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3 February
For some reason, as I have very recently discovered, Blogger can distinguish Ukraine from the former Soviet bloc, all of which it blithely calls 'Russia':
For it is reporting page-views, and also lighting up the region on the map, not least, since at 8, to-day's number of page-views is the highest from anywhere.
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Friday 3 February 2012
Shoes and Hitler
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3 February
I doubt it, but there could be a chapter on what shoes Adolf liked to wear in Der Schuh im Nazionalsozialismus (Shoes in the Time of the Nazis - 1933 to 1945), because the book does run to some 900pp. (well, 876 actually).
It represents a revision of a doctoral thesis (submitted to the technical wing of the University of Munich) by one Anne Sudrow (b. 1970), and apparently is a product history, which makes a comparison of Britain, the States and, of course, Germany - or should that really read The Third Reich (as I imagine that the suppressed populations were brought under the aegis even in this respect)?
If this is not an exhaustive study, it has still probably cornered many of the arguments and research angles, but might have been more manageable as three (or more) volumes. It probably comes with a hefty price-tag, so (forgive me!) not really for those on their uppers.
And, no - for those who might be asking - I didn't get the impression that the book was illustrated*, although (forgive me again!) shoes at this time are its sole subject. Amazing what you can discover on the top floor of a copyright library in a row of books, though why it has it, when it is not seemingly a UK title (and so a copy would not have to be supplied free), I do not know...
End-notes
* In fact, consulting the on-line catalogue tells me that there are 44 tables (but some hold to the view that shoes should not be put on them), and even 92 illustrations, whereas it did not look like that sort of book.
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3 February
I doubt it, but there could be a chapter on what shoes Adolf liked to wear in Der Schuh im Nazionalsozialismus (Shoes in the Time of the Nazis - 1933 to 1945), because the book does run to some 900pp. (well, 876 actually).
It represents a revision of a doctoral thesis (submitted to the technical wing of the University of Munich) by one Anne Sudrow (b. 1970), and apparently is a product history, which makes a comparison of Britain, the States and, of course, Germany - or should that really read The Third Reich (as I imagine that the suppressed populations were brought under the aegis even in this respect)?
If this is not an exhaustive study, it has still probably cornered many of the arguments and research angles, but might have been more manageable as three (or more) volumes. It probably comes with a hefty price-tag, so (forgive me!) not really for those on their uppers.
And, no - for those who might be asking - I didn't get the impression that the book was illustrated*, although (forgive me again!) shoes at this time are its sole subject. Amazing what you can discover on the top floor of a copyright library in a row of books, though why it has it, when it is not seemingly a UK title (and so a copy would not have to be supplied free), I do not know...
End-notes
* In fact, consulting the on-line catalogue tells me that there are 44 tables (but some hold to the view that shoes should not be put on them), and even 92 illustrations, whereas it did not look like that sort of book.
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Thursday 2 February 2012
Colin Matthews or Does the world need more orchestrations?
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3 February
Presumably, to be consistent, Matthews would just have to go along with it, for, if he did not, what I heard on Radio 3 in mid-December would seem to be hypocrisy :
For the concert, in the Afternoon Performance slot, featured what the web-page describes as 'exquisite versions' of six of Debussy's preludes (three in each half), including such prominent ones as 'The Girl with the Flaxen Hair' ('La fille aux cheveux de lin') in the first part, and 'The Submerged Cathedral' ('La cathédrale engloutie') in the second. (Whether 'versions' is a choice of word that came from Matthews, I do not know.)
Now, I must have been very busy with what I was doing - and I was at work on something - or even asleep in my wakefulness, because, although I heard the concept announced (and marvelled, later, when told that all 24 preludes had been given the same treatment²), I failed to identify either piece that I have named (and I couldn't have missed them both). All that I actually registered was an inundation rather akin to that which did for the cathedral - it all sounded like some murky seascape, and did not sound unlike Debussy in that regard, but I cannot say that it added, for me, in a helpful to what Debussy wrote in 1910 :
Oh, the audience at City Halls in Glasgow seemed appreciative enough, but I do wonder what they had gained from the experience. For I cannot honestly say that, even in an exercise to challenge the too familiar³, these preludes are calling out to be listened to in a different way. (And, for that matter, maybe The Planets didn't need Matthews to produce a Pluto - although I believe that, since he wrote it, it is no longer deemed a planet.)
As it is, Mussorgsky's piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition may stand as part of the virtuoso repertoire (though one hardly ever hears it broadcast) and, I would equally argue, was in no need of embellishment, that ever-present arrangement by Maurice Ravel (in which, admittedly, 'The Great Gate of Kiev' is very powerful and stirring)⁴ is what many people probably only ever hear, and miss out on the beauties of the original suite.
Mussorgsky wrote it in 1874 as a tribute to his artist friend Viktor Hartmann. Without what Ravel did (and Henry Wood apparently withdrew his own orchestration, made in 1915, because he thought Ravel's version superior), many people would not know of this work, but do they ever, in fact, hear it, if they never come to a knowledge of the piano original ?⁵
Well, none of us chooses what he or she is remembered by - the successful writer, who had something like forty West End hits to his name, is thought of as having written Winnie-the-Pooh, after all.
Postlude³ :
End-notes
¹ As, having heard it played live, Mahler rather pointlessly seems to have done with Schubert's String Quartet No. 14 in D minor (amongst other works) - he does not take liberties, thankfully, but what is gained by having more instruments to produce the sound, when that is not what the quartet, in my view, is about ?
(According to Michael Kennedy's book about Mahler, that arrangement, although one of two made in Hamburg, rankled with the orchestra in Vienna when he took up the baton, because they were viewed as complicit in what he had done with the likes of Beethoven and Schubert in these arrangements. I believe that some reckoned that Beethoven had known well enough how to orchestrate his Symphony No. 9, without an extra little beefing up here and there.)
² The Radio 3 web-page says that they were 'orchestrated for the Hallé Orchestra between 2001 and 2007.
³ And, to chip away the veneer on Beethoven's Symphony No. 6, I found Liszt's piano transcription very rewarding. His other such works, including the concert paraphrases, similarly endear themselves to me.
⁴ And there are at least twenty others, including one by Vladimir Ashkenazy (in 1982) that takes issue with what Ravel did (in 1922, commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky).
⁵ Even Night on a Bare Mountain is usually in the edition by Rimsky-Korsakov, and, for Fantasia (1940), Stokowski orchestrated it afresh.
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3 February
I wonder what Colin Matthews would say if I commissioned another composer to orchestrate one of his very fine string quartets¹...
Presumably, to be consistent, Matthews would just have to go along with it, for, if he did not, what I heard on Radio 3 in mid-December would seem to be hypocrisy :
For the concert, in the Afternoon Performance slot, featured what the web-page describes as 'exquisite versions' of six of Debussy's preludes (three in each half), including such prominent ones as 'The Girl with the Flaxen Hair' ('La fille aux cheveux de lin') in the first part, and 'The Submerged Cathedral' ('La cathédrale engloutie') in the second. (Whether 'versions' is a choice of word that came from Matthews, I do not know.)
Now, I must have been very busy with what I was doing - and I was at work on something - or even asleep in my wakefulness, because, although I heard the concept announced (and marvelled, later, when told that all 24 preludes had been given the same treatment²), I failed to identify either piece that I have named (and I couldn't have missed them both). All that I actually registered was an inundation rather akin to that which did for the cathedral - it all sounded like some murky seascape, and did not sound unlike Debussy in that regard, but I cannot say that it added, for me, in a helpful to what Debussy wrote in 1910 :
Oh, the audience at City Halls in Glasgow seemed appreciative enough, but I do wonder what they had gained from the experience. For I cannot honestly say that, even in an exercise to challenge the too familiar³, these preludes are calling out to be listened to in a different way. (And, for that matter, maybe The Planets didn't need Matthews to produce a Pluto - although I believe that, since he wrote it, it is no longer deemed a planet.)
