Контакт

a film by Vladimir Tarasov

Amazingly, I first saw Contact just a few months after its release in 1978. If you’ve never seen it before... watch it now. If you’ve seen it before... please watch it again.

Apart from Nino Rota’s Speak Softly, Love (performed by the Paul Mauriat Grand Orchestra), which is a theme the alien learns to sing, you can hear a lovely version of Gershwin’s Oh, Lady, Be Good by the Leonid Chizhik Trio (Leonid Chizhik, piano; Aleksey Isplatovsky, double bass; Aleksey Kuznetsov, guitar). Quite unusually (for a Soviet film), both composers and arrangers are acknowledged in the closing credits.

Дженни

by Robert Burns and Samuil Marshak

The same recently mentioned Holden Caulfield famously misinterpreted Comin’ Thro’ the Rye and imagined some mysterious catcher. I guess he didn’t read the alternate version of the poem.

One of many musical interpretations of Marshak’s Дженни is in the 1978 Soviet TV show Бенефис Людмилы Гурченко performed by Alexander Schirvindt and, naturally, Lyudmila Gurchenko. I remember watching this show for the first time with a mixture of embarrassment and, um, more embarrassment. Watching it now... well, it’s embarrassing all right. But it had its moments. Весёлый сапожник with Armen Dzhigarkhanyan was a runaway success and it is still fun to watch and listen to. Дженни was not as catchy but, in my humble opinion, more interesting musically.

Robert Burns Comin’ Thro’ the Rye	Роберт Бёрнс, перевод С.Я. Маршака Дженни
O, Jenny’s a’ weet, poor body, Jenny’s seldom dry: She draigl’t a’ her petticoatie, Comin thro’ the rye! Comin thro’ the rye, poor body, Comin thro’ the rye, She draigl’t a’ her petticoatie, Comin thro’ the rye! Gin a body meet a body Comin thro’ the rye, Gin a body kiss a body, Need a body cry? Gin a body meet a body Comin thro’ the glen Gin a body kiss a body, Need the warl’ ken? Gin a body meet a body Comin thro’ the grain; Gin a body kiss a body, The thing’s a body’s ain. Ilka lassie has her laddie, Nane, they say, ha’e I Yet all the lads they smile on me, When comin’ thro’ the rye.	Пробираясь до калитки Полем вдоль межи, Дженни вымокла до нитки Вечером во ржи. Очень холодно девчонке, Бьёт девчонку дрожь: Замочила все юбчонки, Идя через рожь. Если кто-то звал кого-то Сквозь густую рожь И кого-то обнял кто-то, Что с него возьмёшь? И какая нам забота, Если у межи Целовался с кем-то кто-то Вечером во ржи.

Бенефис Людмилы Гурченко. «Дженни» (53:15—58:40)

Lazarus

by David Bowie

I was a relative latecomer to the world of David Bowie. I didn’t even hear The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars until the late 1990s. The news of his passing surprised but didn’t exactly shock me. This song and video (published on YouTube three days before Bowie’s death), however, did. Just like Ziggy Stardust, it has to be played at maximum volume.

La chica de Los Planetas

by Holden Centeno

So what should a guy do if a girl stops responding his calls (emails, tweets, whatsapps, whatevers)? There are a few options, some of them less annoying than others. For example, he can try to get over her. Holden Centeno (taking his nom de plume, or, rather, nom de Twitter after the protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye) decided to create a blog dedicated to his failed relationship epic love as a big letter to his ex... and monetise it. Am I alone in finding this somewhat creepy? I say, the chances of her coming back to him after this must be slim to none. Unless there never was such a girl as la chica de Los Planetas in the first place. In which case, he still can get lucky.

I borrowed this book from the library since I read the opening passage of the very first story, El profesor que pudo ser una guitarra, and got hooked:

Un año en la universidad, en una asignatura, me tocó con el profesor más hijo de puta que había en toda la facultad. Lo juro. Cada vez que otros compañeros me preguntaban cuál era mi profesor, me decían: «Olvídate de aprobar con esa cabronazo. Es lo más parecido a Satanás, aquí, en la tierra.»

The first two parts of the book, Vida y encuentros and Muerte y eternidad, are quite short and consist of five stories each. Because of their randomness and self-sufficiency, I found these stories greatly superior to those from the last part, La chica de Los Planetas proper. Can’t say why, but I expected more from the main dish. Or, rather, less, for a good short story writer should know when to stop. The best story of this lot is Madrid—Cariño, thanks to the absence of the very chica.

I have a theory that most human males go through the Holden Caulfield phase during their ontogenesis. Some, however, do stuck there for quite a bit.

Fuerteventura

by Russian Red

RR’s second album is very different from I love your glasses but every bit as charming. A touch of country here, a dash of gypsy swing there, a mystery of song names — why, for example, Tarantino? Or Nick Drake? And what the title track has to do with my favourite island? And why should I care?

Alphaville: une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution

a film by Jean-Luc Godard

After a year and a half living here, we just started to discover various free events and activities in Las Palmas. On Friday, we went for a free bus excursion organised by the Cabildo de Gran Canaria to watch a (not quite yet) winter solstice sunrise and visit a cave village called Acusa Seca. And on Saturday, there was a free open-air movie night. Godard’s Alphaville was closing Futuro, a cycle of sci-fi films screened at Palacete Rodríguez Quegles.

Sunrise at Acusa Seca, 18 December 2015. More photos of Acusa Seca @ Shutterstock.

Now I can think of a few pastimes more satisfying than watching a 50-year-old black and white French film noir. In French. With Spanish subtitles. Outdoors. None of them would be as cool though. (In fact, it was positively chilly last night. Next time we have to bring a blanket.) I mean, Lemmy Caution, aka secret agent 003, aka Ivan Johnson, a journalist for Figaro-Pravda — can it get Frenchier than that? Not exactly a comedy but full of deadpan humour (the car chase scene is priceless). Of course, Lemmy, played by Eddie Constantine, is nobody else than an early cinematic incarnation of Lazlo Woodbine, so expect a lot of gratuitous sex and violence, now and then unashamedly accompanied by “dun dun dun”. A great cast featuring Anna Karina and Akim Tamiroff; names like Leonard Nosferatu, Prof. Heckell and Prof. Jeckell; and fireworks into the bargain — well that was not a part of the original movie but that’s what you can get when watching in the open air. Marvellous.

Song of the Sea

a film by Tomm Moore

Once again, brought to us by Timur: a strange, not-quite-coherent story, beautifully, almost entirely hand-drawn animated. IMDb’s Parents Guide states that the “climax can be intense for some”. Which turned out to be true. Timur noted that, in spite of all the sadness, it still left more people happy, unlike The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, where nobody was happy in the end.