More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
Christmas Day
Whatever one thinks of Philip P., if one has read any of his work*, the one whose title I'm parodying was not the snappiest, and more resembled the label of a Ronseal® tin in terms of subtlety.
For those not in the know generally, it appears that Mr Pullman has some issue with religion (maybe even Christianity as a formalized faith), and calling a book The good man Jesus and the scoundrel Christ is only a little less of a battle-cry than much of what Richard Dawkins naggingly wants to assert every waking minute of his life.
(Culturally or racially intolerant people want to bleat on about mosques, minarets and muezzins, but Dawkins is a foghorn in his own right, together with a blindingly white tower in one's view and a powerful light that he keeps shining in one's eyes.)
I can just imagine Alison Weir subtitling an account of Anne Boleyn's courtship and marriage The chaste, monogamous, home-loving king and his slatternly, unfaithful bitch of a wife - maybe she should try, if in need of boosting her sales: what about writing history for the masses in headlines worthy of defunct News of the World? (A sort of Horrible Histories of popular events, but for a different age-group.)
Anyway, back at PP: he's been awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of the Moon, but the catch is that he has to go to collect it! (Presumably some bright spark's wheeze for keeping him out of the way for a while.)
Though that trick wouldn't work with RD, maybe, since he wrote The God Delusion, someone should write (something like) Dawkins: The Delusion of Anyone Giving a Frig - or God himself could prove that RD doesn't exist by dropping a huge tome on him called The Dawkins Delusion, a self-fulfilling title...
* Someone whom I know was so afraid, when reading the Dark Materials trilogy, that - and I quote - 'I would die before I got to the end' that he bunked off his lecturing job to make sure that the latter was completed before the former happened (although, for why it should have done, you'd have to ask him...).
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Saturday, 24 December 2011
Has Will Smith been flyposting again?!
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
Christmas Day
From a street in Cambridge:
IAMN
OTAR
OBOT
the lamp-post declared.
Never said that you were! I retorted.
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Christmas Day
From a street in Cambridge:
IAMN
OTAR
OBOT
the lamp-post declared.
Never said that you were! I retorted.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
The woman who wrote about pandas
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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Christmas Eve
Yes, I'm sure that Ms Truss' book did well enough, but, with 'Pandamania' upon us*, what if she'd waited...! (Perhaps those led astray by the cover may still be interested.)
But why would anyone punctuate (think of punctuating?!) a sentence about pandas eating shoots - which we now know are so costly (a bit like buying a chinchilla, and then finding that the only thing that it will eat costs as much as (maybe a cheap) caviar!) - by putting a comma slap bang in the middle of They eat shoots and leaves, or whatever exactly it was**?
Really, one would have to subscribe to the 'theory of punctuation' that says:
(1) Never use the semi-colon - no one else does, and no one understands where it belongs, which may be cause and effect, or vice versa (if not a symbiotic feedback-loop);
(2) The colon is good (as above) once in a while, just to bring you up short, saying 'Something important (probably) follows!';
(3) NB Ignore the semi-colons in this list, but, for advanced students, that's the only way to employ them. If still tempted, stick in a dash instead (much safer!);
(4) Blather on until you've had enough with that sentence. Then, at least, a full-stop, if not, which is worth considering, a new paragraph;
(5) Finally, just to show who's boss, stick a comma in from time to time to impress - if they are in the wrong place (wherever that is), no one will know, and they are as likely to think that you've done something clever that they don't understand as stuck it where it doesn't fit;
(6) If needing to talk about more than one comma, comma's or commas are both fine***.
Not very convincing, but maybe that's Modern English. (About as tenuous as turning, by mistake, the description You wiggle! into the imperative You, wiggle!?)
* Or, if you prefer, Pandamonium...
** Ah, yes! It was some alleged dictionary or encyclopaedia, saying The panda eats, shoots and leaves.
It could just as easily have said The panda, eats shoots and, leaves, only no 'humorous' story about it dining in a restaurant would ensue, just apoplexy.
*** No one understands the apostrophe (or plurals) any longer, so you can do what you like:
Potato's (meaning 'Potatoes');
Paninis (pluralizing an already plural word);
Premia or stadia (when adding an 's' to 'premium' / 'stadium' is much more natural, as these words are not Latin, but naturalized English) -
Whatever you like, dear student! (Sorry, that should be Whatever, you like, dear student!, or even Whatever you, like dear student!.)
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Christmas Eve
Yes, I'm sure that Ms Truss' book did well enough, but, with 'Pandamania' upon us*, what if she'd waited...! (Perhaps those led astray by the cover may still be interested.)
But why would anyone punctuate (think of punctuating?!) a sentence about pandas eating shoots - which we now know are so costly (a bit like buying a chinchilla, and then finding that the only thing that it will eat costs as much as (maybe a cheap) caviar!) - by putting a comma slap bang in the middle of They eat shoots and leaves, or whatever exactly it was**?
Really, one would have to subscribe to the 'theory of punctuation' that says:
(1) Never use the semi-colon - no one else does, and no one understands where it belongs, which may be cause and effect, or vice versa (if not a symbiotic feedback-loop);
(2) The colon is good (as above) once in a while, just to bring you up short, saying 'Something important (probably) follows!';
(3) NB Ignore the semi-colons in this list, but, for advanced students, that's the only way to employ them. If still tempted, stick in a dash instead (much safer!);
(4) Blather on until you've had enough with that sentence. Then, at least, a full-stop, if not, which is worth considering, a new paragraph;
(5) Finally, just to show who's boss, stick a comma in from time to time to impress - if they are in the wrong place (wherever that is), no one will know, and they are as likely to think that you've done something clever that they don't understand as stuck it where it doesn't fit;
(6) If needing to talk about more than one comma, comma's or commas are both fine***.
Not very convincing, but maybe that's Modern English. (About as tenuous as turning, by mistake, the description You wiggle! into the imperative You, wiggle!?)
* Or, if you prefer, Pandamonium...
** Ah, yes! It was some alleged dictionary or encyclopaedia, saying The panda eats, shoots and leaves.
It could just as easily have said The panda, eats shoots and, leaves, only no 'humorous' story about it dining in a restaurant would ensue, just apoplexy.
*** No one understands the apostrophe (or plurals) any longer, so you can do what you like:
Potato's (meaning 'Potatoes');
Paninis (pluralizing an already plural word);
Premia or stadia (when adding an 's' to 'premium' / 'stadium' is much more natural, as these words are not Latin, but naturalized English) -
Whatever you like, dear student! (Sorry, that should be Whatever, you like, dear student!, or even Whatever you, like dear student!.)
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Friday, 23 December 2011
Mind charity shops and NAMH
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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23 December 2011 (updated 2 February 2013, 11 January 2015)
Seeing Paul Farmer's Tweet, I gave him the opportunity to comment. He did not do so (until 11 months later, when asked again...).
You will know the national charity Mind (it sometimes claims to be the leading UK mental-health charity, but Rethink and the Mental Health Foundation may not agree).
Some places where people live have a local Mind charity shop: the common misconception (which, for all that I know, some obscure notice on the premises may allegedly clarify, if you knew that it is there) is that giving items to or otherwise supporting the shop supports people locally who have mental-health issues (rather than Mind itself, the national body).
Some people also assume that 'Mind' means something, and write it 'MIND', as if it were an acronym, but it is actually just a trading-name that stuck to and was kept by what is really the National Association for Mental Health (or NAMH).
