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19 February
We know how they* like 'to tidy up' history, to make it History, but one can still act the role of detective and uncover some uncomfortable truths:
Jean Sibelius
Met Vesalius
For a piece of cake
After one slice
It is no surprise
Another they did take
These shocking lines tell us all! The late-twentieth century liked to believe that it had invented the concept of the dessert party (call it what you will, the name doesn't really matter), but one only has to think what Roman orgies were really about - tackling a mountain of cream cakes - to realize the error.
For some reason (if you've ever been to that country, you'll probably know why), the Finnish authorities thought it more acceptable to represent what happened to the composer as 'a drink problem' (I have no problem with drink: I just say Yes, please!).
It's not hard to guess why - unlike liking cakes (and puddings), hard drinking is a manly state of affairs, and one only has to think of Hemingway to recognize the force in that archetype**, plus Finland's (often unwilling) ties with the lands of the Russian peoples and the type of and attitude towards drinking there.
End-notes
* Thought to be meaning something with a referent such as Orwell's 'thought police'.
** Even if, rather worryingly, what he had a leaning towards in his sessions at Harry's Bar, is essentially, a cocktail, albeit a powerful one.
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Sunday, 19 February 2012
Bowed Eric, beautifully
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11 March
Anne Thrack's in town agin!
M'mate George says she's a stubborn mule.
Mare, more like!
Yes, La Mer, if you like - prefer the damn' Sea Pictures missel'.
What's the right waiter work this damn' thin'?
Wassup?
This thing on't wall that sells you a few Minstrels.
Dunno, but nothing to the instruction on the wall of the condom-machine:
TURN KNOB BRISKLY TO RIGHT THEN TURN TO LEFT
Seen some confused guys with their tackle out, I kin tell ya!
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11 March
Anne Thrack's in town agin!
M'mate George says she's a stubborn mule.
Mare, more like!
Yes, La Mer, if you like - prefer the damn' Sea Pictures missel'.
What's the right waiter work this damn' thin'?
Wassup?
This thing on't wall that sells you a few Minstrels.
Dunno, but nothing to the instruction on the wall of the condom-machine:
TURN KNOB BRISKLY TO RIGHT THEN TURN TO LEFT
Seen some confused guys with their tackle out, I kin tell ya!
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Saturday, 18 February 2012
How's this for a contention?
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18 February
Messaging isn't talking:
I've known one friend, with whom I regularly swap text-messages, for 15 years, but we still sometimes misunderstand each other.
So I believe that you can't really talk to someone by e-mail or anything like it, if you don't know the person.
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18 February
Messaging isn't talking:
I've known one friend, with whom I regularly swap text-messages, for 15 years, but we still sometimes misunderstand each other.
So I believe that you can't really talk to someone by e-mail or anything like it, if you don't know the person.
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What do we need 'for free' for?
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18 February
Why would I prefer something free, rather than for free?
Some examples:
(a) Free fudge here - call in for a sample!
(b) Law For Free
(c) Free Nelson Mandela!
(d) Did you get a ticket for free at the train station?
(e) Click here to try our quiz free
(f) In a quiz-free world, you could talk to your mate over a quiet pint
(g) Claim your free prize from The Agent Apsley
(h) Click here to try our free quiz
(i) Fudge for free here - call in for a sample!
(j) Book your holiday with us - children travel free!
(k) Claim your prize for free from The Agent Apsley
(l) Did you get a free ticket at the station?
(m) The best things in life are for free
I shall freely leave those examples simmering, and return when they're cooked...
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18 February
Why would I prefer something free, rather than for free?
Some examples:
(a) Free fudge here - call in for a sample!
(b) Law For Free
(c) Free Nelson Mandela!
(d) Did you get a ticket for free at the train station?
(e) Click here to try our quiz free
(f) In a quiz-free world, you could talk to your mate over a quiet pint
(g) Claim your free prize from The Agent Apsley
(h) Click here to try our free quiz
(i) Fudge for free here - call in for a sample!
(j) Book your holiday with us - children travel free!
(k) Claim your prize for free from The Agent Apsley
(l) Did you get a free ticket at the station?
(m) The best things in life are for free
I shall freely leave those examples simmering, and return when they're cooked...
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Friday, 17 February 2012
Is Kelly Brook really engaged? (asks AOL®)
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17 February
No doubt a sage question - does she just think that she's engaged, when she's not*? Probably the poor woman is wondering over** the legitimacy of her engagement as I write!
(Whereas Kelly B. Rook has no qualms - she's never going to leave 'The Rookery' and take up with some other nook, because she's not the marrying kind.)
Meanwhile, is Cameron (only just) beginning to wonder whether he is actually Prime Minister, or whether - as in that masterpiece of paranoid schizophrenia turned into a comedy, The Truman Show (1998) - everyone's just been humouring him?
PS If our Kelly turns out not to be engaged, I seem to remember that she is really a Parsons - she could always go back to her natal name and aim to marry a Mr Nicholas (Paul Nicholas?), or, if she could put her surname first, a Mr Green (or a Mr Nose - or Egg).
End-notes
* And what would - either party not being eligible to marry apart - constitute such an erroneous belief? Maybe false memory that the offer of marriage and the acceptance took place...
** Well, I might have meant 'worrying over' or 'wondering about', but who cares? - it's a portmanteau day, after all!
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17 February
No doubt a sage question - does she just think that she's engaged, when she's not*? Probably the poor woman is wondering over** the legitimacy of her engagement as I write!
(Whereas Kelly B. Rook has no qualms - she's never going to leave 'The Rookery' and take up with some other nook, because she's not the marrying kind.)
Meanwhile, is Cameron (only just) beginning to wonder whether he is actually Prime Minister, or whether - as in that masterpiece of paranoid schizophrenia turned into a comedy, The Truman Show (1998) - everyone's just been humouring him?
