Ida (2013) – Pawel Pawlikowski (Friday’s Finest)

Posted on November 1, 2019 by observationblogger — 16 Comments

Ida

Ida is a Polish movie which won the 2015 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It is set in Poland in 1962. It tells of the story of a young woman is about to take her vows as a Catholic nun. She was orphaned as an infant after the German occupation in World War II. Before taking her vows she is mandated to see her Aunt who is her only living relative. Her Aunt ‘Wanda’ reveals to Ida that she is in fact Jewish and alludes to a great tragedy which befell on her family.

The duration is just 82 minutes and so little is said throughout, but the words which are spoken are necessary and poignant. Sometimes less is better and Ida is a great demonstration of the effectiveness of minimalist cinema. The road trip shared by the quiet, morally virtuous Ida and her verbose, narcissistic and promiscuous aunt played magnificently by Aguta Kulesza is captivating viewing. They complement each other wonderfully.
Ida’s Aunt continually tempts Ida to defrock herself as it were:

Wanda (Aunt) – You have such a nice dimple.
– Three when you smile.
– Men will go crazy.
– Do you have sinful thoughts sometimes?
Ida – Yes.
Wanda – About carnal love?
Ida – No
Wanda – That’s ashame.
– You should try
– Otherwise what sort of sacrifice are these vows of yours?

According to Wikipedia: Pawlikowski had difficulty in casting the role of Anna/Ida. After he’d interviewed more than 400 actresses, Agata Trzebuchowska was discovered by a friend of Pawlikowski’s, who saw her sitting in a cafe in Warsaw reading a book. She had no acting experience or plans to pursue an acting career. She agreed to meet with Pawlikowski because she was a fan of his film My Summer of Love (2004).

Agata Trzebuchowska’s delivers a very commendable debut performance, but Agata Kulesza (The aunt) is absolutely right in every part of her role as Aunt Wanda. She is so whole and complex inside a movie that doesn’t otherwise spend lengths on character’s backgrounds. She just draws you inside, whether you know her story, her past, her issues or not. A jaw-dropping performance.

Shot in gorgeous black and white, this film is a disconcerting beauty while remaining simple and pure, with a neat photography, elegant and appropriate framings highlighting the emptiness and the sadness of certain existences, and a careful treatment of natural light. Overall, I was touched by its delicateness, simplicity, great photography, splendid script and nuanced acting.

I am not a big fan of jazz but the choice of Coltrane’s jazz music for parts of this film really let you feel what jazz is all about, it was beautiful. I’ll leave you with this music from the film:

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Posted in Movies and TV

Aubury (1972) – Bread

Posted on October 31, 2019 by observationblogger — 13 Comments
Aubrey - Bread

Keep the tissue box handy because we are going to visit this soft love ballad hit released by the band Bread on their 1972 album Guitar Man. David Gates wrote and composed the song after watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s which starred of course the irrepressibly beautiful Audrey Hepburn. Note that the name of the song and the actress are not the same. According to wikipedia – it swapped the assumed gender of the name Aubrey, nearly extinguishing its use as a male name and popularizing it as a female one. Actress Aubrey Plaza is named after the song.
The single lasted 11 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaking at number 15.

I keep this song in my music library mainly for nostalgic purposes. I listened to Bread and this song a lot in my youth. He sings about this unrequited love for a girl named Aubrey, but the lyrics suggest it was about someone he perhaps never knew. It is renowned as one of Bread’s most beautiful, yet melancholic, songs. I’m not a big fan as I used to be, but when I hear it now sometimes it evokes memories that were once forgotten; like dipping yourself in magic water and the memories are so thick, reminding me of all that was once unspoiled.

But how I miss the girl
And I’d go a million times around the world just to say
She had been mine for a day

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Posted in Music

Camino Real (Royal Road) – The Road Between Barichara and Guane

Posted on October 30, 2019 by observationblogger — 33 Comments

For this Wednesdays’ literature quote we are going to take a different route again. Years ago I wrote an article for a travel web site which described 5 relatively obscure places to visit in Colombia.