So, to summarize, Mind is really NAMH, and Mind charity shops don't support the Mind named after your area, e.g. West Norfolk Mind (if there is one and you lived there).
Now, other charities, say Red Cross, may be set up the same way - I don't know - but, in Mind's case, it's just several assumptions that it would be easy enough to prevent people making, if it mattered enough to stop them.
Now one wild, further, improbable step: imagine East Cambridge Mind (there isn't one, but let's call it ECM) providing services in the voluntary sector, receiving grants and funding, etc. They might offer somewhere where, using Mind's favoured terms, those with a personal experience of 'mental distress' can come for a coffee at certain times of the week.
Or there might be free counselling, or the artificial buddying known as befriending, where a volunteer commits to meet with a member of ECM every so often to allow social things like going for a walk or having a drink (maybe one then the other) that might seem harder to do on one's own. Services, anyway, that need staff and volunteers.
Mind doesn't employ the staff or manage the volunteers, because Mind (as NAMH) is a separate company. ECM is another. Mind lets ECM use the Mind name by agreeing to let it subscribe to be a Local Mind Association (or LMA).
OK, so Mind where you live will be a company (usually limited by guarantee) registered at Companies House. NAMH is another one, so they are separate, except for NAMH letting ECM have Mind in its name.
ECM subscribes (pays a subscription, amongst other things) to do that, but it remains separate. Two companies, never the twain shall meet, although national Mind does require these LMAs (such as ECM) to meet quality standards. The assessment, though, is largely on the basis of self-certification.
So to establish that, say, ECM supervises its staff regularly (maybe monthly) for that quality standard, what Mind actually does is to get ECM to fill in a series of forms that state how, where and when supervision takes place and is recorded. For example, ECM sets out how the manager meets the employee or volunteer every x weeks, spends at least y hours with him or her without interruption, and makes sure that z specified issues are discussed every time.
No other check is made - it may not happen at all, or, at least as often or as well as certified. As far as Mind is concerned, ECM is meeting the quality standard, just because it says that it is meeting the quality standard. That's fine, of course.
Or might you be saying this?:
Isn't ECM employing or having as volunteers people who work with vulnerable people, some of whom may be vulnerable people themselves, seeking 'to give something back'?
That's true.
OK, so aren't there at least three people's interests to protect?
(a) The person receiving a service through ECM;
(b) The person giving a service on behalf of ECM;
(c) The other staff / volunteers of ECM?
Yes, that's right.
And, in fact, isn't there a fourth (maybe a fifth) set of interests?
(d) The carers / relatives / friends of the person receiving a service (or those who otherwise come into contact with the staff and volunteers of ECM)?
You're still right, and some of those are the ones who are not disabused as to what they are supporting with Mind charity shops, too.
So, if something goes wrong, if a volunteer or an employee (or all of them) is not being supervised, and Mind is just being told that they are, it will want to know and will take action?
No, Mind just believes what it's told - it actually has no mechanism for an employee to go to it and complain of not being supervised, because it will just direct him or her back to ECM. ECM is a company, Mind is a company (NAMH), and, despite ECM subscribing to Mind, Mind says that it has no control over ECM.
It remains an internal matter to resolve with ECM, even if the staff member or volunteer is vulnerable because of mental distress, and is less well placed to challenge ECM's company approach or adherence to quality standards or its procedures. Mind will not help or get involved - the aggrieved person, who is not being supervised properly and / or regularly, must raise a grievance.
But that's OK, isn't it? It fits with the slogan (it's for For better mental health, isn't it?), and is just the model of governance you expect from the Mind name.
Good, knew you'd be happy - merry Christmas!
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23 December 2011 (updated 2 February 2013, 11 January 2015)
A good day for some early spring cleaning and take stuff to your local Mind shop.
— Paul Farmer (@paulfarmermind) February 2, 2013
But does one's 'local Mind shop',@paulfarmermind, raise funds that are spent *locally*, on services where one lives ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 2, 2013
Seeing Paul Farmer's Tweet, I gave him the opportunity to comment. He did not do so (until 11 months later, when asked again...).
@THEAGENTAPSLEY @MindCharity around £400,000 per year goes to local Minds in grants from the profits generated by our shops.
— Paul Farmer (@paulfarmermind) January 11, 2015You will know the national charity Mind (it sometimes claims to be the leading UK mental-health charity, but Rethink and the Mental Health Foundation may not agree).
Some places where people live have a local Mind charity shop: the common misconception (which, for all that I know, some obscure notice on the premises may allegedly clarify, if you knew that it is there) is that giving items to or otherwise supporting the shop supports people locally who have mental-health issues (rather than Mind itself, the national body).
Some people also assume that 'Mind' means something, and write it 'MIND', as if it were an acronym, but it is actually just a trading-name that stuck to and was kept by what is really the National Association for Mental Health (or NAMH).
So, to summarize, Mind is really NAMH, and Mind charity shops don't support the Mind named after your area, e.g. West Norfolk Mind (if there is one and you lived there).
Now, other charities, say Red Cross, may be set up the same way - I don't know - but, in Mind's case, it's just several assumptions that it would be easy enough to prevent people making, if it mattered enough to stop them.
Now one wild, further, improbable step: imagine East Cambridge Mind (there isn't one, but let's call it ECM) providing services in the voluntary sector, receiving grants and funding, etc. They might offer somewhere where, using Mind's favoured terms, those with a personal experience of 'mental distress' can come for a coffee at certain times of the week.
Or there might be free counselling, or the artificial buddying known as befriending, where a volunteer commits to meet with a member of ECM every so often to allow social things like going for a walk or having a drink (maybe one then the other) that might seem harder to do on one's own. Services, anyway, that need staff and volunteers.
Mind doesn't employ the staff or manage the volunteers, because Mind (as NAMH) is a separate company. ECM is another. Mind lets ECM use the Mind name by agreeing to let it subscribe to be a Local Mind Association (or LMA).
OK, so Mind where you live will be a company (usually limited by guarantee) registered at Companies House. NAMH is another one, so they are separate, except for NAMH letting ECM have Mind in its name.
ECM subscribes (pays a subscription, amongst other things) to do that, but it remains separate. Two companies, never the twain shall meet, although national Mind does require these LMAs (such as ECM) to meet quality standards. The assessment, though, is largely on the basis of self-certification.
So to establish that, say, ECM supervises its staff regularly (maybe monthly) for that quality standard, what Mind actually does is to get ECM to fill in a series of forms that state how, where and when supervision takes place and is recorded. For example, ECM sets out how the manager meets the employee or volunteer every x weeks, spends at least y hours with him or her without interruption, and makes sure that z specified issues are discussed every time.
No other check is made - it may not happen at all, or, at least as often or as well as certified. As far as Mind is concerned, ECM is meeting the quality standard, just because it says that it is meeting the quality standard. That's fine, of course.
Or might you be saying this?:
Isn't ECM employing or having as volunteers people who work with vulnerable people, some of whom may be vulnerable people themselves, seeking 'to give something back'?
That's true.
OK, so aren't there at least three people's interests to protect?
(a) The person receiving a service through ECM;
(b) The person giving a service on behalf of ECM;
(c) The other staff / volunteers of ECM?
Yes, that's right.
And, in fact, isn't there a fourth (maybe a fifth) set of interests?
(d) The carers / relatives / friends of the person receiving a service (or those who otherwise come into contact with the staff and volunteers of ECM)?
