Sophie Taeuber-Arp at Tate : Imagine if Paul Klee had been so relativ unsung...

Sophie Taeuber-Arp at Tate : Imagine if Paul Klee had been so relativ unsung...

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

15 October

Sophie Taeuber-Arp at Tate : Imagine if Paul Klee had been so relativ unsung...

¹ Also slightly younger, Täuber-Arp had a shorter career, since she died [from CO poisoning] on 13 January 1943 (days before her 54th birthday²), but she had achieved so much more - in whatever medium, work that lasts and has far more to say !

² Arp died 23 years later, at 79.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 28, 2021

Friday 15 October

Composition of Quadrangular, Polychrome, Dense Strokes (1921)

Gouache and graphite on paper

Luxuriating in 4-5h, back at @Tate Modern again, in a show, one inevitably doesn't simply want to take photos that won't be as good as in the exhibition postcards or books - but, with an artist as aware of movement as #SophieTaeuberArp, it's fun showing the latent force at work ! pic.twitter.com/xAD3gQBIdq

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 15, 2021

At @Tate Modern, unexpectedly meeting - via the personage of The Smeraldina - the early work and life of Beckettt (More Pricks than Kicks)#SophieTaeuberArp#KingStagsGetEverywhere ! pic.twitter.com/h4HxLN8OG0

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 15, 2021

Where one might have missed it, on the landing of Level 2 of The Blavatnik building, was a video of figures put in motion, but did no one have the means (or forethought) to film at the time ?

2 / 2

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 22, 2021

Sunday 17 October

Or bas-relief (when rotated through 180°) ?

Or is it as when Gary Brooker wrote ? :

'It's a trick of the night
Everything is all right
Caught me while I was dreaming of you
It's a trick of the night
Everything is alright
Caught me while I was sleeping'https://t.co/BNbejfuCPG pic.twitter.com/2eNPlJ1gAR

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 17, 2021

This and more now being compiled on #UCFF at :https://t.co/yXLSXw9X79 https://t.co/TzyEqofUiy pic.twitter.com/IAGiTjVcsu

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 17, 2021

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

Films that make you wish that you were watching some other work - In the Mood for Love (Fa yeung nin wah) (2000)

Films that make you wish that you were watching some other work - In the Mood for Love (2000)

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

11 October

Films that make you wish that you were watching some other work - In the Mood for Love (Fa yeung nin wah) (2000) [seen at Saffron Screen]

Films that make you wish that you were watching some other work - In the Mood for Love (Fa yeung nin wah) (2000) :

* Nathalie (2003)

* Michael Frayn's Copenhagen [2002 t.v. film]

* Samuel Beckettt's Play [Beckettt on Film dir. Anthony Minghella]

* The Deep Blue Sea (2011) pic.twitter.com/DYmPzdVyV8

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 11, 2021

I was glad to have had a chance to see it, having missed it elsewhere recently, but the fact that it was a Franco-HK co-production made sense of a lot of its curiously dry affect, and made me think of films that I like instead, e.g. Nathalie (2003). pic.twitter.com/h50oqSl1B7

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 12, 2021

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

Report from Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival 2021 : [Place-holder for Saturday 2 October]

Report from Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival 2021 : [Place-holder for Saturday 2 October]

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

2 October

Report from Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival 2021 : [Place-holder for Saturday 2 October]

* As David at @camjazz had ruefully commented beforehand to Th'Agent...

(See also https://t.co/nRWcx4XduE and (for the original line-up) https://t.co/DeyG3GIIwT.)

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 3, 2021

[...]

Inept cinematography, but keen applause for The Julian Bliss Quintet at @Hatfield_House, last Saturday evening, during @HHChamberMusicF ! pic.twitter.com/SMX9m47Oh5

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 10, 2021

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

Report from Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival 2021 : [Place-holder for Thursday 30 September]

Report from Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival 2021 : [Place-holder for Thursday 30 September]

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

30 September

Report from Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival 2021 : [Place-holder for Thursday 30 September]

With a complete change of programme*, to-day doesn't feel at all unseasonal for @BarronFleur to join @jpianomiddleton at @Hatfield_House for Schubert's great Liederkreis, so movingly setting Wilhelm Müller wanderer's texts, D. 911...

