I've been indulging in the Film Festival. Ten down, four to go plus one missed because I was reading a book and forgot the time and one cancelled to accommodate the visit of a roofer to fix a water ingress problem. So how have they been?
The Fall of the American Empire - an to me unaccountable title for a French Canadian film about a painfully introverted but very bright philosophy graduate, a high cost escort with a heart of gold, an ex con who learned financial skills in clink and the escort's former sugar daddy who knows a thing or two about tax havens and their attemps to launder a large amount of stolen money that comes into the hands of our young philosopher. Mildly entertaining.
Food for Thought - not a film at all but inspired by one. A three course meal washed down by multiple glasses of prosecco and other drinks in praise of Scottish produce and accompanied by a panel discussion on our food and how to promote it. The grub consisted of novel variations on mutton, Cullen skink and cranachan. Served in nouvelle cuisine portions but tasty. There were bowls of delicious whisky smoked cashew nuts with which to while away the intervals between courses. Great value for the £3.25 it cost me.
Chef's Diaries: Scotland - the inspiration for the foregoing. A documentary tracing the journey of one of the Rocca brothers who run El Celler de Can Rocca in Girona, (elected several times as the best restaurant in the world), through Scotland to discover the glories of our food resources and culinary traditions with a view to developing new and exciting recipes for their restaurant. So so.
Loopers - a documentary about golf caddies. It was fun, a bit schmaltzy here and there as can be the American way. A telling fact was that one year in which Tiger Woods did particularly well his caddie New Zealander Steve Williams was the best paid athlete (sic) in New Zealand. Nice work if you can get it and a far cry from the days of Tom Morris.
Wedding Belles - a great fun rollick through the lives of four Edinburgh girls and through their home town as they prepare to marry off one of their number. With Irvine Welsh in the writing credits you can imagine the sort of fun involved. Made for Channel 4 in 2007 but never before seen on the big screen it's up there with Trainspotting in my estimation.
Balance not Symmetry - exalted in the festival programme as "a beautiful cinematic tribute to art, music and Scotland (Glasgow in particular). A moving, funny and inspirational new film....". I wasn't moved, didn't laugh and wasn't inspired. The cast were credited with creating the dialogue. Nuff said. I did like the music though.
Cléo from 5 to 7 - from the nouvelle vague this 1962 film tells the story of a singer's anxious wait for a medical test result that she fears will be a cancer diagnosis. As she waits she wanders through Paris encountering friends and strangers and reveals her inner self to us. It's a lovely film that I don't remember seeing back in the day when the Cameo was the place for foreign films.
One Sings, the Other Doesn't - another brilliant film from Agnes Varda (Cléo above). This is a 70s feminist piece with stunning performances from the two actresses playing the women whose friendship the film is about. Loved it.
Aleksi - the one I missed through book reading.
Contemporary Spanish Shorts - five very different works. In Vaca a slaughter house worker meets the eye of a cow, can't pull the stungun trigger, rescues the cow and persuades a lugubrious looking bus driver to let her take it on board. Cuban Heel Shoes explores the fascination with flamenco of two young men who dabble in drug dealing to keep the wolf from the door but who escape to dance for their dinner by passing the hat around in El Retiro. The Great Expedition is an animation about escape to another planet from a devastated earth whose virtues cinematic or otherwise largely escaped me. My memory of Bad Faith is that it was mostly a series of black and white stills of interiors in which nothing happened coupled with video passages of childhood beach holidays (again black and white and again in which nothing happened). The festival website description is "Across the stretch of a long, languid summer, power dynamics shift within the complex relationships of three young siblings". Too subtle for me obviously. Grey Key I found the most interesting. José Carlos Grey was born in Equatorial Guinea and the film is a memoir by his daughter. of her father. He was a student in Barcelona who fought against Franco, fled to France and then during the second world war was deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp where as a black man he was subject to special humiliation. The story is told in voice over to a series of family photographs, super 8 videos and archive materials. He died when his daughter was quite young. She remembers that he always worked at night and her exploration of his story tells her why.
Jacquot de Nantes - another Agnes Varda and the one I cancelled. Where tradesmen are concerned it's seize the day, the film's on Youtube after all.
Friday, June 28, 2019
Tuesday, June 25, 2019
I've never been keen on The Duchess of Malfi and Zinnie Harris's version at The Lyceum did nothing to make me warm to it, excellent production though it was.
