Author Archives: Ben Gould

Dec 26 2020
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Art, Cinema, Crime, Film, Germany, Movie, Movies, Transport, Uncategorized

A Most Wanted Man (2014). Crikey!

For years, I forgot this existed. Then someone sent me a snap of Hamburg and I remembered a rather excellent wee spy thriller set in the city. Philip Seymour Hoffman, or THE HOFF, was magnetic in everything he did but with The Master (2012), this is his masterpiece. There’s something so sincere and likeable about his ability to get real, and what I mean by that is a gift to portray what one would deem as flawed character traits, warts and all, what humans are actually like.

Hamburg on film is a daunting task. This film really does capture the international feel of the city. I just remember it being absolutely fucking freezing. I went for a jog around the port one afternoon and ended up in a political rally. It was cinematic. Anyway, to Hoffman. You were the best.

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Dec 23 2020
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Martin Scorsese’s The Big Shave (1967) is quite the thing.

One might deem it ‘the genesis’, a foundation of style and themes. There’s a sacred quality to the pre-digital age and this is why they are better movies – one had to really think about how to construct the visuals and it wasn’t a case of throwing the camera around and waiting for something to happen. It’s a basic non-point to make but films today are beyond pathetic because they are so far from artistry it’s a 1,000-crewed ‘collaborative effort’. There have been several exceptions but almost everything is identical, every film conforming to the same storyboard.

It’s a terrifying experience firing up Netflix.

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Dec 21 2020
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Architecture, Britain, Building, Edinburgh, Photography, Scotland

Edinburgh lockdown – week 40. This will never end.

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Dec 19 2020
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Britain, Edinburgh, Photography, Scotland, Uncategorized

Screaming “DRAGO!!!” at the top of a Pentlands’ hill wasn’t as cinematic as I imagined.

Because I looked up and saw a bigger hill. But I couldn’t be bothered spending another two hours moving my legs. I got a semi-decent snap out of the endeavour, though. ‘Z for Zachariah’ came to mind, the only book from school I can ever remember that was about something. I don’t wish to read it again as it will probably turn out to be total shite, like much you revisit from yesteryear.

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Dec 17 2020
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Britain, Germany, Soviet Union, Transport, Uncategorized, United Kingdom, World War Two, WWII

World War Two on … YouTube.

This is the best thing on YouTube and exactly what the internet is for.

I’m not here to plug the channel and I don’t know anything about the production or its team at all but the show is so well put together it needs to be shared. The depth of research is up there with your contemporary historians and, rather than a simple retelling, the makers actually dig into everything and ponder the what-ifs. I’d take this form of accessible media over a dry academic piece any day, and it’s the intro for anyone interested in the topic; back in the day, all we ever had was the same old insipid, badly researched and produced textbook material regurgitated on the BBC.

We’re up to winter 1941 now and even to this day it’s utterly shocking how close the Wehrmacht made it to Moscow despite all of the setbacks. It’s the greatest and worst event in history. The age of extremes, aye.

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Dec 15 2020
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Architecture, Britain, Edinburgh, Photography

Who is this?

Just off Glimore Place, Edinburgh. I don’t know who it is and it is starting to vex me.

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Dec 14 2020
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Oscars

Mank (2020) is absolute scenes.

A time machine quality swirls around this flick. Whether it’s the throwback cinematography that apes Gregg Toland or the peculiar sound recording that could be lifted straight from the seminal Citizen Kane (1941) or merely the endlessly fascinating subject matter – Kane’s production history, its bonkers cast and crew. The movie was a joy to watch. It captures ‘Old Hollywood’ like no other; not that I was there, but it’s how I’ve always pictured the era. The sleaze, the smoky rooms, the shameless greed, the debauchery, the magnates and barons mixing with screenwriters and journalists, a glorious melting pot with movies the rarefied outcome.

It’s not just a portrait of an untouchable epoch, though. The … tribute is married to actual human stories, the individual struggles that inspire and spark creative output, the roman-à-clefs that writers as omniscient as Herman J. Mankiewicz soaked up like a sponge. When you read into types like this – Ben Hecht also comes to mind – you can’t help but admire the way they dipped into Bohemian Grove.

This might also be the most unusual movie David Fincher has made. I will have to view it again for I did not detect any ‘Fincherisms’.

Further reading:

https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2559818/mank-historical-figures-from-david-finchers-netflix-movie-explained

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/nov/06/mank-review-david-fincher-gary-oldman-citizen-kane-herman-mankiewicz

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Dec 14 2020
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Architecture, Edinburgh, Photography, Scotland, United Kingdom

Edinburgh lockdown – week 39. This will never end.

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Dec 13 2020
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Uncategorized, Film, Cinema, Monarchy, Game of Thrones, TV series

Stannis could have been up there with the gods.

But they ruined him. It’s another example of writing ‘jumping the shark/sofa’. He did a terrible deed – burning your kin is not the best move – and no one believed the sincerity of it for a second. It sums up how appalling Game of Thrones got in its last two pathetic seasons. It was ghastly, infected with bizarre vignettes that went NOWHERE.

The actor Stephen Dillane is the best in the show and he nails the character – absolutely and totally miserable, consumed with hatred. Even if he sat on the Iron Throne I can imagine he’d be bored to death and questioning his life role. That’s my kind of human. His quotes are incredible.

The crème de la crème: “A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad the good.”

Fucking hell. Fancy a pint?

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Dec 12 2020
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Art

Ernest Bloch’s quote about ‘A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte’ is just glorious.

I’ve never read a more vivid and correct description of a painting:

‘This picture is one single mosaic of boredom, a masterful rendering of the disappointed longing and the incongruities of a dolce far niente [idleness] …. The painting depicts a middle-class Sunday morning on an island in the Seine near Paris. Despite the recreation going on there, it seems to belong more to Hades than to a Sunday. The result is endless boredom, the little man’s hellish utopia of skirting the Sabbath and holding onto it too; his Sunday succeeds only as a bothersome must, not as a brief taste of the Promised Land.’

Brilliant.

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