As it is, Mussorgsky's piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition may stand as part of the virtuoso repertoire (though one hardly ever hears it broadcast) and, I would equally argue, was in no need of embellishment, that ever-present arrangement by Maurice Ravel (in which, admittedly, 'The Great Gate of Kiev' is very powerful and stirring)⁴ is what many people probably only ever hear, and miss out on the beauties of the original suite.
Mussorgsky wrote it in 1874 as a tribute to his artist friend Viktor Hartmann. Without what Ravel did (and Henry Wood apparently withdrew his own orchestration, made in 1915, because he thought Ravel's version superior), many people would not know of this work, but do they ever, in fact, hear it, if they never come to a knowledge of the piano original ?⁵
Well, none of us chooses what he or she is remembered by - the successful writer, who had something like forty West End hits to his name, is thought of as having written Winnie-the-Pooh, after all.
Postlude³ :
He does the opposite of Colin Matthews in symphonic arrangements of Debussy, and one feels that one hears more in Gould's piano than from an orchestra - as against 'La fille aux cheveux de lin' and @the_halle / Mark Elder, closing yesterday's @BBCInTune ?https://t.co/4i4tFQQNAL— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 22, 2018
Or Symphony No. 6, in F Major, Op. 68 :https://t.co/hwHuNPEs4K https://t.co/y5rb8bmTYu— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 22, 2018
End-notes
¹ As, having heard it played live, Mahler rather pointlessly seems to have done with Schubert's String Quartet No. 14 in D minor (amongst other works) - he does not take liberties, thankfully, but what is gained by having more instruments to produce the sound, when that is not what the quartet, in my view, is about ?
(According to Michael Kennedy's book about Mahler, that arrangement, although one of two made in Hamburg, rankled with the orchestra in Vienna when he took up the baton, because they were viewed as complicit in what he had done with the likes of Beethoven and Schubert in these arrangements. I believe that some reckoned that Beethoven had known well enough how to orchestrate his Symphony No. 9, without an extra little beefing up here and there.)
² The Radio 3 web-page says that they were 'orchestrated for the Hallé Orchestra between 2001 and 2007.
³ And, to chip away the veneer on Beethoven's Symphony No. 6, I found Liszt's piano transcription very rewarding. His other such works, including the concert paraphrases, similarly endear themselves to me.
⁴ And there are at least twenty others, including one by Vladimir Ashkenazy (in 1982) that takes issue with what Ravel did (in 1922, commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky).
⁵ Even Night on a Bare Mountain is usually in the edition by Rimsky-Korsakov, and, for Fantasia (1940), Stokowski orchestrated it afresh.
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Escaped lion kills camel at zoo (according to AOL®)
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3 February
Sadly (actually, probably not), the item - whether it is a news report or even some gruesome footage - is spending minutes allegedly loading, so I am none the wiser. However, two questions therefore remain pertinent:
1. If the lion were being regularly fed, what reason would it have to attack another creature?
2. And how would it kill one of such a size that many a passenger needs a leg-up to get onto it?
I shall have a quick look in search of answers...
Well, an ITN report that is available on YouTube informs me that all this was in Indonesia, and that, after cleaning the lion's cage and feeding it, the zoo-keeper failed to lock it. In consequence, two camels were attacked, with one fatality.
But I still don't believe that the lion could have been being fed properly, and this very brief ITN item is all that there seems to be to flesh out (pun intended) what happened and why. Leaving the cage unlocked is not, I think, a sufficient explanation, though necessary to what happened.
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3 February
Sadly (actually, probably not), the item - whether it is a news report or even some gruesome footage - is spending minutes allegedly loading, so I am none the wiser. However, two questions therefore remain pertinent:
1. If the lion were being regularly fed, what reason would it have to attack another creature?
2. And how would it kill one of such a size that many a passenger needs a leg-up to get onto it?
I shall have a quick look in search of answers...
Well, an ITN report that is available on YouTube informs me that all this was in Indonesia, and that, after cleaning the lion's cage and feeding it, the zoo-keeper failed to lock it. In consequence, two camels were attacked, with one fatality.
But I still don't believe that the lion could have been being fed properly, and this very brief ITN item is all that there seems to be to flesh out (pun intended) what happened and why. Leaving the cage unlocked is not, I think, a sufficient explanation, though necessary to what happened.
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Google® has its uses
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3 February
For some reason, not that the scrolls on any of the string instruments were in any way exceptional, I was reminded of a film that I had seen - and which I couldn't place - where a teenager saws, almost hacks, the scroll off a violin in a symbolic gesture regarding his relationship with, as I recollect, his father.
My first thought was to ask the friend who might have seen the film with me, but the e-mail didn't even get drafted, because I tried searching with the following, and, much to my surprise, got what I wanted as item 7 on my list of results:
"scroll"+"violin"+"film"
The film, it turns out, is Adoration (2008), and, courtesy of About.com's DVD section, I have very quickly been reminded of it. However, other than telling me that a scroll made by the teenage main character's (Simon's) father 'decorated' an instrument played by his mother, I am none the wiser just now...
Still, if only all searches were as succesful!
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3 February
For some reason, not that the scrolls on any of the string instruments were in any way exceptional, I was reminded of a film that I had seen - and which I couldn't place - where a teenager saws, almost hacks, the scroll off a violin in a symbolic gesture regarding his relationship with, as I recollect, his father.
My first thought was to ask the friend who might have seen the film with me, but the e-mail didn't even get drafted, because I tried searching with the following, and, much to my surprise, got what I wanted as item 7 on my list of results:
"scroll"+"violin"+"film"
The film, it turns out, is Adoration (2008), and, courtesy of About.com's DVD section, I have very quickly been reminded of it. However, other than telling me that a scroll made by the teenage main character's (Simon's) father 'decorated' an instrument played by his mother, I am none the wiser just now...
Still, if only all searches were as succesful!
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All sorts of echoes
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3 February
To-night, I listened - live - to three pieces for (or incorporating) a piano trio (The Sitkovestsky Trio), the first (Haydn’s Klavertrio No. 43 in C major, Hob. XV/27) and last (Franck’s Piano Quintet in F minor, M. 7) of which reminded me of other things.
Regarding one, I have a hypothesis to make, whereas the other gives rise to an observation:
In a motif in the opening movement of the Haydn (marked Allegro), and in a certain quality in the string writing, I could hear Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E flat major*, Op. 44, and I should be surprised not only if this work of the former were not known to the latter, but also, if so, to learn that the reminiscence is not a deliberate one.
For this, I must search for some evidence.
Regarding the Franck, this was not a work that I knew – because, as far as I recall, I have only heard the familiar works: the Symphony in D minor and the Sonata for Violin and Piano in A major** – and yet I heard themes, especially in the outer movements (marked Molto moderato and Allegro non troppo), that seemed to emanate from those of the symphony, and the power of the tutti was such as to remind one of orchestral forces.
But which came first...?
End-notes
* In full (according to the work quoted below), the Quintet for Pianoforte and Strings.
** At any rate, it appears that the Schumann was influential on Franck in writing his quintet, but that needs further looking into:
Talking of the finale of Schumann's piano quintet***, J. A. Fuller-Maitland writes (in Schumann's Concerted Chamber Music (Oxford University Press, London, 1929) 'we are irresistibly reminded of a chime of bells, an effect that must have been in César Franck's mind when he wrote the ending of his violin sonata.