PS If our Kelly turns out not to be engaged, I seem to remember that she is really a Parsons - she could always go back to her natal name and aim to marry a Mr Nicholas (Paul Nicholas?), or, if she could put her surname first, a Mr Green (or a Mr Nose - or Egg).
End-notes
* And what would - either party not being eligible to marry apart - constitute such an erroneous belief? Maybe false memory that the offer of marriage and the acceptance took place...
** Well, I might have meant 'worrying over' or 'wondering about', but who cares? - it's a portmanteau day, after all!
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Present show at The Tavern Gallery, Meldreth : Royston Arts Society
Present show at The Tavern Gallery, Meldreth : Royston Arts Society
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17 February
Present show at The Tavern Gallery, Meldreth : Royston Arts Society
It’s unmistakably someone whom you know – they say that people divided as to whether they supported The Stones or The Beatles, but I think that I just happen to know the former less well, so I would have struggled to find the name of Ronnie Wood, but I knew the connection. (Saying that, it’s alleged that people have trouble naming all of the Fab Four straight off: Can you do it?)
Which is not the sine qua non of a good portrait, that it should resemble the person who sat for it, as Picasso [may have] proved, but this one is a striking likeness, and I think that, as with the divide just mentioned, there might be those who dislike the schematic of the colours and textures employed, whereas others will be very pleased with it.
To judge for yourself, it is one of the most obvious works on entering The Tavern Gallery, and be informed that this show welcomes visitors between 10.00 and 4.00 from Wednesday to Sunday, with its last day on Sunday 26 February.
The rest of what I shall share here, in the form of my attempts at producing images of some of the other sixty-three framed works, is almost inevitably my taste, as why would I choose something that I don’t like – OK, that didn’t stop me with my major dislike of The Future (to which the series of postings The Future or How do you choose a satisfying film? bear testimony) - when I can enthuse over something that I do? Sorry about that, but the breadth of what is on show (and Val Pettifer, to whom I talked about it there yesterday afternoon, tells me that there are probably around another one hundred unframed works) means that I have to start somewhere, so I have selected a few things as representative of the whole.
So why not start with a figurative piece (which, you will see, has sold)? Winter Fox by Rosalind Ridley (which was priced at £110), next to which I have dared to place Beth Hardwicke's Winter Scene after Lu Cheng-Yuan, priced at £95*.
Other than the season, the works, in feel (let alone technique), have nothing in common- which is my point, that there is much to please in the variety of approaches. Moving on, as if promenading through the gallery in Mussorgsky's suite for piano...
... And so on to the landscape in watercolour, juxtaposing The Ouse Washes by Norman Rushton (on sale at £55) with Derek Bunting's West Highlands, which is £38.
And for a finishing-touch, as I really don't want to say any more, or display further inadequate attempts to capture the spirit of these works (which words can only hint at), View through Crumbling Cottage by Caroline Fookes for £75, and which very much puts me in mind of the artistic interests of a painter friend of mine.
End-notes
* I do apologize for the lack of quality in the images that I have made of Beth and Rosalind's images (and of those that follow), but it is down partly to trying to avoid unwelcome reflection, but largely to the inadequacy of the photographic device (a camera on a phone) - the aim is to give an idea of what is on offer to see, not to substitute for going to Meldreth.
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Thursday, 16 February 2012
'Lines here and there' at Writer's Rest
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16 February
There is a posting that could give rise to a quite interesting thread (or whatever it's called) - needless to say, I have made a reply:
http://writersrest.com/2012/02/16/lines-here-and-there/#comment-1141
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16 February
There is a posting that could give rise to a quite interesting thread (or whatever it's called) - needless to say, I have made a reply:
http://writersrest.com/2012/02/16/lines-here-and-there/#comment-1141
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Wednesday, 15 February 2012
Crowds outside Houston's hotel (according to AOL®) (2)
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15 February
There is reputed to be a newspaper called The Sun, and it appears that issues of this newspaper have have borne the headline Whitney's Death Bath.
I cannot comment, and, if the newspaper were to have carried a photograph of a bath, I would not have looked at it - after all, if I want to look at a bath (not my own), I go to the showroom at IKEA® (some such place), as it is inconceivable that I should not know what a bath looks like, or take any satisfaction from seeing what is supposed to be one where any person died, whoever that person may have been.
In other words, Mawkish photography of where Whitney died
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15 February
There is reputed to be a newspaper called The Sun, and it appears that issues of this newspaper have have borne the headline Whitney's Death Bath.
I cannot comment, and, if the newspaper were to have carried a photograph of a bath, I would not have looked at it - after all, if I want to look at a bath (not my own), I go to the showroom at IKEA® (some such place), as it is inconceivable that I should not know what a bath looks like, or take any satisfaction from seeing what is supposed to be one where any person died, whoever that person may have been.
In other words, Mawkish photography of where Whitney died
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Harriet and Hector
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15 February
Perhaps evidence for 'the collective unconscious', perhaps the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment has just been reading my mind (or I its), but Berlioz was on my mind yesterday, when I heard announced on Radio 3 how he had wrought his own libretto for The Trojans, just as he did - as I blogged about last year - with L'enfance du Christ.
He was still on my mind just now, as I indulged one of the themes from the symphony that both threatened his union with Harriet Smithson and, strangely, brought them together. Still loudly humming it, I was moved to search for (the name of) Harriet, and soon found this link to the OAE for last night's concert*:
http://www.oae.co.uk/tag/harriet-smithson/
I have no doubt that it was good, and I wish well all who had the chance to hear it!
End-notes
* My mistake for assuming - there was no concert, but this was 'a trail-blazer' for things Berlioz to come from the OAE, so maybe see you there...
