More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
5 February
Not for the first time (By way of apology for never reviewing Sarah's Key (2)), I find Philip French's reviewing not just perverse, but wilfully at odds with the nature of the matter about which he is meant to be informing me. In the case that I shall go on to discuss, I think that it is, actually, just plain laziness.
In his review of In Glorious Technicolor, the book that Francine Stock brought out last year, in The Guardian, French takes much time in seven paragraphs not talking about the book at all (or, at any rate, telling us where Stock and her collaborator Stephen Hughes, both on The Film Programme (on Radio 4), and on the idea for the book and its content, are wrong to think that their book is needed):
* Paragraph 1 - Responses to films from Gorky and Kipling - both affected by, and writing about, films
* Paragraph 2 - Reminding us first, perhaps unnecessarily (and maybe even in a snobbish way!), that Stock is 'a former BBC TV current affairs reporter' (well, yes, but she left Newsnight in 1993, and people such as Paxman and she were by no means just reporters), French sets out his stall about what he thinks the book to be, and brings in Hughes*, before a quotation of more than thirty words** - this paragraph is where, as I will go on to say, French misses what Stock says that the book is
* Paragraph 3 - An exposition of the structure of the book (after French seems to have taken trouble to pin down another connection (this time in the Prologue), that of the evacuation of a cinema during Stock seeing Chinatown (1974), to the Guildford pub bombings, whereas Stock just mentions, to give necessary context, that she was sixteen when there was a bomb in 'an adjacent pub' (Prologue, p. 3), French has seemingly gone overdrive on being detective) - Stock takes three key films per decade for ten decades (and French cannot help reminding us, in comparison, how many films he has seen: 'a total of 30 pictures, the number shown nowadays in an average month to the London critics', but surely not pulling rank?)***
* Paragraphs 4 and 5 - An opening statement that Stock and Hughes are wrong, but nothing more about the book, just two paragraphs about what others have thought and written (surely not showing off learning, though!)
* Paragraph 6 - A continuation of this digression halfway down this paragraph eventually brings us back to the book, or, rather, how it appears and what is shown on the dust-jacket****), and some anecdote that Stock appears to have related about being at a screening of Avatar with James Cameron***** (although, flicking through the section under that title, I could not find it ('2000s Turning Inwards' , pp. 304 - 311))
* Paragraph 7 - A closing paragraph (complete with a terminal joke about the proof copy - how 'protagonist' became 'photagonist', but, to French's disappointment, was corrected, as it redeemed this: 'Stock does, however, repeat the canard that Clark Gable had a catastrophic effect on the underwear industry during the depression, when he appeared without a vest in It Happened One Night******), which otherwise imparts a little damning with faint praise:
Still, there is much to enjoy in this book, and nuggets of information on recent cinematic developments to be mined.
This, along with the following, is all that French wants to say that is positive:
[... D]iscursive discussions of her three chosen films, which are never less than intelligent, though rarely more than perfunctory until the last couple of decades
'Never less than intelligent' - what is that? Irony?
Right at the outset, French had tried to pin on Stock 'borrowing the title from Martin Scorsese's film centenary documentary and book, "a personal journey"', but, as ever (never judge a book by its cover, I mean dust-jacket), he is ascribing to her what does not appear in the book itself.
Even if there were anything distinctive (which there is not) about the phrase that he means, he is quoting from the inside front of the dust-jacket again:
In this fascinating, entertaining and illuminating book Francine Stock takes us on a personal journey through a glorious century of cinema, showing in vivid detail how film both reflects and makes our world.
A 'personal journey' with which French beats her is not even Stock's claim. Yes, she does say 'This book is an attempt to record snatches of the conversation that has been taking place between us and film for the past hundred years. It is also a very personal contribution to that discussion', and she does also say 'The reason for taking this idiosyncratic journey through a century of film is precisely to provoke argument and further exploration' (both from Prologue, p. 5), but that is nothing to do with Scorsese.
French, who too much limits himself to the contents of this Prologue, when not studying the design and wording of the dust-jacket (matters that, rather naively, he imputes to Stock), wants to say (in his third paragraph) 'In the event, it is not a deeply personal book' (before being personal and delving into where and when Stock saw Chinatown, as mentioned above), and 'And there is little that is idiosyncratic about her choice of films'. So he missed the paragraph above, where she wrote:
This book is neither a comprehensive history of cinema nor an attempt to extend the sometimes daunting territory of film studies. [...] The films selected here may not necessarily be the best of their kind or even personal favourites, although many are. Rather, they are films that exert a particular power [...]
