Cultural Experiment # 2

weekend in Helsinki

2011-09-05T13:03:00.001+04:00

Kiasma modern art - has the annual ARS exhibition. This year the theme is Africa.Sunday was a day that impressed me with the work ethic of the main figures:At Taidehalli we saw Michaël Borremans' paintings which seem to have a rather male and melancholy outlook, not surrealism. I think his sources are definitely true and he makes a genuine attempt to convey them.At the Design museum in the basement the designer couple Pekka Harni and Yuka Takahashi who work in different media - wooden furniture, ceramics for Arabia and also some Marimekko textiles.Upstairs Kaj Franck who is a key figure in 20th century Nordic design and mirrors the postwar trends. An especially interesting progression in his view of whether the designer should be anonymous, and on the importance of natural compositions / gardening. The Japanese connection with zen gardens. Columns made of different types of stone - marble and granite next to each other.

Finns in Kinoforum

2011-07-15T08:04:00.000+04:00

Kinoforum includes some open-air showings in squares and some in the grand surroundings of the Mikhailovsky Theatre. On the first day they had "La piel que habito" - Almodovar's new film as the opening event, with red carpets and all. No tickets on sale though. Instead, we went to Helsinki Forever - a documentary with free tickets at Dom Kino. This had scenes of Helsinki through the 20th century as seen in different films. It was noticeable how quickly the pieces from Aki Kaurismaki's films were recognisable. I feel quite familiar with them, although I guess I've only seen most of them on TV.
On Wednesday we went to Kaurismaki's latest - Le Havre, which is set in Le Havre and in French with English subtitles. Earphones were available for Russian speakers. This is a really great story about the true meaning of "Fraternity" and how that concept comes up against the "powers that be". It's a shame that some people think this is "wacky".

two films in a weekend.

2011-06-14T18:42:00.002+04:00

Nobody sleeps well during White Nights. In retrospect I think that going to serious matinee films at the weekend doesn't help. This weekend we saw Another Year on Saturday and Tree of Life on Sunday.

Mike Leigh's film shows the year for a contented couple of allotment gardeners circled by their friends/colleagues and relatives, all of whom have fairly recognisable (and transparent) kinds of suffering: they drink a lot which seems to bring it out more...She is a counsellor by profession.
In Tree of Life there's a big cosmic view, where family patterns repeat through millions of years...from dinosaurs to authoritarian 1950's fathers - people look up into space and down volcanoes. I hadn't been aware of the director Terence Malick, but recently we saw his Days of Heaven and really enjoyed how he shows the prairies in that.

Sean Penn hardly says a word but we took the film to be showing his character's attempt to understand why he should have lost his younger (and better?) brother (in Vietnam?). I would add a bit more dialogue to this film as pointers...although I suppose we got the message without them I still would have welcomed a little more specificity. That was what was so good about "Another Year" - it shows events which are not symbolic of anything and the people say exactly what people say in these situations.

Generation P

2011-05-02T10:59:00.002+04:00

An ideal film to watch in the morning of May 1st. Outside on Nevskiy Prospect was a parade, with large contingents from the Communist Party and the LDPR... Also some different groups of leftists or nationalistic organisations not connected with the main political parties. Pictures of Stalin and Lukashenko among others. The communist party had a soviet lunar exploration vehicle as one of its floats - which is quite an interesting statement. Sadly there was no mention of international workers' solidarity - which ought to be the most relevant argument and movement of our times.

The film is really fun with lots of very well cast figures from present day Russian pop culture like shnur and Gordon. It deftly covers a lot of now familiar stories and situations mixed together in a way that slightly mirrors the sort of fantastic mock-documentaries you might see on "amazing" TV3 but while the TV wants you to lose all ability to think...perhaps Generation P has enough creativity in it to slip in a clue or two that allow viewers to guess that someone is hinting at the true horror of our situation.

photosynthesis

2011-03-30T12:06:00.001+04:00

A Wednesday evening at the Gallery of Experimental Sound part of the famous Pushkinskaya 10 Art Center.
The highlight was a performance by four dancers from Oddance...it looked rather different from this version in youtube:

Although the title was the same the music was also different, one of the musicians has this interesting myspace page... The actual evening we saw is also on youtube here:

Time of Penitence

2011-03-08T14:45:00.001+03:00

The "Great Fast" of the orthodox church begins the day after "Maslenitsa". This year a holiday Monday joining up with International Women's Day (on Tuesday) which it is not related to at all.

