More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
10 March
What is this bloody rubbish?! Since when have we said this in this country, rather than I’d like… or (though it is closer) Could I have…?, but it’s the subjunctive ‘could’, not ‘can’.
Yet I will freely admit that asking questions in the form ‘May I…?’ is a dinosaur, and the only person whom I know to use it (and who also uses ‘whom’ when it’s appropriate) is Russian, but that is, it must be said, what I was brought up to say: May I hit you on the nose – right now?.
Some put-downs that those in the so-called hospitality business** might find helpful:
Q Can I get a bottle of beer and some dry-roasted nuts?
A Depends on how long your arms are, mate – and whether I stop you!
Q Can I get---?
A Yes, you can ‘get’ – get stuffed!
End-notes
* Thankfully, this isn't topical, as it has been 'hanging around' since Thursday 1 March, which is what seems to happen when blogging isn't done straight into the on-line box (but in some Word document, supposedly for posting later).
** It’ll be called an industry yet – no, I mean a factory, as some idiots have already decided that it is an industry (heavy or light?).
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Friday, 9 March 2012
A very delayed excuse for a review of Red State (2011)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
10 March
Yes, well... What follows - more of an excuse of a review, than for one - has been lurking on my desktop* for a very long time, and, when I opened it just now, didn't even turn out to be the limerick that, I thought, was the best part of my response to this screening at last year's Festival (yes, some six months ago).
I have tidied and tarted it up, but it remains what it is: incomplete (if only I had that limerick!)
* Contains spoilers *
Can one ever be prepared for Kevin Smith? I don’t think so. (He probably isn’t himself.)
So I don’t think that, just because I hadn’t done my homework and managed to watch Clerks (1994) my companion at the screening was at an advantage: the world into which we were plunged was one of proud intolerance, casual killings, being right (in more than one sense) in the face of everything, and prepared to fight to the death. Not much scope for humour there.
My friend enjoyed what Smith, despite all odds, did wring from the situation by way of comedy at the end, but I was less sure – being unsure is not a good foundation for comedy, unless it is one involving a nervous kind of tittering.
Where will I go next, if I feel in need of searching out Smith? Well, I could investigate Dogma (1999), the one whose poster owes more than a little to (the work of) Gilbert and George, but why should I watch Damon team up again with Affleck? That said, Alan Rickman and Salma Hayek are both in it…
End-notes
* Which we know doesn't mean that thing that the computer - or part of it - stands on, because we call that 'my desk', and 'top' never has anything to do with it!
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
10 March
Yes, well... What follows - more of an excuse of a review, than for one - has been lurking on my desktop* for a very long time, and, when I opened it just now, didn't even turn out to be the limerick that, I thought, was the best part of my response to this screening at last year's Festival (yes, some six months ago).
I have tidied and tarted it up, but it remains what it is: incomplete (if only I had that limerick!)
* Contains spoilers *
Can one ever be prepared for Kevin Smith? I don’t think so. (He probably isn’t himself.)
So I don’t think that, just because I hadn’t done my homework and managed to watch Clerks (1994) my companion at the screening was at an advantage: the world into which we were plunged was one of proud intolerance, casual killings, being right (in more than one sense) in the face of everything, and prepared to fight to the death. Not much scope for humour there.
My friend enjoyed what Smith, despite all odds, did wring from the situation by way of comedy at the end, but I was less sure – being unsure is not a good foundation for comedy, unless it is one involving a nervous kind of tittering.
Where will I go next, if I feel in need of searching out Smith? Well, I could investigate Dogma (1999), the one whose poster owes more than a little to (the work of) Gilbert and George, but why should I watch Damon team up again with Affleck? That said, Alan Rickman and Salma Hayek are both in it…
End-notes
* Which we know doesn't mean that thing that the computer - or part of it - stands on, because we call that 'my desk', and 'top' never has anything to do with it!
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Max Bruch is most famous for...?
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
9 March
Not for inventing the dishwasher (as Max Christian Friedrich Bruch didn't, having been born, on the day of Epiphany in 1838, too early to do so), but, from more than 200 compositions, arguably for that Concerto for Violin (in G minor No. 1, Op. 26 (1866))*, or, if not that for you, for one of three other pieces (with very close opus numbers, and even corresponding dates of composition):
* The Scottish Fantasy in E flat major, Op. 46 (1880)
*Kol Nidrei, Op. 47 (1881);
* Symphony No. 3 in E major, Op. 51 (1883)
It is not that his work was not received well by audiences in its time (apparently, his cantata Frithjof, in the early 1860s, was met with great enthusiasm), but it didn't help either that, on account of the second of the works listed above, it was assumed that Bruch had Jewish ancestry and so was not performed in countries under Nazi control, or that music critics since seem to have sidelined him.
And there is, of course, a huge element of chance in what makes it into the repertoire. I have always loved the symphonic music of Vaughan Williams, but it is taking a figure such as Andrew Manze, as conductor, to make out a case for listening to symphonies that I have long valued. I also repeatedly remember how important Mendelssohn was, in a similar way, in making sure that works of Bach such as the B Minor Mass were heard, and also - love or loathe what he did with it - there is the influence of Glenn Gould's first recording of the Goldberg Variations.
With Tchaikovsky, it is rare to hear (least of all live) the Piano Concerto No. 2, and, despite how it was famously received at the time, it is almost always No. 1 that is played. There are also four Concertos for Piano and Orchestra by Rachmaninov, but it is relatively rare for the first or the fourth to be heard.
As to Bruch, although some sources say that he thought that the third concerto was as fine as the first, he seemingly knew where he was in history, and that the reputation of Brahms would overshadow hs own. In an unascribed comment**, he said:
Fifty years from now he [Brahms] will loom up as one of the supremely great composers of all time, while I will be remembered for having written my G minor violin concerto.
