Strange times, that weep with laughing, not with weeping!

Why did it take an American museum to honour great Brit alternate institute the Quay Brothers with their first retrospective? They've certainly won many a gold over the years in the animation Olympics. And if you have to ask who 'they' then presumably you haven't been a die-hard reader of this blog.

Go HERE for video of the MoMA press conference.

...and with a good wind behind me rather than within me;) there will be some more words here very soon....

Sunday September 2, 2012 (you'll just have to trust me on that…)

about time this post finished writing itself! So, let's start with a petit obit for American lyricist Hal David (of the Burt Bacharach team) who has just passed away. While so much light shone out of David's lyrics, out of necessity they came from knowing what was the darkness in our lives:
The Windows of the World (sung by Dionne Warwick) and We Have All The Time In The World (1969, John Barry's music) recorded by Louis Armstrong for the Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
Hal David had two musical adventures on Broadway, the 1968 Promises, Promises (revived a few years ago, based on the 1960 Academy Award-winning Billy Wilder film The Apartment) choreographed by a young Michael Bennett and introducing a young Donna McKechnie. In 1974 there was the ill-fated Brainchild. Now is the time to check out the original cast recording to make up your own mind with songs such as, Everything That Happens to You, Happens to Me and the sombre I've Been Waiting For Tomorrow (all Of My Life)  - interestingly revamped on Matt Johnson’s (of the Brit multimedia group The The) second album Soul Mining (1983).

Tuesday September 4, 2012

We hadn’t ignored the 2012 London Olympics on this website, btw, it was just so hard to know what to say. How did the city’s transport infrastructure hold up? There used to be a Protest page in the London Evening Standard paper where folk could voice their experiences! Alas, no more. I guess the world will never really know now. Was all that tax-payer Olympic money worth it? Time only will tell. UK was 3rd in the medal table with 29 Gold Medals. Bloody impressive! I’m sure the winners will be diplomatic and lobby for better training facilities in the UK rather than state the past facts. After all, freedom of expression may be a right in Western democracy but as we all know is severely relative to just how accurate you are in your critical expression. Opening last week’s Para-Olympics disabled scientist Prof Stephen Hawking spake: "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance - it's the illusion of knowledge." Surely not truer than in the protests against Atos sponsoring the IT of their Games.
Tom Greatrex, Labour MP for Rutherglen and Hamilton West said: "It is a cruel irony that the company causing so much distress to thousands of disabled people across the country is now sponsoring the Paralympics.
The Independent
Apart from the Department of Work Pensions assessment contract worth £110m a year, one of French company Atos Origin (ATOS.PA)s' other largest contract was as Worldwide IT Partner of the International Olympic Committee- Atos Business Technologists designing the IT systems and infrastructure for the Olympics' site in East London and the Games' 94 venues across the UK. So no conflict of government interest there! Read this blog’s older posting for the innocent l’histoire.

One commentator on the BBC noted that Britain's Richard Whitehead in the Para-Olmympic 200m won in a new world record of 24.38sec  behind Usain Bolt's able-bodied gold medal time of 19.32 seconds, and compared to Eric Liddell's 22.2sec (on whom the 1981 film Chariots of Fire) was based) in the 1924 Paris Olympics.

A trio of Blu-ray classic releases (Sept 10) certainly makes us consider our mortal coil: Orson Welles’ The Trial, Luis Buñuel's That Object of Desire and Port of Shadows (Le Quai des brumes) a 1938 French film directed by Marcel Carné. First off. Seeing these films in their jumpy, grumpy old prints with wobbly sound and wonky visuals just never did them justice. Whatever ‘they’ may say about digital technology it serves nothing but to release from these films from historical celluloid decay. A Quai des Brumes Blu-ray extra explains the difficulties of giving these creatures the ombre they once shed. And seeing The Trial’s B/W photography puts most indy films of the last few decades to shame. And like most of the other extras in the trio it is newly commissioned by Studio Canal for this release. The Quai des Brumes screenplay was written by poet Jacques Prévert (based on a novel by Pierre Mac Orlan) and almost never saw the light of day were it not for the stalwart support from the film's star Jean Gabin, director Marcel Carné and Prévert. The producer and production manager didn't have faith in the project and moreover the film was subject to the WW2 Nazi censorship: no violence, talk of suicide etc. And it's interesting when one thinks of the criticisms frequently lobbed at director Henri-Georges Clouzot agreeing to work under the French Nazi regime at the same time. Another important point raised in one of the disc interviews is that Carné's films were "social fantasy" rather than the oft repeated academic description "poetic realism". " [Carne] preferred the heart's movements to a camera's" notes one interviewee.

The interview extra on That Object of Desire with screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière is alone worth the price of admission for its pellucid insights into the nature of desire, the director/actor relationship, and many, many anecdotes such as a dinner they all attended in Los Angeles with the director luminaries of the time. Alfred Hitchcock analysed one of Buñuel's films to his face with Carrière translating. And admitted his most favourite director after himself was Buñuel. There are equally worthwhile interviews with two of the three actresses who played the one female 'obscure object' and how the idea transpired. It's obviously unfair to compare actress/writer/director Sarah Polley's film Take this Waltz (already released by Studio Canal, Aug 17) with Buñuel.  The film's somewhat penultimate scene set to Leonard Cohen's song of the title (based on lyrics by poet/playwright Federico García Lorca). (Old Ideas a 10-song collection of new material was released this Jan.) And though some may find the film gilds far too often the cinematic and emotional lily, there's a heart beating ever so strongly in this story that is very hard to shrug off.

