Sunday, 31 July 2016

Poetry in a Tweet : Poem for The Dispossessed

Poetry in a Tweet : Poem for The Dispossessed

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

30 July





© Belston Night Works 2016


End-notes

* A companion-piece to 'You *tease* !' ~ 60-word story...




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Thursday, 28 July 2016

Cambridge Summer Music Festival (#CSMF16) : concerts with a first-time visitor to Cambridge

Cambridge Summer Music Festival : concerts with a first-time visitor to Cambridge

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

28 July
Some Tweets about four concerts, in three days, at Cambridge Summer Music Festival (#CSMF16), with - and chosen by - a first-time visitor to Cambridge


A follow-up to A quick overview, by Tweet, of I Fagiolini’s programme 'Amuse-bouche' at Cambridge Summer Music Festival...



 1. Benjamin Appl (baritone) (@BenjaminAppl), standing in for Louise Alder (soprano) (@louisealdersop), with Gary Matthewman (piano) (@songpianist) at The Fitzwilliam Museum (@FitzMuseum_UK) ~ Monday 25 July at 7.30 p.m.










Interlude (general grumping) :






Resuming with Appl (@BenjaminAppl) and Matthewman (piano) :







2. The Piatti String Quartet at ‘Little St Mary’s’ (The Church of St Mary the Less [Wikipedia®]) ~ Tuesday 26 July at 1.15 p.m. :




3. The Academy of Ancient Music (@AAMOrchestra), directed by Pavlo Beznosiuk, in The College of St John the Evangelist, St John's College (@stjohnscam) ~ Tuesday 26 July at 7.30 p.m.










4. #Gallicantus at The Round Church ~ Wednesday 27 July at 9.30 p.m.












Also from #CSMF16 : A quick overview, by Tweet, of I Fagiolini’s programme 'Amuse-bouche' at Cambridge Summer Music Festival...




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Saturday, 23 July 2016

A quick overview, by Tweet, of I Fagiolini’s programme Amuse-bouche at Cambridge Summer Music Festival

An overview of I Fagiolini with Amuse-bouche at Cambridge Summer Music Festival

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

23 July

A quick overview, by Tweet (and free text), of I Fagiolini’s performance of their programme Amuse-bouche, under the directorship of Robert Hollingworth, for Cambridge Summer Music Festival at Emmanuel United Reformed Church, Cambridge, on Saturday 23 July at 7.30 p.m.


A still from I Fagiolini - Ode à la gastronomie

Directed by John La Bouchardière and made by Polyphonic Films




In both halves, we also heard from Anna Markland (as well as her voice in the ensemble) on piano, with two of Erik Satie’s Gnossiennes (Nos 4* and 6, respectively), and, to close the first half, with Roderick Williams’ arrangement for piano and choir of the central movement (marked Adagio assai) of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major









All in all, whether one wants to relate to the majority of the texts that we heard before the Françaix as surréaliste, or in some other stylistic or genre terms, these composers brought out qualities in them, and likewise the members of I Fagiolini under Robert Hollingworth’s direction, that made them compelling, and highly inviting of our interest :

In his Lieder, Franz Schubert sometimes transformed poems to which one might otherwise not have devoted much attention : here, it was not that the poems of Éluard or Apollinaire were unattractive, but that interpreters such as Poulenc could, in and through their sound-world, cause their visions to open up – in a way that, beforehand, their words on the page, even in the French, did not easily allow one to experience…





To conclude by way of an encore, after the well-received strangeness of Jean Françaix’s text and its treatment, something more familiar still than the Satie pieces : ‘Baïlèro’ from Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne.



Very much a Post-script - Schumann, Surrealism, and Satie [in Satie’s Parade] :









One can read more about András Schiff here [from Kirshbaum Associates Inc., his representatives in North America], and Wikipedia® on Parade, Satie's Opus ??, here...



 End-notes

 * Regarding which the audience, wrongly, seemed almost more enthusiastic than the preceding Sept chansons (by Francis Poulenc)… ?


Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Thursday, 21 July 2016

In a few sentences, casting out NWR¹'s The Neon Demon (2016)

In a few choice sentences, casting out NWR¹'s The Neon Demon (2016)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

21 July


In a few choice sentences, casting out NWR¹'s The Neon Demon (2016)



Martin Creed ~ Work No. 232 (2000) at Tate Modern (@tate)



With a film, some will want to go into it, already knowing everything about it...