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3 February
To-night, I listened - live - to three pieces for (or incorporating) a piano trio (The Sitkovestsky Trio), the first (Haydn’s Klavertrio No. 43 in C major, Hob. XV/27) and last (Franck’s Piano Quintet in F minor, M. 7) of which reminded me of other things.
Regarding one, I have a hypothesis to make, whereas the other gives rise to an observation:
In a motif in the opening movement of the Haydn (marked Allegro), and in a certain quality in the string writing, I could hear Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E flat major*, Op. 44, and I should be surprised not only if this work of the former were not known to the latter, but also, if so, to learn that the reminiscence is not a deliberate one.
For this, I must search for some evidence.
Regarding the Franck, this was not a work that I knew – because, as far as I recall, I have only heard the familiar works: the Symphony in D minor and the Sonata for Violin and Piano in A major** – and yet I heard themes, especially in the outer movements (marked Molto moderato and Allegro non troppo), that seemed to emanate from those of the symphony, and the power of the tutti was such as to remind one of orchestral forces.
But which came first...?
End-notes
* In full (according to the work quoted below), the Quintet for Pianoforte and Strings.
** At any rate, it appears that the Schumann was influential on Franck in writing his quintet, but that needs further looking into:
Talking of the finale of Schumann's piano quintet***, J. A. Fuller-Maitland writes (in Schumann's Concerted Chamber Music (Oxford University Press, London, 1929) 'we are irresistibly reminded of a chime of bells, an effect that must have been in César Franck's mind when he wrote the ending of his violin sonata.
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Wednesday 1 February 2012
Akanksha is - allegedly - a doctor
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1 February
She may or may not be 25 and 5' 10", but she keeps coming up in some shady side-banner to a sign-in page of mine.
She is also said to be in the States:
She must have chosen some really worthy part of the medical profession to be being paid just $35,000 p.a.!
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1 February
She may or may not be 25 and 5' 10", but she keeps coming up in some shady side-banner to a sign-in page of mine.
She is also said to be in the States:
She must have chosen some really worthy part of the medical profession to be being paid just $35,000 p.a.!
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Sunday 29 January 2012
BANGKOK
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29 January
Bruce and Nancy go kicking old kettles - that's what I told my friend when he wanted to say that writing 'lol' means 'laugh out loud', to which my retort is Lizards over London:
Perhaps some prophetic vision of the impeding* Games in London...?
End-notes
* Unweisely (?), there are some who would write 'upcoming' instead. And it seems, on revisiting this posting, that I have left an 'n' out somewhere, but maybe these Games will just be a hindrance.
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29 January
Bruce and Nancy go kicking old kettles - that's what I told my friend when he wanted to say that writing 'lol' means 'laugh out loud', to which my retort is Lizards over London:
Perhaps some prophetic vision of the impeding* Games in London...?
End-notes
* Unweisely (?), there are some who would write 'upcoming' instead. And it seems, on revisiting this posting, that I have left an 'n' out somewhere, but maybe these Games will just be a hindrance.
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Saturday 28 January 2012
A short review of whisky
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29 January
Not in general, but a 16yo single malt*, which - for sport - I shall not name.
It has never been a great dram in my opinion, but I do still have a fondness for where it comes from, and from having it on board early on in my Scottish travels** (as the bottle lends itself to stowing away), and before I knew that place (and others and their scotch):
Here, where the human population is significantly outnubered by that of the fauna, one is two ferries from anywhere, and with a capital (where the distillery is, together with a small shop and the hotel, with its lively public bar and nice restaurant) that you can drive through in not much more than thirty seconds, I have twice stayed the night, and neither time did I have the inclination to do the morning distillery tour.
What the box (not a tube, in this case) told me, on the top and front, was that this one is dedicated to the inhabitants, and is 'rich and full-bodied' (on tasting, it was not, no more than the 10yo).
Drowning my sorrows later at spending £20 on the unremarkable (and, then, with the same distillery when I last did so on a dubious recommendation, at least I got a full bottle - 70cl - for only £2 to 3 more than this one, with its claims), I studied the piece of marketing that the box is:
* Well, there is the burnished bronze printing, including a special emblem, with which the photograph of what I take to be that place is overlaid - very classy!
* Then, along with that emblem and the attribution to the locals, the assertion that they 'are drawn to it above all others' - not at that price, I'll warrant (and there are, as I have said, very few people there)!
* Then, for all that the wording in the text above says, and also that a mathematical diagram puts it into a quadrant that denotes 'unpeated' and 'heavy / rich', another description states:
It's a subtle malt - unassuming, understated yet intriguing. Qualities often attributed to the [regional name for the locals] themselves.
Or what they meant was:
It tastes pretty much the same as the (supposedly contrasting) 'light / delicate' 10yo, but we're charging more!
End-notes
* I am glad that I only bought a half-bottle - 35cl - as a friend, who's in the trade, told me afterwards that he agrees that there is nothing special about it, even if it has been 'Nurtured for sixteen long years'. Sure they had some craic determining the wording on this box!
** It was also where I first learnt, from reading it in German on the box (it was not there in English), about adding caramel to malt whisky, which some say is fine and just evens out variations in colour (but caramel, of all things! how can that not affect the taste?), but others say imparts one that was not there - and some whiskies are sold on that feature (this one used to be - hence the bronze printing on the box ).
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29 January
Not in general, but a 16yo single malt*, which - for sport - I shall not name.
It has never been a great dram in my opinion, but I do still have a fondness for where it comes from, and from having it on board early on in my Scottish travels** (as the bottle lends itself to stowing away), and before I knew that place (and others and their scotch):
Here, where the human population is significantly outnubered by that of the fauna, one is two ferries from anywhere, and with a capital (where the distillery is, together with a small shop and the hotel, with its lively public bar and nice restaurant) that you can drive through in not much more than thirty seconds, I have twice stayed the night, and neither time did I have the inclination to do the morning distillery tour.
What the box (not a tube, in this case) told me, on the top and front, was that this one is dedicated to the inhabitants, and is 'rich and full-bodied' (on tasting, it was not, no more than the 10yo).
Drowning my sorrows later at spending £20 on the unremarkable (and, then, with the same distillery when I last did so on a dubious recommendation, at least I got a full bottle - 70cl - for only £2 to 3 more than this one, with its claims), I studied the piece of marketing that the box is:
* Well, there is the burnished bronze printing, including a special emblem, with which the photograph of what I take to be that place is overlaid - very classy!
* Then, along with that emblem and the attribution to the locals, the assertion that they 'are drawn to it above all others' - not at that price, I'll warrant (and there are, as I have said, very few people there)!
* Then, for all that the wording in the text above says, and also that a mathematical diagram puts it into a quadrant that denotes 'unpeated' and 'heavy / rich', another description states:
It's a subtle malt - unassuming, understated yet intriguing. Qualities often attributed to the [regional name for the locals] themselves.
Or what they meant was:
It tastes pretty much the same as the (supposedly contrasting) 'light / delicate' 10yo, but we're charging more!
End-notes
* I am glad that I only bought a half-bottle - 35cl - as a friend, who's in the trade, told me afterwards that he agrees that there is nothing special about it, even if it has been 'Nurtured for sixteen long years'. Sure they had some craic determining the wording on this box!
** It was also where I first learnt, from reading it in German on the box (it was not there in English), about adding caramel to malt whisky, which some say is fine and just evens out variations in colour (but caramel, of all things! how can that not affect the taste?), but others say imparts one that was not there - and some whiskies are sold on that feature (this one used to be - hence the bronze printing on the box ).
