Pigfoot in Cambridge : A strippers' band ? (work in progress)

This is a review (work in progress) of Pigfoot's gig in Cambridge, hosted by Listen!

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

10 October

This is a review (by Tweet) (work in progress) of Pigfoot's gig in Cambridge on Saturday 10 October 2020 at The Unitarian Church, Emmanuel Road, hosted by Listen!

Some people have said that we sound like a strippers' band ~ Chris Batchelor

It was nice that, though few, we knew each other, as performers and audience both knew what had been missing in all the false dawns about live gigs - as Batchelor said, 'Playing in front of humans', with (especially in the second set) a chance to try out material / arrangements !

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

When numbers weren't swaying to Caribbean rhythms, the first set had the quartet express its New Orleans origins (in 21st Century Acid Trad) - as well as showing that spirituals or Bacharach alike will syncopate, and how well James Allsopp's baritone complements Batchelor's tpt. pic.twitter.com/pQNX79zids

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

Batchelor and Allsopp are very different (musical) personalities, with dissimilar playing-styles. However, bass clarinet, breathed as finely and beautifully as the latter does the sax, is also a good tonal-match for Batchelor on flugelhorn or cornet*.

Except for Liam Noble on a Korg keyboard (plus a smaller one (sampler ?) and a group of effects-pedals), the gig was acoustic, so, hearing him via one audience-facing speaker, the balance as between Paul Clarvis on percussion and Batchelor and Allsopp was for them alone to judge.

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

As well as with Noble's prominent and recurrent use of a 'toy piano' timbre (or that of a de- or differently tuned piano), along with many a Monk-like dissonance, and Clarvis' highly amenable and adaptive percussion (on what seemed, just physically, a 'cut down' kit**), there was, often enough, a sparseness in the texture that not unreasonably might connote the functional instruments of a small seedy house-band, accompanying the acts : just think, maybe, of Michael Winterbottom's The Look of Love (2013), a tune that Pigfoot gave us in the second (?) set ?

Clarvis' cheerful smile (and eyes that searched the room for our response) showed why it matters for a band to have live listeners, as well as being a barometer, by their relative absence, for the times when something more experimental or unfamiliar needed his full concentration.

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

[...]


End-notes :

* Batchelor's trumpet and cornet both have a silver-band finish, and all three are shiny to behold on their stands. (Allsopp just lays his alternative instrument, when not in use, on the deck.)

** Chosen, again, to fit both the space and an acoustic affected by the reduced number of sound-absorbing bodies that would allow for a fuller dynamic (as well as being eminently portable) ?

*** Which sounds not a little Arts Council funded... ?



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

Darkness at Noon : A review (work in progress, allegedly) of Rebuilding Paradise (2020)

Darkness at Noon : A review (work in progress, allegedly) of Rebuilding Paradise (2020)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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Darkness at Noon : A review (work in progress, allegedly) of Rebuilding Paradise (2020)

#RebuildingParadise (2020), by Ron Howard, is both terrifying and a mover to tears, with its emotive, personal and thoughtful touches :

This is film-making that is wise as well as intelligent, and it needs more than a large screen at home (or a computer-screen). pic.twitter.com/W5fU1jcDge

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

We see the arch-heresiarch #Frump, and hear him saying (before declaring how terrible it is) We have just left Pleasure [sic], and one of his entourage swiftly correcting him, but - as throughout - there is no comment, no overlaid assertion from director Ron Howard, who has constructed ths film so that nothing is needed, only a chronology by inter-title [i.e. Three months after the fire, etc.].

pic.twitter.com/BoOBnQAnvw

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

As Howard well knows, given when and how we are presently watching, being able to choose to offer hugs rather than handshakes [on which Woody Culleton (or another ?) specifically remarks] is now a proximity and a possibility from which we are undesirably kept distant - we will even see people expressing their feelings, and, having been accustomed to these times, at least think that they are behaving rashly, if we do not, for that reason, shudder in recognition of what we have lost.