So, no claim that the choice of film was idiosyncratic, no claim that this was a personal journey, and a supposed review that spends at least half of our time in reading it in talking about what French thinks that the book should have been. Others must judge how much he actually read, but he's certainly pretty familiar with that dust-jacket and the book's five-page Prologue at least...
For those whose attention span isn't up to Dickensian convolution*******, here is a summary of the above...
End-notes
* Whom he says is 'named as co-author on the title page but not on the cover', whereas the copy that I have, a first edition (not a proof copy), quite clearly states 'with Stephen Hughes' under Stock's name and in a type-size, even if the words already were not, that is inconsistent with an acknowledgement of co-authorship (and which is not claimed in the usual assertion on the imprint-page).
** The quotation is 'We had both searched without much luck for writing on the way cinema intersects with what you might distinguish separately as life: to us it seemed an endlessly fascinating and important aspect of cinema's history'.
Except that those exact words do not seem to appear in the book, unless I am mistaken, but rather 'How could something as patently artificial as film seem so real? We all know that what we see on a screen is not real and yet we experience it so intensely that it provokes a physical response. Might there be particular effects on our behaviour - both public and private? Ways in which we had become indoctrinated by this most seductive medium? Researching for a series on film some years ago, we hunted in vain for a book that tackled these ideas' (Prologue, p. 4).
*** However, she talks about much else, because the two-column index runs to fifteen pages, and talks about other films and their actors, directors, cinematographers and the like in relation to them.
**** With the issue of Hughes being co-author, French was talking about 'the cover', but he has now found the right word.
***** With what accuracy I do not know, French asserts that 'There are more references to James Cameron than to any other moviemaker'. (In the index, The Terminator (1984), Titanic (1997), and Avatar (2009) are all referenced, but only the last of these has its own titled section.)
****** Whether French took that point of criticism just from the inside front of the dust-jacket is open to question (and how a typo, for which Stock would have no responsibility, could make up for the offence to French's sensibilities is unclear), because it appears in context, in the section on Annie Hall (1977), in paragraphs about fashion and films ('1970s Just when you thought it was safe...', pp. 223 - 227).
******* In other words, a reference to the posting Young 'lack attention for Dickens' (according to Yahoo! News).
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Saturday 4 February 2012
Eric Morecambe and the evils of e-mail (2)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
5 February
I was going to come back to this topic of Eric Morecambe, and someone - to-day or yesterday - has been looking, so here goes:
A good deal of Eric Morecambe's stage business, however much of it was actually worked out by Eddie Braben* (rather than, spontaneously or otherwise, by him - as Ernie Wise made a fine art of looking taken aback and confused), revolved around the incongruous: in the Cleopatra play (as in every one of Ernie's plays), although we are in Ancient Egypt, his signature spectacles and no less sock-suspenders are undeniable and out of place.
With the item thrown into the air and caught in the bag, I believed - and still like to believe - that what is tossed up is real, but only leaves a trace by the noise that it makes entering the bag.
There are levels on which e-mail (or a text-message) isn't real, but it betrays its presence in the list of the contents of one's inbox. The phantom e-mail, the one that one could almost swear that one had written (or that one can swear did not reach one's inbox), but it just doesn't show up in the 'sent' folder, is not so far distant from Eric's stone - or coin.
Another incongruous aspect of e-mail is that a person can get so familiar, in a way that - one hopes - he or she wouldn't think (or dare?) to do face to face: e-mailers can burn their bridges, nail colours to their mast, or take pot-shots in a way that, if one could be divorced from the person to whom their messages are directed, would make one wish that they had, instead, made an about face, abandoned ship or sheathed their weapon.
In a way, these hostile - or unexpectedly amorous - exchanges seem, to some people's mentality, to have a different status (and that precisely because they are deemed to happen in that non-existent reality that some call cyberspace). It is as if, in due course, meeting the person to whom the things were written will somehow erase, unwrite, them, or as if both were undisclosed players in an on-line game who encountered each other. Or it's just a bit like - deliberately, who knows? - getting drunk and letting rip.