In their concerti for the instrument, both men owed a debt to the great Joseph Joachim (violinist, but also composer, as had been Pisendel before him), and - although it is another story - where would either work have been without him?
End-notes
* There are two others, both in D minor.
** Taken from The Rough Guide to Classical Music (London, 2005).
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
9 March
Not for inventing the dishwasher (as Max Christian Friedrich Bruch didn't, having been born, on the day of Epiphany in 1838, too early to do so), but, from more than 200 compositions, arguably for that Concerto for Violin (in G minor No. 1, Op. 26 (1866))*, or, if not that for you, for one of three other pieces (with very close opus numbers, and even corresponding dates of composition):
* The Scottish Fantasy in E flat major, Op. 46 (1880)
*Kol Nidrei, Op. 47 (1881);
* Symphony No. 3 in E major, Op. 51 (1883)
It is not that his work was not received well by audiences in its time (apparently, his cantata Frithjof, in the early 1860s, was met with great enthusiasm), but it didn't help either that, on account of the second of the works listed above, it was assumed that Bruch had Jewish ancestry and so was not performed in countries under Nazi control, or that music critics since seem to have sidelined him.
And there is, of course, a huge element of chance in what makes it into the repertoire. I have always loved the symphonic music of Vaughan Williams, but it is taking a figure such as Andrew Manze, as conductor, to make out a case for listening to symphonies that I have long valued. I also repeatedly remember how important Mendelssohn was, in a similar way, in making sure that works of Bach such as the B Minor Mass were heard, and also - love or loathe what he did with it - there is the influence of Glenn Gould's first recording of the Goldberg Variations.
With Tchaikovsky, it is rare to hear (least of all live) the Piano Concerto No. 2, and, despite how it was famously received at the time, it is almost always No. 1 that is played. There are also four Concertos for Piano and Orchestra by Rachmaninov, but it is relatively rare for the first or the fourth to be heard.
As to Bruch, although some sources say that he thought that the third concerto was as fine as the first, he seemingly knew where he was in history, and that the reputation of Brahms would overshadow hs own. In an unascribed comment**, he said:
Fifty years from now he [Brahms] will loom up as one of the supremely great composers of all time, while I will be remembered for having written my G minor violin concerto.
In their concerti for the instrument, both men owed a debt to the great Joseph Joachim (violinist, but also composer, as had been Pisendel before him), and - although it is another story - where would either work have been without him?
End-notes
* There are two others, both in D minor.
** Taken from The Rough Guide to Classical Music (London, 2005).
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Might I ask what our Sunday trading legislation is for? (2)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
18 March
Just, for the sheer helluvit, I had planned to revisit this topic (when I started this posting as what Wikipedia® calls 'a stub'), but it happens to have become topical, with plans 'to relax' the legislation for the time of The Olympic Games.
Already The Opposition is questioning whether this is an initial move to do away with some provisions of the Sunday Trading Act 1994 permanently, which might be calculated to put the idea into the relevant noddle, not least when AOL® flashed a hint, last night, that the National Minimum Wage will be under attack in The Budget.
And, of course, we know how businesses suffered impossibly when the minimum wage was brought in - it's just that they chose to do so in a reaction delayed by many years - and that businesses, like banking, are good for the country as a whole, not just for those who receive large rewards for being part of the sector of financial services.
As for the 1994 Act, what would it mean to relax its effect temporarily? Not having any protection from sanctions, such as victimization or dismissal, if one refuses to work on a Sunday? A different regime for opting in or out of Sunday working?
Or is Mr Osborne going to look at that window of six hours for Sunday opening instead - or as well? So the shop can be open from 9.00 till 6.00, maybe, and if you don't want to work those hours, then
Nice XYZ Plc is offering you nine hours' work on Sunday - take it or lose it, as they want the hours worked, and you will be short on your usual working hours, because they are restructuring the shifts, if you refuse them, and these are part of your allotted hours, not additional ones.
And not that they would roster the rest of your hours at unsocial hours either...
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
18 March
Just, for the sheer helluvit, I had planned to revisit this topic (when I started this posting as what Wikipedia® calls 'a stub'), but it happens to have become topical, with plans 'to relax' the legislation for the time of The Olympic Games.
Already The Opposition is questioning whether this is an initial move to do away with some provisions of the Sunday Trading Act 1994 permanently, which might be calculated to put the idea into the relevant noddle, not least when AOL® flashed a hint, last night, that the National Minimum Wage will be under attack in The Budget.
And, of course, we know how businesses suffered impossibly when the minimum wage was brought in - it's just that they chose to do so in a reaction delayed by many years - and that businesses, like banking, are good for the country as a whole, not just for those who receive large rewards for being part of the sector of financial services.
As for the 1994 Act, what would it mean to relax its effect temporarily? Not having any protection from sanctions, such as victimization or dismissal, if one refuses to work on a Sunday? A different regime for opting in or out of Sunday working?
Or is Mr Osborne going to look at that window of six hours for Sunday opening instead - or as well? So the shop can be open from 9.00 till 6.00, maybe, and if you don't want to work those hours, then
Nice XYZ Plc is offering you nine hours' work on Sunday - take it or lose it, as they want the hours worked, and you will be short on your usual working hours, because they are restructuring the shifts, if you refuse them, and these are part of your allotted hours, not additional ones.
And not that they would roster the rest of your hours at unsocial hours either...
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Thursday, 8 March 2012
Woody and his women (1)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
9 March
Now, don't get me wrong, because Allen has written some great screen parts for women, but I'm thinking - as I do incessantly, thoughts feverishing racing around my head, trying to catch up with each other and sometimes crashing - about this collection Mere Anarchy yet again.
