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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Cinema, Film, Game of Thrones, Monarchy, TV series, Uncategorized

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
3 Comments
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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Dec 10 2020
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Cinema, Fantasy, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) is a slog.

Saw this for the first time in decades and bloody hell is it dull. It’s just so boring, which I find rather mental because it’s about UFOs and all that, and Spielberg is a master craftsman. It’s shot here like a TV movie, its depiction of suburbia painfully tedious. Even when the weird-looking critters arrive at the end it’s underwhelming. The only curiosity to be found is the casual appearance of François Truffaut, who is eminently more interesting than those around him.

Something else bothered me about it. It’s so naive, with government agencies portrayed as even being benevolent. What a weird decision, this just after the twin calamities of Watergate and the American involvement in the Vietnam War.

Never watching it again and I do not understand why it’s lauded.

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Dec 07 2020
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Architecture, Britain, Building, Edinburgh, Photography, Scotland

Edinburgh lockdown – week 38. This will never end.

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Dec 05 2020
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Uncategorized

How to distil the pure talent of Diego Maradona.

Not my generation’s star man, which was Zidane, the ‘Original’ Ronaldo, and then latterly CR7 and Messi. I will still maintain that Cristiano Ronaldo over the broad spectrum of his career is the greatest football player of all time, yet Maradona at his peak from 1984-’89 was playing the beautiful game from another planet.

I don’t think anyone has ever had an impact on a World Cup as he did in 1986. He was not just an attacking midfielder with five decisive assists and goals, which is an astonishing feat in itself; he was a talisman, a wee warrior, a leader, and was hard as fuck. If you watch the matches again he dominates every one of them, carrying an average team over the line each time.

This was back in the day when the ‘art’ of defending consisted of trying to break legs. Coaches would drill it into the centre-backs before kick-off – it was legalised GBH. How he managed to make it through games beguiles me, even more so with the artistry on display after being booted up and down the pitch for 90 mins.

One in a million, and if he were playing the modern game with today’s diet, nutrition, sports science bonanza (and protection from referees) he’d be on an iron throne with a fat cigar in his mouth.

Am I wrong?

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Dec 04 2020
4 Comments
Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Why can’t they just leave their own films alone?

These lads of course have every right to fiddle to their hearts’ content with pictures they’ve made, but it’s getting out of control now. I don’t even know how many different versions of Blade Runner (1982) there are (I’ve only seen one), I hear there is now another edition of Apocalypse Now (1979), and I was yesterday informed that The Godfather Part III (1990) is now being re-released this month but with a completely different structure and with an alternate title. What is going on?

For me, the art that was produced at a specific stage is what it is (for lack of a better phrase) and all it will ever be. I have no time for tweaking, chopping, changing, re-editing, and periodic revisionism. Stop trying to fix what was at that moment your best or worst effort, move on, come up with a new idea. It’s got something to do with grasping for perfection, but the problem is that the films I’ve mentioned are far from perfect. Even the films I rate as ‘transcendental’ (The Third Man, Vertigo, Lawrence of Arabia) have giant flaws but that just adds to the appeal; I hate to appropriate an Oasis song, but true perfection has to be imperfect.

Dear directors, just STOP IT.

Give us something else.

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