More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
18 January
Take this:
For most of his childhood he was a loner, undoubtedly suffering from an inferiority complex. Consistently depressed and fearful of death, Allen learned to overcome his neuroses with comedy. His perception of his childhood and his inadequacies is now central to his humor. "I was in analysis for years because of a traumatic childhood. I was breast fed through falsies," is just one example.
And this:
Nettie and Martin Konigsberg naturally didn't understand the prodigy they had brought forth [elsewhere described as 'semi-literate'], and were very hurt by his college performance. "My mother was a sensitive woman. When I was thrown out of college she locked herself in the bathroom and took an overdose of Mah-Jongg tiles."
And this in a biography of not Allen, but Diane Keaton!
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Tuesday, 17 January 2012
Monday, 16 January 2012
The Man Who Mistook his Novel for a Cookery-Book
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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17 January
More interesting, though, is the one who made the opposite mistake, and wondered why it was so violent (all that dicing and slicing), intent on carrying out on its citizens all sorts of ritual passages through fire and heat, and always emphasizing that they must have qualities of rawness and freshness.
Better things were hoped for from the closing chapters, but still chopping was going on, accompanied by fairly regular beatings, and the whole sorry business seemed intent on leaving nothing unchanged apart from the occasional victor in the form of 'garnish'.
He'd heard about garnishee proceedings - perhaps a nice, juicy law thriller would be better with these people who seemed more content with being what they were...
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17 January
More interesting, though, is the one who made the opposite mistake, and wondered why it was so violent (all that dicing and slicing), intent on carrying out on its citizens all sorts of ritual passages through fire and heat, and always emphasizing that they must have qualities of rawness and freshness.
Better things were hoped for from the closing chapters, but still chopping was going on, accompanied by fairly regular beatings, and the whole sorry business seemed intent on leaving nothing unchanged apart from the occasional victor in the form of 'garnish'.
He'd heard about garnishee proceedings - perhaps a nice, juicy law thriller would be better with these people who seemed more content with being what they were...
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Russell Hoban topped up my anti-freeze last night
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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17 February
Other people will tell you things like this, which, I agree, you may find unlikely:
Samuel Beckettt cleaned and polished my windscreen two days ago
However, what I have gathered through a mate of mine in the trade (he owns GY Motors) is that those who, on our view of things, appear to have died during their literary career (such as Russ Hoban last year) have instead really just no longer found themselves drawn as they always were to everything about writing.
Yes, they may still be found, over coffee, reading a column or two in The London Review of Books, but what energizes them now is no longer producing and spreading their writing. We have misinterpreted as their death the greater pleasure that they take in doing, as a favour for someone else, that little thing that keeps being forgotten about:
The one that niggles every time the driver is about to get into the car, and, again, there isn't time to do it and be in Northampton on time
That recurrence of need is what these working on our cars seek to remedy - that needless feeling of being screwed up that the wiper-blades still haven't been cleaned, or the washer-bottle filled.
My contact tells me that he can't be any more specific than that, but that this pattern is what he has gathered from Tweets that he has seen.
He doesn't know whether it's just novelists (and, as he says, Stevie Smith wrote a novel, so who is a novelist?), but he says that it's clearly just minimal maintenance jobs, so don't expect Thomas Hardy to do your 12,000-mile service, or you'll have a long wait!
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17 February
Other people will tell you things like this, which, I agree, you may find unlikely:
Samuel Beckettt cleaned and polished my windscreen two days ago
However, what I have gathered through a mate of mine in the trade (he owns GY Motors) is that those who, on our view of things, appear to have died during their literary career (such as Russ Hoban last year) have instead really just no longer found themselves drawn as they always were to everything about writing.
Yes, they may still be found, over coffee, reading a column or two in The London Review of Books, but what energizes them now is no longer producing and spreading their writing. We have misinterpreted as their death the greater pleasure that they take in doing, as a favour for someone else, that little thing that keeps being forgotten about:
The one that niggles every time the driver is about to get into the car, and, again, there isn't time to do it and be in Northampton on time
That recurrence of need is what these working on our cars seek to remedy - that needless feeling of being screwed up that the wiper-blades still haven't been cleaned, or the washer-bottle filled.
My contact tells me that he can't be any more specific than that, but that this pattern is what he has gathered from Tweets that he has seen.
He doesn't know whether it's just novelists (and, as he says, Stevie Smith wrote a novel, so who is a novelist?), but he says that it's clearly just minimal maintenance jobs, so don't expect Thomas Hardy to do your 12,000-mile service, or you'll have a long wait!
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Tuesday, 10 January 2012
Amazonspeak
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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10 January
If I query things with Amazon® by e-mail, the reply that I receive is often in quite obscure English, because many of its staff are from (maybe on) the continent.
It has now spread to routine error messages, where I am now trying to understand the astrological significance of the following, and how I am buying and selling in the same breath:
A card provider will often decline an attempt to charge a payment card if the
name, expiry date, or postcode you entered at buy-sell-leo does not exactly
match their information.
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10 January
If I query things with Amazon® by e-mail, the reply that I receive is often in quite obscure English, because many of its staff are from (maybe on) the continent.
It has now spread to routine error messages, where I am now trying to understand the astrological significance of the following, and how I am buying and selling in the same breath:
A card provider will often decline an attempt to charge a payment card if the
name, expiry date, or postcode you entered at buy-sell-leo does not exactly
match their information.
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Monday, 9 January 2012
A special screening of Trainspotting (1996)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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9 January
Well, Ewan McGregor amply demonstrates that he was lacking in something back then, and Robert Carlyle's performance was given largely by his ludicrous moustache. Yet, apart from the fact that the film dragged and went around in circles, it was fine.
The science talk about the biochemistry and physiology of addiction was a bit too much for one who had not long taken pain-killers, but the after-film discussion with the speaker was fun, and everyone had the chance to have their say.
Their next one in the series is MS and Hilary and Jackie, which seems a bit tenuous, when that is not only not remotely what the film is about, but does not even feature except as the background to the drama between the sisters, but still...
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9 January
Well, Ewan McGregor amply demonstrates that he was lacking in something back then, and Robert Carlyle's performance was given largely by his ludicrous moustache. Yet, apart from the fact that the film dragged and went around in circles, it was fine.
