Latest Posts by slenderfire-blog - Page 4

Social conditioning is so strong that many people here seem so honored that a white man cared enough to steal their ideas. Instead of, you know, wondering why they don't have the opportunity of publishing such material themselves.

Veep style tv shows about the Beatles that I want

Veep style tv show about Apple in 1968

Veep style tv show about the staff at the Dakota

everytime I read this story I'm so disturbed by yoko's manic participation, like she was 38 at this point. girl what are you doing with this mean girl baby nonsense you're nearly forty.

Beatlemania was fun but now it's time for beatledepression

Obviously the second part of this quote gets the most attention but I really love the first part because it's so true! Read a page of Finnegans Wake aloud and tell me you don't hear John.

“John spoke the way James Joyce wrote. To me, he was the Beatles. He was always the spark. In a late wee-hour-of-the-morning talk, he once told me, ‘I’m just like everybody else Harry, I fell for Paul’s looks.”

— Harry Nilsson speaking about John Lennon.

it’s still so crazy to me that the guy who wrote this john and paul a love story book is a transphobe like ok dude if you showed up to mclennon monday we would kill you with hammers

taxman is one of the funniest beatles songs ever

The News Today, OH BOY!

Phoebe and Daphne discuss the (Beatle) news of the day in this unfiltered, bonus AKOM.

Eyes of the Storm

Paul Mescal

Another Grammy!?

Gettin’ High w/ Paul

Bowery Ballroom

SNL 50

New Paul album?!

Does He Think of Me? Was He Jealous?

John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs

McCartney Legacy Pt.2

Paul’s Money

THE PAUL MCCARTNEY DRAG BALL! Listen HERE

January/February?, 1964: John works on the composition of ‘If I Fell’. 

JOHN: So I hope you see that I / Would love to love you / I hope that she won’t cry / When she learns we are two / We’re two / Gonna be the two two of us in love / Two two of us in love…

"hey guys, let's all wear dark shirts and not tell paul"

Drawings of John Lennon by Klaus Voormann

The Wolf hides his teeth

Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall was the literary sensation of 2009, and the excitement didn’t abate with the publication of its follow-up, Bring Up The Bodies, in 2012. In some ways the anti- ‘A Man For All Seasons’, Wolf Hall recasts the traditionally maligned Thomas Cromwell as a sympathetic character, quietly pragmatic in the face of the class snobbery of the Tudor courts, and fiercely loyal to his mentor Cardinal Wolsey.

The story covers the now-familiar ground of Henry VIII’s split from Rome and disastrous marriages, but Mantel’s skill as a writer and researcher has ensured her books will be remembered long after more lightweight retellings are forgotten. The same could be said for the new TV adaptation, running on Wednesday evenings on BBC 2 since January.

I haven’t read Wolf Hall or its successor (the only Mantel I’ve read is an obscure early novel set in Saudi Arabia) so I’m coming to the series without much background knowledge other than Alison Weir’s history of the fall of Anne Boleyn. The latter was a useful primer, but there are still many characters and situations that are unfamiliar to me. It doesn’t really matter though, because the story is gripping enough even without a dramatis personae.

Director Peter Kosminsky steers well clear of ‘sexing up’ the material, resulting in an understated, authentic-feeling but nonetheless compelling story. The timeline is complex and moves around a lot - some familiarity with the books or the historical period is recommended - but the editing is so elegant that the jumps don’t feel jarring. I reviewed Kosminsky’s series ‘The Promise’ about the founding of modern Israel a couple of years ago and was impressed with its scope and intelligence, if disappointed in its inability to give its Arab characters the same depth as its Jewish ones. There are some hints of that same urge to simplify in 'Wolf Hall', albeit in the opposite direction. Whereas in ‘The Promise’ the Arab characters were portrayed as saintly to the point of simpleness, in 'Wolf Hall' Thomas More and his coterie are cartoonishly nasty, smirking at Cromwell’s ‘low’ birth and doing everything short of steepling their fingers like supervillains. Thomas More being a villain isn’t the issue, but he needs to be a complex villain in order to be believable.

The contrast is especially stark when Anton Lesser’s performance of Thomas More comes up against Mark Rylance’s as Cromwell. The latter’s ability to navigate the treacherous intrigues of Henry’s court is explained in this version of history by a wonderfully watchful performance by Rylance. Thomas is quiet and reserved, mysterious to even his family, but he is constantly observing and absorbing what he needs to know in order to survive. Survival isn’t his only motivation though - he is a committed (if circumspect) believer in Church reform, smuggling Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament into his home and encouraging Henry’s avarice towards the monasteries in a sincere effort to dismantle their feudal power and redistribute their wealth. He is also motivated by loyalty to Cardinal Wolsey (played by Jonathan Pryce), a fellow ‘low-born’ man and a kind of mentor to the young lawyer (the series has fun with how Cromwell changes his job description every few years in order to finagle his way into spheres of influence). Wolsey’s days are numbered once Anne Boleyn sets her mind on becoming Queen, but Cromwell stays loyal and quietly vows to avenge him. How the story will treat the historically controversial issue of Cromwell’s role in Boleyn’s eventual fall will be interesting to see.

Speaking of Anne Boleyn, Kosminsky stalwart Claire Foy turns in a delightfully spiky performance of the imperious, determined young woman. Eschewing any approximation of conventional seductiveness, Foy’s Boleyn is a streak of loud, clever arrogance bursting through the murky, hushed double-dealing of Henry’s court. It’s an interpretation that hews closer to what we know of the real Boleyn’s character and provides an explanation for Damian Lewis’ surprisingly milquetoast Henry’s infatuation with her. Lewis seems to be playing Henry with plenty of understatement for the early part of the series, but hints of his megalomania and unpredictability are already beginning to show. In his interactions with Henry, Rylance’s Cromwell plays the classic manipulator’s trick of convincing Henry that implementing Cromwell’s plans was, in fact, the king’s idea all along. Seeing Henry fall in line without even realising he’s being pulled is delightful. It’s a credit to Rylance’s quiet charm that this somewhat terrifying skill endears him all the more to the audience.