What does he read (or hear) that he writes such things in these stories for his male characters to write (or say) about women*?:
* The twin dirigibles that stretched her silk blouse to the breaking point
* Hoping to revel in tableaux of raven-tressed sinners looking like they’d come directly from the pages of a Victoria’s Secret catalogue as they undulated, seminude, in sulphur and chains
* Once she wiggled her award-winning posterior into the lift
Not, by any means, that sex - particularly oral sex - hasn't always been a preoccupation since Allen's earliest films (such as Bananas (1971), Sleeper (1973), Love and Death (1975), and Annie Hall (1977)), but maybe, despite the humour (which is maybe a bit too unsubtle), it's that it passes by quickly onscreen as cheeky, rather than as smutty or prurient...
End-notes
* There is another in this collection of around 18 pieces, but I have mislaid it: it must be resting in Father Ted's account, I think. (None is narratated by a woman.)
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
9 March
Now, don't get me wrong, because Allen has written some great screen parts for women, but I'm thinking - as I do incessantly, thoughts feverishing racing around my head, trying to catch up with each other and sometimes crashing - about this collection Mere Anarchy yet again.
What does he read (or hear) that he writes such things in these stories for his male characters to write (or say) about women*?:
* The twin dirigibles that stretched her silk blouse to the breaking point
* Hoping to revel in tableaux of raven-tressed sinners looking like they’d come directly from the pages of a Victoria’s Secret catalogue as they undulated, seminude, in sulphur and chains
* Once she wiggled her award-winning posterior into the lift
Not, by any means, that sex - particularly oral sex - hasn't always been a preoccupation since Allen's earliest films (such as Bananas (1971), Sleeper (1973), Love and Death (1975), and Annie Hall (1977)), but maybe, despite the humour (which is maybe a bit too unsubtle), it's that it passes by quickly onscreen as cheeky, rather than as smutty or prurient...
End-notes
* There is another in this collection of around 18 pieces, but I have mislaid it: it must be resting in Father Ted's account, I think. (None is narratated by a woman.)
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Mystery Worshipper: Mr Ricarno
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
8 March 2012
Having heard to-night about some mystery drinkers, really from CAMRA, but who had masqueraded as members of a rugby club in the region, I cannot resist posting a link to this item, which I have happened to discover and has a synergy:
http://ship-of-fools.com/mystery/2005/1134.html
If only to tell me that there may be more reasons than the supposedly obvious one why someone attends a service, buys a ticket for a concert, or has a meal...
And, although it does not appear to work for all numbers, if you edit the link to make it 1133, you get another visit to another church (but I haven't - and probably never will - figured out (pun intended!) why 1132 works, but 13 does not)...
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
8 March 2012
Having heard to-night about some mystery drinkers, really from CAMRA, but who had masqueraded as members of a rugby club in the region, I cannot resist posting a link to this item, which I have happened to discover and has a synergy:
http://ship-of-fools.com/mystery/2005/1134.html
If only to tell me that there may be more reasons than the supposedly obvious one why someone attends a service, buys a ticket for a concert, or has a meal...
And, although it does not appear to work for all numbers, if you edit the link to make it 1133, you get another visit to another church (but I haven't - and probably never will - figured out (pun intended!) why 1132 works, but 13 does not)...
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
LENT LUNCH - 23 MARCH
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
8 March
Some people's take on the feeding of the five thousand is that a little boy shared his lunch-box.
Mine on reading the notice that advises me of this meal is to mourn the failure to use the word Lenten, because my understanding of a lent lunch is a sandwich that you somehow expected to get back, and I feel a richness and a beauty in this specific adjective for the church season of Lent - the word aurally has a better ring to it than the monosyallabic Lent: 'we welcome to you our service at this Lenten time'.
Yet it is the church itself that is turning its back on this word, because who else, other than the various denominations and some charities, has Lent lunches?
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
8 March
Some people's take on the feeding of the five thousand is that a little boy shared his lunch-box.
Mine on reading the notice that advises me of this meal is to mourn the failure to use the word Lenten, because my understanding of a lent lunch is a sandwich that you somehow expected to get back, and I feel a richness and a beauty in this specific adjective for the church season of Lent - the word aurally has a better ring to it than the monosyallabic Lent: 'we welcome to you our service at this Lenten time'.
Yet it is the church itself that is turning its back on this word, because who else, other than the various denominations and some charities, has Lent lunches?
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Wednesday, 7 March 2012
What was it with Sibelius and the milk pudding?* (2)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
7 March
And old Jean had a thing not just about gâteaux, but milk puddings, notably tapioca:
Of course, he tried to give the game away, by writing a whole programmatic work in praise of it, but - probably only in a misreading (his handwriting was worse than mine) brought on by incredulity, rather than an attempt to suppress his message - it ended up as being interpreted to depict a forest spirit called Tapio and his realm, hence Tapiola.
No wonder it was his last work, for his publisher asked him for clarification of its themes, and he then had to struggle to write four lines of verse to turn his appreciation of one of his life's delights into some other wretched evocation of Finnish mythology!
End-notes
* Oh, I know that it's a formulation little better than Can I get...?, but it was done with thought, with deliberation, with Love.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
7 March
And old Jean had a thing not just about gâteaux, but milk puddings, notably tapioca:
Of course, he tried to give the game away, by writing a whole programmatic work in praise of it, but - probably only in a misreading (his handwriting was worse than mine) brought on by incredulity, rather than an attempt to suppress his message - it ended up as being interpreted to depict a forest spirit called Tapio and his realm, hence Tapiola.
