Tuesday, 2 July 2019

Yes, amazingly did not see Reservoir Dogs (1992) at the time¹

Reservoir Dogs (1992) - so what was all the fuss about... ?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


1 July

Reservoir Dogs (1992) - so what was all the fuss about... ?


On this showing, it is less clear what in it caused the clamour for QT, but the story goes that Tony Scott directed Tarantino's screenplay for True Romance (1993), because the latter only had the chance to make one of them, and he chose Dogs : #UCFF thinks Scott's film far superior











Except for those who like painting in blood – actually, a slick of it (do we question that ?), or so that, we are to believe (or are we ?), it perfectly soaks into one or two white shirts, to leave them uniformly dyed (with no streaks or other colour-variation) – it may not be immediately clear what, after the opening scene in the restaurant / diner, Dogs newly offered audiences that did not routinely depend on shock for effect.


Maybe it is that, as heralded or betokened by that opening (which therefore acts as a kind of synthesis of the elements of blood and brain ?), Tarantino seeks to set up a kind of bi-polar opposition to all this bloody physicality : maybe we also see these considerations applying in Kill Bill : Vol. 1 (2003) and Vol. 2 (2004) ?



For the life of the flesh is in the blood : and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls ~ Leviticus 17 : 11a [KJV]




Considered in this way, Tarantino's aim may be akin to the purpose of the phlegmatic ‘calm before the storm’ in films made by The Allies during World War II (or to promote their messages afterwards) – or even the mysterious (dis)quietude of the mise-en-scène of Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter² [1957] ?


There is, for example, the highly protective tenderness of Mr White (Harvey Keitel) towards Mr Orange (Tim Roth), or how the latter’s throaty shouting³ is in contrast to moments of quieter conversation (when, for example, Mr Pink (Steve Buscemi) arrives, and White and he go aside to talk). Yet too much else, as we wait around in this space for 'something to happen'⁴, feels located - as in Beckettt's fame-making play⁵ En attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot) - in an excessively heady mood, as if it were a text-book on epistemology, or on irrationality in decision-making⁴.




Lacking the cunning and panache of Pulp Fiction (1994), Dogs still clearly does what Tarantino wanted – making a statement [of intent] and / or his mark. However, in later films under his direction, he has much better handled issues that are important to him, such as that of trust and its basis, and, in scripting them, the role of flashback and how to use it innovatively, which we see him rather noisily and boisterously trying out here.




#UCFF has some other things to say here about Tarantino and Kill Bill : Vol. 1 (2003) and Vol. 2 (2004)


Yeah, you made me feel
Shiny and new :






Whenever Tarantino imagines us thinking Reservoir Dogs set, on its release, the notoriety around Madonna in 1992 was not these initial hits (on which the breakfast club egotistically dilates), but the music-video (lesbian kiss, S&M, etc.) and lyrics - Put your hands all over my body ? - of 'Erotica' (and, that year also, the publication of Sex)




End-notes :

¹ The Arts Picturehouse (@CamPicturehouse) was preparing for Tarantino's Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood (2019), all 2h 39mins of it, by reprising his film career.

² We should recall that part of the Zeitgeist, into which both films were feeding, was Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) – with the edginess of the situation of Al Pacino and Jack Lemmon. (A film that, amongst other names, also boasted Alec Baldwin, Kevin Spacey and Jonathan Pryce.)

³ Which, at least, seems verging on homo-eroticism ?


Apart from ‘Nice Guy’ Eddie (Chris Penn) in particular, so many of the characters present as very hoarse, gruff, or both, as if thereby asserting – beyond (reasonable) question – their hard-ball, masculine status ? So much of this guff about the lyrics of 'Like a Virgin', or Larry grabbing / confiscating Joe's pocket-book, is really just posturing about 'Who's got the biggest dick ?'...