The science talk about the biochemistry and physiology of addiction was a bit too much for one who had not long taken pain-killers, but the after-film discussion with the speaker was fun, and everyone had the chance to have their say.
Their next one in the series is MS and Hilary and Jackie, which seems a bit tenuous, when that is not only not remotely what the film is about, but does not even feature except as the background to the drama between the sisters, but still...
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Antony Worrall Thompson masterminded attacks on my bird-feeder by marauding squirrels
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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9 January
The arrangement was that they’d split the proceeds 50:50, but you can never trust a squirrel to honour a deal when it’s influenced by nuts as trophies.
Seriously, I have no (operational – i.e. stocked and suitably hanging) bird-feeder, and I cannot claim that I have ever seen even one squirrel in my garden (apart, probably, from a plastic one, which my ex-wife thought pleasantly decorative: its fate is unknown to me, but not a source of sorrow).
Back to the story, what a back-handed compliment for the brand of shop (which I sha’n’t name – they don’t need the publicity) from which the items were taken: the endorsement that a top chef (at least, I take it that he is one) thinks their (if it was) cheese and wine worth running that risk for*!
Could this just be the beginning of the concept of celebrity approval by theft? Will tagged packets of condoms next be taken by your favourite man (or woman), and the name D---- or M---- just happens to get mentioned in the report?:
I always steal T----- condoms – why wait to pay when I can get it on and use them?
Of course, the whole idea might then backfire, if the public dared to copy its prize stars, and those rather ineffectual bleepers at the entrance to shops would be getting worn out. How would the line of defence go? Maybe, I only did it because she’s worth it.
* Or should this apology, reported on the Channel 4 News web-site, actually be read as showing that AWT admitted an error of judgement in his choice of products?:
The celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson apologises for repeatedly shoplifting cheese and wine from a branch of T[----], and says he will "seek treatment".
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9 January
The arrangement was that they’d split the proceeds 50:50, but you can never trust a squirrel to honour a deal when it’s influenced by nuts as trophies.
Seriously, I have no (operational – i.e. stocked and suitably hanging) bird-feeder, and I cannot claim that I have ever seen even one squirrel in my garden (apart, probably, from a plastic one, which my ex-wife thought pleasantly decorative: its fate is unknown to me, but not a source of sorrow).
Back to the story, what a back-handed compliment for the brand of shop (which I sha’n’t name – they don’t need the publicity) from which the items were taken: the endorsement that a top chef (at least, I take it that he is one) thinks their (if it was) cheese and wine worth running that risk for*!
Could this just be the beginning of the concept of celebrity approval by theft? Will tagged packets of condoms next be taken by your favourite man (or woman), and the name D---- or M---- just happens to get mentioned in the report?:
I always steal T----- condoms – why wait to pay when I can get it on and use them?
Of course, the whole idea might then backfire, if the public dared to copy its prize stars, and those rather ineffectual bleepers at the entrance to shops would be getting worn out. How would the line of defence go? Maybe, I only did it because she’s worth it.
* Or should this apology, reported on the Channel 4 News web-site, actually be read as showing that AWT admitted an error of judgement in his choice of products?:
The celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson apologises for repeatedly shoplifting cheese and wine from a branch of T[----], and says he will "seek treatment".
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50 years since Poulenc stubbed his toe in Montmartre
50 years since Poulenc stubbed his toe in Montmartre
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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50 years since Poulenc stubbed his toe in Montmartre
9 January
Do not misunderstand me - I have loved, even if I can never remember how to pronounce his surname, Poulenc's chamber works for a long time.
But to-day, a matter of weeks since it was played before on Radio 3, I have just heard again his Sextet for Piano and Wind, so some dubious anniversary must be afoot:
However, why not hear his glorious music more often just as a matter of course, as with that of Prokofiev (a proposition with which Susan Milan, who had just played his sonata for flute and piano at a recital, fully agreed and with the notion that he is underplayed in the repertoire)?
We really don't need these lame excuses such as its being 100 years since Groves pronounced somebody's music 'an abomination' to revisit them.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Treatment for Worrall Thompson
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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9 January
I have just heard reported, on Radio 3 news, the item that has been besieging me on various sign-in pages. It was then being reported as an allegation that Antony Worrall Thompson had been caught shoplifting, perhaps cheese and wine.
According to the news bulletin, he has now received a caution, and has described his behaviour as 'irresponsible'*, saying 'I need treatment' for it.
I wonder what treatment he has in mind... For sure, forgoing that illicit cheese-and-wine party, but perhaps having to eat Quorn® twice per week.
In any case, Worrall Thompson's reported way of referring to himself and what he had done might make one wonder if he was meaning to suggest that this had happened before, if there is a behaviour that needs treatment**.
Doubtless, more will unfold on yet another celebrity story - a rather different penalty, in terms of both criminal sanction and disapproval, from when Winona Ryder was caught, it has to be said.
* There was another adjective, but somehow it didn't stick.
** Well, according to the Channel 4 News web-site:
The celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson apologises for repeatedly shoplifting cheese and wine from a branch of T[----], and says he will "seek treatment".
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9 January
I have just heard reported, on Radio 3 news, the item that has been besieging me on various sign-in pages. It was then being reported as an allegation that Antony Worrall Thompson had been caught shoplifting, perhaps cheese and wine.
According to the news bulletin, he has now received a caution, and has described his behaviour as 'irresponsible'*, saying 'I need treatment' for it.
I wonder what treatment he has in mind... For sure, forgoing that illicit cheese-and-wine party, but perhaps having to eat Quorn® twice per week.
In any case, Worrall Thompson's reported way of referring to himself and what he had done might make one wonder if he was meaning to suggest that this had happened before, if there is a behaviour that needs treatment**.
Doubtless, more will unfold on yet another celebrity story - a rather different penalty, in terms of both criminal sanction and disapproval, from when Winona Ryder was caught, it has to be said.
* There was another adjective, but somehow it didn't stick.
** Well, according to the Channel 4 News web-site:
The celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson apologises for repeatedly shoplifting cheese and wine from a branch of T[----], and says he will "seek treatment".