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Friday 27 January 2012
My mate, Damon Hoban!
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28 January
Damon gets really good things posted, such as:
Damon and Elena also both accept people for who they are in spite of everything. They both love unconditionally. WE NEED MORE DELENA*
The same person said:
I believe that Damon can bring the old Elena to life, the girl who had fun and just lived life.. WE NEED MORE DELENA
Well, this Damon is one helluva guy!
End-notes
I don't know - and I'm not going to find out (if I can help it) - what Delena is, but I am reminded of:
* A girl whom I once knew, who was clearly named after half each of her parents, Dennis and Anita
* The celebrated home of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford - Pickfair (why not Fordbanks, or Fairford, with its air-shows, or Doumar?)
* Someone (maybe not the owner) who had called a house Nibynool (and, likewise, someone whose e-mail began werdna)
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28 January
Damon gets really good things posted, such as:
Damon and Elena also both accept people for who they are in spite of everything. They both love unconditionally. WE NEED MORE DELENA*
The same person said:
I believe that Damon can bring the old Elena to life, the girl who had fun and just lived life.. WE NEED MORE DELENA
Well, this Damon is one helluva guy!
End-notes
I don't know - and I'm not going to find out (if I can help it) - what Delena is, but I am reminded of:
* A girl whom I once knew, who was clearly named after half each of her parents, Dennis and Anita
* The celebrated home of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford - Pickfair (why not Fordbanks, or Fairford, with its air-shows, or Doumar?)
* Someone (maybe not the owner) who had called a house Nibynool (and, likewise, someone whose e-mail began werdna)
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Jack Gordon and Lydia Wilson did an especially good job to-night (1)
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28 January
This was in Cheek by Jowl's production of the one that - if at all - we have all heard of, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, but, having now done a little reading, it seems that there are other plays of John Ford's that not only merit a read (on my part), but being performed (or, if they are, looked out for in production).
I had already been encouraged by Jack's excellent rendering of the verse (and also that of Lydia*, yet though - as is in his case - her diction was impeccable, her approach to the metre was less mellifluous, deliberately, I would guess, and she used her own, more-measured delivery), plus wanting to find out how one continuous show of 110 minutes had been made of the text, to seek it out. Now, I know to find either a collection of Ford's plays, or, at least, editions of the other three mentioned by my source (The Literary History of England (ed. Baugh)). (The programme guides me to two editions of the present play, but I don't want to buy, unless I can do so cheaply**.)
The pace and innovation of this performance were always just about right, my only feeling where it could have been a little tighter - since we moved between scenes near seemlessly, and the blocking and staging were very well worked out - being, as I recollect, the key scene between Hippolita and Soranzo, and just before: it could have been a deliberate point of judgement to let up then (or whenever exactly I am trying to remember was), but, if so, it would not have hurt for being done a fraction less.
All sorts of echoes, from the posters on the wall of what - at times - is Annabella's bedroom to the visual parodies of religious and other scenes, so there will be more postings (soon)...
End-notes
* Whom I have hitherto wrongly called Watson, when she is Lydia Wilson. Apologies!
** A copy has now arrived, so I hope to look out some soaring examples of verse, although that inevitably means my least-favourite thing: transcribing passages from a book that will not lie flat. (Saying that, I can probably cheat by finding a fairly plain text of a suitable passage to cut and paste, and then edit accordingly.)
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(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
28 January
This was in Cheek by Jowl's production of the one that - if at all - we have all heard of, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, but, having now done a little reading, it seems that there are other plays of John Ford's that not only merit a read (on my part), but being performed (or, if they are, looked out for in production).
I had already been encouraged by Jack's excellent rendering of the verse (and also that of Lydia*, yet though - as is in his case - her diction was impeccable, her approach to the metre was less mellifluous, deliberately, I would guess, and she used her own, more-measured delivery), plus wanting to find out how one continuous show of 110 minutes had been made of the text, to seek it out. Now, I know to find either a collection of Ford's plays, or, at least, editions of the other three mentioned by my source (The Literary History of England (ed. Baugh)). (The programme guides me to two editions of the present play, but I don't want to buy, unless I can do so cheaply**.)
The pace and innovation of this performance were always just about right, my only feeling where it could have been a little tighter - since we moved between scenes near seemlessly, and the blocking and staging were very well worked out - being, as I recollect, the key scene between Hippolita and Soranzo, and just before: it could have been a deliberate point of judgement to let up then (or whenever exactly I am trying to remember was), but, if so, it would not have hurt for being done a fraction less.
All sorts of echoes, from the posters on the wall of what - at times - is Annabella's bedroom to the visual parodies of religious and other scenes, so there will be more postings (soon)...
End-notes
* Whom I have hitherto wrongly called Watson, when she is Lydia Wilson. Apologies!
** A copy has now arrived, so I hope to look out some soaring examples of verse, although that inevitably means my least-favourite thing: transcribing passages from a book that will not lie flat. (Saying that, I can probably cheat by finding a fairly plain text of a suitable passage to cut and paste, and then edit accordingly.)
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Kelly Brook shows us her coconuts! (according to AOL®)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
28 January
So what can that possibly be about?
Well, she is not alone in liking the beach, possibly the tropics (possibly being photographed there*), and then there's this BFG / BGT / GMT business to promote...
So what are the chances of a Hawaiian look, rather than her collection of prized shells garnered from pleasure-beaches from Margate to Skegness, Blackpool to Minehead?
Going to the page, and below a photograph of Kelly** (holding an unhusked coonut - I take it to be such, rather than a partly damaged elephant's testicle) is:
Mostly we are posting this picture of Kelly Brook because we wanted to use the coconuts headline. It's very classy reporting but y'know what? Kelly is lovely (we met her at London Fashion Week), her bikini is lovely, and we wish we were on holiday instead of typing at our desks while a pigeon with a bad attitude watches us through the window.
So, highly informative! - I liked the pigeon's eye view best (in fact, I met the pigeon, also at London Fashion Week, and got all the gossip)...
End-notes
* It seems that the Hindustan Times may know more than most, apparently describing Kelly as 'the ideal travel companion for guys'.
** Meanwhile, Wikipedia®'s entry appears to err on the side of caution, telling us that she ' is an English model, actress, entrepreneur, television presenter and Playboy model'.
Delving further, though:
1. Does Kelly (née Kelly Ann Parsons - any connection with Nicholas?) fill in her census form that way (OK, the chauffeur does it), considering herself 'English' (even if she is), rather than British (even if she is)?
2. In what order do these attributes, achievements or activities appear? - it might seem chronological, but I am less sure, and in what sense do they distinguish her from, say, Linda Lusardi (although the latter is patron of a refuge for orphaned oysters, it must be remembered, as, properly, Wikipedia® records in her entry)? Or does starring in pantomime - and even Emmerdale - constitute a divide?***
3. Does once a 'Playboy model', always a 'Playboy model' apply? Would it still be the case twenty years hence, even if she did not appear in the publication in-between, or does it - any time - become 'and has appeared in Playboy [as a model]'?
4. Plus, aren't we over looking a few things? To name but a few:
* Justice of the Peace
* Piano-tuner
* Auxiliary fire-fighter
* Mother of the Bennett daughters from Pride and Prejudice (because Mrs Bennett was busy, writing her biography of Jane Austen)
* Carpet-layer
*** I do not know about the Playboy part (as the writing is not of the best, and Linda has always been disappointed by its attempts at interviews with Woody Allen). However, Linda has a thriving business, which she started herself ten years ago, where pubs - if any can still be found, and ones where people play not just games, but card-games - are offered a replacement pack of cards, because it is impossible to play properly when everyone knows that the one with the missing corner is the King of Diamonds.