No wonder it was his last work, for his publisher asked him for clarification of its themes, and he then had to struggle to write four lines of verse to turn his appreciation of one of his life's delights into some other wretched evocation of Finnish mythology!
End-notes
* Oh, I know that it's a formulation little better than Can I get...?, but it was done with thought, with deliberation, with Love.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Sunday, 4 March 2012
What is this fascination with the music of Adès? (2)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
4 March
An achievement whose performance, I feel, deserves celebration, by contrast, is that of a piece that I happened to hear (and turned out probably only to have missed the beginning of and a little bit twenty minutes on) as part of Music Nation on Radio 3 last night:
It was Surrogate Cities by Heiner Goebbels, called a composition for orchestra, and broadcast live from The Royal Festival Hall.
In default of saying anything more meaningful now, here is a link to the composer's web-site:
http://www.heinergoebbels.com/en/archive/works/complete/view/46
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
4 March
An achievement whose performance, I feel, deserves celebration, by contrast, is that of a piece that I happened to hear (and turned out probably only to have missed the beginning of and a little bit twenty minutes on) as part of Music Nation on Radio 3 last night:
It was Surrogate Cities by Heiner Goebbels, called a composition for orchestra, and broadcast live from The Royal Festival Hall.
In default of saying anything more meaningful now, here is a link to the composer's web-site:
http://www.heinergoebbels.com/en/archive/works/complete/view/46
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Saturday, 3 March 2012
James Bowman pronounces: Most Handel operas have stupid plots
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
3 March
I'm not sure (maybe, now, he, too, isn't sure) why he had to share this opinion to introduce a duet from, I think, the last Act of Riccardo Primo, but, he excepted only Giulio Cesare and Ariodante.
Which, I believe, is a little hard on:
Acis and Galatea (about a poster for which he made another joke) - why shouldn't a jealous giant, in love with one, kill the other?
Teseo, because Medea is such a great, wild and torn character, and the things that she does are of legendary status, and what is wrong with the Theseus story?
Likewise Alcestis, for why should not Ruggiero, very much modelled on Odysseus and his wanderings, be unwittingly enslaved by enchantments - a paradigm for love, after all?
And so one could go on - I don't disagree with Bowman that the music is great, but where is the evidence that the libretto / story is so unworthy that Handel must have composed with an eye to the money, not the power of the piece*?
For, if the da capo arias really did have such little merit in terms of a story not worth advancing, I really do find it hard to believe that Handel's audience would, throughout his opera career, have been so often duped. Whereas I honestly believe that word of mouth and personal recommendation, then as now, are so much a part of whether a run closes early that the success that he enjoyed should give us pause in the face of Bowman's dimissal:
Really, when Bowman himself boasted of how many Handel roles he has played, isn't he, not Handel, the cynical one, if he thinks them so much trash...?
End-notes
* Is the opinon, one wonders, based on anything better than having seen the highly unflattering portrait of the composer in Farinelli (il Castrato) (1994)?
(The film gives, by contrast, much evidence of the beauty of the music and of Farinell's (imagined) voice, against the background of hard-nosed competition and ruthless business deals, the depiction (whether or not invention) of the latter of which may easily influence for the worse against our notion of Handel the man.)
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
3 March
I'm not sure (maybe, now, he, too, isn't sure) why he had to share this opinion to introduce a duet from, I think, the last Act of Riccardo Primo, but, he excepted only Giulio Cesare and Ariodante.
Which, I believe, is a little hard on:
Acis and Galatea (about a poster for which he made another joke) - why shouldn't a jealous giant, in love with one, kill the other?
Teseo, because Medea is such a great, wild and torn character, and the things that she does are of legendary status, and what is wrong with the Theseus story?
Likewise Alcestis, for why should not Ruggiero, very much modelled on Odysseus and his wanderings, be unwittingly enslaved by enchantments - a paradigm for love, after all?
And so one could go on - I don't disagree with Bowman that the music is great, but where is the evidence that the libretto / story is so unworthy that Handel must have composed with an eye to the money, not the power of the piece*?
For, if the da capo arias really did have such little merit in terms of a story not worth advancing, I really do find it hard to believe that Handel's audience would, throughout his opera career, have been so often duped. Whereas I honestly believe that word of mouth and personal recommendation, then as now, are so much a part of whether a run closes early that the success that he enjoyed should give us pause in the face of Bowman's dimissal:
Really, when Bowman himself boasted of how many Handel roles he has played, isn't he, not Handel, the cynical one, if he thinks them so much trash...?
End-notes
* Is the opinon, one wonders, based on anything better than having seen the highly unflattering portrait of the composer in Farinelli (il Castrato) (1994)?
(The film gives, by contrast, much evidence of the beauty of the music and of Farinell's (imagined) voice, against the background of hard-nosed competition and ruthless business deals, the depiction (whether or not invention) of the latter of which may easily influence for the worse against our notion of Handel the man.)
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
STOP PRESS: Beat-Crazed Boffins trounced by Daniella (1)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
3 March
Alas, that whole Westbrook / East End scene has trashed all the planning for the gig!
In other words, the promoter has got twitchy about 'the substance issue' with which - let's face it - the Boffins had always been inextricably connected.
So he's itchy, because he thinks that the backers will have the rug pulled by the bankers, who, maybe, might be looking to a bonus other than in the form of unsaleable gig tickets, and who, in turn, are in hock to God knows whom who owns X who should honour some favours to Hugh Hefner and / or his estate.
Sorry, BCB following, but that - and, admittedly, this is only the latest - appears to be the terminus, the station where Tolstoy died and the Tolstoyans took over...
That said, the desperate and the downright depraved can now go here in search of news of what Bray King (one-time fight promoter, and now would-be manager of the putative Boffins) has to say about A Tall!