* As, sadly, @SampsonCarolyn is poorly. pic.twitter.com/9nL3me9Suv

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 30, 2021

As one might expect, Barron's dramatic work or for the stage informed her approach this evening (at 5.00 p.m.), but not perhaps, given that she is mentored by Barbara Hannigan and working with Ian Bostridge, any more than befitted the audience or occasion.

In such a lovely, but relatively small, performance-space [The Marble Hall at Hatfield House], one simply could not give a performance that was audaciously writ large – unlike The Maltings, at Snape, where Bostridge let rip one summer at Aldeburgh Festival [reviewed by #UCFF as 'A swaying, snarling, even spitting Schubert for our times'] ! – and large gestures were unnecessary, when small ones (such as, early on, fluttering eye-lids) worked in this context much better, alongside the usual recital-room process of clearly and visually thinking her way to, and into, the next Lied.


Even if partly filled in by Müller in Die schöne Müllerin (?), he is anyway handling the universals of love, life and their loss, so there is no need for him or us to delay on the particulars – and those, similarly, who still remark that they are hearing a mezzo-soprano perform Winterreise are perhaps missing the point of its universality, and that there is no good reason why any character of voice cannot inhabit these texts* (or they the singer ?).

The texts speak to us, from and through the performers, of things that extend far beyond any literal scenario outlined, and, excepting, perhaps, the strangely placid encounter (or non-encounter [as of Beckettt's Murphy with Mr Endon] ?) with the vision that ends the cycle (and the eerie scoring that might as effectively have launched Pierrot lunaire from Earth), who cannot relate to the narrator's awareness of how perspectives can be curiously mixed and changed by time, as recalled in 'Der Lindenbaum' or, say, 'Die Post' ?


On half-a-dozen occasions (in live concerts alone), it appears that one can have followed the poems that make up Winterreise and seemingly not have noticed before that – except in three cases ('Die Post' [no. 13], 'Täuschung' [19] and 'Die Nebensonnen' [23]) – they compromise some number, between 8 and 3, four-line stanzas. However, one palpable reason not to be aware (other than that each poem is headed by a title) is that substance far outweighs form in this Liederkreis, and this is not La divina commedia's intense terza rima, or equivalent to a sonnet-sequence (such as Sidney's Astrophel and Stella).

Winterreise is far more condensed, so, with its many different scenes (those titles, again), let alone changes of heart or direction of thought, its progression is at a different scale, and of a different scope, from Shakespeare's sonnets or those of Sidney (though some have disputed that the former appear in the correct order) : there can be (in fact, need to be) such changes, but the formality and requirements of fourteen lines, even if they are constituted as three quatrains, is then affected by leading up to ending with a couplet. (Or there may be, say, a differently structured division, with a rhyme-scheme for the first eight lines, and another for the final six.)

Barron's rendition, matched by that of versatile and gifted recital-partner Middleton, gave us the full, passionate spectrum of depiction of states of being or mind that, when written and set nearly two hundred years ago, had a different status as literature and as a form of life https://t.co/ilKpSWpdDB

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 1, 2021

We can see this most easily in the language and vocabulary of such phrases as 'Was fragen sie nach meinen Schmerzen ?', 'Mit meinen heissen Tränen' or 'Seine kalten Flocken saugen / Durstig ein das heisse Weh'.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 1, 2021

[...]

Ich bin zu Ende mit allen Träumen*

[...]
























One emotional centre that Fleur Barron found and gave to us in this series of pieces was in 'Im Dorfe', from which the words that head this review are quoted*, and these words, in particular, threw into retrospect other times when dreaming and dreams had occurred in the texts of Wilhelm Müller's poems :

Seven poems away from the seeming inevitability of 'Der Leiermann', and after the narratorial voice has already passed through – and given us insights into – such moments as something heartfelt, resolution, noble feeling, moodi- and vengefulness, pride, and despairing***, its experiences seem to have come to one definite conclusion, from which the remaining poems will not deviate – although of course, and not least in 'Der Leiermann', there are more realizations, dreads and existential horrors to come.



