nineveh_uk

On Sunday afternoon I went to the cinema for the first time since February 2022 (David Copperfield) to see Fire or Love, a documentary about volcanologists and film-makers Katia and Maurice Krafft, whose footage anyone who has enjoys volcano documentaries will recognise some of, and who died along with 41 other people at the eruption of Mt Unzen (Japan) in 1991.

As a volcano film, and a film about a pair of deeply committed scientists, it was very enjoyable, and I was glad I had seen it in the cinema rather than on my television. Unfortunately, while much of the script was good, the remaining portion and the narration as a whole was the most awful glurge. Better to have called it Fire of Lurve. Miranda July's voiceover sounds like it is being played at half speed, and while the sections using the Kraffts' own words (variously spoken by them or actors) are engaging, and my problem wasn't the subject of them as a couple, but the overall presentation lapsed into a tedious sentimentality when I would have preferred a brisker narration and more about the Kraffts and about volcanoes.

With this in mind, I shall clearly have to watch the forthcoming second Werner Herzog documentary about volcanoes, also about the Kraffts, which the Guardian found lacking purpose in the absence of July's narration. Less lurve can only be to the good.

Here is the Fire of Love trailer. If the voiceover annoys you, it will annoy you all film. The volcano footage is still great.

My parents have set out for points north once more, a day earlier than anticipated on account of Youngest Sister having broken her upper arm on Thursday evening. I suspect that will prove to be her last ice-skating session… Other than phone calls to various people on this subject, we had the relaxing sort of weekend suited to somewhat tired people in late February, and other people did the cooking, which I always like. I enjoy cooking, but it gets tedious day in and day out, especially the washing up.

We saw Icelandic film Rams on Saturday, highly recommended. I found myself thinking afterwards how incomparable it was as a piece of art compared to Star Wars, which was the last film I saw at the cinema. Not that I didn’t enjoy Star Wars, which was a fun piece of light entertainment that I enjoyed very much; but Rams simply offers more to chew on.

I shall cheat and quote the beginning of the Guardian review:

In a secluded Icelandic valley, estranged brothers Gummi and Kiddi are warring neighbours, competing with each other for the best ram prize that has become a symbol of their family feud. But when the spectre of the fatal scrapie disease threatens their remote farms, both brothers are faced with the prospect of a cull. Can these long-term enemies find common purpose when their ancestral stock and way of life are threatened?

Here’s the trailer:


It’s a powerful film, with some terrific acting, real pathos, unattractive woolly jumpers, set in a place that makes February in southern England feel like paradise by comparison, and with lots of sheep.

Having missed Spectre, and put off Carol until the Christmas break, I finally managed to get myself to the cinema not only once this week, but twice, indeed on successive days.

Bridge of Spies When I say that this was an excellent old-fashioned film, I mean that in the best way. It was possessed of such old-fashioned virtues as a strong script, coherent and engaging narrative, good pacing, fine cinematography, and top quality acting from all concerned. The film dramatizes an incident in 1960, in which a Soviet spy was exchanged by the USA for a US pilot whose spy plane was shot down over the USSR (the U-2 Incident), plus a student who got himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Though the events of the story are greatly compressed, and there is little exploration of the wider context, the basic historical outline of the spy story is apparently fairly accurate. Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance are terrific as the leads, but there are also fine performances from the younger actors playing the US pilot and student, and by Amy Ryan as Donovan’s wife (also a tribute to the script, which resists the temptation to make her a metaphor for American small-mindedness, by leaving that role to the American officials who are being small-minded), and the eternal issue of how to deal with the accents of Russian and German characters speaking English is got round by casting Russian and German actors. Engaging and entertaining from start to finish, definitely recommended.

The Nutcracker, live broadcast of the Royal Ballet production from the ROH (see link for trailer). The music was sublime. The dancing was fabulous. The costumes were gorgeous. There's just one tiny thing...

I'm not saying the plot of The Nutcracker is ludicrous, but it's an excuse for dancing in the way that huddling for warmth is an excuse for fanfic porn.

I'm not saying the plot of The Nutcracker is ludicrous, but it gets more interesting in the second act when there isn't one.

I'm not saying the plot of The Nutcracker is ludicrous, but I ended up making sense of it as Drosselmeyer the toy-maker's forbidden love for his nephew.

Or as my father put it, it's a shop window plot, there solely to display the exhibits, namely a pretty Christmassy set and cute dancing children (act 1), and spectacular exhibition dancing (act 2). By the end of act 1 I had decided that good as the dancing was, I would never need to see it again. My life does not need toy soldiers vs. mice warfare in it. By the end of act 2, which is just a bunch of exhibition dances one after the other, I was converted. At least to act 2.

The dancing is gorgeous. The sugar-plum fairy and prince section was absolutely staggering and on its own would be worth the price of admission. It also illustrated the extraordinary tightness of ballet tights that appeared to be spray-painted on as the camera view showed the prince's thigh muscles quivering in the leaps. Mention must also be made of Gary Avis, playing Drosselmeyer as if auditioning to represent earth at the 2016 Galactic Cape-Twirling Championships. And passionately in love with his nephew. One of the cinema audience response tweets run across the screen at the end suggested there should be a Drosselmeyer spin-off. I am 100% behind this, just as long as it is the incestuous goth aesthetic version. With capes.

