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25 February
Of course, some scientists appear to want to link the intake, through the lining of the stomach*, of certain fats, or rather kinds of fats (you know, the hydrogenated ones, where the molecule's carbon atoms (or more of them) have more hydrogen atoms attached to them (or, even, so many that no more will attach)), with nasty things that happen in the rest of the body**.
Some journalists and / or some of the public (some of whom may have read the said journalism) may be persuaded of 'findings' that they would be hard pressed to explain stone sober to you in the market-place of Hartlepool (not the place where they hanged the moneky, but with which it is often confused), even given until closing-time, but never mind:
The new thinking is this. Enjoy all the benefits, just as you did with the cream of tomato soup, of the lovely ingredients of a mixed grill, but, because the skin is a less-permeable membrane than that stomach lining, it will keep all the nasties out, but still feed you And, at the same time, by proton-impelled reverse osmosis all those horrible lipids and triglycerides will be sucked out of your body***.
So empty the contents of your grill-pan into the bath, and sit back to enjoy pork and lamb chops, sausages, steak, mushrooms and tomato**** floating around you and giving you nourishment - and, if you do feel self-conscious, just find the web-cam and put a flannel over it, and pretend that you are Amanda Barrie (in Carry on Cleo (1964), not a later reincarnation).
If you like, you can even whistle - whistling is good for the heart (it traps and eliminates ozone, and all good free radicals run at the sound of it, allowing for natural anti-oxidation). A good thing might be the main theme (leaving out Two-Ton Ted from Toddington) from Ernie, The Fastest Milkman in the West...
End-notes
* In order not to offend, let's call it that, and not 'the gut wall'.
** Which, of course, we won't call 'coronary heart disease'.
*** Rather coarsely, that Fleming's Bond character denigrated the bath, preferring the shower on the basis that he was not immersing himself in his own effluvia. However, he was not far wrong, so it's a good idea - after your pleasurably slow soak, I mean meal - to rinse yourself over (a bit like a finger-bowl).
**** Those, I believe, are traditional elements of such a meal, but notice that I have omitted the chips (or 'the healthy option' of the jacket potato) - you'll need them later, as (purely an illusion) you may still feel hungry: the stomach only knows what the body has taken in, after all, because it knows what you have been chewing and swallowing (the so-called Creosote effect).
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Saturday 25 February 2012
DVD release: Misrepresentation (2009)
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25 February
For more on why what follows was written, go to the web-site of New Empress Magazine:
Myself (in a sideways take on this), I’d watch out for a DVD issue of a film called Misrepresentation (2009).
You won’t happen to remember it being on general release, which is strange, because it is said to star (amongst others) Johnny Depp and Lady Gaga, so you are fascinated.
When, having bought it (in said state of fascination), you finally take it out of the pile of DVDs like mine that you know, if you’re being honest, you’ve got of films that you ‘haven’t quite yet’ caught up with, you won’t be disappointed:
You’ll actually prefer what you see, because it’s that winning team of Hepburn and Grant in Charade (1963).
So, enjoy it, and just thank the kind distributor for your not having to witness the film – if it had been made – that would otherwise be on your screen!
(By the way, more such oddities – sometimes, amid genuine reviews – on the blog at Unofficial Cambridge Film Festival)
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25 February
For more on why what follows was written, go to the web-site of New Empress Magazine:
Myself (in a sideways take on this), I’d watch out for a DVD issue of a film called Misrepresentation (2009).
You won’t happen to remember it being on general release, which is strange, because it is said to star (amongst others) Johnny Depp and Lady Gaga, so you are fascinated.
When, having bought it (in said state of fascination), you finally take it out of the pile of DVDs like mine that you know, if you’re being honest, you’ve got of films that you ‘haven’t quite yet’ caught up with, you won’t be disappointed:
You’ll actually prefer what you see, because it’s that winning team of Hepburn and Grant in Charade (1963).
So, enjoy it, and just thank the kind distributor for your not having to witness the film – if it had been made – that would otherwise be on your screen!
(By the way, more such oddities – sometimes, amid genuine reviews – on the blog at Unofficial Cambridge Film Festival)
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Thursday 23 February 2012
The latest on Dimensions
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24 February
New Empress Magazine's on-line content has beaten me to posting the news that Dimensions (2011) has won a prestigious award, which I had first by e-mail from Ant Neely (with the following image).
