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12 August
As an enthusiast, I cannot help watching What's New, Pussycat? (1965), and wonder what it would have been, if Woody Allen's script from the swinging sixties had been kept intact.
There are traces of what seems his humour in exchanges such as when Victor, played by Allen, is told I can't make love with a person in the closet!, and he retorts to ask how many people, then, does she need in it? If it was his entire screenplay, which I'm sure that I gather that it was not, would that have had a chase with go-karts towards the end, before a muted non-sequitur finale?
As it stands, the plot takes us from A to B just about, but probably the most entertaining aspect of it is from when Ursula Andress literally drops into shot, exuding unashamed sex appeal, albeit as an implausible parachutist with what others like to call 'no back story' - what Thurber called Sex ex machina. Otherwise, that is when the film itself descends into the weakest and most stupid of farces, probably pretty unworthy of the relative sophistication of what went before.
When still in Paris, we see little but interiors, the most 'charming' being Victor's artist's garret, complete with tree-trunk staircase, but the most winning outside shots are of where Dr Fassbender (Peter Sellers) and his Wagnerian wife live, and are having an argument about his relations with patients at the outset. Sellers is terrifically funny, with his immaculate timing and delivery, not least in this scene, where Allen's writing shows.
Allen himself has limited opportunities to shine, though he does, and Romy Schneider excels in a trio with Capucine and Paula Prentiss, all after the body of Michael James (Peter O'Toole). O'Toole's comedic flair, as more of a straight man than Sellers, is also to the fore as this suitably unreal sex-magnet, and they bring this skit on sex and attraction up from two stars to three.
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Saturday, 11 August 2012
Turing tested
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12 August
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12 August
Turing tested
For Lucy
Can we can safely say
That, not having
An optical computer,
Alan Turing could have been
On the German side
Without a difference?:
The Allies had, not just him,
But secure code-books,
A machine that Axis hadn't seen
(Without Enigma's flaw),
And the Germans not knowing
Enigma and Lorenz cracked
So the Germans had their pride,
Relying on technology whose
Non-self-encryption
Left them more open,
And, never knowing the truth,
Could only have set Turing
A tougher task: to break
The Allies' code,
Probably not listening
If he challenged their
Self-assurance
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Responding like Shostakovich
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11 August
It was decided to give Dmitri S. a hrad* time, as a delayed response, to Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (which I have not knowingly heard any more than an extract from (long frogotten**), nor do I know where M. is).
Let's say that Stalin took offence at the work. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't (though he could have done: he heard things, and he didn't always like - or condemn - them), but it was the official line.
DS took the official way of reply, saying that he was responding to just criticism, and the work disappeared, I gather, for three decades, with DS having a hard time and having to abandon his formalist ways (in public, anyway, even if he was composing his string quartets on the sly).
All this, it is clear enough, is happening on the surface - publicly and officially, the work (and DS with it) was condemned, so no point defending it, but does it tell us anything?
Yes, maybe a bit, because if you think that this posting is crap, you can add a coment to that effect. If, because it is not the Soviet might against DS, I just call you a troll***, does that mean anything in any objective terms, or is it just a label, like reactionary, liberalism or - that wonder of wonders for a fairly meaningless phrase - political correctness?
Obviously, it means that I disagree violently not with what you have said (but with you!), and want you to go away, a stage on from finding your message in my spam folder and, deciding that it is spam, deleting it. If I were hacking your page and putting anti-Islamic or -Pakistani slogans on there, maybe, and maybe a call to the police, before you get blamed for some sort of incitement, but what about trying to tell you that perhaps you are wrong?
Really a response to just criticism to lash out with You're trolling my blog!, because you can't stand the heat in the kitchen? After all, who lit the flames with his or her blog to begin with - and isn't it there for anyone to read and maybe disagree with? If a reader responds by trying to engage with the arguments and refute them, that isn't wrecking activity in my mind, but, more importantly, the response to that criticism (not accepting it as possibly just, just trolling) may be indicative of insecurity and an inability to accept the hypocrisy of the position argued for, of not practising what one preaches.
And as for political correctness, if we mean using the right words, but then actually 'queer bashing' with the best of 'em, then that's just whited sepulchres, hypocrisy, and a bogus party-line, seeking to get the minority vote...
End-notes
* Sorry, not thinking about Prague - honestly!
** I shall keep that in, too, never having managed to wrap my fingers around that one before.
** I don't know who originated this faintly idiotic description, probably someone who's never read Peer Gynt, but my sister and I (at a lunch-stop by rail between Bergen and Oslo) met a troll in 1973 and were awarded a certificate, so they can't be all bad!
