Bird Brain and Murmuration

The book of the week is  The Wood by John Lewis-Stempel  Read by Greg Wise
 I am reflecting on this and life etc when I notice
Mr Wikipedia asserts that flocking behaviors are controlled by three simple rules:

    Separation - avoid crowding neighbors (short range repulsion)
    Alignment - steer towards average heading of neighbors
    Cohesion - steer towards average position of neighbors (long range attraction)

So there you go. However, I'm not sure I would be able to solve,  continuously, 3 similtaneous differential equations while flying 30 metres (variable) above the ground.

A nice touch in the description of blackbirds - squawking like enraged Ayatollahs.
(Is that not a touch perjorative... Ed?)
To a blackbird, possibly, but you are looking at a man who has enjoyed two filums in the last 24 hours, Dr Zhivago and Brooklyn and who's peace and equilibrium are not to be shifted!

No Bad for a Friday night In!

As the weather, politics and the hope for humanity deteriorates a quiet 'Friday Night In'  trawling the old interweb looking for inspiration. A tweet  for a gig at Celtic Connections set me off.   I look forward to hearing it. I then stumbled across Duncan Chisholm who has a new CD out titled Sandwood. Duncan's reflections on that magical place are here  There is a U Tube vid here  
(Spot the old man,  Am Buachaille - The Shepherd, at 1.46. )
Then I tripped over a link to Bothy Culture & Beyond  at The SSE Hydro as part of Celtic Connections 2018. A rare bash if this wee U Tubey thing is anything to go by.

(Are you sure you have not been at the Devil's Buttermilk again with all this depression and stumbling and tripping over...Ed?)

Absolutely not, probably just dementia and in any case I cheered myself up by watching Calvary.  My second or third time of watching. Still not clear who killed the dog! Boy that's a laugh a minute.

Paella Marinara

Well what else can you do

on a wet Easter Saturday.

Herself cooks a mean Paella Marinara and with help from family and an anniversary bottle a good time was had by all.
Which is more than can be said for the characters in High Rise (or the audience apparently)

We're Younger than that Now

The BFI, whom god preserve, have joined the i madness! There is now a BFiplayer...
This morning, sat with a cup of coffee, I watched an 11 min. short film about the Essex villages of Finchingfield and Great Bardfield in the 30's. Music courtesy of Benji B, the link takes you right there.


A different world, I tell you.

An Awfully Big Theory of Everything

Just booked to see the Imitation Game. Top film about a top secret, even the write ups are hush, hush on the QT!

In answer to an advertisement  Smart Boy Wanted,  placed in Secret Agents Classified, Steven Turing applies for the job. Turing, a wizard, mathematical genius and inventor of the Bombe Surprise shortens the Second World War by an average of ten years. He is played by Alan Fry and his faithful butler Higgs to Wodehousean perfection. The film deals sensitively with Turing's Motor Home Disease, a dreadful affliction which leaves him permanently incarcerated in a purpose built cottage with wheels on the outskirts of Cambridge. The crux of the film comes when Turing and Higgs are summoned to the mansion of the Dowager Hawkwind to discuss Life, the Universe, String Theory and how to get the Dreadfulhun off her lawn at Belchly Abbey... (continued, see Blog 94...)

Vivian Maier, Found!

To the local filum theatre to see Finding Vivian Maier.
Boy that girl could take snaps and if you don't believe me take a look at her official website.
An intriguing story about a woman who combined being a nanny with being a street photographer. Most if not all of her work was unpublished in her lifetime.
The co-director of the film, John Maloof, comes across a cache of her photos and determines to find the person. The truth as we all know is seldom pure and never simple. The film left me with a feeling that Vivian was possibly a flawed, certainly complex but very, very talented individual!

Summer Filums

We went to the local flea pit twice in one week.
West Side Story
Neither of us had seen it, or seen it all the way through, or could remember seeing it all the way through!
What emotion, what music, what dancing, what panstick, and that was just the sharks! Lenny could certainly write a tune or two.
No credit for our own dear Wills scratched on the wall at the end, such a difficult name to get right!

The World's End
A bit of a contrast. However, as part of the deeply moving Cornetto Trilogy it provided a useful reminder of the perils of drink, drugs and the undead! I have yet to see Shaun of the Dead or can remember seeing it all the way through! That is a treat to come.

Jim Dreams of Sushi

It being a cold January afternoon we turned up at our local flea pit, much improved, but alas sold to the lowest bidder!

It was a one off showing of Jiro Dreams of Sushi.

Lots of good press and we did enjoy it. Inspiring, and suitably inspired, three guesses what I am preparing for herself?

 

 

Interesting on a day when horse DNA seems to have been found in inappropriate places allegedly. 

Still, every little pony helps. You know it makes horse sense.