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15 February
Perhaps evidence for 'the collective unconscious', perhaps the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment has just been reading my mind (or I its), but Berlioz was on my mind yesterday, when I heard announced on Radio 3 how he had wrought his own libretto for The Trojans, just as he did - as I blogged about last year - with L'enfance du Christ.
He was still on my mind just now, as I indulged one of the themes from the symphony that both threatened his union with Harriet Smithson and, strangely, brought them together. Still loudly humming it, I was moved to search for (the name of) Harriet, and soon found this link to the OAE for last night's concert*:
http://www.oae.co.uk/tag/harriet-smithson/
I have no doubt that it was good, and I wish well all who had the chance to hear it!
End-notes
* My mistake for assuming - there was no concert, but this was 'a trail-blazer' for things Berlioz to come from the OAE, so maybe see you there...
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Tuesday, 14 February 2012
BUNROY?
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14 February
Life is full of puzzles (some more fun than others)...
If you named your home (or, at any rate, a house) Bunroy, might you not fail to envisage how wearing it would be to explain both why it needed a name as well as a house number, as well as what it means - or would it be in the spirit of blagging (so like blogging), of making up some blarney to meet each new enquiry*?
Yes, it takes its name from the Scottish camp-site** where:
* I was born
* All our children were conceived
* My wife and I [met / first slept together]
Well, my pet name for my wife is Bunny, and I grew up in Rosyton, so it seemed the obvious choice!
Really?! Is there a sign outside saying that? Well, in all the time that I've lived here, I've never noticed it - are you sure?
Ah, well - it spells something backwards, you see: Yor nub, i.e. Your nub? What bloody point are you making?
Hours of fun for all the family at the price of a house-sign!
End-notes
* As some like to say, glass half full, rather than half empty...
** 13 miles from Fort William, and not far from the River Spean.
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14 February
Life is full of puzzles (some more fun than others)...
If you named your home (or, at any rate, a house) Bunroy, might you not fail to envisage how wearing it would be to explain both why it needed a name as well as a house number, as well as what it means - or would it be in the spirit of blagging (so like blogging), of making up some blarney to meet each new enquiry*?
Yes, it takes its name from the Scottish camp-site** where:
* I was born
* All our children were conceived
* My wife and I [met / first slept together]
Well, my pet name for my wife is Bunny, and I grew up in Rosyton, so it seemed the obvious choice!
Really?! Is there a sign outside saying that? Well, in all the time that I've lived here, I've never noticed it - are you sure?
Ah, well - it spells something backwards, you see: Yor nub, i.e. Your nub? What bloody point are you making?
Hours of fun for all the family at the price of a house-sign!
End-notes
* As some like to say, glass half full, rather than half empty...
** 13 miles from Fort William, and not far from the River Spean.
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What does that Italian at the top of the music mean?
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14 February
An example. Does striggio mean:
(a) Excitedly - a bit like a tremolo?
(b) The opposite of sforzando?
(c) There's a hole in the score here, where the composer dropped his or her cigarette on the manuscript original?
(d) Just for the strings, i.e. the players are encouraged to sound really stringy?
(e) He's that other composer of a choral work in forty parts?
And why Italian anyway? Not always, because some composers (e.g. Schumann, Dvorak) shun it, but is it really the language of music (or, even, Music)?
And, if you thought None of these in (a) to (e), above, then you're probably right, and 'that Itlian' is Carlo Maria Giulini, ready to conduct the piece...
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14 February
An example. Does striggio mean:
(a) Excitedly - a bit like a tremolo?
(b) The opposite of sforzando?
(c) There's a hole in the score here, where the composer dropped his or her cigarette on the manuscript original?
(d) Just for the strings, i.e. the players are encouraged to sound really stringy?
(e) He's that other composer of a choral work in forty parts?
And why Italian anyway? Not always, because some composers (e.g. Schumann, Dvorak) shun it, but is it really the language of music (or, even, Music)?
And, if you thought None of these in (a) to (e), above, then you're probably right, and 'that Itlian' is Carlo Maria Giulini, ready to conduct the piece...
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My top three Blondie songs
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14 February
With the following qualifications:
* Not including after Deborah Harry's solo albums (which give rise to their own favourites); and
* So not from when Blondie started producing albums again (ditto)
If they are not all from one original album (I forget - probably Eat to the Beat), two out of three are.
In no order (save that I think of them in this order):
Dreaming
Union City Blues
Atomic
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14 February
With the following qualifications:
* Not including after Deborah Harry's solo albums (which give rise to their own favourites); and
* So not from when Blondie started producing albums again (ditto)
If they are not all from one original album (I forget - probably Eat to the Beat), two out of three are.
In no order (save that I think of them in this order):
Dreaming
Union City Blues
Atomic
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Britten and the concentration camps
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14 February
[For which, of course, read extermination camps - or death camps.]
But can we really hear, in the writing of his String Quartet No. 2, that Britten had made a visit to these camps? Surely, if we could, we wouldn't need to be told the fact, because the music itself would tell us!
The essence of my point is the old, old one: does the detail of a biography (even an autobiography) inform how we listen to a composer's work*? If so, are we then not unbelievably alienated, according to that belief, from Bach's highly alive compositions, because we do not really know very much about his life?
After hearing a quartet, five or so years back, announce Shostakovich's inescapable String Quartet No. 8 in a different way from what predominates, I have been freed from crediting that old chestnut about the bombing of Dresden, even if the composer was, indeed, in Dresden to write music for a film about that very subject (Five Days, Five Nights), and wrote it there in the three days from 12 to 14 July 1960.
Rightly or wrongly, I feel that I can now hear that quartet without these supposed guides to an interpretative view of what is - purely - music: it is not, I believe, programme (or programmatic) music.
And we also ought not only to get a good chance for an airing of more than a dozen other string quartets except to mark the 52nd anniversary of his stubbing his toe in Dresden (a bit like Poulenc: 50 years since Poulenc stubbed his toe in Montmartre).
