Κυνόδοντας (Dogtooth) (2009) re-considered

Κυνόδοντας (Dogtooth) (2009) re-considered

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

Κυνόδοντας (Dogtooth) (2009) re-considered

In Κυνόδοντας (Dogtooth) (2009), Yorgos Lanthimos* horrifies far more when - by remembering - we know (roughly) where the film's going, how it unfolds, and picks up any clues or indications missed previously.

* With regular co-writer Efthymis Filippou (through to Sacred Deer). pic.twitter.com/ghlVRdYw81

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

By contrast, nothing about a film in English per se required the overclunky exposition that The Lobster (2015) gives us :

Yes, the opening premise may seem curious and novel, but the film does not operate on its own level, but only to take obvious side-swipes at society's norms.

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

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

#AndyWarhol at Tate Modern

#AndyWarhol at Tate Modern

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

#AndyWarhol at Tate Modern

Andy Warhol produced art at a time of immense social, political and technological change.

This exhibition examines Warhol’s subject matter, his experiments in media
and the way he cultivated his public persona.

It draws attention to Warhol’s personal story and how his view of the world shaped his art.

Unlike Factory Girl (2006), suggesting Andy Warhol's attitudes to others as monstrous and / or that he was a monstrosity, #Warhol at @tate Modern shows or finds humanness, and an equal caring about people's humanity : as with Picasso, curation that subverts the norm is welcoming. pic.twitter.com/n4kOVz4trB

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

One of the most significant wall-notes in the whole of the #Warhol show might not even be seen by many visitors (it is in Room 3, opposite the soup, and the Coke bottles)

Nice image !

Also indicative how an image (or a group of them) will reveal, as one experiments, an ideal distance at which to view it / them - even if that's more difficult in these days of SD* !

* And limited by how far back one can stand in Room 9 and not trigger the alarm.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 25, 2020

pic.twitter.com/0BTMTY5jWe

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 25, 2020

Notes or observations on the dozen or so screen-tests (compiled and converted to video by ???, the Warhol museum in Pittsburgh, from around 150 in all) :

* Susan Sontag's weeping, and a tear falling down her face, and then from her chin

* From the lively intelligence, eyes twinkling and even cigar-smoking and smoke-blowing of Duchamp to the dullness of Dylan - in medium shot, and resolutely trying to rest his fingers on the right-hand side of his shades (as if even he thinks that he looks / will look good ?), and, all in all, an imposture of posture :

Using both arm-rests, right leg crossed over left, clothing dark (except light jacket), with the fingers of his left hand angled down to be partly hidden behind the base of his right thigh

left hand's * Little like Dylan (wooden, unregal, and as obedient as if 'looking into my light' at the opticians'), Duchamp is so animated that he leans both ways sideways, forwards, and can be seen actively looking, taking in what surrounds him

* Ginsberg is intense, and, but for blinking, a likeable living passport pose - he is shot almost full face, and lit mainly from his left (as the subject)

[...]


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

Live-Tweeting from The 2020 Proms : Anoushka Shankar with Gold Panda, Manu Delago, Jules Buckley and Britten Sinfonia

Live-Tweeting from The 2020 Proms : Anoushka Shankar, Gold Panda and others

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

Live-Tweeting from The 2020 Proms : Anoushka Shankar with Gold Panda,
Manu Delago, Jules Buckley and Britten Sinfonia

Looking forward to it 👏👏👏

— Saffron Hall (@SaffronHallSW) September 4, 2020

Anoushka Shankar’s sitar awaits @ShankarAnoushka We’re live @bbcproms @BBCRadio3 @BBCSounds at 7.30. pic.twitter.com/0myQYfh5pi

— Ian Skelly (@Ianskellyradio3) September 4, 2020

As ready as #UCFF will ever be, here is :https://t.co/5See5ncfL9https://t.co/WwavWFRWZ3

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

Also very useful to have a guide to the instruments, because typical familiarity is as the audience applauding 'the tuning' in The Concert for Bangladesh (George Harrison's collaboration with Ravi Shankar**).

** Anoushka Shankar's father (who is also the father of @NorahJones).

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

A lively opening introduced us, with full vividity, to the sounds and the sound-production in we are hearing (including percussion from Manu Delago and Gold Panda's live electronics)

->

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

And there's the element of seeing and hearing the finger-picking that's alongside Gold Panda's threaded interweaving of gentle or insistent riffs, looping unrealities, and almost pitchless sonic whirls : just now, setting down a ground bass for voice, with sitar as response.