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11 August
It was decided to give Dmitri S. a hrad* time, as a delayed response, to Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (which I have not knowingly heard any more than an extract from (long frogotten**), nor do I know where M. is).
Let's say that Stalin took offence at the work. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't (though he could have done: he heard things, and he didn't always like - or condemn - them), but it was the official line.
DS took the official way of reply, saying that he was responding to just criticism, and the work disappeared, I gather, for three decades, with DS having a hard time and having to abandon his formalist ways (in public, anyway, even if he was composing his string quartets on the sly).
All this, it is clear enough, is happening on the surface - publicly and officially, the work (and DS with it) was condemned, so no point defending it, but does it tell us anything?
Yes, maybe a bit, because if you think that this posting is crap, you can add a coment to that effect. If, because it is not the Soviet might against DS, I just call you a troll***, does that mean anything in any objective terms, or is it just a label, like reactionary, liberalism or - that wonder of wonders for a fairly meaningless phrase - political correctness?
Obviously, it means that I disagree violently not with what you have said (but with you!), and want you to go away, a stage on from finding your message in my spam folder and, deciding that it is spam, deleting it. If I were hacking your page and putting anti-Islamic or -Pakistani slogans on there, maybe, and maybe a call to the police, before you get blamed for some sort of incitement, but what about trying to tell you that perhaps you are wrong?
Really a response to just criticism to lash out with You're trolling my blog!, because you can't stand the heat in the kitchen? After all, who lit the flames with his or her blog to begin with - and isn't it there for anyone to read and maybe disagree with? If a reader responds by trying to engage with the arguments and refute them, that isn't wrecking activity in my mind, but, more importantly, the response to that criticism (not accepting it as possibly just, just trolling) may be indicative of insecurity and an inability to accept the hypocrisy of the position argued for, of not practising what one preaches.
And as for political correctness, if we mean using the right words, but then actually 'queer bashing' with the best of 'em, then that's just whited sepulchres, hypocrisy, and a bogus party-line, seeking to get the minority vote...
End-notes
* Sorry, not thinking about Prague - honestly!
** I shall keep that in, too, never having managed to wrap my fingers around that one before.
** I don't know who originated this faintly idiotic description, probably someone who's never read Peer Gynt, but my sister and I (at a lunch-stop by rail between Bergen and Oslo) met a troll in 1973 and were awarded a certificate, so they can't be all bad!
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Friday, 10 August 2012
Performance in proposal: Bach's Mass in B Minor
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10 August
I heard much of the re-broadcast Prom in which this work was given at the weekend.
There, they took a break after the Gloria, and resumed with the Credo, but this afternoon proceeded with only a few words from the presenter folowing the applause at the end of what was its first half.
But, as I queried recently in an informal chat with one of the directors of a festival (which had done likewise), it may be the organizers' and the audience's idea, after around one hour of music, to resume after tea, wine, cake or strawberries, but is that best for the work?
I think not: I think that the Mass in B Minor (BWV 232) builds, and that, if people can turn up for a play and find that the performance runs for 90 minutes to 2 hours without an interval, they could and should with this work, rather than interposing the trivial things entailed in an interval.
With the St Matthew Passion (BWV 244) (I have a posting called Meditations on Matthew), however, I do not think so, because it is in two Parts, and anyway runs to longer than 3 hours - having heard it without a break, I would not wish to do so again, even if that means I am faint hearted: by the standard of Bach's day, I certainly am, where complaining that a sermon was longer than 20 to 25 minutes would have been ludicrous, and the Passion itself would have had worship, too, before, between and after each Part, plus that full-length sermon.
Elsewhere, I complained that Stravinsky's Mass, when - for once - it was broadcast live (or at all), had interpolations from the seventeenth century. For me, having an interval in Bach's masterpiece is alike unnecessary.
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10 August
I heard much of the re-broadcast Prom in which this work was given at the weekend.
There, they took a break after the Gloria, and resumed with the Credo, but this afternoon proceeded with only a few words from the presenter folowing the applause at the end of what was its first half.
But, as I queried recently in an informal chat with one of the directors of a festival (which had done likewise), it may be the organizers' and the audience's idea, after around one hour of music, to resume after tea, wine, cake or strawberries, but is that best for the work?
I think not: I think that the Mass in B Minor (BWV 232) builds, and that, if people can turn up for a play and find that the performance runs for 90 minutes to 2 hours without an interval, they could and should with this work, rather than interposing the trivial things entailed in an interval.
