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Wednesday, July 23, 2014
clippings.io
I've been using Clippings Converter for two or three years. It began as a way of uploading clippings from my Kindle into a format like Word or Evernote (I prefer the latter) and being able to access them more readily while using my PC. They've now shortened their name from Clippings Converter to clippings.io, and are heading for another step up in their online journey, with added features that will enhance their site considerably. The main addition is the Google Chrome extension, which you can use to speed up the shift from the Kindle itself to your PC or Mac. There is a small charge per month for this extension (previously Clippings Converter was free), and no doubt there will be many people who take advantage of it. At $2.49NZ it's a good deal. With this extension you no longer have to plug in your Kindle to your PC; the extension will read clippings from your phone or iPad or other Windows devices. It'll be interesting to see how that works.
Friday, July 18, 2014
No sales tax
As an Auckland resident (which I'm not) I'm told that if I make any purchases from premiertablelinens.com I won't have to pay sales tax. Although that apparently excludes any shipments to Florida that I may make. I'm not sure if Florida has recently transplanted itself to Auckland, New Zealand, but I guess it's kind of possible. They have similar climates at certain times of the year, and lately Auckland has been getting more and more tropical weather of the typhoon/tornado kind. Aucklanders, who continually tell those who live in the rest of the country how badly off they are, have been losing their roofs, windows, trampolines and more in a series of hectic winds. We've never lost our trampoline, though it did shift place a little once. Nor have we ever had the roof blown away. Thankfully. However, glass from the glasshouse is prone to fly off and smash in a high wind, and that has happened to us. We can't be protected from all things down here in the South.
Monday, July 14, 2014
The Promise
Over the last few days we've watched the four episodes of Peter Kosminsky's TV film: The Promise. Like much of Kosminsky's TV work, it's quite provocative, and your sympathies change as the story unfolds.
Two stories interweave: one is set in Palestine just after the Second World War. A young sergeant is caught up in the historic events of the time, when the British were keeping the peace - as far as possible - between the new Jewish settlers who'd returned to their homeland after the horrors of the concentration camps, and the Palestinians who had lived in the area for centuries and were suddenly finding themselves kicked out of their country by a people who apparently forgot, very quickly, what it was like to be treated badly because of who you were.
The second story is set in the present day: the Sergeant is now an old man dying in a hospital. His unsympathetic daughter and his granddaughter (who's barely known the supposedly grumpy old man) set about clearing out his house. The daughter, Erin, finds the old man's diary, with photos and newspaper clippings. Against her mother's orders, she keeps the diary, and takes it with her to Israel where she's going with a friend whose Israeli background means she has to go into the Army for two years. Erin is a typical know-all teenager who begins to find out a great deal more about the Israel-Palestine conflict than she would ever have learned in her native country, and also matures quickly as a result of trying to repair something that had gone wrong back when her grandfather was a young man.
The two stories gradually cohere. There are perhaps too many coincidences in the plotting, and the filmmakers slide over some questions about motivations that probably should have been asked, but for all that the film carries you along as you increasingly struggle - like Erin - to make sense of a country where a people who were hated almost universally for centuries (the Jews) and then were slaughtered in their millions, show almost no care or concern for a people who by accident live in the country the Jews claim as their homeland.
Kosminsky doesn't offer us easy answers: we begin by thinking that the Israelis are a pretty reasonable bunch of people, but gradually discover - as both the grandfather and the granddaughter do - that they have almost no sympathy for the Palestinians, and show little concern about killing them or destroying their property if the need, or mood, arises. Try as you might, by the end of the movie, it's likely your opinion of the Israeli people may be much less sympathetic than at first. Whether this is a more one-sided view on Kosminsky's part than is fair is left to our judgement.
Claire Foy plays the initially sulky teenager with ease - there are times when you want to wipe that sulky look off her face, even late in the film. Nevertheless, she makes the journey from sulkiness to a degree of wisdom effectively. Christian Cooke, as the Sergeant, has a face that often makes it look as though he's going to burst into tears, yet he convinces us that he's a man who can make wise decisions, is loyal, is strong in a crisis, and much more. He's particularly strong in his last scenes when everything he's tried to do for a Palestinian family goes wrong, and he's treated as a deserter and thrown into prison.
The rest of the enormous cast are superb, and with the film shot entirely in Israel (with places standing in for Hebron, Gaza, and the West Bank. Even the Ben Gurion airport stands in for Heathrow. The series in general received high praise when first shown, though there were a number of voices claiming that it was anti-semitic in tone, something which can be justified, if that's what you're looking for.
21.7.14
Since writing this review I've become more aware of the concerns that were raised over Kosminsky's series. This article goes into detail about these and provides some balance to the way in which Kosminsky nudges his viewers more and more into an anti-Israeli bias.
Two stories interweave: one is set in Palestine just after the Second World War. A young sergeant is caught up in the historic events of the time, when the British were keeping the peace - as far as possible - between the new Jewish settlers who'd returned to their homeland after the horrors of the concentration camps, and the Palestinians who had lived in the area for centuries and were suddenly finding themselves kicked out of their country by a people who apparently forgot, very quickly, what it was like to be treated badly because of who you were.
The second story is set in the present day: the Sergeant is now an old man dying in a hospital. His unsympathetic daughter and his granddaughter (who's barely known the supposedly grumpy old man) set about clearing out his house. The daughter, Erin, finds the old man's diary, with photos and newspaper clippings. Against her mother's orders, she keeps the diary, and takes it with her to Israel where she's going with a friend whose Israeli background means she has to go into the Army for two years. Erin is a typical know-all teenager who begins to find out a great deal more about the Israel-Palestine conflict than she would ever have learned in her native country, and also matures quickly as a result of trying to repair something that had gone wrong back when her grandfather was a young man.
The two stories gradually cohere. There are perhaps too many coincidences in the plotting, and the filmmakers slide over some questions about motivations that probably should have been asked, but for all that the film carries you along as you increasingly struggle - like Erin - to make sense of a country where a people who were hated almost universally for centuries (the Jews) and then were slaughtered in their millions, show almost no care or concern for a people who by accident live in the country the Jews claim as their homeland.
Kosminsky doesn't offer us easy answers: we begin by thinking that the Israelis are a pretty reasonable bunch of people, but gradually discover - as both the grandfather and the granddaughter do - that they have almost no sympathy for the Palestinians, and show little concern about killing them or destroying their property if the need, or mood, arises. Try as you might, by the end of the movie, it's likely your opinion of the Israeli people may be much less sympathetic than at first. Whether this is a more one-sided view on Kosminsky's part than is fair is left to our judgement.
Claire Foy plays the initially sulky teenager with ease - there are times when you want to wipe that sulky look off her face, even late in the film. Nevertheless, she makes the journey from sulkiness to a degree of wisdom effectively. Christian Cooke, as the Sergeant, has a face that often makes it look as though he's going to burst into tears, yet he convinces us that he's a man who can make wise decisions, is loyal, is strong in a crisis, and much more. He's particularly strong in his last scenes when everything he's tried to do for a Palestinian family goes wrong, and he's treated as a deserter and thrown into prison.
The rest of the enormous cast are superb, and with the film shot entirely in Israel (with places standing in for Hebron, Gaza, and the West Bank. Even the Ben Gurion airport stands in for Heathrow. The series in general received high praise when first shown, though there were a number of voices claiming that it was anti-semitic in tone, something which can be justified, if that's what you're looking for.
21.7.14
Since writing this review I've become more aware of the concerns that were raised over Kosminsky's series. This article goes into detail about these and provides some balance to the way in which Kosminsky nudges his viewers more and more into an anti-Israeli bias.
Wednesday, July 02, 2014
The Other Son
The Other Son is an intense, emotional film set in Israel and Palestine (there's a great deal of coming and going across the border between the two areas, and many views of the wall), and it's quite a tear-jerker, though in best sense.
It has a slightly improbable story, perhaps (although the starting point of the story is as old as the hills): two babies are literally swapped at birth because of fears of a Scud attack.One baby is Jewish but is given back to the Palestinian mother, and the other baby, of course, is Palestinian, and given back to the Jewish mother.This only comes to light when the 'Jewish' boy is about to turn eighteen and a blood test reveals that he couldn't possibly be the son of his parents. The other parents are informed, and there's a great deal of struggling to come to grips with the issue, both on the part of the two young men, but even more so on the part of the fathers. The mothers manage to begin to work through the problem much quicker than their husbands, of course, but even for them it's a major upheaval.
There are four languages spoken in the film: Hebrew, Arabic, English and French - the Jewish father is French by birth, and it appears that the family has spent some time there, but the 'Arab' boy has also been studying there.
The director is Lorraine Lévy, who also co-wrote the screenplay. She makes a fine job of bringing out the emotional aspects of the story (there's little 'action' in it), and is supported by a wonderful cast, all of whom are unknown to me, though plainly very experienced. When you see foreign movies you realise again and again what a vast world of actors, directors, writers there is out there whom we barely know about. We're so inundated with Hollywood and British movies and TV that we remain quite insular.
This is a great story, and well worth catching up with. There's an interesting interview with the director here.
It has a slightly improbable story, perhaps (although the starting point of the story is as old as the hills): two babies are literally swapped at birth because of fears of a Scud attack.One baby is Jewish but is given back to the Palestinian mother, and the other baby, of course, is Palestinian, and given back to the Jewish mother.This only comes to light when the 'Jewish' boy is about to turn eighteen and a blood test reveals that he couldn't possibly be the son of his parents. The other parents are informed, and there's a great deal of struggling to come to grips with the issue, both on the part of the two young men, but even more so on the part of the fathers. The mothers manage to begin to work through the problem much quicker than their husbands, of course, but even for them it's a major upheaval.
There are four languages spoken in the film: Hebrew, Arabic, English and French - the Jewish father is French by birth, and it appears that the family has spent some time there, but the 'Arab' boy has also been studying there.
The director is Lorraine Lévy, who also co-wrote the screenplay. She makes a fine job of bringing out the emotional aspects of the story (there's little 'action' in it), and is supported by a wonderful cast, all of whom are unknown to me, though plainly very experienced. When you see foreign movies you realise again and again what a vast world of actors, directors, writers there is out there whom we barely know about. We're so inundated with Hollywood and British movies and TV that we remain quite insular.
This is a great story, and well worth catching up with. There's an interesting interview with the director here.
Writing and reading
Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.
Anne Lamott
Tuesday, July 01, 2014
Payu2blog gone?
Over the years I've done a lot of posts here for a site called Payu2blog.com. It seems that they've run right down, however. I've had no assignments for a few months, and they're not answering any emails (not that they were ever very good at that). They've begun to use Twitter as an alternative to blog posts, but the Twitter approach doesn't seem to be working. I never got paid for the one assignment they offered that I've tweeted, and the latest assignment along these lines is so confusingly laid out, I've had read trouble trying to figure out what they're talking about.
It's a pity, because Payu2blog was a reasonable source of small income over several years; my PayPal account was kept topped up by it. Ah well, that seems to be the way of the Net. Some things have their day and then suddenly they're gone, when the crowd moves on...
It's a pity, because Payu2blog was a reasonable source of small income over several years; my PayPal account was kept topped up by it. Ah well, that seems to be the way of the Net. Some things have their day and then suddenly they're gone, when the crowd moves on...