⁴ At times, do the reasons for any of the Reservoir Dogs, notably Mr Pink (Steve Buscemi), to stay where they are and / or their irresolution about doing so seem as flimsy as those of the two principals in Godot (i.e. that they are waiting for Godot) ? :

Vladimir : Well ? Shall we go ?

Estragon : Yes, let’s go.

They do not move.


Artistically, as learnt from cinema, Tarantino has an attraction to stand-offs (and Reservoir Dogs finally resolves with / in one), but he uses this one in a stylistic way, without resolving it : that does not work as an unresolved chord would in music, because he gives the impression of having started that which he cannot (plausibly) finish by scripting - unlike a killer chess-move, or maybe Buscemi taking the legs from under Keitel (though, in this still, all the energy is in and from Keitel's stance)


⁵ One of the two posthumous biographies of Beckettt is called Damned to Fame.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Sunday, 23 June 2019

A 'French Sundae' with Jon Davies at The Cinema Museum : La haine (1995)

A 'French Sundae' at The Cinema Museum with Jon Davies : La haine (1995)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


23 June

Tweets in response to a 'French Sundae'
at The Cinema Museum with Jon Davies :
La haine (1995)










If, in the first act, you have hung a pistol on the wall, then, in the following one, it should be fired ~ Anton Chekhov


Jean-Paul Belmondo in À bout de souffle (1960)




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Friday, 21 June 2019

#AldeburghFestival2019 : The #UCFF portal-page (in progress)

#AldeburghFestival2019 [This posting is a place-holder]

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


20 June

#AldeburghFestival2019 [This posting is a place-holder]




Sunday 16 June ~ Britten and Bridge
The Britten Studio at 4.00






Sunday 16 June ~ Vox Luminis II
The Snape Maltings Concert Hall at 7.30

A report by Tweet on Vox Luminis II at #AldeburghFestival2019




Monday 17 June ~ Schubert 1828
The Snape Maltings Concert Hall at 7.30





[...]





Tuesday 18 June ~ Il Quatuor Diotima
Aldeburgh Parish Church at 11.00




Tuesday 18 June ~ Britten and Blake
The Britten Studio at 4.00




Britten and Blake were both publicists, but Britten was the better at it, which is why he would not have looked for knottier or more distant texts of Blake's to set than these

Patience Agbabi's reading of her 'homework' was not only a tour de force that outclassed her 'teacher', but also, one likes to think, one whose extent and content were surprising to all hearing them





Tuesday 18 June ~ Vox Luminis III
Pre-concert Talk in The Britten-Pears Recital Room at 6.30 / Snape Maltings Concert Hall at 7.30





Wednesday 19 June ~ Alisa Weilerstein
Blythburgh Church at 7.30








Addenda :







Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Sunday, 16 June 2019

A report by Tweet on Vox Luminis II at #AldeburghFestival2019

A report, by Tweet, on Vox Luminis II at Aldeburgh Festival 2019

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


17 June

A report, by Tweet, on Vox Luminis II at Aldeburgh Festival 2019
(a concert of Handel and Britten, both setting Dryden, given at Snape Maltings on Sunday 16 June 2019 at 7.30 p.m.)


Prelude :




Image by David-Samyn







Concluding comments :

As one has learnt to expect, sensitive and sincere performance from Vox Luminis, under the direction of the affable Lionel Meunier - one senses, even from the encore, that this ensemble does not perform repertoire in which it does not believe.


Postlude :






Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Saturday, 15 June 2019

Looking for... Yoko Ono [initially, at The Heong Gallery ?*]

Looking for... Yoko Ono in Cambridge in summer - or found by her, where we are ?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October) (Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

15 June

Looking for... Yoko Ono in Cambridge in summer - or found by her, where we are ?




End-notes :

No, with @CRASSH, at Lady Mitchell Hall.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Saturday, 1 June 2019

The #DorotheaTanning Tweets

Sunshine after rain : moving from Bonnard to Dorothea Tanning at Tate Modern...

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


1 June

Sunshine after rain : moving from Bonnard to Dorothea Tanning at Tate Modern...