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
3 March
Alas, that whole Westbrook / East End scene has trashed all the planning for the gig!
In other words, the promoter has got twitchy about 'the substance issue' with which - let's face it - the Boffins had always been inextricably connected.
So he's itchy, because he thinks that the backers will have the rug pulled by the bankers, who, maybe, might be looking to a bonus other than in the form of unsaleable gig tickets, and who, in turn, are in hock to God knows whom who owns X who should honour some favours to Hugh Hefner and / or his estate.
Sorry, BCB following, but that - and, admittedly, this is only the latest - appears to be the terminus, the station where Tolstoy died and the Tolstoyans took over...
That said, the desperate and the downright depraved can now go here in search of news of what Bray King (one-time fight promoter, and now would-be manager of the putative Boffins) has to say about A Tall!
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Naomi Campbell performs her Sonata for Piano (according to Samuel VII and YouTube)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
3 March
And a cracking performance it is!
Shunning designer wear for a frock borrowed (on the sly) from Katie Derham, Campbell cuts a stunning figure, as she sits silently, contemplating the black interleaved with the white.
Then, in a shot of her actually at the piano, we see her hesitate, before unleashing this piece of compressed energy. For the entire sonata, although in two quite different movements, lasts just 15 seconds, without repeats. (With repeats, which are intermeshed in a complicated way, it could take days, which is longer than can be uploaded to the relevant web-site.)
In a naive act, as if of rage, we are reminded of nothing so much as Bartók's Allegro barbaro, and then, in the contrasting mood, of his well-known nuance for 'night music'. How good, then, that Campbell turned down, in favour of this work, a commission for a Theme and 57 Variations on an Original Melody by Thomas Adès!
Just the first in a strand dubbed 'Supermodels play Sonatas'*.
End-notes
* Although, personally, I'm with Nietzsche still - and waiting for the hypermodel to emerge.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
3 March
And a cracking performance it is!
Shunning designer wear for a frock borrowed (on the sly) from Katie Derham, Campbell cuts a stunning figure, as she sits silently, contemplating the black interleaved with the white.
Then, in a shot of her actually at the piano, we see her hesitate, before unleashing this piece of compressed energy. For the entire sonata, although in two quite different movements, lasts just 15 seconds, without repeats. (With repeats, which are intermeshed in a complicated way, it could take days, which is longer than can be uploaded to the relevant web-site.)
In a naive act, as if of rage, we are reminded of nothing so much as Bartók's Allegro barbaro, and then, in the contrasting mood, of his well-known nuance for 'night music'. How good, then, that Campbell turned down, in favour of this work, a commission for a Theme and 57 Variations on an Original Melody by Thomas Adès!
Just the first in a strand dubbed 'Supermodels play Sonatas'*.
End-notes
* Although, personally, I'm with Nietzsche still - and waiting for the hypermodel to emerge.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Complex?
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
3 March
Complex?
'They've got it all wrong,
About the Don'
(So says he):
'They're the ones who demand -
They want him'
(Such his view)
'They truly stand in need -
They want him'
(Thus he observes)
At the same time,
In a basement in Amsterdam,
He cannot deny:
The desire to inseminate,
To make pregnant,
To give her one!
Priapic, his lust
For intercourse
Defies Leporello's notes,
Numbers, logic,
Save the logic
Of genetic lines
Rutting in the glade,
Seducing another's wife,
All about passing it on,
Passing on the impulse
To pass it on,
And on again
© Copyright Belston Night Works 2012
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
3 March
Complex?
'They've got it all wrong,
About the Don'
(So says he):
'They're the ones who demand -
They want him'
(Such his view)
'They truly stand in need -
They want him'
(Thus he observes)
At the same time,
In a basement in Amsterdam,
He cannot deny:
The desire to inseminate,
To make pregnant,
To give her one!
Priapic, his lust
For intercourse
Defies Leporello's notes,
Numbers, logic,
Save the logic
Of genetic lines
Rutting in the glade,
Seducing another's wife,
All about passing it on,
Passing on the impulse
To pass it on,
And on again
© Copyright Belston Night Works 2012
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Friday, 2 March 2012
Somehow I blinked... (2)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
3 March
I quote, rather hurriedly, from http://www.takeonecff.com/about:
The Official Cambridge Film Festival & Arts Picturehouse Review
Take One is an independent film journal run by volunteers. It evolved in 2011 from the original Film Festival Daily as the official source of news, reviews and interviews on all films screened during the Cambridge Film Festival. The first hard copy issue of Take One was distributed around Cambridge on September 8th, and the website is set to run throughout the year. We are in the process of publishing unseen gems from CFF 2011 including interviews with John Hurt, Gary Oldman, Paddy Considine and Nicholas Winding Refn – not to mention friends you maybe haven’t met yet such as Jos Stelling and Simon Rumley.
We will be covering many events in Cambridge including the Silent Film Festival and Cambridge African Film Festival, keeping you abreast of all things Picturehouse and reporting back from events and film festivals around the world.
We pride ourselves in being quotable but un-hip, informative but not smug, and we won’t spoil endings. Stick around, chums.
QED
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
3 March
I quote, rather hurriedly, from http://www.takeonecff.com/about:
The Official Cambridge Film Festival & Arts Picturehouse Review
Take One is an independent film journal run by volunteers. It evolved in 2011 from the original Film Festival Daily as the official source of news, reviews and interviews on all films screened during the Cambridge Film Festival. The first hard copy issue of Take One was distributed around Cambridge on September 8th, and the website is set to run throughout the year. We are in the process of publishing unseen gems from CFF 2011 including interviews with John Hurt, Gary Oldman, Paddy Considine and Nicholas Winding Refn – not to mention friends you maybe haven’t met yet such as Jos Stelling and Simon Rumley.