Monday, June 30, 2014
Brass comps
I'm playing for the National Brass Band Competitions next week, in Invercargill. At the moment there are two contestants playing one of my favourite brass pieces. Variations on a Welsh Theme by Peter Kneale. I've written about this piece before on this blog, and possibly I've written about it at some other time as well! The great satisfaction about this piece is that the piano part is as interesting as the soloist's. That's not entirely unusual in brass band solos, but this one in particular is a delight to play.
Another contestant is playing Mace by Philip Sparke, a conductor and prolific composer whose music is played everywhere brass players play. Mace has a lovely slow melody opening the piece, but then it goes crazy. As far as I can make out it was originally written for soloist and piano, rather than soloist and band. The soloist has a hectic part in the fast section, with hardly room to breathe, and a massive cadenza.The pianist doesn't really have anything like as much to do, except make sure he or she keeps up: there's a constant shifting between 2/4 and 3/4 and counting beats (for me, anyway) is a major task. There are only a couple of awkward spots, one with impossible to play thirds. The rest of the time it's a matter of making sure you and the soloist stay together. It'll be interesting.
Another player is doing a piece called Concerto No 1 for Tuba and orchestra (although the soloist here is a bass trombonist). It's by Alexej Lebedjew, another prolific composer, especially for the tuba. This accompaniment, interestingly enough, even though it was composed for orchestra, sits under the pianist's hands very well. There are some nasty moments but in general it's more pianistic in style than orchestral. Perhaps the composer rewrote it himself for piano, rather than someone just transcribing it from the orchestral score. It's a big play and I'll probably leave the soloist behind while I'm enjoying myself...
There are some other pieces which are more traditional in style: the old thing of the pianist just having to keep hammering away while the soloist does all the fiddly bits. They have their place, but it's good that modern composers have moved well away from this style.
Another contestant is playing Mace by Philip Sparke, a conductor and prolific composer whose music is played everywhere brass players play. Mace has a lovely slow melody opening the piece, but then it goes crazy. As far as I can make out it was originally written for soloist and piano, rather than soloist and band. The soloist has a hectic part in the fast section, with hardly room to breathe, and a massive cadenza.The pianist doesn't really have anything like as much to do, except make sure he or she keeps up: there's a constant shifting between 2/4 and 3/4 and counting beats (for me, anyway) is a major task. There are only a couple of awkward spots, one with impossible to play thirds. The rest of the time it's a matter of making sure you and the soloist stay together. It'll be interesting.
Another player is doing a piece called Concerto No 1 for Tuba and orchestra (although the soloist here is a bass trombonist). It's by Alexej Lebedjew, another prolific composer, especially for the tuba. This accompaniment, interestingly enough, even though it was composed for orchestra, sits under the pianist's hands very well. There are some nasty moments but in general it's more pianistic in style than orchestral. Perhaps the composer rewrote it himself for piano, rather than someone just transcribing it from the orchestral score. It's a big play and I'll probably leave the soloist behind while I'm enjoying myself...
There are some other pieces which are more traditional in style: the old thing of the pianist just having to keep hammering away while the soloist does all the fiddly bits. They have their place, but it's good that modern composers have moved well away from this style.
Friday, June 27, 2014
The Bletchley Circle
Things have been a bit quiet on the blog scene in general of late because I've been focusing on writing the first draft of the sequel to Grimhilda! This has been completed (insofar as you can ever say that a first draft is 'completed') and I've now scribbled all over the printed-out version of it, making notes galore, amending, re-writing, fiddling, reconsidering, and generally hacking it to pieces. As you should with a first draft. The beginning and the ending both need thorough rewriting and expanding (now that I have a better idea of how things fit together) but there are some sections between them that are pretty satisfactory. Two lines in the entire draft actually made me laugh out loud when I came back to reading them again. Two lines! That's promising.
So the next job is to get on and do the rewrite. Should be fun.
We watched all three episodes of the series The Bletchley Circle last night because I had to stay up till one am to ring the US about something that couldn't be done any earlier. A very-well crafted series, with meticulous attention to detail of costume and design, and excellent photography.
Anna Maxwell Martin plays the main character, one of four women who'd worked at Bletchley during the war and were now effectively twiddling their thumbs nine years later, not using the gifts that had made them so valuable a decade earlier. I don't find Martin my favourite actress, perhaps because when I saw her in Bleak House as Esther Summerson, she seemed not to have got hold of the character: too lacking in the almost irritating modesty that Esther exhibits, and too little warmth.
Here she's given strong support by Rachael Stirling, Sophie Rundle and Julie Graham. The four re-unite, after a bit of dubiousness, in order to solve a series of murders that have obviously been done by the same man.The police are at a loss, but Martin's character sees links in the locations of the murders, and believes she can predict where the next abduction, murder and rape will take place - at least as near as anyone can - and will hopefully prevent another death.The police pooh-pooh her rather, and her husband thinks she's acting oddly. Certainly she's suddenly out and about a lot more than she's been in a long time.
The plot has a few holes - you want to know who's suddenly looking after the kids when Martin is gallivanting around, and also why she goes hiving off on her own, at night, to a place that's obviously closed down and inhabited by one person. Who she realises is the murderer she's looking for. That peculiarity apart (although it's common enough in suspense stories for the woman to do that daft thing of putting herself in considerable danger in a dark house with a stranger) this was well-worth watching. The other three women are great, and though the men mostly come off looking a bit like twats, the story is absorbing enough to keep us involved throughout.
The series was originally a one-off piece, but there's been a sequel. This was done a couple of years later, and should be worth looking out for. Hopefully it lives up to the standards of the first series.
So the next job is to get on and do the rewrite. Should be fun.
We watched all three episodes of the series The Bletchley Circle last night because I had to stay up till one am to ring the US about something that couldn't be done any earlier. A very-well crafted series, with meticulous attention to detail of costume and design, and excellent photography.Anna Maxwell Martin plays the main character, one of four women who'd worked at Bletchley during the war and were now effectively twiddling their thumbs nine years later, not using the gifts that had made them so valuable a decade earlier. I don't find Martin my favourite actress, perhaps because when I saw her in Bleak House as Esther Summerson, she seemed not to have got hold of the character: too lacking in the almost irritating modesty that Esther exhibits, and too little warmth.
Here she's given strong support by Rachael Stirling, Sophie Rundle and Julie Graham. The four re-unite, after a bit of dubiousness, in order to solve a series of murders that have obviously been done by the same man.The police are at a loss, but Martin's character sees links in the locations of the murders, and believes she can predict where the next abduction, murder and rape will take place - at least as near as anyone can - and will hopefully prevent another death.The police pooh-pooh her rather, and her husband thinks she's acting oddly. Certainly she's suddenly out and about a lot more than she's been in a long time.
The plot has a few holes - you want to know who's suddenly looking after the kids when Martin is gallivanting around, and also why she goes hiving off on her own, at night, to a place that's obviously closed down and inhabited by one person. Who she realises is the murderer she's looking for. That peculiarity apart (although it's common enough in suspense stories for the woman to do that daft thing of putting herself in considerable danger in a dark house with a stranger) this was well-worth watching. The other three women are great, and though the men mostly come off looking a bit like twats, the story is absorbing enough to keep us involved throughout.
The series was originally a one-off piece, but there's been a sequel. This was done a couple of years later, and should be worth looking out for. Hopefully it lives up to the standards of the first series.
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Assassin of the Tsar
We recently got a package DVD which includes ten movies - mostly from the 90s, I think - and have only watched a couple so far. Last night it was the turn of a strange movie called Assassin of the Tsar. Made in Russia by a Russian director and with a Russian cast and crew, it stars Malcolm McDowell who plays a psychiatric patient, Timofeyev, with his usual intense on-the-edge approach, and also plays a real-life person, Yurovsky, the man who, along with a number of 'comrades', murdered the Tsar and his family. The other main actor, Oleg Yankovskiy, a well-known actor in his native country, plays the new doctor at the asylum where McDowell has been hospitalised for many years, as well as the Tsar. Confused? You should be.
Even for people who know the story of the assassination, and the botched assassination of the Tsar's father (which is also in the movie), I suspect this film would appear confusing. Timofeyev believes he is Yurovsky, and on a certain date each year (July 16th, if I remember rightly) a wound appears around his neck, a circle like that of a hangman's rope. On another date in August, he also shows extremes symptoms of a stomach problem. Both of these are somehow related to the assassinations. In due course the doctor takes on the role of the Tsar in order to try and treat Timofeyev, but in the process comes to see himself actually as the Tsar, and dies - though not by assassination. Why he comes to take on the Tsar's persona isn't adequately explained, except with a bit of psycho-babble.
The scenes set in the past where the Bolsheviks are planning to kill the imperial family are full of tension. The scenes in the asylum seem random and unrelated to the rest of the movie, and the whole nonsense of the doctor dying makes no sense. Then there's the woman who's lost her child and who's waiting outside the residence where the Tsar and his family are confined. We have no idea what she has to do with the story. Some reviewers see the film as a kind of releasing of guilt of the Russians in modern USSR. I have no idea, and couldn't see the connection.
The film is in English, presumably with the Russian cast dubbed. Curiously, while they all have accents, McDowell for the most part doesn't. By all accounts there's a version in Russian in which McDowell is dubbed. The soundtrack is also odd: there's music playing a good deal of the time, the usual sort of music that accompanies any film, but it seems to be coming from another room, and is often quite faint.
How this film came to be made and how McDowell got involved in it isn't obvious. McDowell gives it his all, as you'd expect, and is worth watching. But beyond that the film makes too little sense to really engage an audience.
Even for people who know the story of the assassination, and the botched assassination of the Tsar's father (which is also in the movie), I suspect this film would appear confusing. Timofeyev believes he is Yurovsky, and on a certain date each year (July 16th, if I remember rightly) a wound appears around his neck, a circle like that of a hangman's rope. On another date in August, he also shows extremes symptoms of a stomach problem. Both of these are somehow related to the assassinations. In due course the doctor takes on the role of the Tsar in order to try and treat Timofeyev, but in the process comes to see himself actually as the Tsar, and dies - though not by assassination. Why he comes to take on the Tsar's persona isn't adequately explained, except with a bit of psycho-babble. The scenes set in the past where the Bolsheviks are planning to kill the imperial family are full of tension. The scenes in the asylum seem random and unrelated to the rest of the movie, and the whole nonsense of the doctor dying makes no sense. Then there's the woman who's lost her child and who's waiting outside the residence where the Tsar and his family are confined. We have no idea what she has to do with the story. Some reviewers see the film as a kind of releasing of guilt of the Russians in modern USSR. I have no idea, and couldn't see the connection.
The film is in English, presumably with the Russian cast dubbed. Curiously, while they all have accents, McDowell for the most part doesn't. By all accounts there's a version in Russian in which McDowell is dubbed. The soundtrack is also odd: there's music playing a good deal of the time, the usual sort of music that accompanies any film, but it seems to be coming from another room, and is often quite faint.
How this film came to be made and how McDowell got involved in it isn't obvious. McDowell gives it his all, as you'd expect, and is worth watching. But beyond that the film makes too little sense to really engage an audience.