[...]



End-notes :

* Maybe we cannot easily forget Dylan Thomas, reading his own work, once heard, but he is not the only one who can or should be heard, reading it aloud.

** #UCFF would render this I'm through with all these dreams. (As perhaps too prosaically translated as 'I am finished with all dreams' in the English version, by Richard Wigmore, provided ?)

*** To capture ones just from the first four poems ('Gute Nacht', 'Die Wetterfahne', 'Gefrorne Tränen' and 'Erstarrung').


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

The Invented Quotations [and Ascriptions] : A Compendium (in subject order)

The Invented Quotations [and Ascriptions] : A Compendium (in subject order)

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

20 September

The Invented Quotations [and Ascriptions] : A Compendium (in subject order)

Invent the riposte, and attribute it to Jean Harlow, Joan Rivers, Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau, etc.*, as you see fit ! ;)#YouAreMakingUpYourOwnJokesNow - literally

* Though unlikely, perhaps, that *all of them* worked on the gag ? Unless... : https://t.co/OL1fPtbVBe

2 / 2

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 15, 2021

Attentiveness :

Might being attentive and seeking not to be inauthentic be - or seem to be - all that one needs do in life ? ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 1, 2024

Bagels :

Toasted Bagels and a Bath at Noon would make an excellent title for one's memoirs ~ Serge Koussevitzky

Discuss.

How would you answer differ, if you had :

1) Read Oblomov (1859), by Ivan Goncharov ? and / or

2) Been an author who had been compared to its titular head ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 21, 2024

Brinkmanship :

Brinkmanship simply has no meaning when everyone has now seen your hand (which they anyway knew had nothing in it) ~ Montaigne https://t.co/D3uAZUn8bF

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 9, 2021

Charitable objects :

If ever the claimed good intentions behind the objects of a charitable institution come under sorry scrutiny, 'tis oddly most likely in the particulars of how it gainfully offers employment to those who are - or are entitled to be - its stated beneficiaries ~ Benjamin Franklin

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 22, 2021

Cromer Delicacies

Cromer Delicacies [according to Mark Twain*] :

Jellied adder's tail or marinaded Jersey-herd udder

* Allegedly.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 9, 2023

Deceit :

Deceit is an unnecessary, but frequently present, part of political and public life ~ Thomas Hardy

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 30, 2022

Employment and its so-called rights :

'Even with the sound off, the stench both of the finger-wagging and from the hideous assurance that comes from having so much capital that one can spout fantasies* makes me hasten to beckon the servant with the bucket and refreshing lemon-infused towel !' ~ Evelyn Waugh

1 / 2

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 14, 2022

Friendship :

When it comes down to it, friends who sometimes prove to be an irritatant are one thing, essentially : irritating ~ Victor Hugo

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 12, 2024

Insincerity :

The only thing that astounds me more than your lack of sincerity is your sincere and deep indifference to its easily being found out ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 20, 2021

Kissing :

If a person kisses a fish, the person may be happy, but the fish will not be ~ Voltaire

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 9, 2021

Lives led well :

An examined life may still not be a life will led, but it has more chance of being so than one left unexamined ~ Henrik Ibsen

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 2, 2023

London :

If one is but kind to London, see how it does, indeed, reciprocate ~ Samuel Johnson

If you are called Jonson, it shouldn't be spelt Johnson ~ Ben Jonson

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 14, 2020

When a man is tired of London, he may use his One-Day Travelcard to go home again ~ Ben Jonson

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 2, 2021

Love-apples :

Love-apples, Hodge ? They are but an riotous fruit ! ~ Samuel Johnson

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 13, 2023

Low-achievers :

As LBJ privately told JFK, it's these kids who are low-achievers - objectively considering the advantages that they've already had in life - but think that they can sort out everyone else's lives who are the problem ~ Henry Miller

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 9, 2021

Lunar eclipses :