You're still right, and some of those are the ones who are not disabused as to what they are supporting with Mind charity shops, too.
So, if something goes wrong, if a volunteer or an employee (or all of them) is not being supervised, and Mind is just being told that they are, it will want to know and will take action?
No, Mind just believes what it's told - it actually has no mechanism for an employee to go to it and complain of not being supervised, because it will just direct him or her back to ECM. ECM is a company, Mind is a company (NAMH), and, despite ECM subscribing to Mind, Mind says that it has no control over ECM.
It remains an internal matter to resolve with ECM, even if the staff member or volunteer is vulnerable because of mental distress, and is less well placed to challenge ECM's company approach or adherence to quality standards or its procedures. Mind will not help or get involved - the aggrieved person, who is not being supervised properly and / or regularly, must raise a grievance.
But that's OK, isn't it? It fits with the slogan (it's for For better mental health, isn't it?), and is just the model of governance you expect from the Mind name.
Good, knew you'd be happy - merry Christmas!
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The habit of collecting (3)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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23 December
Well, an evening of interesting prospects:
Gerry Hawkins offers me to Discover the secrets of sex with our pills
However, Gerry's gender is unclear, so it may be germane to find out, if the invitation is to discover the secrets with her / him (rather than just swallow the tablets made of talcum powder and rat poison)...
Also, as such pitches are usually offering penis enlargement, what's secret about that, I have to ask? In fact, the well-endowed males report a problem accommodating their flexible friend neatly when it becomes firmer and thus more noticeable, so no secret there.
But, of course, the secret has to be what one can do, which one couldn't before, with the supposedly available super-member, and then the usual thing is make a more open claim about length or girth. Well, maybe increasing one dimension of the relevant organ might be a better pay-off than the other, as the receiving part is not infinitely deep, and I have been told (although it could, of course, have been reassurance) that it could be quite uncomfortable to have that much penetration...
Back at my e-mail, Molly Justice (my cat is called Molly, so perhaps she's starting Internet protests at my care of her!) wants to promote something more novel: Yelling with toothache, here is the way out!
Sure, one might be being invited to make a one-way trip to a Swiss clinic, but there are worse things than NHS dentists (non-NHS dentists, for one, as the bill can give more pain than any tooth)!
In any case, with the Christmas post, how am I supposed to get any remedy, even if it were genuine and were genuinely to be sent to me? But I suppose there's Special Delivery or some equivalent form of courier, and some might be so avoidant of dentistry and keen for a solution that they would subscribe.
I shall look out for others in the same business, having just read a Woody Allen piece about a bureau that puts prayers on eBay for the highest bidder, and which seems apt (more about that it in the Woody strand of postings about Mere Anarchy)...
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23 December
Well, an evening of interesting prospects:
Gerry Hawkins offers me to Discover the secrets of sex with our pills
However, Gerry's gender is unclear, so it may be germane to find out, if the invitation is to discover the secrets with her / him (rather than just swallow the tablets made of talcum powder and rat poison)...
Also, as such pitches are usually offering penis enlargement, what's secret about that, I have to ask? In fact, the well-endowed males report a problem accommodating their flexible friend neatly when it becomes firmer and thus more noticeable, so no secret there.
But, of course, the secret has to be what one can do, which one couldn't before, with the supposedly available super-member, and then the usual thing is make a more open claim about length or girth. Well, maybe increasing one dimension of the relevant organ might be a better pay-off than the other, as the receiving part is not infinitely deep, and I have been told (although it could, of course, have been reassurance) that it could be quite uncomfortable to have that much penetration...
Back at my e-mail, Molly Justice (my cat is called Molly, so perhaps she's starting Internet protests at my care of her!) wants to promote something more novel: Yelling with toothache, here is the way out!
Sure, one might be being invited to make a one-way trip to a Swiss clinic, but there are worse things than NHS dentists (non-NHS dentists, for one, as the bill can give more pain than any tooth)!
In any case, with the Christmas post, how am I supposed to get any remedy, even if it were genuine and were genuinely to be sent to me? But I suppose there's Special Delivery or some equivalent form of courier, and some might be so avoidant of dentistry and keen for a solution that they would subscribe.
I shall look out for others in the same business, having just read a Woody Allen piece about a bureau that puts prayers on eBay for the highest bidder, and which seems apt (more about that it in the Woody strand of postings about Mere Anarchy)...
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Thursday, 22 December 2011
Tyrannosaur and Another Earth
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23 December
* Contains spoilers *
Both hailed at Sundance, but how Paddy Considine's direction won a best award is beyond me, whereas Brit Marling / Mike Cahill's film did deserve all that it got (and probably more):
Did Tyrannosaur tell a story? Yes.
Was it pretty much a linear narrative? Yes.
Was the story shocking or innovative? Well, a man kicking his canine best friend to death because angry at someone else did jolt, but it just set the tone, only slightly offset as a stereotype by Joseph's (Peter Mullan's) being someone who can give a fuck (sometimes).
What was innovative about the direction? Yes, what was innovative about the direction?
In interview at Cambridge Film Festival, Considine was clear that: his script was the script; he is on the Autistic spectrum; and there was no role play / improvisation in sight.
For my money, he wrote a decent enough script, given what he wanted to tell a story about, but all of these actors* - Peter Mullan, for God's sake! - were quite capable of delivering it with minimal direction.
And the title and the poster image that incorporated and reflected it? Sheer red herring, as far as I can see.
Just part of this comfortable myth that Joseph had enough humanity to go with his brutality and bullying that he would be self-aware when telling Hannah (Olivia Colman) that calling her that name (i.e. 'the Tyrannosaur') was how he mocked his late wife's clomping around because of her obesity or disability (I forget which).
So I know which film praised at Sundance I'll be rewatching - on a screen, if I get the chance!
* Incidentally, a factor links the three main figures:
Peter Mullan
Olivia Colman
Eddie Marsan
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23 December
* Contains spoilers *
Both hailed at Sundance, but how Paddy Considine's direction won a best award is beyond me, whereas Brit Marling / Mike Cahill's film did deserve all that it got (and probably more):
Did Tyrannosaur tell a story? Yes.
Was it pretty much a linear narrative? Yes.
Was the story shocking or innovative? Well, a man kicking his canine best friend to death because angry at someone else did jolt, but it just set the tone, only slightly offset as a stereotype by Joseph's (Peter Mullan's) being someone who can give a fuck (sometimes).
What was innovative about the direction? Yes, what was innovative about the direction?
In interview at Cambridge Film Festival, Considine was clear that: his script was the script; he is on the Autistic spectrum; and there was no role play / improvisation in sight.
For my money, he wrote a decent enough script, given what he wanted to tell a story about, but all of these actors* - Peter Mullan, for God's sake! - were quite capable of delivering it with minimal direction.
And the title and the poster image that incorporated and reflected it? Sheer red herring, as far as I can see.
Just part of this comfortable myth that Joseph had enough humanity to go with his brutality and bullying that he would be self-aware when telling Hannah (Olivia Colman) that calling her that name (i.e. 'the Tyrannosaur') was how he mocked his late wife's clomping around because of her obesity or disability (I forget which).
So I know which film praised at Sundance I'll be rewatching - on a screen, if I get the chance!