End-notes
* Orrin Howard seems to inform us, regarding Britten, that 'In spite of his being a Britisher through and through, he didn't go the folk route of Vaughan Williams'. Well, yes...
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14 February
[For which, of course, read extermination camps - or death camps.]
But can we really hear, in the writing of his String Quartet No. 2, that Britten had made a visit to these camps? Surely, if we could, we wouldn't need to be told the fact, because the music itself would tell us!
The essence of my point is the old, old one: does the detail of a biography (even an autobiography) inform how we listen to a composer's work*? If so, are we then not unbelievably alienated, according to that belief, from Bach's highly alive compositions, because we do not really know very much about his life?
After hearing a quartet, five or so years back, announce Shostakovich's inescapable String Quartet No. 8 in a different way from what predominates, I have been freed from crediting that old chestnut about the bombing of Dresden, even if the composer was, indeed, in Dresden to write music for a film about that very subject (Five Days, Five Nights), and wrote it there in the three days from 12 to 14 July 1960.
Rightly or wrongly, I feel that I can now hear that quartet without these supposed guides to an interpretative view of what is - purely - music: it is not, I believe, programme (or programmatic) music.
And we also ought not only to get a good chance for an airing of more than a dozen other string quartets except to mark the 52nd anniversary of his stubbing his toe in Dresden (a bit like Poulenc: 50 years since Poulenc stubbed his toe in Montmartre).
End-notes
* Orrin Howard seems to inform us, regarding Britten, that 'In spite of his being a Britisher through and through, he didn't go the folk route of Vaughan Williams'. Well, yes...
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Monday, 13 February 2012
Crowds outside Houston's hotel (according to AOL®) (1)
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13 February
So why does Whitney Houston become known by her surname when she's dead? I don't mean it irreverently, but I am inescapably reminded of the Apollo missions:
Do you read me, Houston?
And what makes for 'crowds', distinct from a 'crowd', in this case? Does it just sound better, does it fit the space where 'Huge crowd' might not (actually, there is room)?
And these people - are they being mournful or macabre, wanting to be the first to book into the room where she was found dead? (And I'm sure that there were those who did the same with Sid Vicious - or who want to stay in Hemingway's suite at the Danieli.)
Perhaps they are respectful, perhaps they will endow a fund so that the room can be permanently be set up as a shrine and reverentially visited by bona fide fans...
In any case, who can forget the singer looking so in need of being rescued in Costner's arms*?
End-notes
* By the looks of it, Kevin has had a pretty hard time of it: poor lad had the misfortune to cohabit with Elle MacPherson for a while, and his fraternity, of all things, was Delta Chi! Still, at least his wife designs handbags, for which I'm sure that we're all grateful, and he apparently took her for a ride in a canoe after their wedding ceremony - no doubt inspiration for a whole range of bags...
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13 February
So why does Whitney Houston become known by her surname when she's dead? I don't mean it irreverently, but I am inescapably reminded of the Apollo missions:
Do you read me, Houston?
And what makes for 'crowds', distinct from a 'crowd', in this case? Does it just sound better, does it fit the space where 'Huge crowd' might not (actually, there is room)?
And these people - are they being mournful or macabre, wanting to be the first to book into the room where she was found dead? (And I'm sure that there were those who did the same with Sid Vicious - or who want to stay in Hemingway's suite at the Danieli.)
Perhaps they are respectful, perhaps they will endow a fund so that the room can be permanently be set up as a shrine and reverentially visited by bona fide fans...
In any case, who can forget the singer looking so in need of being rescued in Costner's arms*?
End-notes
* By the looks of it, Kevin has had a pretty hard time of it: poor lad had the misfortune to cohabit with Elle MacPherson for a while, and his fraternity, of all things, was Delta Chi! Still, at least his wife designs handbags, for which I'm sure that we're all grateful, and he apparently took her for a ride in a canoe after their wedding ceremony - no doubt inspiration for a whole range of bags...
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Sunday, 12 February 2012
Jack Gordon and Lydia Wilson did an especially good job to-night (2)
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12 February
Lost! I am lost! my fates have doom’d my death:
The more I strive, I love; the more I love,
The less I hope : I see my ruin certain.
What judgment or endeavours could apply
To my incurable and restless wounds,
I thoroughly have examined, but in vain.
O, that it were not in religion sin
To make our love a god, and worship it!
I have even wearied heaven with pray’rs, dried up
The spring of my continual tears, even starv’d
My veins with daily fasts: what wit or art
Could counsel, I have practised; but, alas!
I find all these but dreams, and old men’s tales,
To fright unsteady youth; I am still the same:
Or I must speak, or burst. [...]
Belatedly, an example of the verse (from the first Act) that Jack Gordon delivered so excellently.
A Literary History of England (ed. Baugh) speaks very interestingly of how Ford's four major plays were viewed in his time, and helps to explode the myth that the incest at the heart of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore proved problematic or controversial to that audience (irrespective of what the Commonwealth might have thought of it, and of plays in general).
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12 February
Lost! I am lost! my fates have doom’d my death:
The more I strive, I love; the more I love,
The less I hope : I see my ruin certain.
What judgment or endeavours could apply
To my incurable and restless wounds,
I thoroughly have examined, but in vain.
O, that it were not in religion sin
To make our love a god, and worship it!
I have even wearied heaven with pray’rs, dried up
The spring of my continual tears, even starv’d
My veins with daily fasts: what wit or art
Could counsel, I have practised; but, alas!
I find all these but dreams, and old men’s tales,
To fright unsteady youth; I am still the same:
Or I must speak, or burst. [...]
Belatedly, an example of the verse (from the first Act) that Jack Gordon delivered so excellently.
A Literary History of England (ed. Baugh) speaks very interestingly of how Ford's four major plays were viewed in his time, and helps to explode the myth that the incest at the heart of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore proved problematic or controversial to that audience (irrespective of what the Commonwealth might have thought of it, and of plays in general).