The first demotic record, in English, of what appears to have been a lunar eclipse suggests that witnessing it may have given rise to some strange - not to say wildly transgressive - behaviour ! ~ G. K. Chestertonhttps://t.co/S3N84U2KMp

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 29, 2023

Need :

A plain deal table - and, maybe, a plate of tepid tapioca - is all that any of us needs ~ Mark Twain pic.twitter.com/v56rbohGn8

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 19, 2020

The Night Sky :

Although, despite the frost,
The Night Sky was not
Crisply - not so sharply -
Defin'd, 'twas to me
Comfort to look - and see.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson#OneLovelyThingToDay

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 5, 2022

Parfums :

Oh, but I procure *all* mes parfums, my dear, through the caring offices of Boddle & Shrike - don't you ? ~ Oscar Wilde

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 11, 2023

Parties :

Parties are, generally, to be endured, forgotten, or recalled unbidden, and with the accompanying cold sweat ~ Walter Matthau

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 5, 2021

Penguins :

A plain penguin is no match for a fancy penguin, but a pretty penguin surpasses all ~ John Gielgud

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 12, 2022

Poverty :

Poor people are just rich people who don't have any money ~ Mark Twain

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 3, 2021

Set-backs :

Whatever set-backs there may have been, some will turn out to be blessings in disguise - and blessings are always worth being grateful for ! ~ Novalis

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 12, 2023

Sex :

More than the question whether the sex act itself is ridiculous or demeaning is the matter of all the things that the sexes do to achieve, adulterate or avoid it ~ Joan Rivers

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 1, 2021

I 'love' about the writing of Henry James that beyond the middle of The Golden Bowl, for example, one can be sure that the pair of leading characters *must have* had sexual relations, but, even by re-reading the likely chapter, one can never work out where ~ S. J. Perelman

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 17, 2021

Shakespeare :

Even the much-maligned Compositor D (?) took more skill in setting the works of Shakespeare than he did in writing them ~ Frank Muir

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 13, 2024

'Sporty' clothes :

When 'being sporty', it is essential to wear sporty clothes : if not, people may not think that you're serious about it, or, even worse, realize that that's what you're doing ~ Stephen Potter [a paraphrase]

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 17, 2023

Standards in public life

The decline of standards in public life or politics is epitomized by this analogy : a fresh turd on a packed coach whose windows won't open, but with passengers who all seem to have lost their sense of smell ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 9, 2023

Tchaikovsky :

As Rimsky once remarked, it may be that the best of Pyotr Ilyich's symphonic writing is not to be found in his Symphonies ~ Leonard Bernstein https://t.co/EAof8ySLSK

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 1, 2022

Work :

Those infamous words are perhaps better understood as Machtfreie Arbeit : Power-free work ~ E. B. White

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 24, 2024

Youth :

As Dostoyevsky maybe once said, what we might imagine to be the arrogance of youth is actually its insecurity :

All too aware *that* it is, but - not yet (ever ?) knowing *why* it is - repeating the mistake of over-emphatically announcing its presence.https://t.co/Hmen3gyRfu

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 8, 2024

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

The Invented Quotations [and Ascriptions] : A Compendium (in chronological order)

The Invented Quotations [and Ascriptions] : A Compendium (in chronological order)

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

20 September

The Invented Quotations [and Ascriptions] : A Compendium (in chronological order)

Invent the riposte, and attribute it to Jean Harlow, Joan Rivers, Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau, etc.*, as you see fit ! ;)#YouAreMakingUpYourOwnJokesNow - literally

* Though unlikely, perhaps, that *all of them* worked on the gag ? Unless... : https://t.co/OL1fPtbVBe

2 / 2

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 15, 2021

A plain deal table - and, maybe, a plate of tepid tapioca - is all that any of us needs ~ Mark Twain pic.twitter.com/v56rbohGn8

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 19, 2020

If one is but kind to London, see how it does, indeed, reciprocate ~ Samuel Johnson