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Sunday, 8 January 2012
Anxious thoughts made apparent
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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8 January
There is some quotation from Paradise Lost that would do better than that tag-line, but it doesn't come to me*.
It would not be right to say that I like Erin Hogan's descriptions in her book Spiral Jetta, but only because I do not think that one should relish another's pain.
For what she does is to capture the type of content of anxious thoughts, fears that cannot be reasoned with and so will not be subdued by argument or otherwise abate:
I pulled off into what seemed the largest gap between two scrub bushes and parked the car. There were a lot of little bushes underfoot, and I wondered whether the undercarriage of the car, which had been running all day, might be hot enough to start a fire. I wasn't sure if this could actually happen, but the thought alone made me get back in the car and move it to the barest ground I could find.
Likewise (a continuation of the previous passage, but just giving a pause):
Still worrying, I checked the landscape and realized that, should I see a faint plume of smoke from wherever I happened to be, I would not have time to halt the nascent inferno, and my burned-out Jetta would forever be marked as the car--and I as the dumbass driver--that destroyed Mormon Mesa. My poor car would share the fate of the rusted-out amphibious vehicle and old Dodge truck near Spiral Jetty.
Further (a continuation of the previous passage, but just giving a pause):
The thought was too much to bear, so I moved the car again, took a liter bottle of water and poured it over the ground, then put the car back over the wet spot. What more could I do?
Beautifully written, and - so rare nowadays - perfectly punctuated, what Erin Hogan has written just does justice to the intrusive thoughts, with their very strong force, that can beset an experience and undermine one's (potential) joy in it.
Another quotation (from a page or so on):
Now I faced a new dilemma. Clearly there was someone else out there. But would they be friend or foe? I pictured a bunch of sixteen-year-old guys sitting on their tailgate, listening to ZZ Top, shooting their rifles at empty beer cans scattered atop the mesa. I magined what I would look like sauntering up to them out of nowhere. "Hey guys, how's it going?"
[...] I imagined my broken, violated body baking there on the top of the mesa. Snippets of Deliverance alternated with The Accused in my head. I debated going back to the car. Was that cowardly or prudent? Where, once again, was the line between legitimate concern and paranoia?
Maybe the above, if not an interest in US land art, will encourage finding this book. I should leave the final word to Erin:
Maybe it's the salt that keeps Spiral Jetty honest. The work is now almost entirely white. Salt has latched onto every available surface, blanketing it, making it a croûte en sel. It comes across as pink in all the recent pictures I had seen, and perhaps in a certain light it is. [...] But the color one feels overwhelmingly is white: bone white, bleached white, blinding white.
* On reflection, I think that it is 'darkness visible' (from Book 3 or 4).
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8 January
There is some quotation from Paradise Lost that would do better than that tag-line, but it doesn't come to me*.
It would not be right to say that I like Erin Hogan's descriptions in her book Spiral Jetta, but only because I do not think that one should relish another's pain.
For what she does is to capture the type of content of anxious thoughts, fears that cannot be reasoned with and so will not be subdued by argument or otherwise abate:
I pulled off into what seemed the largest gap between two scrub bushes and parked the car. There were a lot of little bushes underfoot, and I wondered whether the undercarriage of the car, which had been running all day, might be hot enough to start a fire. I wasn't sure if this could actually happen, but the thought alone made me get back in the car and move it to the barest ground I could find.
Likewise (a continuation of the previous passage, but just giving a pause):
Still worrying, I checked the landscape and realized that, should I see a faint plume of smoke from wherever I happened to be, I would not have time to halt the nascent inferno, and my burned-out Jetta would forever be marked as the car--and I as the dumbass driver--that destroyed Mormon Mesa. My poor car would share the fate of the rusted-out amphibious vehicle and old Dodge truck near Spiral Jetty.
Further (a continuation of the previous passage, but just giving a pause):
The thought was too much to bear, so I moved the car again, took a liter bottle of water and poured it over the ground, then put the car back over the wet spot. What more could I do?
Beautifully written, and - so rare nowadays - perfectly punctuated, what Erin Hogan has written just does justice to the intrusive thoughts, with their very strong force, that can beset an experience and undermine one's (potential) joy in it.
Another quotation (from a page or so on):
Now I faced a new dilemma. Clearly there was someone else out there. But would they be friend or foe? I pictured a bunch of sixteen-year-old guys sitting on their tailgate, listening to ZZ Top, shooting their rifles at empty beer cans scattered atop the mesa. I magined what I would look like sauntering up to them out of nowhere. "Hey guys, how's it going?"
[...] I imagined my broken, violated body baking there on the top of the mesa. Snippets of Deliverance alternated with The Accused in my head. I debated going back to the car. Was that cowardly or prudent? Where, once again, was the line between legitimate concern and paranoia?
Maybe the above, if not an interest in US land art, will encourage finding this book. I should leave the final word to Erin:
Maybe it's the salt that keeps Spiral Jetty honest. The work is now almost entirely white. Salt has latched onto every available surface, blanketing it, making it a croûte en sel. It comes across as pink in all the recent pictures I had seen, and perhaps in a certain light it is. [...] But the color one feels overwhelmingly is white: bone white, bleached white, blinding white.
* On reflection, I think that it is 'darkness visible' (from Book 3 or 4).
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Saturday, 7 January 2012
Tirza: an epilogue
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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9 January
At the time of the Festival, I established that the book from which this book was made, with the participation of its author, into a film was available only in the original Dutch and in a German translation (which, at a pinch, I could have read, but at great cost).
I now see that there is a French translation, which would not put me at any greater advantage, but none in English that I can find, and I wonder what the fate of the film is - if it is not going to get distributed here or in the States, the possibility of an English translation probably depends on it.
