tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65118026695474834792024-03-05T05:34:15.902+00:00The Man from London(Street) art, books, film & musicOmer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.comBlogger300125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-89370515950746671302023-12-18T13:19:00.006+00:002024-01-04T16:06:38.281+00:00The books I read in 2023<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Nuar Alsadir, Animal Joy<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Yukito Ayatsuji, The Mill House Murders<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Nicholson Baker, A Box of Matches<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Thomas Bernhard, Old Masters<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Richard Brautigan, A Confederate General from Big Sur<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Richard Brautigan, In watermelon sugar<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Gerald Brenan, South from Granada<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Natasha Brown, Assembly<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Dino Buzzati, Catastrophe and Other Stories<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Dino Buzzati, A Love Affair<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Jen Calleja, Vehicle<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Edward Chisholm, A Waiter in Paris<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Jeremy Cooper, Brian <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Michael Crummey, River Thieves<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Claire Dederer, Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Len Deighton, Berlin Game<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Len Deighton, SS-GB<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Maureen Duffy, Capital<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Victor E Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Mathias Enard, The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">CS Forester, Plain Murder<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Jon Fosse, Morning and Evening <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Jon Fosse, A Shining<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Jon Fosse, Trilogy<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Willem Frederik Hermans, The Darkroom of Damocles<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Willem Frederik Hermans, An Untouched House<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Eduardo Galeano, Children of the Days<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Chester Himes, If He Hollers Let Him Go<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Florian Huber, Promise Me You'll Shoot Yourself<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Anna Kavan, Ice<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Claire Keegan, Foster<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time to Keep Silence<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Thea Lenarduzzi, Dandelions<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Norman Lewis, The Tomb in Seville<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">AJ Liebling, Between Meals<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Léo Malet, 120 rue de la Gare</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Léo Malet, The Rats of Montsouris<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Adam Mars-Jones, Box Hill<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Robert McLiam Wilson & Donovan Wylie, The Dispossessed<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Laurent Mauvignier, The Birthday Party<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Clemens Meyer, While We Were Dreaming<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Jan Morris, Spain<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Haruki Murakami, Novelist as a Vocation<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Magdalen Nabb, The Innocent<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Cesare Pavese, The Beautiful Summer<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Rebecca Pawel, The Summer Snow<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">David Piper, Trial by Battle<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Emeric Pressburger, The Glass Pearl<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Edogawa Rampo, Beast in the Shadows<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Ben Ratliff, Every Song Ever<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Olga Ravn, The Employees<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Derek Robinson, Goshawk Squadron*<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Joe Sacco, Palestine<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Leonardo Sciascia, The Knight and Death<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Leonardo Sciascia, The Wine-Dark Sea<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Georges Simenon, Death Threats<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Georges Simenon, The New Investigations of Inspector Maigret<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Peter Watts, Denmark Street<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">EB White, Here is New York<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Seishi Yokomizo, Death on Gokumon Island<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Alejandro Zambra, The Private Life of Trees<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Nell Zink, Avalon (67)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">* Book of the year</span></p>Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-76439861481427960552023-01-03T12:57:00.015+00:002024-01-04T16:09:28.851+00:00The books I read in 2022<div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>Matthieu Aikins, The Naked Don’t Fear the Water<br /></span><span>Eric Ambler, The Mask of Demetrios<br /></span><span>Kjell Askildsen, Everything Like Before<br /></span><span>Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water<br /></span><span>James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain<br /></span><span>Dominique Barbéris, A Sunday in Ville-d’Avray<br /></span><span>Julian Barnes, Elizabeth Finch<br /></span><span>Julian Barnes, Keeping an Eye Open<br /></span><span>Julian Barnes, The Pedant in the Kitchen<br /></span><span>Kirsty Bell, The Undercurrents<br /></span><span>Michael Bracewell, Souvenir<br /></span><span>Jorge Carrión, Bookshops<br /></span><span>Nick Cohn, Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom<br /></span><span>Teju Cole, Open City<br /></span><span>Moyra Davey, Index Cards<br /></span><span>Christopher de Hamel, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts<br /></span><span>Claudia Durastanti, Strangers I Know<br /></span><span>Geoff Dyer, The Last Days of Roger Federer<br /></span><span>Brecht Evens, The City of Belgium<br /></span><span>Jon Fosse, Aliss at the Fire<br /></span><span>Camilla Grudova, The Doll’s Alphabet<br /></span><span>Gregor Hens, Nicotine<br /></span><span>Marit Kapla, Osebol<br /></span><span>David Keenan, For the Good Times<br /></span><span>David Keenan, Industry of Magic & Light<br /></span><span>Karl Ove Knausgaard, Autumn<br />Martin Limón, The Joy Brigade<br /></span><span>Cameron McCabe, The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor<br /></span><span>Ross Macdonald, Meet Me at the Morgue<br /></span><span>Seichō Matsumoto, Tokyo Express<br /></span><span>Ana María Matute, The Island<br /></span><span>Haruki Murakami, T<br /></span><span>Magdalen Nabb, The Marshal at the Villa Torrini<br /></span><span>PJ O’Rourke, Holidays in Hell<br /></span><span>Musa Okwonga, One of Them<br /></span><span>Pete Paphides, Broken Greek<br /></span><span>Richard Powers, Bewilderment<br /></span><span>Joseph Roth, Hotel Savoy<br /></span><span>Julian Sancton, Madhouse at the End of the Earth<br /></span><span>Philippe Sands, East West Street<br /></span><span>Uwe Schütte, Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany<br /></span><span>Leonardo Sciascia, The Moro Affair<br /></span><span>Richard Sennett, Building and Dwelling<br /></span><span>George Sims, The Last Best Friend*<br /></span><span>Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams, Diego Garcia<br /></span><span>Natsume Sōseki, Sanshirō<br /></span><span>Rupert Thomson, Barcelona Dreaming<br /></span><span>Charlotte Van den Broeck, Bold Ventures<br /></span><span>Janwillem van de Wetering, The Perfidious Parrot<br /></span><span>Louise Welsh, The Cutting Room<br /></span><span>Seishi Yokomizo, The Village of Eight Graves<br /></span><span>Alejandro Zambra, Bonsai (52)</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><br /></span><span>* Book of the year</span></span></div>Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-13456698012190989182022-02-23T15:42:00.011+00:002023-01-04T16:01:31.780+00:00All the books I read in 2020 and 2021<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Kobo Abe, The Ruined Map<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Svetlana Alexievich, Chernobyl Prayer<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Svetlana Alexievich, Second-hand Time<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Carlos Manuel Álvarez, The Fallen<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Daniel Anselme, On Leave<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Bernardo Atxaga, Nevada Days<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Yukito Ayatsuji, The Decagon House Murders<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Dorothy Baker, Young Man with a Horn<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Julian Barnes, The Man in the Red