Barbara - in two Tweets, and a bit of bloggin'

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20 November

* Contains spoilers *

@picturehouses Dunno about Barbara - it's recommended if you liked The Lives of Others, but it - Barbara herself apart - doesn't go beyond.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 20, 2012

Barbara - does the film portray the same ruthless, but largely inept, Stasi that The Lives of Others did, basically benign because bungling?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 20, 2012

To my mind, if you've seen Others (2006)*, viewing Barbara is inextricably linked with that experience, although I would, in no way, want to underplay the fact that Nina Hoss plays the title role brilliantly, and that this fact alone serves to distinguish Barbara from the earlier film** (together with the skill and genuineness that Ronald Zehrfeld brings to playing the co-starring part of André).


To keep, for a moment, on this bungling Stasi idea, a few observations (in no particular order) :

* Barbara disappears off on the train and thence to a lakeside restaurant to get cash left for her by her lover in West Germany*** (somehow she knows that it is there, which is never - fair enough - explained)

* She does all this (and stashes the money where, I think, he has suggested) without any more than her hours-long absence being detected

* However, the Stasi seem powerless / unwilling to punish her for her more or less obvious disobedience / suspicious behaviour (even at this stage : Barbara never presents, from the first shot, as someone who will tow the line), except by the humiliation of trashing her flat when looking it over

* Despite these disruptive looks-around her accommodation, they later fail to find the cash at the time when it is hanging from a thread down the flue of her stove

* They humiliate her, at the same time, by intimate strip-searches, but to no avail, as - whatever they think that they are looking for (i.e. they do not question her in any meaningful way, let alone interrogate her) - they never find anything (if I kept looking, and not discovering, when Barbara behaves as she does, I cannot imagine saying Ho hum!)

* She sneaks away and, seemingly undetected, spends (part of) the night with her lover - I recall no visit, no sanctions


Do I need to go on, to suggest that these Stasi agents are not the brightest matches in the box? Fine for a talented and compassionate, as well as highly intelligent, doctor to outwit them, but I got the impression that Minnie Mouse could have, too...

Barbara is no Minnie at all - she is hard to get to know, easier to like, and that is the joy of the film, and of seeing André interested in (and trying to soften) her supiciousness (which is her protective cloak) and her.

That part of the film is perfectly fine, but it is the business with the rude mechanicals that doesn't convince me, and makes the film overall the weaker.


Apologies for a bit of a rushed account of this, which (unless it is something that merits no polishing) may get it later...

Actually, what it's going to get is this Twitter exchange :

'Barbara' a muted mystery timepiece swept international film festival circuit, praised for its take on East German life dw.de/p/179bm
— German Culture (@GermanKultur) December 27, 2012

@germankultur Fine, but a documentary, with re-enactments, could do that, and that isn't what makes a feature film, I believe.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 27, 2012

@theagentapsley Have seen it and must admit, having experience of the country at the time, thought it summed up the emotional conflict.
— German Culture (@GermanKultur) December 27, 2012

@germankultur It's not an inherent criticism that a film depends on one character, but I felt that this one did too much (and inept Stasi).
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 27, 2012

End-notes

* IMDb suggests that there is a The Lives of Others (2013).

** Which is not to criticize Ulrich Mühe, but rather the limitations of his part, or Martina Gedeck, for whom, from Atomized (2000) I have a soft spot / a lot of time for her acting.

*** BRD = Bundesrepublik Deutschland, which we called FRG = Federal Republic of Germany.


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Faulks, Fort Knox and fingers

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19 November

When the cover, for some reason, says Writing as Ian Fleming, does that say anything at all?

Is Sebastian thereby licensed* to write, or is it mediumship - transcribing the beyond-the-grave Bond of this so-called franchise**'s originator ?

And what, then, does the infamous 'statement' say, under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, on the imprint-page ?

The rights of Sebastian Faulks, writing as Ian Fleming, to be identified as the author of this work have been / are hereby asserted under the [... CDA 1988 ...] ?


Aldous Huxley would never have allowed being dead to prevent continued authorship, as is attested by the account of A message from Aldous Huxley, deceased, and we can expect little else from the man behind Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang (Fleming, that is, not Faulks)...

And this would have gone on to talk a bit about Auric Goldfinger, but, just now, it doesn't !



End-notes

* Or, as modern illiteracy has it, 'licenced'.

** In what sense of the term are films to do with Bond, Bourne or - for all that I know - Bono (Sonny or U2's own Paul Hewson) linked to someone granting a franchise in the way that Spar (or sometimes Costa) licenses the franchise-holder (or franchisee) to trade under that name and sell branded goods, or Rolls Royce authorizes a dealership to sell (and service) its vehicles ?