For what it's worth, my practice is to treat every e-mail that I write as if it were a letter - I remind myself that it could have the same consequences as a letter, and that it should only contain what I would be happy for a letter to contain, and I do so by pausing
* To put the date at the top, and
* Then by addressing the intended recipient properly: 'Dear Helen' or 'Hi, John!'
Whether I am right about the effect that this has (and whether it would work for anyone else - anyone else who hates getting an e-mail (or text-message) that could have been meant for a different person), I do not know, but I do it.
It is a gesture, just like hoping that the stone - or coin - that cannot be seen will land in my waiting paper-bag...
End-notes
* Whose eighty-second birthday falls on Hallowe'en.
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5 February
I was going to come back to this topic of Eric Morecambe, and someone - to-day or yesterday - has been looking, so here goes:
A good deal of Eric Morecambe's stage business, however much of it was actually worked out by Eddie Braben* (rather than, spontaneously or otherwise, by him - as Ernie Wise made a fine art of looking taken aback and confused), revolved around the incongruous: in the Cleopatra play (as in every one of Ernie's plays), although we are in Ancient Egypt, his signature spectacles and no less sock-suspenders are undeniable and out of place.
With the item thrown into the air and caught in the bag, I believed - and still like to believe - that what is tossed up is real, but only leaves a trace by the noise that it makes entering the bag.
There are levels on which e-mail (or a text-message) isn't real, but it betrays its presence in the list of the contents of one's inbox. The phantom e-mail, the one that one could almost swear that one had written (or that one can swear did not reach one's inbox), but it just doesn't show up in the 'sent' folder, is not so far distant from Eric's stone - or coin.
Another incongruous aspect of e-mail is that a person can get so familiar, in a way that - one hopes - he or she wouldn't think (or dare?) to do face to face: e-mailers can burn their bridges, nail colours to their mast, or take pot-shots in a way that, if one could be divorced from the person to whom their messages are directed, would make one wish that they had, instead, made an about face, abandoned ship or sheathed their weapon.
In a way, these hostile - or unexpectedly amorous - exchanges seem, to some people's mentality, to have a different status (and that precisely because they are deemed to happen in that non-existent reality that some call cyberspace). It is as if, in due course, meeting the person to whom the things were written will somehow erase, unwrite, them, or as if both were undisclosed players in an on-line game who encountered each other. Or it's just a bit like - deliberately, who knows? - getting drunk and letting rip.
For what it's worth, my practice is to treat every e-mail that I write as if it were a letter - I remind myself that it could have the same consequences as a letter, and that it should only contain what I would be happy for a letter to contain, and I do so by pausing
* To put the date at the top, and
* Then by addressing the intended recipient properly: 'Dear Helen' or 'Hi, John!'
Whether I am right about the effect that this has (and whether it would work for anyone else - anyone else who hates getting an e-mail (or text-message) that could have been meant for a different person), I do not know, but I do it.
It is a gesture, just like hoping that the stone - or coin - that cannot be seen will land in my waiting paper-bag...
End-notes
* Whose eighty-second birthday falls on Hallowe'en.
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Friday 3 February 2012
Another successful search with Google®
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
4 February
It couldn't just have been hearing Mary Ann Kennedy to-night presenting a largely live show, the last of those that have been on during the week, from events at Celtic Connections (in Glasgow), but I was reminded a little while back of the name Shona Spurtle.
Now, I knew perfectly well what the name meant (to me) - and I will wager that it doesn't mean a whole lot to many others - but I didn't know if it was spelt Spirtle (as I don't remember paying any attention to when I could have seen it written). So, rather than putting into my search-box the name of where Shona comes from, I put in that spelling - setting a challenge.
Obscure though it is - but I might, although I doubt it, find a plethora of fan web-sites in my search-results - Google® knew what I meant, and has taken me straight there:
I now know that there is a clip on YouTube, and that someone liked the name enough to have it as a user-name to comment on a story connected with the Scottish Parliament.
Amazon®, ever ready to please, even claims to have a web-page called www.amazon.co.uk/spurtle, which won't be the laugh that I hope for it to be, as I think that I have clicked such advertising links before...
No, it turns out that I am wrong, for, although it looked like a page of ball-point pens, it is some sort of culinary stick - it could be a magic-wand, for all that I know! - in connection with porridge (the making of, I have to think, as I have no conception how (or why) one could eat that dish with something looking like this).