 I wonder if you can have Shetland Sushi?

(Arrgh...Ed)

Dersu Uzala

Went to the pics to see Dersu Uzala by Akira Kurosawa (1975, 70mm print Mosfilm, Sovcolor!)
Described by Philip French, who knows a thing or two about Filums, as

 an elegiac film of great visual and spiritual beauty

The print wasn't that good and for today's audience it must seem a little slow, 2hr. 40m.
Since the audience had an average age of 72 it didn't seem to matter much.
An afternoon of real, contemplative, pleasure.

I'm sorry I'll wake up now.

Headhunting

O Lord what a violent world we live in, even in our fiction. Scandicrime has had a hold on our family reading and viewing for some time so that it was inevitable that we would head for the 'Pea Flit' for a screening of the Headhunter based on a Jo Nesbo 'thriller' at some point. I don't want to give too much away but was struck by the filmic cracker of the 'hero' caught with his gun in his kecks and a crazed, spurned, woman of murderous intent wielding the biggest, sharpest, kitchen knife it is legal to posses. She is clearly set on performing butchery on his carcass without the benefit of death, initially.  Of course, he sticks his hand down his pants produces what looks like a pretty deadly erection and just manages to kill his assailant before she plunges the samurai Sabatier into his heart. Needless to say, she ends up dead sprawled on top of him in a somewhat suggestive position.
There was a clear teeing up of the line:-

There's a gun in my pants and I'm not pleased to see you!

The moment passed.

How pleasant after this to return home, the fire out, the kettle boiling and a good prawn curry cooked to perfection by Lady BP.
We also had the joy, later, of watching death in much warmer climes with Inspector Montepulciano - based on the Andrea Camilleri series.

All good stuff!

The Milk of Human Protest

A pleasant evening in with a DVD from the wonderful Suffolk County Libraries. Sad that they are to be slowly throttled with a ruse to ensure SCC will be able to say nothing to do with me gov. it was those idiots over there. It takes a special kind of mind to dream up the idea of getting an Industrial and Provident Society - a mutual organisation- to torture the libraries to death. I digress.

I have been meaning to watch Milk for some time. I am a great fan of Harvey Milk and what he achieved. He certainly learned how to organise. Strangely uplifting for a film in which the gay hero stands in dog shit and gets shot. Can't wait to see the look on the local librarian's face when I take it back!

Back with a Bang

Being at a loose end (rather than the end of my tether) on Saturday I went to the local flea pit to see The Guard.

The usual tale of sex, drugs and Irish traditional music. Nothing there that you could not take your mammy to see as long as she does not understand the Gaelic and why those two wee lassies dressed as Garda are wearing such short skirts. Terrible political incorrectness was noted!

I haven't laughed so much since the old queen died.

Made in Dagenham

We stumbled into our local flea pit to see this film. I had mistakenly taken it to be a tribute to our glorious, past and now failing leaderette, (one stop beyond Barking). That mistake aside I sat down to a very inspiring little film. There were glorious ironies all the way through from the titles - supported by the (late) film council. (Thank god says Dave and Gideon, we don't want any ideas about solidarity and what the right people in the right place at the right time can accomplish.) I'm sure the Mrs O'Gradys etc were not quite as Sally Hawkins, for all her gawk, and her mates appeared. Toby Ziegler(Richard Schiff the token lefty of the West Wing) appearing as the ball breaking Ford's fixer. He barks -break the strike- at the oleaginous union representative who obediently goes off to shaft the women who's union dues pay for his constipated, apparatchik lifestyle.

Barbara Cartland, the erstwhile Secretary of State for Employment, chuckling at the fact that Mrs O'Grady has (borrowed) the Biba while our Babs cuts a dash with C&A.

Interesting, while we wallow, debating with the forces of darkness about fair and fairness it was the Equal Pay Act. Even so, some are still more equal than others.

Came home to slump in front of Newsnight and the delicious ironies continued like sweets flying off an abandoned dessert trolley in a playground. Paxoid was grilling a number of lefties about solidarity, unionisation and where we will go in the current round of anarchy. You can just see him wobbling his wattles as he says that word. Tariq Ali who had been soothed with the sobriquet firebrand was mumbling something about class and I thought you're past it the Terry Kelly(try saying Tariq Ali in a scouse accent!) I knew would have asked Paxoid if he was a member of the NUJ, if he intended to strike in support of BBC Journos today, and if he was scabbing would he consider a pay cut in these difficult times? And he would have kept asking those questions until Paxoid did a Sweeny on him!
Heigh Ho.

Still did enjoy the film, right down to the closing title and 'you can get it if you really want it!'

Must keep an eye out what's on next at the flea pit.
Probably some Mike Leigh shoot 'em up sex romp!