CoMo No. 19: Great Britain (November, 2023)

[sally]

alfalfa - richard kwietniowski (1987) #CoMoGBakaUK

80's gay alphabet...

[greennui]

The Two Sights 2020 ‘An Dà Shealladh’ Directed by Joshua Bonnetta

[sally]

the white shadow - graham cutts aka dominated by hitchcock (1924) #CoMoGBakaUK

half of this is lost, so maybe it redeems itself (tho not, going by plot description)

however, betty compson IS gorgeous and fun












although any film that stars the greatest yearning desirer outside of valdemar psilander in vor tids dame automatically does not contain enough clive brook and in this one there's even less than hardly anything....tragedy...





however, the most obvious flaw of the film is the extreme misogyny that requires such hideous levels of purity in the women that i begin to wonder (after watching the previous film i saw) if there are other unbeknownst things at play...

[sally]

The Two Sights 2020 ‘An Dà Shealladh’ Directed by Joshua Bonnetta

oooooh that looks cool!

[niminy-piminy]

partially lost and partially embellished...

[niminy-piminy]

STOP LAUGHING, THIS IS ENGLAND (Douglas Hickox, 1963) #CoMoGBakaUK

What’s at the bottom of being English? Perhaps the answer is: No!

also... being English = being water-soaked




read → https://animusmagazine.com/2023/05/15/s ... r-bresson/
stream → https://www.cinematheque.fr/henri/film/ ... sson-1963/

[sally]

slow action - ben rivers (2011) #CoMoGBakaUK

Utopia is the past,
not the past as a golden age
but the past as ruins
of its own wounds.
Unrepeatable.
With recreation can come about
with a reverse of temporal flow
tempered by thermodynamics
to an entropy.
Entropy moving backwards
against itself
Received from us
we harness time to erect our utopias
Ruins of ruins,
tending so soon to dust
we labour in the warm days
to piece them back together.
And on the cold and howling days
new holes are bored
into the faith of the past.
We return and rebuild
another possible articulation.

loved this when i saw it in....2011? still love its repetition now................

If an equation is traced
depending on the slope
of selected tangents to the asymptotic
it is taken
as a direct sexual proposition.

[rischka]

umm i watched a CoMo movie xD



sing as we go (basil dean 1934) - i didn't know who gracie fields was, i thought she was married to george burns but that was gracie allen



this is gracie fields - a british music hall star extremely popular in the 30s. she is funny! and she can sing!



sometimes she reminds me of lucille ball or marion davies. but she has a certain edginess. she tells people off and is always rude to police (one develops a crush on her)
she once worked in the mills and never relinquished her lancashire accent.





when the mills shut down and gracie has to find work she's off to blackpool, leading to any number of misadventures





and she gets to sing quite a bit. she's a pretty great character and it's easy to see why people loved her. i'm sorry i ddin't know who you were gracie fields!





i won't mention that her most famous song was 'sally in our alley' bc it's not in this film i bet this lady was great for the war effort

[niminy-piminy]

THE MIGHTY BOOSH (S1, E1): KILLEROO (Paul King, 2004) #CoMoGBakaUK


https://youtu.be/rZZESvFWRwo?si=abZSbqZCHZV8RJA6

[greennui]

Place of Work 1976 Directed by Margaret Tait

[sally]

Place of Work 1976 Directed by Margaret Tait

greeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeennui.....can you share this in the place? can't find it anywhere!

[sally]

redshift - emily richardson (2001) #CoMoGBakaUK
nocturne - emily richardson (2003) #CoMoGBakaUK
aspect - emily richardson (2004) #CoMoGBakaUK
block - emily richardson (2005) #CoMoGBakaUK
petrolia - emily richardson (2005) #CoMoGBakaUK
cobra mist - emily richardson (2008) #CoMoGBakaUK


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYCV8Etqvjs

[greennui]

Place of Work 1976 Directed by Margaret Tait

greeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeennui.....can you share this in the place? can't find it anywhere!

Doneee.