In any case, they go for nearly £5.00 (well, more than that with postage - is there a standard Amazon® charge for a spurtle?), the best ones boast of being made of beech* (how that can matter to anything?), and you can even buy a box of six. Plus there's a hardback book, but it's miserably not available, called Mrs Spurtle goes South, which, I think, precedes this other appearance as a name.
Bizarrely, there is even a double of the Wikipedia® web-page for the vehicle in which our Mrs (or Ms) Spurtle appeared. It is called Wikipeetia, and it claims to exist solely because 'you spelled someting wrong'**, so:
For your amusement, we've also included a copy of the entire Wikipedia article misspelled
Helpfully, as I am obviously a remedial case for making such an error (?), there is a link that will take me where I can learn to spell English, or just to the unprocessed Wikipedia® piece.
As yet, though, nothing to lure me to buy a recording that shows Siobhan Redmond's exploits as Shona, but she may have gone on to use that 'handle' on Arsebook® and Twitter®, both of which claim that Shona has a presence.
No, again I speak too soon (what a rich vein this is: or is that the - I kid you not! - Glayva talking?), because I can buy a pirate DVD, and there is a web-site with a quotation (and they don't even know where it's from!), which I shall use by way of an ending of all this - for want of a better word - craic:
You are a waster, Sebastian! You are a lying cheat! You are a fibster, a fabulist, an equivocating shim-shammer, a cousining cardsharp, a pathological mythomaniac, a yarner, a palterer who perjures, a whited sepulchre, a cantering serpent, a rat!
Yes, she likes him!
End-notes
* Then again, it is traditional for wash-backs to be made from pine, and not just any old pine, but Oregon pine. We are talking of - if you know what I'm talking about - a very conservative means of producing a drinkable spirit, where they reproduce the dents in the copper-stills, when they have worn so thin that they need repair.
That said, some have taken the view that this Oregon pine approach adds nothing to the all-important taste (too much liquid in there for too short a time to make a difference - except, perhaps, at the leve of homoeopathy), and have gone for stainless-steel vessels. Which you would have no way of knowing when you buy the product, unless you have visited.)
** This seems a tenuous reason to have gone to the trouble of having such a dual text (even if, in it, for example,the word not is turned into 'nto', in a restless attempt to misspell everything, whereas what is really presented is often enough just a meaningless rearrangement of the letters).
I cannot believe that the reason applies in all cases, since this is not the only time that I have looked at what is just the fourth page of search-results, and I do not reall seeing such a thing, although I am often enough searching for a name precisely because I do not know how it is spelt. However, I shall attempt to find the famous Helen Mirran... Well, it didn't surface in the first hundred search-results, but I now know that 66-year-old Mirren, the famous typing error, has - seemingly by her much-vaunted posing nude - earnt the title of having 'the sexiest body on [the] planet' (according to www.salon.com), and also wants not only to appear in Doctor Who, but to be the first female Doctor***.
*** Doubtless her part-time role appreciating art for MOMA (the Museuem of Modern Art in New York) fits her for such a role (I cannot wait for the first Cubist Doctor Who). In the commentary on a clip that she filmed for the museum, which I might have to resist watching (after such a write-up), we are told:
Truth be told, I’m a huge fan of the dame. In addition to being a fantastic actor, she’s beautiful, smart, and completely unpretentious. She’s an art lover, and she is especially enamored of the pioneering abstract paintings of Vasily Kandinsky, whose work is represented in MoMA’s collection and whose “Four Seasons” were very fortuitously on view on the day of her visit. [...]
Like these amazing works, Helen does not disappoint, and in this interview she talks passionately about her great love of painting—particularly her “lovely friends” the Kandinsky paintings—and about the connections between painting and her work.
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4 February
It couldn't just have been hearing Mary Ann Kennedy to-night presenting a largely live show, the last of those that have been on during the week, from events at Celtic Connections (in Glasgow), but I was reminded a little while back of the name Shona Spurtle.
Now, I knew perfectly well what the name meant (to me) - and I will wager that it doesn't mean a whole lot to many others - but I didn't know if it was spelt Spirtle (as I don't remember paying any attention to when I could have seen it written). So, rather than putting into my search-box the name of where Shona comes from, I put in that spelling - setting a challenge.
Obscure though it is - but I might, although I doubt it, find a plethora of fan web-sites in my search-results - Google® knew what I meant, and has taken me straight there:
I now know that there is a clip on YouTube, and that someone liked the name enough to have it as a user-name to comment on a story connected with the Scottish Parliament.