If you are called Jonson, it shouldn't be spelt Johnson ~ Ben Jonson

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 14, 2020

Poor people are just rich people who don't have any money ~ Mark Twain

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 3, 2021

More than the question whether the sex act itself is ridiculous or demeaning is the matter of all the things that the sexes do to achieve, adulterate or avoid it ~ Joan Rivers

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 1, 2021

When a man is tired of London, he may use his One-Day Travelcard to go home again ~ Ben Jonson

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 2, 2021

Parties are, generally, to be endured, forgotten, or recalled unbidden, and with the accompanying cold sweat ~ Walter Matthau

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 5, 2021

The only thing that astounds me more than your lack of sincerity is your sincere and deep indifference to its easily being found out ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 20, 2021

If ever the claimed good intentions behind the objects of a charitable institution come under sorry scrutiny, 'tis oddly most likely in the particulars of how it gainfully offers employment to those who are - or are entitled to be - its stated beneficiaries ~ Benjamin Franklin

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 22, 2021

If a person kisses a fish, the person may be happy, but the fish will not be ~ Voltaire

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 9, 2021

As LBJ privately told JFK, it's these kids who are low-achievers - objectively considering the advantages that they've already had in life - but think that they can sort out everyone else's lives who are the problem ~ Henry Miller

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 9, 2021

Brinkmanship simply has no meaning when everyone has now seen your hand (which they anyway knew had nothing in it) ~ Montaigne https://t.co/D3uAZUn8bF

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 9, 2021

Although, despite the frost,
The Night Sky was not
Crisply - not so sharply -
Defin'd, 'twas to me
Comfort to look - and see.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson#OneLovelyThingToDay

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 5, 2022

Through the words of Bond, his soulless creature, Fleming tried to persuade us that he had known, but rejected, the pleasures of longer immersion in hot water :

One can barely credit that the man had ever been run, let alone taken, a bath worth the having. ~ Flann O'Brien

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 12, 2022

As Rimsky once remarked, it may be that the best of Pyotr Ilyich's symphonic writing is not to be found in his Symphonies ~ Leonard Bernstein https://t.co/EAof8ySLSK

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 1, 2022

'Even with the sound off, the stench both of the finger-wagging and from the hideous assurance that comes from having so much capital that one can spout fantasies* makes me hasten to beckon the servant with the bucket and refreshing lemon-infused towel !' ~ Evelyn Waugh

1 / 2

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 14, 2022

Deceit is an unnecessary, but frequently present, part of political and public life ~ Thomas Hardy

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 30, 2022

Whatever set-backs there may have been, some will turn out to be blessings in disguise - and blessings are always worth being grateful for ! ~ Novalis

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 12, 2023

Oh, but I procure *all* mes parfums, my dear, through the caring offices of Boddle & Shrike - don't you ? ~ Oscar Wilde

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 11, 2023

Love-apples, Hodge ? They are but an riotous fruit ! ~ Samuel Johnson

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 13, 2023

When 'being sporty', it is essential to wear sporty clothes : if not, people may not think that you're serious about it, or, even worse, realize that that's what you're doing ~ Stephen Potter [a paraphrase]

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 17, 2023

Cromer Delicacies [according to Mark Twain*] :

Jellied adder's tail or marinaded Jersey-herd udder

* Allegedly.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 9, 2023

The decline of standards in public life or politics is epitomized by this analogy : a fresh turd on a packed coach whose windows won't open, but with passengers who all seem to have lost their sense of smell ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 9, 2023

The first demotic record, in English, of what appears to have been a lunar eclipse suggests that witnessing it may have given rise to some strange - not to say wildly transgressive - behaviour ! ~ G. K. Chestertonhttps://t.co/S3N84U2KMp

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 29, 2023

A cheery face, even if it's but a chimæra of one's own construing, can still be a comfort ~ Peter Lorre#OneLovelyThingToDay pic.twitter.com/CbnuZDxial

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 23, 2023

An examined life may still not be a life will led, but it has more chance of being so than one left unexamined ~ Henrik Ibsen

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 2, 2023

I prefer arm-rests to arm-wrestling, but I don't like either very much ~ John Wayne

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 6, 2023

Very probably, there *is* a special place reserved in Hell for those who assert that such a place is reserved for those who trivially annoy their sensibilities with, say, how they eat their food in company ~ Dante Alighieri

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 1, 2023

Might being attentive and seeking not to be inauthentic be - or seem to be - all that one needs do in life ? ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 1, 2024

Toasted Bagels and a Bath at Noon would make an excellent title for one's memoirs ~ Serge Koussevitzky

Discuss.

