Unofficial Cambridge Film Festival [#UCFF]: December 2021

Tuesday, 21 December 2021

How not to Tweet about a claim in an Employment Tribunal ?

How not to Tweet about a claim in an Employment Tribunal ?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

21 December

How not to Tweet about a claim in an Employment Tribunal ?

->

* I.e. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) [https://t.co/e4hzuD4o6M] as Respondent in a case brought by the claimant, Tarique Mohammed, in The Employment Tribunals [https://t.co/NBwacixukZ] :

Sufficient real justification for displaying the CPS logo in the original Tweet ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 21, 2021

Note :

'[Crown Prosecution Service] did accept that it treated [Tarique] Mohammed unfairly by not allowing him to work from home two days a week and leave work at 4pm to help him manage his condition, and by removing him from court duties, meaning he will receive compensation.' https://t.co/XZFLpcVLEJ
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 21, 2021

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

Shiny : How to make one billion pounds sterling sound like a large amount of money !

Shiny : How to make one billion pounds sterling sound like a large amount of money !

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

Winter Solstice (21 December)

Shiny : How to make one billion pounds sterling sound like a large amount of money !

* It was 6.0m SMEs in 2020, but seems to be 5.5m in 2021 ? :

£1,000,000,000 divided by 5,500,000 = £181.82.

** What are the admin costs of both administering and obtaining 'the available' £1bn ?#TwoHundredQuidBailout

2 / 2
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 21, 2021

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

Monday, 13 December 2021

C'mon C'mon (2021) : The [spoilery] view from Bi-Polar Land (work in progress)

C'mon C'mon (2021) : The [spoilery] view from Bi-Polar Land (work in progress)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

13 December

C'mon C'mon (2021) : The [spoilery] view from Bi-Polar Land (work in progress)

In a not a very humble opinion, claiming bi-polar / schizo-affective rights*, Th'Agent will say that :

C'mon C'mon (2021) is mightily deserving of your non-generic attention, and

Excellently acts as a companion to Her (2013) - they talk to ea. oth.

* Or bi-polar depression ? pic.twitter.com/g0u6drg8WF
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 13, 2021

The latter's in the representative (for once !) trailer, plus another reminder of the excellent ethos and work of Kirsten Johnson, whose @Cameraperson16 (2016) is now overdue for #UCFF to re-watch :https://t.co/bCV1CpatBd

['All the raw edges, but with respect and compassion']
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 13, 2021

Impossible to think in such terms ?

However, in C'mon C'mon (2021) - with the words Buy / BYE, above each other on a nearby building and backgrounded by the cab - Jesse gets into the back, with barely a word to Johnny.@cmoncmonmovie has at least six other verbal cues / clues !
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 20, 2021

Knock-out reading of Star Child here ! :https://t.co/6Mo38orB7V https://t.co/3CbrWOqJyl
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 15, 2021

But, of course, Butler's tale and its telling are themselves beautiful, wise and useful to us - if we knew of their existence.

The link, in #UCFF's case, must have been either Martin Gardner's Annotated Alice or from somewhere in the tales and re-tellings of Jorge Luis Borges...
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 15, 2021

[...]

More to come... ?

[...]

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

Monday, 6 December 2021

Three predictive Tweets on Matrix 4 : One, Zero, √-2

Three predictive Tweets on Matrix 4 : One, Zero, √-2

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

6 December

Three predictive Tweets on Matrix 4 : One, Zero, √-2

Not (necessarily) in Eliot's 4Q sense, but do we know the end from the beginning ?

The trope's there in the predecessors, and Alice, so patent in The Matrix (1999) - with, from memory, 'Wakey-wakey, Neo !', 'Follow the white rabbit', and 'See how far down the rabbit-hole goes' - is resurfacing, as also the dissenting voices when The One goes back to The Source.
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 7, 2021

The hazard is that, when those dismissive of The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and / or The Matrix Revolutions (2003), baulked at the service's apparently irrelevant stopping-points, or what they deemed its graphic failures, it all exactly maps on the Carrollian universe !
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 7, 2021

Postlude cum Prelude :

Goin' good, on Matrix Released Day, and #UCFF is - in its true sense - trying to anticipate the Carrollian Twists and Turns that, who knows, might take us to the Isa Bowman acrostic (and beautiful poem) in Sylvie and Bruno ?