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Saturday, 11 February 2012
That damn' Derham attitude!
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11 February
It's not exactly an oral swagger, but an over-hasty, confidential familiarity - no, an overfamiliarity - from one who is making quite clear who's boss in the presenter / listener relationship, IF you let her (which she wants you to do, and almost assumes that you will).
Yesterday, she said as if it were an expletive, or, rather, admiration of someone's bum, Gorgeous piece!, then whiffled off into some - perhaps more scripted (and, to be honest, I do not know whether these presenters write their own material) - string of information. As ever, briskly, with almost unnecessarily precise diction, which reinforces the message I know what I'm talking about, you should listen to me.
Unfortunately, it's so forced, almost so desperate to be liked and to make ad libs full of her own opinions and 'personality', that, for me, it is an unsubtle stamp of would-be trustworthiness, not remotely the sort of underlying reassurance that is just inherent in, say, the style of Fiona Talkington.
Yet this Derham attitude is not her unique phenomenon, for Radio 3 seems 'to have bought into' this feminine style of clipped authority: to my mind, Suzy Klein is almost indistinguishable, save that she is the only person that I have heard using the word 'please' in such a barked way* that it is quite out of place in asking a performer being interviewed to answer whatever he or she is there to talk about:
It had echoes of a child begging for something that he or she knows is forbidden (or, at least, it's time has not yet come), but delivered not in quite such a wheedling way, but as if to ingratiate on some other level, but, not on her own behalf, but as the servant of the listening audience: it's as if she is a Jesus, pleading with the Father for forgiveness for the sinners on their knees before the cross - give them, I beseech thee, but the answer to this question in your almighty mercy...
End-notes
* And unnecessarily using it, to impart some sense of God knows what! - counterfactual humility?
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(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
11 February
It's not exactly an oral swagger, but an over-hasty, confidential familiarity - no, an overfamiliarity - from one who is making quite clear who's boss in the presenter / listener relationship, IF you let her (which she wants you to do, and almost assumes that you will).
Yesterday, she said as if it were an expletive, or, rather, admiration of someone's bum, Gorgeous piece!, then whiffled off into some - perhaps more scripted (and, to be honest, I do not know whether these presenters write their own material) - string of information. As ever, briskly, with almost unnecessarily precise diction, which reinforces the message I know what I'm talking about, you should listen to me.
Unfortunately, it's so forced, almost so desperate to be liked and to make ad libs full of her own opinions and 'personality', that, for me, it is an unsubtle stamp of would-be trustworthiness, not remotely the sort of underlying reassurance that is just inherent in, say, the style of Fiona Talkington.
Yet this Derham attitude is not her unique phenomenon, for Radio 3 seems 'to have bought into' this feminine style of clipped authority: to my mind, Suzy Klein is almost indistinguishable, save that she is the only person that I have heard using the word 'please' in such a barked way* that it is quite out of place in asking a performer being interviewed to answer whatever he or she is there to talk about:
It had echoes of a child begging for something that he or she knows is forbidden (or, at least, it's time has not yet come), but delivered not in quite such a wheedling way, but as if to ingratiate on some other level, but, not on her own behalf, but as the servant of the listening audience: it's as if she is a Jesus, pleading with the Father for forgiveness for the sinners on their knees before the cross - give them, I beseech thee, but the answer to this question in your almighty mercy...
End-notes
* And unnecessarily using it, to impart some sense of God knows what! - counterfactual humility?
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Friday, 10 February 2012
Silky, smooth and satisfying
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
10 February
Yes, what does that describe (or purport to)...?
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(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
10 February
Yes, what does that describe (or purport to)...?
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Wednesday, 8 February 2012
The Future or How do you choose a satisying film? (Part 5)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
9 February
* Contains (almost nothing but) spoilers *
Probably full circle, and definitely the end of this group of postings, and to that alleged film The Future* (2011) and how, no less, it was sold to me by that clearly blasphemous publication, Picturehouse Recommends - sooner read Uncle Joe Stalin Rather Unequivocally Recommends**, and at least know where I stand and the permitted level of adoration!
I am confronted, once more, by that whole-page image of July*** (I think that the background has been edited out to make it more stark, as far as I recollect), leaning urgently out of the window as if - and this is the clever bit!? - some emergency is happening beneath her, and she is doing her best to intervene.
Rather than, when they both know that he should not be able to hear her (given where they both live), shouting nonethless - I forget what she does shout - to see if someone she has spoken to one the phone for the first time after all does. The image, as I say, suggests a crisis, because one wouldn't - unless Sophie (July) - go to the window with a hair-dryer and stick one's torso so emphatically out of it just to shout to someone who's not there, but it provides a great opportunity for the hair-dryer, a love-gift that has just been presented, to be pointed out of the window and suggest, in a phallic way, the direction of events and where her interest lies.
Redolent of that crazy connection that there is between teenage friends, who might try such a thing, rather than a woman of 35 trying to engage with an older man (Marshall) whom she probably didn't even meet when her partner Jason talked to Marshall and his daughter, and Jason, who had seen the drawing of the daughter's hamster (or whatever it was - possibly to raise funds for the animal welfare centre, possibly to line Marshall's pocket, as I don't recall, and don't intend to find out) bought it for Sophie.
The facing page is in two parts, the top about the film, the bottom about July. Here, mainly in order, are some quotations from what the write-up alleges (mostly, as if it were stating facts) from the top part, with a commentary as to why I take issue of them and believe that they built up a sigificantly misleading portrait of The Future:
July returns in typically charming fashion
I think that it’s very much a matter of opinion whether this film is charming – a Sundance jury might have thought it so, where a differently constituted one might not – and might not have found any real depths in this piece of work.