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

I'd give them all to you : #UCFF on Christopher Nolan in TENET (2020) (work in progress)

I'd give them all to you : #UCFF on Christopher Nolan in TENET (2020) (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)

21 September

I'd give them all to you : #UCFF on Christopher Nolan in TENET (2020) (work in progress)

Tenet. n. A belief by which one lives, or which guides one's thinking

Prelude :

If I can't have x, no one else will

Whether expressed in the proverbial form of Dog in the manger, or, from military tactics, Burning one's bridges [behind one], or even - back to proverbial language, if more colourfully - Cutting off one's nose to spite one's face, none of it is far removed from the stuff of legend, literature, or works for the opera-house or cinema, because it is, or can be, a human impulse.

Darren Aronofsky might thinly disguise rooting a film in such soil, whereas Christopher Nolan constructs yet another maze around it, so that we do not immediately perceive what is at its centre, and does so with enough brash stage-business of spectacle built around it (detonation, collision or combustion) that he broadly keeps our attention from wandering back to it.

The main event :

Christopher Nolan's Tenet could be seen as a mass of red herrings - or, if one prefers, a couple of diamonds (maybe more ?) in the dust :

What we least need to know, or to follow the ins and outs of it (as the general direction suffices), he gives us by darting around, from country to country, in the style of (early) Bond films (except that there is no (rigged) game of Vingt-et-un, poker or Baccarat in sight).

Lacking any other name than in the credits, The Protagonist (John David Washington) is principled, but he is not answerable to an M, or armed by a Q, etc., etc., and so has only the crudest notion overall what he is trying to do - such that he makes errors. [In this, he resembles a less humorous take on Frank Capra's earnest Clarence (Henry Travers)]. However, whether it be a Connery or a Moore, Washington has and employs the charm and bluff of a Bond, and also has the resourceful Neil (Robert Pattinson) as his running-mate* (as well as a few other assistants).

A centuries-old 20-sided die might have been used for divination—or ancient tabletop games.https://t.co/7qRtvCk2BT

— History In Pictures (@HistoryInPics) September 24, 2020

Even if Tenet were to feel as if it needs to re-watched for something that one missed, one is as likely to gain very little new (and only benefit the film's box-office figures) - or not to be able to concentrate sufficiently to glean whatever was thought important. Whether it is what happens here, or Cobb (Leonardo Di Caprio), trying to change Fischer's (Cillian Murphy's) mind undetected in Inception (2010), the basic thrust can be easily enough perceived, although doing so is despite all the elements of distraction.

For example, neither Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), nor Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh), narrates an incident in their past without our being fed visual snippets, which, by being intermittent**, only serve to stop us weighing the truth of what they say. (Except that, although it is not obviously going to be so, we prove to have no reason to doubt what is said, and it seems that Nolan just wanted to embed the images ?)

* Which Monzón co-adapted with Jorge Guerricaechevarría from a novel by Francisco Pérez Gandul.

[Seen at, and because of, @camfilmfest]

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

You're so right, yes. :)

My belief is that an exec or three reeled it back to 150 mins, thereby saving us from the Wagnerian grandiosity for which Nolan had contended :

Pre-show

100 mins

Interval 1 - Tenet-themed drinks

130 mins

Interval 2 - Tenet-themed merch

115 mins

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 20, 2021

'It would be fair to say that Kenneth Branagh makes a decent villain - he seems to enjoy hamming it up as a Russian crime lord who despises everyone'

Seconded, @everyfilmneil ! :)

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

Christoper Nolan learnt many of his tricks from this film - seriously ! https://t.co/GFm1CxXM1h

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

My usual one for this: Interstellar is nonsense. Nolan’s worst tendencies dialled up to 11, obfuscated by one or two great moments. https://t.co/nm9gBy16x9

— Jim Ross 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🎞️ (@JimGR) September 27, 2020

Can't get away from Caine, Jim - he's in Tenet* (2020), as he was in Inception (2010)...

But God knows, in the former, what he's meant to have ordered for lunch in his London club ! ;)

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

[...]


By the end of the film proper [not the coda that deals with a couple of loose ends], we will have no more idea why (if we were to stop to think and ask) :

* Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), any more than any mother would (Aronofsky's entrée), obsesses about her son to the extent of enquiring, somewhat idiotically in context, Not even my son ?

