Stacks : An illustrated poem

Stacks : An illustrated poem

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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6 May - 11 August

Stacks : An illustrated poem

For S. T. Saunders

pic.twitter.com/BGbOPya70a

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 11, 2020

Practice, or custom,
Names a time of year
(Maybe church time,
Or tangible on walks),
And makes memorials -
We erect cathedrals pic.twitter.com/xyXKf5t51J

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 11, 2020

© Copyright Belston Night Works 2020


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

Musings (by Tweet) in advance of visiting [sc. expecting to visit] Kettle's Yard again - after around five months

Musings in advance of expecting to visit Kettle's Yard - after an absence of ~5 months

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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8 August

Musings (by Tweet) in advance of visiting [sc. expecting to visit] Kettle's Yard again -
after an absence of around five months

Photos on account of both a visit booked for next weekend at @kettlesyard, and its publication Light Spells – a photographic exploration of Kettle’s Yard - and in recollecting how light, and plants, flowers, air and space, do change the special place that Jim and Helen Ede made ! pic.twitter.com/p5lXzpjDgo

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 9, 2020

pic.twitter.com/Oun4EKrI8W

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 9, 2020

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

Recollections of [old] Adrian House - not, largely, 'the happy memories'

Recollections of [old] Adrian House - not, largely, 'the happy memories'

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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5 August

Recollections of [old] Adrian House - not, largely, 'the happy memories'

What even *is* The Main Hall at Fulbourn Hospital ?

Different times, different dances...#AreProwlersAGoodThing ?

Photo courtesy of our good buddy, @xa329. :) pic.twitter.com/PsOXyeMG6N

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 10, 2021

To be honest, the work of Roy Porter alone, in works such as these, long ago pointed the way to the need for full and proper revision of the worth of and need for sacred cows in this, as it were, field - people who never knew history excused themselves from 'learning from' it ? ! pic.twitter.com/vjUQBKJtVB

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 5, 2020

Friends, inside, helped me know who those 'good people' were :)

However, there was no point :

1) Sitting, except in the 'smoking' part of the patients' lounge, when I wanted their company

2) Being in the 'community' meeting*

3) Expecting anyone to walk around the grounds

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 5, 2020

** A perfect long bath-time, safely assured that the meeting would start on time, and with those who did not do likewise then in the meeting***

*** Winding patients up, but urging them to stay in the meeting, was the daily weekday sport - if they stormed out, they stormed out

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 5, 2020

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

No hawks or hand-saws : Re-visiting North by Northwest (1959)

No hawks or hand-saws : Re-visiting North by Northwest (1959)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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31 July

No hawks or hand-saws : Re-visiting North by Northwest (1959)

When Valerian (Adam Williams) and Licht (Robert Ellenstein) spot Roger O. Thornhill leave The Plaza's Oak Room*, they immediately decide (seemingly for no better reason than that Kaplan's name has just been paged as Thornhill rose to go to make the call) that he is Kaplan.#NxNW

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 9, 2020

* To make a dutiful reminder to his mother about the theatre that night :

Maybe not untypical of mother / son relationships in other films that star Cary Grant, but Thornhill's attitudes towards marriage / divorce and women seem shaped by that with his (Jessie Royce Landis) ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 9, 2020

Jessie Royce Landis (as Clara Thornhill, Roger O. Thornhill's mother¹)

[...]

However, what we learn of Eve Kendall (if gender-assumptions misdirected us) causes N x NW to unfold into the jealousies of Devlin (Grant, again) for Alicia Huberman (Bergman, again) in Notorious (1946), in the dual role that she played towards Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains).

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 1, 2020

“I think the Academy ought to set aside a special award for Bergman every year whether she makes a picture or not!” - Cary Grant about Ingrid Bergman at the 1947 Academy Awards pic.twitter.com/WtivqvzQFC

— ingrid bergman source (@ingridbsource) July 18, 2020

[...]

¹ The spell-binding (versus The House of Dr Edwardes, the novel from which Ben Hecht, etc., worked (away)) is additionally of all of :

* Ballantyne, believing what Leo Carroll (Dr Murchison) wants

* Dr Alex Brülov (Michael Chekhov), desiring his old pupil

* We cinema-goers

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 1, 2020

End-notes :

¹ Though only a year separated Grant and her in age.