We will be covering many events in Cambridge including the Silent Film Festival and Cambridge African Film Festival, keeping you abreast of all things Picturehouse and reporting back from events and film festivals around the world.
We pride ourselves in being quotable but un-hip, informative but not smug, and we won’t spoil endings. Stick around, chums.
QED
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Never Let Me Glow - Ishiguro's Nocturnes
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
3 March
I had more than a hand in critiquing this set of five stories (subtitled 'Five Stories of Music and Nightfall'), which is posted, under my friend's pseudonym, as a review on Amazon®:
One reviewer said that this book is not a `miscellaneous collection of unpublished scraps', but it is - why else mention it?
Another reviewer praised the book this way: `The five brief novellas of Nocturnes are intense and beautiful [read as shallow, boring, banal, shapeless and colourless]; they are packed with detail [read as inconsequential information, senselessly repeated], never waste the readers' attention [read as continuous amazement about oneself for continuing to read on], and are entirely engrossing [read as feeling that doing the dishes would be time better spent]'.
A third reviewer soberly observed: `Had my A level student son written in the same way, I would have made him do a re-write.' The stories are juvenile, and so is the writing.
One other reviewer suggested killing time by reading the stories `in quick succession in one go. Given their pacing, this seems like a manageable task over a long languorous weekend afternoon'.
In fact, there is only one way to experience this book: reading it aloud, doing humorous voices for Ishiguro's feeble characters, and pointing out all his poor style on the way. A hilarious and enjoyable form of entertainment for many an hour!
As a one-star review, it's done well by being read: it has won no stars at all of its own, but it is better than expected for 0 out of 8 people not to have found it helpful (i.e. at least 8 people have looked at it and been bothered enough to want to respond).
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
3 March
I had more than a hand in critiquing this set of five stories (subtitled 'Five Stories of Music and Nightfall'), which is posted, under my friend's pseudonym, as a review on Amazon®:
One reviewer said that this book is not a `miscellaneous collection of unpublished scraps', but it is - why else mention it?
Another reviewer praised the book this way: `The five brief novellas of Nocturnes are intense and beautiful [read as shallow, boring, banal, shapeless and colourless]; they are packed with detail [read as inconsequential information, senselessly repeated], never waste the readers' attention [read as continuous amazement about oneself for continuing to read on], and are entirely engrossing [read as feeling that doing the dishes would be time better spent]'.
A third reviewer soberly observed: `Had my A level student son written in the same way, I would have made him do a re-write.' The stories are juvenile, and so is the writing.
One other reviewer suggested killing time by reading the stories `in quick succession in one go. Given their pacing, this seems like a manageable task over a long languorous weekend afternoon'.
In fact, there is only one way to experience this book: reading it aloud, doing humorous voices for Ishiguro's feeble characters, and pointing out all his poor style on the way. A hilarious and enjoyable form of entertainment for many an hour!
As a one-star review, it's done well by being read: it has won no stars at all of its own, but it is better than expected for 0 out of 8 people not to have found it helpful (i.e. at least 8 people have looked at it and been bothered enough to want to respond).
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
A letter to The Editor
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
3 March
Dear Cedric
The letter is probably Z, since it is more versatile on the board than Q or J, and my handkerchiefs are accordingly monogrammed with it. (They wanted to monograph them, but I refused, unless they gave them a free mammagram: which they refused.)
I had a telegram from Tom, but he had telegraphed in vain - 'twas ever in vain with Tom, after dear Viv, and it is now just an Unreal City in which he cannot believe death has undone so many. (Dr ZenZen has charge of his case now, after taking over the left-property concession at Victoria. [He wanted the right-property one, but he had sealed a playing-card in the envelope, rather than his bid].)
Victoria sends her love, and, forgiveably, spends less time with Virginia now after that incident with the water, so the hours hang heavy, unless she goes to the lighthouse, or calls on her kid brother Jacob in his room. At least he has a room of his own!
Ed tells me - a little too candidly even for my club's steward - that he 'wants to get his end away', but maybe he'll sublimate that in another novel. I'd like to believe that there is a visual quality in his prose, as everyone else says, but I'd rather buy ivory from a merchant in the street!
Anyway, that's a round-up of the set. (Moeran had tried to buy the set, saying that, after all, he, too, was known by his initials, but his Egyptian funds fell through.)
Yours dutifully
Bertie
PS I did want to get this to the post to-night, but, at the head of the stairs (or was it the stead of the hares?), I was blunged into parkness, everything became a blur, and I had visions of falling, my head mashed to a pulp on the newel-posts.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
3 March
Dear Cedric
The letter is probably Z, since it is more versatile on the board than Q or J, and my handkerchiefs are accordingly monogrammed with it. (They wanted to monograph them, but I refused, unless they gave them a free mammagram: which they refused.)
I had a telegram from Tom, but he had telegraphed in vain - 'twas ever in vain with Tom, after dear Viv, and it is now just an Unreal City in which he cannot believe death has undone so many. (Dr ZenZen has charge of his case now, after taking over the left-property concession at Victoria. [He wanted the right-property one, but he had sealed a playing-card in the envelope, rather than his bid].)
Victoria sends her love, and, forgiveably, spends less time with Virginia now after that incident with the water, so the hours hang heavy, unless she goes to the lighthouse, or calls on her kid brother Jacob in his room. At least he has a room of his own!
Ed tells me - a little too candidly even for my club's steward - that he 'wants to get his end away', but maybe he'll sublimate that in another novel. I'd like to believe that there is a visual quality in his prose, as everyone else says, but I'd rather buy ivory from a merchant in the street!
