of Hannah already was, on leaving the cinema after the credits, to both one’s fellow viewer (@AJRigbyTweet) and one's self (and for a number of days or weeks), courtesy of Dick Hyman’s arrangements, band, and leadership / playing**. The same had been true of the score of Broadway Danny Rose (1984), for which IMDb® (@IMDb) does give Hyman credit as the ‘music supervisor’ : the themes from both films have such a hook to them that one easily recalls them now. (However, at the time that when the Festival booklet had been printed, that film was said to be ‘unconfirmed’ (as may be legible, in the image below, in the column next to that for El Norte), so it did not have a date / time slot in the programme of events at the back, but was later confirmed and came on sale.)


All that being said, and for the two years in question (being those of the 8th and 10th Festivals, respectively), here was what was seen, if not at the Festival in 1984 and 1986, then as a result of it – in each case, the date and time are given simply of the first performance listed in the programme (except for Danny Rose, where one is having to guess when it would have ended by being shown) :

8th Cambridge Film Festival (15–29 July 1984)

Sunday 15 July

* 3.00 The Dresser (1983)

* 6.00 Swann in Love (1984)

* 8.30 El Norte (1983)

Thursday 19 July

* 6.30 The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum) (1975)


Saturday 21 July

* 2.00 Cal (1984)


?? Friday 27 July ??

* ?? Broadway Danny Rose (1984) ??


Saturday 28 July

* 1.30 Paris, Texas (1984) [referenced in The Night Elvis Died (La Nit Que Va Morir L’Elvis) (2010), and referred to in What is Catalan cinema ?]

* * * * *

10th Cambridge Film Festival (10–27 July 1986)

Thursday 10 July : Opening night

* 8.00 Mona Lisa (1986)

Sunday 13 July

* 6.30 Plenty (1985)


Friday 18 July

* 11.00 After Hours (1985) [How Time views After Hours (1985)]

Saturday 19 July

* 11.00 Sid and Nancy (1986)

Sunday 20 July

* 8.45 Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

* * * * *

Twenty-five Festivals later (this will be the 35th), Director of #CamFF
Tony Jones is still in charge

End-notes

* Which runs between Market Street and Sidney Street, when that separated Joshua Taylor from Eden Lilley (one fantasized that they were lovers, cruelly separated by Victorian parents. [Or later ? One thinks of the lyrics of ‘They Can’t Take That Away from Me’ – whose meaning Tommy Smith queried at The Stables lately…]).

Well, anyway, before that became bar / club land, and when, upstairs, had been Angeline’s, a lovely restaurant in which to be made very welcome, and luxuriate in continental cuisine.

Who - of a certain age - remembers this about Cambridge... ? [From the programme-booklet of the 10th @camfilmfest] pic.twitter.com/Z37HEJXmDS

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 12, 2015

** Although not credited by IMDb®, proving unreliable again (and making one doubt oneself and one’s memory, despite owning the soundtrack (on LP)).

*** Probably less famous than Hannah, although with Allen magic of its own, Broadway Danny Rose is a super film in monochrome : with Allen as Danny (an indulgent theatrical agent), his star turn Lou Canova (Nick Apollo Forte), Mia F. as Lou’s unsympathetic secret lover (whose life-or-death attitude Danny finds immediately and alarmingly frank), and gangsters, in the funniest shoot-out in a hangar that you will ever see !


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

An equal partnership, full of felicity

This is a review of a gig given by Tommy Smith (tenor) and Brian Kellock (piano)

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
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6 June

This is a (delayed) review of a gig given at The Stables, Wavendon, by Tommy Smith and Brian Kellock on Tuesday 2 June at 8.00 p.m.

The jazz world / market remains a dazzlingly small one, and no disrespect to Stacey Kent’s enchantingly quirky vocal-style, but there is no way that the ticket-price of her gig at The Stables (on 1 July) – at Wavendon, on the outskirts of Milton Keynes (@stablesMK) – should be £9.00 more than that for someone of the class of Scottish saxophonist Tommy Smith ! Let alone excellently partnered – as they have played together for some years – by pianist Brian Kellock. (More, if one considers that an announcement offering two tickets for the price of one had been made.)