Coat<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Polly Barton, Fifty Sounds<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Quentin Bates, Cold Comfort<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">David Bellos, Jacques Tati<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Claire-Louise Bennett, Pond<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Claire-Louise Bennett, Checkout 19<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Matt Benton Rees, The Fourth Assassin<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Laurent Binet, Civilisations<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Cara Black, Murder on the Champ de Mars<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, The Passenger<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Kate Briggs, This Little Art<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Craig Brown, One Two Three Four<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Dino Buzzati, Poem Strip<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Dino Buzzati, The Tartar Steppe<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jonathan Coe, Mr Wilder and Me<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Joshua Cohen, The Netanyahus<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Colin Cotterill, Six and a Half Deadly Sins<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Gioacchino Criaco, Black Souls<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Frédéric Dard, The Executioner Weeps<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Frédéric Dard, Crush<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Augusto De Angelis, The Murdered Banker<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Brian Dillon, Suppose a Sentence<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">David Diop, At Night All Blood Is Black<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Garry Disher, Bitter Wash Road <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Garry Disher, <o:p></o:p></span>The Dragon Man</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Garry Disher, Port Vila Blues<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Stuart Douglas, Shuggie Bain<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">David Downing, Jack of Spies<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Geoff Dyer, See/Saw: Looking at Photographs<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mathias Enard, Zone<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Annie Ernaux, The Years<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Agustín Fernández Mallo, The Things We’ve Seen<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jon Fosse, The Other Name (Septology I-II)*<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jon Fosse, I is Another (Septology III-V)*<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jon Fosse, A New Name (Septology VI-VII)*</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jon Fosse, Scenes from a Childhood<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Alan Furst, Under Occupation<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Gaito Gazdanov, The Spectre of Alexander Wolf<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Natalia Ginzburg, The Dry Heart<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Rainald Goetz, Rave<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Elizabeth Hardwick, Sleepless Nights<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Phil Harrison, The Age of Static<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">John Hersey, Hiroshima<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Andrew Humphreys, Raving upon Thames<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Denis Johnson, The Stars at Noon<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis, The Boy in the Suitcase<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Ryszard Kapuściński, The Emperor<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">David Keenan, This is Memorial Device<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Philip Kerr, Hitler’s Peace<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle 6<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Karl Ove Knausgaard & Fredrik Ekelund, Home and Away: Writing the Beautiful Game<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Benjamin Labatut, When We Cease to Understand the World<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Carson McCullers, The Ballad of the Sad Café<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Javier Marías, Your Face Tomorrow 1: Fever and Spear<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Javier Marías, Your Face Tomorrow 2: Dance and Dream<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Javier Marías, Your Face Tomorrow 3: Poison, Shadow and Farewell<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Seicho Matsumoto, A Quiet Place<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Fernanda Melchior, Hurricane Season</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Clemens Meyer, Bricks and Mortar<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Leonard Michaels, The Nachman Stories<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Joseph Mitchell, Up in the Old Hotel<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Shigeru Mizuki, Showa 1926-39<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Patrick Modiano, Missing Person<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Haruki Murakami, First Person Singular<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Magdalen Nabb, The Monster of Florence<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Cees Nooteboom, Roads to Santiago<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Howard Norman, The Northern Lights<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">James O’Brien, How to Be Right<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Andrew O’Hagan, Mayflies<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">David Olusuga, Black and British<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Eliot Pattison, The Lord of Death<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">David Peace, Tokyo Redux<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Roberto Perone, The Second Life of Inspector Canessa<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Philippa Perry, The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Leo Perutz, Saint Peter’s Snow<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Arthur Phillips, The King at the Edge of the World<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Chris Power, A Lonely Man<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Ian Rankin, A Song for the Dark Times<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Robin Robertson, The Long Take<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Marilynne Robinson, Jack<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Nicholas Royle, White Spines: Confessions of a Book Collector<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Salman Rushdie, Quichotte<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Leonardo Sciascia, A Simple Story <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Anna Seghers, Transit<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jorge Semprun, The Long Voyage<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Adania Shibli, Minor Detail<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Soji Shimada, The Tokyo Zodiac Murders<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Georges Simenon, Sunday<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Georges Simenon, Death Threats<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Maria Stepanova, In Memory of Memory<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Masako Togawa, The Lady Killer<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">William Trevor, Last Stories<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Janwillem van de Wetering, The Sergeant’s Cat<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Hilde Vandermeeren, The Scorpion’s Head<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Luis Fernando Verissimo, The Spies<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Tarjei Vesaas, The Ice Palace<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Enrique Vila-Matas, Never Any End to Paris<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Katharina Volckmer, The Appointment<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Peter Wahloo, The Lorry<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Edmund White, The Flâneur<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Timothy Williams, Big Italy<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Qiu Xiaolong, Enigma of China<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Seishi Yokomizo, The Honjin Murders<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Seishi Yokomizo, The Inugami Curse<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Shuichi Yoshida, Villain<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Nell Zink, Doxology (120)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">* Book(s) of the year(s)</span></p>Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-9015939164502876382019-03-26T16:30:00.001+00:002019-03-27T11:43:09.726+00:00Avian invasion<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's the harsh 'Sqruawck!' that often alerts you to their presence. Then there is the flash of fluorescent green in the sky. If they're perched in a tree, you may even get a glimpse of red beak.<br />
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As a resident of Richmond, I'm terribly proud of our parakeet population. A chance sighting during the day feels like a cheery greeting from the gods, a bright hint of good fortune and conviviality.<br />