* Incidentally, a factor links the three main figures:
Peter Mullan
Olivia Colman
Eddie Marsan
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Another blog - Writer's Rest (2)
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23 December
At Writer's Rest, Lindsay has now made a posting to comment on my posting*:
That is the question and right now it is unanswerable. I want to read this book. I think author is right about the language used to describe this theoretical ascension into consciousness. Personally, I believe that IF it happens (I have no idea whether it will or not), it will fall far short of an apocalyptic event.
* IF technology were what it is cracked up to be, I would not have had to notice in the list of blogs that I am following that there had been a reply, I was supposed to get an e-mail - maybe the e-mail got too interested in watching the trailer for J. Edgar, though I can't fathom why (Hoover as a black woman in the court scene in Bananas, Woody Allen's early collaboration with Marshall Brickman, fires my imagination far more than Leonardo does)...
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23 December
At Writer's Rest, Lindsay has now made a posting to comment on my posting*:
That is the question and right now it is unanswerable. I want to read this book. I think author is right about the language used to describe this theoretical ascension into consciousness. Personally, I believe that IF it happens (I have no idea whether it will or not), it will fall far short of an apocalyptic event.
* IF technology were what it is cracked up to be, I would not have had to notice in the list of blogs that I am following that there had been a reply, I was supposed to get an e-mail - maybe the e-mail got too interested in watching the trailer for J. Edgar, though I can't fathom why (Hoover as a black woman in the court scene in Bananas, Woody Allen's early collaboration with Marshall Brickman, fires my imagination far more than Leonardo does)...
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The habit of collecting (2)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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23 December
Some will know the drummer Jack de Johnette (of, amongst other things, long-standing service in Keith Jarrett's Standards Trio).
Well, in three spam messages to delete one surely from a would-be relation, Jacquetta Donnette, telling me how great I'll feel with an 'exact fake watch'.
So it's either the penis or - maybe not unrelatedly... - the wrist that gets targeted: Of Cock or The Clock, maybe one could say.
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23 December
Some will know the drummer Jack de Johnette (of, amongst other things, long-standing service in Keith Jarrett's Standards Trio).
Well, in three spam messages to delete one surely from a would-be relation, Jacquetta Donnette, telling me how great I'll feel with an 'exact fake watch'.
So it's either the penis or - maybe not unrelatedly... - the wrist that gets targeted: Of Cock or The Clock, maybe one could say.
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From the archive: In a Better World reviewed in a poem
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23 December
Christian's Journey
21 August 2011
Copyright © Belston Night Works 2011
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23 December
Christian's Journey
A boy who played with pipe-bombs
Nearly kills his friend -
Christian's the bomber,
Saved by his friend's dad:
Elijah's not in pieces
(Though he thought him dead)
And, on the towering silo,
He need not seek his end.
Returning from his coldness
At his mother's death
(He'd made himself heroic -
His father's sternest judge),
The future is reopened,
The truth can be revealed,
And Christian learns of feelings
That his hate concealed.
21 August 2011
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There is another Earth – and, wow, up there with Solaris! (part posting)
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23 December
Something doesn’t have to be plausible to be genuine, human, warm and engaging, and elements of Another Earth are not plausible*, but that didn’t matter.
If I had earlier followed up, as I intended, the newspaper’s and Sundance’s recommendation to see this film, I could have given it the ‘watch it again and see if it matters / works’ test. However, this was the last screening most locally to me, so no another Another Earth for me just yet…
One thing to have known from a second screening might have been whether there were clues in the first 20 to 30 minutes that I missed that it was going to develop and build so dramatically. That said, there was nothing about it to say ‘Cut your losses, this isn’t going anywhere’, it’s just that it gave the impression of being unexceptional, which, start to finish, it certainly isn’t. (It would have take a cussed ‘This isn’t what it was cracked up to be!’ to walk out.)
Another would have been to know when Brit Marling’s luminous quality as Rhoda Williams first came through, because, again, I had the expectation from the write-up that the actress / co-director / co-producer was striking and her performance revelatory, which she and it are. For what she reveals, she sometimes also conceals, but there was a subtly amused tone to her response to what John Burroughs (played by William Mapother - a curious alternative to cartography!) was saying to her.
... To be continued - in another posting
* They are minor things, but criminal rehabilitation, both in prison and on parole, would have involved seeking to apologize to the victims of the crime or, as the case might be, being directed to stay away, because saying sorry wouldn’t be welcome.
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23 December
Something doesn’t have to be plausible to be genuine, human, warm and engaging, and elements of Another Earth are not plausible*, but that didn’t matter.
If I had earlier followed up, as I intended, the newspaper’s and Sundance’s recommendation to see this film, I could have given it the ‘watch it again and see if it matters / works’ test. However, this was the last screening most locally to me, so no another Another Earth for me just yet…
One thing to have known from a second screening might have been whether there were clues in the first 20 to 30 minutes that I missed that it was going to develop and build so dramatically. That said, there was nothing about it to say ‘Cut your losses, this isn’t going anywhere’, it’s just that it gave the impression of being unexceptional, which, start to finish, it certainly isn’t. (It would have take a cussed ‘This isn’t what it was cracked up to be!’ to walk out.)
Another would have been to know when Brit Marling’s luminous quality as Rhoda Williams first came through, because, again, I had the expectation from the write-up that the actress / co-director / co-producer was striking and her performance revelatory, which she and it are. For what she reveals, she sometimes also conceals, but there was a subtly amused tone to her response to what John Burroughs (played by William Mapother - a curious alternative to cartography!) was saying to her.
... To be continued - in another posting
* They are minor things, but criminal rehabilitation, both in prison and on parole, would have involved seeking to apologize to the victims of the crime or, as the case might be, being directed to stay away, because saying sorry wouldn’t be welcome.
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Forty-five years in film (2)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
22 December
I still haven't looked to see whether unnaturally or not, but the version that I thought was going to press turned out to have to be truncated, and that is really all that I know as yet, with one of the three illustrations being out, too.
Still, I shall commend the New Empress Magazine's 2011 Year Book, as there is much else in it - available from NEM web-site's ordering-system or, although the navigation's tricky, via www.newempressmagazine.com, and possibly via the ISSN (but it's not on this issue)...
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22 December
I still haven't looked to see whether unnaturally or not, but the version that I thought was going to press turned out to have to be truncated, and that is really all that I know as yet, with one of the three illustrations being out, too.
Still, I shall commend the New Empress Magazine's 2011 Year Book, as there is much else in it - available from NEM web-site's ordering-system or, although the navigation's tricky, via www.newempressmagazine.com, and possibly via the ISSN (but it's not on this issue)...
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In and out of insults
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
22 December
Fashion was when an abruptly raised solo middle finger (probably of either hand - forgive me for not being bothered with the etiquette!), together with the curt utterance ‘Swivel!’, was deeply insulting*. Probably, then, it became less insulting, until it became too tame to do at all, because I cannot think when I last saw it done.
(If not on t.v., although it usually lags behind in the provocation stakes, it probably originated on celluloid, that great promoter of catch-phrases such as the dire ‘I’ll be back…!’ – with its sickeningly inappropriate overtones of Captain Oates.)
In their time, insults and insulting gestures have the currency (pun intended!) of being known to be both the latest and also stylish: by saying it and doing the (action and) utterance properly, you are showing that you are an informed person, and so worthwhile. (By mimicking something else, whether it is passé or just not credited as being the thing to do, you are showing the converse, your worthlessness: and we all know how the dictionary almost invairably defines various coarse words as meaning (amongst those referring to the sexual organs in which they have their home) 'a worthless [or offensive] person'.