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28 January
So what can that possibly be about?
Well, she is not alone in liking the beach, possibly the tropics (possibly being photographed there*), and then there's this BFG / BGT / GMT business to promote...
So what are the chances of a Hawaiian look, rather than her collection of prized shells garnered from pleasure-beaches from Margate to Skegness, Blackpool to Minehead?
Going to the page, and below a photograph of Kelly** (holding an unhusked coonut - I take it to be such, rather than a partly damaged elephant's testicle) is:
Mostly we are posting this picture of Kelly Brook because we wanted to use the coconuts headline. It's very classy reporting but y'know what? Kelly is lovely (we met her at London Fashion Week), her bikini is lovely, and we wish we were on holiday instead of typing at our desks while a pigeon with a bad attitude watches us through the window.
So, highly informative! - I liked the pigeon's eye view best (in fact, I met the pigeon, also at London Fashion Week, and got all the gossip)...
End-notes
* It seems that the Hindustan Times may know more than most, apparently describing Kelly as 'the ideal travel companion for guys'.
** Meanwhile, Wikipedia®'s entry appears to err on the side of caution, telling us that she ' is an English model, actress, entrepreneur, television presenter and Playboy model'.
Delving further, though:
1. Does Kelly (née Kelly Ann Parsons - any connection with Nicholas?) fill in her census form that way (OK, the chauffeur does it), considering herself 'English' (even if she is), rather than British (even if she is)?
2. In what order do these attributes, achievements or activities appear? - it might seem chronological, but I am less sure, and in what sense do they distinguish her from, say, Linda Lusardi (although the latter is patron of a refuge for orphaned oysters, it must be remembered, as, properly, Wikipedia® records in her entry)? Or does starring in pantomime - and even Emmerdale - constitute a divide?***
3. Does once a 'Playboy model', always a 'Playboy model' apply? Would it still be the case twenty years hence, even if she did not appear in the publication in-between, or does it - any time - become 'and has appeared in Playboy [as a model]'?
4. Plus, aren't we over looking a few things? To name but a few:
* Justice of the Peace
* Piano-tuner
* Auxiliary fire-fighter
* Mother of the Bennett daughters from Pride and Prejudice (because Mrs Bennett was busy, writing her biography of Jane Austen)
* Carpet-layer
*** I do not know about the Playboy part (as the writing is not of the best, and Linda has always been disappointed by its attempts at interviews with Woody Allen). However, Linda has a thriving business, which she started herself ten years ago, where pubs - if any can still be found, and ones where people play not just games, but card-games - are offered a replacement pack of cards, because it is impossible to play properly when everyone knows that the one with the missing corner is the King of Diamonds.
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Self-parking garages at Writer's Rest
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
27 January
There's a discussion going on about cars that drive themselves (that age-old dream - of some, anyway!).
I have just posted this comment in a 'spin-off thread'* to the original posting:
Hmm. I'm not sure that this concept is a new one - if I am not raving, it originated in Japan (probably Tokyo), where, clearly, efficient use of the available space is of paramount importance. (It may be now in West Hollywood.)
In essence, I think that it is little more than a giant car-transporter (those huge things on the roads that look so dangerous on so many counts:
* What if the cars touch (in varying degrees of touching from a knock to a squash)?;
* What if the whole thing falls over?;
* What if a car - as in the films - tumbles off the back and into one's path, and would one's reactions be good enough?.
Self-parking garages are a mechanization of using storage space, as I recall, a bit like the capsule hotel - you get a bed for the night, but it's cheap and basic, as you're occupying a space not much larger than a coffin!
I believe that, with the self-parking concept, you leave the garage with fitting your car into the space available, rather than driving around and around a car-park, where a large surface-area is, of course, wasted in this search by providing the route for the cars to get around, and from floor to floor.
I think that it's computer-controlled mechanization, in fact, with hydraulics, sensors, etc. If I'm right, it's little different from the technology that we have already taken for granted with robots building vehicles for us in car-plants:
There's a very atmospheric scene in such a plant in The Hunter (2010) (write-up on my blog**, and the Cambridge Film Festival web-site), where Ali (writer / director / actor Rafi Pitts), who is a security guard on night duties, makes a patrol. There is no one around, but the robots are busy welding and the like.
Full blog at http://writersrest.com/2012/01/24/let-the-robot-drive/#comment-1108
End-notes
* Some such...
** Postings at: The Hunter re-emerges and Back to The Hunter.
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27 January
There's a discussion going on about cars that drive themselves (that age-old dream - of some, anyway!).
I have just posted this comment in a 'spin-off thread'* to the original posting:
Hmm. I'm not sure that this concept is a new one - if I am not raving, it originated in Japan (probably Tokyo), where, clearly, efficient use of the available space is of paramount importance. (It may be now in West Hollywood.)
In essence, I think that it is little more than a giant car-transporter (those huge things on the roads that look so dangerous on so many counts:
* What if the cars touch (in varying degrees of touching from a knock to a squash)?;
* What if the whole thing falls over?;
* What if a car - as in the films - tumbles off the back and into one's path, and would one's reactions be good enough?.
Self-parking garages are a mechanization of using storage space, as I recall, a bit like the capsule hotel - you get a bed for the night, but it's cheap and basic, as you're occupying a space not much larger than a coffin!
I believe that, with the self-parking concept, you leave the garage with fitting your car into the space available, rather than driving around and around a car-park, where a large surface-area is, of course, wasted in this search by providing the route for the cars to get around, and from floor to floor.
I think that it's computer-controlled mechanization, in fact, with hydraulics, sensors, etc. If I'm right, it's little different from the technology that we have already taken for granted with robots building vehicles for us in car-plants:
There's a very atmospheric scene in such a plant in The Hunter (2010) (write-up on my blog**, and the Cambridge Film Festival web-site), where Ali (writer / director / actor Rafi Pitts), who is a security guard on night duties, makes a patrol. There is no one around, but the robots are busy welding and the like.
Full blog at http://writersrest.com/2012/01/24/let-the-robot-drive/#comment-1108
End-notes
* Some such...
** Postings at: The Hunter re-emerges and Back to The Hunter.
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Cher not dead (according to Yahoo!)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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27 January
Well, I know that using that qualification to the title, to give the source, makes it sound as though there is some doubt about 'the message'...
But I can state that I have no reason to think that Cher is dead, so why - maybe in some metaphorical sense? - I need to be told otherwise in this so-called 'Trending' feature at the top of the Yahoo! e-mail inbox is beyond me!
Think what one may of Celine Dion (and, sadly, I don't like something in the quality of her voice), I am reminded of seeing a headline to a newspaper (or magazine) in a French channel port, many years ago, which promised a report on 'her incredible suicide'.
It was merely, though, a 'career suicide', where the publication was putting the case for (or against) some decision - becoming an astronaut, or following Glenda Jackson into Parliament - that might have been thought to be the death of her work as a singer. A pretty far-fetched suicide, and that could have been at least 15 years ago, so Yahoo! has some catching up to do!
What about?:
Trending: Winston Churchill
Leading to a report that scientists in Taiwan, who stole tissue samples from a laboratory in the University of Oxford, are trying to clone his brain...
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27 January
Well, I know that using that qualification to the title, to give the source, makes it sound as though there is some doubt about 'the message'...
But I can state that I have no reason to think that Cher is dead, so why - maybe in some metaphorical sense? - I need to be told otherwise in this so-called 'Trending' feature at the top of the Yahoo! e-mail inbox is beyond me!
