Медена земја

a film by Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov

It was curious to watch the South Korean drama Oasis back-to-back to the Macedonian multi-award-winning documentary Honeyland. If some scenes of the former are of almost documentary quality, the latter film, as a whole, appears to be staged or, at the very least, unnecessarily dramatised. Perhaps the authors should have stuck to their original plan to make a short film. The photography is gorgeous and the desolate landscape is often breathtaking, but there’s just not enough content for 90 minutes.

오아시스

a film by Lee Chang-dong

The society is not kind to disabled people. They are not just ignored but also are taken advantage of, often by their own family. I have to confess that after reading the synopsis of Oasis I was not sure that I wanted to know the details. In the end, I went to see it anyway.

This very strange and totally believable love story of two misfits, masterfully portrayed by Sol Kyung-gu and Moon So-ri, doesn’t make for a comfortable viewing, and is not supposed to. But a few scenes of tenderness and the final scene are of such transcendental quality that, in spite of everything, the film fills you with optimism. You won’t regret watching it.

千と千尋の神隠し

a film by Hayao Miyazaki

There are movies you grow up watching. And then there are movies your kids grow up watching. Spirited Away is from the latter category. Not exactly my favourite Miyazaki film: I myself wouldn’t choose it for a Sunday evening in. But yesterday Timur expressed a wish to re-watch it, and so we all did.

Somehow I enjoyed it more yesterday than the previous n times. The score is amazing even by Joe Hisaishi’s own standard, and the train scene is one of the most beautiful in Miyazaki’s filmography.

Persepolis

by Marjane Satrapi
translated by Carlos Mayor

This year, Persepolis turns 20. I loved the animation; finally, I’ve got to read the book — a brand new edition containing all four volumes, in a brand new Spanish translation by Carlos Mayor.

As one could expect, there are differences between the comic and the animation. Among the “new” (for me) scenes, my favourites are the one with “ping-pong balls” Wolfy, Lucie’s boyfriend #18 (the chapter La píldora), and life drawing class with a model wearing the black chador (Los calcetines). Oh, by the way, the pages are not numbered, so I can’t tell you the exact page. For this price, it could be nice if this gorgeous book came with a bookmark.

장사리: 잊혀진 영웅들

a film by Kwak Kyung-taek and Kim Tae-hoon

This 2019 film opens the cycle 100 años de Cine Coreano (“100 years of Korean cinema”) offered by Filmoteca Canaria.

As “based on a true story” war films go, The Battle of Jangsari is not a bad one. Sure enough it’s got a fair share of melodrama but probably no more than any Hollywood war movie does. If you don’t like it, it’s best to stick to documentaries.

Kim Myung-min’s performance is outstanding. Maggie as portrayed by Megan Fox is an utterly unconvincing goody-two-shoes; George Eads is rather good as a cynical American general.

Me acuerdo: Beirut

by Zeina Abirached
translated by Lucía Bermúdez Carballo

Nothing distinguishes memories from ordinary moments. Only later do they make themselves known, from their scars.

Chris Marker

During the war, Zeina’s father got into the habit of listening to music at high volume. For example, to Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. Or to Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale by Berlioz. While Zeina preferred Ayam El Loulou by Sabah.

More images of the English-language edition of this book

Unwrapping KitKat. The nails of Florence Griffith Joyner. How to make a paper boat. Our memory is amazing. The earlier work of the author of El piano oriental is a charming memoir you’re bound to fall in love with.

Paranoid

by Black Sabbath

Paranoid, 50 years young today, is kind of genre-defining album. You can’t say you heard any heavy metal if you didn’t hear Paranoid. Right?

In my case, it was not even the first Sabbath’s album I heard. The wonderful and criminally underrated Technical Ecstasy was the first, in the early ’80s. It was not until 2000 that I actually sat down to listen to Paranoid in its entirety. So, happy 20^th to that.

In 1989, I didn’t go to Moscow Music Peace Festival featuring acts like Bon Jovi, Mötley Crüe, Scorpions and, wait, I’m getting there, Ozzy Osbourne — with Geezer Butler! Missing it is one of my regrets, mostly because of that event’s zeitgeist, although probably the only band worth seeing there were Scorpions. You can see the footage in the 1989 documentary «Десант в гнездо гласности» where Ozzy sings Paranoid (rather badly, in my opinion).

Later the same year, I went to see Black Sabbath live at Olimpiyskiy stadium in Moscow. They played incredible 13 concerts there, on 19 through 28 November as a part of their Headless Cross world tour. By that time, only Tony Iommi was left of the original line-up. But the rest of the band was truly stellar: the vocalist Tony Martin, the great Neil Murray on bass, the great late Geoff Nicholls on keys and the greatest, late Cozy Powell on drums. Dismal acoustics notwithstanding, it was a blast. Amazingly, one of those shows is available on YouTube. And of course, they played Iron Man, War Pigs and Paranoid.