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Couches aren't just for potatoes...

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19 November

I'm sure that I heard the first reference to a couch potato on British t.v. thanks to Clive James, and I'm also sure that the word 'potato' is utterly gratuitous in that phrase - it might as well have been couch wiener, couch tomato or couch ocelot for all the seeming relevance that potato has...

Really glad we bought the cat that scratching post. It's something nice for him to look at while he digs his claws into my fucking sofa.
— Chris (@ChribHibble) November 18, 2012

@chribhibble D'you still like fucking on the sofa, then (given the choice not to)? Probably what the cat's trying to say offends him !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 18, 2012

@theagentapsley Ha! You might be right.
— Chris (@ChribHibble) November 18, 2012

@chribhibble Gotcha is the word, I think !:)
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 18, 2012

Which proves that Donald Sutherland (and Fellini) knew more about Casanova than we suspected...

(Incidentally, how did we end up with Casanova (2005) twice - was it 190 years since his last conquest or summat ?)


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Svetlana steals the show

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18 November

Lovely and legendary artist Svetlana Baibekova from St Petersburg will have a solo show this December at The Tavern Gallery, Meldreth


Living in Cambridge and a member of Cambridge Drawing Society, Svetlana has the distinction of having one of her fish paintings (shown here) being admired so much that a young man stole it from one of the society's exhibitions in The Guildhall in 2009 to give to his girlfriend (as reported by Raymond Brown of Cambridge News, and on Anglia News)

After a very successful joint show held at Michaelhouse in Cambridge this autumn, and Burnished Burgundy, a recent solo display in Ely, as well as exhibiting previously in several venues in Cambridge, Edinburgh, London and her native Russia, Svetlana offers this change to become familiar with and immerse onself in the captivating universes that are her painted work

The exhibition will be open between 12.00 and 5.00 every day from Friday 7 December until Sunday 16 December, with a private viewing on the evening of Thursday 6 December from 7.00 till 9.30

The Tavern Gallery, so called because it occupies the premises of the former Railway Tavern in Meldreth, is easily accessible by transport from Cambridge or from Royston (and beyond), because its station is on the King's Cross to Cambridge line, and the gallery is a few hundred yards away from where one alights


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This is Leicestershire - where comments cannot easily be added...

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18 November

Article from Nicky Morgan MP @nickymorgan01 about the need to improve mental health services ow.ly/fnxC5
— YoungMinds (@YoungMindsUK) November 18, 2012

Comment on : The report provides food for thought for all of us who want to see the best possible treatment, with in-patient units offering the most therapeutic environments


Because I can, I am adding my comment here :


I can say, from experience, that psychiatric units have provided a poor therapeutic setting for at least 15 years, during which nothing much has changed, despite :


1. Initiatives such as Mind's Star Wards

2. The merger of the Mental Health Act Commission with the Healthcare Commission (and a third commission, whose name escapes me) to create CQC, or the Care Quality Commission

3. Much public and parliamentary rhetoric

4. The (patchy and very late) introduction of services for crisis resolution and home treatment, as well as some services for early intervention

5. Any money added to - rather than cut from - spending on mental-health services


What we need is services, i.e. for someone to do something that helps those who are experiencing mental distress. That is therapeutic, whereas these (all too common) experiences are not :


a. Being told that the doctor wants to see you this morning, and waiting in for something that never happens ('Oh, Doctor Jones had people to see at the out-patients' clinic and couldn't get away after all'), rather than being able to go to the cafe or for a walk

b. Coupled with that, misinformation, doublespeak, denial about what someone else definitely said ('Oh, Richard wouldn't have said that', when Richard did), confusion ('Who told you that?', when it was someone who had never been on duty before and who didn't give his or her name)

c. Having no one listen when you report unpleasant side-effects such as constipation, being unable to sleep at night, awkward limb movements, or painful uncontrollable muscle spasms ('Welcome to the world of anti-psychotics such as haloperidol, designed to make you acceptable to the family, friends, neighbours and the requirements of "society in general" who may have had you sectioned or otherwise persuaded into being admitted to become transformed into whatthey approve of !')

d. Likewise with any existing physical-health condition, or a physical complaint that you may develop - these experiences get written off ('The side-effects are worth the therapeutic benefit') or dismissed ('The medication won't do that', even if you later get hold of a patient information leaflet and find it listed') by the doctor, and who are the multi-disciplinary team to challenge him or her (as with any doctor)... ?


Therapeutic environments ? Well, no !