Or having (in its proper sense of reading every word) perused what Little White Lies (@LWLies) – or even Picturehouse Recommends – had to say (or did say, without ‘having to’ say it), and which will have determined them to watch - or to shun².





'when you were young, you dressed yourself and walked where you wanted'
John 21 : 18


Nicolas Winding Refn's (NWR¹'s) The Neon Demon (2016) is very deliberately mannered, and to the extent that his dialogue desires - in massive swathes of overly-delayed reaction - to be portentous. However, alongside its mise-en-scène³, instead it ends up just feeling very ponderous : nigh tediously so, with an affect that aims at insightful awkwardness, but largely conveys leadenness.

 Music choices, as ever, are strong, but, having made a graphic point of doing so in Drive (2011), NWR seems unable to do other than try to shock his audience, as if crediting that it will have a lack of interest in the first-blush, well-worn premise of the traps of (the topos of) a beautiful young girl, come to California to trade on attributes that she knows herself to possess.





 Prey on her what may - which, of course (and in order to provide the shocks), it duly does...



 This is what [some] others said, at more length… :






[...]










End-notes :

 ¹ Winding Refn is now monogrammed, with the claimed status of the royal or the regal, at the head of his films. (Although, according to Wikipedia®, A series of uncombined initials is properly referred to as a cypher (e.g. a royal cypher) and is not a monogram.)


² Maybe it is the bane of many a film-maker (or distributor) that a book is judged by what is not even its cover, though those in the latter category do not entirely help their cause when a trailer makes an excellent film seem weak, or a poor film worth the watch, because of how scenes, snippets and elements of dialogue have been unrepresentatively mixed up and divorced from their filmic setting, in favour of creating an impression that the work itself does not substantiate (let alone footage that is in a trailer, but did not make the cut to appear in the film itself…).

 ³ Which obviously heavily evokes Tony Scott's Tarantino-scripted True Romance (1993) (whose being shot by Scott left Tarantino himself free to direct Reservoir Dogs (1992)).




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Wednesday, 20 July 2016

Starting with @PeterBradshaw1's @guardian 'review', some Tweets at and after Sheffield Doc / Fest about The Hard Stop (2016)

Some Tweets at and after Sheffield Doc / Fest about The Hard Stop (2016)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

20 July

Starting with @PeterBradshaw1's @guardian 'review', some Tweets at and after Sheffield Doc / Fest about The Hard Stop (2016)














Next, engagement with the Every Film in 2016 review from Neil White (@everyfilmneil ~ http://everyfilmblog.blogspot.co.uk) :




More to come...




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Sunday, 10 July 2016

From the archive : Ma Apsley deputizes at inaugural Cary Grant Comes Home for the Weekend Festival

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

10 July

From Horfield to Hollywood - Guest Review ~ Diana Davis

I was thrown in at the deep end to review the event From Horfield to Hollywood, including a discussion with Laura Rawlings (BBC Radio Bristol) and an expert panel. The reason being that The Agent Apsley [@THEAGENTAPSLEY] was unable to cover the event, owing to another commitment in Cambridge, so he suggested I attend, and Charlotte Crofts, the event and festival organizer, agreed - as I have always been such a fan of Cary Grant...

 It will come as no surprise to most Bristolians that the Watershed was packed with fans at 10 a.m. on Saturday morning – even George Ferguson, wearing his trademark red trousers, was there, to herald the start of the Cary Grant Comes Home for the Weekend Festival : to celebrate the transformation of Bristol schoolboy Archie Leach into Hollywood icon Cary Grant, and his endearing relationship with the City.

The film Cary Comes Home was directed by Stuart Napier ten years ago for ITV, and Laura Rawlings kicked off the proceedings by telling us that, on the anniversary of Cary Grant’s birth (18 January) this year, BBC Bristol decided to produce a radio programme about his life, and so invited listeners to contribute tales about him. She received many different stories, because people had met him walking around the City, or remembered him from school. She felt sure that it would be possible to make another film about their encounters in the future.


