Lighting

One obsession of mine - amongst many - is light bulbs.

With the disappearance of incandescent bulbs (not entirely warranted I must add) there are new forms and styles to consider.

So here is one of the more alien options.

1963

From Wil Wheaton's twitter :


If loving New Order's 1963 is wrong, I don't want to be right. In fact, if loving Joy Division and New Order is wrong, SHUT UP.



Thank you Wil :-)

My Lost City - First Review

The cover is sublime, an imaginary city with skyscrapers impossibly tall leading into an infinite fog of diffused light. A freeway overpass approaching from the distance merging into an unbelievably complex form of flyover. 

And impossibly small beneath the flyover, in the underpass, amongst vague lights and obscure street forms, a solitary figure walks with his back to the camera, a man in a grey suit and a hat. The quiet man. Detached and moving through this insane cityscape.

Beyond the cover, the CD disc itself is also a work of art, as have been all the John Foxx releases in 2009 - a plain black label with black text on top - made visible as the text is gloss black against the matt of the background.

Serious pleasure before the music is played..

And the music? It's a kind of a secular hymnal music - a mass for a city of obscure and derelict architecture. 

The names of the tracks make explicit references to modernist brutalist structures, the Barbican and Trellick Tower. Also references to ancient brutalising buildings such as Hawkesmoor churches. The liner notes make clear that the music is representing a London from an imaginary past, the layer of the centuries coming together to mix ancient devotional music with modern synthesizer acoustics.

The music drifts by with washes of chords - no drums or rhythms. Some tracks have Foxx's vocals seemingly singing in a lost and unknown language, as in the Cathedral Oceans albums.

But what to make of it all? I would not recommend this CD to someone unfamiliar to John Foxx's work. I however have been listening to Foxx for over 25 years, and this disc fits in with the overall picture of this man's work and concepts. It takes a strand of DNA from the Cathedral Oceans project, most notably for me the track "City of Endless Stairways" on Cathedral Oceans III, and fleshes out the ideas into 11 tracks. 

The writings by John Foxx about this disc allude to discarded ideas and forgotten cassette tape recordings dating from as early as the last days of the 1970s. Forgotten electrical waves imprinted onto solidified remains of prehistoric forests.

Westmalle Trappist

Last Winter I covered the three Wallon Trappist beers and now it is the turn of our Flemish brothers.

The Cistercian abbey of Westmalle furnishes us with two fantastic beers, the Dubbel and Tripel - the latter being possibly the most famous of all Trappist beers, and arguably the one that started the whole bandwagon off.

The Dubbel is a dark satisfying beer with a nice balanced sweetness and a reasonable alchohol content at ABV 7%. The balance between the bitterness of the hops and the soft fruityness makes this a very comfortable drink, especially in autumn and winter.

The Tripel is a golden coloured, strong (ABV 9,5%) complex beer, perhaps one of the most multifaceted beers of all. It combines many tastes, fruit, bitterness, softness (if that is a taste) and has real staying power in the mouth. A long complex symphony of flavours that is more like a good wine than a beer. The alcohol content gives it a strong sweetness, but this is balanced perfectly by the other flavours in the mix. In my opinion it is best served colder than the recommended temperature on a sunny day sitting opposite a church - heavenly! Truly a word class beer.

Coming soon, more Trappist Beer

After the summer of white wine, the autumn leaves are falling and a man's thoughts turn to beer again. Before the summer I reviewed the three Walloon Trappist beers, next up the two readily available Flemish Trappist beers.

Firstly Achel then Westmalle. Westvleteren is in the pipeline so to speak, but this would appear to require a trip to Amsterdam... it's a convoluted story I will get to later.

Enjoy the last of the evening daylight!

Orval

To the third of the six Trappists - Orval. The name is derived from Gold ('Or') and Valley ('Val') and the Cistercian monastery is located in what is presumably a golden vale in Wallonia.

The beer itself is one of my favourites, very bitter, but also with a good refreshing taste and full of complex flavours. The monks aim to make only one type of beer, and to make it well. The glass is a nice chunky goblet similar to the Chimay chalice but with more sloped sides. The decoration of the stem and the design of the bottle give it a very art deco feel in my opinion.

The symbol of the beer is a fish with a ring it its mouth. The delightful story behind this is that a beautiful princess was passing that way in ancient times, and while crossing a lake, let fall her gold ring from the boat into the depths. She exclaimed that if god returned the ring to her, then she would make a donation to fund a holy place at the lake. And indeed a trout obliged by bringing up the gold ring from the deep in its mouth. And so the monks established themselves and despite Napoleon's efforts, were able to bring this wonderful beer to the world.