Well, I still think that it is a tremendous film, and maybe I shall look for evidence of reviews...*
I have found this, with which I would take issue (and will, given a chance):
http://jasperaalbers.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/the-best-and-the-worst-of-dutch-cinema-%E2%80%93-the-tirza-review/
But, maybe, I'd prefer you to look at (or what preceded it):
http://unofficialcambridgefilmfestival.blogspot.com/2011/10/attempting-to-address-tirza.html
* Contains spoilers *
In the meantime, my knowledge of German allowed me, belatedly and when it had to be returned to the library, to look at the Dutch original, and it may not surprise to know that the ending in the novel appears to differ:
If I didn't miss something, and it isn't a dream, Jörgen does not try to leave, but ends up going back to, Kaisa's dwelling, but makes it to the airport, and, despite her cries of Want company, sir?, boards a flight and labours his way home.
As I say, I was reading the text as someone who speaks German, so I could work out much of what was being said, but I may have missed something in the preceding pages that could indicate that it is Jörgen's fantasy that he makes this journey...
Since then (at the end of February, in fact), Penny, a friend who speaks Dutch, took a look at the closing pages, and found nothing to suggest that there is the intervention of a dream between getting back from Big Mama and leaving Namibia.
End-notes
* Well, I see that it has no reviews at all on the so-called Rotten Tomatoes web-site, and the first one that I found was from one of the Festival's own Take One crew - I obviously didn't submit something myself, or, as others didn't, it didn't appear.
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9 January
At the time of the Festival, I established that the book from which this book was made, with the participation of its author, into a film was available only in the original Dutch and in a German translation (which, at a pinch, I could have read, but at great cost).
I now see that there is a French translation, which would not put me at any greater advantage, but none in English that I can find, and I wonder what the fate of the film is - if it is not going to get distributed here or in the States, the possibility of an English translation probably depends on it.
Well, I still think that it is a tremendous film, and maybe I shall look for evidence of reviews...*
I have found this, with which I would take issue (and will, given a chance):
http://jasperaalbers.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/the-best-and-the-worst-of-dutch-cinema-%E2%80%93-the-tirza-review/
But, maybe, I'd prefer you to look at (or what preceded it):
http://unofficialcambridgefilmfestival.blogspot.com/2011/10/attempting-to-address-tirza.html
* Contains spoilers *
In the meantime, my knowledge of German allowed me, belatedly and when it had to be returned to the library, to look at the Dutch original, and it may not surprise to know that the ending in the novel appears to differ:
If I didn't miss something, and it isn't a dream, Jörgen does not try to leave, but ends up going back to, Kaisa's dwelling, but makes it to the airport, and, despite her cries of Want company, sir?, boards a flight and labours his way home.
As I say, I was reading the text as someone who speaks German, so I could work out much of what was being said, but I may have missed something in the preceding pages that could indicate that it is Jörgen's fantasy that he makes this journey...
Since then (at the end of February, in fact), Penny, a friend who speaks Dutch, took a look at the closing pages, and found nothing to suggest that there is the intervention of a dream between getting back from Big Mama and leaving Namibia.
End-notes
* Well, I see that it has no reviews at all on the so-called Rotten Tomatoes web-site, and the first one that I found was from one of the Festival's own Take One crew - I obviously didn't submit something myself, or, as others didn't, it didn't appear.
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Might I ask what our Sunday trading legislation is for? (1)
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8 January 2012
Does anyone have any idea now what the UK law on Sunday trading protects - and how?
We have a regime, recently changed to allow shops to reopen on the chime of midnight as Sunday ends, where the larger shops (as defined by square footage, principally*) can only open for six hours continuously, starting no earlier than 10.00 a.m. and ending no later than 6.00 p.m.
(I am not aware of any obligation to open for the full six hours, so, if I am right, it would be possibly to be open just from 12.00 till 3.00.**)
Does that protect the workers, if they presumably can be in later than on other days for a start no earlier than 10.00, and give them the possibility of some lie-in? Is that at the heart of the legislation's thrust, though it doesn't protect workers in smaller, local shops (we know that names and brands), who still might have to start at 8.00, if not 6.00 (let alone the 24-hour petrol-stations)?
Or is it to protect the poor consumer / shopper from shopping him- or herself silly every day of the week...?
In any event, the premable of the enabling Act of Parliament (there are bound to be Regulations made under it), the Sunday Trading Act 1994, says (with great economy) relatively little:
An Act to reform the law of England and Wales relating to Sunday trading; to make provision as to the rights of shop workers under the law of England and Wales in relation to Sunday working; and for connected purposes.
Oh, I forgot, there is the protection for workers of being able to opt out (and not be penalized) of working on a Sunday - notices to be served, etc., and changing one's mind***. Which, of course, for someone who wants to devote him- or herself to the family and / or religious observance, is fine and good, but where do those other limitations on opening hours come from and fit in, not least 17 years on from 1994?
End-notes
* Thus: “large shop” means a shop which has a relevant floor area exceeding 280 square metres.
** Actually, that doesn't appear to have been envisaged, and is, at any rate, not possible (and might mean that someone failing to open for the full six hours could be taken to task, bizarre though that seems, for all that I know):
A person who is, or proposes to become, the occupier of a large shop may give notice to the local authority for the area in which the shop is situated—
(a) stating that he proposes to open the shop on Sunday for the serving of retail customers, and
(b) specifying a continuous period of six hours, beginning no earlier than 10 a.m. and ending no later than 6 p.m., as the permitted Sunday opening hours in relation to the shop.
*** Section 4 of the Act is, to say the least of it, terse: 'Schedule 4 to this Act shall have effect'.
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8 January 2012
Does anyone have any idea now what the UK law on Sunday trading protects - and how?
We have a regime, recently changed to allow shops to reopen on the chime of midnight as Sunday ends, where the larger shops (as defined by square footage, principally*) can only open for six hours continuously, starting no earlier than 10.00 a.m. and ending no later than 6.00 p.m.
(I am not aware of any obligation to open for the full six hours, so, if I am right, it would be possibly to be open just from 12.00 till 3.00.**)
Does that protect the workers, if they presumably can be in later than on other days for a start no earlier than 10.00, and give them the possibility of some lie-in? Is that at the heart of the legislation's thrust, though it doesn't protect workers in smaller, local shops (we know that names and brands), who still might have to start at 8.00, if not 6.00 (let alone the 24-hour petrol-stations)?
Or is it to protect the poor consumer / shopper from shopping him- or herself silly every day of the week...?