Monday, June 02, 2014
A couple of movies from 1993
The Warehouse had a sale of DVDs on the weekend, so we picked up a few to replace a bunch that were surplus to requirements, movies we'll never watch again (wouldn't want to watch again) and some that we had double-ups of for whatever reason.
On Saturday night we watched a DVD of The Remains of the Day, which we'd seen at the cinema when it first came out. Neither of us could remember much about it; in fact there was very little of that visual recognition you usually have when you're seeing a movie again. Perhaps we're losing our visual recognition as we get older, which is a bit scary!
Anyway, this movie, with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson both at their best, is a story about a butler in a large aristocratic home, Darlington Hall, owned by Lord Darlington. The Lord, though he is an honourable man, is an amateur in his political dealings; he foolishly sides with the Nazis during the war, and probably should have been charged with treason. Hopkins, the consummate butler, always there, always perfect in behaviour, claims he never hears what goes on around him: he's too busy doing his job. But in fact he's closed off to human relationships for the most part. When he employs his own father as an under-butler, he calls him Mr Stevens rather than father. It's only as his father is dying that he manages to speak as though there is some relationship there. Even when his father is lying dead upstairs he believes his duty is still to serve his Lordship first.
Thompson plays the housekeeper who gives as good as she gets from Hopkins, but also falls in love with him. In spite of himself, he's in love with her, but his nature is such that he can't admit to it, and so both their lives go awry as a result.
There's a top-notch cast including Hugh Grant, Christopher Reeves and Ben Chaplin among the more familiar faces. The direction by James Ivory is quiet and assured, and the script by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala gives the performers ample room for subtlety and subtext. A great film, with much in it to be admired.
In the same year, Michael Keaton and Nicole Kidman starred in a much less well-known movie, My Life, which, if it had been done as a TV movie with a TV actor would have ended up requiring a box of tissues. It narrowly avoids this because of Keaton's solid performance in which he has ample room to both clown and play to his serious side.
Keaton plays a man who has only a few months to live because of cancer, and like many in that position he doesn't want to die, especially as his wife is expecting their first child. He manages to stay alive long enough to see his son grow through his first months before succumbing to the continually invasive cancer. As in too many movies about illness, the cancer gets put on the back-burner too often: it has a brief dramatic appearance at the beginning (sorted out by some magic pill that works instantly) and hardly turns up again until the end. In the meantime, unlike most cancer patients, Keaton, on the surface at least, appears to be as healthy as the next man.
Before he dies he makes a series of home movies that he wants his future child to be able to view, but in the process he comes face to the face with the fact that he's never forgiven his own parents: he particularly felt that his father was never there for him because he worked so hard at his business. But he has to face the fact that he's actually no different: he's a workaholic too.
For the most part it's Keaton who makes the movie work (Kidman has a bit of a wishy-washy role that doesn't give her room for much depth unfortunately) in spite of its forays into occasional silliness. The rest of the cast, including Bradley Whitford (from West Wing, and sporting the worst false moustache you've ever seen - it looks as though belongs in the 70s rather than the 90s), Michael Considine and Queen Latifah don't really get much chance to get to grips with their roles because they're basically underwritten. Latifah doesn't appear till almost the end, comes in with a whiz and a bang and is then given nothing to do.
On Saturday night we watched a DVD of The Remains of the Day, which we'd seen at the cinema when it first came out. Neither of us could remember much about it; in fact there was very little of that visual recognition you usually have when you're seeing a movie again. Perhaps we're losing our visual recognition as we get older, which is a bit scary!
Anyway, this movie, with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson both at their best, is a story about a butler in a large aristocratic home, Darlington Hall, owned by Lord Darlington. The Lord, though he is an honourable man, is an amateur in his political dealings; he foolishly sides with the Nazis during the war, and probably should have been charged with treason. Hopkins, the consummate butler, always there, always perfect in behaviour, claims he never hears what goes on around him: he's too busy doing his job. But in fact he's closed off to human relationships for the most part. When he employs his own father as an under-butler, he calls him Mr Stevens rather than father. It's only as his father is dying that he manages to speak as though there is some relationship there. Even when his father is lying dead upstairs he believes his duty is still to serve his Lordship first.
Thompson plays the housekeeper who gives as good as she gets from Hopkins, but also falls in love with him. In spite of himself, he's in love with her, but his nature is such that he can't admit to it, and so both their lives go awry as a result.
There's a top-notch cast including Hugh Grant, Christopher Reeves and Ben Chaplin among the more familiar faces. The direction by James Ivory is quiet and assured, and the script by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala gives the performers ample room for subtlety and subtext. A great film, with much in it to be admired.
In the same year, Michael Keaton and Nicole Kidman starred in a much less well-known movie, My Life, which, if it had been done as a TV movie with a TV actor would have ended up requiring a box of tissues. It narrowly avoids this because of Keaton's solid performance in which he has ample room to both clown and play to his serious side.
Keaton plays a man who has only a few months to live because of cancer, and like many in that position he doesn't want to die, especially as his wife is expecting their first child. He manages to stay alive long enough to see his son grow through his first months before succumbing to the continually invasive cancer. As in too many movies about illness, the cancer gets put on the back-burner too often: it has a brief dramatic appearance at the beginning (sorted out by some magic pill that works instantly) and hardly turns up again until the end. In the meantime, unlike most cancer patients, Keaton, on the surface at least, appears to be as healthy as the next man.
Before he dies he makes a series of home movies that he wants his future child to be able to view, but in the process he comes face to the face with the fact that he's never forgiven his own parents: he particularly felt that his father was never there for him because he worked so hard at his business. But he has to face the fact that he's actually no different: he's a workaholic too.
For the most part it's Keaton who makes the movie work (Kidman has a bit of a wishy-washy role that doesn't give her room for much depth unfortunately) in spite of its forays into occasional silliness. The rest of the cast, including Bradley Whitford (from West Wing, and sporting the worst false moustache you've ever seen - it looks as though belongs in the 70s rather than the 90s), Michael Considine and Queen Latifah don't really get much chance to get to grips with their roles because they're basically underwritten. Latifah doesn't appear till almost the end, comes in with a whiz and a bang and is then given nothing to do.
Friday, May 30, 2014
Hue and Cry II
I was about to write a blog post saying that in spite of the fact that I'd had the DVD of the movie, Hue and Cry, on my shelves for some time, I'd never watched it. To my surprise, when I checked back, I did watch it in 2007, and wrote about it then. Both my wife and I said last night, I don't remember ever seeing this before. Which is puzzling, because I usually have a reasonable visual memory for movies, and so does she, and at least some aspects of the first viewing will be remembered in the second.
So I don't need to say any more about the film, except to say that it was just as enjoyable on a second viewing as I'd obviously found it on the first. However, what I don't seem to have noted at the time is the detail. Right from the opening credits, which are white-washed onto a real wall, with boys playing, running, fighting in front of them, and with a bit of humour thrown in (Wot? no producer? says one, and Stick no Bills in another, with a tatty Ealing Studios poster fluttering alongside) there's an attitude of 'Let's see if you pick this up, audience.' Added to this is Auric's opening music which fits beautifully to all the zipping around and punching that's going on.
Every time the main group of boys appear - and there are around a dozen of them, and one girl (Joan Dowling, who later married Harry Fowler, the main 'boy' in the film, and who sadly committed suicide at the age of 26) - not only do we get a sense of their individuality, but all manner of other 'business' is going on. In one scene one boy is holding a bag of chips; the arm of another reaches over several times to pinch a chip while the others are talking. One boy is being buried in bricks from the bombed-out building site in another scene, and is left to fight his own way out when the others all rush off. One boy has a pet mouse (which has a couple of important scenes later) and it's casually walking up around his collar when we first see him. There's a scene where the first 'The Trump' - a boy's adventure weekly that plays a vital role in the film - is snatched back and forth between three or four of the boys, including its owner. Nobody ever stands around in this movie: the boys' characters and movements are distinct and well-worked out. Charles Crichton, the director, obviously had a good eye for how boys of that generation behaved, and the movie is full of things to keep the eye attentive.
And there's plenty of comedy: in one notable scene that takes place in a department store at night the boys are waiting for the crims to arrive: the owner of the mouse is hiding under a mannequin's skirt. The mouse escapes, and heads over to a speak-your-weight machine. The boy dives for the mouse and the machine speaks his weight. The shop's caretaker arrives and tries to get the boy and the machine speaks their combined weight, and then other boys come and then the police and the machine, with its pompous voice, can hardly keep up.
Alistair Sim has only a few scenes, and plays a character who can hardly sit still. Crichton has him up and down around his cluttered flat, talking nineteen to the dozen, and performing as only Sim could do, and doing so many bits of business that his brain must have been whirling. He gets star billing in spite of appearing for about ten minutes all up, but as Sim always did, he makes those ten minutes unforgettable.
I mentioned in the previous post that a great deal of the film was shot on location, outside in the bombed-out streets of London. In the background of several shots you can see workers rebuilding, and further away still, the barges and boats on the Thames. The film manages to be a documentary of a particular time in the city's history as well as an entertaining story.
So I don't need to say any more about the film, except to say that it was just as enjoyable on a second viewing as I'd obviously found it on the first. However, what I don't seem to have noted at the time is the detail. Right from the opening credits, which are white-washed onto a real wall, with boys playing, running, fighting in front of them, and with a bit of humour thrown in (Wot? no producer? says one, and Stick no Bills in another, with a tatty Ealing Studios poster fluttering alongside) there's an attitude of 'Let's see if you pick this up, audience.' Added to this is Auric's opening music which fits beautifully to all the zipping around and punching that's going on.
Every time the main group of boys appear - and there are around a dozen of them, and one girl (Joan Dowling, who later married Harry Fowler, the main 'boy' in the film, and who sadly committed suicide at the age of 26) - not only do we get a sense of their individuality, but all manner of other 'business' is going on. In one scene one boy is holding a bag of chips; the arm of another reaches over several times to pinch a chip while the others are talking. One boy is being buried in bricks from the bombed-out building site in another scene, and is left to fight his own way out when the others all rush off. One boy has a pet mouse (which has a couple of important scenes later) and it's casually walking up around his collar when we first see him. There's a scene where the first 'The Trump' - a boy's adventure weekly that plays a vital role in the film - is snatched back and forth between three or four of the boys, including its owner. Nobody ever stands around in this movie: the boys' characters and movements are distinct and well-worked out. Charles Crichton, the director, obviously had a good eye for how boys of that generation behaved, and the movie is full of things to keep the eye attentive.
And there's plenty of comedy: in one notable scene that takes place in a department store at night the boys are waiting for the crims to arrive: the owner of the mouse is hiding under a mannequin's skirt. The mouse escapes, and heads over to a speak-your-weight machine. The boy dives for the mouse and the machine speaks his weight. The shop's caretaker arrives and tries to get the boy and the machine speaks their combined weight, and then other boys come and then the police and the machine, with its pompous voice, can hardly keep up.
Alistair Sim has only a few scenes, and plays a character who can hardly sit still. Crichton has him up and down around his cluttered flat, talking nineteen to the dozen, and performing as only Sim could do, and doing so many bits of business that his brain must have been whirling. He gets star billing in spite of appearing for about ten minutes all up, but as Sim always did, he makes those ten minutes unforgettable.