Amazon®, ever ready to please, even claims to have a web-page called www.amazon.co.uk/spurtle, which won't be the laugh that I hope for it to be, as I think that I have clicked such advertising links before...
No, it turns out that I am wrong, for, although it looked like a page of ball-point pens, it is some sort of culinary stick - it could be a magic-wand, for all that I know! - in connection with porridge (the making of, I have to think, as I have no conception how (or why) one could eat that dish with something looking like this).
In any case, they go for nearly £5.00 (well, more than that with postage - is there a standard Amazon® charge for a spurtle?), the best ones boast of being made of beech* (how that can matter to anything?), and you can even buy a box of six. Plus there's a hardback book, but it's miserably not available, called Mrs Spurtle goes South, which, I think, precedes this other appearance as a name.
Bizarrely, there is even a double of the Wikipedia® web-page for the vehicle in which our Mrs (or Ms) Spurtle appeared. It is called Wikipeetia, and it claims to exist solely because 'you spelled someting wrong'**, so:
For your amusement, we've also included a copy of the entire Wikipedia article misspelled
Helpfully, as I am obviously a remedial case for making such an error (?), there is a link that will take me where I can learn to spell English, or just to the unprocessed Wikipedia® piece.
As yet, though, nothing to lure me to buy a recording that shows Siobhan Redmond's exploits as Shona, but she may have gone on to use that 'handle' on Arsebook® and Twitter®, both of which claim that Shona has a presence.
No, again I speak too soon (what a rich vein this is: or is that the - I kid you not! - Glayva talking?), because I can buy a pirate DVD, and there is a web-site with a quotation (and they don't even know where it's from!), which I shall use by way of an ending of all this - for want of a better word - craic:
You are a waster, Sebastian! You are a lying cheat! You are a fibster, a fabulist, an equivocating shim-shammer, a cousining cardsharp, a pathological mythomaniac, a yarner, a palterer who perjures, a whited sepulchre, a cantering serpent, a rat!
Yes, she likes him!
End-notes
* Then again, it is traditional for wash-backs to be made from pine, and not just any old pine, but Oregon pine. We are talking of - if you know what I'm talking about - a very conservative means of producing a drinkable spirit, where they reproduce the dents in the copper-stills, when they have worn so thin that they need repair.
That said, some have taken the view that this Oregon pine approach adds nothing to the all-important taste (too much liquid in there for too short a time to make a difference - except, perhaps, at the leve of homoeopathy), and have gone for stainless-steel vessels. Which you would have no way of knowing when you buy the product, unless you have visited.)
** This seems a tenuous reason to have gone to the trouble of having such a dual text (even if, in it, for example,the word not is turned into 'nto', in a restless attempt to misspell everything, whereas what is really presented is often enough just a meaningless rearrangement of the letters).
I cannot believe that the reason applies in all cases, since this is not the only time that I have looked at what is just the fourth page of search-results, and I do not reall seeing such a thing, although I am often enough searching for a name precisely because I do not know how it is spelt. However, I shall attempt to find the famous Helen Mirran... Well, it didn't surface in the first hundred search-results, but I now know that 66-year-old Mirren, the famous typing error, has - seemingly by her much-vaunted posing nude - earnt the title of having 'the sexiest body on [the] planet' (according to www.salon.com), and also wants not only to appear in Doctor Who, but to be the first female Doctor***.
*** Doubtless her part-time role appreciating art for MOMA (the Museuem of Modern Art in New York) fits her for such a role (I cannot wait for the first Cubist Doctor Who). In the commentary on a clip that she filmed for the museum, which I might have to resist watching (after such a write-up), we are told:
Truth be told, I’m a huge fan of the dame. In addition to being a fantastic actor, she’s beautiful, smart, and completely unpretentious. She’s an art lover, and she is especially enamored of the pioneering abstract paintings of Vasily Kandinsky, whose work is represented in MoMA’s collection and whose “Four Seasons” were very fortuitously on view on the day of her visit. [...]
Like these amazing works, Helen does not disappoint, and in this interview she talks passionately about her great love of painting—particularly her “lovely friends” the Kandinsky paintings—and about the connections between painting and her work.
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Greetings to The Ukraine!
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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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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(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
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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Shoes and Hitler
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
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?
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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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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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®)
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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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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
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
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
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
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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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
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
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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