In any event, the premable of the enabling Act of Parliament (there are bound to be Regulations made under it), the Sunday Trading Act 1994, says (with great economy) relatively little:
An Act to reform the law of England and Wales relating to Sunday trading; to make provision as to the rights of shop workers under the law of England and Wales in relation to Sunday working; and for connected purposes.
Oh, I forgot, there is the protection for workers of being able to opt out (and not be penalized) of working on a Sunday - notices to be served, etc., and changing one's mind***. Which, of course, for someone who wants to devote him- or herself to the family and / or religious observance, is fine and good, but where do those other limitations on opening hours come from and fit in, not least 17 years on from 1994?
End-notes
* Thus: “large shop” means a shop which has a relevant floor area exceeding 280 square metres.
** Actually, that doesn't appear to have been envisaged, and is, at any rate, not possible (and might mean that someone failing to open for the full six hours could be taken to task, bizarre though that seems, for all that I know):
A person who is, or proposes to become, the occupier of a large shop may give notice to the local authority for the area in which the shop is situated—
(a) stating that he proposes to open the shop on Sunday for the serving of retail customers, and
(b) specifying a continuous period of six hours, beginning no earlier than 10 a.m. and ending no later than 6 p.m., as the permitted Sunday opening hours in relation to the shop.
*** Section 4 of the Act is, to say the least of it, terse: 'Schedule 4 to this Act shall have effect'.
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There is another Earth – and, wow, up there with Solaris! (terminal posting)
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8 January
* Contains spoilers *
I must have been quite dim when I saw Another Earth. (We say 'He is bright', 'She's so dim', as if the intensity of a light is all that matters, when, of course - as any photographer or cinematographer will tell you - it has other qualities.) It's just that I was musing to myself why, when Rhoda was wandering around, largely at night, the other Earth that was being talked about on the night that she, by trying to look at it out of the window whilst driving, killed the wife and child of John Burroughs seems so improbably huge - if it appeared that big, it would either have to be enormous (and so not a mirror Earth) or very close, many times nearer than the moon (with which, maybe for technical reasons, it seemed to appear).
The less-dim may have realized the symbolic nature of its size, reflecting - almost in an expressionistic way - the depth of Rhoda's guilt. As I have said, the probable cannot be pressed too far with this film, or it would not have taken scientists four years (the term of Rhoda's prison sentence) to try communicating with the other planet. And, as John Burroughs asks, when he is arguing against not escaping from Plato's cave and knowing the truth, would its inhabitants be calling it Earth 2, as those on his were.
His initially unselfish response to learning that Rhoda has won the prize of a trip to Earth 2 is not what we expect, and, when he comes to appreciate that he doesn't want her to go, we have not expected her to tell him the truth about why she came there. (We know that she is a bright girl, who had a place to go to MIT before her foolish act (and which of us has not done foolish things in a car and got away with it?), and her quick-wittedness came out in thinking of the explanation that she had called to offer a free trial of a cleaning service, faced by the awfulness of telling John the truth - and then in claiming to come from Maid in Haven, which, of course, sounds almost like something else, the thing that maybe John comes to believe her to be.)
The final unselfish act - again, a complete surprise to me - was giving John her flight-ticket, and again I was being slow. (I've talked about Rhoda's quick-wittedness - what makes us turn extremes of a spectrum into pejorative terms?) I knew that she had given him a family photograph, and that she had told him that the latest theory was that Earth 2 became visible when its synchronicity with this planet broke, but I did not know then that the flight-ticket was also being given, or why John, with the views expressed before (which may have been an intellectual cover, of course, for his real feelings), would have wanted it.
I came to understand, as I meditated on the apparent hugeness of Earth 2, that, if the theory were right, then it might be that, on that otherwise hitherto identical planet, the accident hadn't happened, and John could see his family again (whatever the other John Burroughs might think).
Whether others 'got all of that' as the film played out, I don't know, but it has in no way spoilt it for me to have been reflecting on what I could not follow...
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8 January
* Contains spoilers *
I must have been quite dim when I saw Another Earth. (We say 'He is bright', 'She's so dim', as if the intensity of a light is all that matters, when, of course - as any photographer or cinematographer will tell you - it has other qualities.) It's just that I was musing to myself why, when Rhoda was wandering around, largely at night, the other Earth that was being talked about on the night that she, by trying to look at it out of the window whilst driving, killed the wife and child of John Burroughs seems so improbably huge - if it appeared that big, it would either have to be enormous (and so not a mirror Earth) or very close, many times nearer than the moon (with which, maybe for technical reasons, it seemed to appear).
The less-dim may have realized the symbolic nature of its size, reflecting - almost in an expressionistic way - the depth of Rhoda's guilt. As I have said, the probable cannot be pressed too far with this film, or it would not have taken scientists four years (the term of Rhoda's prison sentence) to try communicating with the other planet. And, as John Burroughs asks, when he is arguing against not escaping from Plato's cave and knowing the truth, would its inhabitants be calling it Earth 2, as those on his were.
His initially unselfish response to learning that Rhoda has won the prize of a trip to Earth 2 is not what we expect, and, when he comes to appreciate that he doesn't want her to go, we have not expected her to tell him the truth about why she came there. (We know that she is a bright girl, who had a place to go to MIT before her foolish act (and which of us has not done foolish things in a car and got away with it?), and her quick-wittedness came out in thinking of the explanation that she had called to offer a free trial of a cleaning service, faced by the awfulness of telling John the truth - and then in claiming to come from Maid in Haven, which, of course, sounds almost like something else, the thing that maybe John comes to believe her to be.)
The final unselfish act - again, a complete surprise to me - was giving John her flight-ticket, and again I was being slow. (I've talked about Rhoda's quick-wittedness - what makes us turn extremes of a spectrum into pejorative terms?) I knew that she had given him a family photograph, and that she had told him that the latest theory was that Earth 2 became visible when its synchronicity with this planet broke, but I did not know then that the flight-ticket was also being given, or why John, with the views expressed before (which may have been an intellectual cover, of course, for his real feelings), would have wanted it.