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

But now, after that Concerto of themes [full title to be noted later], ‘Wandering Around’ by and from @manudelagomusic, with @BrittenSinfonia's first participation in, at least, the aural texture - they were assuredly in the space, and active witnesses to the other performers.

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

Jules Buckley* told us how he notated a largely oral / aural tradition in which @BrittenSinfonia are now playing with @ShankarAnoushka so that they could follow a score :

* Also excellently to be heard, at present, in stand-in mode (for Clemmie) on @BBCRadio3's Classical Fix.

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

At first, it takes that approach, at any rate, but we have reached another moment of calm, of sustained sound, just as - by long bowing and the effect of multiple players - a string-orchestra can lengthen a note into one continuity - as might ercussive riffs and / or electronics.

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

No matter, because it is in that variation in pace, tempo and timbre that all music lives and dies, and it must assuredly be Sinfonia leader @ThomasGouldVLN's instinct for playing off and with Shankar that helps inform one's ear, opening out to what's at The 2020 Proms right now.

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

Except that, with apologies to her, it was Jacqui Shave who was leading @BrittenSinfonia to-night ! ;) https://t.co/prWjLFiDRP

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

No one thing, but all the same ensemble, the same participation in a whole that is and grows because of its parts :

An orchestra, a city, a string quartet, a choir, a football-tea, its crowd - that togetherness in separation - has been here with @ShankarAnoushka in Land of Gold,

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

Thank you for all your lovely comments about tonight’s @bbcproms concert. If you missed it, you can catch it on @BBCiPlayer or @BBCSounds now. @bbcproms @ShankarAnoushka @julesbuckley @manudelagomusic pic.twitter.com/RKmaWpVUn4

— Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia) September 4, 2020

Such a beautiful way back to live music-making for ⁦@BrittenSinfonia⁩ ⁦@bbcproms⁩ tonight. Serene and sparkling collaborations with ⁦@ShankarAnoushka⁩ ⁦@julesbuckley⁩ and ⁦@manudelagomusic⁩ The hang, sitar and strings is a magical combination... pic.twitter.com/2rfxMxctGW

— Meurig Bowen (@MeurigB) September 4, 2020

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

Live-Tweeting from The 2020 Proms : London Sinfonietta in 'A programme of pulses'

Live-Tweeting from The 2020 Proms : London Sinfonietta in 'A programme of pulses'

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

Live-Tweeting from The 2020 Proms : London Sinfonietta in 'A programme of pulses'

We're still buzzing from last night's performance! Thank you to everyone that tuned in!

If you missed it you can still watch it on @BBCiPlayer 👉https://t.co/S4RseaVyb7

Set your alarms for a special archive broadcast of our 2000 Prom with Jessye Norman at 7pm on Sunday! ⏰

— London Sinfonietta (@Ldn_Sinfonietta) September 2, 2020

Prom programme-notes* are here ! :https://t.co/hijs3dErC3

I'd rather have heard a segue from the texturally engaging featured reed-sounds of the Philip Glass to Julia Wolfe's high-energy toccata crescendo, but @Ldn_Sinfonietta players need peer-applause !

* Track-listing...

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

Harder, perhaps, than the preceding works, because both neon (by @tansydavies) and Edmund Finnis' in situ (to follow) are relatively looser than those more explicit pulsations, they are harder to assimilate at first blush, and so will blossom more clearly with further hearings...

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

With this CD (somewhere !) chez Apsley, it will be interesting to compare the live version with that known from the recording ! pic.twitter.com/Jzd6YBdU5G

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

Not bravura per se, but an able and welcome demonstration of how it need not be electric guitar*** whose sound-production is bent and moulded in the actual playing.

*** Which we also associate with Reich, because, for example, of Electric Counterpoint or Electric Guitar Phase.

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

A resonance of two occupied places in one that once were, and then those fell who could not get away when both fell, and those who saw and mourned and witnessed those who had fallen (some here, in the work, via tape) - resonating with this place, emptied by death, filled by music

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

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

Live-Tweeting from The 2020 Proms - The LSO under Simon Rattle

Live-Tweeting from The 2020 Proms - The London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle

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

Live-Tweeting from The 2020 Proms - The London Symphony Orchestra
under Sir Simon Rattle on 30 August 2020

After Venetian brass*, which might well have resounded in San Marco as it did to-day, such a glorious moment when the string-sound of the Elgar broke through :

All credit to @londonsymphony players and @BBCRadio3 crew for such clarity !