How would you answer differ, if you had :

1) Read Oblomov (1859), by Ivan Goncharov ? and / or

2) Been an author who had been compared to its titular head ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 21, 2024

As Dostoyevsky maybe once said, what we might imagine to be the arrogance of youth is actually its insecurity :

All too aware *that* it is, but - not yet (ever ?) knowing *why* it is - repeating the mistake of over-emphatically announcing its presence.https://t.co/Hmen3gyRfu

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 8, 2024

When it comes down to it, friends who sometimes prove to be an irritatant are one thing, essentially : irritating ~ Victor Hugo

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 12, 2024

Even the much-maligned Compositor D (?) took more skill in setting the works of Shakespeare than he did in writing them ~ Frank Muir

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 13, 2024

Those infamous words are perhaps better understood as Machtfreie Arbeit : Power-free work ~ E. B. White

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 24, 2024

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

The Invented Quotations [and Ascriptions] : A Compendium (in reverse chronological order)

The Invented Quotations [and Ascriptions] : A Compendium (in reverse chronological order)

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

20 September

The Invented Quotations [and Ascriptions] : A Compendium (in reverse chronological order)

'Even with the sound off, the stench both of the finger-wagging and from the hideous assurance that comes from having so much capital that one can spout fantasies* makes me hasten to beckon the servant with the bucket and refreshing lemon-infused towel !' ~ Evelyn Waugh

1 / 2

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 14, 2022

Those infamous words are perhaps better understood as Machtfreie Arbeit : Power-free work ~ E. B. White

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 24, 2024

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

Even the much-maligned Compositor D (?) took more skill in setting the works of Shakespeare than he did in writing them ~ Frank Muir

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 13, 2024

When it comes down to it, friends who sometimes prove to be an irritatant are one thing, essentially : irritating ~ Victor Hugo

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 12, 2024

As Dostoyevsky maybe once said, what we might imagine to be the arrogance of youth is actually its insecurity :

All too aware *that* it is, but - not yet (ever ?) knowing *why* it is - repeating the mistake of over-emphatically announcing its presence.https://t.co/Hmen3gyRfu

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 8, 2024

Toasted Bagels and a Bath at Noon would make an excellent title for one's memoirs ~ Serge Koussevitzky

Discuss.

How would you answer differ, if you had :

1) Read Oblomov (1859), by Ivan Goncharov ? and / or

2) Been an author who had been compared to its titular head ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 21, 2024

Might being attentive and seeking not to be inauthentic be - or seem to be - all that one needs do in life ? ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 1, 2024

Very probably, there *is* a special place reserved in Hell for those who assert that such a place is reserved for those who trivially annoy their sensibilities with, say, how they eat their food in company ~ Dante Alighieri

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 1, 2023

I prefer arm-rests to arm-wrestling, but I don't like either very much ~ John Wayne

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 6, 2023

An examined life may still not be a life will led, but it has more chance of being so than one left unexamined ~ Henrik Ibsen

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 2, 2023

A cheery face, even if it's but a chimæra of one's own construing, can still be a comfort ~ Peter Lorre#OneLovelyThingToDay pic.twitter.com/CbnuZDxial

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 23, 2023

The first demotic record, in English, of what appears to have been a lunar eclipse suggests that witnessing it may have given rise to some strange - not to say wildly transgressive - behaviour ! ~ G. K. Chestertonhttps://t.co/S3N84U2KMp

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 29, 2023

The decline of standards in public life or politics is epitomized by this analogy : a fresh turd on a packed coach whose windows won't open, but with passengers who all seem to have lost their sense of smell ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 9, 2023

Cromer Delicacies [according to Mark Twain*] :