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

Outline for a proposed film 2.0 : Primavera [or Dario ?] - or The Mandrake Serenade

Outline for a proposed 2.0: Dario [or Primavera ?] - or The Mandrake Serenade

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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16 July

Outline for a proposed film 2.0 : Dario [or Primavera ?] - or The Mandrake Serenade

NB Now superseded by version 2.1 - fully corrected, and with preliminary ideas for casting

'Reap what ye shall sow'

For Rosy and Brent

1. Maria Mandragora and Michael Hope meet at a performance of Verdi's Otello, and, talking during the interval, become friends : he is in Milan for a year during his degree (Italian and French), and she is older, and did not go to university, but has already established herself in business, buying and selling rare recordings as Mandragora

2. They are close, but never lovers - something holds him off, even at romantic operas at La Scala, and he never quite trusts Vincenzo Argenta, Luigi's father, who was widowed early, after the birth of Maria's younger sister Primavera (away, in Manchester, at Royal Northern)

3. Michael and Maria write to each other when he returns to the family home in Lancaster (where he sings in a church choir), before completing his degree
4. A year or so on, Maria is visiting Primavera in Manchester (who chose to stay there, despite giving up on becoming a professional singer) and, to see Maria again, Michael (who has never met Primavera) is invited to a party that she is throwing in Maria's honour

5. Primavera works there in music publishing, and Michael works for a company that makes travel arrangements for musicians

6. Unknown to Michael, Maria and Vincenzo (who is also visiting, but not in evidence at the party) contrive for Primavera and him to meet early on at the party (of which Primavera is also unaware), and bewitch them both with love-potions

7. The effect is such that they abandon their wontedly cautious behaviour and disappear to the roof-garden, where they kiss and pet heavily, then return to the party separately

8. As the party continues, so does the effect of the love-philtres, and Primavera (having told Maria how struck she is on Michael) manages to suggest privately that Michael should stay the night, who, without his usual level of reserve, agrees

9. One of the last to leave, Maria had earlier seemed to slip out of the party and to have brought back a chilled bottle of a quality Italian sparkling wine for Primavera (and Michael), but, in fact, she gets the bottle from Vincenzo, and lets him in (to hide in the roof-garden ?), when she returns, as the bottle will knock Primavera and Michael out soon after they take it to bed, and, when Vincenzo has seen that they are unconscious, he will let Maria back in, who rapes Michael to orgasm while he watches / listens next door, afterwards emptying away all but a small residue in each glass (and leaving the empty bottle, as if the couple had consumed its contents)

10. FF through a montage or other telling of Primavera's being mortified that she does not remember the vigorous love-making, without protection, that proves to have made her pregnant, and that, although Michael also does not have any conscious memory of that first time, he seems never to find her or her love-making exciting, and yet they marry and stay together because of their son Dario, with only the distant attentions of his grandfather and apparent uncle, except for family visits

11. The suggestion that, although they are a couple out of duty, they do not even find themselves blessed by Dario (or vice versa), and that, not just through teething, etc., they have never been able to rely on undisturbed sleep, and that they move to be near Michael's parents to have their support with childcare and a detached property where tensions with neighbours no longer arise

12. Yet tensions repeatedly happen, when Dario pesters and pesters to be allowed to play in the garden, but invariably wreaks destructive wonders on it, as soon as anyone's back is turned (which behaviourally mirrors their life with him in microcosm), so that Primavera finally asks Michael to fence off the garden and gives Dario his own patch of the garden near the house, where nothing that he plants he does not soon uproot or trample on - until three seeds are given to him by Michael's old choir-mistress, as part of Dario's Christmas present, all of which, now oddly assiduous, he feeds and waters into vigorous life, as he approaches his seventh birthday

13. Dario's screams and rages at night have finally subsided, but Michael and Primavera, driven mad by a shrieking of unidentifiable origin at night, have resorted to heavy-duty ear-plugs, which means that they are unaware that, after arriving on Dario's birthday on an early flight, Maria and Vincenzo have been greeted at the door by Dario, and proudly shown his three established plants - which so repulse and horrify Vincenzo, at some gut level, that he wrenches them out of the ground, unaware of their shrieks, and that first Maria, and then Dario, fall down dead behind him, and we see him - as if at the end of Mozart's Don Giovanni - reached for by arms and pulled down, through the patch of soil, and into Hades


