Cinema visits returning.

 

Though now they'll likely be very sporadic.

Booked to see the eagerly-awaited (by me) 'Tenet' at this local seafront cinema next Tuesday, which'll be just two days shy of six months since seeing my last film.

Told you this posting was going to be concise.

The Curse of the Growling Stomach.

Don't know why this subject should have occurred to me this morning, but as I've not seen it mentioned in anyone's blog before, well why not give it a shot?

I don't suffer from the 'condition' now as far as I'm aware, but in younger days it used to cause me acute embarrassment.

The pinnacle of these blush-causing experiences was (and I've only ever mentioned it to one person - and it cracked him up!) way back in 1970 when, at the age of 24, I went to the cinema to see the newly-released film of Michelangelo Antonioni, one of my favourite directors, his 'Zabriskie Point' - a film largely forgotten now but in those more 'innocent' days was considered a shocking breakthrough in on-screen depiction of raw sex (hetero, naturally) - tame by today's standards when hard-core porn is freely available 'on tap' as it were (or so I've been led to believe!) Anyway, that's by the way.

Before the film I'd indulged myself in a 'meal' of one large, boiled cauliflower (then and still now my favourite vegetable), and nothing else with it. And so, stomach replete with contentment, made my way to the cinema and took my usual circle seat - this was in the days when nearly all cinemas were huge, single-screen auditoria, and if one sat in a certain place in the circle one could look down and see the front rows of the stalls below.

The film began and it wasn't long before I became aware of 'rumblings' within my person. They progressively grew in intensity of sound......and grew.......and grew. Now, as bad luck would have it, the film was not only given over to long periods of silence (long, soundless sequences with slow-moving camerawork being one of Antonioni's 'trademark' techniques) but most of it was set in or near California's Death Valley - hence the film's title - so the visuals were filmed in blazing sunlight from a cloudless desert sky, thus lighting up the entire cinema audience. So every time I 'rumbled', people were starting to turn around and look to see just where this annoyingly distracting sound was originating, in what ought to have otherwise been total silence. It got worse and worse, with me trying to sink lower in my seat. It soon dawned on me that I wasn't going to be able last out this worrying humiliation. The film wasn't yet even half-way through. I would just have to wait for a dark scene when I could creep out of the cinema relatively unnoticed. But would the screen get dark? Would it hell! I waited.....and waited......stomach rumbling on like approaching thunder. The final straw came when, unable in any way to hold it back, a stentorian growl came forth like a lion's roar, reverberating all around the place so that even a couple in the stalls way below me turned round and looked up to see what was happening. Oh, the cutting agony of it! I couldn't wait any longer for the dazzling desert scene to come to an end, even before the sex had properly started, but finally got up, wishing I'd had a high collar on or scarf to cover my identity - and shame-facedly, head depressed to almost between shoulders, I hurriedly made my way out, feeling that all eyes were on me, tut-tutting me to the exit - Begone, pest! 

I returned home - and it was a further six years before I managed to catch up with another chance to see the complete film, and so at last being able to include 'Zabriskie Point' in my 'register' of films actually seen on a cinema screen. 

But oh, how I still cringe when recalling the horror I went through to get there!

On even earlier instances of a related theme - though in this case caused by actual hunger rather than by having unwisely consumed something with 'consequences' - the school I attended (St Mary's College, Middlesbrough) every Thursday morning just before lunchtime, all the boys would be herded into Church to attend Mass - and when it came to tummy-rumbles it always sounded like my stomach was louder than anyone else's. After the first such sound (then emanating from whomsoever), the boys not just immediately around me, but in the pews in all directions, would giggle as quietly as they could, then cruelly await the inevitable next  'contribution' from some 'unfortunate' they could mock, albeit in stifled manner - making it still worse for those of us who were so 'afflicted'. Although it wasn't just me alone, it always sounded like my 'instrument' would be a contender for the forte prize. Helpless to supress it, it would come out whatever I did - clenching abdominal muscles, even praying, imploring God to make it stop - please! - though all to no avail. And when it did make its aural presence known ("Here I am!") they'd all snigger and laugh under their breaths - and then it would fall silent again apart from the celebrant priest's Latinate intonations, .....and they'd wait for who'd be next - more often than not, as it seemed, me again! Mental torture in extremis!

Happy days? Far from it. More like my Gethsemane!  

Btw; In my 'comeback' posting of a few days ago I intimated that future posts would be "concise and pithy". The two I've submitted since then have certainly not been the former. Have to bear this in mind for whatever's next.   

Speculating on spectacles.

 

Everyone who wears spectacles occasionally misplaces them, do they not? And then they eventually find them a few minutes, perhaps even an hour or so, later. 