My minor participation in The Lark was not informed by anything so grand as research into the subject of the play although I did buy a book about Joan of Arc in a fit of mild enthusiasm. After the run I got round to reading it.
A super book much to be recommended. Joan of Arc: A History by Helen Castor is quite scholarly, (over 20% of it is notes and bibliography and the like), but it reads like a novel and a gripping one at that. I'd always understood that thousands of Scots marched with Joan and indeed thousands of them were in France fighting the English in the 15th century but it seems that practically all of them had died in battle before she set out to ride to the rescue of France. Another illusion shattered.
I've been a member of the General Council of the University of Edinburgh for over 50 years which is no great accomplishment since the council consists of all graduates and all academic staff but it sounds quite grand if you don't know that fact. They meet twice a year and this year was the very first time that I've attended a meeting though I have thought about it from time to time.
The meetings generally have an add on of some sort to attract the brethren and this time there were for me two such attractions. One was that it was to be held in the McEwan Hall and I hadn't been in it since it was refurbished and the new entrance built (whaur's yir Louvre peeramid noo?) . The second was that the meeting was to be followed by (not counting lunch) an exhibition and presentations about the university's connections with Africa past, present and future.
The refurbishment is lovely; all that fancy decoration bright and shiny and comfy cushioning on the seats. The bringing into use and extension of the hithertoo unused basement areas (where the meeting and presentations were held) is impressive.
I enjoyed discovering the various academic and practical African connections and had some very interesting conversations with those involved. I even had the opportunity to remonstrate with the director of the 1971 (or was it 72) Nairobi production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie for not casting me. I hadn't seen the man since but the wound runs deep.
In the pursuance of art I've been to a big exhibition of Victoria Crowe's work. She does wonderful trees but disappointingly none of those pictures featured amongst the prints and postcards of her work that were on sale.
I'd have liked a Crowe tree print but wasn't tempted to buy a souvenir of the Bridget Riley exhibition. However one might admire the skill and the extraordinary amount of detailed work she does in preparation for her abstracts the sworls of black and white and the columns of colours fail to inspire much enthusiasm: in me that is, her world renown speaks to other impacts on other people. Mind you I have to admit to a nascent admiration, indeed liking for a canvas covered in purple dots.
Oor Willie statues have sprung up around town and one of them could well have been decorated by her:
I've always admired the library building in Dundee Street and very much enjoyed the talk about it given by Alice Strang at the National Gallery. It was illustrated by some fine slides of the building and its decorative panels with their relief sculptures. Apart from introducing us to the various worthy gents involved in its creation and design and reminding us of the part played by the generous endowment of Nelson the publisher she was able to quote from the reminiscences of a chap who grew up in the area and used the library and its predecessor.
The Dunedin Wind Band finished its year with an excellent concert in Old St. Pauls that raised a £1,000 for charity. An excellent social evening two days later rounded things off as we split for the summer.
My minor participation in The Lark was not informed by anything so grand as research into the subject of the play although I did buy a book about Joan of Arc in a fit of mild enthusiasm. After the run I got round to reading it.
A super book much to be recommended. Joan of Arc: A History by Helen Castor is quite scholarly, (over 20% of it is notes and bibliography and the like), but it reads like a novel and a gripping one at that. I'd always understood that thousands of Scots marched with Joan and indeed thousands of them were in France fighting the English in the 15th century but it seems that practically all of them had died in battle before she set out to ride to the rescue of France. Another illusion shattered.
I've been a member of the General Council of the University of Edinburgh for over 50 years which is no great accomplishment since the council consists of all graduates and all academic staff but it sounds quite grand if you don't know that fact. They meet twice a year and this year was the very first time that I've attended a meeting though I have thought about it from time to time.
The meetings generally have an add on of some sort to attract the brethren and this time there were for me two such attractions. One was that it was to be held in the McEwan Hall and I hadn't been in it since it was refurbished and the new entrance built (whaur's yir Louvre peeramid noo?) . The second was that the meeting was to be followed by (not counting lunch) an exhibition and presentations about the university's connections with Africa past, present and future.
The refurbishment is lovely; all that fancy decoration bright and shiny and comfy cushioning on the seats. The bringing into use and extension of the hithertoo unused basement areas (where the meeting and presentations were held) is impressive.
