Slightly Intrepid

16 January 2025

I've been drinking down your pain, gonna turn that whiskey into rain

Thursday music corner: Singer-songwriter and pianist Tori Amos (b. Myra Ellen Amos in North Carolina, 1963), a child prodigy on the piano, came to fame after an abortive record-company attempt to fashion her into a popstar (1988's Y Tori Kant Read), gaining widespread attention for her richly autobiographical songwriting and classically-trained piano performances. Her first five solo albums all went platinum in America, and her second album, Under the Pink, entered the UK album charts at number one in February 1994. She has released 16 solo albums plus two live albums, and scored a UK pop number one in 1996 with the Armand van Helden remix of her track Professional Widow.

Big Wheel was the first single from Amos' 2007 album American Doll Posse. The album features 23 tracks, each under the aegis of one of five personas derived from Greek goddesses. Some American radio stations refused to play Big Wheel due to the lyric, "I am a M.I.L.F, don't you forget".

Tori Amos - Big Wheel (2007)

15 January 2025

What East Germans wanted in the 1950s

Given that most of the men and women who were involved in the governmental and party structures of the newly established GDR had suffered horrendous political persecution during the Hitler years, one might have expected more resistance to the lack of democratic process within the new constitution. Here was a chance to build the better Germany many had dreamt of, why was there not more anger at the corruption of this ideal? Paradoxically, the answer lies precisely in the experiences of fascism and war, which had led many Germans to value stability and unity over pluralistic discussion. This was true East and West. Germans were exhausted and the majority wanted little to do with politics. Since 1914, there had been little respite from ideology, war, economic turmoil and rapid political change. A middle-aged German in 1949 had seen the whole spectrum of political systems in their lifetime, but none of the offerings had shown a functioning democracy. Where was a love for voting, citizens' rights and a pluralistic society meant to come from? What the German public wanted was not an array of parties on a voting slip every four years but food on the table, a restored roof over their heads and a future without war and economic disaster.

The difference between East and West was that the West delivered these things immediately while the East did not. Konrad Adenauer, the first Chancellor of the FRG, was re-elected with results that modern politicians can only dream of: in 1953 and again in 1957, when his party received an astonishing 50.2 per cent of the vote despite a system of proportional representation which usually leads to coalition governments. This enabled him to run the country without forming a coalition for the only time in its history since 1949. All of this under Adenauer's famous slogan: 'Keine Experimente' - No Experiments.

East Germans too wanted no experiments in the 1950s. They wanted peace, secure jobs, food and an opportunity to rebuild their disrupted lives...

- Katja Hoyer, Beyond the Wall: East Germany 1949-1990, 2023, p.109-110.

11 January 2025

An afternoon at Wellington Zoo

A first visit in several years to take in the red panda encounter and enjoy the other animals, on a fine capital Saturday.

10 January 2025

Leibniz, polymath

[German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm] Leibniz collected fossils and conducted geological research, which eventually resulted in an innovative essay on the history of the earth. He had also begun another project, one that proved a bigger boon than any amount of efficiently extracted silver. The Hanoverian dukes were an offshoot of a junior branch of the Welf dynasty, whose long history Leibniz was commissioned to write. He never finished this compendious work—there was always a fascinating new morsel to add—but his relentless archival digging helped the duchy make its case for promotion to an electorate of the Holy Roman Empire.

Medieval history, metaphysics, and geology were not nearly enough to keep Leibniz busy in early 1686. In January, he wrote an article exposing what he took to be a notable blunder in Descartes’s physics. Descartes regarded force as the product of mass and velocity, whereas Leibniz argued that it was better seen as mass times the square of velocity. This move brought Leibniz close to the modern notion of kinetic energy. In April, he began writing a hundred-page “Examination of the Christian Religion,” and not long afterward he composed his most substantial treatise on logic. It contained a pioneering algebra of propositions, similar to the logical calculus invented in the mid-nineteenth century by the English mathematician George Boole. Boole’s creation is a large part of the basis for computer languages. When he learned of Leibniz’s precursor to his handiwork, Boole said that he felt as if Leibniz had shaken hands with him across the centuries.