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Before the Fall

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17 November

Myth, legend, symbol or allegory, we will generally be familiar with The Garden of Eden and what happens there.

Interesting enough, and, for some, the origins of a theology of original sin, but that begs a bigger question:


What was the nature of Adam and Eve before any of it happened?


My starting-point for asking (although there is almost certainly, as part of the theology of sin, a whole doctrine of our unfallen state) is that few, Pallas Athene and maybe Benjamin Button apart, come into existence as fully formed adults - their nakedness adverts to a state before clothes or fig-leaves, but also to the fact that (whether or not they have had sex) they did not come into being as a result of sex.

There are those who like to ask how incest was unavoidable, if their offspring were to procreate, but a better question is who they were, what they knew, and how they viewed their world. Was who they were - as well as what they knew - changed in the instant of eating of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?

Snow White (the pole to The Wicked Queen) only needs one bite of the Queen's poisoned apple; Neo just takes the red pill to see the mirror ripple and his arm silver; Alice follows the instructions (in the same Wonderland that Neo's pill keeps him in) and grows and shrinks. But a few examples of how a moment's ingestion makes a world of difference...

What would it be like not to know good and evil? We think of children (some of us think of the overturned legal principle of Doli incapax), we think of angels, and, though we were once children (and some feel closer to that than others do), and cannot imagine much more than the appearance of angels (except when Frank Capra and Luc Besson do it for us), none of this seems like the possibly timeless state that our pair was in.

Maybe Milton helps us 'flesh out' that notion of a state of being before culpability, or maybe our guiltiness, our sense of responsibility, failure and despair shuts out that possibility of actively identifying or imagining anything other than this - at best, maybe, the anthropologists of old, talking about tribes in a state of nature, wanted to read into them some sort of innocence or unknowingness that was never there...


I do not know, but I think, reminded as I am of Paradise Lost yet again, I shall go back to John Milton, and try to read a book on each day of Christmas.



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Scorsese directed, not dissected

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17 November

on his bday, a thought onScorsese: he's unique yet NYNY is like Cukor,TaxiD is like Wenders,RagingB is like Welles,Mean Sts is like Pasolini
— mark cousins (@markcousinsfilm) November 17, 2012

@markcousinsfilm And After Hours is like Kafka meets Woody Allen...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 17, 2012

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Bony and Rusty

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16 November

* Contains spoilers *

I cannot, try to think of it kindly as I may (now that I have seen the film), believe that the title of Rust and Bone (2012) was the best that anyone had the wits to come up with from the original French title, De rouille et d'os, itself a shortening of Un goût de rouille et d'os, which is what the film credits as the title of the book.

That said, although Craig Davidson may have written originally in French (since he is Canadian), perhaps the title is from the English after all... At any rate, it is that of a collection of short stories, seemingly brought out to tie in with the film, although information seems a little hard to come by. (In French editions, there appears to be one in May with the full title, which names Anne Wicke alongside Davidson, and then one with the abbreviated title in July and no mention of her.)

The title isn't a massive - or any? - reason to be put off the film, but it is - as Ali is - a bit brusque (and does, say, as with The Woman in the Fifth, set up certain expectations): what about, rather than suggesting Monte Carlo or Bust! or Steptoe and Son, Of bone and of rust?

There are those who would criticize Untouchable (2012) (Intouchable) for being 'a buddy movie' between unlikely bedfellows, and find cliché in it - for all that Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) accepts Stéphanie (Marion Cotillard) for who she is, he still tells her, on first meeting, that she is dressed like a whore, unthinkingly says to her (as he says to everyone) 'Ça va?' (although he knows that she has lost her legs, because he saw it on the news), and treats her - although she is, as the phrase has it, all thumbs - as though being an amputee makes her incapable of making him a coffee. All this is the territory of Driss with Philippe, who, though having arms and legs, cannot use them. End of polemic (sort of)...


With this film (perhaps because I learnt that the origins are in stories, but I thought this at the time), I find myself thinking that there is bittiness about it: there could be one story about a boy and playing with the dogs kept for breeders; there could be another about a woman who enters 'the man's world' of hustling bids for illegal fights (used, in the film, to give a moment of hutzpah and light relief), partly because she gets a thrill from seeing the man with whom she sleeps risk getting beaten up; a third about the antics of a man paid by managers of stores to instal cameras to catch out their staff.

Now, I'm not saying that it was put together that way, but where does this film really cohere in any better way than Driss becoming the best chum to Philippe that he has ever had and vice versa? It is, apart from the gender meaning that Ali and Stéphanie can have sex, not really much of a love story - Ali's dissatisfaction about how his son has been treated has taken him to be with his sister, whom he has not seen for five years, and away from his son's mother, and the business with the cameras gets her fired and him off the scene. (Off the scene, but not - one notcies - around to Stéphanie's flat.)