With the St Matthew Passion (BWV 244) (I have a posting called Meditations on Matthew), however, I do not think so, because it is in two Parts, and anyway runs to longer than 3 hours - having heard it without a break, I would not wish to do so again, even if that means I am faint hearted: by the standard of Bach's day, I certainly am, where complaining that a sermon was longer than 20 to 25 minutes would have been ludicrous, and the Passion itself would have had worship, too, before, between and after each Part, plus that full-length sermon.
Elsewhere, I complained that Stravinsky's Mass, when - for once - it was broadcast live (or at all), had interpolations from the seventeenth century. For me, having an interval in Bach's masterpiece is alike unnecessary.
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Thursday, 9 August 2012
Toilets
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9 August
I've just Tweeted for the first time about toilets, wondering, if a toilet can have a gender, how much it has cost for signage for these male and female toilets - and then you go to go in Café Rouge, and its Messieurs.
My follow-up Tweet asked: how would you like, at a wedding, to be invited as male and female guests to be silent for the male marriage-partner to make his speech?
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9 August
I've just Tweeted for the first time about toilets, wondering, if a toilet can have a gender, how much it has cost for signage for these male and female toilets - and then you go to go in Café Rouge, and its Messieurs.
My follow-up Tweet asked: how would you like, at a wedding, to be invited as male and female guests to be silent for the male marriage-partner to make his speech?
Catch up with me @TheAgentApsley
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Wednesday, 8 August 2012
Dr Emily Gibson pronounces
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8 August
'End The War On Pubic Hair' Doctor Emily Gibson Urges, As She Warns Of Boils, Pustules And Even MRSA
She sounds more like an Old Testament prophet than an MD!
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8 August
'End The War On Pubic Hair' Doctor Emily Gibson Urges, As She Warns Of Boils, Pustules And Even MRSA
She sounds more like an Old Testament prophet than an MD!
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An image of...?
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8 August
Who could it - momentarily - be thought to be (not as a contemporary shot, though)?
Or is that just me, thinking that someone else's look has been assumed?
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8 August
Who could it - momentarily - be thought to be (not as a contemporary shot, though)?
Or is that just me, thinking that someone else's look has been assumed?
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Who remembers The Tichborne Claimant (1998)
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8 August
I saw the film in its time, because I was fascinated that one of the pieces contained in A Universal History of Infamy, by Jorge Luis Borges, shared its subject-matter (not so, as yet, the tale of Widow Ching, Lady Pirate).
I remember little about it, but see that Stephen Fry was in it, which is plausible. It came to mind, because I was reading promotional material for The Imposter (2012) plus Q&A, and it seemed, as does The Return of Martin Guerre (1982), a better reference-point than The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) - even if Matt Damon is in it - or the other feature that it mentioned.
But maybe not...
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8 August
I saw the film in its time, because I was fascinated that one of the pieces contained in A Universal History of Infamy, by Jorge Luis Borges, shared its subject-matter (not so, as yet, the tale of Widow Ching, Lady Pirate).
I remember little about it, but see that Stephen Fry was in it, which is plausible. It came to mind, because I was reading promotional material for The Imposter (2012) plus Q&A, and it seemed, as does The Return of Martin Guerre (1982), a better reference-point than The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) - even if Matt Damon is in it - or the other feature that it mentioned.
But maybe not...
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A new comic-strip - Bradshaw and French
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9 August
The difference being that there's just the dialogue - the comic bit is so passé!
I say, Bradshaw, what's that thing with its teeth in your trousers?
Dunno, French, but I'll kill it off with a bad review, as usual!
Le motto: Wouldn't know a good film, if...
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9 August
The difference being that there's just the dialogue - the comic bit is so passé!
I say, Bradshaw, what's that thing with its teeth in your trousers?
Dunno, French, but I'll kill it off with a bad review, as usual!
Le motto: Wouldn't know a good film, if...
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Tuesday, 7 August 2012
Pap instead of news-reporting
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8 August
From Yahoo!®, 's e-mail sign-on page:
As the search continues for 12-year-old Tia Sharp, members of her local community have pledged to do all they can to help find her
Irrespective of the cause, why the same stale expressions? Those first four words, for example, which pointlessly have to link with something else.
What they mean is that, although the search has gone on for x hours / days, they're not giving up.
But, as for this pledge nonsense - Pledge is a household product, and no one was signing documents to say that they would persist.