NEM's coverage is available at:
http://newempressmagazine.com/2012/02/23/dimensions-has-gort-it-say-boston-sci-fi-judges/#more-2393
Helen Cox, who wrote the item, has - understandably - a soft spot for the film, and may even have seen it as many times as I, since, at NEM's third quiz night - as ever in Bermondsey - there was a screening laid on for the first fifty to sign up as participants (because Shortwave Cinema only seats fifty-two).
She mentions two festivals, but Ant told me a while back that there is a third - looking back, I see that, then, he asked me not to mention it, so I'm not doing so...
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24 February
New Empress Magazine's on-line content has beaten me to posting the news that Dimensions (2011) has won a prestigious award, which I had first by e-mail from Ant Neely (with the following image).
NEM's coverage is available at:
http://newempressmagazine.com/2012/02/23/dimensions-has-gort-it-say-boston-sci-fi-judges/#more-2393
Helen Cox, who wrote the item, has - understandably - a soft spot for the film, and may even have seen it as many times as I, since, at NEM's third quiz night - as ever in Bermondsey - there was a screening laid on for the first fifty to sign up as participants (because Shortwave Cinema only seats fifty-two).
She mentions two festivals, but Ant told me a while back that there is a third - looking back, I see that, then, he asked me not to mention it, so I'm not doing so...
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Letting the music speak for itself
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24 February
That’s what I reckon that Ronald Brautigam was doing in his all-Beethoven programme to-night by not noticeably using rubato*.
Three well-known sonatas (all of them with probably non-Beethovenian nick-names, as publishers then, amongst others, tried to get you to buy something with a catchy title), played quite straight, plus the Variations on the Eroica theme (Op. 35), which I did not know. (In position in Symphony No. 3, assuming that that work came first, the movement is in variation form.)
With all pieces taken from memory, yes he used variations in tempi between sections (as well as between movements), and contrasted quieter moments with louder ones: the so-called Pathétique, for example, opened with the thunder and explosion of what seems to be the fashion to call ‘a gesture’**.
Not strange when, after all, I think of him as playing the forte piano, where the nature of the instrument leads to a certain way of playing. It was therefore a little odd that the first time that I see him is at the keyboard of a grand piano, but he respected the works that he played by not adding expression, but allowing the expressive quality of the writing itself.
Where the benefit of the grand piano did come to the fore under Brautigam’s playing was in the articulation of motifs that would have sounded very different on a forte piano: there was a precision and clarity in the phrasing of significant passages that made sure that everything was audible, and every note had its full weight.
How such a big name gets invited to play must remain a mystery when the venue is distinctly intimate (not to say quirky), but I am an uncomplaining beneficiary, who next week hopes to see Simon Leper as accompanist***…
End-notes
* In the same way as Alexandre Tharaud on Radio 3 recently (on Wednesday last week, in fact), in his all-Scarlatti first half, broadcast live from the Wigmore Hall: his playing had me so captivated that it kept me listening in the car (and outside the intended destination of the pub), for nigh-on half-an-hour after I had first intercepted it (on the way to said pub).
Apart from attempts from someone to intrude into the sequence with the first beat of intended applause, Tharaud played ten sonatas without a break (I have edited 'Kk.' back to 'K.', because, even if it may be the new convention, everyone knows that the K. numbering credits Ralph Kirkpatrick, its inventor): D minor K. 64, D minor K. 9, C major K. 72, C major K. 132, D major K. 29, E major K. 380, A minor K. 3, C major K. 514, F minor K. 481, D minor K. 141.
I think that his choice of piece and their order owes something to Kirkpatrick's famous study of the allegedly 555 sonatas, so I must take a look...
** Just as the art world has come around to talking about painters and the like ‘making a mark’.
*** To whom, you might well ask, but I have not noticed that name alongside his.
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24 February
That’s what I reckon that Ronald Brautigam was doing in his all-Beethoven programme to-night by not noticeably using rubato*.
Three well-known sonatas (all of them with probably non-Beethovenian nick-names, as publishers then, amongst others, tried to get you to buy something with a catchy title), played quite straight, plus the Variations on the Eroica theme (Op. 35), which I did not know. (In position in Symphony No. 3, assuming that that work came first, the movement is in variation form.)
With all pieces taken from memory, yes he used variations in tempi between sections (as well as between movements), and contrasted quieter moments with louder ones: the so-called Pathétique, for example, opened with the thunder and explosion of what seems to be the fashion to call ‘a gesture’**.