Anyway, that's a round-up of the set. (Moeran had tried to buy the set, saying that, after all, he, too, was known by his initials, but his Egyptian funds fell through.)
Yours dutifully
Bertie
PS I did want to get this to the post to-night, but, at the head of the stairs (or was it the stead of the hares?), I was blunged into parkness, everything became a blur, and I had visions of falling, my head mashed to a pulp on the newel-posts.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Thursday, 1 March 2012
True Stories (1986)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
2 March
Not (essentially because, ironically, of the story) much of a film (and I doubt that I would revisit it to be sure*), but it gave rise to what should be admitted is a great album (some people might like to say the same about The Mission (1986), released the same year, but I think that is probably unfair).
My best friend from school, for reasons that were quite hidden to me, had - probably still has - a great liking for Martinu's** music. A few years ago, and a few years on from then, he played me some favoured orchestral composition of his when we were at university, and, admittedly not intending to be complimentary, said that it sounded like film music to me. (He found, I seem to remember, some way of interpreting the comment that questioned whether that was actually a bad thing.)
I vaguely heard the concert in the first part of to-night's Through the Night announced by the very safe voice of Susan Sharpe (on the night shift yet again!), but it was only when what turned out to be Martinu's Symphony No. 1*** was playing that it struck me that it could be accompanying some action that I probably wouldn't want to pay to see at the cinema (not my sort of film), and I went to www.bbc.co.uk/radio3 to be sure that this composer was on the bill of fare.
End-notes
* Even if a whole load of Garrison Keillor (and Bill Bryson's take on small-town America) has flowed under the bridge since then. (And, yes, I do know that this is Texas, not the mid-West!)
That said, I notice (which is the reason for all this) that I missed a film last year about and showing David Byrne in live performance, and have added the DVD to my basket - somewhere - for when I feel like spending a fiver...
** Radio 3 doesn't bother with the accent on his name on its web-page, so I am not troubled to go somewhere else, only to find that I cannot reproduce it anyway (or is that the one on his Christian name?).
*** Elsewhere (work in progress) I shall be asking about how we refer to kings and queens.
In the meantime, this convention of calling works by titles such as 'Concerto No. 3' (which no one respects when talking about them - but, then, we live in a world where Tracy Chevalier made up a name for a painting and got away with it) suddenly seems very odd.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
2 March
Not (essentially because, ironically, of the story) much of a film (and I doubt that I would revisit it to be sure*), but it gave rise to what should be admitted is a great album (some people might like to say the same about The Mission (1986), released the same year, but I think that is probably unfair).
My best friend from school, for reasons that were quite hidden to me, had - probably still has - a great liking for Martinu's** music. A few years ago, and a few years on from then, he played me some favoured orchestral composition of his when we were at university, and, admittedly not intending to be complimentary, said that it sounded like film music to me. (He found, I seem to remember, some way of interpreting the comment that questioned whether that was actually a bad thing.)
I vaguely heard the concert in the first part of to-night's Through the Night announced by the very safe voice of Susan Sharpe (on the night shift yet again!), but it was only when what turned out to be Martinu's Symphony No. 1*** was playing that it struck me that it could be accompanying some action that I probably wouldn't want to pay to see at the cinema (not my sort of film), and I went to www.bbc.co.uk/radio3 to be sure that this composer was on the bill of fare.
End-notes
* Even if a whole load of Garrison Keillor (and Bill Bryson's take on small-town America) has flowed under the bridge since then. (And, yes, I do know that this is Texas, not the mid-West!)
That said, I notice (which is the reason for all this) that I missed a film last year about and showing David Byrne in live performance, and have added the DVD to my basket - somewhere - for when I feel like spending a fiver...
** Radio 3 doesn't bother with the accent on his name on its web-page, so I am not troubled to go somewhere else, only to find that I cannot reproduce it anyway (or is that the one on his Christian name?).
*** Elsewhere (work in progress) I shall be asking about how we refer to kings and queens.
In the meantime, this convention of calling works by titles such as 'Concerto No. 3' (which no one respects when talking about them - but, then, we live in a world where Tracy Chevalier made up a name for a painting and got away with it) suddenly seems very odd.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Russell's Pate and degenerate languages
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
2 March
Of course, the apostrophe is slowly, itself, in danger of slipping into oblivion, but it is only there to make the point:
We do not live in very literate times, and much is passed (or, as some would write, past) on by word of mouth* (a strange phrase, if one stops to think about it), so what is envisaged by the argot (call it what you will) in which the novel Riddley Walker's author has a future time and its notion of its past related is a disjunction between some sounds and what saying them has come to mean.
Apart from the immersive feel of impenetrability that the language seems to give until you have a chance to hear even Will Self himself read a section of it - which you may be able to do on one of the web-sites dedicated to the late Russell Hoban (sa4qe.blogspot.co.uk is as good a place as any from which to find some of the others) - and then realize that there is a way through (other than gritting one's teeth) and there is so much more besides to explore.
End-notes
* Even a very good announcer on Radio 3 talked about, very recently, Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale: I have said elsewhere that the same unstressed dead vowel in a and the can make them sound indistinguishable (which is because the 'th' sound is the unclear one of the pair, unlike the one in that).
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
2 March
Of course, the apostrophe is slowly, itself, in danger of slipping into oblivion, but it is only there to make the point:
We do not live in very literate times, and much is passed (or, as some would write, past) on by word of mouth* (a strange phrase, if one stops to think about it), so what is envisaged by the argot (call it what you will) in which the novel Riddley Walker's author has a future time and its notion of its past related is a disjunction between some sounds and what saying them has come to mean.
