Uncategorized | Wanderings and ... wonderings.

Mar 18 2020

Cinema, Film, Uncategorized, United Kingdom

Corona has unleashed the creatures.

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There’s this line in The Departed (2006) uttered eloquently and menacingly by Jack Nicholson’s Frank Costello: “You learn a lot – watching things eat.”

I can’t help but think of it every time I venture into a supermarket (or pop on Facebook to have a butcher’s at human antics) in this nauseating Corona epoch we now reside in – folk hoarding bog roll and pasta, literally slathering and screeching about the venue, peasants resembling something rage-like out of 28 Days Later (2002).

Source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1255377/British-Army-coronavirus-latest-ministry-of-defence

I feel sorry for the checkout staff. That’s a tough gig.

You learn a lot – watching things shop.

Tagged Coronavirus, Film, Pandemic, The Departed, Virus

Mar 15 2020

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Britain, Edinburgh, Tourism, Transport, Travel, Uncategorized

Lothian Road had a port?!

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I did not know until last week that Lothian Road, right where the Odeon Cinema now resides, was once home to a port (Hopetoun), this the start/end of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Union Canal. Nor was I aware that Burke and Hare were among the navvies who built the waterway. Cracking article here in The Scotsman: https://www.scotsman.com/heritage/when-passenger-boats-could-dock-at-lothian-road-in-edinburgh-s-city-centre-1-5036076

A 13-hour journey quickly supplanted by the railway, imagine being sat on a barge for that long without the internet.

P.S. No midgets were harmed in the taking of that photograph.

A Carl Sagan quote blew my mind.

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‘Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.’

^Wow.^

My Friday KFC adventure took on a bit more meaning.

Tagged Carl Sagan, Earth, Pale Blue Dot, Photography, Space

Mar 09 2020

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Edinburgh, Photography, Uncategorized

Nixon in China.

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Spotted two mass-murdering maniacs at Haymarket the other day. Ruined my morning.

Bye for now.

Tagged China, Mao, Nixon, Nixon in China

Mar 07 2020

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Architecture, Britain, Construction, Edinburgh, Photography, Scotland, Uncategorized

Ugly Edinburgh.

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The reveal of the buildings on this list wasn’t much of a shock, and I am humbled by the fact that two of them I work in, and another – see photo above – I pass at least four times a day (I even wrote a shitty blog about it a while back).

If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain – someone said that once (Dolly Parton and David Brent). Only through the contrast with the rotten can we appreciate the palatial.

FYI: I presently write this from a building on the list.

https://www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/edinburgh-news/gallery/edinburgh-eyesores-here-eight-ugliest-17742367?fbclid=IwAR0IIAoxwAD7GarjG8dxBlCXiAkQTBG-t4901H4UPK9WN4L1NU0mzYsyhqQ

Tagged Aesthetics, Architecture, Buildings, Edinburgh, Scotland

Mar 05 2020

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Crime, Internet, Technology, TV, TV series, Uncategorized

Safe – relishing the ridiculous.

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More highly addictive utter trash binged on Netflix again, this eight-episode thriller a cross between a ’90s peak Joe Eszterhas number and those seedy Hollyoaks specials that were broadcast after the watershed. The appeal of this kind of show is in its cliffhanger formula; every chapter has a spanner chucked in the works or a new revelation.

Unadulterated rubbish it may be, but the sordid spectacle is worth it for trying to pinpoint where the fuck in England Michael C. Hall’s ‘accent’ is meant to descend from. It’s eight different counties mixed in a verbal blender, Owen Hargreaves meets Gillian Anderson.

Bizarre.

Tagged Netflix, Safe, TV series

Mar 02 2020

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Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Knives Out (2019) is splendid.

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This is one terrifically entertaining whodunnit with an unexpected political undercurrent that comes to the surface in the third act. The time flew by, mainly due to Daniel Craig’s outrageous PI southern shtick. His voice is so uncannily like that of House of Cards’ Frank Underwood, I closed my eyes and pictured Kevin Spacey and all the resultant grisly news following the accusations about the bloke. It didn’t ruin the movie, only giving it a creepier edge.

Most films of this ilk hark back to Agatha Christie and are mere pale imitations of those superior yarns; Knives Out (2019) is something more than that, with its contemporary setting and subtly subversive reworking of the genre. You also believe these characters.

Even Chris Evans failed to vex me.

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Architecture, Britain, Construction, Edinburgh, Leith, Photography, Scotland, Uncategorized

Storm Dennis strikes Leith.

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.

Tagged Edinburgh, Leith, Photography, Scotland

Feb 24 2020

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Art, Austria, Cinema, Film, Germany, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized, World War Two, WWII

A Hidden Life (2019) – quintessential Malick.

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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.

Johnnie Walker fantasies at the West End.

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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.

Wanderings and … wonderings.

Category Archives: Uncategorized

Corona has unleashed the creatures.

Lothian Road had a port?!

A Carl Sagan quote blew my mind.

Nixon in China.

Ugly Edinburgh.

Safe – relishing the ridiculous.

Knives Out (2019) is splendid.

Storm Dennis strikes Leith.

A Hidden Life (2019) – quintessential Malick.

Johnnie Walker fantasies at the West End.