Big Mama is Watching You

... and she's watching my bathroom and kitchen...

Chimay

And so to the most widely available Trappist beer, Chimay. Here we see the stout goblet of the Chimay brewery. The pouring of the beer was not totally successful, as you can see the head is short of the rim of the glass.

The style of the glass harks back to medieval times when the monasteries provided food and shelter for the main travelers of the age, pilgrims heading for Scherpenheuvel, Santiago di Compostela, Rome, Jerusalem, Lourdes - well maybe not the latter. But maybe at that time pilgrimages were being made to Little Walsingham in Norfolk, one of my favourite places in Englad, while the routes to the holy land were cut off by the crusades.

The Chimay brewery itself is in the abbey of Scourmont way down south in deep Wallonia.

The beer shown here is the Chimay Rouge, the least alcoholic of the Chimay beers at 7% ABV. The "trois couleurs" of Chimay are easy to remember - Red, White and Blue - 7, 8 and 9% ABV respectively. Red and Blue being dark, malty, tasty beers, and White being their "triple" style, light coloured with citric notes. The Rouge and Bleue are to be served at cellar temperatures, and the Blanche / Triple a bit cooler, around 6 - 8 C. The Bleue can be laid down for a number of years - where it can develop aldehydes to give it a port like character - the bottle of Chimay Blue is vintage labeled for this reason.

Trappistes Rochefort

This Sunday last, I decided to (semi-) complete my collection of Belgian Trappist Beer glasses. Ah Trappist Beer, my current obsession for winter 2007/8. How to explain the appeal? These are beers brewed by monks, with the aid of some lay helpers, for non-profit. The money they make goes to their monastic projects. So freed from the the strictures of shareholder value, they make beer for the pleasure of producing the best quality products.

And the Trappist Beers of Belgium are truly world class. There are six monastic breweries that can carry the Trappist Product symbol. Well it seems there are seven, but we won't count the semi-commercial activities of a certain Dutch brewery. And I am talking Belgian beers - at least while there is still a collective known as Belgium.

So let's name them: Achel, Chimay, Orval, Rochefort, Westmalle, Westvleteren.

Firstly, my latest glass in my collection - the Rochefort. Here you can see the glass, perhaps the most elegant and certainly the most feminine glass of all the Trappists. Here we see it filled with Rochefort 8, which has an ABV of 9.2%.

I don't know this beer well, partly because the strength makes it a very occasional tipple. It is a classic dark brown dubbel-style, quite bitter and flinty, but the sweetness of the alcohol really shines through. Not sure how much I like this one. Definitely one for more exploration.

But the glass, mon Dieu, it's so elegant.

Ex-fan des Bières Belges

Well, after almost a year's absence I felt it was time to put something on this blog. Easy words of course.

It occurs to me we are becoming a world of exemplary consumers. To be a consumer is to participate in modern society in some way. But to just be a consumer... Does that satisfy?

Well I feel the answer is no, I don't feel satisfied being an exemplary consumer. So let's go create!

As I am building my collection of Belgian beer glasses, let's have some fun seeing them full of beer!

Ali G in Da Vinci Code?

In Rome last year, I remember seeing a large advertisement for the film adaptation of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code hanging on the netted cover of an in-renovation church. There had obviously been a hoo-har with the boys in da Vatican as the whole see through netted poster was reversed, a bit like a cross being hung upside down I thought. Anyway, Da Vinci and the last supper are Milan related.

The film got some mixed reviews in the Summer of 2006. I can empathise with the critics. It's not that is it such a bad film, but just so formulaic to be boring. And my goodness it is dark. I think I only saw about 30 minutes of the film, the rest of the time I just saw some facially related artifacts on my LCD screen. Maybe in the cinema things would have been different.

The darkness affects the whole film, and not in a good way. There probably is some acting going on somewhere but I just couldn't detect it.

Tom Hanks looks puffy and barely wears any expression. Audrey Tautou's face is likewise immobile, in addition to the low light, her hair half covers her face. And she looks nothing like Amelie Poulin in this film, which must have been a big disappointment to many viewers of the film worldwide.