A film about confronting the stark realities of adulthood
Well, to be honest, this couple (meaning a pair of people, not an entity) does not have a clue about any sort of reality, and, if so, they have left it half their lives to address things that another generation does much younger than 35 (please see below - they are not a thirtysomething couple).
After weighing up all the pros and cons
I must confess that, aiming to skip the trailers, I missed the very opening minutes, and only met the three of them (including the cat, who confronts stark realities, for my money, far more meaningfully than Jason or Sophie does) when the humans have gone to collect the feline.
Only to be told that, allowing time for healing of the wounded (bandaged) paw, they must come back in twenty-eight days (or was it a month? I don’t care). They also learn that the thing that they have clearly been banking on, life-expectancy of six months, could be five years with love and care.
So whatever they weighed up offscreen to me, the two were never looking for a pet capable of surviving, but, frankly, an opportunity for short-term do-gooding, not a commitment to an animal’s life and well-being.
Of course, if they were wholly cynical (which they are too soft to be), they would go away, realize their mistake, and just call in to cancel the arrangement. But what arrangement? The clinic is crazy enough to say (words put into its mouth by July, and purely for reasons of the pretty thin plot) that it will put the cat down, after feeding and watering it for almost a month, if they do not show up – brilliant ethics for an animal shelter, and an insane way of spending someone’s money on sick or injured animals that you end up killing****.
[They] decide to take the next big step in their relationship: they are going to adopt a cat
As outlined above, they have no intention, at the outset, that this cat will be around very long – what big step? It’s more like an extended version of pet-sitting, with a limited duration. I do not know whether the clinic misled them initially, but they know that what they believed was wrong, and somehow, with a limited access to their own psyches, feel trapped with their previous decision. The write-up does not acknowledge any of this in:
But before they can bring their new pet back to their cost apartment, they will have to wait an entire month for the rescue centre to give them the all-clear
So, it’s hugely convenient that, when they expect that they are collecting the cat, they have a month in their questionably cosy dwelling (which may or may not be given a once-over by the centre) in which to regret being tied down – a bit like going to the dentist for an appointment for a filling, only to find that it is just one at which you are asked what sort of injection you’d like, and you have to come back another day for the filling.
With the big day marked on the calendar, our couple soon begin to fret over the consequences of their commitment
Yes, they fret straightaway about learning that it could be five years, but there is no actual commitment: they could pick up the phone and say ‘We’ve changed our minds’ – and let the centre kill the cat then and there? – is that the issue?
This mog’s going to tie them down; they will be trapped in a round-the clock routine for the next 10 years of their lives
It may be that what I missed is that this an HIV-positive LA cat, and thus that such a routine could be relevant, otherwise do these people really not know how capable cats are of looking after themselves? (They also, then, cannot have any friends who could do pet-sitting so that they go on vacation, and don’t know that, anyway, such help can be hired.)
Where ten years crept in from, I do not know, but Jason makes a rather fatuous speech that has been written for him to say that 5 years onto their 35 is 40, 40 is the new 50, and there’s nothing worthwhile in life then, so they are effectively dead now. Sadly, not very convincing, and even The Sophists of old came up with better reasons than that for the things of which they wished to persuade others: but it does need to allow those watching the film to believe these two credible, and their lacklustre thinking doesn’t do that.
[D]ay by day they drift apart. Until, that is, a moment of catharsis reunites their souls and reconnects them with their suburban world.
Funny, not in the film - of the same name - that I saw. Yes, they drift apart, but what is this cathartic moment supposed to be? Whatever it is, nothing reunites anybody's souls, and the rest is just fanciful padding!
Narrated by Paw-Paw (July herself putting on her best purr), The Future is a contemplative indie gem from one of American cinema's most enlightening free spirits.
So am I seriously being told that this film is enlightening? (And, yes, that was the cat's name, but, no, it doesn't narrate the film - it just narrates its own experience in the rescue centre of getting excited about going somewhere else and being happy, then reconciliation to not going there, then being killed, but there's an afterlife, so that's OK, and really contemplative, too!)
This may just be enthusiastic opinion, but it is making some pretty big claims, for July and The Future. In the section about her:
Like her films, she is understated, she is a citizen of a world far removed from the showy artificiality of Hollywood: the real world.
Oh, I think that I might vomit! It's not the studios' gizmos, hype and big budgets, so it must be good and appeal to those who prefer arthouse films - law of the excluded middle, again, for even if all Hollywood did = Bad, it doesn't follow that non-Hollywood = Good.
I end, speechless (at both ever having read this twaddle / seen the film), and feeling only that there is an enormous effort in this write-up to strong-arm me into why I should see / like it, viz.
Call her kooky or cute, but there is a truth in July's works that distinguishes them from other like-minded films. Without the slightest shade of pretence, The Future captures a tentative step along the potholed corridor towards middle age and an existential dead end*****.
End-notes
* Even Philip French (who he?) doesn't like it - he dismisses it in one outraged paragraph at http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/nov/06/the-future-miranda-july-review.
** By the way, none of this 57 varieties stuff about which I've just piffled on (at, funnily enough, 57 alleged varieties) - one bloody tin of soup and, if you're lucky, you might be at the head of the queue when that one tin is on the shelf!
But it beats all this possibility for deliberation as to whether this bloody 18-month-cured prosciutto is better than a 12-month-cured packet of real Parma ham... Reminiscent of 'Should I see The Future, or save my pennies for The Artist?'?
*** With just the title top right in pinkish capitals, and some details of actors, director, etc., bottom right.
**** Perhaps Sophie and Jason are paying (even though they went there to collect the cat)?
***** There is another sentence, but I just don't feel the need to inflict it on both myelf or anyone reading this posting.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
9 February
* Contains (almost nothing but) spoilers *
Probably full circle, and definitely the end of this group of postings, and to that alleged film The Future* (2011) and how, no less, it was sold to me by that clearly blasphemous publication, Picturehouse Recommends - sooner read Uncle Joe Stalin Rather Unequivocally Recommends**, and at least know where I stand and the permitted level of adoration!