(I always wear contact lenses when going out, having ever been the 'vain' sort. Indoors alone I have to resort to glasses).

Imagine, then. I was watching the BBC 6 o'clock national news on Friday 7th August - I need specs to watch TV, especially for when any captions or printing appears. I put the specs down on the settee beside me to go to (I can only think), the kitchen as the bulletin was coming to an end, before returning to then watch (as is my daily wont) the ITV 6.30 news - and, being the news-junkie that I am, always followed by Channel 4 News at 7, before retiring most evenings. Anyway, on coming back from the kitchen the specs are not there - and now twelve days later, still not found them! I've turned the place upside down, and not just the area where I sit to watch TV, but the few other rooms as well, including bathroom. In a single person's apartment there are only so many places one can go!  

Maddening? You bet! - and more than! For the last week and half, right until yesterday, had to make do with an old, scratched (hence making all viewings fuzzy) pre-present-prescription pair.

The silver lining, if it can be so called, is that by sheer chance yesterday I had an appointment at the opticians to collect a new pair with updated prescription for which I was measured at the beginning of this month. That really was some stroke of luck. These new specs are fine. I can watch telly again. But until I can find that missing pair  (to keep as a spare, just in case.........) I won't be able to settle. Where the hell are they? Soon I'll be reduced to threatening the cats that if they don't tell me where they've hidden them there'll be no more treats!

'Notes from my Dotage - Part the First' ------- or 'I'm still here - just!'

Well, blow me down! Just seen that it's over two months since our last posting (employing the royal 'we'), and this simply will not do! So here's our ploy for times coming.

With some regret (just a little bit) it would appear that my days of frequent cinema-going are now part of the past. I haven't been at all since last March, and even when it becomes possible again I should think that for me the practice wouldn't be more than a well-spaced rarity. However, on those occasions when it does happen I will still post my thoughts on any film in question as before. 

Thus, in order to keep this blog alive so long as I am so myself, I will attempt to post now and again on a miscellany of subjects, hopefully not too weighty but in concise and pithy manner, so you may know there's still life in this old boy yet!  

Next post is coming soon(ish). See ya there?

Has 'Gone with the Wind' now gone for good?

Has my possibly all-time second-favourite film now been declared off-limits to watch? It would seem so, at least on 'HBO Max' site from whence it has been removed, a subscription film library site I wasn't even aware of until today. But it needed just a nudge in this direction and now the move will probably snowball. 

I think it must have been in the 1970s when I first became aware of mutterings against the film's portrayal of black slaves in the American 'Deep South' just before and during the Civil War, as being contented with their lot and fiercely loyal to their white 'masters' - even so much as seeing the outlaw of slavery, let alone emancipation, as being a 'threat' to their stable livelihood. 

The quite understandable disapproval of this depiction has grown in years since then and after the start of this century it has become almost blasphemous to even mention the name of the film and Margaret Mitchell's novel in polite company, at least without holding one's nose while doing so.  

The move by HBO Max arises, of course, from the worldwide reaction to the death (and circumstances and method of killing) of George Floyd in Minnesota a fortnight ago, a formidable reaction which has grown in intensity, acquiring a momentum of its own, and which up to now shows no sign of abating. It has inspired long overdue debate all over on the unequal treatment and attitudes towards black people in particular and non-white peoples generally by governments, various authorities, but primarily by police forces. No one with half a brain even can argue that the matter should not be addressed, and urgently.  In the U.K. the current related obsession has moved to arguing for the removal of statues and monuments, and re-naming buildings and streets, which commemorate in positive terms, historical figures who sometimes actively participated in the slave trade themselves, and who in many cases acquired their wealth from the abhorrent practice - though it has now also reached to those influential persons who supported slavery as well as those who were not sufficiently condemnatory, whether or not they had power to do anything about it. Further, it now extends to those who held views holding certain races or colours in contempt  - for example, it's long been known that Winston Churchill had a very low opinion of those of Indian race. Is it now okay to deface, or even remove, the many statues of him? 

But back to GWTW. 

It would have been back in the mid-1950s when I first saw the film and when I'd have been somewhere around 10 or 11. It was in the cinema, naturally - and in fact still remains the film I have seen in the cinema more times than any other - around 20, I suppose - helped by its numerous re-releases, including in the late 1960s when it was released blown-up to big-screen 70mm (and tinted) when visual epics were all the rage. It's had further releases since then, such as in the 1990s when it was re-released in its original screen proportions and original colours. 

I've always loved the film - as well as the 1,000+ pages novel, which I still read periodically, being something like eight times to date.