Three predictive Tweets on Matrix 4 : One, Zero, √-2
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 9, 2021

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

Sunday, 5 December 2021

Why to watch The Last Bus (2021) [and wish that many award-winners matched this film's manifold qualities !]

Why to watch The Last Bus (2021) [if only big award-winners had this film's manifold qualities !]

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

5 December (and 8 December, etc.)

Why to watch The Last Bus (2021) [if only big award-winners had this film's manifold qualities !]

It transcends one melody- or plot-line, and operates interchangeably on multiple staves [a chamber orchestra, playing https://t.co/xGjMejFNNi [here, @BerlinPhil under Rattle] ?] - or much better than a 3-stranded documentary !#BusHero - #UCFF nearly forgot having noted the tag. https://t.co/ITDlL8Dcux
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 8, 2021

Now compiled, on #UCFF, at 'Why to watch The Last Bus (2021) [and wish that many award-winners matched this film's manifold qualities !]' :https://t.co/LvH5pknktW https://t.co/OeFxw7ZX33 pic.twitter.com/FoROwIDn3A
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 6, 2021

As they say, Timothy Spall's a piece of all right !https://t.co/G7lCxmmnpJ

With my usu. Cottenham companion for monthly cinema in its community cafe, a film :

* That surpasses Nomadland (2020) for breadth, consistency, layering of image

* Where Spall's conviction holds us
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 6, 2021

* Full of humanity, film savvy, and examples of courage or inclusion that don't hide from life's realities, beauties and brutalities

* To knock back flaccid one-hit efforts at screenwriting such as in On Chesil Beach (2017)

* Whose cinematic vision embraces #lagrandebellezza
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 6, 2021

Peter Mullan could have engaged as Spall does (and superbly did in Hector* (2015)).

* Seen, with gratitude, at @Saffronscreen, where a Monday-night film's very often been a good recommendation to watch in its own right [or Spall in The Journey (2016) : https://t.co/VMKsaCRInO]. https://t.co/ITDlL8Dcux
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 6, 2021

Since #CamFF, Th'Agent's been back in cinema-spaces for :

* The Last Bus (2021) [@lastbusmovie / #BusHero]

* The French Dispatch (2021) [@french_dispatch] x2

* C'mon C'mon (2021) [@cmoncmonmovie] x2

And would happily re-visit that real / unreal world in which Spall plays !
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 17, 2021

More to come (if time permits)...

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

Friday, 3 December 2021

A lot of heart : Byron Wallen at Cambridge Modern Jazz with his 'Four Corners' Band (work in progress)

A lot of heart : Byron Wallen at Cambridge Modern Jazz with his 'Four Corners' Band

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

A lot of heart : Byron Wallen at Cambridge Modern Jazz with his 'Four Corners' Band (work in progress)

It was @byronwallen* at @camjazz earlier - his 'Four Corners' band of @Rob_Luft (gtr), Paul Michael (elec. bass), Rod Youngs (drums) :#UCFF didn't hear much of the first set, but the 2nd gave engaged playing, varied moods and thoughtful use of effects-pedals.

* Tpt, pf, perc.
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 4, 2021

A second gig that, despite Cambridge International Jazz Festival's not going ahead this year, had been preserved by CMJ, clearly there had been those who took the opportunity of a Friday-night slot to come to town especially, which is a real encouragement for jazz in Cambridge.
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 4, 2021

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

Thursday, 2 December 2021

Can’t wait to play for you... And it doesn’t feel weird ! : Trish Clowes with her My Iris Quartet at Cambridge Modern Jazz on Thursday 27 May at 7.30 p.m. (uncorrected proof)

Trish Clowes with her My Iris Quartet at Cambridge Modern Jazz on Thursday 27 May at 7.30 p.m.

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

27 May (posted 2 December 2021)

Trish Clowes with her My Iris Quartet at Cambridge Modern Jazz on Thursday 27 May at 7.30 p.m.

