I was hoping for another great short from Normand’s vast catalogue but no. Starring both co-directors, this docu-comedy short is pretty much disposable.
I started to write short pieces when I was living in a room too small to write a novel in.
Afterword to Fireworks
I was so impressed with Fireworks (also with myself, for finishing it), that I decided to read all of Angela Carter’s short fiction. So I acquired this collection and... nothing happened for the next few years. Last summer, I finally dug it out. It took me about nine months to read it, with breaks.
The book contains four previously published collections, including Fireworks, plus six other stories. Of collected works, The Bloody Chamber is the most conceptually and stylistically coherent one, all that Gothic horror stuff with an exception of more, um, light-hearted Puss-in-Boots. Black Venus is rather uneven. The best stories there are Our Lady of the Massacre, Peter and the Wolf and The Kitchen Child, this latter providing much-needed comic relief. It looks like Ms. Carter was fascinated with wolves: the real ones, were-ones and feral children. I like that.
American Ghosts and Old World Wonders is another mixed bag, redeemed by the tasty Text-Mex-Western Gun for the Devil and delightfully Borgesian The Merchant of Shadows (it made me reach for Internet to check if Hank Mann was really born Heinrich von Mannheim: of course not, and he never made a movie called Paracelsus with Charles Laughton).
While I researched my thesis, I was rooming back there in the city in an apartment over a New Age bookshop-cum-healthfood restaurant with a science fiction freak I’d met at a much earlier stage of studenthood during the chance intimacy of the mutual runs in Barcelona. Now he and I subsisted on brown rice courtesy of the Japanese waitress from downstairs, with whom we were both on, ahem, intimate terms, and he was always talking about aliens. He thought most of the people you met on the streets were aliens cunningly simulating human beings. He thought the Venusians were behind it.
He said he had tested Hiroko’s reality quotient sufficiently and she was clear, but I guessed from his look he wasn’t too sure about me.
Charlie Chaplin’s cinema career began in 1914. Caught in a Cabaret is just one of 36 (!) films featuring Chaplin released that year. Also starring the director, Mabel Normand. Watch for Minta Durfee as a dancer at 20:00.
8 May: «Celebrando Canarias» @ Plaza del Pilar Nuevo, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
The first of three concerts featuring Germán López (timple) and La Banda Sinfónica Municipal de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria conducted by Juan Roda Sapiña. The full programme is available here.
With Carlos Eliseo Alemán (flutes), Rayko León (piano), Fofi Lusson (double bass) and Osvaldo Hernández (drums).
24 May: «Del bolero al son» @ Auditorio José Antonio Ramos, Parque Doramas
Flamencubeando is a band from Jaén who mix flamenco with son, bolero, tango and other Latin American genres, playing the standards such as Alfonsina y El Mar, Lágrimas negras,
Nostalgias, Obsesión, Por una cabeza and, would you believe it, Ay Mi Gran Canaria in their own unique style. Featuring Curro Pérez (voice), Luís Delgado (guitar, bass guitar), Fernándo Delgado (piano) and Luis Delgado Jr. (percussion, flute, melodica).
31 May: Ernesto Rossger Trio @ Re-Read, Calle Bernardo de la Torre, 33
One of these events that are not advertised anywhere. We only learned about it because we were visiting this second-hand book shop almost daily. So, on occasion of the eighth anniversary of the Re-Read Las Palmas, we were treated to almost 90 minutes of jazz/blues/funk/bossa nova fusion, plus beer and snacks. With Ernesto Rossger (electric guitar), Carlos Ayala (electric bass), Alejandro Ramos (drums) and a special guest Louis Moreno (vocals).
An exhibition of historical photography in interesting location:
23 May — 1 June: «Presencia Española en el Sáhara» @ Palacio Militar de San Telmo, Calle Triana, 109
Upon finishing Ishiguro’s last novel, I borrowed, as it turned out, his first.
A Pale View of Hills is very different from Klara and the Sun but equally enjoyable. The narrator, Etsuko, moves between “now” (unspecified year) of England and “then” (unspecified year) of post-war Nagasaki. The dialogues in “then” Japan are invariably repetitive and are bound to get on some reader’s nerves. I loved them. They add, dare I say, authenticity. (I have no clue how they talked in post-war Japan but, in general, people repeat themselves all the time.) Etsuko’s conversations with her father-in-law, Ogata-San, are the best.