ENDS

© Copyright Belston Night Works 2020


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Outline for a proposed film : Dario - or The Mandrake Consignment

Outline for a proposed film : Dario - or The Mandrake Consignment

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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16 July

Outline for a proposed film :
Dario - or The Mandrake Consignment

'Reap what ye shall sow'

For Rosy and Brent

1. Luigi Mandragora and Nancy Hope meet at a performance of Verdi's Otello, and, talking during the interval, become friends : she is in Verona for a year during her degree (Italian and French), and he is older, and did not go to university, but has already established himself in business, buying and selling rare recordings

2. They are close, but never lovers - something holds her off, even at romantic operas in The Arena, and she never quite trusts Maria Argenta, Luigi"s mother, who was widowed early, after the birth of his younger brother Dario (away, in London, at The Guildhall)

3. Nancy and Luigi write to each other when she returns to the family home in Suffolk (where she sings in a church choir), before completing her degree

4. Several years on, Luigi is visiting Dario in London (who chose to stay there, despite giving up on becoming a professional singer) and, to see Luigi again, Nancy (who has never met Dario) is invited to a party that he is throwing in Luigi's honour

5. Nancy works for a company in London that makes travel arrangements for musicians, and Dario works in music publishing

6. Unknown to her, Luigi and Maria (who is also visiting, but not in evidence at the party) contrive for Dario and her to meet (of which Dario is also unaware), and bewitch them both with love-potions

7. The effect is such that they abandon their wontedly cautious behaviour and disappear to the roof-garden, where they kiss and pet heavily, then return to the party separately

8. As the party continues, so does the effect of the love-philtres, and Dario (having told Luigi how struck he is on Nancy) manages to ask Nancy privately to stay the night, who, without her usual level of reserve, agrees

9. One of the last to leave, Luigi has seemed to slip out of the party and to have brought back a chilled bottle of a quality Italian sparkling wine for Dario (and Nancy), but, in fact, he gets the bottle from Maria, and lets her in (to hide in the roof-garden ?), when he returns, the bottle will knock Nancy and Dario out soon after they take it to bed, and, when Maria has seen that they are unconscious, she will let Luigi back in, who rapes Nancy to orgasm while she watches / listens next door, afterwards emptying away all but a small rresidue in each glass (and leaving the empty bottle as if the couple had consumed its contents)

10. FF through a montage or other telling of Dario being mortified that he does not remember the vigorous love-making, without protection, that proves to have made Nancy pregnant, and that, although she does not have any conscious memory of that first time, she seems never to find him or his love-making exciting, and yet they marry and stay together because of Lucia, with the distant attentions of her grandmother and apparent uncle, except for family visits

11. The suggestion that, although they are a couple out of duty, they do not even find themselves blessed by Lucia (or vice versa), and that, not just through teething, etc., they have never been able to rely on undisturbed sleep, and that they move to be near Nancy's parents to have their support with childcare and a detached property where tensions with neighbours no longer arise

12. Yet they repeatedly happen, when Lucia pesters and pesters to be allowed to play in the garden, but invariably wreaks destructive wonders on it, as soon as anyone's back is turned (which behaviourally mirrors their life with her in microcosm), so that Dario finally fences off the garden and gives Lucia her own patch of the garden near the house, where nothing that she plants is not soon uprooted or trampled on - until three seeds that are given to her by Nancy's old choir-master for Lucia's at Christmas, all of which, now oddly assiduous, feeds and waters into vigorous life, as ahe approaches her seventh birthday

13. Lucia's screams and rages at night have finally subsided, but Nancy and Dario, driven mad by a shrieking of unidentifiable origin at night, have resorted to heavy-duty ear-plugs at night, which means that they are unaware that, after arriving on an early flight, Maria and Luigi have been greeted by Lucia on her birthday and proudly shown her three established plants - which so repulse and horrify Maria, at some gut level, that she wrenches them out of the ground, unaware of their shrieks, and that first Luigi, and then Lucia, fall down dead behind her, and we see her, as if at the end of Mozart's Don Giovanni reached for by arms and pulled down, through the patch of soil, and into Hades


ENDS


© Copyright Belston Night Works 2020


However, Rosy [#UCFF's esteemed editor at TAKE ONE] then gave these notes... :

Gender flip all the characters and I’ll exec produce. And don’t come back to me with a Considine attitude.