Not strange when, after all, I think of him as playing the forte piano, where the nature of the instrument leads to a certain way of playing. It was therefore a little odd that the first time that I see him is at the keyboard of a grand piano, but he respected the works that he played by not adding expression, but allowing the expressive quality of the writing itself.
Where the benefit of the grand piano did come to the fore under Brautigam’s playing was in the articulation of motifs that would have sounded very different on a forte piano: there was a precision and clarity in the phrasing of significant passages that made sure that everything was audible, and every note had its full weight.
How such a big name gets invited to play must remain a mystery when the venue is distinctly intimate (not to say quirky), but I am an uncomplaining beneficiary, who next week hopes to see Simon Leper as accompanist***…
End-notes
* In the same way as Alexandre Tharaud on Radio 3 recently (on Wednesday last week, in fact), in his all-Scarlatti first half, broadcast live from the Wigmore Hall: his playing had me so captivated that it kept me listening in the car (and outside the intended destination of the pub), for nigh-on half-an-hour after I had first intercepted it (on the way to said pub).
Apart from attempts from someone to intrude into the sequence with the first beat of intended applause, Tharaud played ten sonatas without a break (I have edited 'Kk.' back to 'K.', because, even if it may be the new convention, everyone knows that the K. numbering credits Ralph Kirkpatrick, its inventor): D minor K. 64, D minor K. 9, C major K. 72, C major K. 132, D major K. 29, E major K. 380, A minor K. 3, C major K. 514, F minor K. 481, D minor K. 141.
I think that his choice of piece and their order owes something to Kirkpatrick's famous study of the allegedly 555 sonatas, so I must take a look...
** Just as the art world has come around to talking about painters and the like ‘making a mark’.
*** To whom, you might well ask, but I have not noticed that name alongside his.
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Wednesday 22 February 2012
Bath-times with a difference (1)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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22 February
Forget these bath essences, foams or gels that have ingredients such as pepper* or ginseng:
Just slowly add a tin of cream of tomato soup** to your bath as it is running, and, when it is run, and you have lowered yourself into it, luxuriate in the exotic feeling of what being on the hob is like
NB Needless to say, I can't guarantee to have tried this myself, but I'm just waiting for your appreciative comments so that I can deviate from my habitual - and rather tiresome practice - of eating the soup.
The whole affair is perpetuated here, and also here...
End-notes
* NB It is always qualified as 'black pepper' - poor old white pepper has clearly had its day, whatever its uses...
** The brand doesn't matter - you'll take in its healing properties, but not taste it.
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22 February
Forget these bath essences, foams or gels that have ingredients such as pepper* or ginseng:
Just slowly add a tin of cream of tomato soup** to your bath as it is running, and, when it is run, and you have lowered yourself into it, luxuriate in the exotic feeling of what being on the hob is like
NB Needless to say, I can't guarantee to have tried this myself, but I'm just waiting for your appreciative comments so that I can deviate from my habitual - and rather tiresome practice - of eating the soup.
The whole affair is perpetuated here, and also here...
End-notes
* NB It is always qualified as 'black pepper' - poor old white pepper has clearly had its day, whatever its uses...
** The brand doesn't matter - you'll take in its healing properties, but not taste it.
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Non-Euclidean logic (1)
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22 February
They say that No news is good news
So can we infer:
All news is bad news?
They also say that There is no such thing as a free lunch
So does that mean:
Lunch is the Cinderella of meals, in thrall to ugly sisters Breakfast and Dinner*?
And is lunch, on average, the weekday meal least likely not only to be eaten at home, but to have been made there**?
End-notes
* Not to mention the hideous brothers, Supper and Snack.
When is Lunch ever celebrated? We have Dinner in the diner / Nothing could be finer, and Breakfast at Tiffany's, but Lunch is Out In The Cold, Lunch means He's Out To Lunch, or is even subsumed as 'Brunch'...
** If one can talk of making a bowl of cereal, which may be many's breakfast.
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22 February
They say that No news is good news
So can we infer:
All news is bad news?
They also say that There is no such thing as a free lunch
So does that mean:
Lunch is the Cinderella of meals, in thrall to ugly sisters Breakfast and Dinner*?
And is lunch, on average, the weekday meal least likely not only to be eaten at home, but to have been made there**?
End-notes
* Not to mention the hideous brothers, Supper and Snack.
When is Lunch ever celebrated? We have Dinner in the diner / Nothing could be finer, and Breakfast at Tiffany's, but Lunch is Out In The Cold, Lunch means He's Out To Lunch, or is even subsumed as 'Brunch'...