Where else to be on a Tuesday night if not @StablesMK ? Tommy Smith and Brian Kellock for just £12.50 ! pic.twitter.com/IBWSW7I3DU

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 2, 2015

Staff of The Stables, talking about the gig beforehand and the fact that it was two sets of fifty minutes, seemed puzzled that it was piano and sax, not a trio – they had clearly not figured that a jazz trio is, typically, piano with bass and drums, whereas it is larger groupings, from a quartet upwards, where one has a voice (human or instrumental, since clarinets, saxes, trumpets, trombones, flutes, etc., have much in common with our voices), or a pair of such voices.


The gig tended to alternate slower / quieter numbers with livelier / faster ones, and the first transition needed to bed down, after a number by Michel Legrand (he had a piece in each set, as did hits for Glenn Miller). For there is something banal about ‘I want to be happy’* (from Tea for Two), and, after quite a right-ahead statement of it, the duo took a time to work their magic, before getting it away into jazzified territory : they did it, because they can do anything, but the shock of the new did not subside straightaway.

After that, and with Hoagy Carmichael given an elaborate piano introduction of that dizzying kind, where one can both not catch the tune or even confidently state any more what ‘Stardust’ should sound like, they treated the repertoire as raw material for their ever-inventive treatments.

Third up to-night at @StablesMK, Tommy Smith and Brian Kellockwith HoagyCarmichael's Stardust - one deserving of being shared with someone

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 2, 2015

At times, they came very close to home, sweetly rendering the melody, but, with the same reverence, embellishing, enlivening and abandoning all but its shape. Both men have a strong rhythmic quality to their playing**, not just, with Brian Kellock, elements of boogie-woogie, blues or stride, but in their phrasing, and in fitting so well together, though both are – from the harmonics and note-pattern of their chosen standards – creating before us, with and through their practised feel for chordal variation / progression, and changing accentuation.


If the staff at The Stables had been worried about any lack of difference, from piece to piece, in the sound of a duo, they need not have been – standard orchestral playing can easily be less varied than that of a small ensemble, if one is attuned to the dynamics, pace and resources of chamber musicians :

In December 2014, hearing Jan Garbarek, majestic again with The Hilliard Ensemble*** , one reflected on his distinctive sound-quality, sharp in a sort of way that maybe (as we know it to be so ?) suggests Scandinavian – and what it is that gives those players who have their own voice a tone that is all theirs, even if, of course, it will be cast in a variety of hues. Sound-production is always going to be subject to a number of factors, but, with Garbarek, it is only partly his attack, and more, at the heart of it, how he breathes with the instrument, and infuses his phrasing with the felt physicality of the breath.

Calling Tommy Smith’s tone ‘straight’ might sound as if it implies that he is square, but consider the word in phrases such as He looked at me straight or In a straight-ahead linking passage, and think again. Nothing simple / simplistic in what he does, but a clear and candid way of delivery that gets right to the point, and, bringing to his approach, a wealth of skill and experience that lets him place juxtapositions of register, breath-quality, intensity and feeling with strong, intuitive assurance.


Something that Tommy Smith did in one piece, very atmospherically, was directing the sound of his tenor into the body of the piano. At first just so that his playing came off the lid onto the strings, but, later, pointing the outlet from the horn onto the strings, and even with the bell of his instrument inside the frame.


During the interval and quick to get to the foyer, one found Tommy Smith, all ready to sign CDs for just £10 (and Brian Kellock soon joined him). He was asked about his breathing, because his breath-control and the way that, sometimes almost speaking, he breathes through his sax had been a joy to witness. As he was going to say in the second set about the ensembles that he had been playing with (from a quartet to new compositions with a symphony orchestra, where he needed to use a harder reed), as well as that talk of directing his sound into the piano, he answered that it depends what one is playing and with whom. But he was very alive to the idea of someone watching him as he played, breathing through these longer phrases, and having wondered how he did that.

When we resumed, we were told that some had come up, made themselves known, and bought CDs and got them signed, so we were also given an explanation of the title of the new one, Whispering of the Stars – not a piece of vanity that the pair are stars, but how, in the North of Norway (where Tommy Smith apparently spends some time), the effect of exhaling into the cold air is described.


We were also told us a little more about blowing into an open piano :

* As a twelve-year-old at a school in Edinburgh that did not have many resources, there had been the stringed frame (no more) of a piano on the wall, and Tommy Smith had liked playing notes at it (which, he swiftly revealed, had been the opening ones of the only tune that he knew, the ‘Pink Panther’ theme)

* In a concert with The Stables’ own Sir John Dankworth to celebrate 150 years of the sax (so in 1991 ?), he had a piece for eight saxes, JD and his Eight Dwarves, but also a solo piece, likewise played with a pianist (but in the dark), and also into the body of the piano – which was reported in the press as having used a synthesizer...