* #UCFF guesses - the Tweets don't say.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 30, 2020

Gorgeously inventive programming to suit times of trial and trouble, with Beethoven's Op. 27 and György Kurtág's Op. 27 response :

The setting of #mitsukouchida's performance, in time and space, and the lay-out of the players around her, vividly described by @Ianskellyradio3 !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 30, 2020

I will be rattling my keys in the Kurtág tonight ⁦⁦@bbcproms⁩ ⁦@londonsymphony⁩ pic.twitter.com/DVFxHhlYaV

— Thomas Adès (@Thomas_ades) August 30, 2020

Known via Sir Adrian Boult's recordings (and before energetic recentish champions such as @ClareCollege alumnus @andrewmanze), even he didn't achieve the third-movement pianississimo in this symphony for which Ralph Vaughan Williams is heard thanking Boult at the end of No. 6 (?)

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 30, 2020

The Passacaglia's structure brings us out of the preceding movements' blessed, healing enchantments, seeming to rise in joyous, untriumphal harmony, but to a held-off close*.

* RVW feigns several, and then, via sinuous knotting and unknotting, brings it all back to serene rest.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 30, 2020

Such a treat to hear Vaughan Williams’ beautiful Symphony No 5 performed LIVE @bbcproms and on @BBCRadio3 by the wonderful @londonsymphony. First proper orchestra I saw live as a kid and I’ve never forgotten it. Things are looking up!

— Emma Bloxham (@emmablox1) August 30, 2020

Vaughan Williams’s Symphony No 5 is a shaft of sunshine in a gloom-filled year. Thank you @bbcproms @SirSimonRattle @londonsymphony

— George Poles (@GeorgePoles) August 30, 2020

Loved "Dawn" - thank you so much @londonsymphony @bbcproms @RoyalAlbertHall @SirSimonRattle @Thomas_ades - in fact, loved the whole concert !

— Paul Davies (@pd1946) August 31, 2020

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

Plotting to have Christopher Nolan make a rom-com next...

Plotting to have Christopher Nolan make a rom-com next... But who plants the seed ?

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

Plotting to have Christopher Nolan make a rom-com next... But who plants the seed ?

Which is Christopher Nolan going to be riffing on more :

Sliding Doors (1998) - or the Lynch of The Lost Highway (1997) or Mulholland Drive (2001) ?

Meanwhile, #UCFF is using considerable stealth to implant the idea that Nolan should make 'a rom-com' :https://t.co/LZbUQBk5Wn https://t.co/lirgX9vpkc

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

Nolan heard it from Lilly first* : Chris, are you really writing a rom-com ?

Signed, as long as it's not in the vein of Richard Curtis in About Time (2013) ! ;)

But maybe making Nikolai Leskov's 'Lady Macbeth' into a comedy, told from the PoV of the cat (dreamt of in chapters 6 and 7) - and channelling Zinovy Ismailov's much-overlooked witticisms ?

->

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 26, 2020

This is a far more detailed script treatment than I expected, so you've basically just been greenlit.

— Sarah Parkin (@SarahParkin1) August 26, 2020

Signed, sealed and delivered* :)

'Uncork the champagne, Violet !'

* In accordance with s. 1 Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989. pic.twitter.com/CcXMB1yoNT

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 26, 2020

Cypher : It means fasten your seat-belt, Dorothy, cos Kansas is going bye-bye !

End-notes :

* Or was it Lana... ?


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

My tenet is... : #UCFF's Predictions about Tenet (2020)

My tenet is... : #UCFF's Predictions about Tenet (2020)

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

26 August

My tenet is... : #UCFF's Predictions about Tenet (2020)

Surely, all indications are that you should first have undertaken a theatrical ('tenth-anniversary') re-watch of Inception (2010) ? :

Meanwhile, David Lynch almost certainly did, both in The Lost Highway (1997), and then in Mulholland Drive (2001), what Nolan's aiming at here...