** If one can talk of making a bowl of cereal, which may be many's breakfast.
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Monday 20 February 2012
Indecent Tinsel (2011)
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20 February
Following in the noble tradition of Philip French, I like to approach a film with a clean slate, knowing nothing but (not even?) the title:
So, as I fantasized eagerly on the tube (one has to, you know) to get to the screening, I pictured some young number in a racy, naughty even, Christmas outfit, propositioning Richard Gere in a seasonal version of the 'tart with a heart' story.
What I had in mind for that morning's viewing didn't leave very much to the imagination, so I (or the film) had been built up to fail, when I realized that it was the pre-pubescent worst parts of American Beauty (1999) and Lolita (1962), in a Yuletide tale of a Santa in Santa Fe, who somehow slipped through the usual checks and has very young children on the lap that you would least wish them to grace.
Even a cameo role for a distinguished player could not redeem this piece of sleaze and the sickening way in which it (I imagine - I couldn't stay) unfolded: as if, even could - God forbid! - such a thing could happen in real life, I would want to know about it...
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20 February
Following in the noble tradition of Philip French, I like to approach a film with a clean slate, knowing nothing but (not even?) the title:
So, as I fantasized eagerly on the tube (one has to, you know) to get to the screening, I pictured some young number in a racy, naughty even, Christmas outfit, propositioning Richard Gere in a seasonal version of the 'tart with a heart' story.
What I had in mind for that morning's viewing didn't leave very much to the imagination, so I (or the film) had been built up to fail, when I realized that it was the pre-pubescent worst parts of American Beauty (1999) and Lolita (1962), in a Yuletide tale of a Santa in Santa Fe, who somehow slipped through the usual checks and has very young children on the lap that you would least wish them to grace.
Even a cameo role for a distinguished player could not redeem this piece of sleaze and the sickening way in which it (I imagine - I couldn't stay) unfolded: as if, even could - God forbid! - such a thing could happen in real life, I would want to know about it...
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Sunday 19 February 2012
What was it with Sibelius and the milk pudding? (1)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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19 February
We know how they* like 'to tidy up' history, to make it History, but one can still act the role of detective and uncover some uncomfortable truths:
Jean Sibelius
Met Vesalius
For a piece of cake
After one slice
It is no surprise
Another they did take
These shocking lines tell us all! The late-twentieth century liked to believe that it had invented the concept of the dessert party (call it what you will, the name doesn't really matter), but one only has to think what Roman orgies were really about - tackling a mountain of cream cakes - to realize the error.
For some reason (if you've ever been to that country, you'll probably know why), the Finnish authorities thought it more acceptable to represent what happened to the composer as 'a drink problem' (I have no problem with drink: I just say Yes, please!).
It's not hard to guess why - unlike liking cakes (and puddings), hard drinking is a manly state of affairs, and one only has to think of Hemingway to recognize the force in that archetype**, plus Finland's (often unwilling) ties with the lands of the Russian peoples and the type of and attitude towards drinking there.
End-notes
* Thought to be meaning something with a referent such as Orwell's 'thought police'.
** Even if, rather worryingly, what he had a leaning towards in his sessions at Harry's Bar, is essentially, a cocktail, albeit a powerful one.
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19 February
We know how they* like 'to tidy up' history, to make it History, but one can still act the role of detective and uncover some uncomfortable truths:
Jean Sibelius
Met Vesalius
For a piece of cake
After one slice
It is no surprise
Another they did take
These shocking lines tell us all! The late-twentieth century liked to believe that it had invented the concept of the dessert party (call it what you will, the name doesn't really matter), but one only has to think what Roman orgies were really about - tackling a mountain of cream cakes - to realize the error.
For some reason (if you've ever been to that country, you'll probably know why), the Finnish authorities thought it more acceptable to represent what happened to the composer as 'a drink problem' (I have no problem with drink: I just say Yes, please!).
It's not hard to guess why - unlike liking cakes (and puddings), hard drinking is a manly state of affairs, and one only has to think of Hemingway to recognize the force in that archetype**, plus Finland's (often unwilling) ties with the lands of the Russian peoples and the type of and attitude towards drinking there.
End-notes
* Thought to be meaning something with a referent such as Orwell's 'thought police'.
** Even if, rather worryingly, what he had a leaning towards in his sessions at Harry's Bar, is essentially, a cocktail, albeit a powerful one.
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Bowed Eric, beautifully
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11 March
Anne Thrack's in town agin!
