TV: Christmas 2007 Dr Who

It was quite a while ago now. It was also rubbish. It's a while since I have seen any nu-Who… is it all this bad? The Poseidon Adventure in space premise was enjoyable enough, but the ponderous scene on the narrow bridge across the abyss was straight out of the book of hackneyed clichés. And the music was dreadful, in the wrong kind of bombastic way. On the other hand, Kylie Minogue was surprisingly pleasant, and looked far less like the Aphex Twin than she does in photographs.

Film: "Mangal Pandey: The Uprising"

This is a film about Mangal Pandey, this soldier guy in the British East India Company's army. He becomes more and more annoyed by his bosses, and eventually revolts against them, lighting the spark that will bring the Company's rule to an end. This is a Bollywood film, the first I have ever seen. And it is total genius. Never having seen any of these before and, I suppose, being a closet racist, I had the idea that they would be hokey and lacking in decent production values. Not a bit of it, this film looks great, is well-acted, and deals with its subject with a level of nuance that compares well with equivalent Hollywood films. And it has loads of songs. What more do you want?

It is of course interesting to compare this film to what you get in other nation's cinemas. Male bonding seems to be a really big thing in Bollywood, with the relationship between Pandey and the Scottish officer he initially befriends but then turns against being far more significant than Pandey's courting of a woman imprisoned in a brothel for white Company officers.

I would love to have seen this in India… I bet there isn't a dry eye in the place at the end, when you see news reel footage of the Indian flag going up as the British finally leave.

Does anyone have any other Bollywood recommendations?

Where are the Pandas?

Sadly, internet connectivity problems continue to mean a lack of pandas here on a blog once characterised as all pandas, all the time. Feel free to post links to pictures of pandas in the comments.

It's an ill-wind that blows no good, and the lack of home internet means that last week I managed to READ A BOOK. It was by John Le Carré, was about spies, and had a sadface ending.

Book: "New Penguin Dictionary of Music" by Paul Griffith

We bought this at the Ligeti thing… the author himself was there, so they had it for cheap. I should have got it autographed. This is not actually a dictionary of all music (there is no entry for Dumpy's Rusty Nuts), and in fact it is mainly all about what people sometimes describe as classical music, with occasional nods to other forms. We got it so we could find out what all that funny stuff musos talk about means – you know: atonality, keys, time signatures, all that shite. The book is good fun to dip into, with the author having an endearingly grumpy writing style when discussing things of which he does not approve. I did think his attitude to "Popular Music" (essentially all Western music that is not either classical or jazz – you know, heavy metal, pop music, country and western, acid rock, that kind of thing) was simplistic and ultimately problematic, but this is hardly a new thing with classical music writers. Which reminds me, still have not written my letter to the Journal of Music in Ireland.

Festival: Remembering Ligeti

I think that's what this was called. It was a weekend, ages ago now, of events based around the music of Hungary's late composer. As well as discussions and performances of chamber pieces by the great man, they showed a couple of the Stanley Kubrick films in which his music was used. We watched The Shining. It is still very scary. The chamber performances we attended were most enjoyable, the discussions a bit musicological and over my head, but the most fun musical thing might well have been the performance that opened the festival. This was called Poème Symphonique, and it consisted of a hundred metronomes being set going until they all wound down and stopped. It is amazing how you start attributing human characteristics to inanimate objects, and wondering which metronome will be plucky enough to hold out the longest. The piece is great musically too, or at least great in terms of noise, the endless TACK TACK TACK sounds going in and out of phase while the overall number decreasing calls to mind nothing so much as the start of Kraftwerk's Radioactivity album.

film: "The Assassination of Jesse James [etc.]"

You know the score: idiot savant guy falls in with psychopath gangster Jesse James, idolises him, then turns against him, kills him, becomes rich, famous, and hated, and then is killed by a mentalist. You don't need to see the film now, but you should, because it's great. I have not given away the plot, as the story it covers is a matter of public record.

One maybe interesting thing I was struck by was a possible parallel between Jesse James and the urban guerrilla character in the On The Run / Cavale film in that French Trilogy of linked films. The James gang started as guerrilla fighters in the American Civil War, and kept fighting when the rest of their side gave up. By the time the film is set, Jesse James seems almost washed up, for all his fame and notoriety – a man still going through the motions of fighting a war everyone else has forgotten about.

Nazis - I hate those guys

While I was in Berlin, I saw this exhibition on Hitler and Speer's Germania project - wacky plan to turn Berlin into a corpse city of ridiculously large buildings. It featured models created as props for the Downfall film, showing such delights as the Enormodome, the Great Arch of Victory, some huge Mussolini Column and various other grotesquely oversized buildings and monuments. I have always been aware of what deeply unpleasant people the leaders of the Third Reich were, but it was seeing these models really brought home what total lunatics they were.

Enormous Panda Image Source (have I used this one already?)

I hear the drums echoing tonight

I can reveal that Irene will in fact be going to Ethiopia with Camara (see previous post). This will be in July, apparently one of the wettest months in Ethiopia. It looks like I could be going out there as well - plenty of opportunities to bless the rains down in Africa beckon. Unlike Irene, I will just be going there on a holiday, but you can still send me money if you like.

Irene Speaks

Some of you may know Irene, my beloved. She does not hold with all this blog shite, but she does have a special website of her own at which you can make her happy by donating money to Camara. Here she explains why you might want to do this:

"As some of you may know, I've been doing a lot of volunteering work for Camara, a charity that refurbishes old computers and sends them to education projects in Africa. As part of this work, I'm off to an as yet undecided African country in July to teach computer skills and help set up computer labs. To do this, I need to raise €2000 to cover
my training, flights and accommodation, and to contribute towards the cost of shipping out the computers we'll be working with.

"So I've created a fundraising page on mycharity.ie:

" http://www.mycharity.ie/event/irene_wants_ur_money/

"Please take a look and consider making a donation online (it's all secure). Whatever you decide to donate, it will be very much appreciated. If you would like more info about the charity and/or the Africa project, just give me a shout.

"Thanks,

"Irene

"PS: Please note, this is not one of those "pay for me to go on my holidays" things you sometimes see advertised (trekking in Nepal/climbing Kilimanjaro etc). I will be teaching in a classroom full-time, five days a week, so it is actual work! But don't worry, I will shortly be setting up a separate "pay for me to go on my holidays" page for those of you who really want to fund my time-share in Benidorm."

I'm not dead!

Just in case you were wondering. I have been having internet connectivity issues. No pandas this time, I am trying to get as much stuff up as quickly as possible before this café closes.