Sunday 27 May 2012

J. Arthur


I'll try and make this post a little more cheerful than yesterday's - in fact I'll just try and make it, full stop.  My connection keeps breaking down, and I have just spent an hour reconfiguring my router, not knowing whether or not this is the fault.  My server is bloody difficult to contact, all they want is to take money for the service, not actually service it for you.  Oh well.

The last few responses to comments were made in the windows between break-downs, and some of them had to be repeated - hence my slightly testy responses when kicking you cats.

Last night - with the net connection turned off - we watched the Fassbinder film, 'Despair', which was the last or near last picture that Dirk Bogard ever starred in.  He did a bloody good German accent all the way through it, and the German actors around him did bloody good ones in English too.  Only the text was sub-titled.

I don't know, but I just didn't like it.  In fact - as mentioned before - I just cannot abide any 'art' films aside from extremely good ones these days, and by extremely good I mean effortlessly good and containing a good splash of humour to boot.  Fellini never fails (or very rarely) and all the Swedish angst ones never fail to annoy the shit out of me, no matter how well filmed.  The epitome of Swedish suicide films has got to be 'The Ox' (made by Bergman's cameraman) - the only picture I have walked out of in a huff, leaving H.I. to find me in the bar later.

I used to have aspirations to get involved in the world of cinema when I was in my 20s, and I actually belonged to a film club when I was still at school, aged about 14.  It was then that I saw all the black and white classics, and - being an adolescent - quite enjoyed all the analysis involved in being a buff, all the verbal garbage involved in explaining exactly why you liked or disliked a film.

These days, I just want to be entertained, and leave the science of it to the people who I pay to do the entertaining.  I'm not talking low-brow here, I have still retained some quite sophisticated tastes, after you cut away all the Harry Potter escapism.

I used to fix all my own cars and motorcycles when they broke down, but these days I pay a mechanic to do it for me.  There are two reasons for this:  He can do it about 10 times quicker than I can, and he also has all the diagnostic software programs needed to do it these days.  In my day, an engine was made up of pistons, a carburettor and an electrical system - all with enough space around them to allow you to almost stand inside the engine compartment as you worked.

My grandson who is studying film at college right now, went to our local cinema to ask if he could stand in with the projectionist for an evening, and they virtually laughed at him.

They no longer have projectionists in cinemas - it's all digital now.  Gone are the three spools of celluloid which you have to feed through a system of complicated rollers and be ready to splice together after the film snaps and starts burning in front of the bright lamp.

I wonder what they are teaching him, not to warn him that he could no longer act out the boy's role in 'Cinema Paradiso'.

16 comments:

  1. I should have done my film studies degree when I was 18 but I suspect that very few universities would have run that particular course way back then.
    When I was 41 I was astounded at the numbers of students on the course....hundreds and hundreds of bright young ( and not so young geeks).... very few with any chance of a real film career....
    tis a shame

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    1. I didn't realise you had done your course at such an advanced age. That's a bit too late to start out as a runner on set, then work your way up.

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  2. Do you still have to provide your own jodhpurs and megaphone?

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  3. I was late for most things thomas

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  4. Suspending disbelief...I've never been good at it.

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    1. Disbelieving suspenders has always been my forte.

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  5. Configuring your router sounds quite painful to me Tom.

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  6. I'm with you on the films, Tom. I want to be entertained, and i like a good story. I don't need to discuss it to death.

    I felt the same way in high school when an English teacher i had read symbolism into everything. Ruined some wonderful stories for me doing that. My favourite book at the time was Wuthering Heights, and i told him if he was going to try and ruin that one for me, too, i was going to skip his class.

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    1. Some teachers never understand that the message need only get through to one student to make it all worth while. Targets, eh?

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  7. My husband won't give up his old Volvo estate because he can still work on it if he wants to -- which he still does. But it's all about the money -- why have spare parts that cost a little to replace when you can have a computerized unit go wrong and have to spend lots. There was a time when people liked to find out 'how' things work, and to be able to fix them if they went wrong. Now it's more and more computer chips and throw away and replace...

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    1. I am guessing that his old Volvo is a 200 series? They go on forever. The last Volvos without brains.

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  8. You often talk all tough and mean, sarcastic and lean but then you referred to your grandson and I saw you go all soft inside. A nice view

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    1. Yes, beneath this macho exterior lies... er...

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