Think what one may of Celine Dion (and, sadly, I don't like something in the quality of her voice), I am reminded of seeing a headline to a newspaper (or magazine) in a French channel port, many years ago, which promised a report on 'her incredible suicide'.
It was merely, though, a 'career suicide', where the publication was putting the case for (or against) some decision - becoming an astronaut, or following Glenda Jackson into Parliament - that might have been thought to be the death of her work as a singer. A pretty far-fetched suicide, and that could have been at least 15 years ago, so Yahoo! has some catching up to do!
What about?:
Trending: Winston Churchill
Leading to a report that scientists in Taiwan, who stole tissue samples from a laboratory in the University of Oxford, are trying to clone his brain...
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Thursday 26 January 2012
Helium Kid splits up from Dolphin
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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27 January
There seems to be a fair bit of Internet reporting of this divorce at the moment (whether there is any interest, I do not know, and have followed none of the 'links'*): I had heard of one party (and even heard some music some time), but the other, patent anagram Heidi Klum**, was a bit of a mystery:
Not now - and there she has the advantage over me, because, to judge from the 'thumbnails' (do we get this jargon from photography?), she bears a resemblance to a friend's wife, and he is not in the music business, whereas I do not. (The page of search-results also called her 'mother-of-four' Klum.)
In her youth (if she went by anything resembling that name), did peers jeer at her with Hi, mule kid!, approach with Hi! Like mud?, with mud-pies at the ready, or, with Hi! Milk due!, dive on her breasts?
Or did they keep invoking that device of incoherence, whenever it was sticky, and exclaim Oh, it's - like - humid...?***
End-notes
* I imagine that we have this terminology from the people of the time in universities in the States who made connections between their computers, although some will see it as more, at that stage, to do with the US military.
** Yahoo! also wants to lure me into finding out about another woman, a red ranch serf who goes under the name Crash Redfern (loads of 'em in the LA phone-book, beloved of Woody...).
*** Of course, it's quite possible that none of this happened, not even in vivid, frightening dreams, and that she wowed her contemporaries with her nascent skills as a [whatever she's famous for - to be completed, NB not mother of four at that stage].
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
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27 January
There seems to be a fair bit of Internet reporting of this divorce at the moment (whether there is any interest, I do not know, and have followed none of the 'links'*): I had heard of one party (and even heard some music some time), but the other, patent anagram Heidi Klum**, was a bit of a mystery:
Not now - and there she has the advantage over me, because, to judge from the 'thumbnails' (do we get this jargon from photography?), she bears a resemblance to a friend's wife, and he is not in the music business, whereas I do not. (The page of search-results also called her 'mother-of-four' Klum.)
In her youth (if she went by anything resembling that name), did peers jeer at her with Hi, mule kid!, approach with Hi! Like mud?, with mud-pies at the ready, or, with Hi! Milk due!, dive on her breasts?
Or did they keep invoking that device of incoherence, whenever it was sticky, and exclaim Oh, it's - like - humid...?***
End-notes
* I imagine that we have this terminology from the people of the time in universities in the States who made connections between their computers, although some will see it as more, at that stage, to do with the US military.
** Yahoo! also wants to lure me into finding out about another woman, a red ranch serf who goes under the name Crash Redfern (loads of 'em in the LA phone-book, beloved of Woody...).
*** Of course, it's quite possible that none of this happened, not even in vivid, frightening dreams, and that she wowed her contemporaries with her nascent skills as a [whatever she's famous for - to be completed, NB not mother of four at that stage].
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The Future or How do you choose a satisying film? (Part 3)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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26 January
A contact in the film world and I are agreed about Peter Bradshaw (we both experienced the so-called Tartan Error, I mean Terror, event at last year's Festival - http://www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk/films/2011/the-tartan-terror-hamish-mcalpine-in-conversation/ - and both walked out): Bradshaw has, perhaps not single handedly, talked up The Artist into a frenzy of screenings to cope with the demand.
Rule of thumb, then:
Bradshaw commends, run the other way! - fast: since you can run, but you can't hide, etc.
Not that it was at all excessive to say that he couldn't wait until he could see it again, but it adds a certain punch to the poster - and, in whomever's eyes, though it's only January (unless the person or organ meant December), it's 'film of the year'. A huge debate could ensue about whether critics 'talk things up', and, if so, why, but it won't...
I may already have said so, but - and admittedly out of context, as pure music, as which (for me) it failed (the Birdy album, which I revisited last night, did not) - I heard a number from The Artist, played on Radio 3 last week, and was not just a little (probably, 'take it or leave it' territory), but deeply unimpressed: I should check, as I didn't register at the details, who wrote the score**.
The inverse of the law (Bradshaw despises, sell your home to get a ticket) doesn't follow, but Physics tells us that it is unlikely to, quite apart from Logic and its famous 'excluded middle'***.
For those who can bear more, there is now more at Part 4 (and the promise that Part 5 will be the end of it!)...
End-notes
* I have since revisited the Growing Up album, and other numbers from when Gabriel's were PG1 to PG4 (although PG1, despite the infectious Solsbury Hill, is not one that I want to have as a CD), via the DVD of the Growing Up tour, and will have more to say...
** Courtesy of that noble (if not infallible) resource IMDb, I can report that it was one Ludovic Bourse (more at http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0099753/), whose credentials, somehow, don't - on the basis of past film-work - compellingly strike me****.
*** Kelly Brook®, allegedly, has things to share about how to exclude that pesky middle, but, if so, she can start her own blog! (Having said that, if she were to drop me a line about Bird's use of the diminished seventh (or, even the Dorian mode), I'd make time to read it.)
**** Some, probably redundantly, would have finished that phrase with 'as impressive'...
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26 January
A contact in the film world and I are agreed about Peter Bradshaw (we both experienced the so-called Tartan Error, I mean Terror, event at last year's Festival - http://www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk/films/2011/the-tartan-terror-hamish-mcalpine-in-conversation/ - and both walked out): Bradshaw has, perhaps not single handedly, talked up The Artist into a frenzy of screenings to cope with the demand.
Rule of thumb, then:
Bradshaw commends, run the other way! - fast: since you can run, but you can't hide, etc.
Not that it was at all excessive to say that he couldn't wait until he could see it again, but it adds a certain punch to the poster - and, in whomever's eyes, though it's only January (unless the person or organ meant December), it's 'film of the year'. A huge debate could ensue about whether critics 'talk things up', and, if so, why, but it won't...
I may already have said so, but - and admittedly out of context, as pure music, as which (for me) it failed (the Birdy album, which I revisited last night, did not) - I heard a number from The Artist, played on Radio 3 last week, and was not just a little (probably, 'take it or leave it' territory), but deeply unimpressed: I should check, as I didn't register at the details, who wrote the score**.
The inverse of the law (Bradshaw despises, sell your home to get a ticket) doesn't follow, but Physics tells us that it is unlikely to, quite apart from Logic and its famous 'excluded middle'***.
For those who can bear more, there is now more at Part 4 (and the promise that Part 5 will be the end of it!)...
End-notes
* I have since revisited the Growing Up album, and other numbers from when Gabriel's were PG1 to PG4 (although PG1, despite the infectious Solsbury Hill, is not one that I want to have as a CD), via the DVD of the Growing Up tour, and will have more to say...
** Courtesy of that noble (if not infallible) resource IMDb, I can report that it was one Ludovic Bourse (more at http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0099753/), whose credentials, somehow, don't - on the basis of past film-work - compellingly strike me****.
*** Kelly Brook®, allegedly, has things to share about how to exclude that pesky middle, but, if so, she can start her own blog! (Having said that, if she were to drop me a line about Bird's use of the diminished seventh (or, even the Dorian mode), I'd make time to read it.)