I enjoyed discovering the various academic and practical African connections and had some very interesting conversations with those involved. I even had the opportunity to remonstrate with the director of the 1971 (or was it 72) Nairobi production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie for not casting me. I hadn't seen the man since but the wound runs deep.
In the pursuance of art I've been to a big exhibition of Victoria Crowe's work. She does wonderful trees but disappointingly none of those pictures featured amongst the prints and postcards of her work that were on sale.
I'd have liked a Crowe tree print but wasn't tempted to buy a souvenir of the Bridget Riley exhibition. However one might admire the skill and the extraordinary amount of detailed work she does in preparation for her abstracts the sworls of black and white and the columns of colours fail to inspire much enthusiasm: in me that is, her world renown speaks to other impacts on other people. Mind you I have to admit to a nascent admiration, indeed liking for a canvas covered in purple dots.
Oor Willie statues have sprung up around town and one of them could well have been decorated by her:
I've always admired the library building in Dundee Street and very much enjoyed the talk about it given by Alice Strang at the National Gallery. It was illustrated by some fine slides of the building and its decorative panels with their relief sculptures. Apart from introducing us to the various worthy gents involved in its creation and design and reminding us of the part played by the generous endowment of Nelson the publisher she was able to quote from the reminiscences of a chap who grew up in the area and used the library and its predecessor.
The Dunedin Wind Band finished its year with an excellent concert in Old St. Pauls that raised a £1,000 for charity. An excellent social evening two days later rounded things off as we split for the summer.
Sunday, June 02, 2019
The Grads are doing a version of Jean Anouilh's play about Joan of Arc this week. I didn't audition for it because the intended rehearsal arrangements clashed with other commitments. In fact those arrangements only persisted for a few weeks so I would actually have been available. Indeed I turned up at lots of rehearsals to prompt and have been rewarded by a late casting.
Joan hears voices that prompt her to become engaged in the fight against the English and the script allocates those voices to the actress playing Joan, but it was decided late on that it would be better if someone else did the voices and that's me. So I'm playing St. Michael. Initially I was to be placed in a position in the balcony invisible to the audience but the acoustics of the ex-church we are performing in are such that I've been moved. So I'll be visible to a portion of the punters although I will not be wowing them in the "beautiful starched robe with two big pure white wings" reported by Joan. What a shame.
Just as the English are the villians of the piece in Joan's story so I have always believed that the failure of the Darien scheme was to be laid in large measure at the feet of the English even after making allowance for the climatic and geographic conditions that made establishing a settlement so very difficult.
But reading John McKendrick's Darien: A Journey in Search of Empire showed me a much more nuanced picture. He has an excellent section on the geopolitical circumstances of the time that explains how the relationships between the European powers drove England to act against or at best to give no assistance to The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies.
The objective of establishing a settlement in Darien was to enable trade between the Atlantic (via the Carribean) and the Pacific. A few hundred years later the Panama canal was created for just that purpose. It's creation was politically the work of Theodore Roosevelt who was a descendant of one of the ministers of the kirk who went on the expedition to Darien in the 17th century.
Another interesting book I've read recently is The Word Detective by John Simpson. It's the story of the years he spend working for the Oxford English Dictionary. Interspersed in the narrative are short vignettes about particular words that illustrate the business of tracing the history of words and their meanings which is the business of the OED.
Back in February I was at a couple of gigs in the Jazz Bar that involved players from Belgium. I learnt then that in May in Brussels there is a weekend of jazz throughout the city in venues indoors and out. That sounded a good way to spend a weekend and I've just been. I coupled it with a visit to the French Tennis Open at Roland Garros, one of the things I've always fancied doing.
I had thought I would be able to see Patrick in Brussels (my sailing friend) and Sylviane in Paris (my French theatre friend). But he was at sea and she was away hiking. So I'm going back in late August to see them both.
Anyway the jazz weekend was excellent. There were a number of great combos performing in a bandstand in the park, several groups on temporary stages in city squares and a grand variety in bars and restaurants. There was even a very good quartet performing on the Friday night in the hotel I was staying in.
I squeezed in a visit to the Musical Instrument Museum that I hadn't managed to get to on my very short visit to Brussels in 2015 and I went to an exhibition about Audrey Hepburn who was born in Brussels as this plaque attests.