Nor were they from her local community - realistically, the middle word does not add anything, nor does 'to do all they can'.
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8 August
From Yahoo!®, 's e-mail sign-on page:
As the search continues for 12-year-old Tia Sharp, members of her local community have pledged to do all they can to help find her
Irrespective of the cause, why the same stale expressions? Those first four words, for example, which pointlessly have to link with something else.
What they mean is that, although the search has gone on for x hours / days, they're not giving up.
But, as for this pledge nonsense - Pledge is a household product, and no one was signing documents to say that they would persist.
Nor were they from her local community - realistically, the middle word does not add anything, nor does 'to do all they can'.
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Madonna works tight knee-high boots (according to AOL®)
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8 August
So is it G4S Games absconders who write this stuff?
Is there no sense that, whatever people nowadays might really mean (if they stopped to ask) by some model or starlet working whatever clothing it may be, working something tight (or loose) means something, too?
Or why the hell do I despair at the typical knowledge-base of a human being?
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8 August
So is it G4S Games absconders who write this stuff?
Is there no sense that, whatever people nowadays might really mean (if they stopped to ask) by some model or starlet working whatever clothing it may be, working something tight (or loose) means something, too?
Or why the hell do I despair at the typical knowledge-base of a human being?
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Monday, 6 August 2012
Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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7 August
It's not here, but it's there at http://www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk/, everything that's so far been announced about this year's Festival...
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7 August
It's not here, but it's there at http://www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk/, everything that's so far been announced about this year's Festival...
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Thursday, 2 August 2012
KST / Bradshaw
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This was meant to be a draft, for me to use to comment on what the great Messrs Bradshaw and French have 'made of' this film, but it seems to have gone live - whatever they have to say...
Philip French:
In Your Hands (aka Contre toi) is a subtle psychological thriller, the second full-length feature by the French writer-director Lola Doillon, but the first to be shown here. A claustrophobic virtual two-hander, it stars Kristin Scott Thomas as confident, childless divorcee Anna Cooper, a surgeon working in the obstetrics and gynaecology department of a prison hospital, and Pio Marmaï as Yann, a wild young man.In Your HandsProduction year: 2012Country: FranceCert (UK): 15Runtime: 81 minsDirectors: Lola DoillonCast: Jean-Philippe Ecoffey, Kristin Scott Thomas, Pio MarmaiMore on this filmAt the beginning Anna appears distraught but carefully controlled, running from a shabby suburban house to her smart Parisian apartment. The movie doesn't leave us long to wonder about her conduct. She goes to the police to report her abduction, and in a tensely developed flashback we learn that she has been held in a cellar by Yann, the vengeful husband of a patient who died during a Caesarean operation carried out by Anna. In this first part there's an emotional ebb and flow, the threat of violence and some physical conflict, as the two discuss the case and its emotional ramifications.In the second part, a delayed instance of the Stockholm syndrome, some mixture of guilt and sympathy seems to draw Anna to seek out Yann. A passionate affair ensues that is in its way as dangerous as the period of incarceration, possibly more so. The end is abrupt and not entirely satisfactory, but it's a convincingly performed and constantly intriguing film
Kristin Scott Thomas gives us another movie in a distinctive genre that she has made her own: modern day, no makeup, speaking French, transgressive sex. It's an intense and claustrophobic two-hander, well acted – especially by her – but frankly a bit of a shaggy-dog story with a faintly unsatisfactory ending. Scott Thomas plays Anna Cooper, a single professional woman living on her own in Paris and a bit of a workaholic. The name signals that, though a fluent and idiomatic French speaker, she is British but otherwise there is no back story. At the beginning of a rare holiday, Anna comes into traumatic contact with an intense figure: Yann, played by Pio Marmaï, and their encounter becomes a terrifying ordeal. The film begins intriguingly and promises much, with an interesting flashback structure which initially conceals as much as it reveals. But in its third act, the movie runs out of ideas and has no more to tell us. Set alongside Philippe Claudel's I've Loved You So Long (2008) and Catherine Corsini's Leaving (2009), In Your Hands showcases of one of this country's most remarkable screen performers, a vividly intelligent presence – but it does not quite work. PB
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This was meant to be a draft, for me to use to comment on what the great Messrs Bradshaw and French have 'made of' this film, but it seems to have gone live - whatever they have to say...