Jellied adder's tail or marinaded Jersey-herd udder

* Allegedly.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 9, 2023

When 'being sporty', it is essential to wear sporty clothes : if not, people may not think that you're serious about it, or, even worse, realize that that's what you're doing ~ Stephen Potter [a paraphrase]

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 17, 2023

Love-apples, Hodge ? They are but an riotous fruit ! ~ Samuel Johnson

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 13, 2023

Oh, but I procure *all* mes parfums, my dear, through the caring offices of Boddle & Shrike - don't you ? ~ Oscar Wilde

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 11, 2023

Whatever set-backs there may have been, some will turn out to be blessings in disguise - and blessings are always worth being grateful for ! ~ Novalis

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 12, 2023

Deceit is an unnecessary, but frequently present, part of political and public life ~ Thomas Hardy

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 30, 2022

'Even with the sound off, the stench both of the finger-wagging and from the hideous assurance that comes from having so much capital that one can spout fantasies* makes me hasten to beckon the servant with the bucket and refreshing lemon-infused towel !' ~ Evelyn Waugh

1 / 2

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 14, 2022

As Rimsky once remarked, it may be that the best of Pyotr Ilyich's symphonic writing is not to be found in his Symphonies ~ Leonard Bernstein https://t.co/EAof8ySLSK

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 1, 2022

Through the words of Bond, his soulless creature, Fleming tried to persuade us that he had known, but rejected, the pleasures of longer immersion in hot water :

One can barely credit that the man had ever been run, let alone taken, a bath worth the having. ~ Flann O'Brien

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 12, 2022

Invent the riposte, and attribute it to Jean Harlow, Joan Rivers, Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau, etc.*, as you see fit ! ;)#YouAreMakingUpYourOwnJokesNow - literally

* Though unlikely, perhaps, that *all of them* worked on the gag ? Unless... : https://t.co/OL1fPtbVBe

2 / 2

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 15, 2021

Although, despite the frost,
The Night Sky was not
Crisply - not so sharply -
Defin'd, 'twas to me
Comfort to look - and see.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson#OneLovelyThingToDay

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 5, 2022

Brinkmanship simply has no meaning when everyone has now seen your hand (which they anyway knew had nothing in it) ~ Montaigne https://t.co/D3uAZUn8bF

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 9, 2021

As LBJ privately told JFK, it's these kids who are low-achievers - objectively considering the advantages that they've already had in life - but think that they can sort out everyone else's lives who are the problem ~ Henry Miller

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 9, 2021

If a person kisses a fish, the person may be happy, but the fish will not be ~ Voltaire

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 9, 2021

If ever the claimed good intentions behind the objects of a charitable institution come under sorry scrutiny, 'tis oddly most likely in the particulars of how it gainfully offers employment to those who are - or are entitled to be - its stated beneficiaries ~ Benjamin Franklin

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 22, 2021

The only thing that astounds me more than your lack of sincerity is your sincere and deep indifference to its easily being found out ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 20, 2021

Parties are, generally, to be endured, forgotten, or recalled unbidden, and with the accompanying cold sweat ~ Walter Matthau

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 5, 2021

When a man is tired of London, he may use his One-Day Travelcard to go home again ~ Ben Jonson

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 2, 2021

More than the question whether the sex act itself is ridiculous or demeaning is the matter of all the things that the sexes do to achieve, adulterate or avoid it ~ Joan Rivers

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 1, 2021

Poor people are just rich people who don't have any money ~ Mark Twain

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 3, 2021

If one is but kind to London, see how it does, indeed, reciprocate ~ Samuel Johnson

If you are called Jonson, it shouldn't be spelt Johnson ~ Ben Jonson

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 14, 2020

A plain deal table - and, maybe, a plate of tepid tapioca - is all that any of us needs ~ Mark Twain pic.twitter.com/v56rbohGn8

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 19, 2020

As LBJ privately told JFK, it's these kids who are low-achievers - objectively considering the advantages that they've already had in life - but think that they can sort out everyone else's lives who are the problem ~ Henry Miller

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 9, 2021

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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