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Now, Paradise Road, the 'extremely small' publisher behind writer <a href="https://greatwen.com/" target="_blank">Peter Watts</a>'s estimable investigation of Battersea Power Station, <i>Up In Smoke</i>, has produced <i>The Parakeeting of London</i>, by 'gonzo ornithologists' Nick Hunt and Tim Mitchell. A delightful trawl through the history and mythology of our cocksure neighbours, it's interspersed with many wonderful interviews with random passersby, whose views frequently stray into chance musings on immigration and belonging.<br />
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It's a terrific read and you can order a copy from <a href="http://www.paradiseroad.co.uk/" target="_blank">Paradise Road</a>, or ask your local bookshop to get it in.Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-89031884855871673992019-03-18T10:59:00.001+00:002019-04-02T19:19:47.279+01:00Not so slight return<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimePr8JO9FKFx1VT3Cbr1_l5QIBdZuF85ZHHL60AgbnIDiIIYBHsqFN9hSJLeGX-uRxrkV773KZwqGtMG_L_bnMPvDDt10SgKGO23DfKa2cQIy3ih8wVZCnNsMiL-v5BI2stL3KLtOVA4/s1600/Gangw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="601" data-original-width="900" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimePr8JO9FKFx1VT3Cbr1_l5QIBdZuF85ZHHL60AgbnIDiIIYBHsqFN9hSJLeGX-uRxrkV773KZwqGtMG_L_bnMPvDDt10SgKGO23DfKa2cQIy3ih8wVZCnNsMiL-v5BI2stL3KLtOVA4/s320/Gangw.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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Gangway are back, back, back! The Danish pop group, who split up in 1998, release a fantastic new album, <i>Whatever It Is</i>, on 5 April<i>. </i>Fêted with multiple awards in their home country, their biggest moment in the UK probably came with dissolute single <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6uXrvFrY1E" target="_blank">My Girl and Me</a></i> (1986).<br />
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Gangway's first album <i>The Twist</i>, with its echoes of The Smiths, came out back in 1984; <i>Whatever It Is</i> feels appropriately like the follow-up to the band's final, seventh, <i>That's Life</i> (1996). In the spirit of experimentation on that album, <i>Whatever It Is</i> is completely contemporary - as if <i>That's Life</i> had been moved forward in time.<br />
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The songwriting is as lovely as ever, as evidenced on first single <i>Colourful Combinations</i>, augmented by some fascinating sounds: there's a great mix from track <i>Whatever… </i>to the penultimate <i>Exit</i>, with its sample reference to where they left off 23 years ago - a hiatus worthy of filmmakers Whit Stillman, Terrence Malick or Roy Andersson. Second single <i>Don't Want to Go Home</i>, reworked from songwriter Henrik Balling's The Quiet Boy side project, sits particularly well here (I love, again, the odd noise at the end).<br />
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The band intend to back up this tremendous achievement with a <a href="http://gig.to/gangway?fbclid=iwar0jwlgd0j3xpvhqgwxbfxsvs8pqfjyopq2pvwkgv4d7gsctcssdqjr2iou" target="_blank">series of live dates</a> throughout the year. You can find links to the album and more on the band's <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Gangwaywayway/" target="_blank">Facebook page</a>.Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-56791285212988292862019-03-07T09:39:00.002+00:002019-03-07T09:39:29.297+00:00New from the BFI<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Some exciting news: I've contributed a piece about Georges Simenon to the booklet accompanying a new, dual format edition of 1967 film <i>Stranger in the House</i>. This adaptation of the Belgian author's novel <i>Les inconnus dans la maison</i> (1940) by director Pierre Rouve stars James Mason alongside Geraldine Chaplin and Bobby Darin. It's been released as part of the BFI's Flipside strand - you can read more about it and order a copy <a href="https://shop.bfi.org.uk/new-releases/stranger-in-the-house-flipside-037-dual-format-edition.html#.XIDhAi2cYRb" target="_blank">here</a>. As the image on the booklet cover declares: 'A great Simenon becomes a great film.'Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-71306894230970674482014-12-17T14:12:00.000+00:002014-12-17T14:12:37.305+00:00Merry Christmas!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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After a slightly uninspiring start, Harry Gruyaert's covers for Penguin's continuing Maigret reissues are getting really good. <i>The Flemish House</i> (number 14) is out now, followed by <i>The Madman of Bergerac</i> in January (<i>Liberty Bar</i> is out in March). And there's a hardback edition of the first four books in an edition originally designed by author Georges Simenon.<br />
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Happy Christmas and all the very best for 2015!</div>
Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-91496094289005874632014-05-23T17:37:00.000+01:002014-05-23T17:51:37.276+01:00The Maigret Circle<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A rare post to pull together a few developments in the Simenon universe, which seems to be expanding as Penguin floods bookstores with its new Maigret translations: number eight in the series, <i>The Grand Banks Café</i> (previously<i> The Sailor's Rendez-Vous</i>) is due out 5 June. It's a shame no bookshops have had any offers on these new imprints to tempt me to augment my complete, if ramshackle, Maigret collection, but Penguin will get me out for the English-language debut of <i><a href="http://www.penguinclassics.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780141977928,00.html?The_Mah%E9_Circle_Georges_Simenon" target="_blank">The Mahé Circle</a></i> (1944), translated by Siân Reynolds and released simultaneously with <i>The Grand Banks</i>…<br />
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One of the prolific author's non-Maigret, <i>romans durs</i>, <i>The Mahé Circle</i> (<i>cover image above</i>) is an intriguing addition to Simenon's translated catalogue, in which the good Dr Mahé is trapped in a bleak infatuation on his recurring family holiday in Porquerolles - the island off the Côte d'Azur and the setting for <i>My Friend Maigret</i> (1949), one of the dozen or so books featured in Penguin's previous, apparently ill-fated Simenon revival back in 2003. A little down the coast, the Cannes Film Festival has hosted the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/may/16/cannes-2014-review-the-blue-room-mathieu-amalric" target="_blank">premiere of Mathieu Amalric's intriguing adaptation of <i>The Blue Room</i> </a>(1955), starring the actor-director alongside Stéphanie Cléau and Léa Drucker (here's the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3275279872/tt3230082?ref_=tt_ov_i" target="_blank">poster</a>).<br />
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No doubt all this and more will be mulled over by biographers Pierre Assouline and Patrick Marnham when they share the stage at the Institut Français on 1 June. Their discussion follows a screening of one of my favourite <a href="http://www.themanfromlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/by-georges-simenon-on-film.html" target="_blank">Simenon adaptations</a>, <i>M Hire</i>, as part of the Institut's all too short <a href="http://www.institut-francais.org.uk/events-calendar/whats-on/talks/noir-is-the-colour/" target="_blank"><i>Noir is the Colour</i> season</a>.Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-52570120963102185352013-11-22T13:21:00.000+00:002013-11-22T15:49:15.636+00:00Sickert at Tate Britain<i>'Taste is the death of a painter'</i> - Walter Richard Sickert, 1908<br />
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This week Tate Britain officially reopened its doors after a two-year renovation; it celebrates this weekend with a '<a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/eventseries/housewarming-party" target="_blank">house-warming party</a>'. The new rehang, sponsored by BP, arranges 500 years of British art chronologically, throwing up a number of juxtapositions and surprises.<br />
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If you want to trace the work of one artist through the BP Walk through British Art, you could do worse than follow the career of Walter Sickert. The German-born artist first appears halfway round Tate Britain's west wing in the room dedicated to the 1840s - <i><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/sickert-cafe-des-tribunaux-dieppe-n03182" target="_blank">Café des Tribunaux, Dieppe</a></i> (c1890) - and continues to the front of the east wing: <i><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/sickert-miss-gwen-ffrangcon-davies-as-isabella-of-france-n04673" target="_blank">Miss Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies as Isabella of France</a></i> (1932).<br />
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The theatre crops up in early, Impressionistic, <i><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/sickert-minnie-cunningham-at-the-old-bedford-t02039" target="_blank">Minnie Cunningham at the Old Bedford</a></i> (1892), though his fascination is given an unsettling, haunting twist in <i><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/sickert-brighton-pierrots-t07041" target="_blank">Brighton Pierrots</a></i> (1915). In between, <i><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/sickert-la-hollandaise-t03548" target="_blank">La Hollandaise</a></i> (c1906) perhaps represents the peak of his Camden Town nudes.<br />