Dr Kathrina Glitre, Film and Screen Writing Lecturer at UWE, said how she just fell in love with him when she was eight, after watching Arsenic and Old Lace [(1944)], and saw a lot of his films. She was a teenager when he died, and spent the whole day in bed in misery. I feel sure that most women in the audience felt exactly the same, as his charm, elegance and sheer acting skills were mesmeric when he was on screen.


To think, too, that the-then Archie, as a poor child of eight, returned home from Bishop Road school to find his mother just not there must have been heart breaking. To be given no explanation by his callous father, Elias, who had packed his wife off to the psychiatric 'asylum' at 100 Fishponds Road - on what grounds we do not know* - beggars belief.

In a film-clip, a psychiatrist said that, as Archie's mother was quite strict about his appearance, she could have been suffering from OCD [Obsessive Compulsive Disorder]. Archie therefore felt for years it was something he had done that had caused her to go away.


 It is commonly known that he helped back stage at the Empire Theatre and the Hippodrome, and, in so doing, met Bob Pender, who gave him the chance to join his acrobatic troupe, since he was impressed with Archie’s skills. So Archie ran away from home in order to do so.

His father tracked him down up north and insisted he returned home to continue his education at Fairfield School - and, when he did so, Archie discovered that his father had remarried. However, Archie’s desire to join the troupe (so the story goes...) made him peep into the girls’ toilets, and thus he was expelled : he then rejoined the troupe, and went to New York City with them, as he was now 13.

In 1935, Cary learned his mother was alive when one of the Kingdon family, his mother’s relatives, saw a film of his and thought that he bore a strong resemblance to the Archie Leach whom he had known as a boy. It was 1939 before Cary was able to make contact with his mother, and another six years before he was able to visit her. He ensured that she was released from the psychiatric hospital, and was the perfect son to her right until her death.



After the interval, Professor Andrew Spicer, a lecturer at UWE [University of the West of England], gave an interesting talk about James Bond (Agent 007) and why Cary turned down the role. Cubby Broccoli, a friend of Cary’s, had wanted him to play the part of Bond in Thunderball [(1965)], but Cary did not want to be tied down for a total of seven films. In any case, he would have been too expensive, as the film had a budget of only one million dollars, and Cary’s fee would have eaten up most of that. It was felt that an unknown actor would best suit the part, and Sean Connery [that unknown then] landed the job !

 Stuart Napier’s film on Cary Grant’s life, with Cary occasionally speaking in his everyday voice, was highly interesting. He had been a very astutute man, and had realized, when cast opposite Audrey Hepburn in Charade [(1963)], that - on film - the age-gap between them was too great. He therefore insisted that the scene in the lift be re-written, which meant that he was then able to tell her that she was a child who needed a good spanking, and to behave herself, when she was coming on to him.


In her summing-up, Laura Rawlings referred to the story that Cary [when still Archie] had been playing football in the Bishop Road school-playground, and, when one of his front teeth had been knocked out, there was no money available to have a false tooth. However, mercifully the gap grew over and, as evidenced in a photographic still, he did indeed have only three front teeth. If one had not been told, one would not have realized at all !

There are not many cities whose inhabitants who can boast both about Brunel’s Clifton Suspension Bridge, the s.s. Great Britain, and a Hollywood star whose origins began in their home town of Bristol :

Hurrah for Cary Grant !



To come, in the Festival itself, on 16 and 17 July :




 End-notes

 But watch carycomeshome.co.uk or @carycomeshome, and this space... ?




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Saturday, 9 July 2016

Report from Cary Grant Comes Home for the Weekend Festival 2016 : Notorious (1946) at Averys Wine Cellars

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

8 July




This posting will accrete into some sort of collage account of 'A Grand Day Out' in Averys Wine Cellars, Bristol, for the launch event of Cary Grant Comes Home for the Weekend Festival 2016, with a special screening - with wine interludes, and cheese and bubbly preludes - of Notorious (1946)



Attending this event had only been proposed and then booked, on the day, on a train to Bristol Parkway, as a much-delayed birth treat for The Agent's maternal...







When Cary checks his e-mail / voicemail - or gets that text-message ? - we already know the bad news for Ingrid and him...





Andrea Riseborough as Colette McVeigh in Shadow Dancer (2012)







 To come, in the Festival itself, on 16 and 17 July :






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