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)

Thanks to Jon Davies and everyone who volunteers at The @CinemaMuseum, another great French Sundae afternoon yesterday with director / writer Mathieu Kassovitz's La haine (1995) - the best of cinema connects in very good ways with other great cinema ! :https://t.co/iOIGfHgbMG pic.twitter.com/KyTNQXCGib

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 24, 2019

At The @CinemaMuseum this afternoon, at what is certainly the third of Jon Davies' French Sundaes to which #UCFF has been treated, it seemed apt to buy him a drink and have a post-film chat with him and others...

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 23, 2019

So, although the affect is quite other, what about that sense of creeping doom that Haneke gives us in 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994) ? More directly, are their quotations of style and mood from Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989) ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 23, 2019

Talking of being in a film - but moments also seem self-consciously Godardian, specifically with the existential but small-time crookery of Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) in À bout de souffle (1960), as echoed by Vinz (Vincent Cassel).

In the cinema - what films are they ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 23, 2019

Maybe a feeling of Tom Waits, John Lurie, and Roberto Benigni in Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law (1986) ?

In any case, a strong reminder of Qu’Allah bénisse la France ! (2014), which screened at @camfilmfest in 2015 - set in Strasbourg, and worth a watch ! :https://t.co/btsgoKJyo1

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 23, 2019

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)

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

#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]

Just for these views, well worth doing a river-cruise at @snapemaltings ! pic.twitter.com/OtaOkpTwOO

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 22, 2019

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

Or, still as Part I, but swapping 2 and 3 ?

Or did it need to be Part I (not II) ?

The thinking being that Holst seemed to have had something to say to Harvey, but less so to Britten, even if we moved on in time...

Of course, one's spoiled by @BrittenSinfonia programming !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 16, 2019

Always good to be at the @PloughandSail, and necessary to have one's non-musical space here when at @snapemaltings for Aldeburgh Festival [for Music and the Arts] :

Very glad to hear @VLuminis again for to-night's and Tuesday's concerts (duck terrine and sea bass to follow) !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 16, 2019

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

A report by Tweet on Vox Luminis II at #AldeburghFestival2019

In the opening setting by Britten of Dryden (with a second Ode to Saint Cecilia to come), @CLuminis gave us moments of hushed voices and diction that didn't need the text. When it came to Handel's 'Dixit Dominus', the packed audience was even more esctatic !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 16, 2019

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

At @snapemaltings, so moving to hear The @DiotimaQuartet play that familiar movement from a G Major Quartet, and so feelingly played, in the context of Schubert 1828 : Schöne Musik, schön gespielt :)

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 17, 2019

#UCFF could not resist, having heard the beauty and insight of last night's playing, buying a ticket to hear the last of Schubert's String Quartets in full (on some numbering, No. 15) :

Thank you, #AldeburghFestival2019, and see you for 11.00 ! :)

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 18, 2019

[...]

Some like to diagnose both Schubert's mental health and how what killed him, in physical terms, must or might not have been evident to him : yet, as with an over-fascination for the Mozart and Salieri story / stories, is it only now that Antonio Salieri's work gets reconsidered ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 18, 2019

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

For #AldeburghFestival2019, #UCFF was delighted to be back at Aldeburgh Church, and @THEAGENTAPSLEY both to be led into the worlds of Karl Szymanowski and Thomas Larcher by @DiotimaQuartet and to get their autographs on the programme ! pic.twitter.com/D7RVI7chOx

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 18, 2019

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

The singing, of course, of @Sviceridor in no way made it necessary to have the words, and as Clare alumnus Andrew West and he concurred, the biting nature of the setting - the Blake, too, is snarling - leaves one not wanting more from Britten.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 22, 2019

Quite apart from the voice that ably and almost necessarily disturbingly gave us Britten's setting of Pears' choice of Blake, it is so nice to encounter @Sviceridor affably at @PloughandSail, or before or after the gig -the v. friendly side of #AldeburghFestival2019

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 19, 2019

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

A present puzzle is Kate Kennedy's claim of 'the logical impossibility' of hearing a manacle (if not 'mind-forg'd' ?) :

It was in Poetry and Music (Songs and Proverbs of William Blake) at #AldeburghFestival2019, so is contending that only a rattling manacle is audible prosaic ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 18, 2019

Not really 'a tree falls in a forest' stuff of Berkeley, but whether one *hears* a manacle per se at all :

A wedding-ring can clink, e.g., [against] a glass. Isn't a metal - not a Fifty Shades - manacle in halves, and prone to rattle... ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 19, 2019

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

Some people declare how dull Heaven must be, with endless praise...