I mentioned in the previous post that a great deal of the film was shot on location, outside in the bombed-out streets of London. In the background of several shots you can see workers rebuilding, and further away still, the barges and boats on the Thames. The film manages to be a documentary of a particular time in the city's history as well as an entertaining story.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
More on creativity
As I mentioned in the last post we went and saw the play Souvenir last night: resilience was the major character aspect for Florence Foster Jenkins, along with a remarkable inability to hear what others heard. Artists need resilience. Up to a point I have it, though I can get quite down about things not going well, perhaps less than I once did. My wife's had to say more than once that either you do the work because you love it and want to do it and don’t care about the immediate results, or you get all depressed about it if it doesn't take off as you expect. There’s an obvious choice about which one is going to be more effective, but of course it isn’t always easy just to pick up yourself after a knockback.
Foster Jenkins’ was right to be resilient, though she was wrong in not being able to hear criticism. However, the thing that her pianist discovered ˗ at least in the play ˗ was that she could hear the right music in her head; she just couldn’t reproduce it. I think in a way that’s what a lot of artists ˗ including writers ˗ struggle with: the story, the music, the performance they have in their head isn’t matched by what they achieve in reality. I've often had a piece of music in my head that's really excited me, but trying to get it down on paper turns out to be impossible. Sometimes it turns into something altogether different which has a life of its own. Sometimes it just goes down the tubes. And then there are the piano performances I've given in my dreams...
I’ve never forgotten the story about Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, told by the woman who was page-turning for his accompanist one night. She was rapt by his performance ˗ as she should have been; he was a consummate performer and deserved all the kudos he got. But as they came off stage she heard him berating his performance as mediocre and well below his best. She was astonished because she couldn’t equate his view of it with what she’d heard. (Foster Jenkins had the opposite problem, of course.) What it did for her was disappoint her; it didn’t make her feel that striving for the best was important; criticism of your performance was important. And yes, of course it is. But that should be something you deal with yourself. Let your audience take out of the performance what it can and will. Don’t be so overwhelmed with your own performance that you become boastful; equally don’t let minor slips be a major issue; correct them if you can in the next performance.
The adjudicator at the Junior Singing Competitions this month said to the kids performing: everyone makes mistakes in performance (the actress playing Foster Jenkins made at least three slips in her lines last night that I noticed) ˗ in fact, she said, professional orchestras make an average of seven mistakes per minute in a concert. This doesn’t take away from the overall performance, which for most of the audience will be enthralling or delightful or exhilarating. Always improve, and always strive to improve. But don't pull yourself down because you haven't achieved what you hoped for.
Quite apart from anything else, even the most astute audiences fail to notice most things that go wrong in performances.
Foster Jenkins’ was right to be resilient, though she was wrong in not being able to hear criticism. However, the thing that her pianist discovered ˗ at least in the play ˗ was that she could hear the right music in her head; she just couldn’t reproduce it. I think in a way that’s what a lot of artists ˗ including writers ˗ struggle with: the story, the music, the performance they have in their head isn’t matched by what they achieve in reality. I've often had a piece of music in my head that's really excited me, but trying to get it down on paper turns out to be impossible. Sometimes it turns into something altogether different which has a life of its own. Sometimes it just goes down the tubes. And then there are the piano performances I've given in my dreams...
I’ve never forgotten the story about Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, told by the woman who was page-turning for his accompanist one night. She was rapt by his performance ˗ as she should have been; he was a consummate performer and deserved all the kudos he got. But as they came off stage she heard him berating his performance as mediocre and well below his best. She was astonished because she couldn’t equate his view of it with what she’d heard. (Foster Jenkins had the opposite problem, of course.) What it did for her was disappoint her; it didn’t make her feel that striving for the best was important; criticism of your performance was important. And yes, of course it is. But that should be something you deal with yourself. Let your audience take out of the performance what it can and will. Don’t be so overwhelmed with your own performance that you become boastful; equally don’t let minor slips be a major issue; correct them if you can in the next performance. The adjudicator at the Junior Singing Competitions this month said to the kids performing: everyone makes mistakes in performance (the actress playing Foster Jenkins made at least three slips in her lines last night that I noticed) ˗ in fact, she said, professional orchestras make an average of seven mistakes per minute in a concert. This doesn’t take away from the overall performance, which for most of the audience will be enthralling or delightful or exhilarating. Always improve, and always strive to improve. But don't pull yourself down because you haven't achieved what you hoped for.
Quite apart from anything else, even the most astute audiences fail to notice most things that go wrong in performances.
Souvenir
Last night, courtesy of the surprise gift of a friend, we went to see Souvenir, a play being performed at Dunedin's Fortune Theatre. Souvenir was written by Stephen Temperley, a musician, actor and playwright. It began life as a full-scale play (presumably with a large cast), was abandoned, was tried as a one-woman show, and finally morphed around 2003 into the two-hander that was performed last night. This is the first time the play has been produced in New Zealand, so good on you, Fortune, for doing it. Sadly the house was only half-full, which is a pity, because not only is the play good and worth seeing, it's immensely funny and is performed with huge energy by Angela Johnson and Michael Lee Porter.
Johnson plays the incredible widow, Mrs Florence Foster Jenkins, who is convinced that the perfect music she hears inside her head is what she produces for her audiences. She's sadly disillusioned about this, and yet audiences flocked to hear her in her later years when she began putting on charity concerts, first at the Ritz Hotel, and finally at Carnegie Hall. She even made some recordings. Johnson, who in real life looks nothing like the dumpy Mrs J, gives a performance of such warmth and delight that you realise how people were willing to suspend judgement on the woman's singing. In spite of the fact that we know that she sings absolutely awfully - Johnson gives us dozens of samples of this awful singing - she had such resilience and enthusiasm that it was hard to turn her down on her ideas. Johnson adopts something of the chortly tones of the famous TV character Mrs Bucket (pronounced Bouquet) in order to bring her character to life, and gives great emphasis to certain words and lines.
Porter plays the role of pianist Cosmé McMoon. (Yup, that was his name.) He also narrates the story to us, and is onstage the entire play. (Johnson gets brief patches offstage, but for most of those she's whipping out of one costume and into another.) Porter not only has to tell us the story in speech, but sometimes in song (accompanying himself on the grand piano that takes up a good deal of the space) and then has to become Cosmé as he was twenty or so years earlier. Porter is an accomplished pianist, has a pretty reasonable voice, and performs the complex and constantly switching role of appalled pianist, counsellor, comforter, and possibly even substitute son with aplomb. His role is more difficult, because he's the audience's confidante as well, and sometimes is expected to give us the nod and wink while being in the middle of a scene with Foster Jenkins.
It's possible that people with some musical background might enjoy the piece more than those who don't have one, but it's certainly not necessary to know anything much about opera to appreciate the play. (There are a number of popular songs in the play too, mostly played and sung by McMoon.) The actors give every line great value, and milk every bit of comedy out of the script. It would be interesting to see a production of the play which wasn't played quite so much for laughs; I suspect it's possible to do it in an entirely different way. Here, of course, the laughs make the unfunny scenes all the more poignant: there are two strong scenes towards the end of each act in which Mrs Foster Jenkins has brief moments of insecurity about what she's doing. In the first McMoon loses his temper at her inability to see how she comes across to others, and is hurtful. Such is the way in which the script is written and performed that it's Foster Jenkins who we side with; McMoon is absolutely right in what he says, yet somehow we believe in the woman.
The play speaks to all artists, most of whom have an ongoing insecurity about what they're creating in the world. Is it of any real value, or will be forgotten as quickly as yesterday's news? Is the judgement of friends and family true, or does only the judgement of a wider audience count? And are we reading that judgement correctly, or are we interpreting it in the light of our own belief about what we're creating? Many great artists have been ignored in their lifetime and have only come into their own after they're dead. Many artists who seem to hold the stage at present will soon be forgotten forever. Actors in stage plays present something nightly for a week, or a month, or even years, and then nothing of it remains, except memories. Performance is perhaps one of the most ephemeral of the arts: a concert here, a play there, and next day it's as if it had never been. If an audience misses seeing or hearing it, there is no memory of it. And curiously, the videoing of live performances can often be disappointing: they're not big enough, they lack that buzz that the audience contributes.Things that the actors thought they were conveying seem to be flat and banal. Or they may seem so over-the-top that you wonder what the live audience actually thought.
There's no doubt that Foster Jenkins somehow missed hearing what was heard by others. Her recordings testify to this, and she has been hugely mocked and laughed at. But at the end of the play, when McMoon tells us that she died not long after her Carnegie Hall concert (not of a broken heart, as many claimed, but of natural causes), he speaks of the fact that inside her head she could hear the perfect music. And Johnson comes out on stage again at that point, in a dress that is lovely and not foolish (as many of her stage costumes were), and sings Ave Maria so beautifully that it makes your own heart break. Perhaps in heaven Mrs Foster Jenkins sings still, and now performs truthfully what she couldn't achieve in this life.
Johnson plays the incredible widow, Mrs Florence Foster Jenkins, who is convinced that the perfect music she hears inside her head is what she produces for her audiences. She's sadly disillusioned about this, and yet audiences flocked to hear her in her later years when she began putting on charity concerts, first at the Ritz Hotel, and finally at Carnegie Hall. She even made some recordings. Johnson, who in real life looks nothing like the dumpy Mrs J, gives a performance of such warmth and delight that you realise how people were willing to suspend judgement on the woman's singing. In spite of the fact that we know that she sings absolutely awfully - Johnson gives us dozens of samples of this awful singing - she had such resilience and enthusiasm that it was hard to turn her down on her ideas. Johnson adopts something of the chortly tones of the famous TV character Mrs Bucket (pronounced Bouquet) in order to bring her character to life, and gives great emphasis to certain words and lines.
Porter plays the role of pianist Cosmé McMoon. (Yup, that was his name.) He also narrates the story to us, and is onstage the entire play. (Johnson gets brief patches offstage, but for most of those she's whipping out of one costume and into another.) Porter not only has to tell us the story in speech, but sometimes in song (accompanying himself on the grand piano that takes up a good deal of the space) and then has to become Cosmé as he was twenty or so years earlier. Porter is an accomplished pianist, has a pretty reasonable voice, and performs the complex and constantly switching role of appalled pianist, counsellor, comforter, and possibly even substitute son with aplomb. His role is more difficult, because he's the audience's confidante as well, and sometimes is expected to give us the nod and wink while being in the middle of a scene with Foster Jenkins.
It's possible that people with some musical background might enjoy the piece more than those who don't have one, but it's certainly not necessary to know anything much about opera to appreciate the play. (There are a number of popular songs in the play too, mostly played and sung by McMoon.) The actors give every line great value, and milk every bit of comedy out of the script. It would be interesting to see a production of the play which wasn't played quite so much for laughs; I suspect it's possible to do it in an entirely different way. Here, of course, the laughs make the unfunny scenes all the more poignant: there are two strong scenes towards the end of each act in which Mrs Foster Jenkins has brief moments of insecurity about what she's doing. In the first McMoon loses his temper at her inability to see how she comes across to others, and is hurtful. Such is the way in which the script is written and performed that it's Foster Jenkins who we side with; McMoon is absolutely right in what he says, yet somehow we believe in the woman.
