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bugshaw at 10:48pm on 26/02/2016
bugshaw at 10:48pm on 26/02/2016I'm having a bit of a patchy holiday to use up some annual leave - thought I would get lots of study in, but filled it with social excursions instead, then ate a bad food (when I say my meal needs to be dairy free and you discuss how the dish can be adapted to make it so, please follow through on the sides and accompaniments! I assumed the tiny dish of coleslaw would be ok) and have been fairly laid up. Starting to recover though.
Last weekend I went to London on Sun/Mon - a very full couple of days.
Art gallery first. I tweeted: "John Hoyland paintings: succulent raspberry and watermelon colours, with uncompromising bright rectangles. Soft edges, like distant poplars." I was less keen on the later works, with their sharp edges; they felt less made somehow, and I'm sure I didn't properly understand any of it. My new shoes made comedy creaking noises as I walked up and down the vinyl floor.
Cinema for Chronic, then Bone Tomahawk. Reviews below cut. Chronic is a new release by Michel Franco, starring Tim Roth as a nurse (David) doing home care for people near the end of their lives. They make him somewhat suspicious (if you have seen Talk To Her your possibly-evil-nurse-dar will be pinging), though he is caring and professional and reliable. The shots are long, and fairly slow, with still cameras, leaving you lots of time to feel your way into the scene, and reflect on nurse's presence/intrusiveness/unobtrusiveness and how much that is a performance. David's body is strong, but his clothes and movements are soft and loose. Families have mixed relief/guilt that someone is doing these tasks. Dependence is difficult. So much physicality in contact with ill or frail bodies, nakedness that quietly demands acceptance. He lies - we're not told why - to create distance, to make people comfortable by telling them what they expect to hear, or something more sinister? I wondered if this was a first film (it's not), as it has some visual elements that are heavily used (doors/windows) but don't seem to add to the storytelling, and the film kind of just ends.
Bone Tomahawk was less my cup of tea - 10 minutes to introduce the horror themes, 80 slow-to-start minutes Western of well-meaning idiots on an ill-advised rescue quest, then a shift back to Horror and some of the gruesomest things I have ever not seen because I was holding both hands to my face going "Argh, argh, that's horrendous". There's humour though, and fairly engaging characters, and they use lots of dictionary words. "What transpired?" Nothing for the women to do, and I have seen enough white-painted savages (though they did a good job of appearing human yet monstrous).
The main draw to London for me was that Sunday evening with the London Sound Survey and the Museum of Soho, featuring location sound recordings from the 1950s and earlier, with technical notes about how recorder miniaturisation in the war allowed a lot more street noises to be captured. Colliers with horse-drawn carts, market sellers with jellied eels and lovely vi-lets, and an excited posh chap reporting from a fire station as a (false) alarm went off - "I'm going down the pole now! I'm running across to the fire engine!" In 1888 there was a massive Handel event at Crystal Palace - someone brought a top end wax cylinder recorder, and a mighty funnel, and the massed hordes singing could be very faintly heard like ghosts whispering. There was no amplification, they picked this event as being as loud as they were likely to be able to find. Have a link because it is 2016 and these days they have it on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEhAjcz_iYI
Off to my Mum's after that, for an overnight and then spending much of Monday together. We went around the nearby Manor Farm which is Very Historic and has remnants of a motte and bailey and stuff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manor_Farm,_Ruislip then to her church, which I'd never been to before. She bumped into a couple of people she knew en route and I think was quite glad to prove that her daughter exists :-)
Then into London with Mum for a pootle round the redeveloped King's Cross area, Old St Pancras Church with the Hardy Tree, Camley Street Natural Park, then along the pontoon tow path to the new build stuff - The Granary? Lots to look at, and lots of talking.
Finally headed over to Senate House for a philosophy lecture that I understood little of, a nice dinner and good conversation (mostly me saying "but I don't understand the philosophical concept of redness how is it different from science and/or reality") with good company, an unnoticed poisoning, and home to a bed in which I awoke a few hours later with strange pains...
Last weekend I went to London on Sun/Mon - a very full couple of days.
Art gallery first. I tweeted: "John Hoyland paintings: succulent raspberry and watermelon colours, with uncompromising bright rectangles. Soft edges, like distant poplars." I was less keen on the later works, with their sharp edges; they felt less made somehow, and I'm sure I didn't properly understand any of it. My new shoes made comedy creaking noises as I walked up and down the vinyl floor.
Cinema for Chronic, then Bone Tomahawk. Reviews below cut. Chronic is a new release by Michel Franco, starring Tim Roth as a nurse (David) doing home care for people near the end of their lives. They make him somewhat suspicious (if you have seen Talk To Her your possibly-evil-nurse-dar will be pinging), though he is caring and professional and reliable. The shots are long, and fairly slow, with still cameras, leaving you lots of time to feel your way into the scene, and reflect on nurse's presence/intrusiveness/unobtrusiveness and how much that is a performance. David's body is strong, but his clothes and movements are soft and loose. Families have mixed relief/guilt that someone is doing these tasks. Dependence is difficult. So much physicality in contact with ill or frail bodies, nakedness that quietly demands acceptance. He lies - we're not told why - to create distance, to make people comfortable by telling them what they expect to hear, or something more sinister? I wondered if this was a first film (it's not), as it has some visual elements that are heavily used (doors/windows) but don't seem to add to the storytelling, and the film kind of just ends.
Bone Tomahawk was less my cup of tea - 10 minutes to introduce the horror themes, 80 slow-to-start minutes Western of well-meaning idiots on an ill-advised rescue quest, then a shift back to Horror and some of the gruesomest things I have ever not seen because I was holding both hands to my face going "Argh, argh, that's horrendous". There's humour though, and fairly engaging characters, and they use lots of dictionary words. "What transpired?" Nothing for the women to do, and I have seen enough white-painted savages (though they did a good job of appearing human yet monstrous).
The main draw to London for me was that Sunday evening with the London Sound Survey and the Museum of Soho, featuring location sound recordings from the 1950s and earlier, with technical notes about how recorder miniaturisation in the war allowed a lot more street noises to be captured. Colliers with horse-drawn carts, market sellers with jellied eels and lovely vi-lets, and an excited posh chap reporting from a fire station as a (false) alarm went off - "I'm going down the pole now! I'm running across to the fire engine!" In 1888 there was a massive Handel event at Crystal Palace - someone brought a top end wax cylinder recorder, and a mighty funnel, and the massed hordes singing could be very faintly heard like ghosts whispering. There was no amplification, they picked this event as being as loud as they were likely to be able to find. Have a link because it is 2016 and these days they have it on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEhAjcz_iYI
Off to my Mum's after that, for an overnight and then spending much of Monday together. We went around the nearby Manor Farm which is Very Historic and has remnants of a motte and bailey and stuff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manor_Farm,_Ruislip then to her church, which I'd never been to before. She bumped into a couple of people she knew en route and I think was quite glad to prove that her daughter exists :-)
Then into London with Mum for a pootle round the redeveloped King's Cross area, Old St Pancras Church with the Hardy Tree, Camley Street Natural Park, then along the pontoon tow path to the new build stuff - The Granary? Lots to look at, and lots of talking.
Finally headed over to Senate House for a philosophy lecture that I understood little of, a nice dinner and good conversation (mostly me saying "but I don't understand the philosophical concept of redness how is it different from science and/or reality") with good company, an unnoticed poisoning, and home to a bed in which I awoke a few hours later with strange pains...
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