More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
22 September
Two films shown to-night deserve treating together, although not quite in the same category : one was a feature film, Blackbird (2013), the other what was described to us (using another reviewer's words) as 'cinematic non-fiction', Only the Young (2012).
The latter made good what the former tried to do, because it had a grasp that was too insubstantial of what it was about, other than portraying a small West-Coast community (in Dumfries and Galloway, I am told) and the notion of trying to preserve what made it was both by capturing things before they fell prey to loss of memory or death, and not allowing it to be taken over by impulses that might change it for the worse. Anyone who knows and loves Scotland would have been in such places, would have recognized the people, and felt that emotional pull - anyone who does not might feel out on a limb to understand it or the social and cultural influences.
Already, then, a sort of preaching that might only work to the converted (but maybe not). In any case, we are invited to look, in part, at this place through the eyes of Ruadhan (pronounced 'Rowan'), played by Andrew Rothney, and his brother Callum.
This is where the brilliantly made Only the Young comes in : where the two friends live with whom we spend much of our time (Garrison and Kevin), there is an abandoned mini-golf course, where the restaurant served steak but which must have proved not to be the right attraction to be supported by that place, and pools and even a water-flume in a back garden that have also, if not outlived their usefulness, then not been kept up. Even at this level, the comparison is clear : Ruadhan decks out and lives in a beached vessel, whereas the boys and their friends have taken over an abandoned property as a base.
His motives are different, and his relations other, because (whether he is a relative or just an older person with songs to pass on) Alec sums up his screwed-up narcissism just right, and my experience in mental health would see him not as someone whose desire to collect oral traditions (there is nothing to suggest that he does anything with them) and make his own world is helpful even for him. Kevin, Garrison, Skye and Kristen maybe have a worldview from their Grace Baptist background to contend with (although they seemed accepting of the idea that the elders would influence their choice of loved ones, and so 'shepherd' their lives), but they are living, developing, dealing with life's problems.
Blackbird has only rather falsely, at the end, a notion of moving on, of dealing with life. I say 'falsely' for two reasons : one that I do not believe that Ruadhan can simply progress, and without intervention, in the way that we are invited to believe, when what I see suggests that what is actually going to hold him back is a not being able to let go (where Alec is spot on) that is a well-established psychological disorder, and second that, even if that were not so, the riskily transformative moment that his brother brings about is the film's emotional high point, and everything just drains away from it.
If Ruadhan were the sort to give of what is precious to him to cock a snook at the forces of change (for me, that does not quite ring true), it just becomes a barb to prick him, just as the wishes for a job when he cashes a giro on the heels of Alec's pension), when his insulting gesture is looked at as a possible bonus. With, back at the other film, Garrison and Co., we have no such sense of easy answers, and that the answer to one's head is to remove the brick wall that one is banging it against, or, rather, it from striking distance from the wall.
So, Blackbird seems to understand, and even to make accessible, someone with a very confused personality (principally via Amy as the love-interest), but then leads us on with the idea that it is purely situational. From that perspective, I wish that it had not even bothered to try to share notions of what such a person might be like, and have far more warmth for the achievements of Only the Young, not unlike those of Bombay Beach.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Showing posts with label Scotland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scotland. Show all posts
Sunday 22 September 2013
Tuesday 4 June 2013
The girl on the train
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)easily
2 June
England & Wales is a separate legal jurisdiction from Scotland, with its own laws, courts, Acts of Parliament.
It used to be said, in the early 1990s, that it was a principle of the law of England & Wales that, if one saw a child drowning in a puddle of water (i.e. one could intervene and save him or her without hurting oneself), one was under no obligation to prevent it happening.
I have no idea whether that is still so, and, of course, the law assumed the legal fiction of a stranger, whereas a parent would owe different duties. Curious that Lord Denning was at pains to point out the Biblical origins of the law, but this inhumane example showed otherwise, a callous version of the travellers who went by on the other side of the road in the parable of the so-called good Samaritan (the whole point of the parable was to answer the question Who is my neighbour ?, duties to whom some were seeking to avoid).