- Anthony Gottlieb, ‘He Was a Genius for the Ages. Can We Give Him a Break?’, New Yorker, 6 January 2025

09 January 2025

The blazing sunset in your eyes will tantalise

Thursday music corner: In honour of what would've been David Bowie's 78th birthday yesterday, here's a BBC live recording for the John Peel-hosted Top Gear programme, recorded on 13 May 1968. The track is In The Heat of the Morning, which he originally recorded for Deram records along with the tracks that comprised his commercially unsuccessful self-titled 1967 debut album. The label's rejection of the song along with When I Live My Dream led to Bowie quitting Deram in April 1968. It would remain unreleased until March 1970 when the compilation The World of David Bowie was issued by Deram's parent label Decca, seeking to capitalise on the success in the summer of 1969 of the Space Odyssey single, which had reached number 5 in the UK charts due to its popularity at the time of the Apollo 11 Moon landing.

David Bowie - In The Heat of the Morning (live, 1968)

05 January 2025

My top 10 films of 2024

In 2024 I watched 286 films, a new record for me. I saw 245 of those for the first time. I only managed to see 31 films released in 2024 during the calendar year, so I singularly failed to follow through with my ambition to watch more new releases! But there were some great titles among them that I'm pleased to share.

This year's crop of most-watched actors has a healthy dose of black-and-white legends. The crop of Humphrey Bogart films was anchored by rewatches of the classic The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca, augmented by The Petrified Forest, the improbably-named The Amazing Dr Clitterhouse featuring Edward G Robinson, High Sierra, and All Through The Night. Bette Davis was in The Petrified Forest too, along with The Letter; Now, Voyager; the classic All About Eve and Another Man's Poison. French actress Delphine Seyrig excelled in Resnais' Muriel, or the Time of Return, Truffaut's Stolen Kisses, Bunuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Marguerite Duras' often infuriating India Song and Baxter, Vera Baxter. It was entertaining to see Peter Lorre's Raskolnikov in the 1935 Hollywood Crime & Punishment and a later career appearance in the 1954 Disney blockbuster 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Having already seen George Sanders as a manipulative theatre critic in All About Eve it was pleasing to watch three of his light performances from the 1940s: Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940), plus two French-set confections, A Scandal in Paris (1946) and The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947). Marek Walczewski and Stanislaw Manturzewski both appeared in a series of four brilliantly imaginative low-budget Polish sci-fi films from the 1970s and 1980s by Piotr Szulkin: Golem, The War of the Worlds: Next Century, O-Bi O-Ba: The End of Civilisation, and Ga-Ga: Glory to the Heroes. Indie darling Alia Shawkat of Arrested Development and Search Party TV fame appeared in four films over a span of two decades, from a child appearance in the Gulf War thriller Three Kings to quieter indie fare later on in Kelly Reichardt's Night Moves and First Cow, plus Sebastian Silva's Nasty Baby. And to add to the British quota, Kenneth More appeared in a clutch of wartime morale-boosters - Sink the Bismarck and Reach For The Skies (the Douglas Bader story) - plus The Admirable Crichton, as the unflappable butler who saves the day for a shipwrecked family and teaches them valuable lessons about the important things in life beyond the trappings of aristocracy.