But we know that all, of course: we're modern, we're in the post-Manwatching period. What we don’t know is that the same gesture, performed more slowly, and with the utterance softer and more questioning would have been a pick-up line in Tokyo’s infamous district of the love-hotels. After all, would the person using the more combative combination either expect or want to be taken up on the offered service?
Fine, the insult depends on proposing a penetration that is assumed to be unwelcome, but it only works if there isn’t a retort that takes it at face value and says ‘Yes, please! – Your place or mine?’, intending to induce the revulsion in the other person that he or she sought to provoke. Other responses, of a more cloacal nature, could equally have been devised, but I doubt that they were.
Which shows? The mere copying of a gesture or insult is just that, whereas it takes genuine wit to parry it, as stand-ups do with put-downs, and make the person who uttered it (feel) defenceless and stupid. Doing it on the hoof takes sharper wits, of course, and most people who expect to be heckled have their armoury of both passive and offensive attack – which can, in turn, be copied…
Homo sapiens? I don’t think so! More like Homo mimicus, and even the primates, mammals and birds do that to pass on tricks that have been discovered even in the domain of accessing, processing or eating food. (Quite apart from bees and the honey-dances, and ants’ - or termites’ - ways of passing on important information about threat or prey.)
But do any of these creatures copy something that, looked at, makes no rational sense? – why would the person raising the finger actually want it where he or she suggests the other person accepting it, and, if he or she actually stopped to consider the indecent proposal, wouldn’t he or she be the loser in the transaction?!
Negative view it may be, but human-beings are not always very selective, and the part of the body that this sort of copying behaviour resembles most is not the brain, but the appendix, for its redundancy (and also the scope for grievously poisoning the body with its hoard of toxins). Not the evolutionary future at all, not even a tributary, but a silted-up backwater, stagnating and no longer flowing!
* And these things can be misheard, of course, to the great delight of those who realize that someone else has got it wrong: imagine someone going through the whole routine perfectly, but under the impression that the word is 'Snivel'...
(Actually, a friend revealed, by writing down the phrase 'can't be asked', that there is evidence of genetic miscopying (sc. transcriptional error) in meanings changing and phrasal words becoming confused - when it is the thing to say 'feisty', no one troubles to think what the word actually means, because, hey, we're talking about The Spice Girls, and we know what they're like, so we know what feisty signifies?
Johnson got it all wrong with his dictionary, then, and Carroll's Humpty-Dumpty was right - should have said that the awesome five were 'very helicopter' and seen if that caught on, if you can excuse me being a bit traffic-cone about it!)
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22 December
Fashion was when an abruptly raised solo middle finger (probably of either hand - forgive me for not being bothered with the etiquette!), together with the curt utterance ‘Swivel!’, was deeply insulting*. Probably, then, it became less insulting, until it became too tame to do at all, because I cannot think when I last saw it done.
(If not on t.v., although it usually lags behind in the provocation stakes, it probably originated on celluloid, that great promoter of catch-phrases such as the dire ‘I’ll be back…!’ – with its sickeningly inappropriate overtones of Captain Oates.)
In their time, insults and insulting gestures have the currency (pun intended!) of being known to be both the latest and also stylish: by saying it and doing the (action and) utterance properly, you are showing that you are an informed person, and so worthwhile. (By mimicking something else, whether it is passé or just not credited as being the thing to do, you are showing the converse, your worthlessness: and we all know how the dictionary almost invairably defines various coarse words as meaning (amongst those referring to the sexual organs in which they have their home) 'a worthless [or offensive] person'.
But we know that all, of course: we're modern, we're in the post-Manwatching period. What we don’t know is that the same gesture, performed more slowly, and with the utterance softer and more questioning would have been a pick-up line in Tokyo’s infamous district of the love-hotels. After all, would the person using the more combative combination either expect or want to be taken up on the offered service?
Fine, the insult depends on proposing a penetration that is assumed to be unwelcome, but it only works if there isn’t a retort that takes it at face value and says ‘Yes, please! – Your place or mine?’, intending to induce the revulsion in the other person that he or she sought to provoke. Other responses, of a more cloacal nature, could equally have been devised, but I doubt that they were.
Which shows? The mere copying of a gesture or insult is just that, whereas it takes genuine wit to parry it, as stand-ups do with put-downs, and make the person who uttered it (feel) defenceless and stupid. Doing it on the hoof takes sharper wits, of course, and most people who expect to be heckled have their armoury of both passive and offensive attack – which can, in turn, be copied…
Homo sapiens? I don’t think so! More like Homo mimicus, and even the primates, mammals and birds do that to pass on tricks that have been discovered even in the domain of accessing, processing or eating food. (Quite apart from bees and the honey-dances, and ants’ - or termites’ - ways of passing on important information about threat or prey.)
But do any of these creatures copy something that, looked at, makes no rational sense? – why would the person raising the finger actually want it where he or she suggests the other person accepting it, and, if he or she actually stopped to consider the indecent proposal, wouldn’t he or she be the loser in the transaction?!
Negative view it may be, but human-beings are not always very selective, and the part of the body that this sort of copying behaviour resembles most is not the brain, but the appendix, for its redundancy (and also the scope for grievously poisoning the body with its hoard of toxins). Not the evolutionary future at all, not even a tributary, but a silted-up backwater, stagnating and no longer flowing!
* And these things can be misheard, of course, to the great delight of those who realize that someone else has got it wrong: imagine someone going through the whole routine perfectly, but under the impression that the word is 'Snivel'...
(Actually, a friend revealed, by writing down the phrase 'can't be asked', that there is evidence of genetic miscopying (sc. transcriptional error) in meanings changing and phrasal words becoming confused - when it is the thing to say 'feisty', no one troubles to think what the word actually means, because, hey, we're talking about The Spice Girls, and we know what they're like, so we know what feisty signifies?
Johnson got it all wrong with his dictionary, then, and Carroll's Humpty-Dumpty was right - should have said that the awesome five were 'very helicopter' and seen if that caught on, if you can excuse me being a bit traffic-cone about it!)
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A survey / summary
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
22 December
Whether it really means that they were of interest (or someone just told someone else to look), I have no idea, but the list of postings with the most page-views (since the blog's inception) is:
No. Posting
90 Dimensions: Through the looking-glass of time? (2)
75 Unlimited dimensions
57 Nicola Malet at The Tavern Gallery (Meldreth)
41 The man who believed in flicker-drive
9 The Physics of Poetry
6 A tribute to times past
6 An appreciation of L'enfance du Christ
6 New dimensions on Dimensions
5 Blogging at the Tate (from 4 September)
5 Dimensions to-night
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22 December
Whether it really means that they were of interest (or someone just told someone else to look), I have no idea, but the list of postings with the most page-views (since the blog's inception) is:
No. Posting
90 Dimensions: Through the looking-glass of time? (2)
75 Unlimited dimensions
57 Nicola Malet at The Tavern Gallery (Meldreth)
41 The man who believed in flicker-drive
9 The Physics of Poetry
6 A tribute to times past
6 An appreciation of L'enfance du Christ
6 New dimensions on Dimensions
5 Blogging at the Tate (from 4 September)
5 Dimensions to-night
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Wednesday, 21 December 2011
The Truth about Russell Hoban (according to Hermann Orff)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
22 December
Those who know Russ Hoban's work well (although he is also author of A Practical Guide to Wood-working, and a number of spin-off titles such as A Practical Guide to Working with Live Maggots on Film-sets) will not be surprised by the revelation, cannily made to-day by one-time shrinkhead and writer for the breakfast-cereal market Hermann Orff, that the person who has died recently was not really Russ at all.