Apart from the immersive feel of impenetrability that the language seems to give until you have a chance to hear even Will Self himself read a section of it - which you may be able to do on one of the web-sites dedicated to the late Russell Hoban (sa4qe.blogspot.co.uk is as good a place as any from which to find some of the others) - and then realize that there is a way through (other than gritting one's teeth) and there is so much more besides to explore.
End-notes
* Even a very good announcer on Radio 3 talked about, very recently, Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale: I have said elsewhere that the same unstressed dead vowel in a and the can make them sound indistinguishable (which is because the 'th' sound is the unclear one of the pair, unlike the one in that).
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
The Great Composers: the stories that amuse us, but do not edify them or us
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
2 March
Announcing Beethoven's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 3, they almost invariably tell you this story about the premiere:
A pupil of his was asked to turn the pages, but was aghast that there was almost nothing written on them.
Are we ever told who the pupil is? I don't recall it, if so. So from whose account, save the pupil's, would we know that this happened (or is there a claim that Beethoven confirmed the story)? Could the audience itself possibly have known, by looking at the manuscript paper?
More importantly, how does it help us to approach the work and listening to the solo part to know that, if the story is to be believed, Beethoven had allegedly gone before an audience to play it without having written it out? Even if he had, aren't all of Concertos Nos 3 to 5, at least, in the established repertoire?
So does this account, if it tells us anything, inform us more about our own prejudices and pre-suppositions than about whether Beethoven was so behind with things that he had failed to get something down on time? After all, improvised cadenzas were the stuff of Haydn's day, and of Mozart's, and we love that story of how the latter supposedly wrote a trio whilst playing skittles:
How rare - or common - would it have been for Mozart to play a solo part that he had not committed to paper? Can we even have that notion in our mind when this story about Beethoven is trotted before us once more? It almost compels us to feel that he - in the slang idiom - was 'chancing it', was 'winging it', when maybe he was doing nothing of the sort that was unusual.
You could very well look at the prompt cards that experienced and very professional after-dinner speakers use, and maybe the key-words would say nothing to you, but wouldn't you judge the quality of the preparation evidenced in the speech by hearing it, not by looking at cards that are not meant to mean anything except to the person holding them?
So - and I truly think so - this account of the premiere of that concerto just needs dumping. Unless we know how the performance was received by that contemporary audience - and whether its members detected shortcomings that could be laid at the door of poor groundwork - so what, frankly? And, in any case we value Beethoven for the works that he left us, not for his vices or virtues as a soloist whose efforts, in that domain, we will never hear...
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
2 March
Announcing Beethoven's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 3, they almost invariably tell you this story about the premiere:
A pupil of his was asked to turn the pages, but was aghast that there was almost nothing written on them.
Are we ever told who the pupil is? I don't recall it, if so. So from whose account, save the pupil's, would we know that this happened (or is there a claim that Beethoven confirmed the story)? Could the audience itself possibly have known, by looking at the manuscript paper?
More importantly, how does it help us to approach the work and listening to the solo part to know that, if the story is to be believed, Beethoven had allegedly gone before an audience to play it without having written it out? Even if he had, aren't all of Concertos Nos 3 to 5, at least, in the established repertoire?
So does this account, if it tells us anything, inform us more about our own prejudices and pre-suppositions than about whether Beethoven was so behind with things that he had failed to get something down on time? After all, improvised cadenzas were the stuff of Haydn's day, and of Mozart's, and we love that story of how the latter supposedly wrote a trio whilst playing skittles:
How rare - or common - would it have been for Mozart to play a solo part that he had not committed to paper? Can we even have that notion in our mind when this story about Beethoven is trotted before us once more? It almost compels us to feel that he - in the slang idiom - was 'chancing it', was 'winging it', when maybe he was doing nothing of the sort that was unusual.
You could very well look at the prompt cards that experienced and very professional after-dinner speakers use, and maybe the key-words would say nothing to you, but wouldn't you judge the quality of the preparation evidenced in the speech by hearing it, not by looking at cards that are not meant to mean anything except to the person holding them?
So - and I truly think so - this account of the premiere of that concerto just needs dumping. Unless we know how the performance was received by that contemporary audience - and whether its members detected shortcomings that could be laid at the door of poor groundwork - so what, frankly? And, in any case we value Beethoven for the works that he left us, not for his vices or virtues as a soloist whose efforts, in that domain, we will never hear...
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Beat-Crazed Boffins re-form for a final bash! (according to Samuel VII)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
1 March
Actually, they haven't so much re-formed as reformed, so their gig will be of a rather penitential nature, in kind memory of all those monitors (not of the scaly, four-legged variety) that they have hacked to pieces in previous 'on-stage benders' (Daily Scum).
Catch them if you can - the venue for the gig and other relevant details (such as blood-type) are available to all those who can hack into the deeply hidden treasure-chest, just waiting to be found by the lucky few at www.beatcrazedboffins.org.uk/timian...
For the hard of hearing* (you soon will be):
NB Go here for the latest!
End-notes
* Surely no longer a PC phrase (i.e. only compatible with use on a Mac)?
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
1 March
Actually, they haven't so much re-formed as reformed, so their gig will be of a rather penitential nature, in kind memory of all those monitors (not of the scaly, four-legged variety) that they have hacked to pieces in previous 'on-stage benders' (Daily Scum).
Catch them if you can - the venue for the gig and other relevant details (such as blood-type) are available to all those who can hack into the deeply hidden treasure-chest, just waiting to be found by the lucky few at www.beatcrazedboffins.org.uk/timian...
For the hard of hearing* (you soon will be):
www.beatcrazedboffins.org.uk/timian
NB Go here for the latest!
End-notes
* Surely no longer a PC phrase (i.e. only compatible with use on a Mac)?
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)