Philip French:
In Your Hands (aka Contre toi) is a subtle psychological thriller, the second full-length feature by the French writer-director Lola Doillon, but the first to be shown here. A claustrophobic virtual two-hander, it stars Kristin Scott Thomas as confident, childless divorcee Anna Cooper, a surgeon working in the obstetrics and gynaecology department of a prison hospital, and Pio Marmaï as Yann, a wild young man.In Your HandsProduction year: 2012Country: FranceCert (UK): 15Runtime: 81 minsDirectors: Lola DoillonCast: Jean-Philippe Ecoffey, Kristin Scott Thomas, Pio MarmaiMore on this filmAt the beginning Anna appears distraught but carefully controlled, running from a shabby suburban house to her smart Parisian apartment. The movie doesn't leave us long to wonder about her conduct. She goes to the police to report her abduction, and in a tensely developed flashback we learn that she has been held in a cellar by Yann, the vengeful husband of a patient who died during a Caesarean operation carried out by Anna. In this first part there's an emotional ebb and flow, the threat of violence and some physical conflict, as the two discuss the case and its emotional ramifications.In the second part, a delayed instance of the Stockholm syndrome, some mixture of guilt and sympathy seems to draw Anna to seek out Yann. A passionate affair ensues that is in its way as dangerous as the period of incarceration, possibly more so. The end is abrupt and not entirely satisfactory, but it's a convincingly performed and constantly intriguing film
Kristin Scott Thomas gives us another movie in a distinctive genre that she has made her own: modern day, no makeup, speaking French, transgressive sex. It's an intense and claustrophobic two-hander, well acted – especially by her – but frankly a bit of a shaggy-dog story with a faintly unsatisfactory ending. Scott Thomas plays Anna Cooper, a single professional woman living on her own in Paris and a bit of a workaholic. The name signals that, though a fluent and idiomatic French speaker, she is British but otherwise there is no back story. At the beginning of a rare holiday, Anna comes into traumatic contact with an intense figure: Yann, played by Pio Marmaï, and their encounter becomes a terrifying ordeal. The film begins intriguingly and promises much, with an interesting flashback structure which initially conceals as much as it reveals. But in its third act, the movie runs out of ideas and has no more to tell us. Set alongside Philippe Claudel's I've Loved You So Long (2008) and Catherine Corsini's Leaving (2009), In Your Hands showcases of one of this country's most remarkable screen performers, a vividly intelligent presence – but it does not quite work. PB
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Big bloody news: King Juan Carlos of Spain trips over (according to AOL®)
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2 August
No doubt there's an awkward piece of footage, showing the royal foot stumbling over something - do we think that it was the right one, or the left?
And did Juan Carlos - just in case we don't know where he is king of (as I am not aware of any other king so named), we have to be told - just trip, or did he actually stumble and end up on the floor, crying Shit!?
And is it better or worse than when the poor blighter sneezed yesterday, maybe three times in succession? And, if so, better or worse than when Beckham (unofficial King of Span) tripped over in 2007...?
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2 August
No doubt there's an awkward piece of footage, showing the royal foot stumbling over something - do we think that it was the right one, or the left?
And did Juan Carlos - just in case we don't know where he is king of (as I am not aware of any other king so named), we have to be told - just trip, or did he actually stumble and end up on the floor, crying Shit!?
And is it better or worse than when the poor blighter sneezed yesterday, maybe three times in succession? And, if so, better or worse than when Beckham (unofficial King of Span) tripped over in 2007...?
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Wednesday, 1 August 2012
An ambivalence for Kristin - first thoughts
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2 August
* Contains spoilers - if you can still catch this film, you probably would not wish to know too much *
We see characteristics of Dr Anna Cooper (though her name and profession do not emerge until we hear her listening to her answering-machine), at the outset of this film, that will haunt its progress and eventual ending, did we but know it: I planned to go back to see whether that foreknowledge matters, and, having done so, can say that it does not.
To my taste, Kristin Scott Thomas inhabited the difficult role of Anna to perfection, for she drives and dictates so much of the pace, although, given that she has been kidnapped, one might assume that she is not in control. In this respect, the title in English, In Your Hands, cleverly exploits an ambiguity of the original, Contre Toi, whereas it has to be said that the subtitles are a somewhat ham-fisted affair.
For example, after Anna has been given the response of I sure do when asked whether she likes tea, the utterance Avec plaisir, when she is offered some, is rendered a little more convincingly along the lines of I'd love some. My ability to keep up with spoken French is not brilliant, but I can usually get the gist of dialogue, guided by what I see. Not here, where such a freedom - clearly for the benefit of speakers of US English - had been taken with the tone and style.