One big problem I have with this story is the naming of the characters, it just sticks out so badly as being false. Robert Langdon, that's Lang-Don. It seems to want to mean something, maybe an echo of Langley to tell us he is good at solving mysteries. Sophie Niveau - Sophie was a dead giveaway before one of the shock revelations, Niveau tells us she is on a higher plane. Daftest of them all is the Sir Ian McKellen character, Sir Edmund Teabag or something... silly.

Oh dear, Juergen Prochnow again playing the devious German (well Swiss German probably.) I was just waiting for him to enjoy some more thumb-cutting.

The film chronicles 24 hours in the life of these characters. Where were the toilet breaks? How can you develop character depth like that, just a brief meeting of strangers. And how did they get into england without customs and immigration? Answer, they just drove past the armed police with the 'fugitives' hidden under a blanket on the back seat - please give me Nancy Drew.

What with all the switches in characters from one side to the other, the impenetrable stuff about Rosicrucians, Sion, whatever. I could not follow this film, I just peered into mostly darkness for 2 and a half hours.

Vista Shutdown

Refound my favourite story about software development...

Women in Love

It was a review of this film in the excellent DVD Times that fired me to read the book and hence discover the other works of D. H. Lawrence. And also to buy this DVD. I would recommend reading this review, it is hard to think of writing a better one.

As the author of the article says, the ideas from the book came tearing off the page and ripped into my soul and cosy notions of sex and love. I cannot imagine how this book must have read in the late 1910s – even today the ideas seem shocking and revolutionary against our current solomnent consumerist malaise. I was reminded of the fierce passions of youth, the search for absolute truth and freedom in love. Sex seems to get disconnected from love in our modern society. Really, sex is used for advertising, as a measure of one’s integrity, as a leisure activity. People search for love but have sex whilst waiting for love to come along. And when love does come along, what does the sex become, what remains of sex? Sometimes the absolution of giving yourself to someone, mind and body, is lost I think. This function is not there anymore, the sex has been used up in other energies. A voice from the early 20th Century reminds me of this fact - the idea to love passionately and in doing so remove oneselves from the restraints of the physical world.

So much for my current concerns, what about the movie. As I said, read the DVD Times review. For my part, one major element missed from this review is the look of Alan Bates – so very hirsute, yet evidently the look is designed to mirror the look of D. H. Lawrence himself, as the character if Rupert Birkin is undoubtedly modeled on the author.

Also, I would put in a word of support for Jenny Linden’s portrayal of Ursula Brangwen – yes she is up against three heavyweight actors, and she does not give the appropriate depth to the Ursula character, but I felt she was as much a delight to watch as Glenda Jackson, if for different reasons. Can you describe Oliver Reed as a heavyweight actor? The Gerald Crich character is undoubtedly meant to be a foil for the passion of Rupert Birkin, and Reed’s cold glare is effective in this case. He is also utterly convincing when he is working on the coal face as the owner’s son, as well as being torn between the love for his father and disdain for his father’s outdated philanthropic ideas. Still it’s hard to see how the chemistry works between Gerald and Ursula. Given a movie’s time limitations, that’s maybe understandable – the book takes things far slower naturally.

And here is an argument against making novels into movies. There are always horrendous compromises with time and plot condensing. Novels make far better TV series where the plot and characters have time to breathe, as with Brideshead Revisited. In the Guardian review of Brokeback Mountain, the reviewer makes the case that a short story can improve and gain wings when adapted to a movie. Too much gets lost adapting a novel to 100 minutes.

So an Oscar for Glenda Jackson. This seems improbable somehow, as does the Academy actually watching this picture. I imagine there was not a great deal of competition in 1970. Jackson did wonderful work in Ken Russell’s pictures there is no doubt, and the dance she makes in front of the herd of bulls is very affecting. But an Oscar?
I love Ken Russell – his humor, his integration of music, all the things I learnt from his composer-films. Also I love his naughty side, the desire to upset stuffy England. This film is well known for its male nude wrestling scene, which it has to be said now looks pretty unerotic. Also Jackson’s Oscar was the first for an actor with a nude scene. How quaint these ‘firsts’ seem now to me.

The cinematography works very well. The blackness of coal dust covered Yorkshire (not the Nottinghamshire of the book.) The colour of the two women contrasting on the black. The clarity of the sequences at the Matterhorn is wonderful. Once scene really stunned me – the mis en scene while Gudrun dances near the late, the horizontal lines of the earth and the lower branches of the trees really made my eyes open wide.

Referring back to the DVD Times review, at the end it’s a very good film, but fails to really capture the feeling and complexity of one of the key works of 20th Century English literature.

