| Author | Message | ||
     Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2132 Registered: 10-2006 |
Pomme – Full Live Concert | The Circle° Sessions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9YzkQUA fXY A few songs old & new from the wonderful Pomme, whose voice is maturing beautifully. She’s also sneaked out a new album since I last checked up on her. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2141 Registered: 10-2006 |
Catching up on Utube with one of my favourite TV formats, the Classic Albums series: Tears for Fears, Big Chair, not an album I’ve ever listened to, so it was quite illuminating to see these two articulate, relaxed middle-aged gents talk us through it, plus contributions from a mix of people, not the usual suspects but, for instance, John Grant; and then Suede’s Coming Up. Brett now very prim, like a defrocked priest who teaches RI in a boy's public school. Again, articulate, intelligent and witty contributions from all concerned. I especially love to hear about the origins of a song, how it comes into being, is developed, evolved and transformed into the burnished hit we’re all familiar with. Everybody wants to rule the world, a monster song growing out of two random notes that Roland had a vague fondness for but didn't really know what to do with, is a nice case in point, almost being jettisoned several times before it found its way. The famous documentary on Dark Side of the Moon is probably the apex of this sort of thing, a real masterpiece of how a piece of communal art creeps painfully towards fruition. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2155 Registered: 10-2006 |
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGs65LK_ yK4 A rather good Morrissey concert. When he sticks to singing his excellent songs and a bit of droll patter, he puts on a fine show, even with a voice, not uneffectively, slightly on the hoarse side. Wonderful gothic finale too! His band for a long time has employed a thuggish relentlessness I never particularly enjoyed and didn’t feel suited his singing: here, his first post-JM guitarist Alain Whyte is back and there are a couple of other changes that lighten up the textures and fit him perfectly. Some good new songs too, with Saint in a stained glass window a suitably melodramatic howl for peace. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1493 Registered: 04-2005 |
A fascinating hour watching a documentary about the recording of the soundtrack to Werner Herzog's film "Gizzly Man". Richard Thompson in fine form. And as for Herzog ? He could recite cooking recipes and I would listen attentively  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78x6NnvH QyY | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4800 Registered: 03-2005 |
A pretty good quality video of the December 3, 2022 performance of classic Uruguayan album "Diciembra." This album was released in 2011 by 3Pecados, a three-piece band heavily augmented on the recording. I was stunned by its cinematic sweep when I first heard it. In that sense it made me think of Augie March and some of the Triffids' work. One of the tres Pecados died prematurely which resulted in a still birth for "Diciembra" as a pan-South American cultural possibility but within Uruguay it accumulated legendary status. Pau O'Bianchi, the singer and songwriter behind 3Pecados, decided to stage a series of performances of the album in December of 2022 using his successor band Alucinaciones en Familia. The performance is faithful to the original. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-HsB7Vr 1CQ Having heard a lot of pop music from around the globe over the past handful of years I'd have to say that "Diciembra" is one of the great standouts. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4802 Registered: 03-2005 |
I'm late to it but two days ago I saw the subtitled version of "Im Westen Nichts Neues" in a theater. I've read the Australian translation of the book twice and even labored through the original German of one of Remarque's follow-ups, "Drei Kameraden," for my sixth-year German class in high school. I can assure you that I missed virtually everything in that book and hope to read the translation someday soon. I knew I was in for a rough ride when I bought my ticket, particularly by current events. I was deeply moved by the film's refusal to apply any weight toward helping the viewer form an emotional resolution. We see Paul overcome by remorse after killing two different enemy soldiers at different points in the film and then see him numbed by the succession of loss of his friends and comrades until he was finally a virtual killing machine when ordered to attack before the armistice. I walked out of the theater thinking to myself "I've never had a clue what WWI was about." I stopped in my tracks on the sidewalk and turned around to enter the bookstore two doors away from the theater and picked up a paperback copy of Barbara Tuchman's "The Guns of August." I've meant to read it for a couple years now. I let go of my usual insistence upon a hardcover copy and bought what the store had on offer. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2161 Registered: 10-2006 |
I enjoyed Guns of A a great deal, Randy. Tuchman was savaged fairly roughly by male scholars, apparently because women academics cannot possibly know anything about military matters and strategy and so on and she maybe gets a division number wrong here and there. As usual, having read a book, its contents are unloaded from my mind like a seasonal Italian landslide, leaving very little behind it, except in this case a lot more cavalry action than we usually see represented, especially on the Russian front, since fixed trench warfare had not settled in yet at the start of the war. Two of my great-uncles fought over there, sweet Scottish laddies, one leaving his nerves and the other half his face. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4803 Registered: 03-2005 |
Stuart, I also effectively purge books from my accessible memory not long after reading them. Which means I'll need to read the Remarque novel a third time. This morning I got wind of the German critical response to the above film. They slate it for basically skipping the book in favor of a crash-boom Hollywood spectacle. Color me embarrassed for falling for it, but I do still think that the film was gratifyingly free of glib emotional programming. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1504 Registered: 04-2005 |
Went to the cinema to see the Irish film "An Cailín Ciúin" ("The Quiet Girl"). Simply stunning and well worth all the praise it has received. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10353 Registered: 05-2005 |
Frankie Boyle’s Farewell to the monarchy. I sometimes find his attempts to shock tedious, but this is top notch, tightly scripted and gag after gag. The whole thing is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=deskto p&v=w8vYNEUocys | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10366 Registered: 05-2005 |