But yet conceive of it as 'the instruments of joy' who are @VLuminis, celebrating in sound the majestic and divine in the first half of the programme Vox Luminis III at @snapemaltings at #AldeburghFestival2019 !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 26, 2019

As he told #UCFF after the second half of the programme that he had his ensemble bring us at @snapemaltings for Vox Luminis III, what he liked most about it was that it is thirty minutes of silence :

Casting us back into another time as assuredly as Schubert 1828 did this year !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 10, 2019

Wednesday 19 June ~ Alisa Weilerstein
Blythburgh Church at 7.30

Then, Johann Sebastian's humanity and compassion - nowhere greater in the Suites No. 1 in G Major and No. 3 in C Major than in the Sarabande - comes to us directly

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 19, 2019

It's been good at @snapemaltings and its various venues for #AldeburghFestival2019, but we all know what's said of all good things - and Alisa Weilerstein at Blythburgh gave #UCFF quite a send-off with four Suites from BWV 2007-2012 ! :)

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 19, 2019

It's lovely along there !

After taking a river-cruise out to Iken Cliff on the last day of my Festival visit in June, I walked back out there that evening. pic.twitter.com/vOoiq7ds1n

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 30, 2019

Addenda :

Or 1. @SoundCircusJM...

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 21, 2019

Or 4. @DiotimaQuartet

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 19, 2019

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

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 :

Always good to be at the @PloughandSail, and necessary to have one's non-musical space here when at @snapemaltings for Aldeburgh Festival [for Music and the Arts] :

Very glad to hear @VLuminis again for to-night's and Tuesday's concerts (duck terrine and sea bass to follow) !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 16, 2019

Image by David-Samyn

Justly so, and with recognition of not only the tight playing of the band around whom the vocalists were ranged, but also generous appreciation of all four soloists, especially the soprano duettists. More Handel to come...

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 16, 2019

And Ronan Kernoa, on cello, exceptionally demonstrated compelling musicianship in an extended introduction to one of the soprano arias. So much to value here (and the cheers were even longer and louder), but just the sight of people who can be seen enjoying making music together.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 16, 2019

Except that that is tosh :

Britten was setting (recollections of) Auden !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 17, 2019

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 :

Overheard after @VLuminis at @snapemaltings :

'Yes, she had a lovely voice, a pure voice without vibrato, but not strong enough to be an opera-singer'

1. Handel was a v. fine composer of Baroque opera

2. Bel canto isn't the 'real' opera

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 17, 2019

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

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 ?

The installation Sky TV* (1966 / 2019) obviously resonates with multi-channel viewing vs 'connection'

* A concept of y.o., and an artist's instruction piece (e.g. the collection Grapefruit), comprising video camera, connecting cable, 25 t.v. monitors, and live feed transmission

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 15, 2019

End-notes :

No, with @CRASSH, at Lady Mitchell Hall.


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

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

#Bonnard

Tanning could render a face, Van Gogh could render a face...

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 4, 2019

By Room 8, the Dantean visions had closed in, and one would be surprised to learn that #DorotheaTanning didn't also know, e.g., Beckettt's Comment c'est or Francis Bacon (or he her work)

On till Sunday 9 June

* Danteesque ?

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

Dorothea Tanning ~ [Title and date to come]

Or is that 'Dante-esque' / 'Dantëesque' ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 2, 2019

Yet we see v. little of #MaxErnst (Tanning's fitting spouse*) to judge his sinister qualities, or #HansBellmer (rarely shown) ?

* The @Tate show tells us too little about the connection between Tanning and chess (probably the catalogue does ?), e.g. how often she played Duchamp https://t.co/rxGaqRa7uB

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 2, 2019

Some other Tweet :

We are so divorced from reality that it is only in street-names, etc., that some former parts of everyday life exist, such as Tan Yard, in St Neots :

We talk about 'getting a tan', tanning salons, etc., but wholly unrelatedly to the tanning of leather... pic.twitter.com/daVJsjnBbF

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 31, 2018

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

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.