M'mate George says she's a stubborn mule.
Mare, more like!
Yes, La Mer, if you like - prefer the damn' Sea Pictures missel'.
What's the right waiter work this damn' thin'?
Wassup?
This thing on't wall that sells you a few Minstrels.
Dunno, but nothing to the instruction on the wall of the condom-machine:
TURN KNOB BRISKLY TO RIGHT THEN TURN TO LEFT
Seen some confused guys with their tackle out, I kin tell ya!
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11 March
Anne Thrack's in town agin!
M'mate George says she's a stubborn mule.
Mare, more like!
Yes, La Mer, if you like - prefer the damn' Sea Pictures missel'.
What's the right waiter work this damn' thin'?
Wassup?
This thing on't wall that sells you a few Minstrels.
Dunno, but nothing to the instruction on the wall of the condom-machine:
TURN KNOB BRISKLY TO RIGHT THEN TURN TO LEFT
Seen some confused guys with their tackle out, I kin tell ya!
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Saturday 18 February 2012
How's this for a contention?
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18 February
Messaging isn't talking:
I've known one friend, with whom I regularly swap text-messages, for 15 years, but we still sometimes misunderstand each other.
So I believe that you can't really talk to someone by e-mail or anything like it, if you don't know the person.
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18 February
Messaging isn't talking:
I've known one friend, with whom I regularly swap text-messages, for 15 years, but we still sometimes misunderstand each other.
So I believe that you can't really talk to someone by e-mail or anything like it, if you don't know the person.
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What do we need 'for free' for?
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18 February
Why would I prefer something free, rather than for free?
Some examples:
(a) Free fudge here - call in for a sample!
(b) Law For Free
(c) Free Nelson Mandela!
(d) Did you get a ticket for free at the train station?
(e) Click here to try our quiz free
(f) In a quiz-free world, you could talk to your mate over a quiet pint
(g) Claim your free prize from The Agent Apsley
(h) Click here to try our free quiz
(i) Fudge for free here - call in for a sample!
(j) Book your holiday with us - children travel free!
(k) Claim your prize for free from The Agent Apsley
(l) Did you get a free ticket at the station?
(m) The best things in life are for free
I shall freely leave those examples simmering, and return when they're cooked...
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18 February
Why would I prefer something free, rather than for free?
Some examples:
(a) Free fudge here - call in for a sample!
(b) Law For Free
(c) Free Nelson Mandela!
(d) Did you get a ticket for free at the train station?
(e) Click here to try our quiz free
(f) In a quiz-free world, you could talk to your mate over a quiet pint
(g) Claim your free prize from The Agent Apsley
(h) Click here to try our free quiz
(i) Fudge for free here - call in for a sample!
(j) Book your holiday with us - children travel free!
(k) Claim your prize for free from The Agent Apsley
(l) Did you get a free ticket at the station?
(m) The best things in life are for free
I shall freely leave those examples simmering, and return when they're cooked...
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Friday 17 February 2012
Is Kelly Brook really engaged? (asks AOL®)
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17 February
No doubt a sage question - does she just think that she's engaged, when she's not*? Probably the poor woman is wondering over** the legitimacy of her engagement as I write!
(Whereas Kelly B. Rook has no qualms - she's never going to leave 'The Rookery' and take up with some other nook, because she's not the marrying kind.)
Meanwhile, is Cameron (only just) beginning to wonder whether he is actually Prime Minister, or whether - as in that masterpiece of paranoid schizophrenia turned into a comedy, The Truman Show (1998) - everyone's just been humouring him?
PS If our Kelly turns out not to be engaged, I seem to remember that she is really a Parsons - she could always go back to her natal name and aim to marry a Mr Nicholas (Paul Nicholas?), or, if she could put her surname first, a Mr Green (or a Mr Nose - or Egg).
End-notes
* And what would - either party not being eligible to marry apart - constitute such an erroneous belief? Maybe false memory that the offer of marriage and the acceptance took place...
** Well, I might have meant 'worrying over' or 'wondering about', but who cares? - it's a portmanteau day, after all!
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17 February
No doubt a sage question - does she just think that she's engaged, when she's not*? Probably the poor woman is wondering over** the legitimacy of her engagement as I write!
(Whereas Kelly B. Rook has no qualms - she's never going to leave 'The Rookery' and take up with some other nook, because she's not the marrying kind.)
Meanwhile, is Cameron (only just) beginning to wonder whether he is actually Prime Minister, or whether - as in that masterpiece of paranoid schizophrenia turned into a comedy, The Truman Show (1998) - everyone's just been humouring him?
