The memory of what was lost, between the speaker and the listener

This is a first-night response* to in situ:, performing in the ghost in me at Wandlebury

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28 June

This is a first-night response (work in progress) to the ghost in me [haunted selves, lost sounds, old futures], by and as given by members of in situ: at Wandlebury Country Park on Thursday 28 June 2018 at 8.00 p.m.

More immediately by far (Thursday to Saturday this week), @in_situ brings its inhabitation of place to Wandlebury :https://t.co/AXozgANsDR pic.twitter.com/htWKeVuikW

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 27, 2018

What I carry in my heart
Brings us so close or so far apart
Only love can make love

‘That Voice Again' ~ Peter Gabriel (from the album So)

For those unfamiliar with in situ:’s approach to experimental drama (their tag-line calls it leading the way in environmental theatre), they do not drag members of the audience into the action – and the new show at Wandlebury does not require any prior knowledge. Ideal for those who like, as #UCFF does (with the medium of cinema), a film to speak for itself (and not to depend on extraneous material, or some explanation that should have been in the film).

It may feel odd, but, to have its effect, one does not even have to imagine that one can or has to take everything in [as demonstrated by a version of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, with one or more actors in different rooms of a building at the same time] – the show is one that builds and builds, in a way that one cannot quite explain** : precisely because, in the initial scene-setting (these are not, one suggests, tableaux), one is free to move perspective, one can follow one's impulse that the main action is to be seen / found elsewhere. (Amongst many, many others, a vague and maybe not consciously felt echo – from just being led into and through an orchard – is of The Garden of Eden : some gravity-waves that, at least, #UCFF felt are listed below.)

Such theatre, where it is grounded or rooted – avoid the words as one may – in the place where it is performed*** (work on it had taken place over three terms, the last of which was spent at Wandlebury), feels informed by other times (as if connected to them) : in this case, with frequent references in utterances to grandparents, one is certainly back to the start of the twentieth century in the minds of the actors' relatives, and therefore in quite a different age (in some ways).

What does one experience here, in terms of generalities ? A troupe dressed ordinarily (if in some sort of spectrum of pastel or pastoral hues ?) ; birdsong ; people performing familiar actions, as much sometimes to reassure themselves as others [almost as ritualistic repetitions ?], but also standing or moving as a kind of phalanx [a rippling surge of advancing, and of retreat], and attempting to be careful of each other's needs ; dappled late-evening light high on the wall behind the main performance-area…

All of these (and other things that were noticed and noted), and, in a sense, none of them – when more aware of the birds, is one perhaps less aware of the sound-design, of that actor’s gesture or unheeded / unheard speech, or of sitting with leaves of an apple-tree on one’s shoulder ?

Led, as if Dante at the start of his Inferno (by necessity) or then by having to trust Virgil, we shadily saw figures in the woodland : those represented, but were not, skiis – so what might that be about [and could we see how painful and difficult it looked to walk in them ?], or what could a man be doing, seemingly trying to drop walnuts (or walnut shells ?) into the cuckoo-clock-like aperture of a box-like resonating chamber**** ?

[...]

'If you go down to the woods', to-morrow (29 June) or Saturday (30 June), with @in_situ, had you 'better go in disguise' - or are we always in disguise, hidden even from and leaving fragments of ourselves ?

You'll also see apples and chairs... pic.twitter.com/orkSzALvAy

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 28, 2018

Some cultural resonances and / or sympathies (a gathering list) :

* Samuel Beckettt’s Acte sans Paroles II***** ~ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaGnKjla6pA

* Chumbawamba with some sentiments in their ‘Tubthumping’ ~ http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?lyrics=1909

* Franz Kafka’s Das Schloß (The Castle) and Der Prozeß (The Trial) ~ significantly, in the former, K.’s late-night chance meeting with Bürgel at the Herrenhof, and representatively, in the latter, Josef K., neglecting his advocate Huld in favour of seducing Huld’s mistress Leni, or being distracted from hearing Titorelli by the cries and presence of the school-girls

* Arthur Koestler’s The Ghost in The Machine [even if just as a title] ~ http://archive.org/details/TheGhostInTheMachine

* @TheUnthanks (= Rachel and Becky Unthank) with 'The Romantic Tees' ~ Diversions, Vol. 3 : Songs from the Shipyards

Thank you, Rachael Duthie, Richard Hare, Boris Mayger, Paul Paxton, Cyrus Pundole, Bella Stewart, Katrina Vero - alias cast / crew / sound at @in_situ !

A touching insight into our humanity / fallibility / frailty

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 30, 2018

End-notes :

* But now with closing-night interpolations.

** Although, having said which, it may partly be that – with the performers not essentially ‘hiding behind’ a text (as they might in many a play (or opera)) – so much of our relation to them is in their physicality or presence, and so there is a greater effect of human attachment both to them and to our sense of their mortality / frailty (and, hence, of our own) ?