Someone who was buried there 450 years ago is Peter Breugel and there are various celebratory exhibitions that I didn't manage to get to. Beyond Bruegel looks as though it might even be worth a second trip before it closes in January combined undoubtedly with Back to Bruegel which opens in October and advertises visual reality technology that will allow the visitor to "experience the 16th century in the flesh through face to face contact with original objects from.......".
In Paris I had tickets for two days of tennis. The first day I was in the main show court, Philippe Chatrier. Although I was at the outermost extremes of the court I had an excellent view and saw matches involving Caroline Wozniaki, Rafa Nadal, Novak Djokovic ans Serena Williams. All top dogs. These were first round matches so unlikley to be very competitive but in fact the first match saw Wozniaki being beaten and Serena Williams was down a set before she managed to get into action.
The second day I was in the brand new Simonne Mathieu court which is an architectural gem sitting in a public garden and encompassing plant houses in its structure. It holds 5,000 spectators against Chatrier's 15,000 and I was in the third front row. That's really close to the action. I saw three and a bit matches before leaving for the day. These involved lesser players but not that much lesser. Fabio Fognini for example, a top ten player when in form and Victoria Azarenka a former world number 1.
It was great.
Joan hears voices that prompt her to become engaged in the fight against the English and the script allocates those voices to the actress playing Joan, but it was decided late on that it would be better if someone else did the voices and that's me. So I'm playing St. Michael. Initially I was to be placed in a position in the balcony invisible to the audience but the acoustics of the ex-church we are performing in are such that I've been moved. So I'll be visible to a portion of the punters although I will not be wowing them in the "beautiful starched robe with two big pure white wings" reported by Joan. What a shame.
Just as the English are the villians of the piece in Joan's story so I have always believed that the failure of the Darien scheme was to be laid in large measure at the feet of the English even after making allowance for the climatic and geographic conditions that made establishing a settlement so very difficult.
But reading John McKendrick's Darien: A Journey in Search of Empire showed me a much more nuanced picture. He has an excellent section on the geopolitical circumstances of the time that explains how the relationships between the European powers drove England to act against or at best to give no assistance to The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies.
The objective of establishing a settlement in Darien was to enable trade between the Atlantic (via the Carribean) and the Pacific. A few hundred years later the Panama canal was created for just that purpose. It's creation was politically the work of Theodore Roosevelt who was a descendant of one of the ministers of the kirk who went on the expedition to Darien in the 17th century.
Another interesting book I've read recently is The Word Detective by John Simpson. It's the story of the years he spend working for the Oxford English Dictionary. Interspersed in the narrative are short vignettes about particular words that illustrate the business of tracing the history of words and their meanings which is the business of the OED.
Back in February I was at a couple of gigs in the Jazz Bar that involved players from Belgium. I learnt then that in May in Brussels there is a weekend of jazz throughout the city in venues indoors and out. That sounded a good way to spend a weekend and I've just been. I coupled it with a visit to the French Tennis Open at Roland Garros, one of the things I've always fancied doing.
I had thought I would be able to see Patrick in Brussels (my sailing friend) and Sylviane in Paris (my French theatre friend). But he was at sea and she was away hiking. So I'm going back in late August to see them both.
Anyway the jazz weekend was excellent. There were a number of great combos performing in a bandstand in the park, several groups on temporary stages in city squares and a grand variety in bars and restaurants. There was even a very good quartet performing on the Friday night in the hotel I was staying in.
I squeezed in a visit to the Musical Instrument Museum that I hadn't managed to get to on my very short visit to Brussels in 2015 and I went to an exhibition about Audrey Hepburn who was born in Brussels as this plaque attests.
In Paris I had tickets for two days of tennis. The first day I was in the main show court, Philippe Chatrier. Although I was at the outermost extremes of the court I had an excellent view and saw matches involving Caroline Wozniaki, Rafa Nadal, Novak Djokovic ans Serena Williams. All top dogs. These were first round matches so unlikley to be very competitive but in fact the first match saw Wozniaki being beaten and Serena Williams was down a set before she managed to get into action.
The second day I was in the brand new Simonne Mathieu court which is an architectural gem sitting in a public garden and encompassing plant houses in its structure. It holds 5,000 spectators against Chatrier's 15,000 and I was in the third front row. That's really close to the action. I saw three and a bit matches before leaving for the day. These involved lesser players but not that much lesser. Fabio Fognini for example, a top ten player when in form and Victoria Azarenka a former world number 1.
It was great.
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