[niminy-piminy]

NORTHERN OUTPOST (Jenny Gilbertson, C. J. Cayley, 1940) #CoMoGBakaUK
does Scotland have fjords?
yes, they call them lochs!
yes, but not on the Shetland Islands!
a Shetland dialect word for a fjord or inlet is "voe".
stream → https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/0773

ONCE WE WERE FOUR (Mary Field, 1942) #CoMoGBakaUK
nosy John R.I.P.!
neurotic James R.I.P.!
ww2 hero Charles III. R.I.P.!
gluttony prevails! long live Clifford!
https://youtu.be/3vmbQLSOq_M?si=8yBUtxTHaH9C9L7C

[sally]

a necessary music - beatrice gibson (2009) #CoMoGBakaUK

absolutely adored the tiger's mind....this is an earlier work so slightly less mature (quoting from the invention of morel, cringe aspect of using local inhabitants to read related local lines) it still offers echoes of her later themes in the structure and relations of representation....wish i could see more of her work....

[niminy-piminy]

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE UNDERNEATH (Jane Arden, 1972) #CoMoGBakaUK

In 1970, artist Penny Slinger joined the radical feminist theatre troupe Holocaust, led by Welsh playwright and actress Jane Arden. Their debut production, A New Communion for Freaks, Prophets, and Witches (1971), became the basis for Arden’s 1972 film The Other Side of Underneath, a transgressive avant-garde opus that had Slinger in the dual role of performer and co-art director.

Made in 1972, Jane Arden’s The Other Side of Underneath was the only British film of the decade to be solo-directed by a woman.
more → https://cleojournal.com/2019/08/23/femi ... nderneath/

[niminy-piminy]

THE SKIN GAME (Alfred Hitchcock, 1931) #CoMoGBakaUK

two women bringing the downfall to two prominent families.
one by her dirty past, the other by her dirty schemes.
misogyny underneath...

According to biographer Donald Spoto, Hitchcock was thoroughly bored by the project but entertained himself with one particular shot.
In the climactic scene, Chloe, played by Phyllis Konstam, attempts to drown herself in a garden pond.
Hitchcock, with characteristic cruelty, made the actress shoot the scene — and be thrown into the water by his stage hands — a full ten times.



In the end, the shot didn't even make it into the completed film.

[niminy-piminy]

BRIEF ENCOUNTER (David Lean, 1945) #CoMoGBakaUK

“What’s at the bottom of being English? Perhaps the answer is: No! A prohibition, an inhibition, far from wholehearted but generally observed.”



a staggeringly profound and far-reaching portrait of a nation, touching on everything from an apparently intrinsic desire for dominance, an inescapable individualism, industrialisation and its effects on workers, imperialism and its discontents, inequality, the fear of all things sensuous, and even the effects of sexual repression.

In a biography of David Lean, film historian Kevin Brownlow recalled an incident where an angry man stepped up to Lean at a railway station in London and declared that he had the urge to hit him and was holding back.



“Do you realise, sir,” he told the filmmaker, “that if Celia Johnson could contemplate being unfaithful to her husband, my wife could contemplate being unfaithful to me?”

→ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnforth_railway_station

Carnforth Station Heritage Centre is the famous setting for David Lean's film Brief Encounter. This once significant railway station is situated at the junction between the main London-Glasgow line and the Carnforth-Leeds line, and the starting point of the Carnforth-Barrow-In-Furness line and a branch line to Morecambe.

The station has been lovingly restored and is now an award-winning heritage centre and unique conference venue.

The tea rooms have been restored to resemble the set used in Brief Encounter and now serve refreshments daily, while the extensive heritage centre tells not only the story of the making of the film, but delves into the history and heritage of Carnforth, its workers, and its families.

Watch Brief Encounter in our vintage mini cinema complete with tip-up seats.