Kingmaker – Wars of the Roses - Round One, October 20, 2005

Our first attempt at Kingmaker, Todd vs Ben. A partial account from my point of view.

After drawing the Chancellor card, Ben starts by setting sail for Wales. Todd makes a move on London and after a brief siege makes the early running by capturing the reigning monarch, King Henry VI. Plague wipes out the Yorkist heir George, Duke of Clarence in his Welsh fortified town of Cardigan. Undeterred by this outbreak, Ben’s faction takes the other Welsh-residing Yorkist Edward, Earl of March, by laying siege to the fortified town of Harlech.

Meanwhile Todd makes a move on Margaret of Anjou by successfully entering Coventry. The king and his feisty Queen touchingly will now reside together for the rest of the game. Unfortunately one of Todd’s nobles is killed in a siege leaving him with a conspicuously depleted faction.

However Ben’s faction grows in popularity as an array of nobles from all corners of the island rally support around the Yorkist line, resentful of the mediocre rule of the Lancastrian King Henry VI.

Using his enlarged army, Ben’s faction lays siege on York and captures Richard, Duke of York. Rushing extra bishops and reuniting Richard with his younger brother Edward, celebrations are held for the coronation of the Yorkist Richard III – England has two kings! God save the kings!

Now the race is on to capture and execute the opposing monarchs.

Todd’s faction capture and execute Edward, Prince of Wales in a bold manoeuvre (I forget how this happened in fact …) Sensing danger, The Lancastrian King and his Queen are shipped to Calais. Todd’s dwindling faction currently has not the manpower to enter Calais and simultaneously hunt for the newly crowned Yorkist King. He will need to regroup.

Ben’s faction however remains strong, and using his three ships plus some new recruits sends half his faction to sea, heading south. Meanwhile King Richard III is taken for a northern sojourn in Alnwick Castle, guest of Percy, Earl of Northumberland. Meanwhile the Yorkist heir, Edward, is spirited across Northern England to the safety of Harlech Castle.

Ben’s faction’s fleet closes in on Calais. Bad weather delays the siege, then a large storm sends the fleet to the safety of Rye harbour, while Todd’s nobles are diverted to deal with local matters. A visiting dignitary from Europe is left fuming in Malden as no-one can agree which King is to meet and greet him.

Finally the weather clears, and Calais is taken by Ben’s fleet. King Henry VI and Queen Margaret are both executed swiftly, together to the end.

Hail King Richard III, sole and rightful King of England! Ben’s faction’s nobles receive great rewards from the grateful hunchbacked monarch. Bonfires burn bright in Northumberland. Tomorrow, the King heads for London – but tonight we celebrate with boar and mead!

Freud and Lawrence

Bad Timing

Nic Roeg had a remarkable run of films in the late 70s – early 80s. Don't Look Now, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and this film, Bad Timing. These three films make a cinematic feast, and I would be happy to be stranded on a desert island with just these three discs.

There is a kind of frenzied madness in this film, set in the world of psychological research in Vienna. At one point a portrait of Freud looks down as the main protagonists and it is hard to see his stare as approval or not as he watches what he has unleashed.

I have always had a high regard for Teresa Russell as an actor – this is surely her finest film.Her character is an untamed sexual beast set on destroying the cosy sanity of Art Garfunkel's psychologist. Art Garfunkel plays very well here too, certainly a match for Harvey Keitel's priest like Austrian cop. I remember being astonished by all three leads when i saw this film in the late 80s, especially Keitel – this was the first time i remember noticing him.

The other great star of the film is Vienna – disturbing flashbacks to other films such as The Nightporter, and of course The Third Man (there is even some zither music just for fun in Bad Timing.)

Here is a great article from the Guardian 20 years on from the film's release.

I love this film – one of my all time favourites.


Priest of Love

Also on a theme of an historical figure unleashing sexual forces upon an unwilling party, Priest of Love, from more or less the same year as Bad Timing. Follows the life of D. H. Lawrence from the eve of the First World War to his early death from TB in 1930.

Another very good cast – Sir Ian McKellern in an early cinematic role, playing another historical figure with homosexual tendencies – although this is very muted in this film, just towelling down a friend after skinny dipping in Cornwall. These days this aspect of the film would no doubt be fashionably well documented.

Jane Suzman is glorious as Lawrence's German wife, passionate and devoted. The more minor parts are well filled by Ava Gardiner and Penelope Keith – always a joy to watch Pen Keith, and this is one of her few big screen roles.. (big screen? The DVD was on 4:3 format..??)