PS If our Kelly turns out not to be engaged, I seem to remember that she is really a Parsons - she could always go back to her natal name and aim to marry a Mr Nicholas (Paul Nicholas?), or, if she could put her surname first, a Mr Green (or a Mr Nose - or Egg).
End-notes
* And what would - either party not being eligible to marry apart - constitute such an erroneous belief? Maybe false memory that the offer of marriage and the acceptance took place...
** Well, I might have meant 'worrying over' or 'wondering about', but who cares? - it's a portmanteau day, after all!
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Present show at The Tavern Gallery, Meldreth : Royston Arts Society
Present show at The Tavern Gallery, Meldreth : Royston Arts Society
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17 February
Present show at The Tavern Gallery, Meldreth : Royston Arts Society
It’s unmistakably someone whom you know – they say that people divided as to whether they supported The Stones or The Beatles, but I think that I just happen to know the former less well, so I would have struggled to find the name of Ronnie Wood, but I knew the connection. (Saying that, it’s alleged that people have trouble naming all of the Fab Four straight off: Can you do it?)
Which is not the sine qua non of a good portrait, that it should resemble the person who sat for it, as Picasso [may have] proved, but this one is a striking likeness, and I think that, as with the divide just mentioned, there might be those who dislike the schematic of the colours and textures employed, whereas others will be very pleased with it.
To judge for yourself, it is one of the most obvious works on entering The Tavern Gallery, and be informed that this show welcomes visitors between 10.00 and 4.00 from Wednesday to Sunday, with its last day on Sunday 26 February.
The rest of what I shall share here, in the form of my attempts at producing images of some of the other sixty-three framed works, is almost inevitably my taste, as why would I choose something that I don’t like – OK, that didn’t stop me with my major dislike of The Future (to which the series of postings The Future or How do you choose a satisfying film? bear testimony) - when I can enthuse over something that I do? Sorry about that, but the breadth of what is on show (and Val Pettifer, to whom I talked about it there yesterday afternoon, tells me that there are probably around another one hundred unframed works) means that I have to start somewhere, so I have selected a few things as representative of the whole.
So why not start with a figurative piece (which, you will see, has sold)? Winter Fox by Rosalind Ridley (which was priced at £110), next to which I have dared to place Beth Hardwicke's Winter Scene after Lu Cheng-Yuan, priced at £95*.
Other than the season, the works, in feel (let alone technique), have nothing in common- which is my point, that there is much to please in the variety of approaches. Moving on, as if promenading through the gallery in Mussorgsky's suite for piano...
... And so on to the landscape in watercolour, juxtaposing The Ouse Washes by Norman Rushton (on sale at £55) with Derek Bunting's West Highlands, which is £38.
And for a finishing-touch, as I really don't want to say any more, or display further inadequate attempts to capture the spirit of these works (which words can only hint at), View through Crumbling Cottage by Caroline Fookes for £75, and which very much puts me in mind of the artistic interests of a painter friend of mine.
End-notes
* I do apologize for the lack of quality in the images that I have made of Beth and Rosalind's images (and of those that follow), but it is down partly to trying to avoid unwelcome reflection, but largely to the inadequacy of the photographic device (a camera on a phone) - the aim is to give an idea of what is on offer to see, not to substitute for going to Meldreth.
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Thursday 16 February 2012
'Lines here and there' at Writer's Rest
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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16 February
There is a posting that could give rise to a quite interesting thread (or whatever it's called) - needless to say, I have made a reply:
http://writersrest.com/2012/02/16/lines-here-and-there/#comment-1141
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16 February
There is a posting that could give rise to a quite interesting thread (or whatever it's called) - needless to say, I have made a reply:
http://writersrest.com/2012/02/16/lines-here-and-there/#comment-1141
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Wednesday 15 February 2012
Crowds outside Houston's hotel (according to AOL®) (2)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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15 February
There is reputed to be a newspaper called The Sun, and it appears that issues of this newspaper have have borne the headline Whitney's Death Bath.
I cannot comment, and, if the newspaper were to have carried a photograph of a bath, I would not have looked at it - after all, if I want to look at a bath (not my own), I go to the showroom at IKEA® (some such place), as it is inconceivable that I should not know what a bath looks like, or take any satisfaction from seeing what is supposed to be one where any person died, whoever that person may have been.