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Unfortunately, there's no room for <i><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/sickert-ennui-n03846" target="_blank">Ennui</a></i> (c1914), and I'd love to see his 1935 portraits of the <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/sickert-sir-alec-martin-kbe-t00221" target="_blank">Martin</a> family, but on the way are Sickert's contemporaries: the Camden Town and Bloomsbury groups, Augustus John and his associates, and the Vorticists. Following Dulwich Picture Gallery's recent exhibition, 'A Crisis of Brilliance', the work of a group of Slade artists from a century ago shines especially brightly: David Bomberg (<i><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bomberg-the-mud-bath-t00656" target="_blank">The Mud Bath</a></i>, 1914), Stanley Spencer (<i><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bomberg-the-mud-bath-t00656" target="_blank">Swan Upping at Cookham</a></i>, 1915-19), CRW Nevinson (<i><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/nevinson-la-mitrailleuse-n03177" target="_blank">La Mitrailleuse</a></i>, 1915), Paul Nash (<i><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/nash-totes-meer-dead-sea-n05717" target="_blank">Dead Sea,</a></i> 1940-1) and Mark Gertler's wonderful <i><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/gertler-merry-go-round-t03846" target="_blank">Merry-Go-Round</a></i> (1916).Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-15781938870005731512013-11-04T06:30:00.000+00:002013-11-24T21:52:31.366+00:00Tout Maigret<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In perhaps a belated tribute to the <a href="http://www.themanfromlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/happy-110th-birthday-georges.html" target="_blank">110th anniversary of writer Georges Simenon's birth</a>, Penguin is reprinting the full catalogue of his Inspector Maigret novels in new translations. The first of 75 books, <i>Pietr the Latvian</i>, is out this week, translated by David Bellos, and the rest will follow at one a month. The current calendar runs to <i>The Saint-Fiacre Affair</i> (number 13), which is due December 2014.<br />
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Penguin has tried remarketing Simenon twice in the past decade, with limited success. In 2003, on his centenary, a series of Maigrets was published in Penguin Classics, with covers by Keenan, alongside a handful of the author's notorious <i>romans durs</i> (as Modern Classics). Problems with Penguin's move to a new warehouse may have been to blame at the time, and three years later some of the Maigrets were repackaged once again, this time as pocketbooks.<br />
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This is an audacious move for what may have become an acquired taste for crime connoisseurs, and <i>Pietr the Latvian</i> (<i>Maigret and the Enigmatic Lett</i> in Daphne Woodward's 1963 translation, <i>pictured</i>) is no bad place to start; 10 Maigrets were published in 1931 and Simenon always said this was the first to be completed. The template is established here, alongside the introduction of other favourite characters including Madame Maigret, while Simenon can investigate one of his favourite themes: identity.<br />
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The current crop is branded "Inspector Maigret" and returns to the stock cover images of the Modern Classics*; the books are more faithful to the original titles and some of the goodies that await include <i>The Night at the Crossroads</i> (due April 2014) and <i>The Bar on the Seine</i> (October 2014). The problem for many fans is whether to invest once more in these new imprints, but what a happy problem!<br />
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*UPDATE I note from the estimable <a href="http://causticcovercritic.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/maigret-on-beach.html" target="_blank">Caustic Cover Critic</a> that the cover images have been specially commissioned from Belgian photographer Harry Gruyaert. I'm not convinced by them but fair play to Penguin for their commitment and, darn it, this makes these new editions all the more collectable.Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-86842232761105033522013-07-19T17:39:00.000+01:002013-07-25T09:49:32.781+01:00Pet Shop Boys' Electric revival<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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'I believe in ecstasy/ The times we've had, you and me/ Friends we've met along the way/ Partied every night and day/ And I know we'll meet again' - <i>Postscript</i>, Pet Shop Boys<br />
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At the end of their 1993 album, <i>Very</i>, Pet Shop Boys paid homage to the rave era in a secret track, <i>Postscript</i>. It's a cliché, but it'd be great to hear an echo of final track <i>Vocal</i> at the end of new album <i>Electric</i>. Instead, we get a hint of it at the start of techno opener, <i>Axis</i>. (Rather brilliantly, the nine songs on <i>Electric</i> were recorded, and are sequenced, in alphabetical order.)<br />
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<i>Axis</i> could almost be the song vocalist Neil Tennant is singing about in dance paean <i>Vocal</i>, which is the new single, out 28 July: 'I like the singer/ He's lonely and strange/ Every track has a vocal/ And that makes a change.' There's something of revisiting <i>Being Boring</i> here - 'Everyone I hoped would be around has come along... And the feeling of the ones around us all is strong'; very much of the moment, this is also an album of echoes.<br />
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The songs bookend the Boys' most dance-influenced album since <i>Very</i>'s limited-edition companion, <i>Relentless</i>, abetted by producer Stuart Price. While Price had Madonna sampling Abba (<i>Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!</i>) for <i>Hung Up</i> (2005), however, here the Boys pick up Henry Purcell (via Michael Nyman's 1982 soundtrack for <i>The Draughtsman's Contract</i>?) for <i>Love is a Bourgeois Contract</i>.<br />
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One of the album's stand-outs, <i>Love is</i>... opens with Coldplay-style synth strings, which give way to rave chords as if to say, 'The kings are dead, long live the Boys.' (There's a lot of fading in and out on this album and, perhaps my only criticism, some slightly shonky key changes.) <br />
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There's lots of Englishness, though: <i>Love is</i>... has Tennant 'taking my time for a long time/ Putting my feet up a lot... I've been thinking how I can't be bothered/ To wash the dishes or remake the bed'. Instead, in an echo of <i>I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing</i>'s 'dancing to the <i>Rite of Spring</i>', he finds he 'could dance instead.' In another echo, you could sing the chorus of PSB's first hit from 1985, <i>West End Girls</i>, over the start of <i>Thursday, </i>which features Example and deserves to be a giant summer hit.<br />
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Elsewhere <i>Bolshy is</i> boosted by Italo-house piano stabs, the Boys follow the anti-war message of <i>After All</i> (from their 2005 soundtrack to <i>Battleship Potemkin</i>) with a cover of Bruce Springsteen's <i>The Last to Die</i> and - my favourite - they go delightfully bonkers <i>Shouting in the Evening</i>. The revival follows hard on the heels of the best tracks from their last album, <i>Elysium</i>, which was released only 10 months ago, <i>Invisible</i> and <i>Breathing Space</i>.<br />
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Remarkably, <i>Electric</i> is Pet Shop Boys' 12th studio album in a 27-year career, now - exactly 20 years on, is it their best since their fifth, <i>Very</i>? Yes, actually.Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-65928856967422139542013-07-02T11:05:00.000+01:002013-11-22T15:50:13.000+00:00Winter of Discontent and Tahrir Square<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrff_aC2nKNq1Q0YHcsQiQpk5HOoHqho5UTPI7HpCj_6dDRwibnbZqA67ciaJ3xlOoiSoupWIBEo9Wm8FkopdEt8cYetX16zdDkID6Ht8xbh2POAAnaj9a6XhYTj2aczGJPkpdALtNEYY/s693/AmrWaked.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrff_aC2nKNq1Q0YHcsQiQpk5HOoHqho5UTPI7HpCj_6dDRwibnbZqA67ciaJ3xlOoiSoupWIBEo9Wm8FkopdEt8cYetX16zdDkID6Ht8xbh2POAAnaj9a6XhYTj2aczGJPkpdALtNEYY/s320/AmrWaked.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><b>Cairo’s Tahrir Square is the focus of
protest in Egypt just as it was over two years ago. On 10 February 2011 a film crew led
by director Ibrahim El Batout and featuring Egyptian actors Amr Waked (<i>pictured</i>) and Farah
Youssef began filming among the protestors. The scene they shot imagined the
fall of Mubarak – the next day the president resigned.<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><b>The material became the climax of <i>Winter of
Discontent</i>, which <a href="https://www.institut-francais.org.uk/cine-lumiere/whats-on/special-screenings/winter-of-discontent/" target="_blank">screens at the Ciné Lumière on Wednesday 3 July</a> as part of the Shubbak Festival.
It screened at the same venue in the London Film Festival 2012, when I
met Waked. Known internationally for roles in <i>Syriana</i> and <i>Salmon Fishing in
Yemen</i>, he told me about filming <i>Winter of Discontent</i> amid the protests…</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">'I got involved from the very first day of
the pitch. It was a very spontaneous reaction, the director, Ibrahim El Batout,
called me and asked me if I wanted to do something about what was happening in
Egypt. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">'I had been on the square every day. You felt