At any rate, a child standing and playing on the lap of a woman (who turned out to be her grandmother) was taking too much interest in the nearby open window, one of those narrow ones that flaps down at the top of a larger pane. I kept conceiving of her fingers being in the way if the violent wake of an intercity train passing caused the window to snap shut, or, as she seemed to be doing at one point, of pushing it shut it on her own hand with the help of turbulence.
After we stopped at one station and some hesitation, I felt that I couldn't stand back in the face of what might happen, and, if it did happen, would be deeply damaging to a young child and her fingers, so I approached the woman and, prefacing my remark with the wish that I hoped I wasn't interfering, shared my fears. She then shared them with the girl, and urged the reluctant girl to wave to the man (she never did, but she smiled).
If I'd been asked why, or thanked too much, I'd have said that I would hope that anyone would do the same, even in the keep-myself-to-myself days of train travel when we look at each other and pretend that we haven't, etc.
But I do hope that, that anyone else, seeing the risk, might have dared say something, and have thought nothing special of wanting to avoid a harm to the livelihood of a young life.
Later, after a tiring walk in which I was pulling a case on its wheels, I was kindly offered a lift to the village where the driver also lived. I do not see that, as some would, as karma, but the two were clearly related as acts of care for another.
If such kindnesses happened all the time, would we need to think of talking of karma ?
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)easily
2 June
England & Wales is a separate legal jurisdiction from Scotland, with its own laws, courts, Acts of Parliament.
It used to be said, in the early 1990s, that it was a principle of the law of England & Wales that, if one saw a child drowning in a puddle of water (i.e. one could intervene and save him or her without hurting oneself), one was under no obligation to prevent it happening.
I have no idea whether that is still so, and, of course, the law assumed the legal fiction of a stranger, whereas a parent would owe different duties. Curious that Lord Denning was at pains to point out the Biblical origins of the law, but this inhumane example showed otherwise, a callous version of the travellers who went by on the other side of the road in the parable of the so-called good Samaritan (the whole point of the parable was to answer the question Who is my neighbour ?, duties to whom some were seeking to avoid).
At any rate, a child standing and playing on the lap of a woman (who turned out to be her grandmother) was taking too much interest in the nearby open window, one of those narrow ones that flaps down at the top of a larger pane. I kept conceiving of her fingers being in the way if the violent wake of an intercity train passing caused the window to snap shut, or, as she seemed to be doing at one point, of pushing it shut it on her own hand with the help of turbulence.
After we stopped at one station and some hesitation, I felt that I couldn't stand back in the face of what might happen, and, if it did happen, would be deeply damaging to a young child and her fingers, so I approached the woman and, prefacing my remark with the wish that I hoped I wasn't interfering, shared my fears. She then shared them with the girl, and urged the reluctant girl to wave to the man (she never did, but she smiled).
If I'd been asked why, or thanked too much, I'd have said that I would hope that anyone would do the same, even in the keep-myself-to-myself days of train travel when we look at each other and pretend that we haven't, etc.
But I do hope that, that anyone else, seeing the risk, might have dared say something, and have thought nothing special of wanting to avoid a harm to the livelihood of a young life.
Later, after a tiring walk in which I was pulling a case on its wheels, I was kindly offered a lift to the village where the driver also lived. I do not see that, as some would, as karma, but the two were clearly related as acts of care for another.
If such kindnesses happened all the time, would we need to think of talking of karma ?
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Saturday 28 July 2012
Explore the natural beauty of Caledonia (according to AOL®)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
28 July
What is this? Bloody cornering the market in a fanciful form of what Fowler dubbed Elegant Variation?
Just so that you can refer to it as Scotland below?
And why not Hibernia, whilst you're at it?!
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
28 July
What is this? Bloody cornering the market in a fanciful form of what Fowler dubbed Elegant Variation?
Just so that you can refer to it as Scotland below?
And why not Hibernia, whilst you're at it?!
@TheAgentApsley
Saturday 28 January 2012
A short review of whisky
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
29 January
Not in general, but a 16yo single malt*, which - for sport - I shall not name.
It has never been a great dram in my opinion, but I do still have a fondness for where it comes from, and from having it on board early on in my Scottish travels** (as the bottle lends itself to stowing away), and before I knew that place (and others and their scotch):
Here, where the human population is significantly outnubered by that of the fauna, one is two ferries from anywhere, and with a capital (where the distillery is, together with a small shop and the hotel, with its lively public bar and nice restaurant) that you can drive through in not much more than thirty seconds, I have twice stayed the night, and neither time did I have the inclination to do the morning distillery tour.
