Drive in the Yorkshire Dales and Forest of Bowland

The afternoon was sufficiently bright and warm enough to allow me to drive with the MX5s top down: a rare thing this last couple of months! So with the injunction ‘carpe diem!’ in mind, I had a drive in the Yorkshire Dales and the Forest of Bowland. However grey and black billowing clouds were never far away as can be seen in the photo’s that I took, which can be viewed in the photo above.

Ingmar Bergman 89th Birthday BBC Programmes

To mark the 89th birthday of Sweden’s greatest director, Ingmar Bergman, BBC 4 has broadcast this weekend two Arena documentaries. The first on Friday evening featured three people who had been given, we are told, the rare privilege of interviewing the great man himself. One of these was writer and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg, who had interviewed Bergman thirty five years ago for his South Bank Show. Bragg has been a fan of Bergman since his undergraduate days when he saw his first foreign film which happened to be Bergman’s Summer With Monika. The film, and not to mention the very alluring eponymous star, had a profound effect on him. Whilst being interviewed, Bergman, observed Bragg, could not resist telling everyone on the set what to do.
The second documentary was one made by Swedish TV in 2004 when Bergman was interviewed on the isolated island that he now lives on.
Not much was mentioned in both documentaries about my own favourite Bergman film, Fanny and Alexander. More was made of Cries and Whispers and The Seventh Seal. Fanny and Alexander is available from The Criterion Collection in a very beautiful transfer and should be in every film lover’s collection.
Both programmes are worth watching if they are repeated. Better though is to watch the films themselves.

More You Tube Videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt_PYw0R_i8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSZYHl0EfQc

Animated Verdi

Delightful animated sequence using music from Verdi's La Traviate.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xp7vr_verdi-traviata-choeur-bohemiens

The White Countess

This is another film that I missed last year and only now catching up with it on DVD. Has all the Merchant and Ivory qualities that one has come to expect plus the usual fine acting from Ralph Fiennes and the Richardson girls. Highly recommended.

Roma 2 - Manchester United 1

What a disappointment! Scholes is sent off and Manchester United lose to Roma in the first leg of the European Champioship Quarter Final in Rome this evening.

Henning Kraggerud

Henning Kraggerud was the soloist in Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto played at last night's Halle Thursday Series Concert. And what a performance he gave! Exciting, brilliant, sensitive, heartfelt are just some of th adjectives that come to mind as this sensational young norwegian found his way round this virtuoso war horse. This is the first time that I have heard this thirty four year old (though I believe that he has played with the Halle several times before) and I look forward to hearing him play again! Meanwhile I shall have to content myself with listening to three Naxos compact discs in which he plays and which I have now ordered: 'Norwegian Violin Favourites'; 'Grieg - Violin Sonatas Nos 1 - 3 ' and the "Sibelius; Sinding - Violin Concertos" Can't wait.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf at the Royal Exchange, Manchester

This is one of the great plays of the 20th century and a long one too i.e. if you perform it as currently at the Royal Exchange in Manchester where the director, Sarah Frankcom, has decided to weld acts one and two together so that the second half of this long evening begins with act 3, which for me does n't really work. Proof of which were the large number of empty seats after the first act which weighs in at two hours. One has to concentrate really hard for this length of time, not to mention also have a strong bladder! As a result we also miss the titles of each act, which give us a clue as to what is about to follow: Act 1 Fun and Games; Act 2 Walpurgis Nacht and Act 3 Exorcism.

There have been some great productions of this play in recent times: Kathleen Turner gave a great performance in London last year and there was of course the celebrated film version with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. In other words some hard acts to follow!On the whole the Manchester team do extremely well. But I had problems with the accent of Barbara Marten who plays Martha and who sounded at times like a gangsters moll so thick was her Bronx vocal twang. Philip Bretherton plays George who seemed to me to get everything right. His performance grew in staure as the evening progressed. Michael Begley and Joanne Froggatt convincingly play husband and wife Nicky and Honey.

Manchester United 4 - 1 Bolton

Manchester United did the business again yesterday against Bolton, bringing the Premiership Title a lot nearer. Worryingly though was the ankle injury that Gary Neville received from a bad tackle involving Gary Speed, which looks as though he will now be precluded from taking part in the forthcoming Euro 2008 qualifiers with Israel and Andorra.

I'm not really interested in the world of fashion. I regularly, without reading, cast aside all the supplements in the Sunday newspapers and I think what a waste of time and money including all that rubbish in a newspaper. Did he/she really pay £100 for a pair of badly torn jeans I ask myself. I therefore vacillated about seeing 'The Devil Wears Prada' ; even though lots several friends had recommended it. After watching the recently released DVD this week I now realise that I should never have wavered: this is a funny and clever film that is well directed by David Frankel and wittily written by Aline Brosh McKenna, who provides us with some amusing not to say philosophical insights into the fashion industry. Meryl Streep as 'the Dragon Lady', Anne Hathaway as 'the new Emily' deliver some entertaining characterisations. Mention must be made also of a fine supporting cast: principally Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci. I won't go into the plot and storyline, that would just spoil the surprises for those who haven't yet seen this delightful film. Highly recommended.