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 26, 2020

I know :)

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 26, 2020

I don't think I got any more "story" from it than from the trailer I've now seen about 14 times in the last 3 weeks.

— Fenchurch S Goldfish (@Fenny_Goldfish) August 26, 2020

And, as the three others in the screening may also may not have been told to expect it (but the couple seemed intent on talking through it anyway), I believe that I went off to get a drink and walked in on it partway through (thinking that the film had started early).

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 26, 2020

Especially interesting, having re-watched Bound (1997) last night (on account of @cheshellen's talk 'How to be a femme fatale' on Monday evening), and the 'idea-seeding' of The Wachowskis

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 26, 2020

Which is Christopher Nolan going to be riffing on more :

Sliding Doors (1998) - or the Lynch of The Lost Highway (1997) or Mulholland Drive (2001) ?

Meanwhile, #UCFF is using considerable stealth to implant the idea that Nolan should make 'a rom-com' :https://t.co/LZbUQBk5Wn https://t.co/lirgX9vpkc

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

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

Brief observations, by Tweet, about 'Rule, Britannia !'

Brief observations, by Tweet, about 'Rule, Britannia !'

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

Brief observations, by Tweet, about 'Rule, Britannia !'

'[James] Thomson wrote the word "never" only once, but it has been popularly corrupted to "never, never, never", possibly because it is actually easier to sing', says @Wikipedia, citing a 1763 edn of his work :

'Rule, Britannia ! rule the waves :
Britons never will be slaves.'

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 24, 2020

Grim nonsense from Thomson, a Scot in England for most of his adulthood, and who - with an interest in court preferment - also had one 'in helping foster a British identity, including and transcending the older English, Irish, Welsh and Scottish identities' : Alfred The Great !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 24, 2020

Dutiful Wiki has an exclamation-mark in its URL, which works in :https://t.co/m3M8d07lLF

But helpfully (ahem !) causes Twitter 'to break' the link in :https://t.co/2IBMUQg3Op!

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 24, 2020

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

Some grumpy Tweets about Babyteeth (2019) (work in progress)

Some grumpy Tweets about Babyteeth (2019) (work in progress)

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

Some grumpy Tweets about Babyteeth (2019) (work in progress)

A cinematic / shooting style that openly wants to be unconventional - and is, initially, over-burdened with silence¹ - might have been wearying to all to sustain, but Babyteeth (2019) does not do so, and 'simmers down' to be despairingly conventional in this and many other ways.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 21, 2020

² In the closing credits³ - which, in 'the good old days' of packed cinema-screens, so many were in a near-anxious hurry to avoid (and so miss a 'play-out' track as weird as for Proxima (2019) !) :https://t.co/S556MmUUJh

³ Not IMDb : a 17-word summary is stuffed with error !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 21, 2020

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

La banca prossima qui vicino ? Non è ! : A review, by Tweet, of Proxima (2019)

La banca prossima qui vicino ? Non è ! : A review, by Tweet, of Proxima (2019)

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

17 August

La banca prossima qui vicino ? Non è ! : A review, by Tweet, of Proxima (2019)

'Next' is what the film-archetype of a casting-director irritatedly shouts...

Proxima (2019) :

Because they never said anything about Proxima Centauri, and it is just the same word as in 'La prossima volta' (in Italian), i.e. 'Next [or another] time'

[Other cinema misdemeanours, maybe, but one misdirected oneself here] pic.twitter.com/wZrBpUzkol

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 20, 2020

As one reported earlier on Proxima (in an e-mail to Cambridge Film Projects) :

Rehashing too many competitive / 'who gets to do what and why' elements from First Man (2018) ; often just reminding of films such as In a Better World (2010) or, more so, A Thousand Times Goodnight (2013) ; and with huge elements of implausibility vis-à-vis what happens with Sarah's (Eva Green's) and her crashingly badly named daughter Stella - though the performance by Zélie Boulant, playing Stella, was easily one of the best things about Proxima !