Let me (with the benefit of what, courtesy of Hermes Soundways®, I have understood about the whole Hoban Morphing Project - Humph for short - in the last few crazy days, when sleep seemed a luxury, not a necessity) try to explain:
* Orff first got it from a cabbage that wasn't really a cabbage, but a tip-off that domestic intelligence was getting wise to the whole Hoban vibe, that things were not as they seemed.
* He, being a crazy son of a bitch at the best of times and, like the prophets of old, not one to do what he was damn'd well told, tried to turn the mission down (as if we Agents have any choice, any right of veto, say, about being despatched to Connemara with god-little notice to obtain Yerk's tie-pin (by fair means or foul)!
* So he buggers off to Antibes, and starts hanging out with set there, saying that, despite his thick Rhine accent, he is a Plaid Cymru councillor turned t.v. evangelist who has been working wonders in Mold and even as far as Chester...
* Anyway, the short of it is that he gets zapped in quite the sort of way that he's making out the hand of God is whipping his flock into divine order, because Youdi visits him personally (but in a dream - some of your mystic apparition stuff) and tells him that if he doesn't fry his backside pronto and get back to Blighty, no accrued pension rights (deferred or no) for him.
* Orff falls in line, and goes on the snoop like a good member of the agenthood. Truth is, MI5 has by now got the whole scam, so pretending to date Stella Rimington by overpraising her latest ouevre brings him enough Gewissheit to blow the gaff and, on the pretext that he is a demented collector of plastic figures from the packets of those puffy little boulders of sheer sucrose that Orff himself had been wont to scoff at breakfast as a boy, secures the whole Hoban files.
* On Youdi's orders, this time communicated through that rather bored and, if not world-weary, then rather mundane bearer of tidings Gaber, he legs it with the dossiers, leaving behind a dented metal globe and some electrodes (some trip Kraken had been on made him think that it would be a red herring), and pores over the whole caboodle down at The Cheshire Cheese.
* I see him there, think to myself I wonder what the schlemihl's up to this time with his conspicuous Bogart gear (hat and all), and, sidling up, start plying him with double pink gins, for which he has an insatiable fondness. Well, he's got the fondness, but he hasn't got the stomach to go with it (and is toping on a near-empty stomach), so, on his sixth, he's suddenly belly side up on the floor, and I'm legging it with the Hoban papers.
* I go to a location that Lola told me about, some weird sort of castle place off the south coast that she liked (it was nice, with the ribbons and banners and all that), and master the whole scheme in a matter of hours, plied by a dram or two from the Sound of Islay, before getting the nub over to Youdi on the old handheld (had to stand on one leg, though, facing the wind to get a signal when it came to transmit).
* Message back from Youdi, via a vision of a bus about to plunge off the edge of a nearby cliff and the assorted screams of the no longer would-be passengers, to make a posting here.
* So, the real Huss Hoban (christened Russell Idaho Obama) first saw the light of day the day that Christ died at his parental home in Foxrock nearly 55 years ago. Unaccountably, though the ostensible child of a god-fearing Protestant Irish couple called Becquet, he was black, and it does not require a genius to work out that he was destined for the care of the Sisters of Mercy.
* All in all, he quickly had a new home in Brixton, and grew up, not knowing otherwise, as if South London were his natal home, and the immigrant Borges family, who adopted him to overcome childlessness, were his parents.
* When it came to know better, he didn't care to, being too much engrossed in learning the business of being an illustrator to care much about how he was conceived or who gave him birth. However, he did execute a deed to change his name, because he had resolved to overcome the stigma that it was obvious that would detract from his work, if, as he fancied, he branched out into writing.
* In a place as huge and populous as the States, finding someone with the same name who would settle in the UK and front as him for as long as was convenient was not difficult.
* Both men quite enjoyed their respective roles, one with full licence to embellish any aspect of his life that would enhance the quirky, out-of-the-groove market that his accomplice was seeking to appeal to, who was, in turn, freed from the demands on him to do other than write, without the need to present a front.
* The rest is history. Van Morrison, more obviously, did the same thing when he appointed Brian Kennedy as his public mouthpiece. Those, however, who really believe that Naomi Campbell authored a novel about a swan have wasted precious minutes that could have been spent reading The Daily Mail instead - sorry to have intruded on those endless stories of doom and disaster!
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(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
22 December
Those who know Russ Hoban's work well (although he is also author of A Practical Guide to Wood-working, and a number of spin-off titles such as A Practical Guide to Working with Live Maggots on Film-sets) will not be surprised by the revelation, cannily made to-day by one-time shrinkhead and writer for the breakfast-cereal market Hermann Orff, that the person who has died recently was not really Russ at all.
Let me (with the benefit of what, courtesy of Hermes Soundways®, I have understood about the whole Hoban Morphing Project - Humph for short - in the last few crazy days, when sleep seemed a luxury, not a necessity) try to explain:
* Orff first got it from a cabbage that wasn't really a cabbage, but a tip-off that domestic intelligence was getting wise to the whole Hoban vibe, that things were not as they seemed.
* He, being a crazy son of a bitch at the best of times and, like the prophets of old, not one to do what he was damn'd well told, tried to turn the mission down (as if we Agents have any choice, any right of veto, say, about being despatched to Connemara with god-little notice to obtain Yerk's tie-pin (by fair means or foul)!
* So he buggers off to Antibes, and starts hanging out with set there, saying that, despite his thick Rhine accent, he is a Plaid Cymru councillor turned t.v. evangelist who has been working wonders in Mold and even as far as Chester...
* Anyway, the short of it is that he gets zapped in quite the sort of way that he's making out the hand of God is whipping his flock into divine order, because Youdi visits him personally (but in a dream - some of your mystic apparition stuff) and tells him that if he doesn't fry his backside pronto and get back to Blighty, no accrued pension rights (deferred or no) for him.
* Orff falls in line, and goes on the snoop like a good member of the agenthood. Truth is, MI5 has by now got the whole scam, so pretending to date Stella Rimington by overpraising her latest ouevre brings him enough Gewissheit to blow the gaff and, on the pretext that he is a demented collector of plastic figures from the packets of those puffy little boulders of sheer sucrose that Orff himself had been wont to scoff at breakfast as a boy, secures the whole Hoban files.
* On Youdi's orders, this time communicated through that rather bored and, if not world-weary, then rather mundane bearer of tidings Gaber, he legs it with the dossiers, leaving behind a dented metal globe and some electrodes (some trip Kraken had been on made him think that it would be a red herring), and pores over the whole caboodle down at The Cheshire Cheese.
* I see him there, think to myself I wonder what the schlemihl's up to this time with his conspicuous Bogart gear (hat and all), and, sidling up, start plying him with double pink gins, for which he has an insatiable fondness. Well, he's got the fondness, but he hasn't got the stomach to go with it (and is toping on a near-empty stomach), so, on his sixth, he's suddenly belly side up on the floor, and I'm legging it with the Hoban papers.