It's decision time, never a good season for me. Having finally got round to upgrading from Windows XP to 7 on Sunday, following a blue screen of death incident that forced the issue*, I have reached the inescapable conclusion that while my 2007 laptop is largely in good nick apart from needing a new battery (not an issue because I use it like a PC), its hard drive is full. So I get to take lots of my documents off it, store them externally, and run programmes only on the hard drive, or I upgrade the hard drive, or I buy a new computer. The first is annoying and liable to lead to worry about losing stuff. The third seems unnecessarily expensive and environmentally wasteful, given that I have a computer that functions fine apart from being full. So it may be screwdriver time. On the plus side, the manual does give instructions on how to do it. The relatively small cost seems worth a punt if I can put off spending a couple of hundred a while longer.

I went to see Beyond Clueless this evening. It was an enjoyable way to spend 90 minutes, and there was a lot of amusement in some of the montages, but ultimately I agree with Mark Kermode's three stars, rather than the more breathless review I read in the autumn. It lacks a real thesis, and fails to deliver analytical bite. Ultimately, the genre it's analyzing does the analysis better.

*Fortunately everything was backed up, not my standard state of affairs.

Back home, after the end of the Christmas holidays. It’s been a slightly strange fortnight, with a very disjointed second week as one by one the household succumbed to plague*. I had a very enjoyable Christmas, receiving some excellent presents, and we managed to do quite a bit, but there were various things that didn’t get done and I am not returning to work feeling particularly physically refreshed, though it is fair to say that I certainly haven’t thought about much since the 20th, which is good. I will be catching up on Yuletide in due course.

Anyway, other people’s plagues are almost invariably boring**, so here are other people’s (person’s) seasonal reviews instead.

[Unknown site tag]Frozen

A Christmas Eve matinee at Cottage Road cinema has become a bit of a tradition these days, and this year it was Disney’s turn, with a take on The Snow Queen that happily had moved far enough away from the original that they couldn’t justify the title and I was able to enjoy it for what it was rather than fuming about it not being the proper TSQ. It wasn’t exactly deep, but it kept a slightly dopey me entertained for 90 minutes, with decent songs and strong visuals, particularly beautifully realised scenery***, though the too-large eyes for the female leads - multiple, which was nice - are a bit weird. I was amused that becoming a snow queen also involves a lower neckline and skirt with slit to the thigh. I’m being sarcastic, but actually it was a nice film, if not on the level of Beauty and the Beast, which is an excellent film.

Incidentally, does the concept of “true love’s kiss” thus expressed show up before it was spoofed in Enchanted? It was in Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty as well.

[Unknown site tag] The Hobbit II AKA The Desolation of Smaug

Also at Cottage Road. It’s the fairground ride version of the book, but as I’m not that fussed about the book, I didn’t mind (and indeed it has finally inspired me to re-read it, which took some doing). As in the first film, I loved the visuals of the Kingdom under the Mountain, could have lived with it being half an hour shorter, and managed not to ask myself such question as “have the dwarves left the gas on for fifty years” during the film itself****. I could also have lived without the love triangle, though I quite enjoyed Tauriel as an addition otherwise – an infinitely preferable insert to the Laketown stuff. I was very impressed with the animation of Smaug, which achieved both weight and fluidity and made me believe in him as a dragon rather than a man in a rubber suit. I am glad that he will get to be in the third film.
In short, I enjoy the Hobbit films as what they are – I quite appreciate why other people cannot.

[Unknown site tag] Cinderella, Northern Ballet Theatre

The family theatre trip for the season, and great stuff (not least because we gave up on parking in the centre of town and split the taxi fare both ways). I don’t know a lot about ballet, but I like music (original, not Prokofiev), plot, and to come out wanting to leap about the sitting room. A delightful new version from a company who don’t get anything like the subsidy they deserve and consistently provide exciting and excellent classical dance combined with entertaining storytelling, we all came back dancing.

On the ballet front, I also enjoyed the television broadcast of Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty. I am inclined to agree with the critics who suggested that if you’re going to introduce vampires to the story you might as well go the whole hog, but it was gorgeous nonetheless. I would have liked a bit more formal dancing and pointe work rather than bare feet (one day I will damn well buy myself a pair of pointe shoes to have a go in something better than slippers), which I felt would have added variety, but informality was definitely preferable to the original version’s final act of show dances by random fairytale characters.

[Unknown site tag] Boxing day races, Wetherby

We lost. Well, we also won, but less than we lost. It was fun, and very cold.

*Life skills tip: if you find yourself feeling a bit queasy during a 3D film and there is the slightest possibility that this isn’t simply motion sickness, but motion sickness and a gastric bug, leave. Middle Sister did not follow this advice, and ended up in A&E. On the plus side, she managed to do this at a cinema with its own sickroom (OK, the sickroom belonging to the National Media Museum – lots of school trips, and IMAX).

**The exception being actual plague. Thanks to The Bridge I have learnt that the Swedish for pneumonic plague is lungepest.

***The reindeer was basically an excuse to show how well they can do fur now.

****Though not to stop myself coming up with a Benedict Cumberbatch crossover idea, and I’m not even a Cumberstan.