Deirdre (1940) ~ Dorothea Tanning








Dorothea Tanning ~ [Title and date to come]






Some other Tweet :






Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Tuesday, 28 May 2019

A #UCFF response to A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

This is a response to A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


27 May


This is a response to A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014),
as seen at
Saffron Screen on Monday 27 May 2019 at 8.00 p.m.








[...]







Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Thursday, 16 May 2019

Three Tweets [maybe more ?] about Woman at War (2018)

Three Tweets [maybe more ?] about Woman at War (Kona fer í stríð) (2018)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


16 May


Three Tweets [maybe more ?] about Woman at War (Kona fer í stríð) (2018)








Postlude (with TAKE ONE) :






Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Saturday, 11 May 2019

Three Tweets about Tenebrae

Three Tweets about Tenebrae (during Festival of the Voice in Cambridge)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


9 May


Three Tweets about Tenebrae :

A concert at King's College, Cambridge, by invitation from
Cambridge Early Music (in conjunction with Concerts at King's) for its Festival of the Voice,
on Friday 10 May 2019 at 7.30 p.m.








Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Friday, 3 May 2019

Bonnard : Mirrors, photographic effects, alluring views through windows, and - of course - nudes*

Responses, by Tweet, to and during a visit to Pierre Bonnard : The Colour of Memory

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


3 May


Responses, by Tweet, to and during a visit to the [C C Land] exhibition Pierre Bonnard : The Colour of Memory on Friday 3 May 2019







End-notes :

* But, never all that convincing usually with human faces, the best of these nudes are seen from the back...



Even so, it is puzzling that - as allegedly still true of 'glamour models' - the woman is naked, but obliged to wear black court shoes ? (In this case, they may actually be slippers, but in other nudes in the show, they are definitely shoes.)




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Thursday, 2 May 2019

This is a review (work in progress) of Scotch : The Golden Dram (2018)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


2 May


This is a review (work in progress) of Scotch : The Golden Dram (2018), which was shown at a special screening at The Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge, on Thursday 2 May 2019 (and followed by a guided tasting of two expressions of Bruichladdich (they supplied the Scotch, wine and spirit merchants Bacchanalia the tuition))


Scotch : The Golden Dram* largely concerns distilling as it occurs on The Isle of Islay (which qualifies as a whisky region in its own right, and is especially known for a number of celebrated peated whiskies**), largely considering the distillery of Bruichladdich, and largely taking as its focus Jim McEwan, who, at the beginning of the century, oversaw the re-opening of the distillery (as a sideways move from decades at Bowmore, also on Islay, and the one visible – except on a day with mist on the intervening sea-loch – from the other).




This is not an unreasonable proposition, since, in common with John McDougall (whose memoir, pictured above, was authored for him by whisky writer Gavin D. Smith), McEwan is acknowledged as being from the tradition of having done every job in whisky-making, and therefore using an account of his life-story is well able to provide a general outline that would touch upon many topics (as well as celebrating McEwan's signoficant contribution, as judged by his peers, to the world of Scotch***).

However, one matter that features in McDougall’s book, but was not really touched upon here directly, is the speculative business per se of buying casks, and of the independent bottlers (such as Provenance, Gordon & MacPhail and Signatory) who release distilleries’ single malts under their name (i.e. labelled and packaged differently from the distillery’s own usual bottlings) : although we did see this side of things in the form of an interview with the proprietor of a firm that makes very high-end glassware for releases (where sometimes there might only be as few as a handful of bottles produced, and with matching price tags - which we could see, from a series of images of bottles and a caption to say what they sell for, in some cases go for amounts into the hundreds of thousands of pounds).