* I go to a location that Lola told me about, some weird sort of castle place off the south coast that she liked (it was nice, with the ribbons and banners and all that), and master the whole scheme in a matter of hours, plied by a dram or two from the Sound of Islay, before getting the nub over to Youdi on the old handheld (had to stand on one leg, though, facing the wind to get a signal when it came to transmit).
* Message back from Youdi, via a vision of a bus about to plunge off the edge of a nearby cliff and the assorted screams of the no longer would-be passengers, to make a posting here.
* So, the real Huss Hoban (christened Russell Idaho Obama) first saw the light of day the day that Christ died at his parental home in Foxrock nearly 55 years ago. Unaccountably, though the ostensible child of a god-fearing Protestant Irish couple called Becquet, he was black, and it does not require a genius to work out that he was destined for the care of the Sisters of Mercy.
* All in all, he quickly had a new home in Brixton, and grew up, not knowing otherwise, as if South London were his natal home, and the immigrant Borges family, who adopted him to overcome childlessness, were his parents.
* When it came to know better, he didn't care to, being too much engrossed in learning the business of being an illustrator to care much about how he was conceived or who gave him birth. However, he did execute a deed to change his name, because he had resolved to overcome the stigma that it was obvious that would detract from his work, if, as he fancied, he branched out into writing.
* In a place as huge and populous as the States, finding someone with the same name who would settle in the UK and front as him for as long as was convenient was not difficult.
* Both men quite enjoyed their respective roles, one with full licence to embellish any aspect of his life that would enhance the quirky, out-of-the-groove market that his accomplice was seeking to appeal to, who was, in turn, freed from the demands on him to do other than write, without the need to present a front.
* The rest is history. Van Morrison, more obviously, did the same thing when he appointed Brian Kennedy as his public mouthpiece. Those, however, who really believe that Naomi Campbell authored a novel about a swan have wasted precious minutes that could have been spent reading The Daily Mail instead - sorry to have intruded on those endless stories of doom and disaster!
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The habit of collecting (1)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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22 December
Other than being a writer by profession (i.e. I profess to be a writer, but who am I to judge!), I am a collector.
Apart from whisky, which makes me laugh in a more earthy way that's in touch with the beat of the universe (or some other such flannel as is to be found on many a whisky tube, e.g. the assertion that the Old Pulteney distillery at Wick was, when it was founded, accessible only by sea (well, why found it there?)), I tend to collect things that make me laugh (or that have some other human worth).
This is one, from the title of an e-mail purporting to come from Georgina Dejesus:
our pills has merci for your penis
It's not really the pidgin English that's funny, although 'merci' is quaint, it's this silly attempt to get me to open it - either because of the lurking virus, or because I might be drawn into ordering something that will never arrive or, if it did, would do me, at best, no good, and, at worst, more harm than good.
I've been collecting such e-mails in a folder called 'Crubb' in the account where they tend to reach me, and have more than five hundred, just saved when they take my fancy over the years, and intended to drip-feed into the lives of characters in a novel that I'll probably never write, so maybe I'll share them here with whomever's looking...
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(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
22 December
Other than being a writer by profession (i.e. I profess to be a writer, but who am I to judge!), I am a collector.
Apart from whisky, which makes me laugh in a more earthy way that's in touch with the beat of the universe (or some other such flannel as is to be found on many a whisky tube, e.g. the assertion that the Old Pulteney distillery at Wick was, when it was founded, accessible only by sea (well, why found it there?)), I tend to collect things that make me laugh (or that have some other human worth).
This is one, from the title of an e-mail purporting to come from Georgina Dejesus:
our pills has merci for your penis
It's not really the pidgin English that's funny, although 'merci' is quaint, it's this silly attempt to get me to open it - either because of the lurking virus, or because I might be drawn into ordering something that will never arrive or, if it did, would do me, at best, no good, and, at worst, more harm than good.
I've been collecting such e-mails in a folder called 'Crubb' in the account where they tend to reach me, and have more than five hundred, just saved when they take my fancy over the years, and intended to drip-feed into the lives of characters in a novel that I'll probably never write, so maybe I'll share them here with whomever's looking...
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Another blog - Writer's Rest (1)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
21 December
Commenting on the topic 'Apocalyptic AI' on Lindsay's blog (which I follow, and probably make a nuisance of myself on!), I have posted the following:
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21 December
Commenting on the topic 'Apocalyptic AI' on Lindsay's blog (which I follow, and probably make a nuisance of myself on!), I have posted the following:
It is the claim of AI (its ultimate claim) that consciousness can be gained (or created), and that, as Derek Parfitt repeatedly asserted about various things that are not achievable in Reasons and Persons, technology just has not advanced enough to make it happen.
Some might call that a poetic hope or even a belief that is not necessarily any more grounded than some religious beliefs are supposed to be, but never mind – there is simply a divide over whether we incline to the idea that consciousness just is, and can at best be mimicked, and those who believe that building increasingly advanced systems that employ intelligent strategies, then thinking and consciousness, very much part and parcel of the same thing, come as a result.
I may be simplifying, and there may be waverers, but most people either think ‘Great – I can live on in R2D2!’, or that machines will always just be machines, and not cats or humans…
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Samuel Johnson: a corrective
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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21 December
Beckettt was bothered enough about Johnson early on to attempt a play about him, which I dread admitting not to have read yet, and we all know his assertion that when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.
Shame, then, that we believe all the media-hype about him (a certain Mr Boswell, amongst others), and that his own grandiose claims were credited: talk about Baron Munchausen, but, if the chief medical officer saw details of his daily alcoholic consumption, we'd have none of this not exceeding 3 to 4 units per day regularly! (Not to mention Falstaff, and his commending of sack.)
For the truth is that he had quite a small life - leaving apart the life of the mind, with its fictitious Mrs Thrales - and hardly stepped out of the post office that he ran in Leeds (forget all that nonsense about Ludlow and the like, for our Sam - a kinship of Sams (nat Lemuel, I saye!) with Beckettt - was a Yorkshireman born and bred). A true Walter Mitty before we had the name for him, he so believed that he lived in London and was a great man, pronouncing upon all sorts of subjects, that even people who knew that this was counterfactual were swept up by his enthusiasm.
For Johnson, like our own dear Boris, was nothing if not enthusiastic, and even once made the considerable trip to Rochester because he'd heard that there was a model-railway exhibition on: chump that he was, he had somehow caught sight of a flyer from tens of years on and not spotted that the date was way in advance of his allotted life-span! Still, he was a keen philatelist, too, and brought out a private stamp to mark the excursion, using some rather scrappy shots that he'd taken on his mobile and then smartened up in one of these fancy image-processing suites (when, of course, for the cost of the software (bundling wasn't the norm back then, and he'd had to buy it as a separate), he'd have been better off taking a decent image on a film SLR and having it put onto CD-ROM in digitized form when he had the roll developed...
Oh, and that business about the trip to the Hebrides - need I have said that Boswell's sister was one of the founders of Thomas Cook (named after a boy that she'd gone steady with because he was in the Globetrotters, and who tragically choked on a piece of basketball when some klutz mistook it for a pumpkin and made it a Thanksgiving not to be forgotten), and needed a bit of pull for the Scottish market that she thought crazy stories like Johnson dancing a jig on Rathesay might generate?
Most can probably guess the rest, but it's a bit like a meeting of the directors of a company - if they all say that it took place by approving minutes of it, who's to say otherwise (certainly not the bemused articled clerk who's had to concoct this spurious verbiage, against his better judgement)?