*** Afterwards, director Bella Stewart told us that a version of the piece, using film and other media from the Wandlebury performance-space, will be given at The Leper Chapel later in the year : The Chapel and Wandlebury are both owned / managed by the charity Cambridge Past, Present & Future. We also heard, from Richard Spaul (who is directing Woyzeck, at The Chapel, from 12 to 14 July inclusive), that he will be doing a single-player Hamlet (some will remember Bella’s and his eerie double-handed Macbeth).

It felt v. appropriate to mention @in_situ [http://t.co/91jgCkn9jK] when reviewing the new film, Macbeth (2015) :http://t.co/O7wKA6jMOg

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 4, 2015

**** It also had an elongated and flat piece of wood appended, which resembled a set-square – was it probably a home-crafted musical instrument, whose sound, without our seeing it being made, we heard later on ?

***** But, also (and more obviously), Mouth (in Not I), and Winnie (in Happy Days) - parts both written for Billie Whitelaw. (Even more clearly, the brief candle soliloquy of The Tragedy of Macbeth, and Jacques, taxonomizing 'seven ages' in his monologue in As You Like It [or What You Will] - but somehow exempting him (and us, with him ?) from it... ?


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

Firms will have to justify pay gap between workers and bosses [reports BBC]

Firms will have to justify pay gap between workers and bosses [reports BBC]

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9 June

Firms will have to justify pay gap between workers and bosses [reports BBC]

Firms will have to justify pay gap between workers and bosses https://t.co/X9UgCxbAro

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) June 9, 2018

Who 'welcomed the plan' ? (For example, what bearing does such a ratio have exactly on equal pay ?)

Isn't it obvious that, by hiving off into companies, they can have 249 employees and otherwise skew the 'average worker's salary' ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 9, 2018

Do institutional investors usually care that much (they can outvote human beings at shareholders' meetings and / or block remuneration anyway) ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 9, 2018

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

Tweets from charities [i.e. fund-raisers] that assume that everyone can work

Tweets from charities [i.e. fund-raisers] that blithely assume that everyone can work, etc.

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2018 (25 October to 1 November)
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9 June

Tweets from charities [i.e. fund-raisers] that blithely assume that everyone can work, etc.

Less good, if the charity just should not make assumptions that those who read the Tweet(s) are in paid work or have financial fluidity... ?

Great, but maybe you don't 'buy your daily coffee', when you're one to whom a #mh label was applied, and, despite getting - with some effort - into paid work and out of the damaging initial relationship that provoked the diagnosis, had working-life trashed by stigma-colleagues...

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 9, 2018

No, in that case (if you're a coffee-drinker), you make coffee at home, and the day only really starts when the getting to or staying asleep permit - and, unless it's a day when the appointment (one of very few in the week) can't be avoided, you might really have to stay at home.

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 9, 2018

Meanwhile, for those who do buy a daily coffee, an act of coffee connoisseurship (in a ULIPO-styled mode), might please more... ? #UCFF presents 'Coffee Choice' [written for @edanaming] :https://t.co/vL93VAxMpZ

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 9, 2018

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

Tweets about The Breadwinner (2017) (starting from Day 2 of #CamFF 2017)

Tweets about The Breadwinner (2017) (starting from Day 2 of #CamFF 2017)

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7 June

Tweets about The Breadwinner (2017) (starting from Day 2 of #CamFF 2017)

[...]

At https://t.co/xFknMehWT9, @everyfilmneil does the right thing, giving The Breadwinner (2017) 9.5 / 10.

As he says :

'Reasons to avoid : Really struggling to think of a reason' pic.twitter.com/wRksmYvtSR

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 1, 2018

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

Britten, Tippett, and The Second World War

Britten, Tippett, and The Second World War

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6 June

Britten, Tippett, and The Second World War

Michael Tippett v. Benjamin Britten is always an interesting one, e.g. conscientious objection : more conviction / less compromise in what Tippett did... ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 6, 2018

So, on @BBCSSO's web-site, we find :

'In June 1943, Michael Tippett, then 38 years-old, was sentenced as a conscientious objector to three months in Wormwood Scrubs Prison (of which he served two).'https://t.co/oMUFZoz15A https://t.co/b3byunvwES

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 7, 2018

'[They] registered as conscientious objectors. Britten offered to work for the Ministry of Information in lieu of military service, and was later granted full exemption from the armed forces.'https://t.co/XfLQLN85OS

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 7, 2018

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Self-killing : the ultimate act of self-harming ?

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7 June

The word suicide itself defies us : if we know the word homicide, we are still stumped without a knowledge of Latin that sui means the particular, the self.

But the word gets heard - and used - often enough for us to know the meaning, without needing to know that it is an act of self-killing, and it even appeared, when Céline Deon took a career-break (for motherhood ?), in a French headline sa suicide incroyable (I quote from memory). The word, just now referring to 'career suicide', is with us in such manifestations as 'financial suicide' and 'intellectual suicide', and, if I am honest, it has become a little too cheap for my liking, a glib notion when what is embodied is that of choosing to end one's life.