Both films sort of come together at the end, though with less extensive need for trickery to give Cotillard stumps, when one admits to valuing the other (which Ali had not done, when he went off to Strasbourg - or wherever it is), but plenty of things rang false in the meantime :

* A patient who had had her legs amputated being left to wake up alone and find out what had happened to her;

* She would once, and only on impulse, try to grab a scalpel in despair;

* When, with her sister, she thins out clothes that she thinks that she no longer needs, she would not have been told already what prosthetics could do for her (which information, at the point of her despair, would have lessened it, if not the understandable tendency to depression); and

* Cotillard is not so much left unmade-up, as made down, so that, later, with make-up and her killer smile she can shine the triumph of her process.


And now to a Tweet, relating to Schoenaerts :

For those who saw Bullhead (2011), I think that there will be inevitable comparisons - beyond the male lead - between Rust and Bone and it.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 15, 2012

Nothing wrong with that, except - they used to call it typecasting - that he seems drawn to the same type of character, only doing a lot more here, because the script permitted it. (Here is my review of Bullhead, for those interested.)


In that connection of boxing, body-building and fighting, this is an interesting insight into Davidson from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Davidson :

Davidson also released a novel in 2007 named The Fighter. During the course of his research of the novel, Davidson went on a 16 week steroid cycle. To promote the release of the novel, Davidson participated in a fully sanctioned boxing match against Toronto poet Michael Knox at Florida Jack's Boxing Gym. Davidson was subsequently defeated in the match.


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Mental ill-health is exactly like a broken leg !

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2 November

If you've had chicken-pox, can you remember what it is like ? Or something else that you can compare with, say, having a bad dose of the flu ?

Does it make sense to compare one illness with another, so why is it a truism that depression isn't like a broken leg, because people can't see it ?

If you had appendicitis and had to have your redundant works removed, it's true that people wouldn't claim that you were shamming and just had to buck your ideas up, since you'd been admitted to hospital and they can credit that you have had surgery. Or wouldn't they ? Maybe they had ideas about how quickly you should be recovered, and didn't value how you or your medical advisers said that you should be acting and what you could or could not do and when?

So is a broken leg just a different case altogether from clinical depression, just because whatever the modern equivalent of a plaster-cast is on your leg and can be seen ? That as against feeling no value or warmth in the world, that you are worthless, and that there is nothing to live for.

Yes, we can see that your leg isn't (fully) functional, that you are using a crutch, but some officious, judgement-making person will - sooner or later - enquire how you came to break it : woe betide you, in the sympathy stakes, if it was on a skiing-trip, because you've clearly - the judgement goes - got too much money, and got what you deserved by doing something dangerous. (Forget the circularity that thinks what happened is proof that skiing is inherently dangerous, rather than any statistics as to how many broken legs per 1,000 novices.)

Because, with health, we all Get what we deserved - not quite, any longer (more often than not), in the This is God's punishment sort of way, but because (call it karma or come-uppance) we superstitiously and almost subconsciously believe that Things happen for a reason : whole films have been based on the premise, let alone novels or plays, or bigoted newspaper-columns.


Taking this back to the question broken leg versus clinical depression:


1. Assertion : people can see a broken leg

Well, when you've first fallen, or whatever happened, you might suspect a broken leg when there isn't one, or be surprised to be told that it is broken - it's a medic telling you whether it's broken or not that clinches it.

Same with depression. Someone who is depressed can quite typically, if it's never happened before (they've had glum days, as we all have, but nothing like this, this absence of feeling), not know that it is depression either. Maybe just been dragging oneself into work, but feeling really cold and isolated inside, and starting to drink to cope with it.

2. Assertion : because people can see a broken leg...

I have no idea what it is like to have a broken leg - the pain, the immobility, the disablement, etc. Sure, I know what a shooting pain in my back feels like, if I've put it out, but does anyone else who isn't a back-sufferer (albeit a part-time one) have any notion?

I have dropped descriptions above of what clinical depression is like : the sense of feeling an outsider to one's own life, of looking on one's family, responsibilities and hobbies and not caring about them or being able to derive any pleasure from thinking about them, of - depending on how it catches one - sleeping for England, or being so anxious and screwed up that sleep will not easily come.

These feeling, sensations, hurts, as with the other person who once broke a leg or once had or does have a bad back, will only mean much to anyone who has experienced them.