#UCFF made a date with @Saffronscreen ['The Screen'] and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) - finally, for the latter !

Misguidedly 'sold' by @IMDb as 'Drama, Horror', it's but horror of the existential kind, which Cocteau gave us in Orphée (1950) :https://t.co/LrF2grA41n

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

Yet, as it builds (even if one cannot believe that it could, for logistic and other reasons, have been fully story-boarded in pre-production), the existential dimension shines out (e.g. is The Girl actually Death, as in Cocteau's film ?), and James Dean, etc., tributes fade out

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

The Angst is, e.g., that of H. P. Lovecraft, @russellhobanorg in his novels Fremder or The Medusa Frequency, or [an acknowledged influence on Russ] that of The Fair Beckoning One by Oliver Onions ; the ennui of early and later Jim Jarmusch, the Westerns that it references, etc. https://t.co/0agLxf3l8a

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 29, 2019

* Artefacts of its making ?

[It is, perhaps, a wonder that it was filmed ,or able to be completed at all... ?]

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 29, 2019

[...]

Now, once more, at the place that #UCFF finds itself of late referring to as The Screen :@SaffronScreen

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

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

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)

A film that leaves #UCFF in need of a @Laphroaig - #womanatwarfilm - does not necessarily do so in a good way :

Not least during #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek, it isn't - properly understood - 'Hilarious and heartwarming' at all [as, one sees, @vulture appears to have described it] pic.twitter.com/k1dYzc9Dyz

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 16, 2019

A publicity poster for a paperback edition of Jordan B. Peterson's 12 Rules for Life - which had only been photographed for the purposes of ironically critiquing yet more fostering of the illusion of individualism (no better than many a cult ?) - now proves apt for other reasons. pic.twitter.com/MNpqA6y8Cd

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 16, 2019

Superficially similar to Rams (Hrútar) (2015), with its sororial element / rootedness in the Icelandic landscape, this film mixes the mayhem that comes from mistaking who Roger O. Thornhill is with the dual identities of Salt (2010) and comes up with something disturbingly dark.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 19, 2019

Postlude (with TAKE ONE) :

Meanwhile, over at https://t.co/mu8pD8p7oe, a discussion at @TAKEONECinema !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 21, 2019

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

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.

It was no surprise that @TenebraeChoir, performing during @cambsearlymusic's annual Festival of the Voice to-night at King's, were brilliant - but one had forgotten how gorgeous the tone-colours and individual voices are !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 10, 2019

The Twitter-profile says 'passion and precision', but the passion could be there in a single voice, giving us the introductory word(s) to sections in the Requiem Mass, and in Nigel Short's conducting, maintaining a sense of the whole, but giving appropriate pauses.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 11, 2019

The acoustic was that of the antechapel of @Kings_College, which was accommodated perfectly by choir and conductor in performances that, since the texts were interpreted in such a way that a variety of dynamics and textures could be heard, kept the attention of a hushed audience.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 12, 2019

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

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

By Room 4 at @Tate Modern, it is clear enough that #Bonnard :

* Couldn't depict a human face to save his life

* Can perfectly render a wash-stand

* Liked photographic effects such as mirror-shots or shaded extremes

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 3, 2019

* In Room 7, gives us one of these moody looks, in Paysage du Midi (1920-1921) as if the light fairy has dulled almost everything

* Loves a seducing exterior, seen through a window - breaking rules of photography

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 3, 2019

* Resolved around nudes, water, tables (especially laden with food) and table-cloths, distant views, mirrors - maybe as with Magritte's stock elements ?

* In Femme nue se baissant (1923) and famous Baignoire (Le Bain) (1925) occludes the face

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 3, 2019

This is probably the best of his views of the outside from indoors pic.twitter.com/A0RDlux8du

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 3, 2019

End-notes :

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

Arguably, #Bonnard's 'best' nude - if a nude should be lively, sensuous and not merely observed - is not even in the show, however... pic.twitter.com/1rIlg6lgxY

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 3, 2019

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.)

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

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 ?) ?


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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)

Neil Jordan does 'lay it on a bit thick in places' in Greta (2018)...

Frankie (Chloë Grace Moretz) is from Boston, PA, and living in NYC, NY, for the first time, so Greta (Isabelle Huppert) must really be a lonely woman of a certain age who's suffered loss - whence black nails ? pic.twitter.com/Igk19FpSLz

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 6, 2019

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*.