In honour of the religious occasion there was a concert of the choir from the Minsk saint Elizabeth convent at the Kapella. The first half was ancient music with priestly commentaries and the second was more modern and noticeably more cheerful.

Hermitage to Little Star

2011-03-08T14:29:00.001+03:00

Thursday was the 150th anniversary of the proclamation by Alexander II which gave serfs in Russia the chance to leave the land (which remained aristocrats' property) on which they were born. President Medvedev gave an interesting speech on the subject in a Saint Petersburg conference on reform and modernisation.
The date was about two years ahead of President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in the United States.
We used the fact that the first Thursday of the month has free entry to see some temporary exhibitions at the Hermitage, especially The Prado at the Hermitage, which was extremely popular.

In the evening we attended a quite different event in the building of Совиетская Звезда near the Obvodniy Canal. A collaboration between Marat Shemiunov (dance), and Maksim Svishev (projected video) called Day and Night. Shemiunov especially likes to put things in black and white, and some ink drawings and a sculpture in black and white were also on show.

The place was quite well refitted as an art space, it would be interesting to know what else happens there.

sonatas at the Concert Hall

2011-01-30T13:10:00.000+03:00

Thursday evening with Russian composers: Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev. Peter Laul played throughout, some Tchaikovsky together with the violinist Kirill Terentiev (Watlz-scherzo)and Rachmaninoff with cellist Oleg Sendetsky (Sonata).

The four movement form of a sonata seems to correspond to the variety that makes up a pleasant day, with the slower third movement relating to lunch / siesta - time. Historically there has also been an idea of balancing masculine and feminine characteristics.

There's also a soviet political argument about sonatas, where not following the form correctly could leave a composer open to a charge of "formalism". Both Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev emigrated immediately in 1917-18. Prokofiev returned in 1935 and later would get accused of this. He died on the day Stalin's death was made public 5th March 1953.

Brazilian music at JFC

2011-01-06T14:44:00.001+03:00

Fish and chips at a new branch of Carl's Jr halfway between the underground and the club.
Brazilian bass guitarist Sergio Brandau played thoughout as did the notable Russian keyboard player Andrei Kondakov. Two drummers swapped and Zarina Rodionova (who's been living in Rio for the last few years) sang some of the songs. This music is quite complex but smooth and "effortless".
We had a slight sense that the roof of the place was too low for the sound to come out quite straight.

Boogie Woogie

2010-12-19T09:14:00.002+03:00

Boogie Woogie in the Dom Kino small room at 1700, we were the only people sat in the chairs. A couple + one other punter all chose the sofas. Perhaps because of the emptiness of the room the sound didn't come out right. The dubbed soundtrack was all echoing and hard to follow. I think I missed quite a lot.
Anyway reasonably good fun. We were talking this week about whether running an art gallery could be considered a "business". This certainly makes the whole thing look a long way from economic activity...which, I would argue, in a fundamental way ought to consist of trying to provide people with something that they need in a way that improves on the total offer of options available to them.

Of course lots of worthwhile and good things are NOT economic activities. A fact which, I sometimes think, we are in danger of losing sight of. The characters in Boogie Woogie don't seem to feel very much, and certainly not under any obligation to be useful.

Russian composers at the Mariinsky Concert Hall

2010-11-28T10:00:00.000+03:00

Midday on Sunday 21st - Glinka "Symphony on two Russian Themes"..frenzied happiness and bitter tears; Shchedrin "Old music from provincial Russian Circuses" (written 1989) and Tchaikovsky Second Symphony (composed in Ukraine in 1872) conducted by Valery Gergiev in the Concert Hall.

