It’s not been pretty; in fact, it has been rather harrowing. Tornado season is now over, however, and we can now look forward to the Coronavirus.
Storm Dennis strikes Leith.
Author Archives: Ben Gould
A Hidden Life (2019) – quintessential Malick.
August Diehl holds one of those physiognomies of the Klaus Kinski variety, instantly recognisable and very creepy, more suited to playing the villain or the unhinged than the innocent. Diehl almost stole Inglorious Basterds (2009) from Christoph Waltz with his tavern-set scariness (in full Hugo Boss clobber). Here he pulls off the Jesus role with aplomb, a performance very much devoid of … dare-I-say-it – pretension. The worst performances by actors are the posturing sort which embarrassingly scream for an Oscar; none of that bombast here. And to give the movie more of a deathly air, Michael Nyqvist and Bruno Ganz both star in their final roles.
22 years after the release of The Thin Red Line (1998), Malick casts his spiritual magic once again on WWII, this time not on the soldiers at Guadalcanal but the German home front. Malick ticks all the Malick boxes = sweeping cinematography, incessant voice over, melancholic score, metaphysical monologues, and lots of nature and all that. It is a long sesh but with reason, and in no way a ‘slog’. The story of Franz Jägerstätter is one worth telling.
Further reading/viewing:
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/story-austrian-catholic-resister-franz-jagerstatter
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/jan/19/a-hidden-life-terrence-malick-review
https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/a-hidden-life/
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/a-hidden-life-movie-review-2019
Johnnie Walker fantasies at the West End.
Formerly the House of Fraser, this prime slice of real estate will now allegedly house a rooftop cocktail bar. It won’t happen for two reasons: 1. The men in white coats don’t think that Scottish folk can be trusted to imbibe on rooftops; 2. We can’t be trusted to behave ourselves on rooftops, especially after a gin & tonic served in a slipper or whatever the fuck the Hipster zeitgeist utilise as highball glasses these days.
Bye for now.
Further reading:
Standard Meadowbank scenes.
A thoroughly frightful February in the Meadowbank ghetto this morning, with Arthur’s Seat in the backdrop conforming to its winter type; there is a desolation in the air here 24/7 and a ‘hobby’ of mine is listening to peak The Smiths in all their miserableness every time I lumber through the car park with a protein bar nabbed from Sainsbury’s.
That wee KFC picnic area is a delightful sight come spring, the main attraction hordes of local tribes (most off their nuts on crack cocaine) fending off seagulls.
The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station (1895) … in 4K.
The terrified audience bolted from the theatre, so the apocryphal story goes. Why anyone would flee from a black-and-white moving image with no sound didn’t appear to come into the mythmakers’ thinking.
YouTube user Denis Shiryaev has given the Lumières’ slice of early cinema a 2020 makeover (4K and 60 FPS) and it has the effect of amplifying the nostalgia factor and the strange serenity of the ‘narrative’. The frame’s occupants always looked too nonchalant to me, this a time when the presence of the camera was meant to turn folk into a frenzy. A mere few minutes of research reveals the extras in the shot were asked to ignore the filmmakers, the subjects ‘directed’ so to speak.
This is the upgrading of vintage visuals done right, none of this Ted Turned colorization pish.
Further reading:
https://www.indiewire.com/2020/02/lumiere-brothers-arrival-of-a-train-4k-update-1202208955/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/technology-51360644/lumiere-s-train-gets-4k-treatment-and-other-news
The Stranger – another wasted (Netflix) marathon.
This started off so well. For seven episodes I was gripped. It was so intricately put together and had a masterful Breaking Bad cliffhanger quality to it. Like most contemporary dramas, though, it crumbled into the nonsensical at its denouement. The last episode was so dire it ruined the preceding madness. Depression kicked in and I was then reminded of how Lost completely … lost the plot.
Stay away from this rubbish. Anyway, there’s always a good doc about Nazis to help ease the melancholy.
Fountainbridge, Edinburgh.
Famous for being the birthplace of Sir Sean Connery, and that’s about it as far as historical significance goes. The area has gone through such transformations over the past decade or so it’s unrecognisable from the Noughties. The pub ‘The Fountain’, for example, was in recent times popularly compared to Vietnam in the age of Presidents Johnson and Nixon; today it is thoroughly hipster and you need to venture elsewhere to witness a glassing.
Tragedy.
Inverurie getaway.
Secluded Aberdeenshire bantz this late January, which was another excuse to sit in Guinness pants and watch a batch of movies with a side order of multiple episodes of The Chase, intermittently knocking back ersatz Baileys sourced from Lidl. Every cottage/lodge on my ‘adventures’ up north I ascribe the moniker ‘The Palace’, and this was another plush compound I’d gladly return to.
Doing nothing in the middle of nowhere is a treasured pastime of mine; I’ll never understand bungee jumping or snorkelling or any of that stuff. The perfect trip I would define as sitting on my arse and not having to smile through silly activities, so this jaunt ticked all the boxes. I was even mildly active in my own limited way on this occasion, conducting daily jogs to ’90s trance and ‘conversing’ with some local sheep.
I said to myself, “It must be awful to be a sheep.” But then I concluded they don’t know they are sheep and this is a universal metaphor. It was my profound thought of the expedition. Other highlights include smoking a Cuban cigar, alphabetising by title the dwelling’s book collection, snapping a rainbow, and operating binoculars for the first time in two decades. I spotted a bird which wasn’t a pigeon or a seagull but I don’t know what it was.
A good time was had.
Don’t F**k With Cats: Hunting An Internet Killer.
Watching this was a regret – I hated every minute of it but was compelled to witness the ghastly proceedings unfold. I usually have a weekday curfew of 11:00 p.m. but here I was lucid way into the wee hours with a WhatsApp cat topic frenzy on the go. Lesson learned: Do not ever Netflix (verb) when it’s dark.
The Internet is the Digital Frontier and all that, and now it appears to be the case that the apotheosis of human endeavour is an outlet for almost every single looney with a vengeance; the World Wide Web and the sociopath are meant to be.
The online sleuths in the three-episode show are more competent than the cops meant to be doing the basics of their jobs as professionals, which says rather a lot. The only reason I kept on watching was how in the fuck they managed to uncover the things they did. It is must-see detective work.
Further reading/viewing:
Film Noir Gorgie.
Perhaps one day it will happen but I very much doubt it – a lauded director decides to use Gorgie Road as a seedy backdrop for a modern noir. I imagine a jaded Bogartesque PI stopping off at Aldi for a few cheap beers after a draining day spent with myriads of local scum.
In fact, I’m going to have to make this motion picture, the drama shot on a battered HTC, Gorgie City Farm the site of the climactic shootout.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 