The play speaks to all artists, most of whom have an ongoing insecurity about what they're creating in the world. Is it of any real value, or will be forgotten as quickly as yesterday's news? Is the judgement of friends and family true, or does only the judgement of a wider audience count? And are we reading that judgement correctly, or are we interpreting it in the light of our own belief about what we're creating? Many great artists have been ignored in their lifetime and have only come into their own after they're dead. Many artists who seem to hold the stage at present will soon be forgotten forever. Actors in stage plays present something nightly for a week, or a month, or even years, and then nothing of it remains, except memories. Performance is perhaps one of the most ephemeral of the arts: a concert here, a play there, and next day it's as if it had never been. If an audience misses seeing or hearing it, there is no memory of it. And curiously, the videoing of live performances can often be disappointing: they're not big enough, they lack that buzz that the audience contributes.Things that the actors thought they were conveying seem to be flat and banal. Or they may seem so over-the-top that you wonder what the live audience actually thought.
There's no doubt that Foster Jenkins somehow missed hearing what was heard by others. Her recordings testify to this, and she has been hugely mocked and laughed at. But at the end of the play, when McMoon tells us that she died not long after her Carnegie Hall concert (not of a broken heart, as many claimed, but of natural causes), he speaks of the fact that inside her head she could hear the perfect music. And Johnson comes out on stage again at that point, in a dress that is lovely and not foolish (as many of her stage costumes were), and sings Ave Maria so beautifully that it makes your own heart break. Perhaps in heaven Mrs Foster Jenkins sings still, and now performs truthfully what she couldn't achieve in this life.
Monday, May 26, 2014
The Source
I can't say I'd come across the 2011 film The Source before, and there don't seem to be many English-language reviews of it online. It's directed by Radu Mihăileanu, a Jewish Romanian-born French director who also wrote the script in collaboration with two French writers. It has more than one title: as you can see from the poster, it's called La Source des Femmes, (The Source of/for Women) but the poster on IMDB names it La Sorgente dell'Amore, which translates as The Source of Love. All are equally valid: there is dialogue in the film in which the source of or for women is discussed, and also the source of love, that is, where does love come from - the answer in the film is pretty much, from women, although that's not the whole story. But there's a further aspect to the word, source: in the movie the starting point for the story is the spring up on the hillside to which the women must go each day with their buckets to collect water. This water is the source of life - especially in the drought-stricken time in which the movie takes place - and its place far up on the hill is another source: a source of contention. The women argue that their menfolk (who sit around most of the day doing nothing because the drought has destroyed their crops and livestock) should take the money gained from passing tourists and use it to put a tap from the spring right within the village. The men are loathe to - among many reasons is the one that women should know their place, and if they only had to go to the water in the village, what else would they do with their time?
One of the women, an outsider, whose husband (a much more kindly and gentle man than most in the village) has taught her to read and write, begins a sex strike, and this has ramifications for all concerned. The story is an old one - the bawdy Greek comedy, Lysistrata, is one of the oldest known versions of it - but Mihăileanu and his team have set it in a remote North African village where Islam is the dominating force, and where men have license to beat their wives (just as one would beat children, gently, to discipline them, says the local Imam), and to demand sex nightly, if they're so inclined. And where teenage girls are frequently thrown into marriage without any instruction or care.
Unlike Aristophanes' play, the comedy is minimal (though the film is billed as a drama/comedy) and there are some vicious beatings, fights, slappings and the like. People's passions run high here, and no some seems immune from a good slap across the face.
But the story has more to say than just bringing harmony back between husbands and wives - harmony does return, as you'd expect, but at considerable cost. There is the much bigger issue of Islam itself, which pervades the lives of the people alongside elements of folk religion. Though these people are Arabs, they've been in this part of the world a very long time.
The gentle husband talks at one point of the Islamic Enlightenment. If there's such a thing, it's got very stony ground in which to grow in in this village, and at the film's end it's debatable as to whether it's made much progress. Certainly there's an important scene in which the educated wife fronts up to the Imam with great respect, and counters his views of how husbands and wives should behave by quoting back the Koran to him with great confidence. He's shaken by having a woman stand up to him, but, to his credit, does listen, and reflect on it.
In spite of the male domination aspect, this is a film where women have the focus. They sing at the beginning and at the end (the film is almost a musical at times - some of the story is told in song, and some of the interactions between men and women, or women and women, take place in musical terms), they have two other wonderful scenes in which what they're singing is exactly what the men don't want to hear, and which publicly embarrasses them. and they have a scene in their bathhouse (where there is some nudity on display) in which they discuss sex quite openly as well as the prospect of a sex-strike. Women's talk may embarrass men, but the women aren't embarrassed by it - the group song early in the piece is quite forthright in this regard.
Love is a big theme throughout - it's seldom mentioned by the men, except in terms of disparagement - but for the women it's a thing to hold onto dearly; if it can be received and given it's priceless. The educated couple at the centre of the movie celebrate love, even when it also seems to make their lives more complicated (a man the girl had loved previously turns up to make things difficult), and several of the women long for love but have never received it, including one who gets the educated women to write letters for her to a man she loves, named, somewhat improbably, Slim.
At times the wealth of subplots almost gets in the way of the focus of the story (one scene, in which one of the young husbands tells the educated man just how much he hurt him when he treated him as a lesser person, seems to be going somewhere and then doesn't) but Mihăileanu holds it all in place somehow, and makes the film all the more rich for all its different elements. It could have been a diatribe against Islam and its treatment of women; it could have been political (there are a few elements of this); it could have been primarily a love story. It's all these and more.
And what a cast: Algerian Leila Bekhti is wondrous as the educated wife; her husband is played by Palestinian actor, Saleh Bakri, who manages to overcome the occasional inconsistencies in his role. The older women have faces that never came from any Hollywood movie (some of them may be non-professionals). Israeli actress Hiam Abbass plays the vicious mother-in-law with an underlying fury - justified, we learn in due course, but terrifying all the same. Biyouna, who has a face of considerable ugliness (but happens to be a great star in her native Algeria) plays the aging widow who encourages, provokes, and generally manages to keep her finger in several pies at once. This international cast - it also includes several French-born actors - speak and sing in Arabic throughout, and it's more satisfying than having them dubbed (though the film was dubbed into French for the French!)
The Source is a revelation: for one, a look at an area of the Arab world in which terrorists have no obvious presence; a picture of Islam in which jihad is mentioned but in a totally different context; and much more. The Dunedin Public Library has a copy.
Sunday, May 25, 2014
To those growing older and soon to part
This article, by Jim Battersby, Minister Emeritus, Auckland, was written a few years ago. I came across it while working for the Presbyterian National Mission Office (now unfortunately, no more). It's an excellent piece, full of good advice. I was given permission at the time to reproduce it.
Dear Jack and Grace,
In a recent phone conversation, Jack mentioned that as you are now both in your 80s, you have been talking about the inevitable parting that is ahead of you. That’s good. It is realistic. Sooner or later one of you is going to be left. I recall only one occasion when husband and wife died together, and that was in a car crash. Although my parents died within a few weeks of one another in their late 80s, both my grandfathers outlived their spouses by some years. In my years of ministry, I have met many “relicts” as they used to be called.
I myself have been “solo” since I was 72 – more than 11 years. I know something of the pain of parting, and the change of circumstances that follows. Of course, nothing can really prepare us for this eventuality, but I think something could be done to temper those agonising bewildering months and years that follow. Finding out the hard way of the many things I was faced with when my Barbie died, I have tried to leave information that may be of ready assistance to my children when my time comes to die.
I think the most important first step is for couples to talk about the inevitable parting, each explaining to the other what their wishes are about such things as content of funeral services, burial or cremation, and where ashes should go. Not all couples are equally familiar with financial arrangements about the home, where important documents are kept, what bills have to be paid and when, where family records are kept, where the record of Christmas cards exchanged is (useful for notifying friends of the other’s death), the addresses of close friends of one that may not have been close friends of the other. (A good idea might be to keep a notebook “Where to find” you could each enter such things in.) Often the husband or wife has handled such things by him/herself. It is often the husband who has attended to the outside chores. He knows from years of practice where the lawn mower is, how to start it, whether it uses petrol or petrol and oil; where seeds are kept and when they should be planted, what are all the gadgets he keeps in his workshop, and so on.
On the other hand, it is often that the wife has done the shopping, cooked the meals, done the housework, leaving the husband ignorant of such arts. If you haven’t worried about meals much, you need to know your way around a supermarket, what cuts of meat there are etc, how to plan meals, how to cook them - at what temperature and for how long. These are mysteries that many men have not been let in to, or have not seen fit to be concerned about.
Then the awful day arrives without warning!
In latter years, my wife used to ask me to take a turn with the cooking. My usual reply was that in our generation the women looked after the indoors while the men took charge of the outdoor tasks around the home. I don’t quite know what prompted my change of heart, but while we were overseas my wife took ill. Sometime after, I promised her that when we got home, that for a start, once a week, on Wednesdays, I would plan the evening meal, buy the necessary ingredients, prepare and cook the meal, and wash up afterwards. We got home on a Thursday, and she died very suddenly the following Tuesday morning. So my promise was never fulfilled.
But I had all the shopping and cooking, washing, cleaning and so on to do on my own, thereafter. One unexpected help to me was memories of my mother or wife’s housekeeping that I had unconsciously recorded. Another help I received at first was “my Little Red Cookbook” - a recipe book I started when my wife was ill about 10 years before she died. This was a compilation of basic meals and at what temperature to cook them, and how much is a “little of this, and a pinch of that”, and “how long until it looks cooked” etc. I nearly drove my wife (and also my sister) mad getting precise details. Soon after Barbie died I went to a night school nearby to try to enrol in a basic cooking class. Only cooking classes for Italian and Asian foods were available! So I learnt a lot by trial and error, augmented by advice from my sister and some friendly ladies.
Another helpful thing would be to make a list of whom you want to have your very personal possessions (like jewellery or tools etc), and if you have any requests about the disposal of other personal possessions.
One of the best things I ever did (and it was in our 70s), was to raise a matter that had for years been between us, undiscussed. With trepidation I slowly raised this (after a couple of stumbling attempts, I admit), and we talked it out. Each was able to explain to the other his/her situation way back, the circumstances, attitudes, understandings and misunderstandings at the time and over the years. It was a tremendous relief to both of us. One of the unexpected spin-offs was that we fell in love again, and I had the good fortune in our last few months of taking her into my arms daily and more, and saying, “I love you so much my darling”. Barbie echoed this in her own words. We knew that when the time came for parting, there would be no regretted “unfinished business” of this nature. This proved most significant to me.
I learnt from this, how important it is for couples at any age, but especially if they are growing older, to make the opportunity to discuss things previously left unsaid, but which are at the back of their minds. Such things may be in the nature of confessions – or perhaps even more importantly and easily overlooked, expressions of how wonderful the other is, how much is owed to that person, the depth of one’s love, and similar endearments. Even to say often, “I love you” is important at the time, and vital in memory. All this kind of thing, if left undiscussed, features later as unfinished business, and “the book once closed cannot be re-opened”.
It is also important to talk about, or even record for the other, what you remember about your ancestors, and maybe your own back ground. This can be done via a tape recording. While your spouse may value this, your children and grandchildren will probably value it even more.