Арлекин - the heart of a friend

2010-11-16T13:43:00.002+03:00

After the Videos on Obvodniy Canal, we looked around for a Chinese restaurant on the Petrograd side...but the main "Harbin" has closed. There are lots of sushi bars. Zenit had just become league champions with a 5-0 victory over Rostov...which one could hardly help noticing.
We stopped in at Tuman's gallery and then the Лицидеи Театр where Derevo are on.
In the story, the puppet
Harlequin has a really hard time...giving his heart away and then trying to cope with the pain. Everybody understood the events to be depicting something different according to whatever makes up their own inner life.

Видение - Videos from Perm

2010-11-15T10:02:00.000+03:00

Sunday afternoon along from the place where the new metro station will be for Обводный канал ... Video art exhibition transferred from Perm museum of Modern Art. Includes a "Rube Goldberg" sort of machine...(Brits might rather say "Heath Robinson") by Peter Fischli & David Weiss.The way things go

and a very interesting story about boys collecting cotton and wool and octopuses to make black cloth with. Someone seemed to have stolen the information about this second one.

The venue itself is an old industrial building in the process of renovation: The Tkachi creative space.

Овсянки

2010-11-05T15:05:00.002+03:00

happens mostly in Kostroma region, although we recognised one place near the end, a new pedestrian bridge in Nizhniy Novgorod. It's a road movie, and crosses a number of impressive bridges. The river Volga is the main focus of contemplation, about loss of individual people and of cultural roots (The characters feel they belong to the Merya people).....but with love and friendship still preserved. If I remember rightly the last words were "only love remains". This film is called Silent Souls in English and did very well in the Venice Film Festival.

Literary Movies Festival - Lemon Tree

2010-10-11T08:39:00.001+04:00

The second and final day of a festival dedicated to short films with literary concerns, presented by Study House and using material from issue 15 of Rattapallax journal.
Apparently the small white room at Dom Kino was full on Friday evening, but the public for this sort of thing mostly doesn't get up early enough to be anywhere at midday on Saturday I suppose. The Billy Collins pieces were familiar, like Forgetfulness and really simply proved how everything can be done with a mixture of voiceover and images.

Wall Street 2

2010-10-07T15:45:00.000+04:00

Early morning showing at the Khudozhesveniy Cinema Loved the David Byrne soundtrack and "This Must be the Place" (at the end) is such a beautiful song.
Gekko's speeches fall slightly flat. I'm not sure if this is because...

they weren't translated well (not sure what I would do with a cultural reference like..."everybody's drinking the same cool-aid")
the director wants to show people responding over-eagerly to simple statements
Stone wants to say that the world has really changed, people have seen through capitalism altogether and New Yorkers are just the last to wake up

I thought the story was quite deftly woven with recognisable, almost real, events from the start of the financial crisis, even a suggestion of later actions against the banks that did well out of it. Excellent use of silly jewellery and plastic surgery to suggest decadence.

La cámara oscura

2010-09-27T10:39:00.000+04:00

This was part of the festival of Argentinian film "TangoFutbolChe" sponsored by the Adelante Spanish language courses - a bit disappointing then that the film was shown with translator and the original soundtrack was not that audible.
On the other hand, the film itself was sweet and uplifting. Especially the way it showed the inner worlds of the protagonists - Gertrudis played by Mirta Bogdasarian who has brought up a big family out on a ranch but feels oppressed by the idea of herself as ugly (instilled by her mother) and the adventurous but sensitive French photographer Jean Baptiste who has seen the horrors of WWI and come to a surreal new sense of beauty.
The idea here is in the title: that we only ever look at images, even when using our own eyes.

Мы - at the puppet theatre

2010-09-01T08:59:00.000+04:00

We attended the opening of the World Festival of Festival of Puppet Schools last week, and got tickets to this at the same time.The actors puppeteers are students of the Academy of Theatrical Arts. The festival is organised by The world puppetry union.