My introduction was as follows:
If it’s life you want, then its life you will get. Colombia is one of the world’s five richest countries in biological diversity, coupled with its unspoilt colonial heritage and colourful festivals. As the Colombian travel slogan says ‘the only risk is wanting to stay’.

One of those places in that article is called ‘Camino Real’. Well it’s not so much a place as it is a centuries old 10 kilometer path made out of stone. The experience of walking ‘Camino Real’ was unlike any other. I described it in the article ‘as an almost surreal experience; a pilgrimage into a different age’. I felt as though I had stepped knee-deep into a Robert Frost poem.

Below are some photos of ‘Camino Real‘ from fellow blogger notesfromcamelidcountry trip to ‘Camino Real’ used with his expressed permission. For more photos and description of the towns that connect the walk I recommend you visit his marvelous travel blog:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

How to get to Camino Real: Frequent buses travel north from Bogota to Bucaramanga or you may decide to stay in San Gil situated just 10 kilometres from Barichara. Alternatively, fly directly to Bucaramanga and take a bus south 1.5hours to Chicamocha or San Gil.

Posted in Reading, Reflections

Arthur McBride (1992) – Bob Dylan

Posted on October 29, 2019 by observationblogger — 31 Comments
Bob Dylan in Sydney (Idiot Wind) 1992
Bob Dylan in Sydney 1992
Oh, me and my cousin, one Arthur McBride
As we went a-walkin’ down by the seaside
Now mark what followed and what did betide
For it bein’ on Christmas mornin’
Now, for recreation, we went on a tramp
And we met sergeant Napper and corporal Vamp
And a little wee drummer intending to camp
For the day bein’ pleasant and charmin’

We have another 19th century Irish Ballad coming to you today, this time it is Arthur McBride by Bob Dylan from his 1992 album Good as I Been To You. According to Wiki: it was first collected around 1840 in Limerick by Patrick Weston Joyce; also in Donegal by George Petrie. The song expressed the sentiment that not all the young Irish were willing to fight war for the British crown. The song can be narrowly categorized as an “anti-recruiting” song, a specific form of anti-war song, and more broadly as a protest song.

It took me some time to appreciate the album Good as I Been To You. Some songs made an immediate impact like Jim Jones and Canadee i-o, but others like Arthur McBride and Hard Times were an acquired taste. The album is composed entirely of traditional folk songs and it’s also his first album not to feature any original songs since Dylan 1973. I really admire his guitar playing on this album. I haven’t really heard the acoustic guitar played like that before. How Dylan strums and picks the guitar can’t be replicated – Good as I Been To You is surely the best testament to that! It’s his first solo acoustic album since Another Side of Dylan in 1964. Good as I Been To You also resurrected Dylan with critics after getting panned for Under the Red Sky.

Bob_Dylan_-_Good_as_I_Been_to_You

I really like what Dylan has done with this old Arthur McBride song. The timbre of his voice and focus of his phrasing really elevates this song. He of course sung traditional folk songs all the time in his early years, but they were more topical / political in nature where as this compilation go back at least a century. Dylan mentioned once in an interview that he could have imagined himself being a heroic military officer dying on a battlefield somewhere. Arthur McBride and Good as I Been To You overall seems to be him tapping into this very – very old folkloric wellspring when people were behest to destitution and war – ‘hard times’ if you will. When you listen to these tracks sometimes you catch a glimpse of what it must have ‘really’ been like back then. Dylan’s music has always been a portal to another time in our history. Like how David Sexton pointed out in his review of the album “Dylan sounds now, in comparison to his younger self, like one of those ghosts, but a powerful ghost.‘

I really like Rosanne Cash’s story about Paul Brady’s recording of Arthur McBride (see video here). She wrote a blog post for the New York Times and below were her remarks about it:

‘The first thing my husband, John Leventhal, ever gave me, shortly after we met, was a cassette mix tape he had put together of some of his current favorite songs. On that tape was Paul Brady’s eight-verse version of “Arthur McBride,” a gorgeous, lilting Irish folk song…
I must have listened to “Arthur McBride” a thousand times. It made me want to marry John Leventhal. I did marry him. A couple of years after that, we went together to Aberdeen, Scotland, to tape “Transatlantic Sessions,” a music show that puts American and Scottish and Irish musicians together to see what they will come up with. I sat on the floor in the corner of a little room at an inn where we were taping, a few feet from Paul Brady, with no one else in the room but him and the camera operators, and listened to him sing “Arthur McBride.” It remains one of the greatest live performances I’ve ever seen, and a moment I’ll never forget.’