For #UCFF, Gosling's being centrifuged to many Gs in First Man (2018) was part of breaking the credibility-barrier passim - a need to remind oneself, all along, that unmistakable Ryan Gosling¹ was meant to be Neil Armstrong :

In Proxima (2019), Eva Green got 9G, but we didn't² !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 17, 2020

³ In a different sort of device, which is more gyroscopic, Gosling pulled his Gs here :https://t.co/Lq5tcjwrvm

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 18, 2020

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

Playing Around with Pyjamas (nonsense in progress)

Playing Around in Pyjamas (nonsense 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)

16 August

Playing Around in Pyjamas (nonsense in progress)

Doris Day in The Pajama Game (1957)

Despite sounding as though it should, The Pyjama Game (1957) doesn't even have its origins in one of those successful (i.e. long-running) men-in-boxer-shorts and hiding-in-wardrobes farces - this list has nothing to do with either anyway...

Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Pyjamas

The Old Pyjamas & The Gun / The Old Man & The Pyjamas

The Pyjamas We Were

Funny Pyjamas

A Star is Pyjamas (1976)

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 18, 2020

Pyjamas !* (2009)
Bad Pyjamas Gone Bananas !*
Pyjamas ! (1971)

Hannah and Her Pyjamas
Broadway Danny Pyjamas
Manhattan Murder Pyjamas
Pyjamas over Broadway
Take the Pyjamas and Run
Stardust Pyjamas
Pyjamas and Death / Love and Pyjamas
Annie Pyjamas / Pyjamas Hall
Cafe Pyjamas
Irrational Pyjamas
Pyjamas and Wives / Husbands and Pyjamas
Radio Pyjamas
The Curse of The Jade Pyjamas / The Pyjamas of The Jade Scorpion

Which is, except for Dead Men Don't Wear Pyjamas, of scant relevance to 'Playing Around with Pyjamas' (nonsense in progress) on #UCFF :https://t.co/4QDuQUNTMI#PyjamatizeAFilmTitle#DeflateCinemaHistoryWithPyjamas https://t.co/43i5KfTplB

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 17, 2020

The Sound of Pyjamas / The Pyjamas of Music
Rabbit-Proof Pyjamas
The Pyjamas over The River Kwai / The Bridge over The River Pyjamas
Barry Pyjamas
The Pyjamas Man (2013)
Blue Pyjamas (1986)
The Pyjamas, The Witch and The Wardrobe
Mary, Queen of Pyjamas
Absolute Pyjamas

Captain Corelli's Pyjamas
The French Lieutenant's Pyjamas
The Draughtsman's Pyjamas
A Zed and Two Pyjamas
Drowning by Pyjamas
The Pyjamas of an Architect
The Pyjamas of Mâcon

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 17, 2020

Blue is the Warmest Pyjamas
Breaking the Pyjamas
Pyjamasville
Melanchopyjamas
Nymphopyjamas Vol. 1
Metropyjamas
Pyjamasferatu the Vampyre
Fitzcarrolpyjamas
Grizzly Pyjamas
Aguirre, The Pyjamas of God
Lo and Behold : Reveries of The Connected Pyjamas
The Cave of Forgotten Pyjamas

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 17, 2020

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

Christopher Nolan and the non-poetics of Inception (2010)

Christopher Nolan and the non-poetics of Inception (2010)

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

12 August

Christopher Nolan and the non-poetics of Inception (2010)

We need look no farther than Andrei Tarkovsky - in Solaris (1972), Mirror (Зеркало [Zerkalo]) (1975), Stalker (1979) - to be shown dazzling profundity in simplicity.

NB Spoilers in the Tweets immediately below !

Absent - even according to what *Cobb* says happened - sabotaging one's wife's happiness for one's own ?

Here, and in Interstellar (2014), there is (somewhat laboured) rumination on being a father who is no longer present to his child(ren)*.

* Boyhood (2014) does it better...

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

But we were ever here before, with the Bernard Williams of 'The Makropulos Case : Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality'*, Leoš Janáček, and all their avators, reflected in and by Borges (https://t.co/H0mizrm3H6) :)

* Problems of the Self (CUP [https://t.co/pLwZJBgHMj]). pic.twitter.com/rLaxTeehOX

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

Dædalus proper :

In Inception (2010), dreams - and their putatively calculably different rates of passing (as premise) - are only ever a proxy for the effluxion of time, and, with it, the effacement or extinction of 'memory' [sc. memories] ~ Philip French

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

By contrast with Tarkovsky (whose films are alluded to under the title), one of the premises of Inception (2010) - stated when Cobb is telling Ariadne* why he needs her to design a certain type of maze (and, rather obviously, Cobb / Nolan is all along really referring as much to cinema) - is that its complexity serves to conceal the fact that a dream-world has been fabricated, not dreamt per se.