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21 December
Beckettt was bothered enough about Johnson early on to attempt a play about him, which I dread admitting not to have read yet, and we all know his assertion that when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.
Shame, then, that we believe all the media-hype about him (a certain Mr Boswell, amongst others), and that his own grandiose claims were credited: talk about Baron Munchausen, but, if the chief medical officer saw details of his daily alcoholic consumption, we'd have none of this not exceeding 3 to 4 units per day regularly! (Not to mention Falstaff, and his commending of sack.)
For the truth is that he had quite a small life - leaving apart the life of the mind, with its fictitious Mrs Thrales - and hardly stepped out of the post office that he ran in Leeds (forget all that nonsense about Ludlow and the like, for our Sam - a kinship of Sams (nat Lemuel, I saye!) with Beckettt - was a Yorkshireman born and bred). A true Walter Mitty before we had the name for him, he so believed that he lived in London and was a great man, pronouncing upon all sorts of subjects, that even people who knew that this was counterfactual were swept up by his enthusiasm.
For Johnson, like our own dear Boris, was nothing if not enthusiastic, and even once made the considerable trip to Rochester because he'd heard that there was a model-railway exhibition on: chump that he was, he had somehow caught sight of a flyer from tens of years on and not spotted that the date was way in advance of his allotted life-span! Still, he was a keen philatelist, too, and brought out a private stamp to mark the excursion, using some rather scrappy shots that he'd taken on his mobile and then smartened up in one of these fancy image-processing suites (when, of course, for the cost of the software (bundling wasn't the norm back then, and he'd had to buy it as a separate), he'd have been better off taking a decent image on a film SLR and having it put onto CD-ROM in digitized form when he had the roll developed...
Oh, and that business about the trip to the Hebrides - need I have said that Boswell's sister was one of the founders of Thomas Cook (named after a boy that she'd gone steady with because he was in the Globetrotters, and who tragically choked on a piece of basketball when some klutz mistook it for a pumpkin and made it a Thanksgiving not to be forgotten), and needed a bit of pull for the Scottish market that she thought crazy stories like Johnson dancing a jig on Rathesay might generate?
Most can probably guess the rest, but it's a bit like a meeting of the directors of a company - if they all say that it took place by approving minutes of it, who's to say otherwise (certainly not the bemused articled clerk who's had to concoct this spurious verbiage, against his better judgement)?
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Tuesday, 20 December 2011
Pierrot longs for the moon
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
21 December
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
21 December
Pierrot longs for the moon
(For Harry - who also likes moons)
So clearly
A man
I saw to-night
In the moon:
A man's face
Shadowy
Never seen before
In semi-relief
So real
And huge
No space for dog
Or bush,
Just he
© Copyright Belston Night Works 2011
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Monday, 19 December 2011
The Prince, The Showgirl, and Me
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
20 December
I have bought the volume that contains this set of 'Diaries' with the later 'My Week With Marilyn', and now got to starting to read the text.
Simply put, after sampling the first few entries, anyone who gives credence that what is presented was a contemporaneous record of what happened, rather than a chronological telling of the story after the event, does well not to be parted from large amounts of his or her money on a regular basis, probably by believing the stories of some African prince who is locked out from his fortune, if only...
I still hope that it will still be good reading, but so far the film has stuck so close to the text as to be a conjoined twin!
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(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
20 December
I have bought the volume that contains this set of 'Diaries' with the later 'My Week With Marilyn', and now got to starting to read the text.
Simply put, after sampling the first few entries, anyone who gives credence that what is presented was a contemporaneous record of what happened, rather than a chronological telling of the story after the event, does well not to be parted from large amounts of his or her money on a regular basis, probably by believing the stories of some African prince who is locked out from his fortune, if only...
I still hope that it will still be good reading, but so far the film has stuck so close to the text as to be a conjoined twin!
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Early Woody and Mere Anarchy (1)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
20 December
Maybe I'm just a Gil Pinder (from Allen's latest release, Midnight in Paris), but I have now read half-a-dozen from this new collection (well, fairly new - compared, certainly, with the book-of-books, The Complete Prose of Woody Allen, whose title it falsifies), and I simply don't think that many of them match up to those in books such as Side Effects.
I grew up with Allen as much as an author as a film-maker (Annie Hall was the first thing that I saw, in tow with my parents even), but I caught up with other films, such as Sleeper, on t.v., so the roles are for me inseparable. However, I have a memory of the pieces from those three books (the others being, without checking, Without Feathers and Getting Even) working better and more consistently than these. But that was a while ago, and maybe, as Paul conceitedy tells Gil in the film, that is just what he thinks himself clever enough to call 'Golden Age thinking'.
Be that as it may. The pieces in Mere Anarchy have, I think (but maybe not in all cases), been collected after appearing in such places as The New Yorker (not taking it, I cannot guess how often Allen contributes, how the choice of pieces that were first published there was made, and whether better ones were overlooked in the process). He may also have continued to write plays and for t.v., but that sort of writing is clearly closer to scripting film dialogue than short humorous pieces.
With the one that I have last read, curiously titled (I see) 'Calisthenics, Poison Ivy, Final Cut', the humour arises from the cut and thrust of imagined speech, since it is a vituperative exchange by letter between the owner of 'a film camp' (called Camp Melanoma) and the father of the boy who, attending there, wrote and filmed a nameless blockbuster - the subject being who is entitled to claim the credit and a share in the multi-million-dollar distribution rights. Compared to this, the earlier pieces seem flat, thin on laughs, and almost one dimensional, so not, for me, the sort of things to bring out proudly in a book. But I haven't read the whole book, and more than half is left, so the balance of pieces that succeed with me may change...
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(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
20 December
Maybe I'm just a Gil Pinder (from Allen's latest release, Midnight in Paris), but I have now read half-a-dozen from this new collection (well, fairly new - compared, certainly, with the book-of-books, The Complete Prose of Woody Allen, whose title it falsifies), and I simply don't think that many of them match up to those in books such as Side Effects.
I grew up with Allen as much as an author as a film-maker (Annie Hall was the first thing that I saw, in tow with my parents even), but I caught up with other films, such as Sleeper, on t.v., so the roles are for me inseparable. However, I have a memory of the pieces from those three books (the others being, without checking, Without Feathers and Getting Even) working better and more consistently than these. But that was a while ago, and maybe, as Paul conceitedy tells Gil in the film, that is just what he thinks himself clever enough to call 'Golden Age thinking'.
Be that as it may. The pieces in Mere Anarchy have, I think (but maybe not in all cases), been collected after appearing in such places as The New Yorker (not taking it, I cannot guess how often Allen contributes, how the choice of pieces that were first published there was made, and whether better ones were overlooked in the process). He may also have continued to write plays and for t.v., but that sort of writing is clearly closer to scripting film dialogue than short humorous pieces.
With the one that I have last read, curiously titled (I see) 'Calisthenics, Poison Ivy, Final Cut', the humour arises from the cut and thrust of imagined speech, since it is a vituperative exchange by letter between the owner of 'a film camp' (called Camp Melanoma) and the father of the boy who, attending there, wrote and filmed a nameless blockbuster - the subject being who is entitled to claim the credit and a share in the multi-million-dollar distribution rights. Compared to this, the earlier pieces seem flat, thin on laughs, and almost one dimensional, so not, for me, the sort of things to bring out proudly in a book. But I haven't read the whole book, and more than half is left, so the balance of pieces that succeed with me may change...
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