The film follows the life of Lawrence using the locations he actually lived in – we have Cornwall, New Mexico, Amalfi coast, Tuscany.. The music is also appropriately romantic at times. Ken Russell's influence is very plain to see, and in fact why wasn't he hired to direct it.

D.H. Lawrence is currently one of my favourite authors – his books still have a lot to say about human sexuality – it is surprising how little we understand what has been released by Freud, Lady Chatterly's Lover, the permissive society, sexual liberation. It seems to me at this point in time we live the benefits of un-repressed sexuality without really knowing what it means and how it is placed in the fabric of our short lives.

I'm going to miss Chris Patten

"Is the world today safer than before the overthrow of the appalling Saddam?" Patten asked in the European parliament last week. "Is global terrorism in retreat? Are we closer to building bridges between Islam and the west? Is the world's only super-power more widely respected? Have the citizens in our democracies been treated in a way that will encourage them to give governments the benefit of the doubt next time they are told that force needs to be used pre-emptively to deal with an imminent threat? I simply pose the questions. The answers are well known."

Gladiator

"What we do in life echoes in eternity." Unfortunately probably not for this slightly underwhelming film. Why did it win so many Oscars? Why did Russell Crowe win an Oscar for this when he has done much better work?

I want to talk about something that bugs me with modern films. Maybe I am the only one who notices this? The fight scenes were completely spoiled by the editing and the camera work. Everything was done in close up, each shot took only a couple of frames and they seemed to shoot everything on digital camera, which means that there is no blur in each frame. This gives an extremely disjointed effect overall and for me completely destroys any flow or grace to the fight scenes. There is no impression of choreography or strategy to the fight scenes. It completely destroyed any excitement I have for the fight scenes. Nothing works or connects with this style of editing and shooting. Doesn't anyone else see this?

The special effects were pretty cheesy too in this film. It comes back to the same old gripe I always have. Previously good model work works even if you know it's a model, but so far this has never been the case for CGI effects. In fact the only place it works is in an entirely CGI film such as Shrek, where there is no mix of live and CGI action. Ancient Rome was unconvincing to me.

I like Russell Crowe a lot, especially his early work in Australia – you only have to watch two films (Romper Stomper and The Sum of Us) to understand his range, skill and humanity. But this was just a low key performance. Where the film did score full marks was the use of the three wonderful, now sadly no longer with us, great British (well, of the British Isles) actors – Richard Harris, Oliver Reed and David Hemmings. All sadly missed.

The narrative was terribly linear and doesn't stand up to the great epics of the 50s and 60s. This film was not the promised renaissance of the genre.

Book of Job / Talking of Pelham

The Italian Job

The archetypal cheesy cheeky cockney crime caper. I have to say finally that this film is a bit disappointing. The best section by far is the opening titles. As Matt Munro croons away at Quincy Jones' and Don Black's peerlessly cool “On days like these,” we see Rossano Brazzi (a peerlessly cool name), cigarette hanging louchely from his lips, expensive sunglasses against the glare of the snow, handling his Lamborghini through the Italian Alps. This has to be the best, coolest title sequence from the 60s, or maybe ever.

It all goes a bit downhill after this. There are some nice touches – Benny Hill's line, “if only people could be more like flowers,” is as touching as it is bizarre. Noel Coward has a wonderful jawline, shown to best effect when he is unexpectedly confronted by Michael Caine in the prison toilets. Marvellous. Caine's character shagging multiple girls at the same time is a nod to the permissive 60s, but all is left behind with London.

Special mention should go to Douglas Slocombe, the English DP who also did all the Indiana Jones films.


The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

Nice tense early 70s hijack thriller with Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw as the two opposing protagonists. Notable for its sense of realism. The New York subway is shown in realistic decline. One of the odd things I find about this movie, viewd from our early 21st Century age, is the general incomprehension by all except the hi-jackers that the subway car has in fact been hi-jacked. These days everyone would automatically and immediately assume that it was terrorists.

The demise of Robert Shaw's character is very chilling, eliciting a “Jesus” from this viewer – immediately followed by a “Christ” by Walter Matthau!

Furniture design resource

http://www.architonic.com/

In Vitra Veritas

Sigh! Such lovely furniture:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,11913,1291613,00.html

http://www.vitra.com/

But is my pun on Vitra better than the Observer's La Dolce Vitra? Answers on the back of a 500 Euro note please...