3. Assertion : because they can see a broken leg, they know what it's like

Really? If you've never had to use a crutch or a pair of them, you have a perfect conception of what becomes difficult, painful or impossible? I don't think so, and no more do I think so with depression.

Maybe not the person on crutches, or the person going through the hell of nothing mattering and everything viscerally feeling like rubbish, but someone who's been through that can tell you, the observer, what it's really like. If, as the observer, you love that person, maybe, with imagination, compassion and a lot of thinking yourself into someone else's shoes, you can understand what it's like:

Not ask the person with a broken leg to do something that is going to hurt a lot, or expect the person who is depressed to be as chatty as you are and be pleased to be alive, but be with that person where he or she is, not where we think that he or she ought to be.

That is caring in its full sense, not the cheapened one that wants to feel better about someone else (whatever he cost to him or her), and that is what it really means, using that other much misused word, to be concerned about him or her : to put those persons' feelings, needs and interests first, whether they cannot bend to reach something, or cannot get out of bed to-day to save their life.


Broken leg = visible suffering? No, I don't think so.


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Negativizing the non-existent

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1 November

Am I the only one who cannot entertain the redundancy, circularity or tautology of such notices ? : Only approved credit cards accepted.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 1, 2012

In the same way, at Luton Airport they say Smoking is strictly prohibited anywhere within the airport premises, except in designated smoking areas - so, smoking is not allowed, but, where it is allowed, it is allowed


Fathom my mind, if you like, as to why this irritates me, but it's just that they like using a lot of words to complicate a simple message :

You may only smoke in the smoking areas. You are not allowed to smoke anywhere else.

or

Smoking areas are provided in the airport. You may not smoke outside them.


I have since seen : Authorized parking only

For some reason, those who commission and erect these signs do not dare say No parking. Is that because cars parked in the grounds would appear to belie the assertion, or this mysterious search for the accuracy of assertions.

But, if they wanted that accuracy, why not favour? :

You may only park here with authorization


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A nupe ohm

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31 October - All Hallows' Eve

Call it a poem, rhythmic prose, prose-poem, it saw the light of day - kicking and mewling - on Sunday afternoon, at an event whose report is to follow...




Stopped watch


I am a stop-watch
But I have stopped,
Stopped at a quarter to twelve –
As we used,
When I was made,
To say –
But which is always
Now (when is now?)
Eleven forty-five


In my day,
No one thought
That forty
Contained a double vowel,
And knew where the place
Newgate, boldly declared
Above the pivot (‘London’ below),
Was, and what it meant


I’m old, but not that old,
Though big and what they call chunky,
As my numbered dial proclaims –
Whoever says ‘dial’, in
An age of ‘displays’? –
With its florid seven,
Even eight,
Nine with the grace
Of the six’s curl


As I’m stopped,
I don’t work,
And I have a loose hand,
The brass one that gave me life,
Now – whenever that is –
Forever upside down,
Severed from the shiny
Enamelledness of hour-
And minute-hands
(And even a small, red
Strip, more a marker
Than a hand,
Whose purpose I forget)
And was it just before mid-day,
Nearly to noon,
As they insist on wondering –
Or approaching the witching hour?


As if I care,
As if I remember :
I just hear
The faint click
In my ratchet-domed
Top-piece,
And doze back
To slumber



© Copyright Belston Night Works 2012



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Miliband on mental ill-health - 29 October 2012

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30 September


A series of what I see as key messages in Tweets

So far, this from Ed Miliband's speech : For people to talk about it and get help, there needs to be a common language and understanding.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 30, 2012

This, too, is an important point made : And people can lose years off their lives as mental illnesses undermine their physical health too.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 30, 2012

Also this : But far too often there is scepticism and abuse. Abuse that reinforces the taboo [of not talking about mental ill-health].
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 30, 2012

Regarding government total spending on mental health: A reduction of £150million, including cuts in crisis services and out-reach programmes.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 30, 2012

+ The 21st century challenge of mental health is as profound.Like sanitation, it is a massive public health challenge, affecting millions.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 30, 2012

And we need [...] an end to the artificial divide between physical and mental health services and ensure that they are properly integrated.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 30, 2012

Recognition of difficulty : Silences in our culture are hard to break.Taboos are resistant to being overcome.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 30, 2012

The next Labour government will work with [GB] business to improve our workplaces, helping people stay in work and make their contribution
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 30, 2012

Concluding points : But most of all the Labour Party I lead will speak out against prejudice.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 30, 2012

Then, in a comment on @MarkOneinFour's (Mark Brown's) piece in The Guardian, I said :


I think that the issues raised in this article need to be related to others that were mentioned in the speech:

What Miliband called 'the artificial divide' between physical health and mental health (as if, to one with experiences of stronger cases of either, it were not obvious that poor physical health can affect mood and morale, and how poor mental health impacts on immunity), because if people (GPs included, whose apparent desire for better training was highlighted) appreciated that they are not separate, more might give in the bullishly unforgiving attitudes of those such as Clarkson (much as he wanted to portray Brunel as a great man and for us to vote for him, when it suited).