It was recently revealed in one or two Brit papers that a promising young fashion journalist/blogger/tweeter committed suicide. This is but a random sampling of his of his writings but as with Sarah Polley's film there is something so exacting and honest and downright infuriatingly sad that such a talented soul could take his own life.
One female supporter of James Andrews and some selected pages from his blog: sample 1, sample2, sample 3, and a take on the the London riot.

Depression is so much written about, so much misunderstood, so much misdiagnosed. Why did Hollywood film director Tony Scott kill himself? Often there just isn't an answer though our culture would love for one to exist. One very brave doco of recent years was The Bridge exploring the lives of Golden Gate Bridge suicides.  The world for many is not a happy place nor will it ever be: no amount of pills will change that without side-effects. During one Broadway Tony Awards telecast (ironically the year of the 'mental health' musical Next to Normal), every second advertisement was for some anti-depressive or another - with the Tolstoy like prose warnings of - if side-effects seek your doctor).

Patricio Guzmán's Nostalgia for the Light is one of the simplest most haunting documentaries of recent years. It very humbly concludes that we humans are just atoms albeit very special ones. Guzmán is best remembered for his 3-part The Battle of Chile (La batalla de Chile, 1977-1980). As important an historical document that was, his latest film is an extraordinary distillation of past. present and future. Archaeologist Lautaro Nunez notes that the Atacama Desert in Chile is home to both astronomers and archaeologists, "The past is more accessible here…It is devoid of life, yet full of history." The site of a former mine, it became the Pinochet government's political prisoner concentration camp. To this day, relatives still scour the rocky expanse for clues and indeed one woman found the tiniest bone fragment that ultimately proved her right. Guzmán juxtaposes this material with interviewees from the giant radio telescope also there. American astronomer George Preston explains how calcium is used to identify stars. "A little bit of the original Big Bang atoms may be in your bones." Luis Henriques, a former prisoner of Chacabuco, relates how he formed a group in captivity who regularly studied the night sky with a home-made wooden quadrant. Another inmate Miguel believes that he and his wife Anita (with Alzheimer's) are a metaphor for Chile: "He is remembering, while she forgets." The 'present' is only a concept that exists in the mind. Astronomer Gaspar Galaz: "There will always be some delay between an event and its perception/observation, whether billions of years in the case of an astronomical event or milliseconds in the case of a thought translating into an action or a stimulus producing a response. This time delay is the tool of the astronomer. They only study the past." Guzman narrates, "Memory has a gravitation force. Those with it live in the fragile present moment. Those without it are nowhere. Each night, slowly, impassively, the centre of the galaxy passes over Santiago."

Emad Burnat makes a virtue out of mishap in his documentary 5 Broken Cameras (Oct 19) as he is witness to the erection of barriers separating the lands and communities of Palestinian town of Bil’in. It is almost a surreal finale moment when an Israeli court rules that the barriers should come down. All one sees is barren land and uprooted olive trees where once a community flourished.
American musician Rodriguez supposedly disappeared after his 70s Detroit albums were bootlegged and made him a superstar of the anti-Apartheid movement. Like a detective director Malik Bendjelloul tracked down the man to his current job as a roofer and Searching for Sugar Man is the result. Truth stranger than fiction for sure. Iranian director Asghar Farhadi (of recent A Separation fame also uses drama to seek not the truth but the truths in About Elly (Sept 14). Without giving the game away, the film's final moment is indicative of how humans the world over never learn either from their mistakes, history nor their own foibles. The house where the disappearance occurs is right by the sea. The car has got stuck before in the sand. Once again, the men try to prise the machine from nature's inevitability. (Official trailer) During the 2011 New York Film Festival post-screening Q & A, Farhadi explained the film’s appeal: “I believe we’re in a period where the audience needs to decide for themselves who’s good and who’s bad. It’s not for the director to determine.”

The same can be said of Robert Guédiguian's films and his latest The Snows of Kilimanjaro (Sept 21). His trademark simplicity of direction and ensemble acting is hard to fault. And the 'forgiving spirit' of the film seems to have a certain ironic jab at noblesse oblige. But you may disagree.