[sally]

to follow on from above, but this time in fatalistic male melancholy doom-mode

unrequited love - chris petit (2006) #CoMoGBakaUK

[sally]

look! nostrils!




together - lorenza mazzetti, denis horne (1956) #CoMoGBakaUK


part of the Free Cinema movement, from its lone female director, starring as the fakest deaf-mutes to ever grace the screen (did they even try to learn sign-language?) noted artists:


michael 'nozza' andrews:




and eduardo paolozzi:

[niminy-piminy]

the same Michael Andrews ↑
this time as a salesman Gregor Samsa ↓



K (METAMORPHOSIS) (Lorenza Mazzetti, 1954) #CoMoGBakaUK

Mazzetti’s debut film dispenses with all artifices to portray the original allegory (a man who turns into an insect), instead focussing on the alienation produced by society’s rigid expectations, which are here internalised and invisible.


On learning that the short film had been shot with material stolen from the Slade School of Fine Art (London), the rector of the department decided that its reception by an audience of teachers and students would determine whether or not Mazzetti should be expelled. Thankfully, the film received immediate praise from those present.

The phrase "ungeheuren Ungeziefer" in particular has been rendered in many different ways by translators.
These include:
"gigantic insect" (Willa and Edwin Muir, 1933)
"monstrous kind of vermin" (A. L. Lloyd, 1946)
"monstrous vermin" (Stanley Corngold, 1972, Joachim Neugroschel, 1993, Donna Freed, 1996)
"giant bug" (J. A. Underwood, 1981)
"monstrous insect" (Katja Pelzer, 1915, Malcolm Pasley, 1992, Richard Stokes, 2002)
"enormous bug" (Stanley Appelbaum, 1996)
"gargantuan pest" (M. A. Roberts, 2005)
"monstrous cockroach" (Michael Hofmann, 2007)
"monstrous verminous bug" (Ian Johnston, 2007)
"some kind of monstrous vermin" (Joyce Crick, 2009)
"horrible vermin" (David Wyllie, 2011)
"some sort of monstrous insect" (Susan Bernofsky, 2014)
"some kind of monstrous bedbug" (Christopher Moncrieff, 2014)
"large verminous insect" (John R. Williams, 2014)

[sally]

on the banks of allan water - wilfred noy (1916) #CoMoGBakaUK

not terrible! surprise...

[sally]

illegal tender - paul bettell (1988) #CoMoGBakaUK

A queer, psychedelic portrait of a young man’s desires in an industrial wasteland, this film by Paul Bettell contrasts tenderness of two men together with sequences of cranes and high buildings, and the piece builds to a transcendental and intense conclusion.

Filmmaker Bettell sadly made only two films before dying from AIDS-related complications.

[greennui]

Jesus Blood 1972 Directed by Stephen Dwoskin



Memorable song, not so memorable film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_Dkx7CmD2c

[sally]

i have some dear dear dwoskin lined up, but discovered that ciarán hinds played mr rochester, so instantly watched:

jane eyre - robert young (1997) #CoMoGBakaUK

it is a terrible movie, but have not watched or read jane eyre for years and am suddenly realising how dreadfully silly this staple of my literary canon is, cannot believe i never noticed it before. mr rochester was one of my first crushes and i am very sad to lose him....(even after jean rhys, i still slightly crushed)

thankfully there IS a decent ciarán hinds movie which i am tempted to rewatch to restore the balance, or of course i could binge-watch rome and get a naked james purefoy bonus....hmmmm


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx86Y8hef9Q

[rischka]

so not strictly a uk film but jacques tourneur's circle of danger includes some nice scenery in the scottish highlands







and ray milland meets a cute girl named elspeth! kinda makes me wanna watch brigadoon again

[niminy-piminy]

PERSUASION (Roger Michell, 1995) #CoMoGBakaUK

Jane Austen wrote Persuasion, her last completed novel, between August 8, 1815, and August 6, 1816. During the summer of 1816, she began to feel ill of the disease of which she ultimately died, at the age of 42, on July 18, 1817. Many have speculated that the emphasis on the autumnal setting and on the aging twenty-seven-year-old heroine reflects the mood of Austen at that time and her awareness of her own unmarried situation.

Jane Austen has been praised as a master of social description, and in this essay [Narrating Multiple Realities: Some Lessons from Jane Austen for Ethnographers, 1984], we ask, “What would ethnographic narration be like, if Jane Austen were accepted, belatedly, as an ancestor?” We argue that Austen’s narrative technique skillfully interrelates diverse viewpoints, thereby presenting not an objective account of “the social system,” but the meaningful relations of myriad social realities.