And there we come against the taboos, the misconceptions, the prejudice.

We all know about 'suicides' (as, equally cheaply, those who carried through that choice are sometimes unfeelingly called) not being buried 'in consecrated ground', and so we have a lasting sense of the shame and crime that ecclesiastical law deemed this act to be. We will know also of the shame and penalty of bastardy, of 'being born out of wedlock', and the stigma is quite similar in origin, the shame of the state of affairs, but different in how the twentieth century came to view illegitimacy and suicide :

Legislation enacted by the UK Parliament in 1925 repealed the consequences of being born to parents who happened not to be married, and, in my view, the prevalence of people living together in the last thirty years suggests that little or no societal disapproval attaches to being unmarried parents (as against a young single mother, it must be said). The inability to inherit in certain situations had been swept away by the reforming legislation, and, with it, the negative and hampering limitations of being illegitimate, a notion also done away with. (All that survives are the feeble jokes about doubting my parenthood when the speaker has been called a bastard, etc.)

With suicide, we had to wait until only fifty-two years ago for Parliament to pass the Suicide Act 1961, and thereby decriminalize someone trying and failing to kill him- or herself : before then, because the act was a criminal offence, someone known to be a survivor of the attempt was open to prosecution.


I know only when the two changes that I refer to, not (for want of having researched the matter) what the policy and other considerations were that led to the disparity in timing : more than 35 years to correct the injustice of being open to prosecution for wanting to end one's life, as against remedying the things that a person born to an unmarried couple was prohibited from doing.

In both cases, the history of the law's disapproval of illegitimacy and of suicide lay in Christian theology, with a Biblical notion of birthright (and of the primacy of the legitimate first male child), and a belief that suicide was the unforgiveable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Yet (as I have said), why decriminalizing suicide was less of a priority is not known to me : by analogy, I can say only that, under the law prior to the Mental Health Act 1983, being an unmarried mother made one liable to be detained under the predecessor Act, which is an almost incredible time for repealing such a policy.

Looking back to Greek mythology, whatever we think of Oedipus, it is clear enough in Sophocles' The Theban Plays that there is a taboo against suicide. There were also The Fates, whose Greek name (Moirai) means 'the apportioners', from which we partly get the idea of an allotted span on Earth, maybe three score years and ten : the strand representing each human life was spun by Clotho, measured out by Lachesis, and cut to length by Atropos.

You have your allotted span, and you don't seek to defy the Gods by prematurely shortening it, because there are penalties, if you do. Christian doctrine that this unforgiveable sin was that of suicide involved similar notions that God determines the length of one's life.


All of this history feeds in to the attitudes towards - the words used to describe - suicide now, and many object to the words 'commit[ted] suicide' on the basis that 'to commit' suggests a criminal offence. Whether that usage is a real hang-over from the days before the 1961 Act, I do not know, but it is not unlikely.

All in all, the public is so confused by the messages about suicide, assisted suicide, whether the former is a crime, or whether either is an act of courage or of cowardice (no neutral view here), that is no wonder that those who feel death to be the only way out are hurt and hindered sometimes by them : amongst which, they have the fear of being thrown into Dante's Inferno, of the stigma that will attach, and of being perceived as having acted selfishly.


To be continued


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Too posh to answer the telephone ? [work in progress]

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2018 (25 October to 1 November)
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8 May

Some comments [work in progress], following a screening and Q&A (as film-maker in residence at The University of Cambridge's Centre for Film and Screen), of Lucrecia Martel's La Ciénaga (The Swamp) (2001)

If a film-maker [Lucrecia Martel] sets out to make a film that defies some cinematic conventions, it seems to be odd to want to know if the Q 'Could Chekhov have made it ?' is a compliment

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 8, 2018

Although it was not meant equivocally, it seems ironic for a writer / director who deals in ambiguity / opacity in La Ciénaga (The Swamp) (2001) to want to know if the comparison is meant kindly - if then evading it largely, by saying that Chekhov's work wasn't set in Argentina ? https://t.co/4eptbvEH9x

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 9, 2018

Anton Chekhov's last play, The Cherry Orchard, had sprung to mind.

Yet who necessarily wants a film released in 2001 to be likened to a play written 98 years earlier ?

Not if, now, one is laying store by innovation - even in a film that stays internally consistent and linear ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 9, 2018

[...]


'You were all drunk'



Film-references :

* Babel (2006)

* Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

* Drevo (The Tree) (2014)

* Unrelated (2007)


[...]



