Cherry Hinton Festival 2009

24-strong Arco Iris was leading the parade at this year’s Cherry Hinton Festival. Which means, we could walk at our own speed rather than trying to close the gap between us and the floats. The promised heavy rain never materialised — it was a perfect Summer day! On the downside, there was Saturday traffic as usual so we had to keep to the pavements (and dodge lampposts and stuff). I think we managed to make some good noise nevertheless. Immediately after the parade, we had a short slot (about 20 minutes) at the Arena.

No more gigs is planned for a month or so.

Italiensk for begyndere

a film by Lone Scherfig

I hope that the DVD box sporting the quote “Charming, romantic comedy — The Sun” (yeugh) won’t put you off. Maybe not your typical romantic comedy, but Italian for Beginners, written and directed by Lone Scherfig, is a wonderfully funny and touching movie. Sure, there must be viewers who find it boring or depressing: it is almost completely devoid of both violence and sentimentality. (Well, there was violence behind the scenes: “There was some disagreement about the accentuation of a hymn. Pastor Wredmann got rather physical. He pushed the organist over the balcony.”) But it has life, death, funeral (x 3), love (x 3), some very Danish humour and, of course, Italian. Low budget, great result.

A Plum in Your Mouth

by Andrew Taylor

This is a delightful little book. And yet, reading it, I could not help thinking how much better it could have been. In the Introduction, the author states that “there will be none of the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet”. It’s a shame, considering that throughout the book he endeavours to reproduce the nuances of English pronunciation by means of... English spelling, which, as he points out himself, is less than adequate for the task (see The Logical Fallacy in the last chapter). For instance, according to Taylor, the RP speakers say bath as barth and castle as carrsel — I bet this description makes little sense for those who actually can pronounce r. Or take the schwa, “the most useful and common vowel of all”, which is now and then represented with uh rather than with ə. Elsewhere, the book in not free from linguistic speak, so we meet “flat a”, “rounded u” and “glottal stop” quite a lot. And so on, and so forth.

Perhaps the printed page is simply a wrong medium here. What we really need is an audiobook, preferably narrated by somebody like Rory Bremner (who wrote a foreword) or Hugh Laurie. That would be a bestseller.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

a film by Joel & Ethan Coen

I doubt that Coen brothers would define their 2000 film as a musical comedy. But comedy it is, and music undoubtedly is one of its main heroes. The music also has acquired a life of its own, with Grammy-winning soundtrack album and live performances of real-life Soggy Bottom Boys and things like that. The opening song, Po’ Lazarus, sung by chain gang in the movie, was originally recorded back in 1950s by Alan Lomax as it was performed by real prisoners including James Carter. Aside from music — if such thing is possible here — great story, performances and dialogue (“We thought you was a toad!”). A film to enjoy again and again.

Sledgehammer

by Peter Gabriel
music video directed by Stephen R. Johnson

The 1980s was not the best decade for rock music, but it certainly was the golden era of music video. And there is no better video from ’80s than Peter Gabriel’s classic Sledgehammer, animated by Aardman. According to Wikipedia,

the music video was shot frame by frame. For one scene, Gabriel lay under a sheet of glass for 16 hours with raw fish.

I just love stop-motion films.

Tamara Walks on Water

by Shifra Horn

I guess it was hard for a girl to grow in Jaffa in early 20 century. Especially to grow while being called all sorts of names, like ‘carrot-head’, ‘Tamara another one’, ‘Tamara rooster’, ‘daughter of a hyena’ and ‘your ma is your grandma’. Especially when the said grandma, out of love to Tamara, tries to convince her that she is ugly and does not allow her to wear any pretty clothes, saying that those are “for whores”.

An enchanting book by Shifra Horn, far from being depressing, is very optimistic. At times, it is really funny too.

שפרה הורן When I dissolved into tears enfolded in her arms, she wept tearlessly with me and warned me to beware of men because they are dangerous. They have a stick, she explained to me, a flesh stick, and when this stick enters a girl’s body, it brings forth babies. That night, after she had fallen asleep with a sigh, I conferred with Yosef on a subject. We whispered and inspected the lower apertures of my body in the dim light of the streetlight, and deliberated on the matter. We made assumptions and rejected them, and finally selected the navel. תמרה הולכת על המים

I wish there were more moments like this, instead of rather unconvincing love affair of Tamara and Archimandrite Christodolos. Still, what’s written that’s written, and it’s a great read anyway.

Los abrazos rotos

a film by Pedro Almodóvar

The latest film of Almodóvar features his dream team of fabulous women from Volver, including (of course) Pene Cruz, Blanca Portillo, and Lola Dueñas. It is all top quality stuff, even though by the second half of the movie I wished it was a bit shorter. The scenes of “revelations” did not reveal anything that I haven’t figured out already. The (writing of) vampire sequence it hilarious, and final scenes make you want to watch director’s cut of fictitional movie Chicas y Maletas (a ruder version of Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios?), starring Cruz and Carmen Machi as Chon, “una concejala de asuntos sociales”.