Can’t wait to play for you... And it doesn’t feel weird ! [work in progress (uncorrected proof)]

Set-list :https://t.co/mQj3R9jQTH with a view
2.Time
3.Almost [From 'Two days ago ?', Clowes thought]
4.Amber
5.Morning songhttps://t.co/QCVjfjL12P idea
7.Just the Nesshttps://t.co/xJP5uOHLDc to fall [Ninety Degrees Gravity album]
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 1, 2021

Alongside fluency in and between registers¹, what one can also slow down to hear in Clowes' playing,

behind the clarity of her runs (which Clowes will elide to suit the musical mood or purpose),

is a measure of restraint, of careful placement

Jean-Paul Belmondo

The gig proper – a run-through, as one Covid-informed set, for 75 mins – begins with (1) a jaunty and literally up-beat opener, taking us immediately to the experience and expectation that syncopation, rim-taps, and an emphasis as well as on rhythmicity as on melodic line or material were the things around which this instrumentation-led group of music-makers coalesce and find their means of coherence.

So it was that an early electric-organ solo 'sounded the note of' funk, and Stanley then went on to provide a soft undertow to Clowes – any solos in this gig were just there, and were not in need of / did not invite the apparent appreciation of applause : in a gig like this one, and with a wholly engaged ensemble cast (albeit with Clowes as clear leader), it gets in the way of the ensemble (and mar what one would value).

(2) 'Time', by deliberate contrast, more resembled a ballad, gently, optimistically and unapologetically romantic in the form of its soaring statement on sax, but then, by way of a slightly Caledonian (Hibernian ?) groove and drone, there was an emanating sense of hours that hang a bit too heavily, which yet, by noodling on, one gets past.

Another outright, if brief, statement of the thematic material made way for a slurring and skirling of the tenor-sound, and took us into what, poetically, felt as if they might be the squalliness of sails, and that they (or we) were in the wind and the sky !

Tweet (to come)

(3) 'Almost' began in a free vein, in which the sensation continued of being connected with a world external to the physical venue, of seeing – or even being ? – a bird, coasting on thermal-currents, or of a brook, being followed upstream.

As to both overall content and Clowes' own tone-colour and ambit of palette, there seemed to be, in and beyond the music played, a personal and organic observation and reflection that saw the inner through the outer – or through the other – and its seeming exteriority.

A segue of rim-taps and alterations in tempo and rhythm brought us to the firstlings of Montague's and Clowes' playing off each other, which is one of this quartet's greatest depths. This approach to being present and open to, and as aware as possible of, each other, and – in gigging that already creatively extends the mere (pre)text of a song or tune – an act of addition that seems to exceed the available forces :

For, at times, perhaps we had glimpses here of something more certain or more visible than that which we know (or know that we know), and also the sensation, in the very instant of their vanishing, that other things do and can become tangible.

In (4) 'Amber', a new work from, with or for an old-established cellist collaborator² (and written in the name of the person behind Donate4Refugees), Clowes gave us elements of note-patterns³, and a querulous riff, which, with Montague, became a call-and-response of riffs, before a switch of time-signature [...]

Writing, and performing it, with a sense of place and of its intenseness

(5) 'Morning song' proved to embody tonal uncertainty in what, at first, seemed an open and frank tune from the heart, and which when Montague picked it up, became as if that now-uncertain heart had lurched into a sudden and terrifying perception of the vertiginous actuality of the moment. (Those who have ever experienced an unspecific, but doom-laden, anxiety would have related to that dread moment.)

Moving past which, however, Clowes made a bluesily contemplative re-visit to the initial material, and, joined again by Montague, one could easily imagine a couple, smooching alone on the dance-floor, as evening breakers crashed on the shore-line. (Well, Th'Agent could !)

Again – as in the aside for 'Morning song' (with Clowes saying that it was so called because she wrote it in the morning) – Clowes could not resist describing (6) 'No idea' as 'Another amazing title' – and its start did seem to evoke seeking around, without finding (or else rooting around, but not giving up ?)

In any case, maybe a little as with Bridget Riley's Hesitate (1964) [alluded to above], the material then centres on a falling interval (which 'might' have been an echo of a bird-call* ?), but soon differently modulated, stressed or breathed through, before widening out into another rockin' / stomping section, full of creations and warmth, and a wealth of ideas and optimism.

Yet Clowes, keeping it back and under, and then seeming to resume with the initial thematic content - whereas, perhaps, it was only to bring on the abruptness of the number's ending ?

NB This is where the review 'collapses into' rough expansions / transcriptions / interpretations of the gig-notes...