**** Some, probably redundantly, would have finished that phrase with 'as impressive'...
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Wednesday 25 January 2012
Pregnant Amanda Holden has been admitted to hospital (according to Yahoo!®) (2)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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26 January
Now it's:
Demi Moore rushed to hospital*
According to AOL® (but presumably not the same hospital - although, for things of a more psychological nature in the UK, the types of Holden and Moore were once thought to favour recuperating in The Nunnery (or whatever that place was called))
That said (whatever it was), I am fairly sure that there might have been some 'story' about Moore being pregnant, too - someone, at any rate, in that sort of league:
No, I do tell a lie, it was some postulation to that effect about darling Jennifer Aniston (who, unless she cultivated it (and even then), must want to vomit about being called Jen all the time).
As to Moore's fecundity, fertility or carrying - now or at any time - of foetuses, I am quite ignorant! (As who is not?, some would say.)
* I have since found her described as 'the raven-haired beauty' (in the NY Daily News), but, in the same article on the Internet (and very pleasingly, I am sure), also as 'the child of two alcoholics [...] whisked to a nearby hospital'.
It appears, at least, that she does have have a 23-year-old daughter, who 'rushed' there, and was 'photographed looking visibly distraught' - presumably, if she had been looking invisibly distraught, the poor photographers would have had a problem (and would have had to leave it to the named Frank Digiacomo and Nancy Dillon to spin the line of 'putting a brave face on it, but she must have been worried').
I imagine that it is also to be supposed that she was not playing some role of appearing what, in fact, she was not, viz.distraught.
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26 January
Now it's:
Demi Moore rushed to hospital*
According to AOL® (but presumably not the same hospital - although, for things of a more psychological nature in the UK, the types of Holden and Moore were once thought to favour recuperating in The Nunnery (or whatever that place was called))
That said (whatever it was), I am fairly sure that there might have been some 'story' about Moore being pregnant, too - someone, at any rate, in that sort of league:
No, I do tell a lie, it was some postulation to that effect about darling Jennifer Aniston (who, unless she cultivated it (and even then), must want to vomit about being called Jen all the time).
As to Moore's fecundity, fertility or carrying - now or at any time - of foetuses, I am quite ignorant! (As who is not?, some would say.)
* I have since found her described as 'the raven-haired beauty' (in the NY Daily News), but, in the same article on the Internet (and very pleasingly, I am sure), also as 'the child of two alcoholics [...] whisked to a nearby hospital'.
It appears, at least, that she does have have a 23-year-old daughter, who 'rushed' there, and was 'photographed looking visibly distraught' - presumably, if she had been looking invisibly distraught, the poor photographers would have had a problem (and would have had to leave it to the named Frank Digiacomo and Nancy Dillon to spin the line of 'putting a brave face on it, but she must have been worried').
I imagine that it is also to be supposed that she was not playing some role of appearing what, in fact, she was not, viz.distraught.
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Blogging is infectious
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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26 January
I have mentioned Writer's Rest already.
Time does not permit a link to those postings to this blog, but here is my latest comment in the debate on cars that drive themselves:
I’m not sure that it is that [sc. that technology fails, because it is only as good as its human designers]:
Someone might be able to say what it is that makes my PC sometimes crash or go into a loop, and I’m not convinced that it is (directly) attributable to having been designed by human-beings – computer systems do just fail in ways that, as far as I am aware, are not predictable.
(Or, maybe, not worth predicting at the cost that would be attached: there’s always a cost, just as, if the maker of the PC, laptop or BlackBerry has skimped, we pay the price as the person using it, especially if we do not lose the simple time to try again, but data, or the chance to bid for that item at the last moment on eBay – the small fatalist in me then invokes You weren’t meant to win it?.)
After all, I believe both that the Apollo missions ran the flight software in multiple parallel because of this very problem, and that, because I understand jumbos that take off and land themselves have the same ‘redundancy’ with which we are, maybe, more familiar from the 32x oversampling of our CD-player (which still fails, but maybe for other reasons, such as a dirty lens), the problem is inherent and has not been solved.
Except by the very simple expedient of rebooting, and hoping that you can carry on, with whatever autosave routine was invoked in those crucial closing nanoseconds…
More available at Writer's Rest...
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26 January
I have mentioned Writer's Rest already.
Time does not permit a link to those postings to this blog, but here is my latest comment in the debate on cars that drive themselves:
I’m not sure that it is that [sc. that technology fails, because it is only as good as its human designers]:
Someone might be able to say what it is that makes my PC sometimes crash or go into a loop, and I’m not convinced that it is (directly) attributable to having been designed by human-beings – computer systems do just fail in ways that, as far as I am aware, are not predictable.
(Or, maybe, not worth predicting at the cost that would be attached: there’s always a cost, just as, if the maker of the PC, laptop or BlackBerry has skimped, we pay the price as the person using it, especially if we do not lose the simple time to try again, but data, or the chance to bid for that item at the last moment on eBay – the small fatalist in me then invokes You weren’t meant to win it?.)
After all, I believe both that the Apollo missions ran the flight software in multiple parallel because of this very problem, and that, because I understand jumbos that take off and land themselves have the same ‘redundancy’ with which we are, maybe, more familiar from the 32x oversampling of our CD-player (which still fails, but maybe for other reasons, such as a dirty lens), the problem is inherent and has not been solved.
Except by the very simple expedient of rebooting, and hoping that you can carry on, with whatever autosave routine was invoked in those crucial closing nanoseconds…
More available at Writer's Rest...
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The Future or How do you choose a satisying film? (Part 2)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
26 January
Take Birdy (1984), for instance. What decided me to see it, when it was released?
* Well, it had not been created then, so it was not the phenomenon of Nicholas Cage. (For some, it might even have started with cult film Rumble Fish (1984), for others, maybe, with - also from that year of release - The Cotton Club.)
* For me, it also was not knowing of the actor playing Birdy, Matthew Modine (born in 1959, and so older than Cage, although their film careers have run in parallel). Amongst the things that one knows Modine's acting from, he has also appeared in shorts such as:
§ Jesus was a Commie (2011) - perhaps balancing up playing Jesus in Mary (2005), which, although it looks crazy, perhaps isn't that interesting, and anyway passed me by.
§ Santa, the Fascist Years (2008)*
§ I Think I Thought (2008)
* Alan Parker's work, on the other hand, one already had reason to respect and expect things from (e.g. Bugsy Malone (1976) and Midnight Express (1978)).
* I am sure, also, that Peter Gabriel, who produced the music, was already in my consciousness - in my opinion, the CD of the soundtrack (even if one knows nothing about the film) is a worthwhile Gabriel album in its own right, well worth taking a chance on if found somewhere (which I never have, since buying my copy, and I have no idea of availability / price).
For the film itself, along with the flight sequences, it is truly remarkable!
* The album's insert has an image that I believe to be a still from the film - disturbing, haunting, as the film poster itself was.
* And last, by no means (as one has to say) least, would have been that write-up of around 140 words, on the basis of skim-reading which I have almost exclusively decided what to watch in the independent cinema world for the last eight years.
That had, for a long while, been my practice, prior to the days of seeing Kevin Spacey talk on t.v. about K-PAX (2001), I think both Matt Damon** and Ben Afleck Good Will Hunting (1997), and Geoffrey Rush Shine (1996) - none of which, I have to say, I even slightly regret having seen.
Possibly it was the trailer that led me up the garden path in those days (a bit like the film's pig), but, in any event, I was not spared Michael Palin and co. in what I found the disappointingly dire A Private Function (1984).