I came to understand, as I meditated on the apparent hugeness of Earth 2, that, if the theory were right, then it might be that, on that otherwise hitherto identical planet, the accident hadn't happened, and John could see his family again (whatever the other John Burroughs might think).
Whether others 'got all of that' as the film played out, I don't know, but it has in no way spoilt it for me to have been reflecting on what I could not follow...
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Page layout and baking
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7 January
No, not a view of the night sky, with supernovae, galaxies and complete with meteors, but an arrangement of twelve prawn bites, creatures that sacrificed their lives to be put in the oven for my delight (as it turned out, this purchase of discounted party food was inspired) - I was interested enough in the challenges presented in setting them out, if one didn't adopt the mundane approach of rows of each one, to record the result.
And then we have this, to-night's effort with the same task (no, the previous ones did get cooked and eaten, not just put back in the fridge to be humiliated again by more facile designs made using them):
From which one takes what? Well, someone might like to compare them, and perhaps even psychoanalyse me on the basis of the significance of the similarities (or differences) in carrying out the same exercise more than once.
For me, I take the grandiose line, and return to the night sky, with an analogy to mandalas, those Buddhist sand-paintings that first so intrigued me when I read about then...
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7 January
No, not a view of the night sky, with supernovae, galaxies and complete with meteors, but an arrangement of twelve prawn bites, creatures that sacrificed their lives to be put in the oven for my delight (as it turned out, this purchase of discounted party food was inspired) - I was interested enough in the challenges presented in setting them out, if one didn't adopt the mundane approach of rows of each one, to record the result.
And then we have this, to-night's effort with the same task (no, the previous ones did get cooked and eaten, not just put back in the fridge to be humiliated again by more facile designs made using them):
From which one takes what? Well, someone might like to compare them, and perhaps even psychoanalyse me on the basis of the significance of the similarities (or differences) in carrying out the same exercise more than once.
For me, I take the grandiose line, and return to the night sky, with an analogy to mandalas, those Buddhist sand-paintings that first so intrigued me when I read about then...
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Friday, 6 January 2012
Crypt in Canterbury
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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6 January
I quote from the Hoban 2005 web-site. Can anyone else spot the relational error?:
After viewing the painting, a service began in the main part of the cathedral, so the group was led downstairs to the crypt, where no photography is allowed.
A clue. It resembles the one in these lines from a song by Chris de Burgh:
Rolling through the countryside,
Tears were in my eyes.
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6 January
I quote from the Hoban 2005 web-site. Can anyone else spot the relational error?:
After viewing the painting, a service began in the main part of the cathedral, so the group was led downstairs to the crypt, where no photography is allowed.
A clue. It resembles the one in these lines from a song by Chris de Burgh:
Rolling through the countryside,
Tears were in my eyes.
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Vented ill-feeling and the Vento case
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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6 January
Whilst looking for related case-law to that of Vento v. Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police [2002] EWCA Civ 1871*, I came across another that, though not relevant to what I wanted to know, is nonetheless intriguing, probably in a salacious way, for the allegations made in it.
I wasn't there, so I only know what the judge said (and judges tend to be a little staid, even if they do not sit in the High Court or higher courts), but here is an indication of what looking at the case, Mitton and others v. Benefield and another [2011] EWHC 2098 (QB), reveals (amongst other things - see for yourself):
* I consider it clear that he [Mr Wilding-Mitton] has become or allowed himself to become obsessed with his neighbours and prepared to identify as sinister the most ordinary of suburban activities.
* Mr Wilding-Mitton maintained in his evidence that he has consulted experts on both sides of the Atlantic to enable him to tell me that from the outset of their relationship Mr and Mrs Benefield, who should be classified as psychopaths, had a planned campaign to destroy Mr Wilding-Mitton and his family. He said that he thought the matter, which he described as the hounding of an innocent person, to be of national importance. He said that they, by which I understood him to mean his family, were trying to defend themselves in an impossible situation.
* He said that Mr Benefield was a platinum smirker who had a moronic stare. A consequence was, according to Mr Wilding-Mitton, that his daughter, who in the witness box appeared an amiable teenager, had been subject to psychological rape or molestation. Nothing she said in her evidence came remotely close to that kind of categorisation. He maintained that Mr Benefield was a psychopathic narcissist and that Mrs Benefield had a psychotic disorder.
Read on, if you dare, at www.bailii.org ...
* A general Internet search, based on the name 'Vento' and trying to find a synopsis of what it established concerning awards for injury to feelings in discrimination cases, proved null, so I consulted a specialist legal database, www.bailii.org, not to be mistaken for what superficially pretends to be it at www.bailii.org.uk.
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6 January
Whilst looking for related case-law to that of Vento v. Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police [2002] EWCA Civ 1871*, I came across another that, though not relevant to what I wanted to know, is nonetheless intriguing, probably in a salacious way, for the allegations made in it.
I wasn't there, so I only know what the judge said (and judges tend to be a little staid, even if they do not sit in the High Court or higher courts), but here is an indication of what looking at the case, Mitton and others v. Benefield and another [2011] EWHC 2098 (QB), reveals (amongst other things - see for yourself):
* I consider it clear that he [Mr Wilding-Mitton] has become or allowed himself to become obsessed with his neighbours and prepared to identify as sinister the most ordinary of suburban activities.
* Mr Wilding-Mitton maintained in his evidence that he has consulted experts on both sides of the Atlantic to enable him to tell me that from the outset of their relationship Mr and Mrs Benefield, who should be classified as psychopaths, had a planned campaign to destroy Mr Wilding-Mitton and his family. He said that he thought the matter, which he described as the hounding of an innocent person, to be of national importance. He said that they, by which I understood him to mean his family, were trying to defend themselves in an impossible situation.
* He said that Mr Benefield was a platinum smirker who had a moronic stare. A consequence was, according to Mr Wilding-Mitton, that his daughter, who in the witness box appeared an amiable teenager, had been subject to psychological rape or molestation. Nothing she said in her evidence came remotely close to that kind of categorisation. He maintained that Mr Benefield was a psychopathic narcissist and that Mrs Benefield had a psychotic disorder.
Read on, if you dare, at www.bailii.org ...