It could be that with the years, your spouse has developed infirmities of some kind – e.g. loss of sight, hearing, mobility, and has become quite dependent on you. Have you ever thought of sharing ideas of how you spouse could best cope without you – what alternative aids could be available, what kind of care might be best, how you could avoid if possible, putting a burden on your children, especially
on the only one who is nearby? One often has better insight into the other and his/her “quirks of character” than the person him/herself, and may be able to suggest inner strengths not yet tapped, and better attitudes of coping with difficulty.
One of the things I have missed most – and I don’t know the answer for it, is the opportunity to talk over with Barbie everyday things, and to recall together special memories, little intimacies, and personal jokes. There is simply no other who can fulfil this role, and it is a pain that just has to be borne.
On the other hand, I recognise in my “going solo” for nearly 12 years, there have been some gains. I have discovered new insights into myself, gained new interests, new activities, new skills, new friends. I am still discovering what I don’t really want to; the strength of independence, standing on my own feet without the lifelong love and support of the other very special person.
Sometimes, but not so often now, I cry in my loneliness, which no other can assuage – I suppose it is self pity, but I excuse myself by saying it is natural and understandable. If it is a weakness, I accept it, and don’t beat myself.
Well dear friends, I hope you read and digest this, and make some use of it in pondering any ideas from it that sound useful to you. It is only one person’s point of view. But he wishes he had had as long a partnership as you two have.
God Bless, and loving regards,
Jim
Dear Jack and Grace,
In a recent phone conversation, Jack mentioned that as you are now both in your 80s, you have been talking about the inevitable parting that is ahead of you. That’s good. It is realistic. Sooner or later one of you is going to be left. I recall only one occasion when husband and wife died together, and that was in a car crash. Although my parents died within a few weeks of one another in their late 80s, both my grandfathers outlived their spouses by some years. In my years of ministry, I have met many “relicts” as they used to be called.
I myself have been “solo” since I was 72 – more than 11 years. I know something of the pain of parting, and the change of circumstances that follows. Of course, nothing can really prepare us for this eventuality, but I think something could be done to temper those agonising bewildering months and years that follow. Finding out the hard way of the many things I was faced with when my Barbie died, I have tried to leave information that may be of ready assistance to my children when my time comes to die.
I think the most important first step is for couples to talk about the inevitable parting, each explaining to the other what their wishes are about such things as content of funeral services, burial or cremation, and where ashes should go. Not all couples are equally familiar with financial arrangements about the home, where important documents are kept, what bills have to be paid and when, where family records are kept, where the record of Christmas cards exchanged is (useful for notifying friends of the other’s death), the addresses of close friends of one that may not have been close friends of the other. (A good idea might be to keep a notebook “Where to find” you could each enter such things in.) Often the husband or wife has handled such things by him/herself. It is often the husband who has attended to the outside chores. He knows from years of practice where the lawn mower is, how to start it, whether it uses petrol or petrol and oil; where seeds are kept and when they should be planted, what are all the gadgets he keeps in his workshop, and so on.
On the other hand, it is often that the wife has done the shopping, cooked the meals, done the housework, leaving the husband ignorant of such arts. If you haven’t worried about meals much, you need to know your way around a supermarket, what cuts of meat there are etc, how to plan meals, how to cook them - at what temperature and for how long. These are mysteries that many men have not been let in to, or have not seen fit to be concerned about.
Then the awful day arrives without warning!
In latter years, my wife used to ask me to take a turn with the cooking. My usual reply was that in our generation the women looked after the indoors while the men took charge of the outdoor tasks around the home. I don’t quite know what prompted my change of heart, but while we were overseas my wife took ill. Sometime after, I promised her that when we got home, that for a start, once a week, on Wednesdays, I would plan the evening meal, buy the necessary ingredients, prepare and cook the meal, and wash up afterwards. We got home on a Thursday, and she died very suddenly the following Tuesday morning. So my promise was never fulfilled.
But I had all the shopping and cooking, washing, cleaning and so on to do on my own, thereafter. One unexpected help to me was memories of my mother or wife’s housekeeping that I had unconsciously recorded. Another help I received at first was “my Little Red Cookbook” - a recipe book I started when my wife was ill about 10 years before she died. This was a compilation of basic meals and at what temperature to cook them, and how much is a “little of this, and a pinch of that”, and “how long until it looks cooked” etc. I nearly drove my wife (and also my sister) mad getting precise details. Soon after Barbie died I went to a night school nearby to try to enrol in a basic cooking class. Only cooking classes for Italian and Asian foods were available! So I learnt a lot by trial and error, augmented by advice from my sister and some friendly ladies.
Another helpful thing would be to make a list of whom you want to have your very personal possessions (like jewellery or tools etc), and if you have any requests about the disposal of other personal possessions.
One of the best things I ever did (and it was in our 70s), was to raise a matter that had for years been between us, undiscussed. With trepidation I slowly raised this (after a couple of stumbling attempts, I admit), and we talked it out. Each was able to explain to the other his/her situation way back, the circumstances, attitudes, understandings and misunderstandings at the time and over the years. It was a tremendous relief to both of us. One of the unexpected spin-offs was that we fell in love again, and I had the good fortune in our last few months of taking her into my arms daily and more, and saying, “I love you so much my darling”. Barbie echoed this in her own words. We knew that when the time came for parting, there would be no regretted “unfinished business” of this nature. This proved most significant to me.
I learnt from this, how important it is for couples at any age, but especially if they are growing older, to make the opportunity to discuss things previously left unsaid, but which are at the back of their minds. Such things may be in the nature of confessions – or perhaps even more importantly and easily overlooked, expressions of how wonderful the other is, how much is owed to that person, the depth of one’s love, and similar endearments. Even to say often, “I love you” is important at the time, and vital in memory. All this kind of thing, if left undiscussed, features later as unfinished business, and “the book once closed cannot be re-opened”.
It is also important to talk about, or even record for the other, what you remember about your ancestors, and maybe your own back ground. This can be done via a tape recording. While your spouse may value this, your children and grandchildren will probably value it even more.
It could be that with the years, your spouse has developed infirmities of some kind – e.g. loss of sight, hearing, mobility, and has become quite dependent on you. Have you ever thought of sharing ideas of how you spouse could best cope without you – what alternative aids could be available, what kind of care might be best, how you could avoid if possible, putting a burden on your children, especially
on the only one who is nearby? One often has better insight into the other and his/her “quirks of character” than the person him/herself, and may be able to suggest inner strengths not yet tapped, and better attitudes of coping with difficulty.
One of the things I have missed most – and I don’t know the answer for it, is the opportunity to talk over with Barbie everyday things, and to recall together special memories, little intimacies, and personal jokes. There is simply no other who can fulfil this role, and it is a pain that just has to be borne.
On the other hand, I recognise in my “going solo” for nearly 12 years, there have been some gains. I have discovered new insights into myself, gained new interests, new activities, new skills, new friends. I am still discovering what I don’t really want to; the strength of independence, standing on my own feet without the lifelong love and support of the other very special person.
Sometimes, but not so often now, I cry in my loneliness, which no other can assuage – I suppose it is self pity, but I excuse myself by saying it is natural and understandable. If it is a weakness, I accept it, and don’t beat myself.
Well dear friends, I hope you read and digest this, and make some use of it in pondering any ideas from it that sound useful to you. It is only one person’s point of view. But he wishes he had had as long a partnership as you two have.
God Bless, and loving regards,
Jim
Friday, May 23, 2014
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
We watched Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia tonight, and while admiring the artistry of its playing-out, the top-notch ensemble acting, and the cinematography, it has to be admitted that some 150 minutes of screen time in which small things happen at a relatively slow pace is somewhat trying. Even the story that's told in a serial fashion throughout by the Prosecutor turns out to have only a so-so fulfilment. And quite what's with the long last section in which an autopsy is done, slowly, and thankfully mostly out of sight, I'm not sure.
Ah well, it takes all sorts of movies to make the world of films. While I'm kind of glad I saw it (my other half found it tedious), I think it could have done with some cutting without losing anything of its quality. Scenes in which the dialogue consists of mind-numbingly mundane words, the sorts of words that everyone's forgotten two seconds later in real life, don't allow the brain to engage in anything but puzzlement.
Ah well, it takes all sorts of movies to make the world of films. While I'm kind of glad I saw it (my other half found it tedious), I think it could have done with some cutting without losing anything of its quality. Scenes in which the dialogue consists of mind-numbingly mundane words, the sorts of words that everyone's forgotten two seconds later in real life, don't allow the brain to engage in anything but puzzlement.
Friday, May 16, 2014
Oddfellows
I've been eating Allen's Oddfellows (white peppermints) since my childhood, which is quite a long time. I'm not sure if Allen's always made them or if they took over the original company. Anyway, Nestlé's now makes them, having taken over Allen's.
For as long as I can remember, Oddfellows have been a certain shade of slightly-off-white, and they've been quite solid in texture. In the last few times I've bought the sweets, they've become whiter than white, as though Persil had got hold of them, and the texture is still hard but verging on the crumbly. To my eye there's been a change in the mix, so I wrote to Allen's today to see if I can find out if this is true. It would be a pity because the Oddfellows I've had recently don't seem to be up to the original standard.
I guess they'll tell me that nothing's changed and I'm imagining it. We'll see. I'll let you know.
Besides this apparent change they've brought in other versions of Oddfellows: mint-flavoured (which take a bit of getting used to but are okay), strong mints (which are exactly what they say, and aren't truly Oddfellows at all) and little mints, which are kind of mini-strong mints. I just note this by the by.
Finally, in relation to Oddfellows, here's the classic TV advertisement that used to be shown in the 80s, when the sweets were still very popular. You'll recognise a few familiar faces in it.
Update, 19.5.14
Part of an email from Nestlé:
29.12.20 Update: In the 'old days' it seemed that things went on forever, with no changes. Not today. Sometimes the changes are bad - as in Nestlé taking over the making of Oddfellows. Sometimes they're good. Another company is now producing Oddfellows, the oddly-named RJs-Licorice. RJs seemed to have reverted to something closer to the original recipe for Oddfellows. I'm not sure that they've kept the original size, but at least the things taste the way they should!
For as long as I can remember, Oddfellows have been a certain shade of slightly-off-white, and they've been quite solid in texture. In the last few times I've bought the sweets, they've become whiter than white, as though Persil had got hold of them, and the texture is still hard but verging on the crumbly. To my eye there's been a change in the mix, so I wrote to Allen's today to see if I can find out if this is true. It would be a pity because the Oddfellows I've had recently don't seem to be up to the original standard.
I guess they'll tell me that nothing's changed and I'm imagining it. We'll see. I'll let you know.
Besides this apparent change they've brought in other versions of Oddfellows: mint-flavoured (which take a bit of getting used to but are okay), strong mints (which are exactly what they say, and aren't truly Oddfellows at all) and little mints, which are kind of mini-strong mints. I just note this by the by.
Finally, in relation to Oddfellows, here's the classic TV advertisement that used to be shown in the 80s, when the sweets were still very popular. You'll recognise a few familiar faces in it.
Update, 19.5.14
Part of an email from Nestlé:
Thank you for your feedback regarding our product, ALLENS Oddfellows 200 g Family Pack.