I am confronted, once more, by that whole-page image of July*** (I think that the background has been edited out to make it more stark, as far as I recollect), leaning urgently out of the window as if - and this is the clever bit!? - some emergency is happening beneath her, and she is doing her best to intervene.
Rather than, when they both know that he should not be able to hear her (given where they both live), shouting nonethless - I forget what she does shout - to see if someone she has spoken to one the phone for the first time after all does. The image, as I say, suggests a crisis, because one wouldn't - unless Sophie (July) - go to the window with a hair-dryer and stick one's torso so emphatically out of it just to shout to someone who's not there, but it provides a great opportunity for the hair-dryer, a love-gift that has just been presented, to be pointed out of the window and suggest, in a phallic way, the direction of events and where her interest lies.
Redolent of that crazy connection that there is between teenage friends, who might try such a thing, rather than a woman of 35 trying to engage with an older man (Marshall) whom she probably didn't even meet when her partner Jason talked to Marshall and his daughter, and Jason, who had seen the drawing of the daughter's hamster (or whatever it was - possibly to raise funds for the animal welfare centre, possibly to line Marshall's pocket, as I don't recall, and don't intend to find out) bought it for Sophie.
The facing page is in two parts, the top about the film, the bottom about July. Here, mainly in order, are some quotations from what the write-up alleges (mostly, as if it were stating facts) from the top part, with a commentary as to why I take issue of them and believe that they built up a sigificantly misleading portrait of The Future:
July returns in typically charming fashion
I think that it’s very much a matter of opinion whether this film is charming – a Sundance jury might have thought it so, where a differently constituted one might not – and might not have found any real depths in this piece of work.
A film about confronting the stark realities of adulthood
Well, to be honest, this couple (meaning a pair of people, not an entity) does not have a clue about any sort of reality, and, if so, they have left it half their lives to address things that another generation does much younger than 35 (please see below - they are not a thirtysomething couple).
After weighing up all the pros and cons
I must confess that, aiming to skip the trailers, I missed the very opening minutes, and only met the three of them (including the cat, who confronts stark realities, for my money, far more meaningfully than Jason or Sophie does) when the humans have gone to collect the feline.
Only to be told that, allowing time for healing of the wounded (bandaged) paw, they must come back in twenty-eight days (or was it a month? I don’t care). They also learn that the thing that they have clearly been banking on, life-expectancy of six months, could be five years with love and care.
So whatever they weighed up offscreen to me, the two were never looking for a pet capable of surviving, but, frankly, an opportunity for short-term do-gooding, not a commitment to an animal’s life and well-being.
Of course, if they were wholly cynical (which they are too soft to be), they would go away, realize their mistake, and just call in to cancel the arrangement. But what arrangement? The clinic is crazy enough to say (words put into its mouth by July, and purely for reasons of the pretty thin plot) that it will put the cat down, after feeding and watering it for almost a month, if they do not show up – brilliant ethics for an animal shelter, and an insane way of spending someone’s money on sick or injured animals that you end up killing****.
[They] decide to take the next big step in their relationship: they are going to adopt a cat
As outlined above, they have no intention, at the outset, that this cat will be around very long – what big step? It’s more like an extended version of pet-sitting, with a limited duration. I do not know whether the clinic misled them initially, but they know that what they believed was wrong, and somehow, with a limited access to their own psyches, feel trapped with their previous decision. The write-up does not acknowledge any of this in:
But before they can bring their new pet back to their cost apartment, they will have to wait an entire month for the rescue centre to give them the all-clear
So, it’s hugely convenient that, when they expect that they are collecting the cat, they have a month in their questionably cosy dwelling (which may or may not be given a once-over by the centre) in which to regret being tied down – a bit like going to the dentist for an appointment for a filling, only to find that it is just one at which you are asked what sort of injection you’d like, and you have to come back another day for the filling.
With the big day marked on the calendar, our couple soon begin to fret over the consequences of their commitment
Yes, they fret straightaway about learning that it could be five years, but there is no actual commitment: they could pick up the phone and say ‘We’ve changed our minds’ – and let the centre kill the cat then and there? – is that the issue?
This mog’s going to tie them down; they will be trapped in a round-the clock routine for the next 10 years of their lives
It may be that what I missed is that this an HIV-positive LA cat, and thus that such a routine could be relevant, otherwise do these people really not know how capable cats are of looking after themselves? (They also, then, cannot have any friends who could do pet-sitting so that they go on vacation, and don’t know that, anyway, such help can be hired.)
Where ten years crept in from, I do not know, but Jason makes a rather fatuous speech that has been written for him to say that 5 years onto their 35 is 40, 40 is the new 50, and there’s nothing worthwhile in life then, so they are effectively dead now. Sadly, not very convincing, and even The Sophists of old came up with better reasons than that for the things of which they wished to persuade others: but it does need to allow those watching the film to believe these two credible, and their lacklustre thinking doesn’t do that.
[D]ay by day they drift apart. Until, that is, a moment of catharsis reunites their souls and reconnects them with their suburban world.
Funny, not in the film - of the same name - that I saw. Yes, they drift apart, but what is this cathartic moment supposed to be? Whatever it is, nothing reunites anybody's souls, and the rest is just fanciful padding!
Narrated by Paw-Paw (July herself putting on her best purr), The Future is a contemplative indie gem from one of American cinema's most enlightening free spirits.
So am I seriously being told that this film is enlightening? (And, yes, that was the cat's name, but, no, it doesn't narrate the film - it just narrates its own experience in the rescue centre of getting excited about going somewhere else and being happy, then reconciliation to not going there, then being killed, but there's an afterlife, so that's OK, and really contemplative, too!)