Miliband rightly drew attention to the fact that the physical health and the mortality of those with long-standing mental-health conditions are far worse, and, although doctors may ask for better training, there has to be a massive shift in attitude, if the chest-pains of someone with a mental-health diagnosis are not, until it proves to be a heart condition, to be ascribed to panic-attacks or anxiety, whereas any other patient is looked at with open eyes.

It is a complete disgrace how, on mental-health units, even patients with diagnosed, pre-existing physical conditions receive - or do not receive - care, and the opposite case, of such a person being in a physical-health ward and needing their mental-health needs understood and not patronized, can be just as bad.

But, whatever the poor starting-point, Miliband is right to identify these issues, and I have tried to draw the half-dozen or so key messages out of his speech in my blog at [URL for this page censored by The Guardian]:


Next, I shall make another version of this posting, and interpolate comments between the Tweets of Miliband's speech...


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Comparing Bonds

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29 October

In case you missed it earlier, I have ranked all of the Bond movies from worst to best. (No Skyfall spoilers.) wp.me/pU0l8-Xr
— Mark Liversidge (@MovieEvangelist) October 29, 2012

Going to http://movieevangelist.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/the-23-best-james-bond-films-of-all-time/#comment-1479, I have added :

From memory, I know that I have seen Goldfinger / Dr No / Thunderball / Diamonds are Forever / The Man with the Golden Gun / Goldeneye / Die another Day / You only live Twice / Live and let Die / Quantum of Solace / Casino Royale, and one other, and I shall seek, before bedtime, to put them in order...



On reflection, can't place Thunderball / The Man with the Golden Gun as I recall them too poorly


Here, in order of my ranking, My ranking / The Evangelist's ranking out of 23 / That ranking translated to these 9

1 / 11 / 5 Live and let Die

2 / 19 / 8 Diamonds are Forever

3 / 8 / 4 You only live Twice

4 / 2 / 1 Casino Royale

5 / 7 / 3 Goldeneye

6 / 14 / 7 Quantum of Solace

7 / 22 / 9 Die another Day

8 / 4 / 2 Goldfinger

9 / 12 / 6 Dr No


On a first glance, biggest disparities (top of one ranking, bottom of another) are Goldfinger and Diamonds are Forever, and closest congruence with Quantum of Solace, You only live Twice, Die another Day, and Goldeneye. So we agree more than we disagree...?






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Definately indefinite

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29 October

I cannot claim to have read every word written by William Shakespeare, or even every play acknowledged to be his (or to have his hand in it), but I do not recollect the word definitely.

Easily enough remedied, as I have two nineteenth-century concordances upstairs, but my suspicion is that, although the word definite might just about have been Jacobean, the longer word came later...

But, with editions of Shakespeare that very often harmonize and modernize his spellings, since it is notorious that there is scarcely a pair of his signatures that are the same or where he even spells his name consistently, it is hard to know what - if he ever wrote the word - he would have written.

Would it stand as definate and definately? At the moment, I can definitively say that Shakespeare did / did not use the words...


Bartlett's The Shakespeare Phrase-Book does not list either word, but it - and the other one - is of a non-exhaustive kind, unlike more modern ones.



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Blair and Barnhill

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28 October

Many will know that George Orwell = Eric Blair. Perhaps fewer know that, partly out of fear of personal retribution from Stalin following publishing Animal Farm, Orwell went to live for several long stretches at Barnhill (the estate shown), in the white property in the photograph.

Barnhill is located close to the more northerly tip of the wild and remote Isle of Jura, one of The Western Isles.

In the end, probably because he had tuberculosis before he went back there for the last time, he had to be taken off the island, and he died in London, but he had been working on the novel that, by the expedient of reversing the final digits, became Nineteen Eighty-Four.

This is not the first time that I have taken shots of Barnhill from as close as, unless one is renting the property, one can get from the private road, but I will have to look out those earlier images...



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Balancing Hitchcock

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28 October

* Contains spoilers *

I will always make time to try to see a Hitchcock - as, broadly, with any film - in the cinema.

Often enough, it is a restoration, and the BFI has done a fair bit of that recently with his early films. There may be one screening (or a limited number), but one can usually hope to make it.