[In obedience to which dictates [which assuredly reference #UCFF's Q&A comments on Paddy Considine's Tyrannosaur (2011)], we then derived version 2.0...]

NB Now superseded by version 2.1 - fully corrected, and with preliminary ideas for casting

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Nine Lessons with Messiaen : La nativité du Seigneur on DVD

Nine Lessons with Olivier Messiaen : La nativité du Seigneur on DVD

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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26 July

Nine Lessons with Olivier Messiaen : La nativité du Seigneur on DVD,
performed by Jennifer Bate on the organ of Norwich Cathedral

Programme :

1. La vierge et l'enfant

2. Les bergers

3. Desseins éternels

4. Le verbe

5. Les enfants de Dieu

6. Les anges

7. Jésus accepte la souffrance

8. Les mages

9. Dieu parmi nous


La nativité du Seigneur is a strange piece, except seen as fairly static, winter-suited meditations, which rely on juxtaposition ('Les bergers' (mvt 2) or 'Le verbe' (mvt 4)), rather than development, or only on gradual, if essentially slow, re-working of the material at a microscopic level.

'Les enfants de Dieu' (mvt 5) is where the work first takes flight, although it then reduces to contemplation to close. 'Les anges' (mvt 6), with its scurrying or dance-like steps, also has a toccata, at its end.

We see Bate's hands, on the four manuals of the console, much before 'Jésus accepte le souffrance' (mvt 7), but this is the first and only time that we see the pedals (perhaps not much in use before then ?). It is succeeded by 'Les mages' (mvt 8), which re-visits earlier, somewhat fractured material.

'Dieu parmi nous' (mvt 9), after its bold opening bars, and a quieter re-statement of a familiar sequence, chirpingly and then, accretingly or consolidatingly, and via a wild prefiguring chord, builds towards the celebrated finish's testament - much used as an organ voluntary - to Pentecost and the power of the Holy Spirit, and the summative and echoing gestural pillars of the last chords.


As a DVD, it is equally strangely filmed, whatever benefits we might expect from seeing an organist perform, who was at the height of her powers.


[...]


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Re-visiting, decades on, The Masque of The Red Death (1964)

Re-visiting, decades on, The Masque of The Red Death (1964)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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17 July

Re-visiting, decades on, The Masque of The Red Death (1964)

How we made: Jane Asher and Roger Corman on The Masque of the Red Death https://t.co/H1RIvm2hz8

— Guardian Film (@guardianfilm) February 8, 2021

¹ When Vincent Price is not squinting (or smirking) as a substitute for acting, Jane Asher is his fairly lifeless younger obsession, in what is a mash-up of Edgar Allan Poe's title short story with his 'Hop-Frog' (and other probably obligatory elements, such as Satanic worship). pic.twitter.com/Q5djAuCOQ3

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 19, 2020

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Flint Lives Matter : Anthony Baxter's FLINT (2020)

Flint Lives Matter : Anthony Baxter's FLINT (2020)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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10 July

Flint Lives Matter : Anthony Baxter's FLINT (2020)

See water as a precious thread that runs through Baxter's work, with the questionable loss, to might, of precious Aberdeenshire sand-dunes and Molly Forbes' water-supply in @TrumpedMovie* and @ADGmovie. #UCFF Tweets are gathering at :https://t.co/QKkfLlsmxS

* *That* Trump ! https://t.co/TZGNtogKHC

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 10, 2020

At times via Alec Baldwin's narration, and with a way of showing people's humanity in what pains them to recall or just their faces, Baxter's camera is ever on, over and around Flint, MI, and those who live there.

