a drop of prophecy

Russian conductor Valery Gergiev and the World Orchestra for Peace allows Mahler to sound like Shostakovitch and Bernstein...live now BBC Proms 2014! More movements to come...

less than a drop in the great blue ocean of the sunlit sea

“I want the light of God, I want the sweet love of Jesus! I danced for the Devil; I saw him, I wrote in his book; I go back to Jesus; I kiss His hand. I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil!”

“Pray calm yourselves. I have eleven children, and I am twenty-six times a grandma, and I have seen them all through their silly seasons, and when it come on them they will run the Devil bowlegged keeping up with their mischief. I think she'll wake when she tires of it. A child's spirit is like a child, you can never catch it by running after it; you must stand still, and, for love, it will soon itself come back.”

“Great stones they lay upon his chest until he plead aye or nay. They say he give them but two words. "More weight," he says. And died.”--quotes from Arthur Miller's play The Crucible. But who cares about the truth of theatre any more. The truth clearly lies in the internet and social networking and television that promised so so much for all...and if sense of truth changes from year to year from decade to decade does anybody notice or care...

Camelot Last Scene 

“one of what we all are…less than a drop in the great blue ocean of the sunlit sea. But it seems that some of the drops sparkle…some of them do-oooooo SPARKLE! “

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Everybody Says Don't

Two (there may be more...;) must sees for May:

Joanna Hogg’s new film Exhibition and the world premiere of Julian Anderson’s first opera Thebans at the ENO with a libretto by Irish playwright Frank McGuinness (In Tune BBC interview May1)

the colours of yesteryear's darkness

In his latest post indefatigable movie poster advocate Adrian Curry spotted the unearthing a few years ago of 50s posters in the depths of the London underground. Even more interesting was to learn that Italian artist Nicola Simbari began his career designing posters! (revelatory if like me you may have been Simbari 'artistically challenged' to date). And a website by his wife certainly illuminates why he ever became famous in the first place e.g. the sporting page has some great images.

For more colour there could be far worse things for a Londoner to believe in than the angel in Stella Scott’s new short film.

All universe’s palette from (the lately deceased) Claudio Abbado conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in a concert recorded last May - Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique (1830). Moments where your heart stops a beat as Abbado and the Berlin Phil conjure a plangent meditative Debussy world. Berlioz dreaming. Out of place and out of time.

The beautiful tragic story of actress Dora Jordan.

NOAH

So what’s the latest news? The next ‘celeb’ suicide because the world is just not the quid pro quo you/ we were all promised? Hmmm.! Nobody even speaks Greek anymore let alone…no wonder the bi-focal-cameral dilemma led us all to …!

Meanwhile Russell Crowe is Noah! He will save us all. Though he couldn’t save Tony Scott from speaking to the waters below a bridge too far…but

Sometimes the world is REALLY only a degree of separation: I mean- Andrew’s voice coach was Russell’s ah/hmmm same Sydney teacher. I even framed/stole his DNA Shakespeare ‘spit’ to inspire me in my bathroom. You see Jonah Hill great orifices speak alike. Right? I mean Marty’s…..Oh I suddenly see angles…

Now seriously Mr Crowe: why didn’t you like my screenplay for Timothy Findlay’s Not Wanted on the Voyage? Too many alcoholic animals? Too many normal Jews? Too many normal woman telling you the truth? Oh well. Such is history.  You are there and I am HERE. There lies the …so you win in Aronofsky’s parallel world. But we all know the tangent so…

Oh- where are my erudite critical colleagues to shoot you down while never ‘rocking the boat’. THEY never tell what fascinated them when they were 13 years old….maybe that’s a good thing as Andrew might say. But hey. It’s Paramount. It’s Chinatown. Oh- LUV Liam Neeson as the Irish Leopard (so much Film Society Lincoln Center Visconti thing going on;!) – or was that Anthony Hopkins. Anyway. Enjoy. Bless. Na zdorovie.

Planet Lucre lives here...

   $    £       €

                                                     
The income gap in the United States is the highest since 1928.
And not all paintings sold at auction glorify wealth. 
(above image: digital photograph [uncorrected colour] of glass framed Pieter Breughel the Younger print [found street object] with affixed analogue photo c.1990-Andrew Lucre, 2011-both photos)

Will The Monuments Men (George Clooney doing his über  writing/directing/producing/acting thing) enlist a whole new army to attend art galleries? We’d all like to think so and in so many ways this is a very ‘likable’ movie – based on retired Texas businessman Robert M. Edsel’s books of copious research. In fact if it weren’t for Edsel’s tenacity the photo albums (collated for Hitler) of looted WW2 Nazi art would probably have become dust in the German attic of the GI’s heirs who purloined them at war’s end. Clooney’s adaption (with Grant Heslov) pushes all the right buttons and clicks the right biros but just is never in the same league as the great heist/war buddy movies of either France or America (or indeed Britain). 
 

As the film is inevitably plot driven it’s difficult to drive such a film into being commandeered by its characters to the extent that they become master portraits of ordinary people. 
Clooney is admirably aware of this it seems (hence the release delay from late last year). And if it was so easy then everyone would be making great movies of this genre. It’s all in the right direction then just peters out. Unlike many a recent movie there is indeed a sense emerging of each of these men and a skillful sketch at that. The relationship between Matt Damon’s Lt. Granger and Cate Blanchett’s Claire -Jeu de Paume Paris gallery resistance fighter- is a case in point. But in dances the scene with the hand holding dinner in Claire’s atelier after they finally trust each other. Alas, as with the rest of the magnificent cast they just can’t rise the soufflé. A frustrating shame because Clooney’s obviously put his heart into this. Here’s hoping mainstream audiences aren’t too picky because it is truly a great great story.  The rest of us will want to read all of Edsel’s books. Just goes to show how much of history simply continues untold.