A little later that morning, Ogata-San emerged from his room dressed in his jacket and tie.
“Are you going out, Father?” I asked.
“I thought I’d just pay a visit to Dr Endo.”
“Dr Endo?”
“Yes, I thought I’d go and see how he was keeping these days.”
“But you’re not going before lunch, are you?”
“I thought I’d better go quite soon,” he said, looking at his watch. “Endo lives a little way outside Nagasaki now. I’ll need to get a train.”
“Well, let me pack you a lunch-box, it won’t take a minute.”
“Why, thank you, Etsuko. In that case I’ll wait a few minutes. In fact, I was hoping you’d offer to pack me lunch.”
“Then you should have asked,” I said, getting to my feet. “You won’t always get what you want just by hinting like that, Father.”
“But I knew you’d pick me up correctly, Etsuko. I have faith in you.”
I went through to the kitchen, put on some sandals and stepped down to the tiled floor. A few minutes later, the partition slid open and Ogata-San appeared at the doorway. He seated himself at the threshold to watch me working.
“What is that you’re cooking me there?”
“Nothing much. Just left-overs from last night. At such short notice, you don’t deserve any better.”
“And yet you’ll manage to turn it into something quite appetizing, I’m sure. What’s that you’re doing with the egg? That’s not a left-over too, is it?”
“I’m adding an omelette. You’re very fortunate, Father, I’m in such a generous mood.”
“An omelette. You must teach me how to do that. Is it difficult?”
“Extremely difficult. It would be hopeless you trying to learn at this stage.”
L’amour en fuite, released 20 years after Les quatre cents coups, brings the adventures of Antoine Doinel to an almost happy end. And, as it happens, it brings to the end the Antoine Doinel cycle by Filmoteca Canaria. I guess I would have enjoyed this comedy more if I didn’t see the other parts of the saga. The flashbacks, taken from the previous films, were not exactly necessary and some of them way too long. The torn-up photo story, however, is utterly brilliant.
This is what we’ve seen this unusually cold and rainy (by Canarian standards) April.
4 April: «La chica de Arlés» @ Sala Gabriel Rodó, Paseo Principe de Asturias, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
Joven Orquesta de Gran Canaria conducted by Josep Gil played music by Mozart, Bizet, Joaquín Rodrigo, Richard Strauss and Andrea Venet. The full programme available here.
11 April: Sofar concert @ Casa de Colón, Calle Colón, 1
Jonay Mesa (guitar) and Luis Sánchez (piano) present their forthcoming album Mind Trip. Postponed from 9 April.
24 April: «Cuentos y leyendas» @ Auditorio José Antonio Ramos, Parque Doramas
Finally! Twice postponed (24 January and then 6 February), this concert did not disappoint. La Banda Sinfónica Municipal de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria conducted by Juan Roda Sapiña. The programme included
30 gorgeous dresses from the wardrobe of the famous mezzo-soprano Teresa Berganza, by designers such as Loris Azzaro, Balenciaga, Elio Berhanyer, Pierre Cardin, Christian Lacroix and Guy Laroche, juxtaposed with works from the collection of Cabildo de Gran Canaria.
A set of uninspiring photos by Elia Verona of not particularly interesting body of Pepe Dámaso. The last word of the title (invariably misread as coprografía) does not help.
Mónica Cruz says that when she was a child, Víctor Ullate was considered to be a dancer of the caliber of Baryshnikov and Nureyev. Maybe. I first heard his name yesterday — fittingly, on International Dance Day, thanks to Filmoteca Canaria.
It was no one else but Antonio Gades who, after seeing Víctor dancing, insisted that the boy had to study ballet. So Ullate was accepted to the school of María de Ávila in Zaragoza — the first male student there. In 1964, he became a principal dancer of the Ballet du XXe siècle of Maurice Béjart. How cool is that?
Like many biographical documentaries, this one suffers from too many talking heads and too many too short snippets of actual Ullate performances. Still, I’m glad I watched it. Now to do my own research.