In terms of the directors I savoured in 2024, French documentarian and artist Eric Baudelaire was the most-viewed, with his idiosyncratic film projects including reconstructing Michelangelo Antonioni’s notes on un-made films (The Makes) or recounting his correspondence with his friend Maxim Gvinjia, former Foreign Minister of the breakaway state of Abkhazia (Letters to Max). I watched a bunch of Noah Baumbach films for the first time: Kicking & Screaming, The Squid & the Whale, Margot at the Wedding, and The Meyerowitz Stories (New & Selected) - the latter featuring Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller being the most rewarding. I enjoyed French director Nelly Kaplan's witty and daft feminist comedies, particularly the goofiest of the bunch, the 1971 kidnap farce Papa, the Li'l Boats, with its protagonist kidnap victim Cookie (Sheila White) driving her kidnappers mad by ludicrous schemes of manipulation. It was a pleasure to watch the first three Thin Man comedies by W.S. Van Dyke, featuring the timeless chemistry of William Powell, Myrna Loy and Skippy the wire fox terrier - the latter of which also acted up a storm with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby (1938). It was a pleasure to discover the documentaries of English filmmaker Elizabeth Sankey, with both her 2019 supercut documentary Romantic Comedy and her 2024 post-partum psychosis memoir Witches being highly recommended. And the brace of films displaying the highly personal vision of Ukrainian director Kira Muratova that we saw at the Wellington Film Society - Brief Encounters (1967) and The Long Farewell (1971) - were also a treat as a relatively rare insight into women's filmmaking in the former USSR.

And so on to my top 10 for 2024 - all are 2024 calendar releases.

===

1. ENO (dir. Gary Hustwit)

American documentarian Gary Hustwit has already excelled with his design-themed 'documentart' films Helvetica, Objectified, Urbanised and Rams (a biography of German designer Dieter Rams, not the Icelandic drama or its Australian remake). In Eno he brings his interest in the structure and composition of the artistic process to the perfect subject, ex-Roxy Music and solo artist and ceaselessly-inventive music producer Brian Eno. The subject proves thoroughly charming in addition to his decades worth of insightful, playful commentary on his work and how he creates it. Eno is both disarmingly modest about his artistic gifts and the way he brings out creativity in the collaborators he works with, and passionately articulate about the value of artistic expression. Hustwit's documentary also plays with the form, thanks to the supposed 'AI generative edit' for each screening, jumbling the available content into a new, supposedly unique, structure each time it's seen. Our version felt well-rounded, but lacked any direct interviews with David Byrne; it did feature intriguing clips of a 1990 collaborative album with John Cale. Throughout, Eno displays a ready wit and spry, self-deprecating humour that are a convincing argument for seeing the documentary at least twice, to savour more of his company.

2. DUNE PART II (dir. Denis Villeneuve)

Another example of Villeneuve's almost unrivalled expertise at high-concept, highly-entertaining sci-fi film-making, Dune Part II successfully conveys Frank Herbert's complex plotting without overwhelming viewers, and dazzles with its ambitious set-pieces and, in particular, its sound design. The narrative and dialogue never plods, and the cast of many memorable names is deftly chosen. There's even a few well-needed glimpses of humour. It's rare that sci-fi blockbuster sequels maintain the momentum and quality of the originals, but Villeneuve has delivered that here. Who knows if Part III will live up to this impressive legacy?

3. WITCHES (dir. Elizabeth Sankey, UK)

Elizabeth Sankey's expertly-crafted and highly personal documentary about post-partum psychosis is framed within the context of historical depictions of witchcraft and women's mental health in general, and the techniques of illustrating the often heart-stoppingly sad personal stories with film clips from the world of horror and dark fantasy is a thoroughly effective device to convey the eerie otherworldliness of this most isolating and stigmatised mental illness. Well done to film streamer Mubi for helping to get this work out into the world.

4. THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG (dir. Mohammad Rasoulof, Iran)

Rightly popular at this year's Cannes festival, the recently-exiled Mohammad Rasoulof has crafted a deftly-handled family drama set amidst the backdrop of the popular insurrection convulsing the brutal theocratic regime in Iran. Much like Asghar Farhadi's 2011 film A Separation, this work examines a tightly-knit family as it unravels under misunderstandings, official persecution and its own internal contradictions. The grim paranoia of life in a authoritarian regime and the helplessness of women beholden to male protectors are under the microscope, and while the final act may at least partially veer towards melodrama these are compelling, convincingly nuanced characters and the viewer is indelibly invested in their fates. Earlier last year Rasoulof disobeyed his official travel ban from the Tehran regime and escaped to Germany, where he has been given asylum. He was able to attend the Cannes red carpet event for this film.