(Link to the English version of the book in pdf format) "We" is a science fiction classic. Evgeny Zamyatin wrote it in 1921, and its a rather dismal story of love being not surviving in a kind of insane mathematical dystopia. Zamyatin himself came to Saint Petersburg to study naval engineering and also worked for a time in shipyards in Newcastle. A former Bolshevik, by 1921 he was already turning against the soviet system.

The show was done in a modern way with a line across the front of the stage around shoulder height so that the puppets were sometimes held up above it...although I'd say the puppeteers mostly acted with their own bodies - they did very well and the show as a whole was very effective and inspiring, at least in the negative way that it clearly portrays the enemies of imagination.

Coral Reef - Mike Nelson installation

2010-08-21T11:48:00.000+04:00

There were quite a few cultural stops on my recent visit to the UK but they were mostly things we went to see deliberately and already had an idea of who or what they were. This one was not like that.
There's a doorway in the Tate Britain that just looks like a forgotten "staff only" passageway where they're in the middle of setting up some new exhibition, but it leads instead into a labyrinthine nether world the Coral Reef.

This structure is partly transposed from A Perfect Vacuum by Stanislaw Lem and sci-fi seems to be a constant reference for Nelson, who connects his approach with William Burroughs and the Strugatsky brothers.

деревня художников

2010-07-21T08:51:00.000+04:00

An exhibition at the Manezh representing the activities of various art organisations in the area around the metro stations Pioneerskaya, Udelnaya, and Ozerki in the north of Saint Petersburg. Some quite big sculptures made of wood and stone, a lot of things using found objects and an easily understandable contemporary attitude.
This is the first time the artists have shown in the Manezh, but the "Artist's Village" already has a history going back 25 years of workshop festival in their area...a lot of the workshops seem to be in historic houses that have been (or still are) city property. The program for this year's festival runs throughout July...but I can already see that I'm going to be too busy to get out there.

Север Nord (north)

2010-06-13T08:16:00.000+04:00

An antidepressive Norwegian road movie without roads. Jomar is travelling north on a snowmobile and skis to visit his ex-wife. He comes across isolated houses, where people have usually left the doors open and tend to have more problems than he does. The main event in this film might be when he gets snowblind, or when he accidentally sets fire to a refuge hut, or maybe his trick of skiing straight off the roof of a house. There's a trailer on youtube.
We came out of the cinema and had dinner at Carl's Jr. We weren't sure if the town was empty because everybody had already gone to their dachas or because the first match of the world cup was being played. The screens in the restaurant usually show MTV but they had South Africa V. Mexico this time.

jazz quintet

2010-06-06T17:57:00.000+04:00

Tim Amman quintet at the JFC jazz club. This was a good night with a nice mixed crowd..although some of the people there are too keen on photographing everything which I don't think contributes to the atmosphere...it's hard to say exactly what harm it does.
We had seats down the side and when we arrived it looked like only the musicians were there, but it filled up by eight. They had to send out for some hi-hat cymbals and then they could start. They were excellent kind of funky modern - with a contrasting sax (energetic) and trumpet (melancholic)

The Roerichs and Vernadsky

2010-05-03T06:01:00.000+04:00

Exhibition on the Roerich family at the Manezh. Nicholas Roerich grew up in Saint Petersburg, the families had been close to the tsars for generations. His sons Yuri and Svyatoslav and his wife Helena seem to form part of a single project. I was particularly taken with Svyatoslav's paintings.

A documentary on "Vernadsky's Law" from 1983 was shown. Vernadsky belongs to the group of thinkers collectively called Russian Cosmism This is a proper scientific and worked out philosophical position and an extension of Blake's To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower and a view which later appears in Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis. They were at least a century ahead of their time.