Isn't conforming to the norm one of society's biggest problems given the irony that IT is what drives capitalism rather than the niche. Discuss. A Brit film that cineaste historians have barely mentioned and was years ahead of the more well-known 'kitchen sink' dramas is Woman in a Dressing Gown (released on DVD). Film historian Michelle Williams jokes on the excellent DVD interview : "this film did for dressing gowns what Psycho did for showers!" (BBC's Film Programme) Director J Lee Thompson's films for the most part had women at their centre e.g. Yield to the Night, and then strong parts in Ice Cold in Alex and Tiger Bay. Williams goes onto explain that the writer Ted Willis was influenced by a quote he'd read of American screenwriter Paddy Cheyefsky: "the marvellous world of the ordinary". When Jean-Luc Godard reviewed the film he apparently dismissed it feeling that it should be a comedy rather than another serious Brit film. But tragicomedy is what leaps out to the viewer. Amy (Yvonne Mitchell) is a lovable scatterbrain suburban housewife and mother who does the puzzle in the paper in the hope she might win and mostly finishes the housework. Anthony Quayle whose practically immobile face (once jovially made fun of from memory by Alec Guinness or the like as two sides of condemned veal) is perfectly cast as provider-husband Jim. He's having an office affair, so one day Amy decides to pawn her wedding ring and treat herself to a make-over to impress hubby. But everyone that could go wrong does. And it's comic in the way that is true comedy- equally desperately, desperately sad. Don't miss. Another Brit classic (not so oft seen) It Always Rains On A Sunday from 1947 gets a BFI re-release on Oct 26.

Studio Canal released a couple of rarities on DVD recently: Outcast of the Islands a 1951 Carol Reed film based on Joseph Conrad's novel. Stellar cast on top form lead by Trevor Howard's dissolute layabout who is blinded by a social standing that he will never attain. Giovanni in Vittorio de Sica's 1963 economic boom satire Il Boom literally opts for blindness rashly hiding his poverty from socialite wife Silvia by selling one of his eyes as a transplant for a rich property developer. Hasn't dated much at all.

Woody Allen’s latest To Rome With Love (Sept 14) addresses celebrification of the anything-nothing of mundane existence. Bombarded by the new in every section of the media and the aggregation of the most read and most talked about, Allen’s film takes a light-hearted and most affectionate, loving gaze at peoples’ fascination/obsession with the everyday that could but will never be but just possibly -  if they stand upside down and squint their heads -  be them as the chosen one. Allen’s greatest conceit is to have the ageing reluctant father (Woody Allen – very believably not quite playing himself) of the bride to be, instantly needing  to promulgate the ‘Carreras’ voice of his daughter’s fiancee’s father- a mortician by day but operatic tenor whilst showering. Allen’s follow through is really both clever, endearing and quite a wonderful satire of the operatic world and the macrocosm of society. So too his use of Roberto Benigni as the hapless ‘normal guy’ who suddenly becomes Rome’s latest fad.

Brave: "How one selfish act can tear a rift in our kingdom."
"Our fate lived within us you only need to be brave enough to see it."
The Dark Knight Rises: "Maybe it's time to stop outsmarting the truth and let it have its day."
Ruby Sparks out on Oct 12.
Guy Maddin creates yet another world entirely of his own in Keyhole (Sept 14)

Maya Hewitt's new show opens Sept 5 or catch up with Tony Cragg's sculptures at various Exhibition Road venues thence Thursday 6 September (Royal Albert Hall BBC Proms) is Beethoven’s 4th Piano Concerto with pianist Murray Perahia and the Vienna Philharmonic under conductor Bernard Haitink with one of the world’s great symphonic masterpieces, Bruckner’s 9th Symphony after the interval. A concert that will be the envy of the classical music world. So queue early.

Bruckner left substantial sketches for the Finale of his 9th Symphony, with the entire movement mapped out. Some fully orchestrated, some in sketch. The supposedly final version with an entirely new coda had it's world premier on October 15th, 2010 and at Carnegie Hall on February 24th, 2011 by the Berlin Phil under Simon Rattle. A terrifying prescience heaves itself from the bowels of the orchestral earth warning of the C20th century's horrors to come. Is the ending indeed a Hallelujah? Mahler's 9th Symphony, rather, steadfastly wades slowly forward into an unknown light without flinching, grimacing or even trembling. Deeper, shallower, then deeper again until finally there seems nothing to separate man and the universe. From those initial proud steps, we have come to experience what is total unending freedom, peace and tranquillity- the eternal lightness of being. But wouldn't it be wonderful if they played Mahler's 10th Symphony - (summer 1910, written as he contemplated the light embracing the mountains of Toblach, devastated by his romantic loss of his young wife Alma), and completed by Deryck Cooke using the composer's sketches. Perhaps it is an older human's symphony rather to be stared at by the young. And yet maybe not at all, for their hurt is just as real. Not nearly as sophisticated as Mahler's 9th but quite simply a heartfelt farewell to human life. There is no immortality. But indeed, perhaps, an afterlife. And if at many times the symphony presages many a Hollywood film score (or perhaps homages Richard Strauss' Salome of 1905! an opera Mahler was forbade to conduct in Vienna) then it just shows how magnificent are the influences on those film composers. A flautist would die happy being able to play the symphony's finale, or the few notes of the harpist or lay one down to rest -  the brass section. If there is a God then it inhabits Mahler's 10th. It's like a scene from a Hollywood movie. For example's sake, Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina: "No man walks alone by choice".
           
Chris Marker (29 July 1921 – 29 July 2012) (this blog para 13): “Rarely has reality needed so much to be imagined.”