Dylan’s Arthur McBride has just been recently made available on you tube:

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Posted in Music

22/10 – 28/10/19 Rick Danko, Freeze, Blog-Notes and Adam Scott

Posted on October 28, 2019 by observationblogger — 22 Comments

news on the march

Welcome to Monday’s News on the March – The week that was in my digital world.

Article by Cincinnati Babyhead:

I think you all know that CB is a big fan of The Band. When I went to see “The Last Waltz there’s a scene where Martin Scorsese is walking through a recording studio with Rick Danko talking about what he, Danko is up to. Rick ends up sitting at the control board in the mixing room and says in his laid back way “Just making music”. The scene is then taken over by a song I had never heard before. It’s Danko singing and I had to find that record. I did and this is the album that it’s on. The song was ‘Sip The Wine”. I still get a few chills when I hear it..… (read more).

Article by J Nicholas Price at The Hofflebrock:

I’m stuck on this idea about being able to freeze time for a few seconds whenever I want. I’m stuck thinking that this could go somewhere other than the standard super(anti)hero vigilante badassery. I’m stuck with my mind half in the gutter thinking of ways a person could use this in the (new)age old trope of time freeze fuckery. It all seems fairly cliché, but in a bad way. In an easy way. In a I’d write it to make money, not to satisfy my writerly soul sort of way.…Read more

Article by Nadine at Bloomwords:

15:38. Why do I feel so blocked again, from posting on this site? I think it’s because I no longer understand its purpose.

When I started my second blog on WordPress, that purpose seemed clear; it was to engage with the extension of the word “sober.” Sober: this word I had long detested and written off. “Serious, sensible, and solemn.” Oh no, I wanted no sombre feeling, I wanted only playfulness, wildness, cheerfulness. But finally, I had neither extreme, so I decided to relax on my linguistic nitpicking, and go for “sobriety,” after all; a further-developed word, that seemed inherently cheerful and optimistic, had a natural joyful ring. The jury’s still out on its future; it lives only in the present day.… (Read more).

Poem by Intellectual Shaman:

I would rather be

where the air is thin

and the invisible wind

bangs the hinges of a rusty door

deep in the mountains

where the crowds don’t go.

How much traffic have we seen

or arguments heard?…. (Read full poem)

You tube interview by Netflix is a Joke:

Adam Scott sat down with Zach Galifianakis to discuss whether or not Martin Scorsese remembers him and if he can give a smile that doesn’t say, “I just fucked your girlfriend.” (Watch full interview)

news on the march the end

Posted in Music, News

At The Mid Hour of Night (2017) – Eleanor McEvoy

Posted on October 26, 2019 by observationblogger — 4 Comments

Eleanor McEvoy

At The Mid Hour of Night is an old Irish love ballad written in the 1800s by Thomas Moore who was himself a poet, a sweet-voiced singer and accomplished musician. He is now best remembered for the lyrics of “The Minstrel Boy” and “The Last Rose of Summer”. Irish singer Eleanor McEvoy went to task to reinterpret some of Thomas Moore’s material for her album The Thomas Moore Project. Set in music these incredible lyrics are really pleasant to hear in Eleanor’s voice as part of the vast Irish folklore.

Eleanor McEvoy if you don’t know composed the song Only A Woman’s Heart, title track of A Woman’s Heart, the best-selling Irish album in Irish history. Only A Woman’s Heart will appear later in this music library’s project.