By reading Austen, we can learn the subtleties of a range of understandings of experience, precisely because her texts are made up of lively interaction of many differentiated viewpoints, no one of which is allowed to obliterate the others.

The central characters of Austen’s narratives repeatedly face the problem of interpreting and judging potential spouses, and Austen’s readers engage in the parallel interpretative task of anticipating and judging the potential marriages considered by the characters.


If a new, unattached character is introduced in one of Austen’s texts, both the other characters and the reader soon ask, “Where in the scheme of things could this new person fit?”


The texts give no single answer.


On the contrary, Austen shows that the criteria for evaluating prospective spouses, and for judging marriages retrospectively as well, are multiple and partially contradictory.


Most generally, Austen’s texts reveal a sharp contrast (as well as the implicit relations) between “utilitarian” and “romantic” standards for evaluating marital unions.


In the simplistic vision of the most conventional characters, these criteria should produce a single interpretation of a character’s suitability as a spouse, but practice is not ideal in Austen’s novels.


Contradictions between a character’s nature as represented by his or her wealth, on the one hand, and the same character’s nature as represented by his or her personal traits, on the other, cause extreme difficulties in finding a partner who equally meets both standards.

[rischka]

i watched some docudramas by carol morley, the most well known probably 'dreams of a life' (2011) in which she explores the death of a woman whose body wasn't discovered for 3 years, interviewing friends and co-workers (her family declined to be involved.) she was a beautiful talented person so this was pretty depressing

the director often focusses on news items: her 2001 'everyday something' weaves together news of the weird and 2004's 'stalin my neighbour' follows a woman with avoidant personality who can't even broach the subject of her missing sister (the topic of the film!), instead digressing endlessly on the history of buildings in her neighbourhood. my favourite, based on courage alone, is 'the alcohol years' (2000) - the director spent much of her teens at the factory in manchester, playing in bands and drinking heavily. after some years away she returns to interview those who knew her then. there are years i prefer not to remember and i'd like to keep it that way but good on her disturbing work

[niminy-piminy]

NORTH & SOUTH (Brian Percival, 2004) #CoMoGBakaUK

do u love pride and prejudice but wish there was more industrial revolution and death? then boy do i have the BBC series for you!!

"North & South" was surprisingly well-received by audiences. The BBC had low expectations and didn't widely publicize the series. They were surprised when, only hours after the airing of the first episode, the BBC message board crashed from the large number of visitors and had to be shut down.

If someone had told me years ago that I would find myself watching the 2004 BBC television adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1855 novel, let alone purchase a DVD copy of the miniseries, I would have dismissed that person’s notion as inconceivable. I have never shown any previous interest in ”NORTH AND SOUTH”. And I am still baffled at how I suddenly became interested in it.

[The Ethics of Risk in Elizabeth Gaskell's "North and South": The Role of Capital in an Industrial Romance, 2014]
The cultural shift in attitudes toward risk in the 1850s — specifically, the emergent need to avoid risk — is marked by the passage of limited-liability legislation such as the Joint Stock Companies Act of 1856 and the continuing rise of the insurance industry. Individual investors were no longer required to bear the losses of corporate failure, while insurance companies relied on the aggregation of both capital and information to calculate and compensate risk for the individual. Risk was to be managed by an impersonal collective in order to protect the individual from bearing any of its damaging consequences. Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel North and South (published serially in Household Words from September 1854 to January 1855) enters the discourse of mid-Victorian risk by articulating a vision of economic activity that takes the acceptance of risk rather than risk management as its central ethical precept.


Margaret Hale’s and John Thornton’s decisions regarding whether or not to invest their capital in particular enterprises demonstrate the persistence of an older understanding of ethical financial practice in which individuals must be willing to risk loss and bear the responsibility for such risk rather than asking others to do so for them.

[Lencho of the Apes]

Spice World{/b] - who knows?

I haven't read nearly enough Baudrillard to process this. Shit, I haven't even read Debord, I'm such a poser.