(7) Riffy opening and to and fro, as to the lead playing, between Clowes and Montague. Then, more Morse-coded marks, gestures or tics led into what felt a haunted, echoic and ruminative soundtrack, perhaps for a noir that exists only on the level of sound ? (As Clowes confirmed afterwards having said on other occasions, she has found inspiration before in the cinematic work of a film-maker friend) – yet one, or of how we feel about ourselves in this (or any ?) world.

In a coda, in and during which the humour of Maddren, more and more theatrically and obviously shuffling and rummaging in his sticks – until all were brought into both hands, and then propelled onto the surface of part of his drum-kit, brought on a broader smile and a snort of appreciation.

Left with Montague, the tempo slowed, the texture broadened outward and into a feeling of nourishment, and a quiet close.

In announcing the final piece, Clowes made it clear that she had had our experience that 'The church sounds amazing !', and straightaway added to that comment A keeper ! (Afterwards, with friends, etc., there seemed to be agreement that the venue's carpeted flooring and other upholstery, as well as the natural construction of the space, makes for a very suitable acoustic.)

Arrival (2016)

(8) 'Free to fall' (from the album Ninety Degrees Gravity) had the feel of a ballad in a folk idiom, being breezily and calmingly mused over.

However, when we moved into the main section, at a fast tempo and with off-beats and the other features of the quartet's style, there was a hinting at bowing-out in a joyous and jubilant moment.

In fact, even if by way of a high-magisterial rock-style solo from Montague, there was a breathy and slow and calmed end to the gig.

The show was over, but we weren’t going to be done with thinking about the atmospheres that, on the isle of this shallow dais, Clowes and the My Iris Quartet had brought before us and, so, into being. Yet, not as Prospero to Miranda, but more the magic that Miranda found herself able to work on her embittered father in her direct and unenslaved response [even if Huxley got there and (cynically ?) subverted it] :

[…] Oh, wonder !
How many goodly creatures are there here !
How beauteous mankind is ! O brave new world,
That has such people in’t ! […]

End-notes :

¹ Which #UCFF tries to invoke as smokily burnished colours in the lower one, and a more lightly coppery timbre above... ?

² Lucy Railton, one assumes (in which case, actually heard live, some time, at Cambridge Modern Jazz) ?

³ Although, when asked afterwards by #UCFF, not actually in any conscious relation to birdsong.

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

1982 to 1984 Re-visited : Koestler, Hume and Bernard Williams

1982 to 1984 Re-visited : Koestler, Hume and Bernard Williams

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

2 December

1982 to 1984 Re-visited : Koestler, Hume and Bernard Williams

'I was a bit lost in the inner world that I had retreated into, but there was no sense of people trying to be curious with me or trying to empathise, and I found that more challenging than the experiences I was going through' https://t.co/fUl9ogYK2k
— Anne Cooke (@AnneCooke14) December 2, 2021

'The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion [...]'

[Scientific American at : https://t.co/IByHf3ruLh

* Koestler urged 'holistic' (Janus : A Summing Up), but it then became denuded of power...

2 / 2
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 2, 2021

The philosopher David Hume and others had dilated on this, e.g. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1948) (revising somewhat his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740)) :

More than a century earlier, they already knew how we automatically process information to cope. https://t.co/TBaap2pR42
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 2, 2021

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

Unofficial Cambridge Film Festival [#UCFF]

Tuesday, 21 December 2021

How not to Tweet about a claim in an Employment Tribunal ?

Shiny : How to make one billion pounds sterling sound like a large amount of money !

Monday, 13 December 2021

C'mon C'mon (2021) : The [spoilery] view from Bi-Polar Land (work in progress)

Monday, 6 December 2021

Three predictive Tweets on Matrix 4 : One, Zero, √-2

Sunday, 5 December 2021

Why to watch The Last Bus (2021) [and wish that many award-winners matched this film's manifold qualities !]

Friday, 3 December 2021

A lot of heart : Byron Wallen at Cambridge Modern Jazz with his 'Four Corners' Band (work in progress)

Thursday, 2 December 2021

Can’t wait to play for you... And it doesn’t feel weird ! : Trish Clowes with her My Iris Quartet at Cambridge Modern Jazz on Thursday 27 May at 7.30 p.m. (uncorrected proof)

1982 to 1984 Re-visited : Koestler, Hume and Bernard Williams

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