* Brian Kellock, he observed, had been using moments of opportunity to determine his use of the sustaining pedal


Come a second Gershwin song, ‘They can’t take that away from me’, it seemed (he was not quite clear) that Brian Kellock might have heard Tommy Smith sing at some point, when the latter admitted that he did not know the words anyway. (Behind, and unheard on stage, a woman said The way you wear your hat.) In the light of this observation, it was curious that Tommy Smith chose to tell us that he was puzzled by what the title might mean, for, in fact, the lyrics are plain enough : the song must have a context, where, even if one separates a couple, the memory of qualities that one observed in, or of experiences with, the other cannot be negated (I’ll miss your fond caress).

What, if permitted, would have made a great photograph was Tommy Smith, standing the base of the bell of his sax on the floor, and leaning on the neck, during an extended piano solo. After the gig, one joked with them about the longest that he had had to wait, and Brian Kellock quipped As long as possible !

In the first set, one could see Tommy Smith, with respect tinged with amusement, look down the length of the instrument, under the lid, for an indication from his colleague – it did come, but it was a long time coming, both times, as the other really got absorbed by his solo, and away into a distant fairway, from which he yet came back.


They finished with nothing as late as a tune from 1927 (Tommy Smith had managed to suggest, earlier, that one’s relation to a date subsequent to one’s birth made a song from that year not earlier, but a later one), but from around five hundred years ago, whose title, in Gaelic, he did not try to pronounce. The meditative tone of the piece and its playing brought the gig to a different type of close, where each, as we applauded, could celebrate the other’s artistry and the whole evening.


On leaving The Stables, they were getting into their hire-car (Tommy Smith behind the wheel), so they were saluted – next stop was Brighton, and one wished them well for that.


End-notes

* Which Tommy Smith was getting at, in the second set, when talking about musicals and ‘The Surrey with the Fringe on Top’ (from Oklahoma (Rodgers and Hammerstein)) : revealingly, given that he has even less reason to be called what he is than Chick Corea** (Tommy Smith is not his real name), he told us that he had had to watch his uncle in Les Misérables, as Jean Valjean, fifteen times, because he had been in the show as many times (although he begged to see the backstage effects on the last occasion...).

We also learnt that he had been forced, in childhood, to side with his father against a maternal predisposition towards The Stylistics, and (to which Tommy Smith ascribed a painful side) The Twist, in favour of Glenn Miller and other jazz influences, so we had a lively take on a well-known Miller number :

@THEAGENTAPSLEY @StablesMK Wonderful gig- beat my chattanoogoo choochoo into a cocked hat! Lovely to meet you.

— Rosey Fergusson (@roseyfergusson) June 3, 2015

** Especially so in a Rumba by Chick Corea called Armando, which, as was rightly suggested, is his Christian name ('Chick' is a nickname that has stuck, not uniquely in jazz).

*** In their final collaboration, and also in the concert after which the singers were to cease being a vocal quartet : until one first saw them, it was barely credible that just four men could produce such a rich and consistent texture.


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

Kraken crake

This is a Festival response to On the Road (2012)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

12 October

This is a Festival response to On the Road (2012)

* Contains spoilers *

Two admissions, which ruin my credibility forever:

(1) I declined the opportunity to see The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) because I had no wish to follow the journeys of an early Che - he could have been an early Woody Allen and it would have made no difference to the fact that, if I want a travel documentary (in the case of somewhere where I am not going to go), I will watch Michael Palin's antics, and I see the concept of a film rather differently. (As I did not see the film, obviously I do not know for sure what I missed. Accepted.)

(2) I have never read On the Road (let alone any of Kerouac's other writings), though, when I decided to get around reviewing the film, which a friend and I saw, largely through his desire to do so, at Cambridge Film Festival, I looked out my copy of it. Therefore, anything that I find to quote from it will be just that - a phrase or passage that I find when flicking through it.

I also have some insights about Jack K. from my friend, who has read it and more, namely the close identity between the narrators of these works and JK himself.


As the credits for On the Road (2012) tell you, scenery through which we are supposed to be following various travellers on various journeys is nowhere near where it was shot, but in another part of the States (or of Canada). Yes, unconvincingly London passes for Paris in the dire Bel Ami (2012) (quite apart from what we see in The Third Man (1949) or Amadeus (1984)), but that almost makes sense - we can have a sense of the monumentality or grandeur of parts of Paris, even if we are not seeing them.