The final day to rent the film (£4.50) :https://t.co/5eODZ6Fvcq

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 10, 2020

Even on a laptop, very many other things combine in Baxter's editing (in close conjunction with Glynn's uncanny score) to make what will be a knock-out on a cinema-screen - especially the impact of principal cinematography by Baxter and Edward Bally (and Bally's aerial footage) !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 11, 2020

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Re-visited, as a film, The Trip (2010)

Re-visited, as a film, The Trip (2010)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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7 July

Re-visited, as a film, The Trip (2010)

The film version of The Trip (2010), originally seen* at @camfilmfest, is class from Michael Winterbottom, its gorgeous landscape shots so skilfully edited in that they speak for, or despite, the on-screen personæ of Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan (who'd hate being credited second). pic.twitter.com/Y4nHE3YPDs

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 8, 2020

The six episode version for t.v. has to arc very differently*, and Winterbottom gets it just right here !

* More so than comparing The Trip to Italy (2014) as film and t.v. series, where, building up to Rob's dalliance with Lucy, we actually have more shots of the yacht at sea. pic.twitter.com/ALyPUiTokv

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 8, 2020

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Lessons from Booth and Cleese on Government (3rd edn)

Lessons from Booth and Cleese on Government (3rd edn)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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4 July

Lessons from Booth and Cleese on Government (3rd edn)

Booth and Cleese on Government (3rd edn) tells us about employing 'The Waldorf salad manoeuvre' :

1. The employee (Terry) is skilled, but Basil deems him unskilled.

2. As he demonstrates, by trying to get Terry to stay on (yet keep the £20 that Mr Hamilton paid).#BasilAndBJ

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 6, 2020

Good employers actually value employees, and will ensure that they take proper breaks and their entitlement of leave, because they care about them

Bad employers (who also make punctuality an issue, etc.) invoke work-life balance as a weapon and / or bad managers use it 'unseen'

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

A composer of music, whether writing to commission or not, is not answerable to anyone but inspiration when a glorious theme comes to mind or an impasse in the work evaporates

However, one conceals from bad employers / managers, say, not when an e-mail was sent, but when drafted

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

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Sarah Connolly at Festival international Haendel de Göttingen, 2015

Sarah Connolly at Festival international Haendel de Göttingen, 2015

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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27 June

Sarah Connolly and the Festspiel Orcehster Göttingen, under Laurence Cummings,
at Festival international Haendel de Göttingen, 2015

#OneLovelyThingToDay

* Et aussi @ARTEen ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 27, 2020

If you thought that, with a spirited 'Mi lusinga' and ending on 'Stà nell'Ircana', the first half was devastatingly powerful, Connolly and Cummings built, via Giulio Cesare and Solomon, to the terrifyingly expressive 'Dopo notte' of Ariodante - and two and a half mins' acclaim !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 27, 2020

Which is in no way a bad thing, as the selection of arias on that album - and a smaller one of orchestral pieces and recitative to give them context - works very well, and it is a lovely performance and recording :)

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 28, 2020

Corrigendum :

Or, even, coloratura... :

Not thinking of dinner, honestly, but too distracted - when checking whether it was a double consonant - to notice whether it was in the right word ;)

And that's just the first half of the concert [https://t.co/KhHk2kUrSv]

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 27, 2020

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How helpful is it that Cambridge student newspaper Varsity has published the anonymous article 'Cambridge was not the time of my life' as it stands, without historical context

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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14 June

How helpful is it that Cambridge student newspaper Varsity has published the anonymous article
'Cambridge was not the time of my life' as it stands, without historical context ?

From its personal perspective, the piece makes some very good points, e.g. that - whether taking up rowing becase it's 'supposed to be' beneficial, or treatments or therapies - not everything helps everyone.

Or pinning so much, week by week, on the response of one's supervisor. https://t.co/Uif7Brgn5a

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 14, 2020

'I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety in my second year. After presenting me with this information², the college nurse asked if I was okay, as I looked "a bit numb".'

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 14, 2020

'I asked for an intake appointment at the student counselling service. In the session, the therapist wasn’t able to understand what I was saying. I left feeling crushed and empty.'

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 14, 2020

¹ I.e. not even by decade, or in which period of 15-20yrs.

² The juxtaposed sentences read as if the college nurse *made* the diagnosis :

That may have seemed what happened, even if the nurse's intention was for the writer to see a GP to make a diagnosis and prescribe, etc. ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 14, 2020

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I'm All Right, Jack ! (1959) : A racist message, or a subversive one ?