that whatever function we played as people who are known to encourage people to
take to the streets and not fear was already done, and if I leave the square
and start doing something I think the square will stay alive. I thought it was
time to do something we know best, which is make a film. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">'I went and met him the same day with
cameras and sound, and I called a DOP friend of mine who filmed the film. We
all met in the square thinking the guy wants to do a documentary about
what’s happening, and we find an actress with him and then he pitches the
story. It was very vague, it wasn’t as developed as the film is. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">'The director sat with the writers, and they
came out with a brief structure on how the film would develop and how the
dramatic progression would go. It was almost 12 pages, which we didn’t want to
develop further because what we had shot before was purely improvised so we
wanted to keep that sense of improvisation in the whole film and we did. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">'The performances in the film – I’m not
talking about mine, of course, I’m talking about everybody else – the smallest
shot of an actor saying the tiniest thing is so powerful and so real. That’s a
very different quality in Arabic films of today to find this guy who comes in
and out of the scene for a few seconds. They’re usually not very well rooted
and you feel somehow they choose them like that so the star would shine but we
don’t have that in our film, everybody shines. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">'That was very powerful and it’s very
difficult to think how we can do that again because we had so much energy
from the square and what was happening, which was enormous. I hope we can find
that energy in other topics.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-39379548218886442822013-04-15T07:45:00.000+01:002013-04-15T22:04:50.783+01:00Five things to watch out for at Eurovision<div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7_RBkS1-YlgGquntLN5hRAojU8Q5XkIi1OGqxlpOWvv0jgHTxqaW5CRH3-XvxgkhYvaKoObgiWj67lVy62gIy2uXut-tqxSLeYeuyRe4MWePUD9DgQi7WaIfwMFWIkhfBqnkMM8d5W4w/s1600/Margaret_Berger.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="184" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7_RBkS1-YlgGquntLN5hRAojU8Q5XkIi1OGqxlpOWvv0jgHTxqaW5CRH3-XvxgkhYvaKoObgiWj67lVy62gIy2uXut-tqxSLeYeuyRe4MWePUD9DgQi7WaIfwMFWIkhfBqnkMM8d5W4w/s320/Margaret_Berger.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<b>1. Old is gold</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Alongside host Sweden,
only big spenders France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK are guaranteed a
place in the <a href="http://www.eurovision.tv/page/malmo-2013" target="_blank">Eurovision</a> Song Contest final on 18 May - Germany won in 2010 (for Lena’s<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Satellite</i>), but none of the so-called 'big
five' had previously won since Katrina and the Waves in 1997
(<i>Love Shine a Light</i>); the UK is trying to reproduce her success by having Bonnie Tyler fly the flag this year with <i>Believe in Me</i>. Semi-finals to decide which countries join them in the final take place on 14 and 16 May.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><b>2. Nul points?</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Expect much joshing at
the expense of Norway, as the country has come bottom on 10 occasions, though they
have won three times - in 1985, 1995 and 2009. I'd love Margaret Berger (<i>pictured</i>) to win with the stonking <i>I Feed You My Love</i> but suspect it's one of those that's too good to come out top.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><b>3. Irish-ise</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Ireland have won a
record seven times and their entry this year, </span>Ryan Dolan’s <i>Only Love Survives</i>, is fine radio pop, but their position as European favourites has been
undermined by the explosion of former Soviet states on the scene. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><b>4. All tied up</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Iceland has had some
of the most unusual entries over the years - including former drag queen Paul
Oscar, who instituted a perennial taste for bondage outfits in the competition
in 1997 - and is one of the better-performing countries over
time who have never won. I don't think they'll make it this year with long-haired Eythor Ingi’s ballad
<i>Ég Á Líf</i> (<i>I Am Alive</i>), though - but look out for fellow <o:p></o:p></span>nearly rans Malta, represented this year by Gianluca’s enjoyable, TV-friendly <i>Tomorrow</i>.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><b>5. Hebrew times</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Songs performed in
English have won 24 times over the past 54 years – Hebrew has dominated three
times and Israel tends to perform strongly, but can Moran Mazor (<i>Rak
Bishvilo</i>) match their last winner back in 1998: transsexual Dana
International </span>and <i>Diva</i>?<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-77757293458853525622013-04-08T06:00:00.000+01:002013-04-08T09:46:08.618+01:00Old pop stars don't retire, they go digitalThe first generation to have grown up listening to pop music is getting on now, so it's no surprise pop stars are also entering old age. On 8 January, his 66th birthday, David Bowie announced his first album for more than a decade, <i>The Next Day</i> - released last month. Its first single, <i>Where Are We Now?</i>, sounds deliberately frail, which many critics linked to Bowie's heart surgery in 2004, and references to Berlin sites from the <i>Low</i> heydays add to its poignancy.<br />
<br />
If anything, the rest of the album bristles with the vigour of late-'80s outing Tin Machine, and a similar vitality can be found on <i>Delta Machine</i> - the 13th studio album in 33 years from Depeche Mode, whose band members' average age is 51. Pet Shop Boys - Neil Tennant (58) and Chris Lowe (53) - have revealed they'll be releasing their 12th studio album, <i>Electric</i>, in June. And French pop icon Etienne Daho, 57, has just announced new work and a series of concerts in Paris for next February.<br />
<br />
Unlike the visual arts or writing, pop music is not known for creative longevity - it is traditionally a youngster's game, though pop musicians may go onto innovate in other fields: David Byrne has worked in film and theatre for more than 30 years; Pet Shop Boys premiered ballet <i>The Most Incredible Thing</i> in 2011 and scored Sergei Eisenstein's <i>Battleship Potemkin</i> back in 2004; Patti Smith is noted as a writer and photographer, now.<br />
<br />
While older artists may sound stupid aping new genres (Paul McCartney's the Fireman, anyone?), musicians like Bowie and Radiohead have been quick to grasp the opportunities afforded by new technologies - notably digital release - which may go some way to explaining their current, prolific output. Secure of their fan base, Pet Shop Boys will release <i>Electric</i> through Kobalt Label Services - which released Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' <i>Push the Sky Away</i> in February - barely nine months after their last, <i>Elysium.</i><br />
<br />
In the concert arena, however, women lead the way, as evidenced by Blondie, Joan Jett and Laurie Anderson - or take this year's <a href="http://meltdown.southbankcentre.co.uk/" target="_blank">Meltdown</a> on the South Bank (14-23 June), tickets for which go on sale this week. The 80-year-old Yoko Ono has selected Siouxsie, Marianne Faithfull and Patti Smith among her line-up. Who said girl power's dead?Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-8075669589504261262013-04-02T06:00:00.000+01:002013-04-02T06:00:13.262+01:00Going to the dogs: literary satire after the crashThanks to the great <a href="http://causticcovercritic.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Christian%20Schad" target="_blank">Caustic Cover Critic's recommendation</a>, I've just enjoyed what has become one of my favourite reads ever: <i>Going to the Dogs</i> (1931), by Erich Kästner. Subtitled 'The Story of a Moralist', this adult novel by <a href="http://www.themanfromlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/berlin-brought-to-book.html" target="_blank">the author of <i>Emil and the Detectives</i></a> tells the story of 32-year-old copywriter Jakob Fabian who's struggling to make his way in Berlin following the crash of 1929.<br />
<br />
Stories set in the time of the Weimar Republic are perennially popular, but this is a real humdinger, featuring unsatisfied wives - including a nymphomaniac brothel keeper - and a cabaret of the insane. There's pathos, too, in Fabian's relationships with his mother, his aspiring-actress girlfriend Cornelia, and his talented and generous best friend Labude.<br />
<br />
I was reminded of <a href="http://www.themanfromlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/three-great-flemish-writers.html" target="_blank">Belgian author Willem Elsschot</a>'s <i>Cheese</i>, published by Granta, in which the author's perennial everyman Frans Laarmans fills his home with 22 tonnes of Edam he's unable to sell on. Roughly contemporaneous, the two books depict a world tipping over into desperation, while their authors never lose faith in the warmth of the human heart.<br />
<br />
It also brought to mind William Gerhardie's wonderful satires, such as <i>Doom </i>(Prion), which predates these works by only a few years. Last year the novelist William Boyd invoked Gerhardie as a sort of morality tale: initially fêted, Gerhardie wrote no books for the last four decades of his life and is now little known. 'He's an awful warning of how easy it is to stop writing,' Boyd told <i>Metro</i>.<br />