However, when the strand at this year's Cambridge Film Festival put on twelve films in the only eleven days that it ran*, there were inevitably going to have to be compromises, if trying to do all of them did not become an aim in itself, dictating that one could not see nearly as much of others' work. I therefore chose to limit myself to three (although, if domestic arrangements had permitted, I would happily have made an excuse to reacquaint myself with North by Northwest (1959)).

Vertigo (1958), I have already found time to talk about separately here, which leaves Blackmail (1929) and Marnie (1964), very different times, as we needed to be treated to piano accompaniment to the former. (Sadly, the festival web-site does not credit the pianist for his superb work, but I am able to name John Sweeney, because I have spotted his name in the programme (where I least expected it).)

I think that there may be similarities and preoccupations that I can identify, and, straightaway, is the fact that Hitchock is drawn to making the woman the criminal wrongdoer in all three films (whatever others may have done, it is her guilt and whether she can escape from it that is our point of attention): is Hitchcock giving us, deep down, what we want, or what he really wants (they may be the same thing)?

The contrast is with the Cary Grant figure, not just in NBNW, who is often enough a spy or a policeman (although, in the named film, he has to choose his allegiance, once he has worked out what is going on). I am just guessing, when I should really find out, that Hitchcock may have become influenced by, and even have experienced, the world of psychoanalysis that was so prevalent. Whether or not be believed in it, a film such as Marnie typifies the embodiment in Hollywood cinema of Freudian or sub-Freudian thinking and beliefs, for we are shown a young woman both shaped by her past and with recollections, which she cannot understand for herself, of what that past really means.

The scenes where Marnie ('Tippi' Hedren) relates to her mother (Diane Baker) - or, rather, doesn't relate to her mother, except on the most basic, human level - are almost too painful to watch: there is a torn, broken relationship, although the ties are there. The unfolding of the film tells us what really happened, why Marnie experiences what she does, and the forgetting that is usual in these films is here exposed by Sean Connery's dogged detrmination (as Mark Ruland) to find out the truth, because of the woman whom he loves. Revelation, redemption, renewal is almost the pattern.

In her book In Glorious Technicolor, Francine Stock considers, whether or not it was any more than cinematic convention, this prevalent presentation of one startling breakthrough in recollection or insight that will change everything (itself a sort of version of the American dream of anyone 'making it', and going from rags to riches, by suggesting that the transformation could be so strightforward and simple), which dominated this type of psychiatric or psychological film for a long time: the pattern, as she expounds it, is clearly there in Spellbound (1945), with, there, a male suspected of murder (Gregory Peck) and Ingrid Bergman as the psychiatrist who achieves the breakthrough.

Unlike the women in Blackmail, Vertigo, and Marnie, Peck's character is accused of wrongdoing, but is not ultimately guilty of it. Turning to the first of those, Anny Ondra (as Alice White) has left clues of what she did in self-defence, and they dog her for much of the film. When seemingly free of them, what Hitchcock clevely does is pull the rug from under us that there had been a common understanding, with her policeman boyfriend (John Longden), as to what was being covered up. It is too late, but what, maybe we wonder, will become of them, and what did he think that he was hushing up?


End-notes

* Not to be critical, but this was more of a season than a strand, and I do wonder whether there might be scope for bringing some of them back together so that those who, like I, wanted to see films that may never appear can see some new ones, some maybe not so new.


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Your name is what ?

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28 October

When, because I don't place when it began, did identifying oneself publicly by what are effectively nicknames become commonplace? ->
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 28, 2012

By which I mean - if I could find the answer (as there is somehow no Wikipedia® page for her yet) - was the name with which, for example, the new award-holder for jazz (in the Radio 3 New Generation Artists scheme) was registered at birth Trish Clowes - does that name 'Trish' appear on her birth-certificate, or was she given a longer name, which she never uses?

Yes, there's ample, and even Shakespearean, precedent in, say, the name Jack for one's real name not being what one uses - he, just as much Prince Hal is really Henry, should be Sir John Falstaff*, and, on appropriate occasions, is. But, if he had a business card (or a web-site), since when, as a matter of general custom, would his proper name not have appeared formally on it?

So someone whose name might have appeared on what everyone else calls headed paper (and lawyers 'notepaper') as Peter Graham, M. Phil, or P. D. Graham, has - at some point - almost universally become identified as Pete Graham. That undoubtedly is what happens now, but I cannot say when it became the norm - it just is.


End-notes

* Both men, then, which reinforces their matey-ness, have a familiar form of name, by which they call each other. In the famous scene from Henry IV, Part II, when Hal - as he has planned - banishes Falstaff, whose embarrassing interruption Welles catches in direction and playing so well in Chimes at Midnight (1967), severe attention is called to him, what he calls himself, and what he is.