It has been firmly postulated to be a feature of Andrei Tarkovksy's work that where, say, one sees Fire, the remaining Four Elements (of Earth, Water, and Air) can be found contiguously, but which is a pattern that one might otherwise overlook. In La Ciénaga, whether or not one can seek out the others in proximity (or they are simply pervasively present), one could impose - with some slight 'fudges' - an order on various recurrences to make a new Four Elements :

* Mud

* Blood [+ red wine]

* Water / ice / glass*

* Air


[...]


End-notes :

* Or 'Glass' could be an element in its own right, and substitute for 'Air' - though the latter is palpably there, as when


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

On first watching Yorgos Lanthimos' Kinetta (2005)...

On first watching Yorgos Lanthimos' Kinetta (2005)...

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
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2 May

On first watching Yorgos Lanthimos' Kinetta (2005)...

Ideally - but very fittingly - the DVD doesn't decide to come off its spindle, 35 mins in, and appear jammed... :)

Very interesting story-telling, almost without words, so far - and confusing what is and isn't being staged and / or filmed !

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 2, 2018

As one would want from Yorgos Lanthimos, not pressure-of-speech-type chatter, but a quiet, observational, experimental, and often just plain odd film - avoiding the drama that seems to jar in, and mar, the films in English ? :https://t.co/MCQxBzaxzehttps://t.co/HjgMZCu99B pic.twitter.com/m12wwi7IVC

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 3, 2018

Yet, if one were to believe the ~150,00 votes for The @LobsterFilm (2015) and ~57,000 for @SacredDeerMovie (2017) on @IMDb, both rank at 7.1, and so are >2 points 'better'...

Watch, and boost the 790 ratings on which it's based :https://t.co/L5bQlYiaixhttps://t.co/EtrDcOwpso

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 3, 2018

Some after-throughts :

Finally, #UCFF completes a Yorgos Lanthimos trio of Alps¹ (Alpeis) (2011) and Kinetta² (2005) with Dogtooth (Kynodontas) (2009) :

All better than Deer - or Lobster !

¹ Seen at @CamPicturehouse (in 2013 ?), and not yet re-watched...

² Seen on DVD in May 2018 (and re-watched).

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 5, 2020

Forget The Lobster (2015) - you should be showing Alps (2011) (or even Kinetta (2005)) ! https://t.co/Cv1R7ubf0J

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 1, 2019

Or even 'on film'...

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 27, 2019

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At Lunch Three with Britten Sinfonia

This is an account of Britten Sinfonia in At Lunch Three on Tuesday 17 April 2018

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17 April

This is an account of At Lunch Three, as given by members of Britten Sinfonia at West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, on Tuesday 17 April 2018 at 1.00 p.m.

Thomas Gould (ThomasGouldVLN) introduced the concert, and welcomed Tom Poster (@PosterTom) to play with Clare Finnimore (viola), Caroline Dearnley (cello) and him in two works for piano quartet (and mentioned the deftness of Poster's playing in the latter). The first, a world-premiere performance of a composition by Caroline Shaw, Gould described as ‘pretty beautiful’, and invited interested members of the audience to stay for the post-concert talk with Tim Watts from The University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Music.


Caroline Shaw (1982-) ~ ‘Thousandth Orange’ (2018) :

Several iterations of what seemed like it was to be a piano ostinato (the ‘very simple 4-chord progression’ to which Shaw’s programme-notes referred) began the piece. Before the material was shared with, and widened out, by the string-players, we then began by hearing them harmonizing it in different ways. Although, as a whole, the piece tended towards tonality, it did not do so simply in a sunnily emphatic way, but with edge, instruments rising and swelling - or playing pizzicato (with bowed cello) - at different tempi.

The work sounded quite filmic in its approach, and one could have imagined that it was a close reading of a cinematic short. However, it by no means needs visuals, but – as Shaw had also said in her programme-notes – she was evoking seeing, and the act of looking, and so ‘Thousandth Orange’ relaxed into the general rhythm of, and gave the impression of, different shots or alternative takes (but not at all in a Cubist way) : Maybe after the tenth, or the hundredth, or the thousandth time one paints an orange (or plays a simple cadential figure [sc.as she differently describes that ‘4-chord progression]), there is still yet more to see and to hear and to love.

The piece had a quiet, but effective ending, with a version of the cadential figure – as envisaged earlier on – partitioned between pizzicato strings, and just hanging in the air.


As with the Brahms that followed¹, this was quality playing as of a unit, and well received by the audience : the work plays again at Wigmore Hall on Wednesday 18 and at St Andrew’s Hall, Norwich, on Friday 20 April, and one trusts that there will be other opportunities to hear it afterwards.



Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) ~ Piano Quartet in G Minor, Opus 25 (1861) :

1. Adagio

2. Intermezzo – Allegro ma non troppo - Trio : Animato

3. Andante con moto

4. Rondo all Zingarese : Presto


Rather than reviewing the whole performance, which was excellent (and caused one person, on leaving the venue, to say that she never knew that Brahms could sound like that – almost everyone seemed to have found the work and its playing electric), here are just the written-up form of a few comments that were noted along the way.