This film was screened as a part of the cycle Tiempo de memoria, memoria en el tiempo.
I first spotted the name of Kazuo Ishiguro on the back cover of Homo Deus. I had no idea who he was, so I looked him up. Wow.
Next thing, I went to the library in search of his books. And there they were. I picked this one, read the first page and took it with me.
The mildly dystopian society of the novel is dystopian only mildly because it’s pretty much like the present, at least in the West. (Replace “lifted” with “priveleged”, “oblong” with “smartphone”, and “The Yard” with “nursing home”.) The protagonist, Klara the Artificial Friend, religiously follows the First Asimov’s Law — to the degree of self-sacrifice. And how do the humans repay her, the ungrateful monkeys they are? (Jessie the cowgirl of Toy Story springs to mind.)
...Manager placed a hand on my shoulder and said, in a quieter voice than before:
‘Let me tell you something, Klara. Children make promises all the time. They come to the window, they promise all kinds of things. They promise to come back, they ask you not to let anyone else take you away. It happens all the time. But more often than not, the child never comes back. Or worse, the child comes back and ignores the poor AF who’s waited, and instead chooses another. It’s just the way children are. You’ve been watching and learning so much, Klara. Well, here’s another lesson for you. Do you understand?’
I like the way Ishiguro writes. As far as I know, his other works are not narrated by intelligent gynoids, so I don’t expect to find this particular style there. Off to the library to check out the next novel.
Every year, I think “this is the last one”; then my memory brings up a few more of her words or expressions. Here is another чёртова дюжина (baker’s dozen) of them.
The Wikipedia article about it bored me from the start (who is Howard Stern and why do I need to care?). Thankfully, I ignored it and went to see the film anyway. I’m glad I did.
After an unpromising intro, Ozzy Osbourne, as himself, says “what a fucking jerk” about Howard — from that moment on it’s getting better and better. A hilarious biopic/mockumentary mix with soundtrack featuring David Bowie, Deep Purple and Jimi Hendrix, among others, plus live AC/DC — what not to like?
Is Antoine really a “troubled youth”, “unhappy child” or “outcast”? I didn’t have such an impression. True, the teacher picks on Antoine, but he doesn’t spare other kids either. Here’s one of the IMDb trivia:
All the young actors who unsuccessfully auditioned for the role of Antoine were used in the classroom scenes.
That’s it: all schoolchildren are like Antoine. And, kids being kids, they enjoy themselves even in the most boring and oppressive environments — or find ways out. A gym class scene is simply perfect.
My father and Jean-Pierre both knew this was a very important scene and they had a long time to prepare for it. My father just gave him the questions he was to be asked but then told him to come up more or less with his own answers. That worked beautifully.
The snowy January gave way to a wet and windy February and then to an equally unpleasant March. The sidewalks were filling with mutilated corpses of umbrellas, and I was worrying that mine would join them in a matter of days, if not hours. (The glorious Fulton was yet to be discovered by me.)
One of those rainy afternoons a thought struck me: maybe intead of an umbrella I need, um, an Umbro? This windcheater stared at me through the shop window with its lonely diamond-shaped eye. “Will you take me home? Please?”
So I did. It must have been the first item of clothing I acquired in Leeds. Naturally, it was not called “vintage” back then. I don’t remember how much I paid for my “famous blue raincoat” but it couldn’t have been more than a tenner. I never expected this oversized piece of 100% nylon to become my best investment, garment-wise. And here it is, three decades later, still up to its job (of protecting me from the elements), as good as new. That’s quality. I’ve worn it over any other garb in my possession, including a puffer jacket and a backpack, from Leeds to Boston to Porvoo to Santander, etc. etc.
The concert of the students of Escuela Municipal de Educación Musical de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Works of women composers of 19th and 20th centuries such as Anne Crosby, Christine Donkin, Nancy Faber and Clara Schumann.
“Even more readable, even more important, than his excellent Sapiens”, says the quote on its back cover (by Kazuo Ishiguro, no less). Is it really so?
I have to admit that yes, it is. With chapters titles such as A Brief History of Lawns, Gap the Mind and Why Bankers are Different from Vampires, this book reads like a crime thriller. Well, the history of humankind is a crime thriller, but there have been only a few good storytellers. Harari is one of them.