Of course one's opinion is bound to be influenced to a large extent of it being evocative of one's own life experiences, my own especially strong ones being of seeing it for the first time with my mother, who was also a great fan of film and book - and, very significantly, the film including the first time I recall ever having felt a crush on someone, that someone being Leslie Howard - who, as I grew, fast faded from my list of 'desirables', and has meant nothing to me since those very early days. But I still wonder, did I pick up on my mother saying that she had liked him, and that I felt that I need to follow her taste? Maybe, but if so it will have been subconscious, and is much too long ago to recall it now.

And, of course, from the start I thought that Vivien Leigh's Scarlett was fab! but who wouldn't? - most of all when she was strong, sassy and determined - and in the end she was well rid of Rhett - after all "Tomorrow (would be) another day!" though will it ever again be so for the film and the book?

     

'Waterloo' voted GREATEST Eurovision song ever!........REALLY???

As part of the substitute fayre we were offered to replace the annual camp-fest, the Eurovision Song Contest, this year cancelled for the first time in its 64-year history (due to you-know-what) U.K. viewers were offered the chance to vote on what they considered to be the best ever song from the contest - though we were given a choice of only 19 of the previous winners, thus ruling out dozens of non-winners which in many cases were, in my opinion, superior to those that came top in given years. 
The selection of these few songs - which included no less than four of the U.K.'s five winners ('Puppet on a String' strangely not making it) - were decided  by a panel of 'experts' and celebrities, many/most (all?) of them far too young to having watched the original presentations going back to 1956, unlike myself.

Anyway, the winner was predictable. Though I've been a lifelong ardent fan of ABBA, I do still recall how disappointed I felt way back in 1974 when this came out on top. And in all the years since then my view hasn't changed. There's no doubt that the song made a bigger 'splash' than any other Eurovision song in the contest's history, and did more for the performers than anything else ever did - nothing else comes even close - but as for being a 'great' song I must take issue. In ABBA's own subsequent canon it rates, at best, as only 'middling' and I've never been able to understand why it won. 
However, to be honest, it's been very rare when what I rated as the best song was the one that was the ultimate victor. The last time that happened was Norway's 'Fairy Tale' performed by Alexander

Rybak's boy-faced, hottie fiddler in 2009. But more often than not I'm left flummoxed, sore, and even a bit angry, at the choice of winner.


Out of the 19 songs offered which could be voted on I'd have given mine to the U.K.'s 'Brotherhood of Man's 'Save your Kisses For Me', also, incidentally, the most successful Eurovision song of all time in terms of record sales.


Having stated my view that 'Waterloo'was not a worthy winner for the 'greatest' Eurovision entry, it's only fair that I offer a couple of my own nominations for that title -

'L'amour est bleu' which finished a relatively lowly fourth for Luxembourg in 1967 - an instrumental version under the title of (what else!)  'Love is Blue' reached #12 in the U.K. in 1968 but actually topped the American Billboard charts for a full five weeks in that same year. 

'Hallelujah' from Israel's group 'Milk and Honey' in 1979 which, although it won, wasn't deemed by the panel of being of sufficient merit to be included in those which could be voted on.

'Tom Pillibi', France's 1960 winner.

And I nominate one which will ruffle a few feathers, but it's honest - for the U.K., Cliff Richard singing - no, not 'Congratulations' - but 'Power to All our Friends', which finished a very respectable 3rd in 1973, the top three in that year being very close in score - and a song being, I think even now, one of the 'greats', knocking spots off most other entries both before and since. Unfortunately, when it came to the actual performance in contest, Cliff distracted from the song by his unintentionally comic leg movements. But it really was a classic song.

There are perhaps another score or more of songs I could offer for consideration, most of them non-winners, but got to draw the line somewhere. 

And having got all that off my chest, I feel better now - though could still do without having to listen to that infernal 'Waterloo' ever again!

Latest news hot from The White House

I've only just heard a bulletin direct from the recently-appointed White House Press Secretary who, reporters have been assured, will never lie, and it's phenomenal news too - yes, the President has now saved TEN MILLION American lives, maybe even more, simply by NOT dropping a nuclear bomb on New York. Great success story! Is there no stopping this man??? Oh, celebrate, my friends! Give thanks and party till you drop! 
Now, who will join my petition to have this supremely gifted individual canonised? - while still alive, which might be unprecedented but this is a man with unprecedented talents, and a humble and holy man to boot. A sainthood will sit very nicely beside the 'Noble' Peace Prize he's long overdue in receiving (or should that be a 'Wurlitzer' Prize?) 
So everybody, three cheers now for this living embodiment of selfless disregard of his own interests and his studious prioritising of the often desperate needs of hard-working American citizens everywhere --------------- HIP HIP..............