* A general Internet search, based on the name 'Vento' and trying to find a synopsis of what it established concerning awards for injury to feelings in discrimination cases, proved null, so I consulted a specialist legal database, www.bailii.org, not to be mistaken for what superficially pretends to be it at www.bailii.org.uk.
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Thursday, 5 January 2012
The real Diva
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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6 January
In the film Diva (1980), it may be possible to argue that there is more than one diva, and that Paris itself is the other.
Leaving that aside, we have Cynthia Hawkins, a black American soprano (played by Wilhemenia [sometimes with a Wiggins] Fernandez), who seems to be living in Paris, but - although full marks for effort - whose French must have been a strain on the ears of the first audience: if that isn't just put on, why this choice of character, not necessarily actress, for the role?
Well, she does have a childlike trust and belief, and that quality is both important to the film and comes across very clearly, and it is probably quite relevant that she is the glamorous star from another country, albeit doing her best with her French. (It's said that Jessye Norman was in mind when the part was created (not to play it), although I do not know in what way.)
Her feeling about herself, about not wanting to be recorded or held to ransom because of a recording, is the thing that comes to the fore: with Jules, she is amazingly open and also forgiving, since he not only takes her dress, but the recording that helps create the film's kerfuffle, and he is not always the most direct about what he is doing.
So that, that quality, is what I guess makes Cynthia singing from La Wally, which she does splendidly, the diva in Diva: her naive belief, and following her instincts.
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6 January
In the film Diva (1980), it may be possible to argue that there is more than one diva, and that Paris itself is the other.
Leaving that aside, we have Cynthia Hawkins, a black American soprano (played by Wilhemenia [sometimes with a Wiggins] Fernandez), who seems to be living in Paris, but - although full marks for effort - whose French must have been a strain on the ears of the first audience: if that isn't just put on, why this choice of character, not necessarily actress, for the role?
Well, she does have a childlike trust and belief, and that quality is both important to the film and comes across very clearly, and it is probably quite relevant that she is the glamorous star from another country, albeit doing her best with her French. (It's said that Jessye Norman was in mind when the part was created (not to play it), although I do not know in what way.)
Her feeling about herself, about not wanting to be recorded or held to ransom because of a recording, is the thing that comes to the fore: with Jules, she is amazingly open and also forgiving, since he not only takes her dress, but the recording that helps create the film's kerfuffle, and he is not always the most direct about what he is doing.
So that, that quality, is what I guess makes Cynthia singing from La Wally, which she does splendidly, the diva in Diva: her naive belief, and following her instincts.
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Early Woody and Mere Anarchy (3)
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6 January
I am beginning to realize that the theme of Fool's Gold seems to link almost everything in this collection:
* A man offered levitation and special powers by crooks
* An actor who doesn't know his own status, duped into taking a poor part in a film
* The 2.6-pound white truffle that everyone wants is a fake
* The director who so believes his yes-men that he tries to film the LA phone-book
* The unwise purchaser of a property and hirer of the men to work on it
* The songwriter in analysis who is supposed to be the next Irving Berlin and pays his therapist with songs
* What to the witless might sound like a brilliant idea for working up the interrelated lives of Gustav and Alma Mahler into a musical drama
Those are just the ones whose themes I can recall, and only the one about the father whose son goes to 'film camp' and has the proprietor of the camp and him raging back and forth in correspondence breaks the pattern - even there, though, the $16m distribution rights seem fine until someone else is interested in a share...
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6 January
I am beginning to realize that the theme of Fool's Gold seems to link almost everything in this collection:
* A man offered levitation and special powers by crooks
* An actor who doesn't know his own status, duped into taking a poor part in a film
* The 2.6-pound white truffle that everyone wants is a fake
* The director who so believes his yes-men that he tries to film the LA phone-book
* The unwise purchaser of a property and hirer of the men to work on it
* The songwriter in analysis who is supposed to be the next Irving Berlin and pays his therapist with songs
* What to the witless might sound like a brilliant idea for working up the interrelated lives of Gustav and Alma Mahler into a musical drama
Those are just the ones whose themes I can recall, and only the one about the father whose son goes to 'film camp' and has the proprietor of the camp and him raging back and forth in correspondence breaks the pattern - even there, though, the $16m distribution rights seem fine until someone else is interested in a share...
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Early Woody and Mere Anarchy (2)
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5 January
I had wrongly thought that something appearing in The New Yorker might be a mark of quality.
However, the credits tell me which have previously been published there, and they are not the best: one is just demonstrating how to set out a screenplay (which Allen, of course, can do), but with few laughs; another, a ludicrous idea for a show, which, if the narrator had employed the little sense that he had, he would never have bought an expensive lunch to hear about; a third, a tiring story, loosely tied in with Dante's Inferno, about a very ill-advised choice of building and builder.
Doesn't exactly inspire one to read on (although, for completeness and despite what often seems to me to be lazy writing, I will), and the quality of the presentation of the text leaves a lot to be desires - I know that people no longer know what orphans and widows are, so cannot care about them, but for the last line of a page to end like this shocks me:
; fi-
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5 January
I had wrongly thought that something appearing in The New Yorker might be a mark of quality.
However, the credits tell me which have previously been published there, and they are not the best: one is just demonstrating how to set out a screenplay (which Allen, of course, can do), but with few laughs; another, a ludicrous idea for a show, which, if the narrator had employed the little sense that he had, he would never have bought an expensive lunch to hear about; a third, a tiring story, loosely tied in with Dante's Inferno, about a very ill-advised choice of building and builder.
Doesn't exactly inspire one to read on (although, for completeness and despite what often seems to me to be lazy writing, I will), and the quality of the presentation of the text leaves a lot to be desires - I know that people no longer know what orphans and widows are, so cannot care about them, but for the last line of a page to end like this shocks me:
; fi-
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Thursday, 29 December 2011
180 years since Charles Dickens sneezed publicly in Cardiff - to great acclaim
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30 December
No, it's the 200th anniversary of birth or death*, as usual, and, since we never know which, we don't know what we are celebrating (and, to me, it seems inapt to celebrate the years since someone's death).