It can sometimes be a slow matter of engaging with a film when one is relating to such a familiar face as that of KST, and almost admiring the acting, rather than - if this denotes the separate thing that I intend - following the performance.
For me, an important moment to settle me in was to see her responding to the messages on her answering-machine, following an absence, but also to see how I would relate to her as a doctor, when she arrives and dresses for work at the hospital. (In this film, her name is the closest that we get to an explanation for anyone detecting that she is not French, which I am sure that the noisy pair of couples behind and to the side of me would have made grist to their mill of whispering / talking through the film, since they also laughed at several inappropriate moments.)
Anyone who did not see a poster or other advertising for this film beforehand will not know that they had to envisage, as they were watching what unfolded, how a certain scene would be reached. In fact, I almost came to wonder whether the image had just been - which it is not - a teaser to set the audience off on the wrong scent. Not that this is a thriller, but it is about psychology, about what makes people tick, have the upper hand, in the relations with each other.
And not in a calculating way largely, because there is a lot of instinct at work, and - if we are not busy laughing in a way that suggests we should have left the film to those who wanted to watch it - it will be open to interpretation quite what is happening. No dogma here about even what happens, let alone the rights and wrongs, and in the intelligent domain of films such as Haneke's Hidden (2005) and Code Unknown (2000) (of both of which I was reminded early on), if not equally of The Woman in the Fifth (2011).
More to come...
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2 August
* Contains spoilers - if you can still catch this film, you probably would not wish to know too much *
We see characteristics of Dr Anna Cooper (though her name and profession do not emerge until we hear her listening to her answering-machine), at the outset of this film, that will haunt its progress and eventual ending, did we but know it: I planned to go back to see whether that foreknowledge matters, and, having done so, can say that it does not.
To my taste, Kristin Scott Thomas inhabited the difficult role of Anna to perfection, for she drives and dictates so much of the pace, although, given that she has been kidnapped, one might assume that she is not in control. In this respect, the title in English, In Your Hands, cleverly exploits an ambiguity of the original, Contre Toi, whereas it has to be said that the subtitles are a somewhat ham-fisted affair.
For example, after Anna has been given the response of I sure do when asked whether she likes tea, the utterance Avec plaisir, when she is offered some, is rendered a little more convincingly along the lines of I'd love some. My ability to keep up with spoken French is not brilliant, but I can usually get the gist of dialogue, guided by what I see. Not here, where such a freedom - clearly for the benefit of speakers of US English - had been taken with the tone and style.
It can sometimes be a slow matter of engaging with a film when one is relating to such a familiar face as that of KST, and almost admiring the acting, rather than - if this denotes the separate thing that I intend - following the performance.
For me, an important moment to settle me in was to see her responding to the messages on her answering-machine, following an absence, but also to see how I would relate to her as a doctor, when she arrives and dresses for work at the hospital. (In this film, her name is the closest that we get to an explanation for anyone detecting that she is not French, which I am sure that the noisy pair of couples behind and to the side of me would have made grist to their mill of whispering / talking through the film, since they also laughed at several inappropriate moments.)
Anyone who did not see a poster or other advertising for this film beforehand will not know that they had to envisage, as they were watching what unfolded, how a certain scene would be reached. In fact, I almost came to wonder whether the image had just been - which it is not - a teaser to set the audience off on the wrong scent. Not that this is a thriller, but it is about psychology, about what makes people tick, have the upper hand, in the relations with each other.
And not in a calculating way largely, because there is a lot of instinct at work, and - if we are not busy laughing in a way that suggests we should have left the film to those who wanted to watch it - it will be open to interpretation quite what is happening. No dogma here about even what happens, let alone the rights and wrongs, and in the intelligent domain of films such as Haneke's Hidden (2005) and Code Unknown (2000) (of both of which I was reminded early on), if not equally of The Woman in the Fifth (2011).
More to come...
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Tuesday, 31 July 2012
Kosmos revisited
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
31 July
* Contains spoilers – do not read, if you want to watch the film for the first time *
Kosmos (2010) has passed my Does it Bear Watching Again? test (DIBWA) (or whatever I call it). If I had had a chance to watch it again at Cambridge Film Festival, it would have been to check on detail that I felt that I had missed first time around.
As it is, ten months later, it had me in tears at the end, after having been weighing in the balance whether knowing what was to happen (although getting the sequence wrong several times, not, I think, because it had been re-edited*) mattered to my appreciation for all but the last few minutes. For I was watching it through the more critical lens of scrutinizing it to see whether it worked, but the cumulative impact still hit me, even if (partly because of reading TAKE ONE’s review) I had been more aware of the way in which the soundtrack, including electronic and natural sounds, played its part.