Mr. Nobody

2010-04-24T21:41:00.002+04:00

This film seems to have got mixed reviews but here's a sensible five out of five. But we both liked it and the audience clapped at the end. Lots of stylish designs, effects and interesting characters. Even Mr. (Nemo) Nobody is an interesting character as an exploration of the position "if you never choose, everything is remains possible". This idea could be the road to an empty existence...however one of the life choices...the opposite one (of never leaving anything to chance), proves the most empty of all.
One of the answers in this film is that only true love is the right "choice". But there are deeper answers too:
The film begins with an animal experiment, showing how easy it is to give a pigeon the illusory impression that it controls a food delivery device. This suggests that Mr. Nobody is what we all are in the end...the product of one path which is equal to the rest, and in which a boiling egg or a drop of rain might be the decisive factor.

A way to point out a link to somebody else

2010-04-11T20:14:00.000+04:00

This is not available outside of the UK. It is a program from BBC4

Das weisse Band

2010-03-09T11:31:00.000+03:00

This grim film is not an obvious choice for an outing on the cheery festive day of 8th March - although for anyone serious about women's rights it could still make sense.
I think the picture of society, which looks unbearably oppressive to our postmodern eyes, is both quite realistic in terms of the place depicted (a protestant north German village just before the start of the first world war) and more generally true about conditions for most people in Europe at that time. The subject matter includes emotional extremes that obviously wouldn't have been such a major part of most lives but the "final straw" for the aristocratic Baronin (the only character who might view things in a similar way to the 21st century audience) is a fairly trivial bit of bullying over a toy whistle.

Evert Lundquist

2010-02-04T07:15:00.000+03:00

The exhibition at Moderna Museet in Stockholm.

There are striking pictures from the 1930s and 40s and some late works from the 1980s, painted when Lundquist was losing his sight. The catalog talks about the importance of including the changes that take place in a work of art even after the artist has died.

The permanent collection of the musuem is especially good for Dadaists.

The Beatles

2010-01-13T23:44:00.000+03:00

Help me with the Beatles..a website
McCartney composed more album tracks but the singles were more Lennon. This book seems to explain why 60's beat music was a source of information about how to deal with oppressive conversations.

Tetro

2010-01-10T10:49:00.000+03:00

I think most of us in Dom Kino found this film hard going. I wasn't sure if it was from walking in the snow, something wrong with the projection, or the way Coppola had done the visual effects - but it seemed as if the images were just hard to see. Maybe this is to deliberately give the effect of a person who has been temporarily blinded by bright lights (which would make sense from the plot and the symbolism) but I'd rather have seen a bit more of Buenos Aires and the familiar faces from Spanish cinema Carmen Maura and Maribel Verdu.

Shikasta by Doris Lessing

2010-01-09T22:04:00.000+03:00

A tale of good and evil fighting over planet Earth. Written in the late seventies and marked by the depressing atmosphere of those times, including punkish nihilism in the young. By turns quaint, bracing and plain silly. I've always found it quite easy to imagine that there is a power of evil at work in human affairs - it would explain a lot. It's an interesting challenge even to hypothesize how a friendly galactic alien superpower (Canopus in this book) would set about spreading sweetness and light on a faraway planet. Since the lessons here are moral and spiritual, rather than fully sci-fi... the technology involved is not discussed in detail.

La Giusta Distanza

2010-01-07T15:19:00.001+03:00

The right "distance" in this Italian film is the distance journalists should maintain from the stories they cover.
The setting is shown in affectionate detail - how the characters all fit into the culture and economy of a village in northern Italy. I think for the Saint Petersburg audience it might seem to be a film about immigration and cultural differences, which are shown here as part of the mix...however it doesn't mind showing classism and sexism either. I think it's trying to be a little distant from all of that and avoid preaching.
Towards the end it has a surprsing way of turning into a whodunit...although it was clear all along that young Giovanni has a talent for stringing facts together with tips from his informers. He only finds the killer two years later...and perhaps demonstrates that he really learned the trick of standing back from events.