The kids first heard Iron Man in Futurama (Anthology of Interest I, to be precise) and then in 2008 film Iron Man. Needless to say, Paranoid made its way to Yuri’s MP3 player soon after that. Of zillions of Sabbath’s covers out there (I can’t honestly pretend that I heard even 1% of them), give me Hayseed Dixie’s version of War Pigs any time.

Mala estrella

by Barbara Baldi
translated by Gema Moraleda

Nottinghamshire, December 1850.

Does it look as bleak as it sounds?

You bet.

The great danger of the metric system

First published 15 September 2020 @ low-throughput

A few fact(oid)s about Dame Agatha Christie I haven’t been aware until now.

• Pharmacy and toxicology were among Christie’s many interests. During the the First World War, she took some time off her work as a nurse to study for the Apothecaries Hall Examination. She wrote in her autobiography:

  To be introduced suddenly to the periodic table, atomic weight, and the ramifications of coal-tar derivatives was apt to result in bewilderment. However, I found my feet, mastered the simpler facts, and after we had blown up our Cona coffee machine in the process of practising Marsh’s test for arsenic our progress was well on the way. <...>

  A chemist’s shop, the first time that you go behind the scenes, is a revelation. Being amateurs in our hospital work, we measured every bottle of medicine with the utmost accuracy. When the doctor prescribed twenty grains of bismuth carbonate to a dose, exactly twenty grains the patient got. Since we were amateurs, I think this was a good thing, but I imagine that any chemist who has done his five years, and got his minor pharmaceutical degree, knows his stuff in the same way as a good cook knows hers. He tosses in portions from the various stock bottles with the utmost confidence, without bothering to measure or weigh at all. He measures his poisons or dangerous drugs carefully, of course, but the harmless stuff goes in in the approximate dollops. Colouring and flavouring are added in much the same way. This sometimes results in the patients coming back and complaining that their medicine is a different colour from last time. <...>

  During the course of my pharmaceutical instruction on Sunday afternoons, I was faced with a problem. It was incumbent upon the entrants to the examination to deal with both the ordinary system and the metric system of measurements. My pharmacist gave me practice in making up preparations to the metric formula. Neither doctors nor chemists like the metrical system in operation. One of our doctors at the hospital never learned what ‘containing 0.1’ really meant, and would say, ‘Now let me see, is this solution one in a hundred or one in a thousand?’ The great danger of the metric system is that if you go wrong you go ten times wrong. <...>

  It was while I was working in the dispensary that I first conceived the idea of writing a detective story.

• It was not until 1920 that her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, saw the light of day. The corresponding episode of Poirot was released 30 years ago on occasion of Christie’s 100^th birthday. Now, to mark the centenary of Styles, the Royal Mint issued the new £2 coins featuring the author’s signature, a jigsaw puzzle and some instruments of murder.
  

• I visited Ayuntamiento de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria on many a bureaucracy-related occasion without knowing that its (pretty ugly) headquarters occupy the place of the former Quiney’s Hotel Metropole where Agatha Christie stayed in 1927.

  Las Palmas is still my ideal of the place to go in the winter months. I believe nowadays it is a tourist resort and has lost its early charm. Then it was quiet and peaceful. Very few people came there except those who stayed for a month or two in winter and preferred it to Madeira. It had two perfect beaches. The temperature was perfect too: the average was about 70, which is, to my mind, what a summer temperature should be.

  Agatha Christie: An Autobiography
  

• The Mousetrap was not only the longest-running West End show but it had the longest initial run of any play in history. It premiered in 1952 and ran continuously until March 2020 until it was rudely interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Klezmer: 2. Feliz aniversario, Scylla

by Joann Sfar
translated by Manel Domínguez

So this was the first Klezmer book that I read, before La Conquista del Este. And I liked it more than the vol. 1. Why? The vol. 1 reads more like a prequel, with too many events squeezed together to explain the whos and whys of the band. Feliz aniversario, Scylla lasts just one night. The plot is both incredible and convincing. (Even the visit of the Angel of Death is convincing.) Ditto the inner story of cossack Raki and talking wolf, narrated by Tchokola — unlike the other Tchokola’s tales, where he is just taking a piss. And the scene of Hava and Yaacov in a bathtub together is as sensual as it is hilarious.

The author’s notes, once again, are very much worth reading, even though it means (once again!) struggling with that lettering. This time, Sfar talks about watercolour and what he learned from his heroes and brothers-in-arms: Christophe Blain, Emmanuel Guibert, Gipi and Quentin Blake.