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Proper Games with Film

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27 October

'Inspired by' the inept hashtag #ReplaceMoveTitleWithGoat, coming next on the blog : Proper Games with Film
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 27, 2012

Apologies for the typographical error

No wonder people were Tweeting Goat and Goat Goat Goat Goat and thinking it hilarious... !?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 27, 2012

Replace one word in a film-title of two or more words with 'goat' to astonishing effect - no, you can't do it in a hashtag of 24 characters, but hey!

Anyway, these are the games, which I shall dedicate to Bruce Lacey as


The Lacey Games

1. Switcheroo 1 Change two letters (not necessarily in the same word), to comic effect, in a film-title.

2. Subversion Invent a short, ironic sub-title that deflates the pomposity of a film's claims for itself.

3. Mornington Crescent 1 Play this game with film-titles. For beginners, any film-title can be used, and play ceases on reaching Lawrence of Arabia.

4. Switcheroo 2 With a group of friends, or of elderly relatives, continue as in 1 above, changing two letters at a time until the thing is wrung out. NB It is not to comic effect merely to reverse a previous player's changed letters.

5. Encapsulation As with 2, but a witty summary of a film, which may make risqué or other improper assertions about it.

6. Mornington Crescent 2 Limit the choice of film-titles to those of one specified director, actor and actress. End on Midnight in Paris.

7. Linking Change one film-title into another by subtituting one word that yields a valid title. Continue playing with the willing until they turn unwilling or are otherwise defeated. NB For those unused to the idea of a game, the original film-title has two or more words.

Probably a few more will follow soon...



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A Tweet review II

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27 October

* Contains spoilers *

Welcome to this posting, about the Estonian film of The Idiot (Idioot) (2011), in which I shall seek to fill out my Pratter review

It will be clear early on, when we meet Prince Myshkin* during a journey, that pews in the aisle of what turns out to be a very large church are representing a railway-carriage. However, arrival at the destination and coming face to face with a neon-fuelled icon is enough to show that we are not going to be playing with physical spaces (as in Lars von Trier's Dogville (2003), but transforming them).

Moreover, they are discreet, identifiably different spaces, and, without leaving the building at any point, we will see a flower-garden and the sea. Yet, as Dostoyevsky's novel runs to at least 700 pages, and we have a little over two hours, we must necessarily concentrate on what most centrally concerns Myshkin. Played by Risto Kübar, we learn early on of his medical history, about which - this is his complete and utter nature - he is unnecessarily open, and its manifests itself, as the role is played, as a helplessly shimmering passivity.

All the more contrast, which is at the heart of the book, not just with his distant relative's husband and family, but with the vibrancy, to everyone's cost, of Nastasja Filippovna, which it would have been tempting for Katariina Unt to overdo. The adaptation and direction by Rainer Sarnet have taken risks, but confined them, leaving the abiding feeling that the claustrophic nature of the setting, with all its overtones of the influence of the church on convention and conduct, has strengthened the telling of the central part of Myshkin's story.

My only regret is being so tired during this screening, which, through my fault, detracted from the compelling nature of the production.


End-notes

* His title means next to nothing at this stage, in practical terms, for he is penniless.


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My mad cocktail

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27 October

@mrmattroper @lorettamaine Equal amounts of creme de menthe, white rum, Cragganmore, blue curacao, cream, shaken with crushed ice, strained.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 20, 2012

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Is Izzard fizzin' ?

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27 October

According to Wikipedia®, and regarding Eddie Izzard :

In 2009, he completed 43 marathons in 51 days for Sport Relief in spite of having no prior history of long distance running


I probably couldn't even bring myself, except in a good cause, to eat what used to be called a Marathon for six out of seven weeks, so I have no notion how Monsieur Izzard managed that : maybe some account of it talks about the nasty effects on his health, or, at least, on his running-shoes...

What I was really serching the sacred annals for, and finding no mention of it, was a point of comparison for a statistic that IMDb gives at 5' 7" (or 1.70m), which led me to conclude:

1. The sort of person who routinely goes to IMDb for information about writers, actors and producers needs to know their height (it's probably sneaked from there onto Amazon somewhere).

2. The person consulting Wikipedia® may have other things on his or her mind, and, in Eddie's case, there is a lot to read - including the snippet included above.


But is it actually this, that Wikipedia® can get a bit fussy about these things with its end-notes and notes where a citation is needed, and so it doesn't want to say 5' 7" in case he's 5' 5" (or 5' 10")?


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