In other words, Mawkish photography of where Whitney died
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15 February
There is reputed to be a newspaper called The Sun, and it appears that issues of this newspaper have have borne the headline Whitney's Death Bath.
I cannot comment, and, if the newspaper were to have carried a photograph of a bath, I would not have looked at it - after all, if I want to look at a bath (not my own), I go to the showroom at IKEA® (some such place), as it is inconceivable that I should not know what a bath looks like, or take any satisfaction from seeing what is supposed to be one where any person died, whoever that person may have been.
In other words, Mawkish photography of where Whitney died
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Harriet and Hector
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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15 February
Perhaps evidence for 'the collective unconscious', perhaps the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment has just been reading my mind (or I its), but Berlioz was on my mind yesterday, when I heard announced on Radio 3 how he had wrought his own libretto for The Trojans, just as he did - as I blogged about last year - with L'enfance du Christ.
He was still on my mind just now, as I indulged one of the themes from the symphony that both threatened his union with Harriet Smithson and, strangely, brought them together. Still loudly humming it, I was moved to search for (the name of) Harriet, and soon found this link to the OAE for last night's concert*:
http://www.oae.co.uk/tag/harriet-smithson/
I have no doubt that it was good, and I wish well all who had the chance to hear it!
End-notes
* My mistake for assuming - there was no concert, but this was 'a trail-blazer' for things Berlioz to come from the OAE, so maybe see you there...
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15 February
Perhaps evidence for 'the collective unconscious', perhaps the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment has just been reading my mind (or I its), but Berlioz was on my mind yesterday, when I heard announced on Radio 3 how he had wrought his own libretto for The Trojans, just as he did - as I blogged about last year - with L'enfance du Christ.
He was still on my mind just now, as I indulged one of the themes from the symphony that both threatened his union with Harriet Smithson and, strangely, brought them together. Still loudly humming it, I was moved to search for (the name of) Harriet, and soon found this link to the OAE for last night's concert*:
http://www.oae.co.uk/tag/harriet-smithson/
I have no doubt that it was good, and I wish well all who had the chance to hear it!
End-notes
* My mistake for assuming - there was no concert, but this was 'a trail-blazer' for things Berlioz to come from the OAE, so maybe see you there...
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Tuesday 14 February 2012
BUNROY?
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14 February
Life is full of puzzles (some more fun than others)...
If you named your home (or, at any rate, a house) Bunroy, might you not fail to envisage how wearing it would be to explain both why it needed a name as well as a house number, as well as what it means - or would it be in the spirit of blagging (so like blogging), of making up some blarney to meet each new enquiry*?
Yes, it takes its name from the Scottish camp-site** where:
* I was born
* All our children were conceived
* My wife and I [met / first slept together]
Well, my pet name for my wife is Bunny, and I grew up in Rosyton, so it seemed the obvious choice!
Really?! Is there a sign outside saying that? Well, in all the time that I've lived here, I've never noticed it - are you sure?
Ah, well - it spells something backwards, you see: Yor nub, i.e. Your nub? What bloody point are you making?
Hours of fun for all the family at the price of a house-sign!
End-notes
* As some like to say, glass half full, rather than half empty...
** 13 miles from Fort William, and not far from the River Spean.
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14 February
Life is full of puzzles (some more fun than others)...
If you named your home (or, at any rate, a house) Bunroy, might you not fail to envisage how wearing it would be to explain both why it needed a name as well as a house number, as well as what it means - or would it be in the spirit of blagging (so like blogging), of making up some blarney to meet each new enquiry*?
Yes, it takes its name from the Scottish camp-site** where:
* I was born
* All our children were conceived
* My wife and I [met / first slept together]
Well, my pet name for my wife is Bunny, and I grew up in Rosyton, so it seemed the obvious choice!
Really?! Is there a sign outside saying that? Well, in all the time that I've lived here, I've never noticed it - are you sure?
Ah, well - it spells something backwards, you see: Yor nub, i.e. Your nub? What bloody point are you making?
Hours of fun for all the family at the price of a house-sign!
End-notes
* As some like to say, glass half full, rather than half empty...
** 13 miles from Fort William, and not far from the River Spean.
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What does that Italian at the top of the music mean?
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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14 February
An example. Does striggio mean:
(a) Excitedly - a bit like a tremolo?
(b) The opposite of sforzando?
(c) There's a hole in the score here, where the composer dropped his or her cigarette on the manuscript original?
(d) Just for the strings, i.e. the players are encouraged to sound really stringy?