Nolan only ever means cinema when Cobb tells Ariadne that designing a maze can hide a dream :

A chance to see a tenth-anniversary screening of Inception (2010), which few took up (I was one in an audience of four), might not suggest that seeing the trailer will draw people in ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 22, 2020

Angel Song from 2011 Xmas Show https://t.co/CXixpTjNO6 via @YouTube

— ezio lunedei (@eziolunedei) November 20, 2020

[...]

Set-up : Contact (1997) ?

Planet 1 (Miller's) : Waves / surf

Planet 2 (Mann's) : Frozen / ice

Black hole (Gargantua) : Tesseract / bookcase

Planet 3 (Edmunds') : Habitable

+ Plans A and B

'Computer, map onto Inception (2010) and spot significant differences !' pic.twitter.com/CnC0nFvCGq

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 31, 2020

End-notes :

* Of all people, given the signification of her name !



Nota bene - Level -8
Appendix of spoilery stuff ! :

Wild how many thinkpieces still go over Inception, in particular the ending. It doesn’t matter if Cobb is in a dream at the end. What matters is that he walks away from the spinning top towards his kids - *he* doesn’t care whether he is or not. If there is a point, that’s it.

— Jim Ross 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🎞️ (@JimGR) February 17, 2021

Wild how many thinkpieces still go over Inception, in particular the ending. It doesn’t matter if Cobb is in a dream at the end. What matters is that he walks away from the spinning top towards his kids - *he* doesn’t care whether he is or not. If there is a point, that’s it.

— Jim Ross 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🎞️ (@JimGR) February 17, 2021

We don't even *know* where 'this spinner' came from, except that Cobb** - in explication to Ariadne (i.e. to us) of what it's for - baldly contradicts his own advice and tells her it was Mal's.

** And Cobb, as in cobweb, is a spinner of webs (probably rooted in Le Guin's Cob).

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 17, 2021

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Outline for a proposed film 2.1 [corrected / with casting ideas] : Primavera [or Dario ?] - or The Mandrake Serenade

Outline for a proposed film 2.1 : Primavera [or Dario ?] - 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 2.1 [corrected / with casting ideas] :
Primavera [or Dario ?] - or The Mandrake Serenade

'Reap what ye shall sow'

For Rosy and Brent

1. Lucia Argenta 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. (Despite the name, Michael is unaware that Lucia married date-rape Carlo Argenta when young, who killed himself in guilt that he had shaken her and she then miscarried.) She did not go to university, but has already established herself in business, buying and selling rare recordings [as Dischi 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, Lucia's father [Vincenzo, from the old Italian Mandragora family], who was widowed early, during the birth of Lucia's younger sister, Primavera (who is away, in Manchester, at Royal Northern)

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

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

6. Unknown to him (and of which Primavera is also unaware), Lucia and Vincenzo (who is also visiting, but not in evidence at the party) contrive for Michael and Primavera to meet early on at the party, and have bewitched 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 Lucia 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, Lucia 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 Lucia 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 aunt, 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 have moved to detached property (where tensions with neighbours no longer arise), and near Michael's parents. George and Anne (who can give support with childcare)

12. Yet tensions repeatedly happen, when Dario pesters and pesters to be allowed to play in the garden, but invariably wreaks 'destructive wonders' on the planting, etc., 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 Nancy, 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 when they tried to sleep, have resorted to heavy-duty ear-plugs, which means that they are unaware that, after arriving on Dario's birthday, and on an early flight, Lucia 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 Lucia, 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 [???]


ENDS

© Copyright Belston Night Works 2020


Preliminary ideas for casting :

Michael Hope ~ George MacKay

Lucia Argenta ~ Saoirse Ronan

Primavera ~ Florence Pugh

Vincenzo Mandragora ~ Ralph Fiennes

Nancy Kadmuss ~ Carl Peck (or, also, Fiennes (in the vein of Alec Guinness) ?)

Dario ~ Timothée Chalamet [by CGI, made to seem a child of four to nearly seven] ?

George Hope ~ Also Fiennes

Anne Hope ~ KST


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

Stacks : An illustrated poem

Stacks : An illustrated poem

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

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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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)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

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)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

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)