Klezmer: 1. La Conquista del Este

by Joann Sfar
preface by Marc-Alain Ouaknin
translated by Manel Domínguez

I discovered this book thanks to Pascin, the earlier work by Sfar. Or, rather, first I discovered, and then read, Klezmer vol. 2, thanks to Pascin, and only after that found (and read) Klezmer vol. 1.

I loved the pen and watercolour drawings, very different from black-and-white ones in Pascin. Some of them reminded me of Quentin Blake’s illustrations; the others are darker, bolder affairs. But all unmistakably Sfar. As Rabbi Ouaknin says in the preface: “Sfar draws in Yiddish like others speak it”. I loved the the author’s sense of humour. I loved the quotes from Babel. The only thing I’m not quite happy with is lettering — some words were a bit of a challenge to decipher! Perhaps the challenge was intended.

So find and read it, in whatever language you can. And don’t forget the notes in the end. It seems that Joann Sfar, apart from being a comics artist, novelist, actor and film director, is also a musician. If you feel inspired and would like to try your hand at klezmer, Sfar recommends The Compleat Klezmer (Tara Publications) book by Henry Sapoznik and music from the accompanying CD.

Play list (from the author’s notes) Amsterdam Klezmer Band — any theme from their album Limonchiki, for example Di Naie Chuppe In Odess (Aaron Lebedeff) — from album Kasbek: Klezmer à la russe Belz — from album Yankele by Moshe Leiser, Ami Flammer and Gérard Barreaux Tumbalalaika and Sheyn Vi Di Levoneh — both from You Should Be So Lucky! by Maxwell Street Klezmer Band

Jesus Christ Superstar

by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice

I only want to say that Jesus Christ Superstar was released fifty years ago this month. I couldn’t find more precise date than “September 1970”, so it might be fifty years ago today. Can’t say when exactly I heard it for the first time, but it also must have been the early ’70s and it was my cousin’s 9 cm/s magnetic tape reel. Suffice to say, I grew up on this particular version of the rock opera, needless to say, without understanding the lyrics. (Many years later, I discovered that understanding of the lyrics didn’t spoil my enjoyment of JCS at all, unlike what happened with a lot of Anglophone rock for me.) In 1980s, I had an opportunity to acquire the vinyl, and I even borrowed from my brother a princely sum, an equivalent of my monthly stipend... only to discover that the album on sale, still in original shrink-wrap, was The Original Motion Picture Sound Track Album. Which was not good enough: I was looking for the original and the best.

In the last days of USSR, I bought the double LP Иисус Христос Суперзвезда issued pirated by Andrei Tropillo’s label АнТроп, aka «Продюсерский Центр Рок-н-ролльных Приходов Единой Евангелическо-Лютеранской Церкви России». Well. The aforementioned reel, which was still around, sounded better. I had quite a number of АнТроп vinyls, invariably of low sound quality and with funny modifications, or loose approximations, of the original sleeve designs. Those were the days.

In 1995, on its 25^th anniversary, more or less, I finally got hold of a two-CD box in Leeds, England. I was surprised to learn that the copyright belonged to a body known as Leeds Music Ltd. (It doesn’t exist anymore, being swallowed first by MCA and eventually by Universal.) I still have this box (and CDs, of course).

Here are some trivia related to JCS that I was not-quite-aware of until now:

• Lloyd Webber and Rice wrote Try It And See, later recorded by Rita Pavone, for the 1969 Eurovision Song Contest. The song was rejected. Curiously, Save Your Kisses for Me, with a suspiciously similar chorus, actually won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1976.
• Both Yvonne Elliman and Tony Ashton appear on Jon Lord’s Gemini Suite. Eric Clapton asked Elliman to sing backing vocals on his cover of I Shot the Sheriff and she appeared on a string of Clapton’ albums from 1974 to 1977. Also, the Bee Gees originally wrote How Deep Is Your Love for Elliman. How cool is that?
• Apparently, it was Tim Rice who, “armed with a long, flat piece of board with another smaller section hinged on it, flapped away providing the lashes and doing the counting” on The Thirty-Nine Lashes.
• It turns out that one of my favourite jazz musicians, Kenny Wheeler, played trumpet on this recording!
• According to Something Else! webzine, Ian Gillan “nailed all of his vocals in a mere three hours”... later, he turned down the offers for the stage and film versions of JSC “but not before asking for £250,000 and demanding that all of Deep Purple be paid as well — since filming was going to keep the group off the road”.

By the way, it was Aunty Sonia who first told me the name of the lead singer.

For the last half of the century, the opera has been an inspiration for countless musicians, from Livin’ Blues (look for their 1971 rendition of Overture on Bamboozle) to this year’s all-female JCS with Shoshana Bean as Judas, Morgan James as Jesus, and Cynthia Erivo as Mary (the She is Risen vol. I is out now). Here’s to the next fifty years!