We endeavour to produce products of the highest quality that can be enjoyed by our consumers. Changes to our products are not made lightly. Much research is conducted prior to a change, in the hope that we can offer our consumers a product of the highest standard, both in terms of appeal and quality. We have moved to natural colours which has changed the Oddfellows to a white colour but should not have affected the size or texture of the lolly.
We are sorry to hear that you have not enjoyed our product since our change. We understand your disappointment and sincerely hope this will not deter you from purchasing our products in the future.
29.12.20 Update: In the 'old days' it seemed that things went on forever, with no changes. Not today. Sometimes the changes are bad - as in Nestlé taking over the making of Oddfellows. Sometimes they're good. Another company is now producing Oddfellows, the oddly-named RJs-Licorice. RJs seemed to have reverted to something closer to the original recipe for Oddfellows. I'm not sure that they've kept the original size, but at least the things taste the way they should!
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
A musical and a mystery
Anyway, one of the movies was Calamity Jane, which I'd thought I hadn't seen since it first came out in the fifties. However, I suspect I have caught up with since then, as a lot of it was quite familiar. I've recently arranged four of the songs into a medley for the singing group I conduct, The Choristers. The songs are as popular as ever, and well written. In fact the music in the movie bounces along from the moment the credits start with enormous energy, and is well-integrated into the storyline.
Doris Day is the absolute star in this musical. Even Howard Keel, who has a good deal of screen time, can barely stand up to the utter feistiness, enthusiasm, and freshness Day brings to her role of a kind of Wild West tomboy. She gets all the best songs and she packs a punch from the moment she first appears. Thoroughly enjoyable even after fifty-one years. And somewhat unusual in that this is a movie musical that was turned into a stage musical, rather than the other way round.
The second movie was in another league altogether. Two or three times we looked at each and debated whether we'd continue watching. I'm glad we did, though the movie had some slow moments, and kept making you think it was going to turn into some grisly horror piece. The film was The Sound of My Voice, a movie I'd never heard of until I took a chance on it when I found it in the Library's DVD collection.
It's about a young couple who've decided to make a documentary exposing a group they're convinced is a cult. They sneak film and recording equipment in but more than once something goes wrong and they don't get the results they expect. The woman who's at the centre of the group claims to have come from the future, and of course she already has a bunch of devotees who believe every word she says. The young couple, and another young Asian-American couple, are the newest possible disciples, and we go through the rigmaroles of seeing them gradually being inculturated.
The couple don't live with the cult, but join them regularly at night for their initiations. This means at least they can get away from the saturating presence of the mysterious leader, but it also means that things start to fall apart out in the real world.
The film was written by Brit Marling, who plays the cult leader, and the director, Zat Batmanglij (can that be his real name?). The story is presented in several episodes, some introducing completely new characters who seem at first unrelated to the main story. Marling's character, Maggie, is a highly-intelligent persuader, a person who it's difficult to fool or trip up, and who manages to convince those following her that she really is who she says she is. The persuasiveness of her approach shows how easy it is for people who want to believe - and even for those who don't - to fall into the trap of allowing someone to take over their lives. The film has several intriguing twists and turns, and an ending that leaves you not as sure as you think you are about what's gone on, though it's a very satisfying ending for all that.
The cast is excellent, although none of them are particularly well-known names. Christopher Denham (who I've seen before but is one of those actors that you couldn't easily identify) plays the documentary-maker, and Nicole Vicius, who's also been in a number of movies, plays his girlfriend.
Thursday, May 08, 2014
Three films
Three movies in as many nights. After not having watched movies either on TV or DVD for a few weeks, it's been quite relaxing (after finishing my second book and getting it published online) just to lie on the couch and watch something instead of working.
First there was a strange Jet Li movie on TV - Unleashed; then Silver Linings Playbook with Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence; and finally, tonight, the almost fifty-year-old A Town Like Alice, a film based on only the middle section of Nevil Shute's famous novel.
This last of the three shows its age mostly in the now-stiff-looking performance by Virginia McKenna, so British that nothing disturbs her upper lip. Peter Finch is excellent, as he always was, and has already gone past that very English style of acting that a few other members of the cast indulge in. Even given that it's virtually a road movie, A Town Like Alice, is still very watchable, and there are some excellent scenes, and a strong supporting cast. Fortunately the film focuses almost entirely on the war section of the story; the bookends about improving the lot of a group of Malayan villages, and setting up work for unemployed people in a remote Aussie town, are barely hinted at.
Unleashed is a typically violent Jet Li movie, in which he plays Bob Hoskins' 'dog.' Hoskins has rescued him as a child (after shooting his mother) and brought him up to be absolutely subservient. When the collar he wears continually is loosened, however, he defeats anyone sent against him. Morgan Freeman, doing the typical Hollywood version of what it's like to be blind, and Kerry Conden, playing a piano student who appears to do very little practice, rescue Li by accident, and set him back on his human feet again. The film is full of extraordinarily choreographed fight scenes filmed and edited brilliantly, but it also has strong characterizations from the two leads: Li gets a chance to reveal a soft side, and Hoskins revels in being the ultimate bully and sadist (and manages to survive two major car crashes and various beatings). It was Louis Leterrier's first film as director, and he does an excellent job with his English and French cast and locations. Not for the fainthearted, however.
Silver Linings Playbook (I have no idea what the title refers to, unless it's something to do with the home betting shop Robert de Niro runs) is an in-your-face drama-cum-comedy. Cooper plays a man whose wife was found with another man in compromising circumstances, and who went off his rocker - he was already prone to mental health issues. After eight months in an institution, he's ready to come home - even if no one else is quite ready to have him back. Cooper gives a wonderfully subtle performance underneath all the bombast. Lawrence is equally mentally unhealthy, not helped by having lost her policeman husband in bizarre circumstances. She never says anything you expect, which is quite refreshing, and indeed a great deal of the movie has unexpected moments and situations. Lawrence is wonderful and grabs her role by the throat and tears it apart. (Totally wasted in The Hunger Games - this girl has the goods.)
De Niro plays the manic father again (not far away from his manic father performance in Meet the Fockers), and it's debatable as to which Pat, Senior or Junior, is the more cracked. The leads have top notch support from the rest of the cast, and although it takes a while for the thing to show where it's coming from, it gradually takes hold of you. Interestingly enough, the film departs from the book in many (improved?) ways.
First there was a strange Jet Li movie on TV - Unleashed; then Silver Linings Playbook with Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence; and finally, tonight, the almost fifty-year-old A Town Like Alice, a film based on only the middle section of Nevil Shute's famous novel.
This last of the three shows its age mostly in the now-stiff-looking performance by Virginia McKenna, so British that nothing disturbs her upper lip. Peter Finch is excellent, as he always was, and has already gone past that very English style of acting that a few other members of the cast indulge in. Even given that it's virtually a road movie, A Town Like Alice, is still very watchable, and there are some excellent scenes, and a strong supporting cast. Fortunately the film focuses almost entirely on the war section of the story; the bookends about improving the lot of a group of Malayan villages, and setting up work for unemployed people in a remote Aussie town, are barely hinted at.
Unleashed is a typically violent Jet Li movie, in which he plays Bob Hoskins' 'dog.' Hoskins has rescued him as a child (after shooting his mother) and brought him up to be absolutely subservient. When the collar he wears continually is loosened, however, he defeats anyone sent against him. Morgan Freeman, doing the typical Hollywood version of what it's like to be blind, and Kerry Conden, playing a piano student who appears to do very little practice, rescue Li by accident, and set him back on his human feet again. The film is full of extraordinarily choreographed fight scenes filmed and edited brilliantly, but it also has strong characterizations from the two leads: Li gets a chance to reveal a soft side, and Hoskins revels in being the ultimate bully and sadist (and manages to survive two major car crashes and various beatings). It was Louis Leterrier's first film as director, and he does an excellent job with his English and French cast and locations. Not for the fainthearted, however.
Silver Linings Playbook (I have no idea what the title refers to, unless it's something to do with the home betting shop Robert de Niro runs) is an in-your-face drama-cum-comedy. Cooper plays a man whose wife was found with another man in compromising circumstances, and who went off his rocker - he was already prone to mental health issues. After eight months in an institution, he's ready to come home - even if no one else is quite ready to have him back. Cooper gives a wonderfully subtle performance underneath all the bombast. Lawrence is equally mentally unhealthy, not helped by having lost her policeman husband in bizarre circumstances. She never says anything you expect, which is quite refreshing, and indeed a great deal of the movie has unexpected moments and situations. Lawrence is wonderful and grabs her role by the throat and tears it apart. (Totally wasted in The Hunger Games - this girl has the goods.)
De Niro plays the manic father again (not far away from his manic father performance in Meet the Fockers), and it's debatable as to which Pat, Senior or Junior, is the more cracked. The leads have top notch support from the rest of the cast, and although it takes a while for the thing to show where it's coming from, it gradually takes hold of you. Interestingly enough, the film departs from the book in many (improved?) ways.
Body
Jack Body is the composer of the week on the Concert Programme. His music has its moments, with some pieces that are exciting because they're almost entirely rhythmic, and others that hang around a tiny phrase and barely move, becoming like a kind of brainworm. I don't think that's quite the word I'm looking for: I mean when a tune gets in your head and you can't get rid of it. Although that's pretty rare with Body's music, which seldom stays in the mind.
But it occurred to me this morning what it is that makes his music inaccessible. It's geared for top quality players, people who are either professional musicians, or who specialise in this kind of modern music, or amateurs with exceptional skills. Compare this approach to the way composers in the past worked: they provided music that both amateurs and professionals could play, at least in terms of the smaller scale works. I haven't heard much of Body's music that sounds to me as though a decent amateur could manage it - at least not without a lot of hard work. And then, who would they play it for? You have to be a true Body disciple to really want to listen to his music. I've had the radio on most mornings this week when his music has been played. It doesn't come across as satisfying music somehow - it's intellectual and not often emotional, to me at least. The piece currently on has a flute and a harp tripping around a few notes over and over, making slightly different patterns, but not actually going anywhere at all. Nothing to engage the heart.
Yesterday I heard parts of an interview with James McCarthy, a British composer whose cantata, 17 Days, is being performed in NZ. McCarthy made two comments during the course of the interview which struck me as significant: "I want to write music that people want to perform," and, "It took me ten years to get the modernist approach to writing out of my system." I hope I've quoted him accurately, but I jotted these down almost as soon as he said them. McCarthy's music is being performed (and yes I know Body's is too), but it's performed to large audiences and to rave reviews. It's not reactionary - there's plenty of modern sounds in it - but it can be listened to and will affect the heart as well as the head.
For me this is the great lack in Body's music: the heart doesn't often get engaged. (The flautist and the harpist are now chattering around another couple of phrases, and still going nowhere...and now two women are chanting the same phrase over and over...and over...)
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Taking the dog for a walk
A walk, for the dog, consists first of noticing that you're donning outside gear. He may have been asleep (or pretending to be asleep) up until that point, but suddenly he's wide awake, desperate to go out, racing round in mad circles, scrabbling at the door.The next stage is seeing how soon it will be, after we get out of our gate, before he suddenly feels the need to evacuate his bowels. Sometimes it's so soon I simply march back inside the property and dispose of the little bag of goodies before we go any further. (Why he can sit inside all day holding on, I don't know. It's not as if he's incapable of getting himself out through the dog door.)