Some things that I had remembered aright:
* Someone who reviewed the film on IMDb wrongly thought that the woman with the crutch (reminiscent of Lady Archer) kills herself, not the teacher - as if there were any doubt, the former is still around at the end
* That Neptün and Kosmos both counter gravity, and, with the paperwork that litters the place, fly around his lodging
* The role of the falling star / spacecraft in healing the boy who was not speaking
* Kosmos irritating those who think that he should conform to what living a proper life consists in, having a job and doing work
Some things I had not weighed properly:
* How Neptün is jealous of the teacher, because of her relations with Kosmos, and we are twice shown her throwing stones at the other woman's window (and that she had given herself this name, then Kosmos his own in response)
* Just how ambiguous it is whether she has sex with Kosmos at the conclusion of the scene referred to above (and / or an earlier scenes at his lodgings, where they behave like wolves)
* The coherence of the scenes with the cattle and the geese, and of the views of the civic clock
* The way in which popular opinion turns against Kosmos at the end, despite his grief at what happens to the teacher and the boy
* How raids against the cheese-shop, pharmacy and other premises influences residents against campaigning to re-open the border
* The use of CGI in making the snow and effects with the wind happen, as clearly no one could wait for it to be snowing to film a scene - once I became aware of this artificiality, I could not easily shut it out
As to the impression that the film left me with, it is an abiding and powerful one of a film-maker thoughtfully presenting a series of images and not insisting that any one way of looking at them is correct. This is as it should be with the best films, and this one compares very well with Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011).
End-notes
* Although some things that I could have sworn were to come never happened: a follow-up to the brush that Kosmos has with the tip of a lighted cigarette, in showing his immunity to cold, though I forget what, although I thought that it involved the stove.
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
31 July
* Contains spoilers – do not read, if you want to watch the film for the first time *
Kosmos (2010) has passed my Does it Bear Watching Again? test (DIBWA) (or whatever I call it). If I had had a chance to watch it again at Cambridge Film Festival, it would have been to check on detail that I felt that I had missed first time around.
As it is, ten months later, it had me in tears at the end, after having been weighing in the balance whether knowing what was to happen (although getting the sequence wrong several times, not, I think, because it had been re-edited*) mattered to my appreciation for all but the last few minutes. For I was watching it through the more critical lens of scrutinizing it to see whether it worked, but the cumulative impact still hit me, even if (partly because of reading TAKE ONE’s review) I had been more aware of the way in which the soundtrack, including electronic and natural sounds, played its part.
Some things that I had remembered aright:
* Someone who reviewed the film on IMDb wrongly thought that the woman with the crutch (reminiscent of Lady Archer) kills herself, not the teacher - as if there were any doubt, the former is still around at the end
* That Neptün and Kosmos both counter gravity, and, with the paperwork that litters the place, fly around his lodging
* The role of the falling star / spacecraft in healing the boy who was not speaking
* Kosmos irritating those who think that he should conform to what living a proper life consists in, having a job and doing work
Some things I had not weighed properly:
* How Neptün is jealous of the teacher, because of her relations with Kosmos, and we are twice shown her throwing stones at the other woman's window (and that she had given herself this name, then Kosmos his own in response)
* Just how ambiguous it is whether she has sex with Kosmos at the conclusion of the scene referred to above (and / or an earlier scenes at his lodgings, where they behave like wolves)
* The coherence of the scenes with the cattle and the geese, and of the views of the civic clock
* The way in which popular opinion turns against Kosmos at the end, despite his grief at what happens to the teacher and the boy
* How raids against the cheese-shop, pharmacy and other premises influences residents against campaigning to re-open the border
* The use of CGI in making the snow and effects with the wind happen, as clearly no one could wait for it to be snowing to film a scene - once I became aware of this artificiality, I could not easily shut it out
As to the impression that the film left me with, it is an abiding and powerful one of a film-maker thoughtfully presenting a series of images and not insisting that any one way of looking at them is correct. This is as it should be with the best films, and this one compares very well with Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011).
End-notes
* Although some things that I could have sworn were to come never happened: a follow-up to the brush that Kosmos has with the tip of a lighted cigarette, in showing his immunity to cold, though I forget what, although I thought that it involved the stove.
The usual deal in the trailer for The Hunter
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
31 July
If you did believe the trailer, you would expect a fast-paced experience from watching the feature. However, it will not materialize, because the trailer is not remotely representative: almost all the action has been squeezed together in a few minutes, and put with the sort of pounding music that makes me feel very unpleasantly anxious.