This is a place-holder for I'm All Right, Jack ! (1959) : A racist message, or a subversive one ?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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4 May

This is a place-holder for I'm All Right, Jack ! (1959) : A racist message, or a subversive one ?

Not recently, but - quite seriously - I was watching him in I'm All Right, Jack (1959) to-night

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 4, 2020

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The Unhinged Tweets*

The Unhinged Tweets*

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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12 May

The Unhinged Tweets*

Not only... :

The distributors wittily (?) probably intended both ?

The casualness of its #mh slur apart, an example of what would appear to be a pair of words, one of which we don't actually have

'That Crowe ? Yeah, he's well hinged, he is !'

Sadly, more at #UCFF :https://t.co/qvaIabXOns

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 12, 2020

But also :

PS With 'that crazy N* thing', it's an attempt to turn us on, as it were, to type - as well as character-type ;)

* Which pixily connotes five-bar gates, as well as suggesting all the lack of promise that Bullhead (2011) was never really offering ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 12, 2020

End-notes :

* Well, in these troubled times, we made the difficult decision - at #UCFF - to generate content, but with minimal effort...


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The 'Raindance' Tweets

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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11 May

Interesting :

Both times that #UCFF watched True Romance* (1993), there was no bank-robbery... ;)

* I.e. Quentin Tarantino's screenplay under Tony Scott's direction - *that* True Romance ? https://t.co/n7zR2mbINT

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 10, 2020

Meanwhile, others find a difference between :

'Make my day punk' [Jubilee (1978) - Derek Jarman (director)]

- and -

'Make my day, punk' [Dirty Harry (1971) - Clint Eastwood (as Harry Callahan)] https://t.co/eucvYZK9wd

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 11, 2020

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

Some Tweets about the efficacy of employment law

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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11 May

It all started with the certainty claimed by this Tweet :

If your workplace isn’t safe, you don’t have to work there. Section 44 of the 1996 Employment Rights Act is clear on this. Stay home, save lives.

— James Meadway (@meadwaj) May 10, 2020

And then casually looking up the statutory reference (s. 44 Employment Rights Act 1996 (as amended)) :

Even if it did help to invoke s. 44, it's hard to see why anyone would rely on this Act of Parliament, let alone this section, when enforcement of rights in Emloyment Tribunals is a costly and hardly easy remedy :

Is there some case-law that justifies referring to it at all ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 10, 2020

Or this Tweet ? :

- If your workplace isn’t safe, you don’t have to work there.
- Read Section 44 of the 1996 Employment Rights Act. 👇https://t.co/3L5KTZAerJ pic.twitter.com/fSx2ELwsdD

— Novara Media (@novaramedia) May 10, 2020

And replying :

Or s. 230 [https://t.co/l81upd9weW] ?

The word 'employee' appears in s. 44 (not 'worker'), and is defined in s. 230(1) :

'In this Act "employee" means an individual who has entered into or works under (or, where the employment has ceased, worked under) a contract of employment' https://t.co/VnZZyVgeAl

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 11, 2020

In conclusion (of some sort) :

You're entirely correct to say that people must take advice on their individual circumstances before seeking to rely on sections 44/100. I am concerned about the various tweets flying around which suggest that these sections are a panacea - they are not, they are fact specific.

— Matt Sellwood (@MattSellwood) May 11, 2020

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

Note of a dream (uncorrected proof) : Max Reinhardt¹, and maybe not Nick Luscombe (?), was part of it

Note of this afternoon's dream : Max Reinhardt¹, but maybe not Nick Luscombe², were part of it

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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10 May

Note of this afternoon's dream (uncorrected proof) : Max Reinhardt¹, but maybe not Nick Luscombe², was part of it

The Agent was looking at a metal crown, fitting to it some sort of cake-skirt (and adjusting it to fit), and chatting to @imaxreinhardt¹ about the crown's place in the history of music. (The skirt was largely transparent, but with red designs on it, and, when finally in place, tightened and fastened perfectly.)