That said, if claims are to be made for Dickens, let them establish something that he would have thought worthwhile. And yet, on The Verb a few weeks back, Kevin Jackson told us that Dickens had innovated with the names of his characters, and with the supposed advantage over the big Russian novel (where, of course, we are willingly familiar with the tripartite system of naming, and cannot confess not even to trying!) that one could easily keep track of someone in, say, Bleak House because of the choice of name:
Well, as much as a name that I recognize in Dostoyevsky may recur and I recognize it by its shape, so names in that Dickens novel will be more easily identifiable and probably memorable, but it is a far cry from asserting that, on that account, I know what function that person performs in the novel. No, as with the less major characters in any novel, one sometimes has to look back to see who they are, and there the Russian novel anticipates the need with a Dramatis personæ.
Memorable names (and whether they are memorable just because quirky remains a separate, and unexamined issue - who can forget Tom Jones?) in a longer work do not, I believe, necessarily guide me as to who that person is in relation to everyone else, not least when (again in Bleak House) Dickens deliberately rattles on about the presumed oil-wells of the Reverend Chadband's countenance, or the perpetual need for a cushion to be readjusted, in such a way as to sabotage the progress of his own novel and distract our concentration.
Although, in Wemmick, for example, Dickens chose a very fitting name for its bearer, it is because I see him linked to his castle that I remember him for who he is, not because of the name per se.
At any rate, in a fanciful desire to laud Dickens for this above all else, the contributor to the programme dismissed, as their novels not containing comparably witty or descriptive names, both Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) and Henry Fielding (1707-1754). This, without giving a single example, whereas the eponymous heroes alone of the former's Ferdinand Count Fathom and Roderick Random make demands on our attention. As for Fielding, Mrs Tow-wouse in Joseph Andrews is foremost in my memory, but the novel's pages are peppered with Tom Suckbribe, Jenny Bouncer, Sir Thomas Booby, Mrs Slipslop, Peter Pounce, etc.
If Dickens excels, without the endeavours of other writers at least a century before Dickens even being considered, such as Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), but only Shakespeare (who was only credited with Aguecheek and Belch, because he allegedly took all of his names from his sources), then so be it, but why give Dickens a crown that he doesn't exclusively deserve, and which does not even typify the best things about him?
(In fact, anyone who has heard of William's contemporary Ben Jonson, or who ever took a look at The Alchemist, would find it hard to understand what the fuss about names in Dickens is...)
Since posting the above, and in looking vainly for somewhere on Radio 3's web-site to leave a comment, I've now found the following work, a slim volume published in 1917 by Elizabeth Hope Gordon:
The Naming of Characters in the Works of Charles Dickens
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30 December
No, it's the 200th anniversary of birth or death*, as usual, and, since we never know which, we don't know what we are celebrating (and, to me, it seems inapt to celebrate the years since someone's death).
That said, if claims are to be made for Dickens, let them establish something that he would have thought worthwhile. And yet, on The Verb a few weeks back, Kevin Jackson told us that Dickens had innovated with the names of his characters, and with the supposed advantage over the big Russian novel (where, of course, we are willingly familiar with the tripartite system of naming, and cannot confess not even to trying!) that one could easily keep track of someone in, say, Bleak House because of the choice of name:
Well, as much as a name that I recognize in Dostoyevsky may recur and I recognize it by its shape, so names in that Dickens novel will be more easily identifiable and probably memorable, but it is a far cry from asserting that, on that account, I know what function that person performs in the novel. No, as with the less major characters in any novel, one sometimes has to look back to see who they are, and there the Russian novel anticipates the need with a Dramatis personæ.
Memorable names (and whether they are memorable just because quirky remains a separate, and unexamined issue - who can forget Tom Jones?) in a longer work do not, I believe, necessarily guide me as to who that person is in relation to everyone else, not least when (again in Bleak House) Dickens deliberately rattles on about the presumed oil-wells of the Reverend Chadband's countenance, or the perpetual need for a cushion to be readjusted, in such a way as to sabotage the progress of his own novel and distract our concentration.
Although, in
At any rate, in a fanciful desire to laud Dickens for this above all else, the contributor to the programme dismissed, as their
If Dickens excels, without the endeavours of other writers at least a century before Dickens even being considered, such as Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), but only Shakespeare (who was only credited with Aguecheek and Belch, because he allegedly took all of his names from his sources), then so be it, but why give Dickens a crown that he doesn't exclusively deserve, and which does not even typify the best things about him?
(In fact, anyone who has heard of William's contemporary Ben Jonson, or who ever took a look at The Alchemist, would find it hard to understand what the fuss about names in Dickens is...)
Since posting the above, and in looking vainly for somewhere on Radio 3's web-site to leave a comment, I've now found the following work, a slim volume published in 1917 by Elizabeth Hope Gordon:
The Naming of Characters in the Works of Charles Dickens
Wednesday, 28 December 2011
Food cats
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28 December
Yes, you'll be thinking as I do, all cats are 'food cats':
Food cats would naturally choose - yes, what would food cats choose?
Well, apparently it is revolutionary thinking to 'believe that cats know what they like when it comes to food', so maybe the makers of this food don't have a cat, and someone who does had to tell them.
Then they seem to want to know what I think of their food. OK, we know that some people stocking up with tins of dog-food are buying a cheap meal for themselves, but what is this all about?:
Why not try one of our other W***** varieties?
or
Have you tried W****** DRY?
The text below seeks to exonerate these questions, by stating that their meals contain 'succulent pieces of meat and fish to vary your cat's diet', but I'm sure that they think that I must have just a little taste before I serve it...
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28 December
Yes, you'll be thinking as I do, all cats are 'food cats':
Food cats would naturally choose - yes, what would food cats choose?
Well, apparently it is revolutionary thinking to 'believe that cats know what they like when it comes to food', so maybe the makers of this food don't have a cat, and someone who does had to tell them.
Then they seem to want to know what I think of their food. OK, we know that some people stocking up with tins of dog-food are buying a cheap meal for themselves, but what is this all about?:
Why not try one of our other W***** varieties?
or
Have you tried W****** DRY?
The text below seeks to exonerate these questions, by stating that their meals contain 'succulent pieces of meat and fish to vary your cat's diet', but I'm sure that they think that I must have just a little taste before I serve it...
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