Anyway, at any point after that we're actually heading home. I may not know it, but every step we take away from the house, is, for the dog, part of the return trip. And by the time we get to the gate again, whether it be twenty minutes or sixty, he will be desperate to get inside the door.
And yet, no sooner have I removed his lead, than he takes one look at it and assumes I'm taking him out for a walk again.
The audience will never notice
There's a lovely baritone solo in the delightful movie, Calamity Jane, and its stage version: Higher than a Hawk. The music is by Sammy Fain, and the words by Paul Francis Webster, both men much respected in their line. Howard Keel sang the song with all his usual charm and conviction in the movie version. And it was just as well he brought conviction to the song because it has a strange metaphorical error in it, one that, when you notice it, won't let itself be unnoticed.The song starts: My love is higher than a hawk, my love is deeper than a well. All good so far, in a loose metaphorical sense. But you get the picture without problem. And the chorus goes on quite happily for a few more lines before there's a little verse that, on returning to the end of the chorus again, ends with the same words I've quoted above.
The only problem is that when they return they follow these lines: I said that I would never fall; I laughed at others when they fell, and here I'm fallin' - higher than a hawk, and deeper than a well.
If you're not listening, it rounds out the song very nicely before it goes off onto another verse. But the problem is, how do you fall higher than something? And why is the hawk fallin' - or falling, as the case may be?
It's a kind of 'it doesn't really matter' situation. Plainly Cain, Webster and Keel, and the rest of the Calamity Jane participants didn't get bothered by it. They probably said, the audience will never notice, because audiences don't. And I agree: there is story after story about movies where the audience doesn't notice things that are wrong, and didn't get put right, or where something's gone wrong on a particular night in the theatre and the audience has gone home just as happy as the audience to whom the same thing didn't happen. If you're still with me. I could tell a few of my own, things I've been involved in. But I won't, because I've probably already told you before.
At the end of the day, the baritone will go on stage and sing about a love that's fallin' higher than a hawk, and the movie will carry on showing Howard Keel singin' the song without blinkin' an eyelid, and 99.9% of people won't notice.
Saturday, April 26, 2014
Das Boot
We caught up with the 1981 movie, Das Boot (The Boat) last night, on Maori Television - the channel that actually shows good movies, and not just re-run 'blockbuster premieres.' When I say we caught up with it, we actually missed the first twenty minutes or half an hour; I don't know exactly how long it was. But that didn't cause too much problem in following who was who and how it all fitted together. It probably would have helped to know a bit more about the characters, but ce la vie. This was one of Wolfgang Petersen's big hits: even though it was German-made, and shown with subtitles, it was seen worldwide. After The Neverending Story, and a TV series based on Das Boot, he went onto work in Hollywood, producing In the Line of Fire, Air Force One, The Perfect Storm and other well-known titles.
Das Boot has a somewhat meandering storyline, and a host of characters, and yet is full of tension. The big set pieces are very well done: the torpedoing of a group of freighters and being chased by a destroyer; the unexpected dive to the bottom of the sea in the Gibraltar Strait; the ending which pulls the rug from underneath our expectations. But in the midst of all these is the quiet interplay between the Captain and the various officers and sailors, the warmth and humour, the generosity and courage, the creative thinking, the strength of working together for a common cause.
It's hard to think how men in one of these U-boats could have survived the continual stress of months at sea - when two of them are due to be off-loaded for leave, the leave is abruptly cancelled. One character, Johann, who's seen nine voyages on the submarine, has a mental breakdown during one of the crises; it's surprising more of the men don't go off the deep end. The confined space is brilliantly captured: there's hardly room to turn around in some of the areas, and the ordinary sailors live and sleep in a narrow bunk room with hardly space enough for them to sit down. In a couple of scenes they're all seen lying asleep, exhausted, on the floor, curled and entwined around each other, none of them able to sleep with their legs out straight. Several times absolute quiet is required: only the Captain can see through the periscope, and even that view is limited; the rest have to wait and listen, unsure of what's going on outside their metal walls.
The cast is uniformly good, though thirty years down the track one or two of the performances seem a little too large for the cinema (maybe more so for the TV screen). And the detail in the direction is superb, quite apart from the hugely exciting moments when the camera races through the sub following one or other character desperate to fix yet another part of the sub that's come apart.
Reading the information on the Wikipedia page for the movie is very informative. Apparently the TV series used additional material that had been cut from the movie. The original release came in at 150 minutes, but the much later director's cut is another half hour longer. There are fascinating details about what the actors endured during the course of making the movie, and the way models and various versions of the sub were used (at one time the mock-up of the sub disappeared overnight; Spielberg had been given permission to use it for Raiders of the Lost Ark). It's also interesting to read that the scene in which one of the characters calls out 'Man overboard!' was unscripted: the actor who went 'overboard' had actually fallen, and broken ribs. He was also concussed, and had to be brought from hospital for some of his later scenes. There's a great deal more, for those interested.
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Grimhilda takes a flying leap
A couple of days ago I wrote about the new book that I've nearly finished writing: Diary of a Prostate Wimp. Today, however, I uploaded my previous book, Grimhilda! - a fantasy for children and their parents, which has only been available so far on Kindle, onto Smashwords, where it is now available in other ebook formats, and will soon be available on Kobo, iPad and so on.
I've just spent an interesting half hour doing an 'interview' with Smashwords...all by computer, of course. You can find the result here, and you're welcome to pass along the link to anyone else who might be interested.
So Grimhilda! has now expanded herself further, from a musical seen by a fair number of people here in Dunedin, in 2012, to a novel that went on sale on Kindle in January this year, to this latest leap out into the wider world. She's finding it all to her satisfaction, and is keen for more customers! Pretty good for an old girl who started out life in the late 70s...
I've just spent an interesting half hour doing an 'interview' with Smashwords...all by computer, of course. You can find the result here, and you're welcome to pass along the link to anyone else who might be interested.
So Grimhilda! has now expanded herself further, from a musical seen by a fair number of people here in Dunedin, in 2012, to a novel that went on sale on Kindle in January this year, to this latest leap out into the wider world. She's finding it all to her satisfaction, and is keen for more customers! Pretty good for an old girl who started out life in the late 70s...
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Diary of a Prostate Wimp
The book I've been writing on my experiences of how the medical world dealt with my prostate is now almost ready. It only lacks a cover, an ISBN and a CIP (the National Library of New Zealand's Cataloguing-in-Publication Data - each country has their own version of these). All these are all in the pipeline in various ways. So I may make my deadline of the end of April after all.
I've had a brilliant editor who went through my 'final' draft with such a fine toothcomb that he found things I hadn't thought were even there. Though I must add that I also found a couple of tiny things he missed - but then he was working, as usual, on about six other things at the same time. Nevertheless the final text is correct in ways I wouldn't have achieved on my own.
I've sometimes had some qualms about whether the information in the book is too personal, too in-your-face (especially if you're not a bloke), too intense, and too-a-variety-of-other-things. Time will tell. The book is partly based on a series of blog posts I wrote back at the time the events were happening, and at that time I began to read - but never finished - a book called Please Leave the Seat Up by Brian Turner. Brian was an Englishman who'd gone to the US with his wife to take over a branch of his company. It was going to be a highly successful time, and he would have done very well. Within weeks he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and all his plans fell apart. While I was putting my own book together over the last few months I actually read Brian's book. If I had qualms about anything in my book being too much in your face, then Brian's book showed me that when it comes to talking about health, almost anything is permissible! Not only is it permissible, it's essential to tell the readers the details, because the medical profession doesn't.
This was one of the big things I learned about having something seriously wrong: the medical profession knows a lot of what can go wrong, but prefers to wait until it goes wrong before they tell you that it's not abnormal, and that thousands of other people have been in the same boat. The only thing is that few of those thousand people have written about their experiences and passed on what they've learned.
Still, I often got more help and information from friends and colleagues who'd either had the same experience, or something similar. The doctors and nurses would be helpful if you asked (generally) but they tended not to provide information if you didn't ask. And how would you know to ask until you found something strange was happening? I'm not blaming the medical people - some of them were extraordinarily helpful and I thank God for them - but it sometimes feels they think that less information is better than more, even when that little bit more information might have allayed a lot of your concerns.
I was fortunate to get through the experience; many, as I show in the book, have much worse times than I did. Prostate issues, and prostate cancer, are amongst the most common problems men can have in later life. Hopefully this book will help some men before they find themselves involved in such difficulties.
By the way, it's called Diary of a Prostate Wimp. You'll have to read it to find out why!
I've had a brilliant editor who went through my 'final' draft with such a fine toothcomb that he found things I hadn't thought were even there. Though I must add that I also found a couple of tiny things he missed - but then he was working, as usual, on about six other things at the same time. Nevertheless the final text is correct in ways I wouldn't have achieved on my own.
I've sometimes had some qualms about whether the information in the book is too personal, too in-your-face (especially if you're not a bloke), too intense, and too-a-variety-of-other-things. Time will tell. The book is partly based on a series of blog posts I wrote back at the time the events were happening, and at that time I began to read - but never finished - a book called Please Leave the Seat Up by Brian Turner. Brian was an Englishman who'd gone to the US with his wife to take over a branch of his company. It was going to be a highly successful time, and he would have done very well. Within weeks he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and all his plans fell apart. While I was putting my own book together over the last few months I actually read Brian's book. If I had qualms about anything in my book being too much in your face, then Brian's book showed me that when it comes to talking about health, almost anything is permissible! Not only is it permissible, it's essential to tell the readers the details, because the medical profession doesn't.
This was one of the big things I learned about having something seriously wrong: the medical profession knows a lot of what can go wrong, but prefers to wait until it goes wrong before they tell you that it's not abnormal, and that thousands of other people have been in the same boat. The only thing is that few of those thousand people have written about their experiences and passed on what they've learned.
Still, I often got more help and information from friends and colleagues who'd either had the same experience, or something similar. The doctors and nurses would be helpful if you asked (generally) but they tended not to provide information if you didn't ask. And how would you know to ask until you found something strange was happening? I'm not blaming the medical people - some of them were extraordinarily helpful and I thank God for them - but it sometimes feels they think that less information is better than more, even when that little bit more information might have allayed a lot of your concerns.
I was fortunate to get through the experience; many, as I show in the book, have much worse times than I did. Prostate issues, and prostate cancer, are amongst the most common problems men can have in later life. Hopefully this book will help some men before they find themselves involved in such difficulties.
By the way, it's called Diary of a Prostate Wimp. You'll have to read it to find out why!
Friday, April 11, 2014
Absurdity
I came across this wonderful extract this morning...delights my heart!
Usually I spare myself from the news, because if it’s not propaganda, then it’s one threat or another exaggerated to the point of absurdity, or it’s the tragedy of storm-quake-tsunami, of bigotry and oppression misnamed justice, of hatred passed off as righteousness and honor called dishonorable, all jammed in around advertisements in which a gecko sells insurance, a bear sells toilet tissue, a dog sells cars, a gorilla sells investment advisers, a tiger sells cereal, and an elephant sells a drug that will improve your lung capacity, as if no human being in America any longer believes any other human being, but trusts only the recommendations of animals.
Odd Thomas
in Dean Koontz' Deeply Odd
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