What the box (not a tube, in this case) told me, on the top and front, was that this one is dedicated to the inhabitants, and is 'rich and full-bodied' (on tasting, it was not, no more than the 10yo).
Drowning my sorrows later at spending £20 on the unremarkable (and, then, with the same distillery when I last did so on a dubious recommendation, at least I got a full bottle - 70cl - for only £2 to 3 more than this one, with its claims), I studied the piece of marketing that the box is:
* Well, there is the burnished bronze printing, including a special emblem, with which the photograph of what I take to be that place is overlaid - very classy!
* Then, along with that emblem and the attribution to the locals, the assertion that they 'are drawn to it above all others' - not at that price, I'll warrant (and there are, as I have said, very few people there)!
* Then, for all that the wording in the text above says, and also that a mathematical diagram puts it into a quadrant that denotes 'unpeated' and 'heavy / rich', another description states:
It's a subtle malt - unassuming, understated yet intriguing. Qualities often attributed to the [regional name for the locals] themselves.
Or what they meant was:
It tastes pretty much the same as the (supposedly contrasting) 'light / delicate' 10yo, but we're charging more!
End-notes
* I am glad that I only bought a half-bottle - 35cl - as a friend, who's in the trade, told me afterwards that he agrees that there is nothing special about it, even if it has been 'Nurtured for sixteen long years'. Sure they had some craic determining the wording on this box!
** It was also where I first learnt, from reading it in German on the box (it was not there in English), about adding caramel to malt whisky, which some say is fine and just evens out variations in colour (but caramel, of all things! how can that not affect the taste?), but others say imparts one that was not there - and some whiskies are sold on that feature (this one used to be - hence the bronze printing on the box ).
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(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
29 January
Not in general, but a 16yo single malt*, which - for sport - I shall not name.
It has never been a great dram in my opinion, but I do still have a fondness for where it comes from, and from having it on board early on in my Scottish travels** (as the bottle lends itself to stowing away), and before I knew that place (and others and their scotch):
Here, where the human population is significantly outnubered by that of the fauna, one is two ferries from anywhere, and with a capital (where the distillery is, together with a small shop and the hotel, with its lively public bar and nice restaurant) that you can drive through in not much more than thirty seconds, I have twice stayed the night, and neither time did I have the inclination to do the morning distillery tour.
What the box (not a tube, in this case) told me, on the top and front, was that this one is dedicated to the inhabitants, and is 'rich and full-bodied' (on tasting, it was not, no more than the 10yo).
Drowning my sorrows later at spending £20 on the unremarkable (and, then, with the same distillery when I last did so on a dubious recommendation, at least I got a full bottle - 70cl - for only £2 to 3 more than this one, with its claims), I studied the piece of marketing that the box is:
* Well, there is the burnished bronze printing, including a special emblem, with which the photograph of what I take to be that place is overlaid - very classy!
* Then, along with that emblem and the attribution to the locals, the assertion that they 'are drawn to it above all others' - not at that price, I'll warrant (and there are, as I have said, very few people there)!
* Then, for all that the wording in the text above says, and also that a mathematical diagram puts it into a quadrant that denotes 'unpeated' and 'heavy / rich', another description states:
It's a subtle malt - unassuming, understated yet intriguing. Qualities often attributed to the [regional name for the locals] themselves.
Or what they meant was:
It tastes pretty much the same as the (supposedly contrasting) 'light / delicate' 10yo, but we're charging more!
End-notes
* I am glad that I only bought a half-bottle - 35cl - as a friend, who's in the trade, told me afterwards that he agrees that there is nothing special about it, even if it has been 'Nurtured for sixteen long years'. Sure they had some craic determining the wording on this box!
** It was also where I first learnt, from reading it in German on the box (it was not there in English), about adding caramel to malt whisky, which some say is fine and just evens out variations in colour (but caramel, of all things! how can that not affect the taste?), but others say imparts one that was not there - and some whiskies are sold on that feature (this one used to be - hence the bronze printing on the box ).
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