Wikipedia states: McEvoy’s life as a musician began at the age of four when she began playing piano. At the age of eight she took up violin. Upon finishing school she attended Trinity College, Dublin where she studied music by day and worked in pit orchestras and music clubs by night. McEvoy graduated from Trinity with an Honors Degree in music, and spent four months busking in New York City. In 1988, she was accepted into the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra where she spent four years before leaving to concentrate on songwriting.

She built up a following in clubs in Dublin with her three piece band…During a solo date in July 1992, she performed a little-known, self-penned song, “Only a Woman’s Heart”. Mary Black, of whose band McEvoy was a member, was in the audience and invited her to add the track to an album of Irish female artists. The album was subsequently titled A Woman’s Heart and the track was released as the lead single.

A few days before A Woman’s Heart was released, Tom Zutaut A & R from Geffen Records, who had previously signed Guns & Roses, Mötley Crüe, and Edie Brickell, offered McEvoy a worldwide recording deal after watching her perform at The Baggot Inn in Dublin.

At the mid hour of night when stars are weeping, I fly
To the lonely vale we lov’d when life shone warm in thine eye;
And I think that if spirits can steal from the region of air,
To revisit past scenes of delight; thou wilt come to me there,
And tell me our love is remember’d even in the sky.

Posted in Music

Loveless (Russia) 2017 – Andrey Zvyagintsev (Friday’s Finest)

Posted on October 25, 2019 by observationblogger — 2 Comments
Loveless_(film)

Loveless (Nelyubov) is a 2017 Russian film nominated for best Foreign Language Film at the 2018 Oscars. It lost to the Chilean transgender drama A Fantastic Woman. Although I liked the latter, I thought Loveless was deserving of more ‘love’.
It paints a very stark and morbid picture of Russian secular society within the context of a family tragedy. There is no other movie which comes to my mind which portrays more audaciously the harsh reality of the breakdown of family. It really is a scathing indictment of modern parenting.

IMDB Storyline: Still living under the same roof, the Moscow couple of Boris and Zhenya is in the terrible final stages of a bitter divorce. Under those circumstances, as both have already found new partners, the insults pour down like rain in this toxic familial battle zone, always pivoting around the irresolvable and urgent matter of Alyosha’s custody, their 12-year-old only son. Unheard, unloved, and above all, unwanted, the introverted and unhappy boy feels that he is an intolerable burden, however, what his parents don’t know is that he can hear every single word. As a result, when Boris and Zhenya finally realize that Alyosha has been missing for nearly two days, it is already too late. But is this a simple case of a runaway teenager?

This film is difficult to watch because of the despicable characters that populate it. These poor-wretched souls take their misery out on each other over and over. On countless occasions, the characters check the screen of their smartphone. When nobody exchanges a smile or a kind word, digital friendships are better than nothing. They may have once been contented folk and life could return to some semblance of normalcy one day, but we are given no signs of it. Loveless also hints that the society in which they inhabit isn’t exactly blameless in all this, because it is claustrophobic in its nihilism. The bitter emptiness, disconnect and sorrow in this society could be anywhere. Not only in Russia.

My description might make this film sound like a chore to sit through, but it’s a wonderful movie. Loveless carries an absolutely powerful direction and a hauntingly beautiful cinematography. It’s definitely a movie which I doubt you’ll ever forget seeing. It’s fascinating in a morbid kind of way. People who are exhilarated by good film making can leave even a bleak movie on a high if it’s done well, and this is one of those films.

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Posted in Movies and TV

Ask the Mountains (1995) – Vangelis

Posted on October 24, 2019 by observationblogger — 7 Comments

Vangelis

Ask the Mountains is a single by the Greek electronic composer Vangelis from the 1995 record Voices. According to Last FM.com – Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou (born 29 March 1943 in Volos,Greece), known professionally as Vangelis, is a Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, and orchestral music. He is best known for his Academy Award-winning score for the film Chariots of Fire, composing scores for the films such as Blade Runner and the use of his music in the PBS documentary Cosmos: A Personal Voyage by Carl Sagan.