You can already see how Cromwell’s cunning rectitude will defeat the equally clever but more impulsive Boleyn’s scheming. Seeing those two face off will definitely be a highlight of the series. The Thomas Cromwell of ‘Wolf Hall’ is someone who’s been through the wringer personally and in public life, and his patience for the pampered man-children of the Tudor court is running out. It’ll be interesting to see how he enacts his revenge - probably slowly, quietly, and ultimately getting off scot-free.

Review of an early Hilary Mantel

Goodreads review of 'Eight Months on Ghazzah Street', an early novel by Hilary Mantel:

A terrific sense of menace pervades this story from the beginning, as cartographer Frances struggles to navigate her new home in Jeddah, where her husband has landed a lucrative construction job.

It's the mid-1980s, and Saudi Arabia is riding high on the back of oil wealth, marble and glass towers rising out of empty lots, a modern-looking yet feudal economy carried on the backs of exploited immigrant workers. Cloistered in a luxurious apartment, Frances is frustrated by her Muslim women neighbour's refusal to accept Frances' assertions that life is better for women in the West. It's cautionary tale in how a superior attitude will only drive others further into their own convictions.

Frances recognises her essential prejudice against Saudis and Muslims in general, but the crushing imprisonment and police state-like surveillance of the society she's living in break what little will she has to separate her legitimate protests from bigotry. The novel presents expat life satirically, showing the other English people living in Saudi as essentially venal and bigoted, staying the country just long enough to save up for a 'city flat' in London. Expat life hasn't changed much in 30 years, it seems. Corrupt, arrogrant Saudi politicians and minor royals are equally skewered. The novel's main flaw is the lack of resolution in the central mystery, a story that is built up, clue by clue, through the whole story. Perhaps the details are unimportant and that aspect of the plot merely functions to illustrate Frances' growing paranoia, but what little details that emerged were interesting enough to warrant further explanation. The powerful sense of dread ended up feeling anticlimactic. Also, Frances herself was somewhat thinly drawn, considering she was the central character - her neighbours and the other expats came much more vividly to life. Some experiments in structure didn't really work for me either.

Overall, worth reading, if only as a warning against falling into the trap of becoming the eternal expat, staying in the hated host country for “just another year”....

Construction no.128 (1920)

"There are so many interesting things to do in life. And we waste our time emptily and keep dreaming about something...And this dream isn’t worth anything. But what’s been actually done, even poorly – is worthwhile"

Aleksander Rodchenko

'An empty theatre is a promise unfulfilled'

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"You must take up your well-shaped oar and go on a journey until you come where there are men living who know nothing of the sea, and who eat food that is not mixed with salt, who never have known ships whose cheeks are painted purple, who never have known-well-shaped oars, which act for ships as wings do. And I will tell you a very clear proof, and you cannot miss it. When, as you walk, some other wayfarer happens to meet you, and says you carry a winnow-fan on your bright shoulder, then you must plant your well-shaped oar in the ground, and render ceremonious sacrifice to the lord Poseidon, one ram and one bull, and a mounter of sows, a boar pig, and make your way home again and render holy hecatombs to the immortal gods who hold the wide heaven, all of them in order. Death will come to you from the sea, in some altogether unwarlike way, and it will end you in the ebbing time of a sleek old age. Your people about you will be prosperous. All this is true that I tell you.” The Odyssey

#notavessel

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The Threepenny Opera

Image: Dada Rundschau by Hannah Höch, 1919.

(A review from last year of the Threepenny Opera in the Gate Theatre. Trying to get this post to nestle into the correct chronological space, but Tumblr seems to have a problem with that kind of reverse-scheduling. Hence this introductory note - this review was written in October 2013.)

Seeing the show in the flesh, in the theatre, after years of exposure to the myth, is a slightly disorientating experience. The expected, stunning musical set-pieces are interspersed with narrative-prolonging longeurs, while the most famous songs (Mack The Knife and Pirate Jenny) pop up at rather incidental points in the story. The political message is less a message than an announcement, clunking the audience over the head with the complaints of the oppressed in rags.  The show itself, as presented by The Gate and directed by Wayne Jordan, is both less strange and more wonderful than I’d imagined it would be. This is a production that takes the source material seriously, as shown by the 18-piece orchestra that starts playing as soon as the curtain lifts. From then on the show dazzles with pitch-perfect (and refreshingly unamplified) singing, choreography that manages to be challenging without being confusing and costumes and set design that convey just the right amount of ragged decadence.

The lack of subtlety and nuance in the original storytelling persists through a game reimagining by Mark O’Rowe, but the music and aesthetic for which the name Threepenny Opera is synonymous more than compensates. Allusions to the present economic situation are kept mercifully subtle. This production is no exercise in superficial window-dressing – it is the very sincerity with which the cast and crew present this musical and visual feast that gives this production its extraordinary power.

Highlights include Hilda Fay as Jenny, Mark O’Regan as Mr Beecham and the aforementioned 18-piece orchestra.

'Wherever you go, there you are'

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 Peñíscola, Spain.

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Blue on Blue

“Walking . . . is how the body measures itself against the earth.”

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"He looks around, around

He sees angels in the architecture

Spinning in infinity"

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The Virgin and the Eagle.

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