It was Max¹ in that way that, in a dream, people are. [Ideally, for the dream's own internal purposes, the other person² with me needed to be <@nickluscombe, but I think that I became aware - even as I wasn't aware whether Max, in the dream, actually resembled him - that he didn't look like Nick (at all).]

Max was busy with something else in an amiable Blue Peter way (at some point, we were definitely 'on air', and the group of three, maybe four², of us tittered at a double entendre that we had managed not to get noticed).


In talking about the crown, the three of us - it was definitely just Max, 'Nick' and The Agent, by then - concluded that the required proof of something to do with it, or its musical connection, was missing.

'Nick' asked if I had read Hidden Proof by Mr Nerd, and apparently wasn't joking. Did we just linger on that question (which I didn't (couldn't ?) answer), and that caused the propitious dream-air to dissipate (Or it just did dissipate ?), since it clearly wasn't Nick after all ?


End-notes :

¹ He of the funky Twitter banner-images, no less.

² One of us had gone somewhere, off set, and didn't return before the dream ended (because I awoke - that got him !).


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

Two Tweets on trying to watch James Ivory's The Europeans (1979)

Two Tweets on trying to watch James Ivory's The Europeans (1979)

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

13 March

Two Tweets on trying to watch James Ivory's The Europeans (1979)

Maybe Henry James is as unsubtle in The Europeans : A Sketch, an early novel¹, as James Ivory's direction and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's screen-adaptation suggest ? :https://t.co/nikb3qOq8R

In any event, #UCFF quickly gave up watching what Ebert then seems to have disesteemed²...

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 13, 2020

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

The Verb, the haiku, The McMillan ?

You're buying doublers ? Gotta be The Macmillan !

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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11 March

You're buying doublers ? Gotta be The Macmillan !

Ian Fleming has a lot to answer for ! ;)

As does Edward Lear ? :

There was a McMillan called Ian -
McMillan called Ian, he was :
Because, oh because,
McMillan he was,
McMillan, with first name of Ian.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 11, 2020

First line, of haiku,
Precedes a yet longer line,
Menacing - perhaps ? https://t.co/ssqYleuZrG

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 11, 2020

Slàinte !


Post-script :

Cheers, @IMcMillan - thanks for the Retweet :)

PS Maybe not even of the standard of my recent Catrin Finch poem, but hey !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 11, 2020

For no better reason than that #UCFF's interlocutor had also heard Catrin Finch play :

There once was a person called Finch -
A harpist, who looked ev'ry inch :
When she plucked on the strings,
One heard glorious things
That gave one's sweet conscience a pinch.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 5, 2020

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

What a treat, what a surprise ! : Pembroke Festival of Voice, with Ruby Hughes and Joseph Middleton (work in progress)

This is a review of Pembroke Festival of Voice, with Ruby Hughes and Joseph Middleton

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

29 February

This is a review (work in progress) of Pembroke Festival of Voice,
with Ruby Hughes and Joseph Middleton, in a recital given in The Old Library, Pembroke College, Cambridge, on Friday 29 February 2020 at 8.00 p.m.

When one had paid on the door, expecting Kitty Whately (accompanied by Joseph Middleton), but put right by known others there who were in the know, how could one possibly not be delighted - with no disrespect whatever to Whately ! - to find that Ruby Hughes was performing in her stead (with Middleton) ? !

Love them or loathe them, but the wonted place - though there is also The Cambridge Concert Calendar for every term - to find a music-event is 'the railings : Middleton and Whately, with Mahler's Rückertlieder (in The Old Library at Pembroke), had fitted the bill, so Middleton with Hughes was certainly no disappointment.

The directness of Ruby Hughes, and the concomitant sincerity that it expresses, is palpable - it is through the former that we feel and read the latter

[...]


With Frauenliebe und -leben (i.e. Frauenliebe und Frauenleben), Schumann's Opus 47 song-cycle on the bill of fare, however, who could be dissatisfied at the thoughtful arc with which Hughes and Middleton traversed these eight numbers, from the - very much as it were - infatuation of 'Seit ich ihn gesehen' to the stark realizations of 'Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan' : not in any way even needing (as some do) to be apologetic for the milieu and import of Chamisso's poems, let alone limit them by or to their time. As the Purcell texts should have shown us, human-beings are and have been over the centuries, for all their differing trappings, creatures with and moulded by the same needs, desires and weaknesses as the heroines of Shakespearean drama, or the novels of The Brontës.