Stravinsky

2010-01-01T17:47:00.000+03:00

Afternoon of 31st in the Mariinsky Concert Hall: we arrived only just in time. Planned to eat pies in Stolle before but had to make do with a small bread and salami and then sorbet in the interval. We were late but actually it turned out that Stolle was only selling whole pies and the kitchen was already closed for the holidays.

«Свадебка» 4 pianos, male and female choirs and an exciting range of percussion. Russian folkloric sound.

Кантата «Звездоликий» with apocalyptic words from a poem by symbolist poet Konstantin Valmont. Orchestra including two harps.

«Царь Эдип» (Oedipus rex) in Latin but a narrator announces the plot at different points.

minimal Garbage

2009-11-17T08:42:00.000+03:00

Musical minimalism.
Taking Out The Garbage from Filo Farnsworth on Vimeo.

Blue Gene Tyranny. and then the last record by Talk Talk.

Mariinskiy organ and Theremin

2009-11-10T07:58:00.000+03:00

The Mariinskiy concert hall has a new organ. In the first half of yesterday's concert it sounded rather soft and mellow played by Grigory Varshavskiy. Quite different from the sound of an organ in a stone church - sitting in the Mariinskiy concert hall is like being inside a guitar or a violin.
In the second half the organ accompanied the composer Olesya Rostovskaya on the Theremin. Or Терменвокс as it should properly be known. (Invented in Petrograd in 19919-20 by Lev Termen) Rostovskaya included some of her own compositions: "Свечение" (luminescence) and "Suonare" (Italian..play or ring)
A couple of extra theremin facts: John Otway plays one. Steve Martin made a documentary about the extraordinary life of its inventor. Different versions are available in the UK at reasonable prices.

Moon

2009-10-31T22:22:00.001+03:00

I don't think this is quite a spoiler but the main character in Moon wakes up every morning to "I am the one and only" by Chesney Hawkes.

Shown dubbed in the small room of Dom Kino.

Semantic

2009-09-26T09:11:00.000+04:00

I have a vague sense that this outline of Four Connectivities by Yao Ziyuan is important. Although maybe it's just a restatement of the idea of the semantic web in less technical language.

Dalai Lama Sunrise / Sunset

2009-09-11T23:39:00.000+04:00

This is a Russian documentary nicely shot with a static camera. Monkeys hopping over barbed wire. The peace prize winner always under armed guard (provided by India).

The Dalai Lama gives the same advice and Buddhist philosophy I've heard before but the film-makers seem to take it to heart.... travelling back home from "overpopulated" China to "underpopulated" Siberia. The world needs more monks and not more people. Be nice.

I'd like to check these impressions for myself someday. My experience of travelling in southern England (population density several times that of China) is mostly of pointless empty fields. Once I wrote an article on overpopulation for students of English.

8 Citas

2009-09-10T09:17:00.001+04:00

This is light comedy with actors who are apparently well-known TV faces in Spain. The best of the 8 scenes (which are loosely connected because the people all might vaguely know each other) is jealousy: A dinner party for two couples and one (more attractive/ cooler and cleverer) unattached guest.
I guess this bit of reaction wouldn't happen everywhere...same sex kissing always gets a general laugh with the audience at Dom Kino, whereas heterosexual kissing is not seen as inherently funny.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

2009-09-06T11:19:00.000+04:00

This was brilliant, and I don't think watching Woody Allen's film dubbed into Russian cuts out many jokes (although that's just a guess obviously).
But:
It slightly heightened my frustration at the lack of attention to languages in the story. The artist Juan Antonio (played by slightly-too-old-for-the-role Javier Bardem) tells Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz) to only speak English in Cristina's presence, his father refuses to speak other languages ...because he is a poet. If the poet is from Oviedo he might really speak Galician / Asturian anyway...Vicky is writing a dissertation on Catalan identity but there is no mention of the Catalan language anywhere.
At some point in the dubbed Russian Juan says...literally..we speak the same language ("Мы говорим на одном языке") meaning metaphorically. But of course from the point of view of a Russian viewer they really do

Tsiolkovsky Street

2009-08-23T09:47:00.000+04:00

Tsiolkovsky has a monument given to the city of Saint Petersburg in honour of its 300th anniversary.