On a more personal note, Homo Deus gives me a fair few ideas for my (hopefully near) future classes.
Suppose you were given a choice between the following two vacation packages:
Stone Age package: On day one we will hike for ten hours in a pristine forest, setting camp for the night in a clearing by a river. On day two we will canoe down the river for ten hours, camping on the shores of a small lake. On day three we will learn from the native people how to fish in the lake and how to find mushrooms in the nearby woods.
Modern proletarian package: On day one we will work for ten hours in a polluted textile factory, passing the night in a cramped apartment block. On day two we will work for ten hours as cashiers in the local department store, going back to sleep in the same apartment block. On day three we will learn from the native people how to open a bank account and fill out mortgage forms.
Which package would you choose?
And how about this (published in 2015):
Power will definitely not shift back to ordinary voters if Britain leaves the EU nor if Trump takes over the White House.
The task: rephrase the above sentence from the 2025 perspective, using both simple past and past perfect.
Some other predictions haven’t come true — yet. So far we didn’t see artificial intelligence meaningfully replacing doctors, lawyers and flight dispatchers, although there has been a surge in ChatGPT-generated fake research papers and job applications. What we do see at work is much more powerful natural stupidity. It doesn’t mean we are safe.
If you’ve ever seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit, don’t bother with this one. And if you’ve never seen Roger Rabbit, don’t bother with Cool World either: watch Roger Rabbit.
So what’s wrong with this film? Just about everything.
Cool World concludes the cycle Ralph Bakshi: Urban Noir, and about time too.
Finally, a Bakshi film that I actually liked. A soundtrack for the (best part of) 20th century, something for kids of today to watch. Don’t let the title put you off (yes, it makes me cringe too): “pop” here is short for popular music, moving from ragtime to punk with jazz, swing, soul and rock in between. Not pop music. I still don’t get why American artists insist on naming their creations “American something”.
It’s also pretty uneven. The story kind of disintegrates towards the end — as the quality of music goes down. Yet there are some truly beautiful or otherwise funny bits that made my night.
Imagine the frustration of Warren “I’m cute and I know it” Beatty who co-directed, co-wrote, produced and starred in this 1978 comedy. He was nominated for Oscars in all four corresponding categories and won none. However, the reason I watched Heaven Can Wait in the first place was not Beatty but his co-writer, to whom the new cycle Conociendo a Elaine May by Vértigo is dedicated. Alas, I missed the first film of the cycle.
I enjoyed the movie. Neither Beatty nor Julie Christie impressed me much, but the cast of supporting actors did. My favourite was Dyan Cannon as Julia, the murderous alcoholic wife of Mr. Farnsworth. Also, I’ve been a fan of Dave Grusin for the last forty years or so and his score for the film didn’t disappoint.
From the director of Le clitoris comes this charming “animated documentary series based on Caresses Magiques, a book series written and edited by Sarah Gagnon-Piché and Sara Hébert” (I took this quote from the end credits). The “animated documentary series” is really a mini-series, of five animated shorts no longer than 4 minutes each; and the “book series” was just two volumes, now out of print. The first of the films is narrated in English by Ms Malépart-Traversy herself; the other four feauture the voices of, I suppose, some of the book’s heroines (in French, with English subtitles). You can watch all the films on the National Film Board of Canada web site or on Vimeo (scroll down to the embedded videos).
From the author of Croqueta y Empanadilla comes something completely, utterly different. Also, profoundly beautiful. And as much unsettling. You’ll feel unsettled if you couldn’t figure out what is reality (F, “forest”) and what is dream (P, “Planeta”), especially when in P you also dream about F. As Valentina does. On top of that, in P all human communication, apart from that with live-in partner, happens in virtual reality (V).
Ralph Bakshi’s third feature looks like a combination of Fritz the Cat (animals) and Heavy Traffic (humans and live action). Finally, some sort of coherent plot, which makes the film actually watchable without constant thinking of when it’s gonna end. There is marginally less violence than in his two previous efforts and practically no sex — I wish this was the other way round. For me, Coonskin was the least offensive one of the three Bakshi’s films I’ve seen so far. Or maybe I’m developing tolerance to this stuff.