[...]



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

Pixiedust joins Good Rain : Solveig Slettahjell and The Slow Motion Quintet

A first-blush mini-review of Solveig Slettahjell and The Slow Motion Quintet in Pixiedust

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

28 February

A first-blush mini-review by Tweet of Solveig Slettahjell and The Slow Motion Quintet in Pixiedust

Pixiedust by Solveig Slettahjell and The Slow Motion Quintet¹ has arrived and is having a first play (as pair to Good Rain, the other album then known²):

Still lullabye that's also half to an adult, but even more Gospel (e.g. 'Have a Little faith in Me'), and much more free :) pic.twitter.com/GuII34r2rd

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 28, 2020

¹ I.e. #solveigslettahjell plus Sjur Miltjeteig (tpt), Morten Qvenild (pf), Mats Eilertsen (db), Per Oddvar Johansen (dr).

² *Could* it have been heard, played / reviewed on one of @BBCRadio3's jazz programmes of the time (Jazz on 3, or Jazz Line-Up), and bought so long ago ? pic.twitter.com/Z2VwqWtFlm

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 28, 2020

¹ I.e. #solveigslettahjell plus Sjur Miltjeteig (tpt), Morten Qvenild (pf), Mats Eilertsen (db), Per Oddvar Johansen (dr).

² *Could* it have been heard, played / reviewed on one of @BBCRadio3's jazz programmes of the time (Jazz on 3, or Jazz Line-Up), and bought so long ago ? pic.twitter.com/Z2VwqWtFlm

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 28, 2020

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

The 13 Rules, perhaps, of Making Documentary Films* (work in progress)

The 13 Rules*, perhaps, of Making Documentary Films (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)

24 February

The 13 Rules*, perhaps, of Making Documentary Films (work in progress)

1. If some fact or experience is extraneous to the film, but the audience is expected to know it, it should have been in the film itself (not a Q&A, DVD extras, etc.)
2. Picking and choosing to whom to give a name (using a caption), when that person starts speaking from archive material or in interview, need not be defensible as such, but a discernible rationale might be beneficial

3. By all means let some viewers believe that all the ills of the world (or all its goodness) are located in some place, practice or person, but you could ‘nod’, a little, to others who will watch more sceptically (please see Rule 5 (below) et seq.)?

4. Equally, some viewers will - surreptitiously - drown under an undifferentiated mix of : (illustrative) clips from feature films of the time ; home ciné and / or video ; generic archival footage ; date-specific footage and / or capture of t.v., etc., broadcasts ; other documentary material ; any re-enactments / re-creations, etc., etc.

5. Again, those viewers who happily absorb a message such as hinted at in Rule 3 (above) will not notice, but, even if you are determined just to tell a story that ‘enough’ people will buy wholesale (especially if only adding detail to an accepted narrative), watch out for ‘flak’, from some who expect more

6. Such flak will necessarily come from those who ask what similarities there are to other countries in the territory in which the film (if only in a specific edit or version) is targeted, and which your film largely serves some viewers as a convenient emotional and / or intellectual distraction from acknowledging (or maybe as little more than self-satisying entertainment that such things happen elsewhere ?)

7. Art can hold up the mirror to life, but it can also do us a dis-service, if it does not truthfully answer the Snow White Question asked by those who could, and should, see all that the mirror reflects

8. Some see film as having a pedagogic purpose, whereas some see documentary - when it more closely resembles 'an essay**' - as more free :

Well, there are those who teach who claim that they should tell their students what they are going to teach them, teach it, and tell them that they were taught it, and, although cinema really does not need to be that ‘heavy-handed’, film-makers might pay regard, when they have somehow decided on an intended story (or one of its 'strands'), and know it so well, that – in the edit, etc. – the film omits to tell all of its essential parts


More to come...


End-notes :

* So, for #UCFF (at least), it 'does it', if adherence is made to more than seven or eight of them…

** Though who says where, say, Tarkovsky’s Mirror (Zerkalo [Зеркало]) (1975) begins and Godard’s The Image Book (Le Livre d'image) (2018) ends ?


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