It sits opposite the "Red Triangle" rubber factory on Obvodniy Canal and at the entrance to the street named after him.

Another interesting feature of Tsiolkovsky Street is the Mimigrants theatre of Clowns and Pantomime. The venue looks like a fairly ordinary shopfront except for the playful graffitti:

sopranos

2009-08-19T07:42:00.000+04:00

Yesterday the Elena Obraztsova competition for Young Opera Singers opened with a special ten years after concert featuring previous winners.

Neither of us were really in the mood. I after a long journey home from UK via Finland and Ir having started getting up early to attend massages for her back. You don't need to listen to this many sopranos if you feel like resting your spine.

I thought the most interesting piece of music was from Handel's Julius Caesar in Egypt. (seen above in another production). I'm not at all qualified to pass any judgement on the singing...

Tuman had an exhibition in the foyer and they gave sketches of his to each of the members of the jury.

Palermo Shooting

2009-07-19T10:39:00.000+04:00

The new Wim Wenders film belongs to a select but easily identifable group where death appears as one of the characters. Here played by Dennis Hopper.

One of the best accompaniments to it could be this philosophical lecture which sort of concludes that people may find it a comfort to think that something they have done (a child, a great piece of work,) will continue being around after they've gone. Shelly Kagan is not comforted by the idea that "his atoms" are all immortal individually.

Anathem

2009-07-18T16:37:00.000+04:00

I've been reading Anathem. It's one of the relatively rare sci-fi books where the humans appear as alien visitors to another civilization, this time one living in a parallel reality. The Martian Chronicles is sort of another in this vein.
In Anathem the earthling is Jules Verne Durand who appears first of all in disguise. I think that's the best thing about the book.

Mynta

2009-07-18T16:22:00.000+04:00

Mynta seemed very pleased to be playing in the Capella last weekend. I liked the way CHRISTIAN PAULIN the bassist and leader explained the songs and and their tours etc. I took this to be part of the code of ethics of a folk musician to explain with stories the originas and histories connected with your music. Someone has put a part of the concert on Youtube.

loud family

2009-06-30T22:35:00.000+04:00

I don't know who these people are, but they've done well to pick specific songs for all the years and make sense about them. The years I care about are 1980 "New Amsterdam" (they rightly chose) and 1981: which deserves better. They included " nobody ever told me there'd be days like this" which didn't come out until 1983. Surely there was more funk than Rick James? The days were exactly then in my opinion... don't you dare mess with time retropectively, that's naughty.
At some point in 1981 Adam and the Ants' Stand and Deliver was replaced at number one by Being with You by Smokey Robinson

Iskyss

2009-06-27T06:08:00.000+04:00

Ice Kiss is a sad film about the love of Gunvor Haavik for a Russian prisoner of war whom she meets as a nurse in Bodø during WWII.
The scenes flit about following her (and Valodchik's) train of thought, which doesn't give a clear sense of the mechanics of what happened, or how they managed to carry on their affair in Moscow. So it's really not a spy film but rather a theatrical way to present something about her inner life, where the outside world is a bullying, melancholy place and a short love affair fills and explains everything that happens.
The director and some of the actors were there at the film's Russian premiere in Dom Kino.

Tsiolkovsky

2009-06-24T22:08:00.000+04:00

Ir mentioned Tsiolkovsky as an example of true originality - not depending on his cultural surroundings. 1903 proposes space travel in rockets. 1911 says:
Earth is the cradle of mankind, but one does not stay in the cradle forever.

9 apples and a lemon

2009-06-24T09:45:00.000+04:00

Buckminster Fuller advises readers to accept the tetrahedron as a natural and inevitable form - nature's own system of coordinates.

He suggests that this form might be a more fundamental reason why we've settled on base 10 numbers, and not the 12 or 2 that seem to offer some practical advantages. For my purposes I think it's convenient that the middle layer is a three.