5. BIRD (dir. Andrea Arnold, UK)

Come for the intriguing mix of director Andrea Arnold and compelling lead actors Franz Rogowski and Barry Keoghan, come away with an admiration for the talent of the youthful Nykiya Adams as 12-year-old Bailey in what should've been the title role - "Bailey & Bird", please and thank you - and a compellingly nuanced depiction of life in the hard-knock squats of north Kent. Also a commendable affection for 'The Universal' from Blur's 1995 album 'The Great Escape'.

6. FLOW (dir. Gints Zilbalodis, Latvia)

A dialogue-free animated environmental fable in which only animals survive on an earth abandoned by humans, or perhaps one in which humans are now extinct. An inexplicable and implacable flood forces a wary loner cat to throw in its lot with a random assortment of other animals, and as is the way with such things, make much-needed friendships along the way, including with a determinedly friendly labrador and an exceedingly zen capybara. The painstakingly rendered animation is sumptuously beautiful, and the film has deservedly won a host of critic awards, along with being nominated in the Un Certain Regard category at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Director Gints Zilbalodis was able to attend the Wellington film festival screening to introduce Flow, which was a treat for attendees.

7. HEAD SOUTH (dir. Jonathan Ogilvie, NZ)

A delightful homegrown New Zealand audience-pleaser replete with self-deprecating humour at the expense of the charmingly naive hero, teenager Angus, who in late-1970s Christchurch becomes fixated on starting a punk band, despite not having an instrument or knowing how to play one. Blessed with a quality supporting cast, deftly-handled middle-class New Zealand '79 production design, and a script punctuated with plenty of wry wit, the only way I can think of improving Head South would be if Angus (Ed Oxenbould) asked his band nemesis "Why are you bloody angry all the time?', only to receive the reply, "Because I'm punk, you egg!" (P.S. Also, it was nice to see the visual homage to the cover of Joe Jackson's 1979 classic album 'Look Sharp').

8. BLACK DOG (dir. Guan Hu, China)

A relatively rare glimpse into an outsider's China, with the additional bonuses of a charismatic and mischievous canine co-star, pleasingly moody desaturated cinematography depicting the rugged Gobi frontier, a subcurrent of wry humour, and pleasing touches of magical realist flair. Only the carefully-staged depictions of animal cruelty make this a somewhat challenging watch for sensitive souls. And in case you were worrying, the actor adopted the dog at the end of filming.

9. THE RETURN (dir. Uberto Pasolini)

A well-crafted retelling of the return of the long-lost Ithacan king Odysseus to his home island, after many years of wandering following the the horrors of the Trojan wars. Ithaca is beset by villainous suitors to the stoic Queen Penelope (Juliette Binoche), who is being pressed to renounce her presumed-dead husband to marry again, and to protect the life of her young son Telemachus. Little does anyone know that despite the Queen's fraying determination, Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes) has finally washed up on the shores of Ithaca once more, alone and bedraggled, and without the army necessary to rid the island of the murderous suitors. Fiennes is on top form in the role, and looks absolutely astonishing for a (then) 60-year-old, and the location shoots in Cyprus and Italy mean you don't have to fear for the health and wellbeing of bare-chested male actors having to pretend that Cornwall is as warm as the Aegean.

10. BEATLES '64 (dir. David Tedeschi)

A natural companion piece to the Peter Jackson-digitally-enhanced Get Back sessions, Beatles '64 works technical wonders to restore the 16mm film footage of the Beatles' first mad, barely-in-control tour of the US, including the culture-changing appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show. A wonderful addition to the fulsomely-serviced Beatle tragic library, and a real treat to witness the hotel-room knockabout energy of the Fabs on the brink of their world-conquering success.