The Allegro opens with a sun-lit statement in simple form, and we were fairly immediately in that initial lyricism that Shaw captures in her opening chords : she had chosen this work ‘as a natural partner to her new commission’². What one most wonders at is whether such a cello-line as that of Brahms could be contemporaneously written, or with such easy vibrancy or enthusiasm ?

In the Intermezzo, Gould, then Poster, could be heard to be prefiguring the Finale, and imbuing it with sadness in the repeat. In talking of the movement's exuberance, the programme-notes used the phrase ‘nervous sense of disquiet’ to say that it is kept in check ; however, the words fit better as a description of the Andante con moto, with its motif of repeated couplets, before it hints at and then builds up to grandeur, fuelled by energetic playing by Poster : eventually, out of the ashes of a huge explosion from the piano, Dearnley’s cello and Finnimore’s viola emerge and prove to have survived. (Likewise, in the Rondo, an elaborate cadenza drops down just to Gould's violin³ - imagine Brahms, as a man of 28 (exactly a year after Clara Schumann has given the premiere), making his playing and compositional début with this piece in Vienna in November 1862 !)

As the piano part established itself again, the other instruments could be heard, modulating beneath its harmonic forms : one keenly sensed that Brahms has a massive compositional structure at this point, which he is keeping aloft, until he finally pulls away into a close.


The Rondo started with lively string-tones and with Poster’s piano luminous in its upper register, but soon descended to just keyboard, with then the addition of pizzicato strings. We may know Brahms’ version of Hungarian from [his orchestration from piano four hands of ten of] his Hungarian Dances, but the most enduring theme here is a stately progression of chords in a theme of orchestral proportions - as is often said of this work as a whole, which Schoenberg indeed took the trouble to orchestrate.

Not maintaining this head of steam that he has built up, Brahms lets some of the pace off, as he can be heard doing in the Symphonies or Concerti, by adopting a dance-form (a waltz ?) – prior to that dramatic cadenza, mentioned above, very shortly before the end of the work, and in the context of a summative visitation of the principal themes, en bloc, before some fast playing. He still has time to be meditative once more, however, until an onward current of piano notes drives us to the conclusion, and an even-faster passage that makes what passed before seem like a canter.


Tremendous acclaim met this thrilling playing of an exciting piece – as the audience-member remarked, this was a Brahms that she did not know !


End-notes :

¹ Except when Caroline Dearnley momentarily seemed to be awaiting overlong a cue, from Tom Poster, that he was ready to come in.

² Shaw is quoted, in the programme’s introduction, as saying This new piece for piano quartet is a kind of deep dive into my own memories of rehearsing and performing Brahms’ Piano Quartet as a violinist.

³ Albeit quickly joined by the other string-players.


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

Mouth-music

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
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5 April

The film / book title says The End of The Affair... :

But shouldn't the characters spend at least 50% of the time with :

1. Whether it should be 'affair', or (italicized or not) 'affaire' ?

2. Which of the classic definitions of affair(e)s it meets, and, if so, why ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 6, 2018

Mouth-music


[For the Winter Solstice]


I stand, and
(Having teased
Other lips) quiver
Now, 'twixt these
And your tongue -
Till I explode
Ambrosian gouts,
Thick and warm,
To savour
Sweetly down


© Copyright Belston Night Works 2018

Emma : I wonder. I wonder if everyone knew, all the time.

Jerry : Don't be silly. We were brilliant. Nobody knew. Who ever went to Kilburn in those days ? Just you and me.

Harold Pinter ~ Betrayal (1978) https://t.co/6ygXo8r4vV

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 9, 2018

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Stalin ate my homework

Some Tweets about The Death of Stalin (2017)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
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5 March

Some Tweets about The Death of Stalin (2017)

My birthday wish is for everyone to see this blurb. pic.twitter.com/rAqNXLfqdq

— Charley (@CharleyMacorn) April 5, 2018

With the lure of a ticket for just £4.00, one's feebly shaken faith was restored in @Aiannucci - and one must apologize to him (when one should know what the usual schtick of trailers is) that one credited one that made @Death_of_Stalin (2017) just look crass... :(

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 5, 2018

The film “The Death of Stalin” captures the terrifying absurdity of a tyrant. https://t.co/4i0rxq1EtS

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) March 6, 2018

Simon Russell Beale is very chilling... until he revisits portraying Lear, and rages as he did at Regan and Goneril :

'I will have such revenges on you both
That all the world shall—I will do such things—
What they are yet I know not, but they shall be
The terrors of the earth.' https://t.co/TxYavUePLe

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 6, 2018

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A grievous dereliction of duty at Cambridge Film Festival

A grievous dereliction of duty at Cambridge Film Festival

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

4 April

A grievous dereliction of duty at Cambridge Film Festival

* Very ably working with writer/ director Kenneth Lonergan, Jody Lee Lipes and Jennifer Lame as, respectively, his director of photography and film editor