Rachmaninov's Hands

Rachmaninov famously had large hands able to span over an octave and a half on a piano making some of his piano compositions incredibly difficult to play. Click on the link below to see one pianist's novel way of overcoming this problem........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifKKlhYF53w

Liverpool 0 - Manchester United 1

Down to ten men in the closing minutes of the game , Manchester United managed to hold on and score a deciding goal in what looked as though it was going to be a goalless draw against Liverpool at Anfield Road this lunchtime.

The Story of the Weeping Camel

Told in the style of a documentary this understated film tells the story of a group of Mongolian herders and their attempts at getting one of their camels to bond with it’s newly born colt. Superbly photographed and naturally acted by its cast, 'The Story of The Weeping Camel' slowly unfolds, revealing how three generations of people go about their simple daily lives tending their sheep and camels whilst living on the edge of modernity. The people fascinate and enchant as we observe them living their uncomplicated lives in their canvas houses in the desert. Yes, for some the story may seem unhurried and measured, but it is because of this that we are given the opportunity to watch, take in and consider what we are viewing; not something we are allowed to do when viewing most mainstream films. And what of the title? Well you have to wait till almost the end of the film for the answer to that question.

Summary

Superbly photographed and naturally acted by its cast, 'The Story of The Weeping Camel' slowly unfolds, revealing how three generations of people go about their simple daily lives tending their sheep and camels whilst living on the edge of modernity. Highly recommended.

Long Day Closes

Through the use of music,soundtracks of films,minimal dialogue,imaginative lighting and camerawork,the director Terence Davies recreates the lost world of his childhood in 1950s Liverpool. The film is nostalgic but never sentimental and Davies has the marvelous gift of making the mundane poetic.Quite simply a masterpiece and a film that deserves to be better known. It should be in anybodys 100 best films of all time: it's certainly in mine.

Symphony No.8 - Dimitri Shostakovich

Berglund's impressive reading of this symphony is served well with a recording (in SACD surround sound) of amazing range and power. This disc is up there with the best interpretations; and for sure this symphony hasn't been better recorded. Highly recommended.

Carl Theodor Dreyer

Carl Theodor Dreyer was not a new name to me; I certainly had heard of his films 'Day of Wrath' and 'Joan of Arc', but that was about all. I had never seen one of his works until the other day when I rented the Eureka two disc set of his 1923 silent masterpiece 'Michael'. What a revelation!

'Michael' is perhaps one of Dreyer's lesser known films and barely gets a mention in any film reference books. Why that should be is hard to understand.
I'm now looking forward to the Criterion boxed set of some of his better known films

View From Malvern

Just returned from a couple of days staying with friends in Tewkesbury.
We spent Thursday afternoon walking in the Malvern Hills. The views from the tops must surely be the finest in the whole of England.

Roman Polansky

Another in the Taschen series of biographies of great film directors. For anyone who wants a concise and well illustrated guide the life and works of Polansky need look no further. Thoroughly recommended.

Just read and reading.

Anyone interested in British films in the 1950s and 60s will relish this illuminating and witty book. The chapter on Fraser's encounter with Bette Davis is worth the price of the book alone. Not to be missed!

Capote

At a department meeting four or five years ago we were discussing Harper Lee's 'To Kill A Mockingbird'. During the conversation I remarked that the little boy in the book who came to visit every year was none other than Truman Capote. "Who?" was the response. "The writer of 'In Cold Blood', I replied. "Never heard of him." was the unanimous response.

It's an irony that at the time of the publication of 'To Kill a Mockinbird' Harper Lee's celebrity was eclipsed by that of her close friend Truman Capote and today outside of America at least he is little known, especially to a younger generation of readers and indeed filmgoers who have not heard of 'Breakfast At Tiffany's' let alone 'In Cold Blood.' Perhaps this new film will redress matters.

The new film deals with the period in Capote's life when he was setting down the controversial story of the shocking and brutal murder of the Clutter family in his non fiction novel, 'In Cold Blood'.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman portrays the manipulative, self absorbed Capote without descending to caricature. His performance has quite rightly won him Best Actor Award in this year's Oscars. His confrères give equally committed performances and they and the rest of the crew are expertly directed by Miller.

If there was any justice in Hollywood, this film or Brokeback Mountain should have won the Best Picture category instead of Trash, I mean Crash!