It rates circa 7 / 10 (as it also over-relies not on the power of Huppert's screen-presence, but Javier Navarrete's use of v. high [or low - bowed db] string-tones), but Jordan deftly assimilates references such as Fatal Attraction (1987), Event Horizon (1997), The Future (2011).

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 2, 2019

Paint the black hole blacker

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... ?


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

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.

Absolutely, but also a fascinating and tight piano trio to back Claire - I call this her European Quartet - and a choice of repertoire that doesn't stick to 'standards', but gives us newly commissioned patter-songs, and many ways in which we regret love or not staying in love !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 31, 2019

From listening at @StablesMK on 1 May, and since to the new album, #UCFF safely and warmly concurs (though it has gravitated towards being a dilettante-style reviewer, i.e. too many enthusiasms, but unfortunately lacking stamina for the hard graft that gets the writing done) :

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 14, 2019

Claire is nothing but brilliant, wholly giving herself to music that she loves - whether evoking saké and love-making in rainy Tokyo, giving us a fresh take on 'I'm Not in Love' that brings out the pathos and irony, or the tenderness in 'Broken Wings', or in fiendish patter-songs

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 14, 2019

End-notes :

* Thinking, of course, of Keith J.


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

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)

Quality film material and cine-filled intros / talks !

Only able to come on Sunday, afternoon & evening ticket + fee cost less than my rail-fare :

An illustrated talk about Chaplin ;
Feature with his brother Syd + career intro ;
Three Charley Chase shorts ;
Show People + intro.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 30, 2019

Other Tweets :

https://t.co/5whvqc7uRo My remarks read at the screening W.C. Fields silent 'Running Wild', Saturday April 27 at Kennington @kenbioscope Cinema Museum, London. "Will be there with you in spirit sharing my grandfather, W.C. @WCFieldsTweets silent 'Running Wild' @DrHarrietFields

— Dr Harriet Fields (@DrHarrietFields) May 1, 2019

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

There are homecomings, and there are homecomings...

Some Tweets in response to Todos lo saben (Everybody Knows) (2018)

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

8 April

Some Tweets in response to Todos lo saben (Everybody Knows) (2018), as seen at Saffron Screen, Saffron Walden, on Monday 8 April 2019 at 8.00 p.m.

In Todos lo saben (Everybody Knows) (2018) last night at @SaffronScreen, it really felt as we were in the tense suspicious centre of something happening, as if Ibsenesque secrets became discovered in Murder on The Orient Express* (1974) !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 9, 2019

As taught and intense as Celda 211 (Cell 211) (2009), Todos lo saben will not let us go, and we cannot but engage with it : in both, the age-old struggle around the life-blood of a daughter that makes the Oresteia of Aesychlus compelling for Agamemnon, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. pic.twitter.com/KUAMFOnMca

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 10, 2019

Here, a surprise is realizing that it's Asghar Farhadi, the writer / director of films such as Fireworks Wednesday (2006), The Past (2013), The Salesman (2016) - though the last does have a break brutality, too. Billed as a thriller, it is every bit that, and shreds our nerves ! pic.twitter.com/ytZYtzTKjF

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 10, 2019

Perhaps, and meanwhile one reflects on Pinter and what he gives us, in The Homecoming, with Teddy and Ruth - and how Farhadi's use of Ricardo Darín in the role of Alejandro subtly imports the presence of a figure like that of Donald Sutherland (and another lost daughter ?)... pic.twitter.com/QJKbPjYCCC

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 10, 2019

* A film scored by Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, with his customary style and flair, and how we miss him at @ConcertsatKings as a real gent in duos with @CmartinJazz (and the occasional number or two where he accompanied himself) !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 9, 2019

Epilogue :

I can’t agree with this. One of the least suspenseful whodunnits I’ve ever seen. Not without its merits, I thought it was well shot certainly, and the director gets his money’s worth from his actors (at 2.5 hours it as least 30 mins too long) but do not expect to be thrilled.