* These locations, and how they're used : https://t.co/hvQfLtXOBw

* How Albininoni's Adagio plays over a long sequence pic.twitter.com/YDm9Oj7Gb6

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 4, 2018

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

Tweets from Easter at King's 2018

This attempts, by Tweet, to give a taste of the best of Easter at King's

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
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27 March

This is the annual attempt, by Tweet, to give a taste of the best of the Easter at King's Festival

Tuesday 27 March ~ St John Passion :

Fabulous performance of Bach's St John Passion with @ChoirOfKingsCam, @benparrymusic and @nickmulroy last night. Now onto rehearsals for our second performance @BarbicanCentre on Friday https://t.co/ImjlEcjdcq pic.twitter.com/PZXwcaaryP

— AAM (@AAMorchestra) March 28, 2018

At @ConcertsatKings at Easter once more - as Ben Parry stands in for Stephen Cleobury, the remarkable opening of St John Passion is even more striking. Lovely soprano aria from Anna Dennis !

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 27, 2018

Apart from Anna Dennis' excellent German diction, both Arias were highpoints of each Part (as well as those of @Yorksbass (William Gaunt) and David Allsopp (counter-tenor) in Part II), so raiding YouTube :https://t.co/MwEfs3tinlhttps://t.co/XfXJUiUCgDhttps://t.co/5thifyqQIj https://t.co/DqLHehobkh

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 28, 2018

That would have said (but Twitter on a Samsung mobile is less flexible) @benparrymusic and @SJCleobury :

Good to see the latter able to attend to hear a really tight configuration of @AAMorchestra under the leadership of @BojanCicic, who's both a nice guy and a great violinist ! https://t.co/DqLHehobkh

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 27, 2018

The list goes on, with Judith Evans, rock steady on bass, but given spikiness in this performance, and excellent bassoon from Alexandre Salles - in the swell of that opening Chorus (by contrast, envisaging the sweet farewell of the final Chorus and Chorale), so much was audible !

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 27, 2018

Wednesday 28 March ~ Recital by Joy Lisney (cello) and James Lisney (piano) :

A pleasure again - nearly said a joy - to hear cellist @JoyLisney and her pianist father @jameslisney play together, but for the first time at @Kings_College !

[Joy played Bach* and Britten solo, and he joined her for Beethoven's Opus 69 Sonata and Pärt's Spiegel im Spiegel**.]

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 28, 2018

In a pause between the Beethoven Sonata and Britten Suite for solo cello, several people commented what a good duo they made, with @jameslisney going so far beyond technical performance of the piano part : his playing was often filigree and light, and the Scherzo seemed like fun. https://t.co/eAxALTRnX9

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 28, 2018

As Joy plays, the music and its possibilities are really open to her (as, from the front row at @snapemaltings, one sees Pierre-Laurent Aimard's (PLA's) surprised or moved reaction to the score), and one senses and hears her realize what she is feeling :https://t.co/V51L8q3itp pic.twitter.com/KsZ8LTl4xl

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 28, 2018

* Taken from Bach's Partita for Solo Violin No. 2, BWV 1004, but in an arrangement by @JoyLisney (who is also a composer, and conductor).

** Less loosely than Arvo Pärt's equally celebrated Fratres ('authorized versions' exist), Spiegel im Spiegel was originally for violin & pf.

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 28, 2018

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

Chief : I’m a stray / Nutmeg : Aren’t we all (in the last analysis) ?

This is a review (work in progress) of Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs (2018)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

25 March

This is a review (work in progress) of Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs (2018), as seen in the non-dog-friendly preview screening* at The Arts Picture, Cambridge, on Sunday 25 March 2018 at 6.15 p.m. (in lovely Screen 1)

It is a pleasure to watch and want to write about such a film.

Rather than why The Square (2017) shows scant connection with the world of art (and might as well have been set in a bus station as a museum-style gallery ?), or wishing that Martin McDonagh's [ ] Billboards (2017) film [@3Billboards] had the credentials of his In Bruges (2008) - assuming that people realize that there are two McDonaghs, the other one being his brother Michael, who is the one who made The Guard (2011) and [ ] Calvary (2014)* ?

Sally Hawkins - even without words - is tremendous : should have won the Award from @TheAcademy ! https://t.co/0y7FuWsM6h

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 25, 2018

Meanwhile, both offending films will sell plenty of tickets, and no one will notice that Sally Hawkins deserved The Academy Award for 2017, not Frances McDormand...

Such a bewildering repertoire of rendering physicality and immateriality in Anderson's vision and his crew's artistry, from wisps and clouds of cotton-wool and fibre to puppetry, hand-drawing, etc. - and never 'about' what it's about !