(e) He's that other composer of a choral work in forty parts?
And why Italian anyway? Not always, because some composers (e.g. Schumann, Dvorak) shun it, but is it really the language of music (or, even, Music)?
And, if you thought None of these in (a) to (e), above, then you're probably right, and 'that Itlian' is Carlo Maria Giulini, ready to conduct the piece...
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14 February
An example. Does striggio mean:
(a) Excitedly - a bit like a tremolo?
(b) The opposite of sforzando?
(c) There's a hole in the score here, where the composer dropped his or her cigarette on the manuscript original?
(d) Just for the strings, i.e. the players are encouraged to sound really stringy?
(e) He's that other composer of a choral work in forty parts?
And why Italian anyway? Not always, because some composers (e.g. Schumann, Dvorak) shun it, but is it really the language of music (or, even, Music)?
And, if you thought None of these in (a) to (e), above, then you're probably right, and 'that Itlian' is Carlo Maria Giulini, ready to conduct the piece...
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My top three Blondie songs
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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14 February
With the following qualifications:
* Not including after Deborah Harry's solo albums (which give rise to their own favourites); and
* So not from when Blondie started producing albums again (ditto)
If they are not all from one original album (I forget - probably Eat to the Beat), two out of three are.
In no order (save that I think of them in this order):
Dreaming
Union City Blues
Atomic
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14 February
With the following qualifications:
* Not including after Deborah Harry's solo albums (which give rise to their own favourites); and
* So not from when Blondie started producing albums again (ditto)
If they are not all from one original album (I forget - probably Eat to the Beat), two out of three are.
In no order (save that I think of them in this order):
Dreaming
Union City Blues
Atomic
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Britten and the concentration camps
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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14 February
[For which, of course, read extermination camps - or death camps.]
But can we really hear, in the writing of his String Quartet No. 2, that Britten had made a visit to these camps? Surely, if we could, we wouldn't need to be told the fact, because the music itself would tell us!
The essence of my point is the old, old one: does the detail of a biography (even an autobiography) inform how we listen to a composer's work*? If so, are we then not unbelievably alienated, according to that belief, from Bach's highly alive compositions, because we do not really know very much about his life?
After hearing a quartet, five or so years back, announce Shostakovich's inescapable String Quartet No. 8 in a different way from what predominates, I have been freed from crediting that old chestnut about the bombing of Dresden, even if the composer was, indeed, in Dresden to write music for a film about that very subject (Five Days, Five Nights), and wrote it there in the three days from 12 to 14 July 1960.
Rightly or wrongly, I feel that I can now hear that quartet without these supposed guides to an interpretative view of what is - purely - music: it is not, I believe, programme (or programmatic) music.
And we also ought not only to get a good chance for an airing of more than a dozen other string quartets except to mark the 52nd anniversary of his stubbing his toe in Dresden (a bit like Poulenc: 50 years since Poulenc stubbed his toe in Montmartre).
End-notes
* Orrin Howard seems to inform us, regarding Britten, that 'In spite of his being a Britisher through and through, he didn't go the folk route of Vaughan Williams'. Well, yes...
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14 February
[For which, of course, read extermination camps - or death camps.]
But can we really hear, in the writing of his String Quartet No. 2, that Britten had made a visit to these camps? Surely, if we could, we wouldn't need to be told the fact, because the music itself would tell us!
The essence of my point is the old, old one: does the detail of a biography (even an autobiography) inform how we listen to a composer's work*? If so, are we then not unbelievably alienated, according to that belief, from Bach's highly alive compositions, because we do not really know very much about his life?
After hearing a quartet, five or so years back, announce Shostakovich's inescapable String Quartet No. 8 in a different way from what predominates, I have been freed from crediting that old chestnut about the bombing of Dresden, even if the composer was, indeed, in Dresden to write music for a film about that very subject (Five Days, Five Nights), and wrote it there in the three days from 12 to 14 July 1960.
Rightly or wrongly, I feel that I can now hear that quartet without these supposed guides to an interpretative view of what is - purely - music: it is not, I believe, programme (or programmatic) music.
And we also ought not only to get a good chance for an airing of more than a dozen other string quartets except to mark the 52nd anniversary of his stubbing his toe in Dresden (a bit like Poulenc: 50 years since Poulenc stubbed his toe in Montmartre).
End-notes
* Orrin Howard seems to inform us, regarding Britten, that 'In spite of his being a Britisher through and through, he didn't go the folk route of Vaughan Williams'. Well, yes...
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