Paraphrased from Wikipedia – Ask the Mountains was sung by Stina Nordenstam and reached No 77 in the UK singles chart, but peaked higher in other European countries namely Austria (No 6) and Germany (24). The music was used in the soundtrack for the 1998 documentary Deep Sea, Deep Secrets which was coproduced by the Discovery channel.

Ask the Mountains is relaxing ambient (world) music; a genre I rarely listen to these days. I have no idea how it ended up in my library, but I like listening to it on the odd occasion.

Ask the mountains
Springs and fountains
Why couldn’t this go on?
Couldn’t our happiness go on?
Ask the sun that lightens up the sky
When the night gives in, to tell you why

Ask the mountains
Wild woods, highlands
Ask the green in the woods and the trees
The cold breeze coming in from the sea

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Posted in Music

Bobby Fischer – My 60 Memorable Games (First Printing 1969)

Posted on October 23, 2019 by observationblogger — 13 Comments
Bobby Fischer
In game 1 he writes that “Sherwin slid the Rook here with his pinky, as if to emphasize the cunning of this mysterious move.”

During one of my chess phases I bought the above book off ebay. It cost me a small fortune since it was a first printing. I have collected other written material about Fischer including the original Life magazine about his historic world championship win. I have been intrigued with chess and its history since I was a young kid. I remember my Dad taking my brother and I to local evening chess classes. I played for my school when I was an adolescent. Although I was never a gifted player I liked the brain exercise and mate-ship which came from playing it during school recess hours and tournaments around the State. I always got a kick out of hanging out with kids way smarter than me.

More than any other chess player I found Bobby Fisher the most compelling, not only because he revolutionized the game and won the USA it’s only world chess championship during the height of the cold war, but because his personal life and psychological state were so perplexing. Published in 1969, Fischer was initially reluctant to release My 60 Most Memorable Games. He had asked to be released from his contract since he did not want to reveal all his secrets, because the book has lengthy annotations and analysis of different possible variations of his games. According to wikipedia – In 1968 he changed his mind and decided to go ahead with publication. His friend and colleague Grandmaster Larry Evans, who helped in an editorial capacity and also wrote introductions to all the games, has said this was because Fischer felt philosophically that “the world was coming to an end anyway” (he thought that the Rapture was coming soon) and he might as well make some money.

One of my favourite documentaries which I frequently revisit is The World Against Bobby Fischer. The entire documentary is available below on You Tube. It does a very admirable job of unpacking the psychological state of one of the world’s greatest chess players. Stephen Tisdale’s reaction to the documentary was poignant:
His youth and upbringing were marred by a lack of love, direction, and identity. Combine these with genius and a extraordinary proficiency at applying that genius to chess and you have a recipe for pain, rejection, foolishness, and antagonism. Never underestimate the power of a good mother and father.

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Posted in Reading, Reflections, Sport and Adventure

Archie, Marry Me (2014) – Alvvays

Posted on October 22, 2019 by observationblogger — 2 Comments
alvvays


This 2014 single is some sweet indiepop. Archie, Marry Me is from Canadian group Alvvays. It was their second song on their marvelous self-titled debut album.  It’s a great sweetener too to the type of music you can expect on the rest of their album. So if this song doesn’t tickle your fancy then I’m afraid Allvays may not be your thang.

It was included at No 98 in the Rolling Stones 100 greatest songs of this century (So far). They wrote: “It is a fictitious character, but the situation was a bit of an autobiographical one,” said singer Molly Rankin of Toronto’s Alvvays. True or not, the dreamy Canadian band delivered a sharp, skeptical view of modern romance, tangled up in some of the sweetest indie pop this side of Belle and Sebastian. The result was among the most charming guitar pop of this or any era.

I find Alvvays music just really puts me into a really pleasant mood. It takes me back to when I was about their age and just enjoying the carefree spirit of youth. They are a talented bunch too, just take a look at this live performance on KEXP. They also conduct themselves unabashedly normal for a successful pop group which is refreshing. I hope you do like Alvvays because the music project will feature plenty more from them.

Additional Reading:
1. Music representing the dissonance of loss: Molly Rankin and ‘Archie, Marry Me’ – mialondonblog

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Posted in Music

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