Just been to the cinema for the first time in maybe two years. Longest ever between trips. And what a film to return to, a French thriller called November, based on the Islamist terrorism murders in Paris on 13/11/15. I was working on the foreign desk in the Guardian’s Sydney office as it all unfolded in front of our eyes on TV screens and worked on stories all day. As much as you can from the other side of the world using wire services. Fantastic film. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1511 Registered: 04-2005 |
Pádraig I saw "Novembre" when it came out in France and was intially impressed by it. But be aware that there are a lot of questions on its accuracy, espcially in the depiction of the final assault. The film depicts a hail of gunfire coming from the terrorists in the flat, whereas in reality they shot only 11 pistol shots. And then (following their failed door explosion) the police fired more than 1,500 into the flat ! All injuries to the police came from ricochets from their own colleagues and it's possible that they managed to even shoot dead their own sniffer dog. Apparently the FBI use this French operation as a case book example of what NOT to do in an assault situation Source : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op%C3%A9ra tion_polici%C3%A8re_du_18_novembre_2015_ %C3%A0_Saint-Denis PS I saw "Everything Everywhere All at Once" at the weekend. Maybe I am not in the targetted audience but what a crock of sh*t ! "The Quiet Girl" was much more deserving of the best film Oscar. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4829 Registered: 03-2005 |
This thread reminds me to dig through the current local movie theater offerings. The title of "Everything Everywhere All at Once" is enough to put me off that one. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10369 Registered: 05-2005 |
Damn it. I'll just have to take it as a thriller then. Next you'll be telling me that all male French cops aren't that handsome and female French cops aren't all that beautiful. Like Randy, Everything Everywhere All at Once's title was everything I needed all at once to know I never wanted to see it anywhere. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2201 Registered: 10-2006 |
Song Of Summer – Ken Russell One of those famous films I’d heard about but never seen turns up on Youtube: Ken Russell’s short, fiercely intense portrait of the last years of the composer Delius’s life, with all the poetry but none of the wonkiness of the director’s later career. Max Adrian, an actor I mainly remember for the vulgarly hilarious Frankie Howerd pun-fest Up Pompeii, is stunning as the composer. A beautiful, moving film about music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy8Crdh3 Mh8 | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4835 Registered: 03-2005 |
Thank you for that Stuart. I've just watched it. Somewhere I have a single LP of Delius' music that I haven't played in decades. I thought he was a French composer! This was a wonderfully odd and fascinating film that seemed familiar. Then I checked Wikipedia and found that Russell did "Women in Love" the next year. A friend showed me that film maybe 6 months ago or so. My familiarity with film is only casual so I didn't know anything about Ken Russell. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1516 Registered: 04-2005 |
Ken Russell made the (bonkers) film of The Who's (bonkers) "Tommy". I went to see the film at the cinema when it came out. A couple of months later I was on holiday with my parents on Malta, where the Catholic church still censored all the films. The running time of "Tommy" when I had seen it in Glasgow was almost 2 hours whereas the Maltese version was only 55 mins long ! Too much sex and drugs and rock'n'roll for the Maltese | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4836 Registered: 03-2005 |
That's very funny Andrew. Did you actually see it? Were there any songs left? Or were they all there but shorter? It would have been a fun job being their censor. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2202 Registered: 10-2006 |
I seem to remember other Ken R censorship (there was quite a lot) involved the nude male wrestling scene in Women in Love, where, after the scissors of, I think, the Japanese censor, the action leapt from the two men wholly clothed to them naked and panting on the carpet, thus becoming known in Japan as The Great Buggery Scene. Oliver Reed enjoyed recounting the filming of that particular event, saying that, in order to look at his best, he kept jumping behind the Chinese screen on the set for “a quick Jodrell”. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10391 Registered: 05-2005 |
Deadloch, a new Australian murder mystery/comedy. So far, so great. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10392 Registered: 05-2005 |
The A-League grand final between Central Coast Mariners and Melbourne City. CCM are the smallest club in the league, Melbourne City are owned by the same Abu Dhabi gas money as owns Manchester City, New York City and more. CCM just won 6-1, to my great delight. I hope the City group’s losing streak continues later in the FA Cup final. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10414 Registered: 05-2005 |
An Irish crime drama called Clean Sweep. I’ve only watched one episode, but it was a good start. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1525 Registered: 04-2005 |
Following on to an interesting article about "Empires and Dance" in the Guardian, Simple Minds... https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/j un/27/a-nuclear-reactor-of-music-the-sto ry-of-simple-minds-classic-album-empires -and-dance Hard to believe now that they were once up there with Joy Division and the Bunnymen for all us big-coat-wearing angst-ridden young men. One of the greatest tail-offs in quality ever. Their first few records were great and if they had just stayed true to their European roots who knows ? I saw them twice in Glasgow around the time of this STV performance. Amazing ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqCl3QCX Fl4 | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10460 Registered: 05-2005 |
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. Watching it on TV right now. It’s great. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10536 Registered: 05-2005 |
Last Week Tonight With John Oliver. It’s great to see him back on air and I’m looking forward to Colbert and Meyers returning too. | ||
| TROU Member Username: Trou Post Number: 562 Registered: 05-2005 |
For the falling of Simple Minds, it should be interesting to read the Derek Forbes side. https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/product/de rek-forbes/a-very-simple-mind |