* The Protagonist (John David Washington) cares about her and her son's freedom and survival, to an extent that is, very often, beyond the point of what we can judge reason dictates

* He is, for so long, so much on his own, and, with only some information, skills in bluffing and fight, he is out on a limb, albeit with trusted personnel, given what he is trying to do


Only on the level of the similar anonymity and agency of a Pertwee, where a Nicholas Courtney (Lethbridge-Stewart) provides the (usually meagre, but sufficient) fire-power towards the end, or of Baker, realizing, with clues from conveniently available allies, what is at stake, and, with their assistance, defeating The Master (or some other nemesis), does Tenet pretend to cohere : the answers to what, as set out, we do not know, and will only know extrinsically, may and should matter, but they have been subjugated to the overall arc, whose matters of import (hidden in all the pseudo-technical 'huff and puff') are themselves a tiny fraction of what we see in 150 minutes.

For a headlong dash into the stuff of an unseen world, the comparison of G. K. Chesterton's 'Nightmare' The Man who was Thursday (1908) is worth making.

Obsessed with the guitar-playing on 'Queen Jane' by @msimpsonian at the momenthttps://t.co/lSVLg9ZVAW
hard to believe it's one person playing

As with many folk songs it's a horrible story, but a beautiful song...

— Ian Ross (LSHTM) (@IanRossUK) September 22, 2020

Jane Campion's The Portrait of a Lady (1996), also ?

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

Postlude (NB Spoiler alert) :

And, there was love in Interstellar... another form that can transcend time.

— Dr Hiu Man Chan (@H_onfilm) October 3, 2020

It's the central element in a film (which elsewhere doesn't make sense), on or to which much is pinned, but lesser things are far more spelt out :

At face value, The Protagonist, after Crosby (Michael Caine) tells him about Kat's husband (Andrei Sator), contrives meeting her...

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 3, 2020

It's really ludicrous (as Tweeted) - unless this Kat, saving whom seems inexplicably at the forefront of The Protagonist's mind, is meant to be some sort of Madonna figure ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 3, 2021

Yes, FP was brilliant in Little Women (2019), but had a difficult role to work with in Nolan's film, which (not uniquely for his canon*) is heavy with male actors.

* Might TENET be an exception that proves the rule ?

Mal and Ariadne are pivotal in Inception, yet how central ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 4, 2024

End-notes :

* Much as Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Arthur) is to Leonardo DiCaprio (Cobb) in Inception (2010).

** Versus pure narration, or PoV that takes us through the whole of what is told.


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

Three Tweets about Moonstruck (1987)

Three Tweets about Moonstruck (1987)

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

Three Tweets about Moonstruck (1987)

Maybe as Italian as Watney's¹, but Norman Jewison's Moonstruck² (1987) was a very agreeable - and, ultimately, moral - way to spend 103 minutes.

Cosmo : What's the matter, Pop ?
Dad³ : I'm... confused !

¹ So a student-guide once wrote of a restaurant.#OneLovelyThingToDay pic.twitter.com/c418HqKDVB

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

Neatly shot under David Watkin's direction, in NYC and Toronto, crisply edited by Lou Lombardo, and so tightly written by John Patrick Shanley that one would swear that it had been honed on a stage, Moonstruck has the grace of a tight ensemble work, dusted by Dick Hyman's score ! pic.twitter.com/iTGUKdmMZn

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

Sadly, does Shanley seem to have done anything nearly as impressive since ?

² Certainly not seen (in full) before to-night - which cannot be blamed on the moonlight (or the boogie).