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 26, 2018

A theme of injury or mutilation has been part of Wes Anderson’s world(s) since at least The Darjeeling Limited (2007), and, at the start of Isle of Dogs (2018), is introduced by the narration of Jupiter, who lacks his left eye… Other recurrent situations are being orphaned (e.g. Moonrise Kingdom (2012)), absent fathers / father-figures, escaping (right from the opening of Bottle Rocket (1996) onwards through to The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)) and imagined places (especially islands, and exploring them).



[...]



End-notes :

* Much advertised, the dog-friendly screening had been at 11.00 a.m. on the same day.

**


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

Celebrities who can help your mental health - unless, of course, you disagree with them...

The sporting coaches' guide to mental health

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

23 March

The sporting coaches' guide to mental health

The premise (put by a well-respected campaign) :

There has been a lot of work to tackle the stigma around mental health, which may have resulted in more young people feeling they can speak out, which is a positive thing. But there needs to be adequate support in place. ➡️ https://t.co/VVgAngTSjq

— See Me (@seemescotland) March 28, 2018

The pitch and the query :

Not if you talk to someone - there are plenty - who normalizes by claiming 'Everyone gets #depressed' ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 23, 2018

Getting all defensive straightaway :

We can all be negative. Any positive thoughts?

— Graemefowler (@GFoxyFowler) March 23, 2018

This is sort of marvellous ?

One's meant to applaud this (though there's nothing new in celebrities and / or sportspeople who already have admiration for what they do telling of #mh issues), but dare say anything and have it dismissed as 'negative' : https://t.co/ZQelYRRITs

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 24, 2018

The passive-aggressive 'apology' :

Well, you did imply that I was being negative, and did I have any positive thoughts - how is that not defensively seeking to offend ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 24, 2018

Maybe actually saying something ? :

Plenty of evidence for crisis houses, and that this model has helped those with an experience of mental distress, but successful ones get their funding cut.

Plenty of evidence, too, that in poorly managed workplaces, people get devalued and pushed out on knowing of a diagnosis.

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 24, 2018

The train of thought is to give people with an experience of mental distress what they have valued and what works, such as crisis houses.

Or, more than a decade ago, Mind used to have a bi-monthly magazine (Open Mind) and a three-day conference where views could be exchanged...

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 24, 2018

The long adieu :

Gee, bloody thanks - did you work full time with clients who had mental-health issues for eight years ?

Yrs, self-important git

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 24, 2018

Go well yourself, but these views are (a) not just mine, and (b) ones that you should take into account when campaigning, if you think that you represent people.

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 24, 2018

As you have proved to be - you probably need calling out on giving out a message on mental health, but being so quick (and regardless of the emotional impact) to lash out, if challenged.

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 24, 2018

Whatever being 'valid in discussions' means, I'm perfectly happy with my profile as it is, ta - I don't need to have played at Trent Bridge to know what I'm talking about.

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 24, 2018

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

Empty sex is better than no sex, right ? ~ Stardust Memories (1980)

This is a review of The Square (2017)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

19 March

This is a review of The Square (2017)

Art has - though in no way uniquely - spent more than a century in both learning from itself and oftentimes rejecting its previous practices or cosy beliefs about what art is or is for.

In an imaginary 2020, The Square (2017) is squarely and falsely predicated on the notion that the director of a gallery and his or her board typically could have decided to put on an exhibition (we see it being mounted), but without knowing why it would be of interest or how 'to sell it'. Contrary to which, in the last sixty years the so-called art-world has rarely not understood - though there have been some notable mistakes - how to publicize its practitioners and to encourage viewers into all sorts of galleries to see their work.

How well does writer / director Ruben Östlund show that he understands and has observed the world of galleries and their ways of operating ? - probably as well as IMDb has, in giving us this one-liner about the film :

A prestigious Stockholm museum's chief art curator finds himself in times of both professional and personal crisis as he attempts to set up a controversial new exhibit

If that sounds like Guido Anselmi, trying – as the phrase used to have it – ‘to wing it’ in Fellini’s 8½ (1963), then that is exactly what Christian Jules Nielsen* (Claes Bang) evokes, rehearsing in the toilet – so we realize – pretending to abandon his printed speech and speak impromptu. Other film-references early on are, patently, La grande bellezza** (The Great Beauty) (2013) and, arguably, Holy Motors (2012) - for its ending, and its nature as episodes, very loosely strung together ?

This is fine, because (although this can be overplayed, and is not exclusively so) film is meant to be referential in its nature - except that The Square never seems to have anything of its own to say, other than this small idea of a show that is being installed, but without clear ideas of promoting it (enter what IMDb calls 'PR Guys', Daniel Hallberg and Martin Sööder, in the mode of the destructive duo in Michael Haneke's Funny Games (1997)) :

The film is not about those who work with art***, but it feels as little close to showing them as Elisabeth Moss' (Anne's) vacuous interview with Christian (for which he is woken from a nap), or the equally vapid interior of the head of Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) in Nocturnal Animals (2016)...