Certainly, they must have had reason, in this film, not to show the territories surrounding, say, Louisiana (to and from which we journey), but isn't the entreprise a bit hollow if whatever they do show has nothing to do with those places? I start with this point because, if one cannot say Great panoramas - I must go and see them myself some day, we are 'forced back' on the characters, and I honestly do not think that their desires and changes of heart run to a whole two hours 17 minutes worth of interest, but maybe 90 (with less need to show shots that were really somewhere quite different - I do not think that the list bore any relation to what we thought that we were shown).

OK, my thesis is this - it's a nice safe bet to film some version of a well-known, successful book, because people have been satisfied enough with how it is put together working to have read it approvingly. Nothing new there, but, if one's choice lands on something that, to be done justice to, has to sprawl so much and maybe be pretty lacking in any story, is that the ideal project, unless one has a big shake-up with the text and portrays it radically differently? Yes, that might upset an author's estate, or even fans at grass roots, but would it be a better film, maybe even be a film?

Given the acknowledged limitations, but in the light of talking to my friend and others as to whether the way that the text lies lends itself to taking it point for point as the basis for a film, what I have to ask (as I did) is what credibility Sal Paradise has, when we meet him, as a writer, or even simply what there is about him that would make someone, on pretty slight acquaintance, ask him to travel from New York to Denver to see him.

Now we know, after the event, that On the Road the book resulted from this and all the other travels, and, when Sam Riley (as Sal) starts hitching, we see him scribbling is his small but somehow infinite note-book (as if the guys on the back of the truck with him would not have been more than a little interested and been likely to have parted their company).

It may be little more than sexual when he is cotton picking, but there is even a sense that this Sal abandons his exteriority to his own experiences and actually feels them : frustrated though I was that I was being asked to believe in him as a writer when there had not even been so much as something being read aloud with his New York chums, I think that, by now, there might have been voiceover, maybe, of some of his writerly snippets (unless that only occurs later, when he actually starts writing, and he is reliving these moments).

Set against now, where, unless I wanted to be scenic about it, I would take a flight to make this first journey of Sal's, I would still be less than impressed with Dean Moriarity to have had impressed on me that I needed to make a trip whose basis and necessity turn out, in the ever-casual way of intoxication beyond the means of alcohol passing for the common currency of life, to have dissolved, so that, no sooner there and with no thought of where Sal might stay, Dean has to go to Los Angeles (or some such).

Just the first of a series of long, long journeys that seem to have the same capacity for their purpose to disappear more quickly than the destination can be reached. For me, none of it amounts to more than a few very blunt character traits and repressed feelings, which is where I arrive at a run-time around 90 minutes, because they do not merit more :

Sal is flattered by Dean's interest in him, and Dean, for his part, talks up this man who, if he did not resemble (a little) Scottish saxophonist Tommy Smith (whose talent I know and value), actually seems to possess no qualities to justify it. It is all sublimated through Dean arranging girls (including his own partner, at a key point) for Sal to sleep with, and then noisily doing so himself.

That holds true until (for money, and as he says to Sal he has done before) Dean has sex with the man who has been sedately driving them, and Sal witnesses it : not much guessing where his disgust with Dean and walking out on him at breakfast comes from. With a few twists and turns of sub-plots, and of Dean's various and far-flung women, that is pretty much the emotional core of all these lengthy wanderings, except that they always serve as a distraction from him ever knowing what on earth he wants, and all the signs, from how he chatted up Sal on first meeting, are that his own deeper desires from their 'relationship' (I only call it that because they virtually travel across the continent to say hello for ten minutes) are the same.

However, the film decides to swallow its own tail by having Sal write the book that we are viewing, with a roll of paper that he makes and feeds into the typewriter. Apparently such a roll does exist amongst JK's effects, though its status as being how he wrote the book might be suspect, but we get back to the bogus demonstration of creativity, as if there has to be this infinite roll of paper to receive the limitless notes that we saw scribbled before, and the white-hot power of the process is such that nothing, not even puttting in a new sheet of paper and keeping the finished ones in order, must be allowed to interrupt it. Believe that idea of writing if you like!

Clearly, things were taken from this film, but - from my position of majestic ignorance - I believe that a better film could have been made by taking the book as raw material, and not setting out depiction as if sacrosanct. And, blow me, I've still not opened the wretched text!


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