<br />
And then there's the marvellous <a href="http://www.themanfromlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/killing-jokes.html" target="_blank">Albert Cossery</a>, who, like Kästner, has been championed by New York Review Books. Though he died aged 94 (in 2008), Cossery produced less than one, slim, book for each decade of his life. Cynical they may be, but that doesn't make them any less true; alongside the other works mentioned here, they're truly appropriate for our times.<br />
<br />
PS I note Cossery's <i>Laziness in the Fertile Valley</i> (1948) - with a foreword by Henry Miller - is due to be published in November by New Directions, who already publish his <i>A Splendid Conspiracy</i> (1975) and <i>The Colors of Infamy</i> (1999). Can someone remind me nearer the time, please? Thanks.Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-38297561485802301182013-03-28T06:00:00.000+00:002013-04-01T10:53:13.534+01:00The long films' Good Friday<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuhHr9JVGQeeS0SHtMdInszKQ5D1-rV9L6yDF57AYeERQQYinLfsSskQf0Mdg9ggK_1UTHiJYOLB60tnOlQpM9leAcG2p25hyUJvHOP9O5AkdjqcCP9mUUAk8GCIkRZy10be1PO8w1AbI/s1600/heimat.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuhHr9JVGQeeS0SHtMdInszKQ5D1-rV9L6yDF57AYeERQQYinLfsSskQf0Mdg9ggK_1UTHiJYOLB60tnOlQpM9leAcG2p25hyUJvHOP9O5AkdjqcCP9mUUAk8GCIkRZy10be1PO8w1AbI/s320/heimat.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<i>Easter weekend's here, so what better time for me to rework this piece I did for</i> <a href="http://www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/" target="_blank">Little White Lies</a> (Feb/Mar 2007) <i>ahead of a lengthy visit to the cinema</i>...<br />
<br />
During my university finals I stayed in
every Saturday night, but not because I was swotting for my exams. For 13 weeks, in
a quietened house, I sat in front of the television for the second part of
Edgar Reitz's <i>Heimat</i> chronicle - all 25-and-a-half hours of it. On its Munich
premiere, in 1992, it broke the record for the longest film ever screened
commercially. And that’s after the first <i>Heimat </i>(<i>pictured</i>), which was also broadcast on
BBC2, came in over 15 hours long.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">You’ll have guessed that for me, length
does matter. Some films are long because of the tradition they come from - Bollywood in the case of popular crossover film, <i>Lagaan</i> (2001), which is nearly
as long as the cricket match at its centre - or their source, although in the
case of Sergei Bondarchuk's eight-hour <i>War and Peace</i> (1967), reading the book
might be quicker. L<o:p></o:p></span>ost in Hollywood history is Erich von Stroheim’s <i>Greed</i> (1924) - reputed to run up to 10 hours but cut by the studio to something nearer two and never seen in its intended glory again.<br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The master of the extended film is French
director Jacques Rivette. His 1961 début, <i>Paris Nous Appartient </i>(1961), a tale
of paranoia among avant-garde types that plays like a zombie flick for
intellectuals, is 140 minutes long. By 1971 he hit the big time, literally: <i>Out
One</i> runs to 12 hours, cut to a relatively prolix three-and-a-quarter hours in 1974. The same year's <i>Céline and
Julie Go Boating</i> positively fizzes along and is the
unlikely inspiration for Susan Seidelman’s <i>Desperately Seeking Susan</i> (1985).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcH1v5aJHcS7ds9K_U-Wq0E9Zn00F30PJGU482oSDM2mTmth7hF7lnqIHhuOJahapGLu7W3JkSZnOR-X9oE0hIF4H_Vrg6HpkA0bVHdAEPSysIApbzdYh7GJfBILWv5vH32uNz4_68ex8/s1600/belle_noiseuse.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcH1v5aJHcS7ds9K_U-Wq0E9Zn00F30PJGU482oSDM2mTmth7hF7lnqIHhuOJahapGLu7W3JkSZnOR-X9oE0hIF4H_Vrg6HpkA0bVHdAEPSysIApbzdYh7GJfBILWv5vH32uNz4_68ex8/s320/belle_noiseuse.png" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<div>
<span lang="EN-US"><span lang="EN-US">Rivette's <i>La Belle Noiseuse</i> (<i>pictured</i>, 1991) is a
ravishing portrait of the relationship between the artist and his muse. For
pretty much four hours you get to stare at a naked Emmanuelle Béart. It's
certainly one of her best roles, as it makes the most of her incredible beauty
and a steely, defensive, character beneath. Michel Piccoli is the artist with
whom she shares this watchful dance; the passions may be muted but what emerges
on screen is absolutely devastating. </span>And this is the glory of long films: to
get as much under the skin of something as you ever can; this is cinema where
viewers are afforded space to think.</span></div>
</div>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">In <i>Beyond the Hills</i>, currently showing in
cinemas, Romanian director Cristian Mungiu builds up a claustrophobic picture
of life at an isolated, orthodox monastery using repetition and long takes. </span>Hungarian director Béla Tarr is celebrated for
his long takes: for the first 17 minutes of his <a href="http://themanfromlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/devils-nipples-watching-satantango.html" target="_blank">seven-hour magnum opus, Sátántangó</a> (1994), you don't see a human face - only a group of cows in a farmyard.
It's an opening that could be said to be reflected in Mexican director Carlos Reygadas' wonderful <i>Post Tenebras Lux</i> - 25 scenes over two hours, and a dog called Bela, coincidentally.<br />
<br />
None of these directors expects you to watch without a break, as attested by screenings of <i>Lawrence of Arabia</i> (1962) - late last year at the BFI Southbank - or four and a half hours of Rauol Ruiz' <i>The Mysteries of Lisbon</i> (2010) - at the Curzon Soho. I watched <i>Beyond the Hills</i> and <i>Post Tenebras Lux</i> at London's Renoir cinema, in the Brunswick Centre, the same place I saw a revival of Jean Eustache's three-and-a-half hour <i>The Mother
and the Whore</i> (1973) a generation ago. The Renoir also hosted <a href="http://themanfromlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/long-way-and-right-way.html" target="_blank">the final part - thus far - of Edgar Reitz’ <i>Heimat</i> trilogy</a>.</div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><i>Heimat</i> (1984) is a tightly
controlled family drama spanning Germany's 20th-century experience set in the
north-Rhein region of Germany: the Hunsrück. Eight years later, Reitz turned to
the youngest son of the clan’s university years in 1960s Munich; the memories of
friendships and adventures are so strong that I’m sure they’ve even replaced
some of my own student time.</span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDtDGMc0YDmvFgPVQ_67OSYeGlH41iIdc6EIUXZ99Mm-Nq26dl84AVmM8PUgrkTEDkUrA5QxYfCRo2Jz6bnrcZShG8LWvY-iIt1MHes1wefWO0uvPHQU7ppBswE1kbrYxVLwDZdYwXdfk/s1600/das_boot.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDtDGMc0YDmvFgPVQ_67OSYeGlH41iIdc6EIUXZ99Mm-Nq26dl84AVmM8PUgrkTEDkUrA5QxYfCRo2Jz6bnrcZShG8LWvY-iIt1MHes1wefWO0uvPHQU7ppBswE1kbrYxVLwDZdYwXdfk/s320/das_boot.png" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US">Like Wolfgang Petersen's five-hour - in its uncut version - <i><a href="http://www.themanfromlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/dive-dive-dive-sub-movies.html" target="_blank">Das Boot</a></i> (<i>pictured</i>, 1981) and contemporary Italian family drama <i>The Best of Youth</i> (six hours), which won the Un Certain Regard Award at Cannes in 2003, <i>Heimat</i> was made for TV - as was Lars von Trier's brilliant, lengthy <a href="http://themanfromlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/entering-lars-von-triers-kingdom.html" target="_blank">hospital-set spooker, <i>The Kingdom</i></a> (1994) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 15-and-a-half <i>Berlin Alexanderplatz</i> (1980), adapted from the book by Alfred Döblin.</span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US">In 2004, Reitz felt there was
enough left to explore in his overarching theme of belonging to make the whole
a trilogy. <i>Heimat 3</i> - six full-length features - begins with the fall of the
Wall but is strangely depressing, perhaps mirroring the writer-director's difficulties in
getting it made. 'It took five years of fighting for the funding,' he told me
at the time, 'and now it probably wouldn’t work at all.'</span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US">Despite this pessimism, Reitz is said to be
working on a fourth instalment in the Hunsrück, but what he has
already achieved has left an indelible mark: these places, faces, even accents will stay
with you forever. It is already over 52 hours long - or an hour a
week for a year. That’s as much as I do yoga. Mind you, I could do with a
stretch now.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><i>Related post: <a href="http://www.themanfromlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/dive-dive-dive-sub-movies.html" target="_blank">diving into submarine movies</a></i></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-76892596482135293232013-03-25T06:00:00.000+00:002013-03-25T10:22:04.155+00:00Anatomy of a film: En cas de malheur<div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">
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Always astute over financial matters and his reputation, Belgian writer Georges Simenon was acutely aware of the lucrativeness of cinema and its power in extending his readership. His novels were often adapted for cinema soon after publication - for instance, the years 1932 and 1933 saw the release of three films based on Maigret novels, all from 1931, the year of his big, '<i>bal anthropométrique</i>' launch: <i>La nuit du carrefour</i> (directed by Jean Renoir), <i>Le chien jaune</i> and <i>La tête d'un homme</i>.<br />