— Rob Adam (@rob_adam123) April 10, 2019

3) I suggested the secrets that come out in the plays of Henrik Ibsen - if one doesn't credit Laura that she suspects that Paco is getting back at her, though, the film won't work in one's head. Dunno.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 10, 2019

Or, to give the closing words to @everyfilmneil, from the final sentences of his review (at www.everyfilm.co.uk) :

Farhadi has built a reputation through movies such as A Separation, The Salesman and my favourite of his films, The Past. Everybody Knows keeps up his tradition of keenly observed, tense drama. It helps that his most established cast to date are on great form.


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

No deal [so called] : An analogy in three Tweets

No deal [so called] : An analogy in three Tweets

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

31 March

No deal [so called] : An analogy in three Tweets

So-called 'no deal' - *considerable* 'benefits' in an analogy :

1. People grumble when clocks go forward, e.g. too hard to remember that it's adding an hour, so BST is probably an #EU law

2. Some people put their clocks back, and complain that it gets dark too soon ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 31, 2019

3. Our welcoming friend 'no deal', whom we rationally have no need to fear (so fearmongers should shut it !), opens up WTO terms* to the UK

* Which a former CEO of WTO says that no one would want (instead of the EU) ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 31, 2019

4. Forget the little mistake (at 2, above) of thinking that it's 4.52 p.m. now - I can say that it's 1.27 a.m., if I like, and you 3.33 p.m., and no one will be able to do anything !

QED

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 31, 2019

They feel abandoned by central government and either that 'it can't get any worse' or that it will be worth a bit of hardship to be 'able to make our own laws'

— Devon for Europe #NorthDevon (@NDevon4Europe) March 31, 2019

Of course they should. But they would like life to be simpler. Which is why it is the simple narratives that have traction with them, rather than complex explanations

— Devon for Europe #NorthDevon (@NDevon4Europe) March 31, 2019

That’s a good example of making it simple. We could do with more!

— Devon for Europe #NorthDevon (@NDevon4Europe) March 31, 2019

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

Lazzaro non mi piace molto

Five Tweets about Lazzaro Felice (Happy as Lazzaro) (2018) [and some links]

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

26 March

Five Tweets about Lazzaro Felice (Happy as Lazzaro) (2018) [and some links]

Of course, there's the Christ archetype, so it will be familiar when a trusting figure is also open to exploitation, viewed as possibly saintly, and yet rejected.

But these two films do all of that better - plus Kosmos gives us the alien sounds of telecomms and magical breaths.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 26, 2019

Bringing in what seems a current theme, with some elements of the family background of Shoplifters (Manbiki kazoku) (2018) [which was the winner at @Festival_Cannes (Lazzaro Felice was in the Official Selection)], the film tries to point so many messages, from Lazarus to leprosy.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 26, 2019

Essentially, this is a film, not a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder - such as his Netherlandish Proverbs - and maybe we tire of all that is telling us how life is and how it goes, and maybe a little predictable for it... ? pic.twitter.com/0WTuCjtvIN

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 26, 2019

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) : Some observations (work in progress)

Some observations (work in progress) about Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)

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

24 March

Some observations (work in progress) about Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) (after a screening at Cottenham Community Cinema on Sunday 24 March at 7.30 p.m.)

* There are too many shots where we are shown Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek), supposedly cogitating - it may be in such a film as Mamma Mia ! (2008), but, when Meryl Streep does it, we can see that she is thinking, not that she wants us to believe that she is thinking (nonetheless

* Some captions are, frankly, unnecessary - unless we are in a desperate state of ciné-literacy, it is obvious when it is [back to] the day of Live Aid, because we are re-visiting moments from the beginning of the film

* Some choices of scenes to shoot and / or in editing are not only clumsy, but make the film seem British in a bad way - cutting to Ray Foster (Mike Myers) when we do, as we knew anyway (and before this point in the history) what a massive hit the title-song was, seemed inept (and implausible of not only a nominee for, but the winner of (John Ottman), an Academy Award for 'Best Achievement in Film Editing'

* It is nice to have Lucy Boynton in the film, as Mary Austin, but one cannot think that some appearances / presentations of her are to please those who are not especial fans of Mercury, etc., etc., rather than for pure reasons of historicity

* The writing is clumsy, so, for example, Mary (Boynton) has gone from London to find Freddie in Munich : unless she doubts that she has the right address, there is no reason for the taxi to stay waiting (i.e. she clearly could not have envisaged the scene panning out as it does on arrival)


[...]


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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