But there are write-ups in which one can have (or feel) confidence, and there is the one (from a local free paper) from which I quote a few choice phrases (or, in one case, whole sentences). (I don't need to identify the film, which becomes strikingly obvious - even if some of the things written didn't occur to the writer - or compiler - as such to the reader.)
in 1979, grocer's daughter Thatcher became the UK's first - and to date only - female prime minister
the film focuses on Thatcher's rise to power, right through to the present day
There are, however, a few flaws. The story contains a few boring scenes and the flashback sequences are a little muddled in places.
A great back-up cast includes Richard E. Grant, Jim Broadbent [etc.]
Lack of energy alone at this moment prevents me from scorning the infelicities, but:
Would you want to trust this 'review' to guide you on your way, either into the auditorium with Meryl, or off to catch Luc Besson's The Lady (2011)?
And we're not done with how The Future (2011) was falsely set up, or what one might make of this new Thatcher voice - concerning which Part 3 might have things to say...
End-notes
* Why am I, for some reason, reminded of the notorious home-movies for the private consumption of a certain Disney?
** Of whom, of course, more elsewhere at 'You're now as famous as Matt Damon!', and even New allegations: Matt Damon opens my post, which have now become compulsory reading in the blog world (and, no, I won't be calling it the blogosphere - in my lifetime).
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
26 January
Take Birdy (1984), for instance. What decided me to see it, when it was released?
* Well, it had not been created then, so it was not the phenomenon of Nicholas Cage. (For some, it might even have started with cult film Rumble Fish (1984), for others, maybe, with - also from that year of release - The Cotton Club.)
* For me, it also was not knowing of the actor playing Birdy, Matthew Modine (born in 1959, and so older than Cage, although their film careers have run in parallel). Amongst the things that one knows Modine's acting from, he has also appeared in shorts such as:
§ Jesus was a Commie (2011) - perhaps balancing up playing Jesus in Mary (2005), which, although it looks crazy, perhaps isn't that interesting, and anyway passed me by.
§ Santa, the Fascist Years (2008)*
§ I Think I Thought (2008)
* Alan Parker's work, on the other hand, one already had reason to respect and expect things from (e.g. Bugsy Malone (1976) and Midnight Express (1978)).
* I am sure, also, that Peter Gabriel, who produced the music, was already in my consciousness - in my opinion, the CD of the soundtrack (even if one knows nothing about the film) is a worthwhile Gabriel album in its own right, well worth taking a chance on if found somewhere (which I never have, since buying my copy, and I have no idea of availability / price).
For the film itself, along with the flight sequences, it is truly remarkable!
* The album's insert has an image that I believe to be a still from the film - disturbing, haunting, as the film poster itself was.
* And last, by no means (as one has to say) least, would have been that write-up of around 140 words, on the basis of skim-reading which I have almost exclusively decided what to watch in the independent cinema world for the last eight years.
That had, for a long while, been my practice, prior to the days of seeing Kevin Spacey talk on t.v. about K-PAX (2001), I think both Matt Damon** and Ben Afleck Good Will Hunting (1997), and Geoffrey Rush Shine (1996) - none of which, I have to say, I even slightly regret having seen.
Possibly it was the trailer that led me up the garden path in those days (a bit like the film's pig), but, in any event, I was not spared Michael Palin and co. in what I found the disappointingly dire A Private Function (1984).
But there are write-ups in which one can have (or feel) confidence, and there is the one (from a local free paper) from which I quote a few choice phrases (or, in one case, whole sentences). (I don't need to identify the film, which becomes strikingly obvious - even if some of the things written didn't occur to the writer - or compiler - as such to the reader.)
in 1979, grocer's daughter Thatcher became the UK's first - and to date only - female prime minister
the film focuses on Thatcher's rise to power, right through to the present day
There are, however, a few flaws. The story contains a few boring scenes and the flashback sequences are a little muddled in places.
A great back-up cast includes Richard E. Grant, Jim Broadbent [etc.]
Lack of energy alone at this moment prevents me from scorning the infelicities, but:
Would you want to trust this 'review' to guide you on your way, either into the auditorium with Meryl, or off to catch Luc Besson's The Lady (2011)?
And we're not done with how The Future (2011) was falsely set up, or what one might make of this new Thatcher voice - concerning which Part 3 might have things to say...
End-notes
* Why am I, for some reason, reminded of the notorious home-movies for the private consumption of a certain Disney?
** Of whom, of course, more elsewhere at 'You're now as famous as Matt Damon!', and even New allegations: Matt Damon opens my post, which have now become compulsory reading in the blog world (and, no, I won't be calling it the blogosphere - in my lifetime).
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Tuesday 24 January 2012
Tired old nag of a film (2)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
25 January
And the amazing thing is that Peter Mullan (who could have done with being given a lot more to do in Trainspotting (1996) than the role of Mother Superior) is in this opus:
Some may not know his name, though - whatever one thinks of its ruling idea - he added immensely (as did his opposite number, Olivia Colman) to Paddy Considine's conception of Tyrannosaur (2011), but, for me, this is almost as incongruous as realizing that Robert De Niro really was playing the part of Tuttle in Brazil (1985)*!
* I haven't seen it since, and should, as it is a great film - than which many a Gilliam production is a pale (or very pale) lamp**.
I also must have known at the time, but I have just been reminded, that he had the great Tom Stoppard alongside to temper his inclinations on the writing side - I wonder if anything reveals how those two got on (other than in the finished film)...
Interesting also, I think, that Terry Jones was accepted as the director of the Python films (more or less, give or take a few grumbles about his perfectionism regarding certain aspects of a take, whilst ignoring what others sometimes thought more significant). Which could have been because Gilliam was in so many ways in a different relation to the others or that he simply had not developed in that way - not, at any rate, until his contribution to The Meaning of Life (1983).
** And I do not know whether I am being unfair to Gilliam for his direction, or to Robin Williams for that certain worthiness that he seems to have in all his acting (or to both), but The Fisher King (1991), for whatever it could have been without, sadly gave rise to a feeling akin to having gorged on too many Easter eggs (when that time of the year, marking Christ's death, necessarily had a highly chocolatey character, such that one could easily do it)!
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
25 January
And the amazing thing is that Peter Mullan (who could have done with being given a lot more to do in Trainspotting (1996) than the role of Mother Superior) is in this opus:
Some may not know his name, though - whatever one thinks of its ruling idea - he added immensely (as did his opposite number, Olivia Colman) to Paddy Considine's conception of Tyrannosaur (2011), but, for me, this is almost as incongruous as realizing that Robert De Niro really was playing the part of Tuttle in Brazil (1985)*!
* I haven't seen it since, and should, as it is a great film - than which many a Gilliam production is a pale (or very pale) lamp**.
I also must have known at the time, but I have just been reminded, that he had the great Tom Stoppard alongside to temper his inclinations on the writing side - I wonder if anything reveals how those two got on (other than in the finished film)...
Interesting also, I think, that Terry Jones was accepted as the director of the Python films (more or less, give or take a few grumbles about his perfectionism regarding certain aspects of a take, whilst ignoring what others sometimes thought more significant). Which could have been because Gilliam was in so many ways in a different relation to the others or that he simply had not developed in that way - not, at any rate, until his contribution to The Meaning of Life (1983).
** And I do not know whether I am being unfair to Gilliam for his direction, or to Robin Williams for that certain worthiness that he seems to have in all his acting (or to both), but The Fisher King (1991), for whatever it could have been without, sadly gave rise to a feeling akin to having gorged on too many Easter eggs (when that time of the year, marking Christ's death, necessarily had a highly chocolatey character, such that one could easily do it)!
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
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