There are also some important health-warnings to be given concerning what this film does, and does not, seem to set out do – even if it may once have intended otherwise**** (a full-length documentary, which is, say, of ninety minutes to two hours, may typically have shot fifty times more material that has not been used). They may help indicate, even if the film-makers seem not to have considered the point very clearly, for whom and when it may be suitable, as it may assume too much for the general viewer ? :


1. The film does not, fully or in order, take one through the whole process of how whisky is made.

For this, a tour around a distillery that still runs a malting-floor is the ideal answer, and the film probably shows us the floor at Bowmore (does Bruichladdich have its own, as Kildalton, also on Islay, does ?). However, some might prefer Laphroaig, yet another Islay distillery, because the craic and the tours are always good, as it is not in the brand’s interests for the tour-guide to give a negative experience, such as reading the material from a laminated card (Jura, 2014) ; or not knowing, when asked, whether the temperature at which fermentation takes place is important (Bruichladdich, 2004).

Laphroaig recognizes that people have taken the trouble to travel to Islay to visit some of the distilleries (even if the serenity and sense of being away from the ordinary run of things also and always make the trip to Islay worthwhile) : the pity is that, with such a beautiful island, The Golden Dram does not use the best views, but only a few, fairly stock ones, to which it cuts away, and which serve as little more than punctuation).


2. Some of the stages in the whisky-making process are talked about in some detail, such as fermentation (which has its own section, with a heading). (However, although the film shows how the head rises on the liquid in the fermentation-vessel (the ‘wash-back’), which the yeast creates during fermentation, it does not choose to mention that it is kept in check – to stop it overflowing the vessel – by rotating blades inside the lid (‘switcher-blades’).)

For this reason, there are terms such as ‘low wines’ or ‘malted barley’ that are simply there in what speakers tell us, and left unexplained : from this documentary, we will not learn when and why the ‘feints and low wines’ are collected (which would explain what they are), or what the process of malting barley is, or what it signifies. Rather, seemingly because we hear McEwan relate that, as a teenager on the way to school, he was often enough persuaded when he passed Bowmore distillery to stop to help with what was formerly the only and very labour-intensive way of malting barley (before modern malting-works were designed, such as that at Port Ellen on Islay, on the site of the now defunct distillery of that name).

So, apart from a shot of barley grains that are germinating, we are presented with footage of part of what is still carried on in some Islay distilleries (here, presumably, Bowmore), but no context that helps us relate to why the barley on the malting-floor requires turning every few hours, which is done with a ‘shiel’, an implement that resembles a spade, but with a flat blade, made of wood.


[...]


End-notes :

* The original title, according to IMDb, was Scotch: A Golden Dream.

** So no one could quite take seriously the given name of the director, Andrew Peat…

*** Even if, perhaps, the film overdoes this aspect in places, and seems too much like a tribute (or even hagiography ?) ?




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Everybody needs a friend ~ Greta

A response to Greta (2018)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


2 May

A response to Greta (2018)



Black nails : Just to raise doubts where Frankie should place her trust, her friend Erica (Maika Monroe) - a little more fittingly for her age and manner ? - also has black nails*.





Now reviewed by @everyfilmneil, to much the same effect, at : http://everyfilmblog.blogspot.com/2019/10/328-greta-movie-review.html


End-notes :

* Or is the suggestion of some Lynchean dual-characterization (The Lost Highway (1997) or Mulholland Drive (2001)), where, on some level, Greta and Erica are the same person... ?




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Wednesday, 1 May 2019

Right on key : Claire Martin and her 'European Quartet'* at The Stables

Right on key : Claire Martin and her 'European Quartet'* at The Stables

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


1 May


Right on key : Claire Martin and her 'European Quartet'* at The Stables on Wednesday 1 May 2019 at 8.00 p.m.








End-notes :

* Thinking, of course, of Keith J.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Tuesday, 30 April 2019

Kennington Bioscope Silent Comedy Weekend at The Cinema Museum - 27 and 28 April

A report on the Kennington Bioscope Silent Comedy Weekend (27-28 April 2019)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


28 April


A report from Sunday afternoon at The Cinema Museum on the
Kennington Bioscope Silent Comedy Weekend (27-28 April 2019)





Other Tweets :






Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)