A review of “Midnight In Paris”
April 21st, 2012 by Roger Darlington
I’ve just caught up with the latest Woody Allen movie which I have reviewed here.
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Not silent about silent calls
April 19th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
When I was on the governing bodies of the Internet Watch Foundation and Postwatch, I did lots of media interviews – both radio and television, both recorded and live. But, in my eight years on the Communications Consumer Panel, I’ve not done one – until today.
Normally the Chair of the Panel picks up any media work, but he’s away today, so I found myself doing a live piece for BBC Radio 2. What was the issue? The £750,000 fine of HomeServe by the regulator Ofcom for breaching rules on silent and abandoned calls. You can read more about the issue here.
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World Book Night on the way
April 19th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
You probably don’t know this, but this coming Monday is World Book Night. As I explained in a posting six months ago, I volunteered to be a distributor of one of the 25 books on this year’s list of one million books that will be handed out by some 20,000 givers.
I have been selected and I obtained my choice of book: “The Remains Of The Day” by Kazuo Ishiguro. I picked the book because it features a character with my surname: Darlington.
Today I went along to my nearest “Waterstone’s” store to collect 24 copies of my chosen book. I will now start the process of distributing them so, if you meet me in the next few days, you will probably find that I offer you a copy.
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How much of your body is made of water?
April 18th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
The answer is apparently two-thirds!
How do I know? I picked up this drip of information from this section of the South East Water web site.
As I explained in an earlier posting, I recently became Chair of the Customer Challenge Group at the company and so I’ve been visiting the Head Office in Snodland and learning more about water than you could ever imagine possible.
You would not believe how complex is the management and regulation of the water sector.
At least, it’s raining ….
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How open is your Internet?
April 16th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
All this week, the “Guardian” newspaper is running a special feature on Internet freedom.
As part of the project, the paper has produced an interactive world map with an assessment of how free the Net is in different countries. Check out your situation here.
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Word of the day: augean
April 16th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
I’ve recently been having an e-mail exchange with an Indian political commentator about reform of the Indian political system [see my guide here]. She used the word ‘augean’ and I was impressed that an indian used an English word which I had to look up.
The adjective refers to a task which is both hugely unpleasant and extremely difficult – originally the fifth labour of Heracles in Greek mythology [see here] and, in the context of her e-mail, changing the the Indian political system.
Posted in Cultural issues, World current affairs | Comments (0)
Film appreciation course – part 2
April 15th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
Today I was back at the “Guardian” offices for the film appreciation course run by the critic Danny Leigh.
Before the day’s programme began proper, we were shown the famous Odessa steps sequence from “Battleship Potemkin” which was copied in the much more recent film “The Untouchables” [my review here].
Section 1 on Opening Sequences was taken by Danny. He explained that such sequences are designed to draw in the viewer and set the tone for the film. Everything in a movie – visuals, dialogue, sound, colour, clothing … – is deliberate but perhaps especially so in the initial scenes. He showed five film clips including the start of the Brazilian work “City Of God” [my review here].
Section 2 on Cinematography was presented by Leslie Helperin of “Variety”. She defined cinematography as “everything that is going on with the camera” and one of the course participants offered the definition of “painting with light”. She showed five clips including the terribly slow and opaque opening sequence from “Melancholia”.
Section 3 on Mise En Scene was also covered by Leslie. The term – which comes from the theatre – means literally ‘place in scene’ and the Wikipedia page defines it as “everything that appears before the camera and its arrangement – composition, sets, props, actors, costumes, and lighting”. She showed eight film clips including the Halloween sequence from “ET” when the flying bicycle crosses in front of the moon.
Section 4 on Scripwriting saw the return of Danny. He suggested that, more than the other roles in the moviemaking business, scriptwriting can be taught and that there are standard rules or conventions. However, the script is the formula for a film while the film itself needs structure and putting the page on the screen often necessitates all sorts of changes to make it work. We all agreed that we rarely go to see a movie because of the scriptwriter but that a recent exception might be Aaron Sorkin who wrote “The Social; Network” [my review here]. Danny showed eight clips including one from a film all about scriptwriting: “Adaptation” [my review here].
The course closed with a showing of “Sunset Boulevard” but I skipped this. It had been a long (but very enjoyable) weekend, I have seen it before, and I find it dark and cynical.
The weekend had covered all the key elements involved in deconstructing films and we had see a total of 60 film clips. All the three presenters were experts and all the students cinephiles, so it was a splendid couple of days. I now have even more ideas for works to rent from Lovefilm.
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Film appreciation course – part 1
April 14th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
As regular readers of this blog will know, I am a massive movie fan and have written hundreds of film reviews for my web site.
I’m spending this weekend at the offices of the “Guardian” newspaper attending a two-day film appreciation course. Most of the event is hosted by Danny Leigh, “Guardian” film writer and co-host of BBC’s “Film 2012” which I watch religiously. He is staggeringly knowledgeable about cinema and delivers his material quite fast while energetically pacing the room and waving his arms.
In his Introduction, Danny described his love of film as being because he sees it as “an intersection between imagination and industry” and offered that “I am incredibly suggestible and never see plot twists coming”.
Section 1 on Acting was taken by Peter Bradshaw of the “Guardian”. He contrasted the traditional, old-fashioned style of acting by someone like Laurence Olivier with the more modern, Method type of acting exhibited by the likes of Dustin Hoffman. He showed five film clips including the famous “Are you lookin’ at me?” scene from “Taxi Driver”.
Section 2 on Sound was delivered by Danny. He explained that the main language of cinema is visual and that therefore sound is perceived as the secondary language and suggested that this owed a lot to the first 30 years of the history of cinema when all movies were silent. He pointed out that today lots of the sound in films is not recorded at source but added in post production. He showed eleven clips including the dramatic ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ sequence from “Apocalypse Now” [my review here].
Section 3 on Direction was taken by Danny. He explained the ‘auteur’ theory of direction where the director is seen as the author of the film and the camera is seen as his pen. He contrasted this with the usual situation where the studio – usually in the form of the producer – has the final cut of the film. He showed eight clips including the opening scene of “Citizen Kane”.
Section 4 on Editing was covered by Danny. He described editing as the construction of the narrative and the rhythm of a movie and explained how the creation of a film can be seen as three essential elements: writing, shooting, editing. He showed nine clips including the sex scene in “Don’t Look Now”.
The first day concluded with the showing of a strange, short French film called “La Jetee” which apparently inspired “Twelve Monkeys” [my review here].
Fascinating stuff and more tomorrow …
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That’s one small step for Catrin …
April 12th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
Since the weekend, my granddaughter Catrin has been walking and she is now up to four or five steps at a time. It’s taken a little while – she is almost 15 months – but, of course, all children develop at different paces and she is such a happy and fun baby.
She and I celebrated her new achievement with a visit to the Royal Festival Hall where she tucked into a banana and the South Bank where we went on a merry-go-round together. Such joy.
“I can stand up on my own now.”
“I just love bananas.”
“Can we go round now granddad?”
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Two attempts by Hollywood to tell the same story
April 10th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
First, I saw “No Strings Attached” [my review here]; then I viewed “Friends With Benefits” [my review here]. Both rom-coms have the same premise and the same conclusion but both are worth watching.
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