This may just be enthusiastic opinion, but it is making some pretty big claims, for July and The Future. In the section about her:
Like her films, she is understated, she is a citizen of a world far removed from the showy artificiality of Hollywood: the real world.
Oh, I think that I might vomit! It's not the studios' gizmos, hype and big budgets, so it must be good and appeal to those who prefer arthouse films - law of the excluded middle, again, for even if all Hollywood did = Bad, it doesn't follow that non-Hollywood = Good.
I end, speechless (at both ever having read this twaddle / seen the film), and feeling only that there is an enormous effort in this write-up to strong-arm me into why I should see / like it, viz.
Call her kooky or cute, but there is a truth in July's works that distinguishes them from other like-minded films. Without the slightest shade of pretence, The Future captures a tentative step along the potholed corridor towards middle age and an existential dead end*****.
End-notes
* Even Philip French (who he?) doesn't like it - he dismisses it in one outraged paragraph at http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/nov/06/the-future-miranda-july-review.
** By the way, none of this 57 varieties stuff about which I've just piffled on (at, funnily enough, 57 alleged varieties) - one bloody tin of soup and, if you're lucky, you might be at the head of the queue when that one tin is on the shelf!
But it beats all this possibility for deliberation as to whether this bloody 18-month-cured prosciutto is better than a 12-month-cured packet of real Parma ham... Reminiscent of 'Should I see The Future, or save my pennies for The Artist?'?
*** With just the title top right in pinkish capitals, and some details of actors, director, etc., bottom right.
**** Perhaps Sophie and Jason are paying (even though they went there to collect the cat)?
***** There is another sentence, but I just don't feel the need to inflict it on both myelf or anyone reading this posting.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
57 alleged varieties
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
9 February
If one of the breweries whose beer / ale you like started telling you that they once produced - but no longer produce - fifty-seven of anything, would you not, perhaps, feel short-changed by their range of six (or eight) in these modern times*?
And maybe fifty-seven doesn't just relate to soup, but to alphabetti spaghetti** (can you imagine such an abomination in Italy? though, if it did have real European currency, for some countries, such as Greece, a factory would have to produce the stuff in their own alphabet) - or was that a product of Crosse and Blackwell's***? - and baked beans, but I had always associated the claim with soup.
So how many soups are in the H---z range, and maybe I cannot rely on what the local Veran happens to stock - there must be a www.h---z.com to tell me...
Well, it's .co.uk, and clicking on soups takes me straight to Arsebook, which then offers general information and the circuity of a link back to .co.uk - such web-sites, which aren't any more navigable than many a river, are just not looking at for me to find evidence, not even of these (former) possible soups:
* Tobacco and Coriander
* Cream of Mouse
* Lamb and Beetroot (sure some Polish influence there!)
* Smoked Halibut and Rye
* Dust and Cobweb
In fact, I shall start a - wholly notional - series of detective novels called The Apsley Papers, with a suitably enticing range of 57 sub-titles, and list them all on your favourite retailing site(s):
The Apsley Papers: Remains found in a Gravel-Pit
The Apsley Papers: Killed by a Strontium Nitrate Spoon
The Apsley Papers: Impact of a Club
Then, I just wait for the orders to roll in, and produce copies to meet them - all very supply-and-demand led, all very last minute!
End-notes
* Oh, Chaplin again! A well-known pinko, of course, as the committee told us - see more here.
** Why do I not remember seriously making words with that stuff, not even not rude ones?
*** If they ever existed.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
9 February
If one of the breweries whose beer / ale you like started telling you that they once produced - but no longer produce - fifty-seven of anything, would you not, perhaps, feel short-changed by their range of six (or eight) in these modern times*?
And maybe fifty-seven doesn't just relate to soup, but to alphabetti spaghetti** (can you imagine such an abomination in Italy? though, if it did have real European currency, for some countries, such as Greece, a factory would have to produce the stuff in their own alphabet) - or was that a product of Crosse and Blackwell's***? - and baked beans, but I had always associated the claim with soup.
So how many soups are in the H---z range, and maybe I cannot rely on what the local Veran happens to stock - there must be a www.h---z.com to tell me...
Well, it's .co.uk, and clicking on soups takes me straight to Arsebook, which then offers general information and the circuity of a link back to .co.uk - such web-sites, which aren't any more navigable than many a river, are just not looking at for me to find evidence, not even of these (former) possible soups:
* Tobacco and Coriander
* Cream of Mouse
* Lamb and Beetroot (sure some Polish influence there!)
* Smoked Halibut and Rye
* Dust and Cobweb
In fact, I shall start a - wholly notional - series of detective novels called The Apsley Papers, with a suitably enticing range of 57 sub-titles, and list them all on your favourite retailing site(s):
The Apsley Papers: Remains found in a Gravel-Pit
The Apsley Papers: Killed by a Strontium Nitrate Spoon
The Apsley Papers: Impact of a Club
Then, I just wait for the orders to roll in, and produce copies to meet them - all very supply-and-demand led, all very last minute!
End-notes
* Oh, Chaplin again! A well-known pinko, of course, as the committee told us - see more here.
** Why do I not remember seriously making words with that stuff, not even not rude ones?
*** If they ever existed.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Cheryl Cole's a friggin' Glaswegian!
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
8 February 2012
Honest, she is - you just have to look at the bloke in the background, arms crossed, holding a microphone (her cousin, Donald), to know that we're back in her home territory of Sauchiehall Street...
Just time for an Arbroath smokie at Miss Cranston's Tea-Rooms!
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
8 February 2012
Honest, she is - you just have to look at the bloke in the background, arms crossed, holding a microphone (her cousin, Donald), to know that we're back in her home territory of Sauchiehall Street...
Just time for an Arbroath smokie at Miss Cranston's Tea-Rooms!
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
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