And when I love thee not

Chaos is come again

Othello (Act III, Scene 3)

If this is satire (please see below), rather than the naivety of insulting the viewership with a weak premise (and the latter can sometimes be passed off as the former), then it is a shame that it does not have the conviction of Roy Andersson. Except, that is, in the attention-grabbing, 'stand-alone' scene with Terry Notary that is made into the film-poster : even so, it is a high-energy episode that depicts another débâcle for Christian****, but without troubling to relate it to ‘the main action’ – unless generously seen as a depiction of the reign of Chaos, or an unannounced dream-sequence [and so more in the vein of 8½ than the explicable exactitudes of divine wrath that Lorgos Yanthimos would treat of in The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)].

Now Playing Antonio Salieri, Enrico Fissore - Prima la Musica, Poi ... #antoniosalieri, #enricofissore https://t.co/0vMXLsr20T

— BBC Radio3 Music Bot (@BBCR3MusicBot) March 21, 2018

On the other hand, no one would take the premise of this entertainment of Antonio Salieri’s at face value – we are not meant to engage on a literal level with the fact that the poet is required to write a libretto in four days, and for an opera whose music has already been composed, and no one could seriously so construe the intentions of Salieri and his own librettist, Battista Casti. Yet, on this sort of construction (as with Amy Adams as Susan Morrow in Nocturnal Animals, managing, but significantly not making, art), it no more matters that Ruben Östlund has written real things that happened to him and to others into the setting of, say, a traditional three-ring circus (almost inevitably, back to Guido as circus-master in 8½), or of a cheese-shop with no cheese (Monty Python).

Cabaret (1972), comsummate, acerbic satire, does something useful with the conceit of a sort of circus-master, but the lack of credibility about the art at Morrow’s gallery, when she is supposed to be successful (an issue that writer / director Tom Ford misjudges, by making the work with the film's artistic team), sadly means that it boots nothing to show her as shallow and uncreative in relation to her ex-husband’s novel. However, it is Python that is closest to The Square, not for cramming more names of cheeses into one sketch than a stick can be shaken at, but perhaps for the haphazard way that (according to The Pythons Autiobiography by The Pythons) The Meaning of Life (1983) came into being.

The difference is that, amongst other things, the best sketches from that film – it is, essentially, a sketch-film (though not as is And Now For Something Completely Different (1971)) – and from four t.v. series have stood the test of time. Whoever Elisabeth Moss is meant to be (other than someone called Anne, who conducts a brief interview), it is unlikely that we will find her repeatedly saying the word Cunt !, or the bedroom tussle, on our mind next year, let alone amusing us.

Or even wanting to hear the trite question asked of her whether picking up her handbag and putting it in the gallery-space would make it art – trite, in terms of a century of debate about what art is, not least with Duchamp’s ‘ready mades’ such as Fountain (1917) (if, that is, he really was the R. Mutt who signed the original work (now lost)).


[...]



Even so, the biggest debt (not nearly repaid) is to Michael Haneke's Caché (2005), and to obsessively trying to figure out how and why one has been wronged, countless of the cost.




Film-references and others :

* Caché (Hidden) (2005)

* Funny Games (1997)

* Holy Motors (2012)

* Nocturnal Animals (2016)

* [ ] Songs from the Second Floor (Sånger från andra våningen) (2000)

* The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

* Intouchables (Untouchable) (2011)


Nude descending a staircase ~ Duchamp




End-notes :

* To IMDb, he is just Christian, because it can rarely give you detail that is in the body of the film – or tell you better than [ ] watching the closing credits what that piece of music used was (so IMDb does not mention the most obvious thing that we hear, i.e. Gounod, arranging Bach, in ‘Ave Maria’…)

** What a shame not to be re-watching, in Screen 1 at The Arts Picturehouse, the immense beauty of Paolo Sorrentino's clever, insightful and thoughtful film instead ! The flamingos, Jep Gambardella effortlessly taking down artistic pretension, La scala sancta...

*** Gerry Fox does such an excellent job with that in Marc Quinn : Making Waves (2014).

**** A regular @CamPicturehouse interlocutor, who contributed in this way to the (incomplete) #UCFF review of Certain Women (2016) and saw The Square during @camfilmfest 2017, had found this episode both realistic – in terms of having experience of happenings or performance art – and fun, and suggested that Ruben Östlund had placed it in his film (he had said so, apparently) because he could : which, if so [it was also agreed that it might denote Christian's having a nervous breakdown, i.e. Fellini's Guido again], definitely seems the approach of Holy Motors of Never mind the quality, feel the width ?

Please, please, please ! Of course, there is so much very obvious hypocrisy in the film (at which self-contented people in the screening happily laughed, but - awful realization - don't say that, as he is 'Christian', that this is some sort of re-working of Pilgrim's Progress... !


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