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By the time Simenon's 1956 novel <i>En cas de malheur</i> was filmed, in 1958, 30 of the author's books had been adapted for cinema (only about a third of them Maigrets). Starring <a href="http://themanfromlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/gabin-and-simenon-partners-in-crime.html" target="_blank">Jean Gabin</a> opposite Brigitte Bardot, the film - whose title was translated as <i>Love is My Profession</i> - caused a stir for its nude scenes (<i>pictured below</i>), and is a good deal racier than another version 40 years later with Gérard Lanvin and Virginie Ledoyen, <i>En plain coeur</i> (<i>In All Innocence</i>), directed by <a href="http://www.themanfromlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/luc-bessons-debut-le-dernier-combat.html" target="_blank">Pierre Jolivet - Luc Besson's collaborator on <i>Le dernier combat</i></a> (1983).</div>
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Typically for one of Simenon's romans durs, <i>En cas de malheur</i> (<i>In Case of Emergency</i>) is written in the first person, as a married lawyer, maître Gobillot/Farnese, reflects on his affair with a young criminal; both films begin with the bungled jewellery store robbery that throws Yvette/Cecile (the names are updated for the more recent film) in his path. Aware she's about to be arrested for the crime, in both films Yvette pulls up her skirt to try to entice the lawyer to take her case (Bardot and Gabin, <i>pictured top</i>), though the scene is much more explicit in the book: 'She wore no pants. That was the first time I saw her thin thighs, her rounded childish belly, the dark triangle below it, and for no precise reason the blood rushed to my head.'<br />
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From then on, the 1958 film is surprisingly explicit: the first time he visits her, he comes too soon; once established in lodgings by Gobillot, Yvette institutes a ménage with her maid - a situation familiar from Simenon's own domestic life, where one maid is said to have asked another, '<i>On passe toutes à la casserole</i>?' - both scenes are dropped in the 1998 version. (The maid in Claude Autant-Lara's original film is played by Nicole Berger, a beguiling presence who starred in an <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209470/" target="_blank">early Eric Rohmer short</a> but died in a car crash aged only 32.) Yvette may be doing her best to keep Gobillot's interest alive, but there's surely also a hint of a lesbian aspect to her relationships with female accomplices and flatmates.</div>
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Jolivet's version is much less sophisticated than its predecessor: Gobillot's childlessness is highlighted in an awkward scene where his wife (Carole Bouquet) receives some adoption documents; and while Bouquet's role is more conventional, in the 1958 version, Edwige Feuillère portrays the same character as her husband's equal, who humours - even encourages - his affairs until they get out of hand. There's a lovely scene where Feuillère nevertheless hides her glasses quickly from her husband; one of that film's best images sees her flinging a giant bouquet of flowers meant for the mistress all over her husband's desk in the apartment that also serves as his office, a detail taken straight from the book. (The set up of their bedrooms, connected by a shared bathroom, is also pure Simenon.)<br />
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Where the 1998 film struggles most is in the portrayal of the lawyer: he is not supposed to be jealous when Yvette reignites an affair with someone of her own age - only Gabin can carry off Gobillot's knowing, stubborn insouciance. He's helped by some great lines and the 1958 film has some other nice touches, including the Middle Eastern music that blares in the miserable hotel where Yvette's young lover lives. The two films have completely opposing finales and yet, being Simenon, the outcome is the same - but only one ends with a haunting shot worthy of <i>Casablanca</i>'s close.<br />
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<i>Related: <a href="http://themanfromlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/psycho-love-in-afternoon.html" target="_blank">the lure of </a></i><a href="http://themanfromlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/psycho-love-in-afternoon.html" target="_blank">Psycho<i>'s opening scene</i></a>Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-13435731663191271012013-03-18T11:37:00.000+00:002013-03-18T12:35:16.440+00:00Dive! Dive! Dive! Sub movies<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>Film4 seems to have its submarine-movie jones on at the moment, so I thought I'd dig up and rework an old piece on the genre I did for </i><a href="http://www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/" target="_blank">Little White Lies</a><i>'</i> Marie Antoinette<i> issue (Oct/Nov 2006).</i><br />
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'Dive! Dive! Dive!' Is there any more evocative word in cinema, especially when repeated three times? We all know what comes next: periscope down, the sonar's ping, red light reminiscent of a photographer's dark room. The submariner's life is one of numbers, too: distance to target, torpedo tube one, distance from the ocean surface, ever-rising pressure levels.<br />
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If you think about it, depth charges and silent routine have been imprinted on our minds through only a handful of films. One of the best is <i>The Enemy Below</i>, starring Robert Mitchum and Curt Jurgens - all the regulation words and images are present and correct.</div>
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There's the man who cracks amid it all - who can't take it any more - he even tries to climb up the conning tower and open the hatch when they're under water. He's talked down by captain Jurgens: 'It is part of our work to die; we are not going to die. Do you believe me? Do - you - believe - me?' He does.</div>
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There's a great shot just before this point in the movie: the crews are absolutely still in the middle of the Atlantic waiting for the tiny noise that gives the other away. One US soldier is shown playing noughts and crosses while another is fishing over the side of the boat. Audaciously, the camera travels all the way down his line to focus on the sub, paralysed on the seabed. Here, the German crew is playing chess.</div>
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Incidentally, it's no coincidence sci-fi movies share much with submarine movies - that slim metal tube floats precariously in an alien environment. In the same way a U-boat's hull might give way - fatally - at any moment, so, 'The engines cannae take it, Cap'n.'</div>
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Geoff Dyer, whose <i>Zona</i>, about Tarkovsky's <i>Stalker</i>, is out now in paperback, itemises the distinctive tropes of the submarine movies in his memorable 1998 e-novel <i>Paris Trance</i> ('e', in those days, for ecstasy). Characters Luke and Alex pore through the pages of listings mag <i>Pariscope</i> for the best way to experience the city of (flickering) light, only to discover they're surrounded by Cassavetes films.</div>
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So these movie buffs escape instead in a love of submarine films. Their list of themes fills a page of the book (p33 in the Abacus paperback edition, if you happen to have one to hand), and they come to one vital conclusion: 'Essentially you're a Second World War man?' 'Through and through.' No <i>Crimson Tide</i> or <i>The Hunt for Red October</i> for them.<br />
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Made in 1957, <i>The Enemy Below</i> exemplifies what makes this genre so special: it's not the rakish fashions, the thrill of the chase or the heightened sense of claustrophobia - no, it's because these films consistently humanise the enemy. Like no other, the WWII sub flick is as interested in the other side as the heroes we're ostensibly backing. Could this be because the two sides are at different levels? This literally isn't a level playing field.<br />
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As captain Jack Hawkins tells his deputy after a gruelling chase in <i>The Cruel Sea</i> (1953) : 'Number One, this is quite a moment: we've never seen the enemy before... They don't look very different from us.'<br />
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Director Wolfgang Peterson extended the form for his groundbreaking 1981 TV series, <i>Das Boot</i>. Here we see the war entirely from the point of view of the German crew; as in <i>The Enemy Below</i>, a young Nazi ideologue onboard is humoured like a wilful child: wrongheaded, but what can you do? Here again is the captain portrayed as mythical seer, a man whose experience and guile will see his men home alive.<br />
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This is the best bit: the Second World War submarine film is visceral Battleships, a bloody mind game played out, usually by two mutually admiring leaders. As Jurgen Prochnow's captain declares at a crucial moment in <i>Das Boot</i>: '<i>Jetzt wird es psychologisch, meine Herren</i>' - 'This is where it gets psychological, gentlemen.'<br />