Marina Alberti’s directorial debut is a letter of love to her mother, Aitana Alberti León, and grandmother, María Teresa León. Now Aitana starts to show symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, which also affected María Teresa.
Now this was not in the film: according to Spanish Wikipedia, María Teresa León spent her last years of life in a sanatorium in Majadahonda, near Madrid. Her loving husband, Rafael Alberti, never accepted María Teresa’s illness and... escaped to Rome. What a gentlemen! She died alone and forgotten.
In a recent interview, the director Joe Houlberg says that it took six years to film Ozogoche. In the beginning it was supposed to be a documentary about strange behaviour of migratory birds, upland sandpipers (Bartramia longicauda), known in Ecuador as cuvivíes. There is no shortage of hypotheses why some of these birds travel some 10,000 kilometers from North America to Ozogoche lagoons only to plummet into the icy waters and die. What happened though, after these years of living with local community, the film creators realised that poor cuvivíes became, in words of Houlberg, “just an allegory of the true story <...>, the story of an indigenous family in the Ecuadorian páramo who are waiting for their relatives, waiting for something to change”. If you liked the magical realism of El Eco, you’ll fall in love with Ozogoche.
Javier Colina (double bass, accordion), Javier Infante (guitar) and Alexis Lemes (timple). The programme included material from the trio’s debut album Guiguan.
All-star band featuring Magdalena Padilla (vocals), Yuniel Rascón (guitar, tres), Fofi Lusson (bass) and Totó Noriega (percussion). Still, I can’t help but feel a bit disappointed. “Between salsa and boleros”, I didn’t hear a single salsa. Sure, Bésame mucho, Guantanamera and Quizás, quizás, quizás are all perennial classics... that were played, covered and re-covered ad nauseam. Look, there are thousands of fantastic and equally catchy Latin songs, why not trying something new. Agüita fresca? I’d say agua estancada.
Now, that was one helluva concert! La Banda Sinfónica Municipal de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria went big-band mode with standards such as At the Mambo Inn, Hot House and Soul Bossa Nova. Conductor: Juan Roda Sapiña. The line-up and full programme are available here.
The Colombian town of Gramalote was destroyed by a landslide in 2010. As Ayoze O’Shanahan explained before the screening, the filming of the documentary began exactly when the disaster struck. By the time of its release in 2012, there was little progress with resettlement or rebuilding: most Gramalote (ex-)residents still lived in tents. So the film ends on a bittersweet note that’s more bitter than sweet. I was happy to discover today that by October 2024 the construction of Nuevo Gramalote had been essentially completed.
The titular curse refers to the fate of the town (but of course, its destruction was prophesised before). The miracle was that there were no human casualties — naturally, thanks to the devoutness of Gramalote townfolk. Another explanation is that the slide was relatively slow-moving so the population had plenty of time to move out to safety. Unfortunately, one donkey died.
“A picture as excitingly different as its title!”, said the theatrical release poster for D.O.A.
To me, this 1949 film noir was as exciting as a long joke told after you heard its punchline. But, apparently, it’s a “classic of the genre”, complete with all the clichés of the genre: femmes fatales, mobsters, nighttime driving, etc. etc. The movie has spawned at least six remakes and a musical, so probably I miss something. Or it could be that D.O.A. fell into public domain too early — to be precise, in 1978, due to a silly filing error — an easy prey for idea-starved Hollywood producers.
Edmond O’Brien stars as Frank Bigelow, a pretty dull accountant who, upon learning that he’s mortally poisoned, transforms himself into a hard-boiled detective. Halfway through I got confused with more and more characters and kind of lost interest because, well, the man was gonna die anyway. The jazz band at The Fisherman is good, shame that our accountant doesn’t appreciate live music.
The movie has its share of comic moments, most of them are unintentionally so. Like the one where Frank barges into a second hospital in search of a second opinion:
Frank: Doctor, I want you to examine me for luminous poison. Doctor: Come right in here. (A few moments later.) Yeah, you’ve got it all right.
The doctor is so cocksure because he shows a test tube that glows in the dark. Great. (It’s puzzling why we don’t have a remake yet where Frank is an ex-KGB agent and “luminous poison” is identified as polonium-210.) Be careful what you drink.
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