Imagine, instead, more and more of the glimpses that you have of Martin David (Willem Dafoe) exploring and setting his traps, cut occasionally with the rightly praised photography of the scenery, and you have a better measure of the ratio of what we call ‘action’ to his everyday hunting activities, because this is really not, unless you excite easily, one that will have you on the edge of your seat.
And I wonder how many of these trailers there are: is this the let's-extract-the-last-iota-of-momentum version? Has it mystifyingly attracted attention away from anyone who might have seen In Your Hands (2012), though a film in French with subtitles is a tricky proposition?
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
31 July
If you did believe the trailer, you would expect a fast-paced experience from watching the feature. However, it will not materialize, because the trailer is not remotely representative: almost all the action has been squeezed together in a few minutes, and put with the sort of pounding music that makes me feel very unpleasantly anxious.
Imagine, instead, more and more of the glimpses that you have of Martin David (Willem Dafoe) exploring and setting his traps, cut occasionally with the rightly praised photography of the scenery, and you have a better measure of the ratio of what we call ‘action’ to his everyday hunting activities, because this is really not, unless you excite easily, one that will have you on the edge of your seat.
And I wonder how many of these trailers there are: is this the let's-extract-the-last-iota-of-momentum version? Has it mystifyingly attracted attention away from anyone who might have seen In Your Hands (2012), though a film in French with subtitles is a tricky proposition?
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Sunday, 29 July 2012
'Trends' for New Zealand on Pratter
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
29 July
Why is it ridiculous that these are items 6 to 10 in that list?
6. Aussies
7. Brazil
8. Australia
9. Sky
10. Kiwis
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
29 July
Why is it ridiculous that these are items 6 to 10 in that list?
6. Aussies
7. Brazil
8. Australia
9. Sky
10. Kiwis
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My 'favourite' browser (3)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
29 July
Following on from where I left off, I spot three new browsers:
* Konqueror (sounds a wee bit aggressive (and martial)),
* CriOS (the dead bones enchanted by The Witch of Endor), and
* Namoroka (some bloody weirdo film-director)
Others that I'd like to see:
* Brendel (makes faces at you when playing music-clips)
* Ashkenazy (the same, but makes less amusing, more pained, faces)
* SuperDry (despite its name, it drenches you with a bucket of water for fun occasionally)
* Texugenbag (just complete crap, but someone would choose the name)
* Brodsky (specially programmed to display weird pairings, yoking Kim Kardashian's image in peach with text about salt-beef and prune salad)
* BJ69XXX (a mind-blowing browsing experience that makes sex seem rather inadequate)
* Sarah/Michael (a way of displaying content that takes something from the different ways of viewing the world of these most famous Palins - also known as S&M)
* Carrot (nothing exciting, unless you like orange immensely, as the colour-bias is that what inclined - perfect for saving celebrities money on tans)
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
29 July
Following on from where I left off, I spot three new browsers:
* Konqueror (sounds a wee bit aggressive (and martial)),
* CriOS (the dead bones enchanted by The Witch of Endor), and
* Namoroka (some bloody weirdo film-director)
Others that I'd like to see:
* Brendel (makes faces at you when playing music-clips)
* Ashkenazy (the same, but makes less amusing, more pained, faces)
* SuperDry (despite its name, it drenches you with a bucket of water for fun occasionally)
* Texugenbag (just complete crap, but someone would choose the name)
* Brodsky (specially programmed to display weird pairings, yoking Kim Kardashian's image in peach with text about salt-beef and prune salad)
* BJ69XXX (a mind-blowing browsing experience that makes sex seem rather inadequate)
* Sarah/Michael (a way of displaying content that takes something from the different ways of viewing the world of these most famous Palins - also known as S&M)
* Carrot (nothing exciting, unless you like orange immensely, as the colour-bias is that what inclined - perfect for saving celebrities money on tans)
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Saturday, 28 July 2012
Explore the natural beauty of Caledonia (according to AOL®)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
28 July
What is this? Bloody cornering the market in a fanciful form of what Fowler dubbed Elegant Variation?
Just so that you can refer to it as Scotland below?
And why not Hibernia, whilst you're at it?!
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
28 July
What is this? Bloody cornering the market in a fanciful form of what Fowler dubbed Elegant Variation?
Just so that you can refer to it as Scotland below?
And why not Hibernia, whilst you're at it?!
@TheAgentApsley
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