³ For a film that centres on La bohème, a cute bit of casting here ? : https://t.co/prCndvmgmr pic.twitter.com/T3MJW0PcyI

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

Postlude :

If “Moonstruck” has a clear through line, it is about things that are wrong getting made right, a winding process that often involves committing some new wrongs along the way. https://t.co/yWLll4BZu4

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) December 9, 2021

And given that Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello) requires that Loretta go tell his brother (Nicolas Cage) and invite him to the marriage, this is a tragedy / comedy in the making - with Cage maybe as initially predispossessing as an urban Ethan Hawke to Sally Hawkins' Maudie... ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 9, 2021

What an astounding @E_N_O ‘s drive-in La Boheme proved to be. Technically towering achievement, making all that complexity work so magnificently in a car park, but artistically, from every point of view, a triumph. Funny, clever, moving. Manna from heaven for the opera-famished

— Donald Macleod (@DonaldMacleod01) September 19, 2020

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

Comments on Pinter : Landscape (1968 / 1969) (work in progress)

Comments on Pinter : Landscape (1968 / 1969) (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)

15 September

Comments on Pinter : Landscape (1968 / 1969) (work in progress)

1. A woman (Beth) is being reflective about both the past, and herself and her qualities, in relation to it.

2. Pinter may not have intended this play for radio, but it was first given there by the BBC¹. Has that earlier identity as - one might think of it - 'a play for voices' been subsumed since Peter Hall, within months of that first production, directed it (alongside Silence) at the RSC ?

3. Peggy Ashcroft played Beth in both productions, Dorothy Tutin in the BBC production directed by Kenneth Ives in 1983 (with Colin Blakely as Duff).

4. The title evokes :

(i) The outside, which the man (Duff) and she largely 'live in' while speaking ;

(ii) The 'landscape of their lives' as a terrain (minefield ?) that they physically, and mentally, occupy ; and

(iii) Who they are (or were) in relation to it - and, through it, to each other.


5. It is also a clue to the word 'rape', which is not at all far from the surface - here, in the short Night¹, or in The Collection (1961 / 1962²).

6. What Duff gives with one hand (That nice blue dress he [Mr Sykes] chose for you, for the house, that was very nice of him), he takes with the other³ (Of course it was in his own interests to see that you were attractively dressed about the house, to give a good impression to his guests) : in the latter, he is arguably as much trying to make facts suit him as needle Beth (again) about her worth.

7. Beth does not need, or does / can not benefit from, his version of encouragement (You should have a walk with me one day down to the pond, bring some bread. There's nothing to stop you.) or, more significantly, his of approbation :

Mr Sykes took to us from the very first interview, didn't he ?

Pause

He said I've got the feeling you'll make a very good team. Do you remember ? And that's what we proved to be. No question. [...]


8. [...]

9. When Beth sets out 'the basic principles of shadow and light' (Shadow is deprivation of light, etc.), we know, of course, that she means something else - as well as telling us, she is seeking comfort, by relating them to herself and to her past, to who she is :

But I always bore in mind the basic principles of drawing.

Pause

So that I never lost track. Or heart.

Pause



[...]



End-notes :

¹ On 25 April 1968 and 2 July 1969, according to the information in the Eyre Methuen edition Landscape and Silence (A Methuen Modern Play), which includes the text of Night, first performed on 9 April 1969.

² Another play that, again according to its Methuen edition, was first presented elsewhere than on the stage (on Associated Rediffusion Television on 11 May 1961).

³ Duff had done so, straightaway in the next sentence, with ?, but 'cannot let it lie' - he has to worry it, because, unspoken, it worries him.


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

Church of All Saints, Eyeworth, Diocese of St Albans : Field-notes

Church of All Saints, Eyeworth, Diocese of St Albans : Field-notes

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

13 September

Church of All Saints, Eyeworth, Diocese of St Albans : Field-notes

The north side of the chancel, and the priest's door

Dear @Tate

On the dating of this photo (as 'c. 1930s - 1980s') :https://t.co/3YCX97CI7y

If what this web-site says is correct, that 'The modern bell turret and tiled roof were [...] dedicated on 6th November 1970', the photo can be little earlier :https://t.co/1mwY2N0VY1

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

Hello! Thanks for bringing this to our attention, it's much appreciated. Please email information@tate.org.uk, with any more details if you have them, and we will share it with our Research team 😊

— Tate (@Tate) September 14, 2020

West end of the South aisle, and quatrefoil window

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

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

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

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

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

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

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

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

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)