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<i>Submarine movies </i>Operation Petticoat<i> and </i>The Bedford Incident <i>screen on Film4 in the UK this afternoon from 1.20pm. Painting </i>'Torpedo... Los!'<i> by </i><i>Roy Lichtenstein </i><i>can be seen in Tate Modern's retrospective of the US pop artist, which runs until 27 May.</i>Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-17332471238603082292013-03-11T06:00:00.000+00:002013-03-12T12:06:13.864+00:00Soho Crime around the worldI'm a huge fan of New York publisher Soho Crime's output - particularly the translated fiction. Their catalogue covers detective thrillers from Japan to Norway. Here are some of the picks - dates are for original (foreign-language, where appropriate) publication:<br />
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<b>Cara Black - PARIS</b></div>
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American author Cara Black is as impressively prolific as Janwillem van de Wetering (<i>below</i>) - her Aimée Leduc is a half-French, half-American private detective who throws herself into her cases, alongside dwarf, computer expert sidekick René Friant. The novels travel the arrondissements of Paris, imbuing each book with the atmosphere of the individual districts. </div>
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WHAT THEY SAY '<i>Murder in the Marais</i> provides a richly textured journey into the dark side of the City of Light.' - Linda Grant</div>
CHECK OUT <i>Murder in the Marais</i> (1999)<br />
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<b>Akimitsu Takagi - TOKYO</b></div>
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Another excellent translation - by Deborah Boehm - which brings Akimitsu Takagi's traumatic <i>The Tattoo Murder Case</i> (1948) up to date. Set in the aftermath of Japan's loss in the WWII and the destruction of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a trio of detectives try to crack a case of tattoo theft. Do also try <a href="http://themanfromlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/turning-japanese.html" target="_blank">Seichi Matsumoto's excellent <i>Inspector Imanishi Investigates</i></a> (1961)</div>
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WHAT THEY SAY 'Clever, kinky, highly entertaining...' <i>Washington Post</i> on <i>The Tattoo Murder Case</i></div>
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CHECK OUT <i>The Tattoo Murder Case</i></div>
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<b>Helene Tursten - GÖTEBORG</b><br />
Helene Tursten's <a href="http://themanfromlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/new-lund.html" target="_blank">Inspector Irene Huss is a judo-practising cop to rival Sarah Lund</a> in a series of procedurals that marches in the steps of Swedish innovators Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö.<br />
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WHAT THEY SAY 'Huss is quickly becoming one of the most satisfying lead characters in the thriving world of Swedish crime fiction.' - <i>Booklist</i></div>
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CHECK OUT <i>Detective Inspector Huss</i> (1998)</div>
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<b>Janwillem van de Wetering - AMSTERDAM and beyond</b></div>
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Dutch <a href="http://themanfromlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/about-author.html" target="_blank">Zen-adherent Janwillem van de Wetering</a>'s many mysteries feature police duo Grijpstra and De Gier, as well as their boss, the Commisaris. The books present a thoughtful view of Dutch policing and venture further afield - to New York, Japan and one-time Dutch colonies, including Aruba and Curaçao. Questioning and even mystical.</div>
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WHAT THEY SAY 'He is doing what Simenon might have done if Albert Camus had sublet his skull.' - John Leonard</div>
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CHECK OUT <i>Outsider in Amsterdam</i> (1975), <i>The Japanese Corpse </i>(1977) and <i>The Streetbird</i> (1983)</div>
Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-53136721292225593482013-02-13T06:00:00.000+00:002013-02-17T09:32:44.258+00:00Happy 110th birthday, Georges!This year marks the 110th anniversary of the birth of one of Liège's most famous sons, author Georges Simenon. What better way to pay homage than a short walk around the major sites of his young life in the southern Belgian city.<br />
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Start at 24 (formerly 26) rue Léopold, where Georges was born on a rainy night. He is famously said to have been born on Friday the 13th, 1903, but his superstitious mother insisted that his father register the date of birth as the 12th.<br />
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On the wall in front of the nearby Hôtel de Ville, on the Place du Marché, check out the memorial plaque to Commissaire Arnold Maigret, whose surname may have been appropriated for Simenon's greatest creation: Chief Inspector Jules... Simenon will no doubt have been aware of the real Maigret when he started work as a young reporter on the <i>Gazette de Liège</i> newspaper.<br />
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From here cross over to quirky Outremeuse, over the Pont des Arches - the title of Simenon's first novel - via the Eglise St-Pholien, which became the inspiration for another early book when his friend Kleine was found hanged from the front door.<br />
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Behind the St-Pholien church, on Impasse de la Houpe, the infamous group La Caque ('the keg') - named for its cramped circumstances - hung out, indulging in drink, drugs and sex. I'm tickled by the pride the town takes in Simenon's experience on rue Capitaine, where the man who later claimed to have bedded 10,000 women handed over a watch he had been given by his father to sleep with a prostitute.<br />
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The island of Outremeuse has a strange, otherworldly reputation in Liège's folklore and the family moved here a year after Georges was born. The atmosphere of the house in the rue de la Loi, next door to Georges's school, permeates much of Simenon's work, from the autobiographical <i>Pedigree</i> to one of the most famous <i>romans durs</i>, <i>Stain in the Snow.</i><br />
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If you continue to the place du Congrès, you'll spot a bust of Simenon, not far from the Chapelle de Bavière, where young Georges served as an altar boy. He would have to leave home at 5.45am, arriving out of breath as he ran, frightened, all the way in the dark.<br />
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Running away is the a central theme of all Simenon's work and he, too, left the city, following the deaths of his father and Joseph Kleine. On 10 December 1922 he took the night train to Paris, the city where he would plot his fame and fortune.<br />
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<i>You can hire an audioguide to </i><a href="http://www.liege.be/tourisme/itineraires-et-promenades/balades" target="_blank"><i>Simenon's Liège</i></a><i> for €4.50 at the local tourist office, which also provides a map of the route.</i><br />
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<i>Related post: <a href="http://www.themanfromlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/maigrets-paris-walk.html" target="_blank">Simenon's Paris</a></i>Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-53950872054050860552013-01-02T06:30:00.000+00:002013-01-02T06:30:02.448+00:00Milady at the National Portrait GalleryLast summer, London's <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/jun/06/portrait-18th-century-early-transvestite" target="_blank">National Portrait Gallery bought its first painting of a man in women's clothes</a>. The painting shows Chevalier d'Eon, Louis XV's secret envoy to Russia and England, dressed as a woman. Accused by his enemies of being a hermaphrodite, he may have served as inspiration for the character of Lady de Winter in <i>The Three Musketeers</i>.<br />
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In his coy introduction to his translation of Alexandre Dumas' classic, Lord Sudley tackles the mystery of Milady, "who is referred to by all the men as 'the vampire', the 'creature from Hell', the 'monster', the 'woman who is not a woman'..." It is perhaps this last nomenclature that is the most telling.</div>
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"All men who come her way are first fascinated and then repelled by her, and in the end the terror she inspires in them is, as it were, the terror of the supernatural." Branded with the fleur-de-lis for a youthful crime, "Only her husbands (she had two) and her lovers find out her 'secret', and for that, she declares they must die... Might not Dumas, in creating such a character, have intended to convey that Milady had that particular form of physical malformation which was regarded even in the 16th and 17th centuries as a terrifying token of divine displeasure, punishable by death - a malformation of which the fleur-de-lis was merely a symbol?"</div>
Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-20966470337965415892012-12-17T15:22:00.001+00:002012-12-17T15:22:21.252+00:00Paris posers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I meant to take Penguin's reprint of Julian Green's <i>Paris</i> with me to the French capital but, in a moment worthy of Geoff Dyer in <i><a href="http://themanfromlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/shhhh.html" target="_blank">Out of Sheer Rage</a></i>, forgot it at home. So I visited Green's impressions of the city of his birth while on the London Underground instead.<br />
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Like the author on his return to the USA during World War II, 'It was a Paris of visions in which I took my walks now, a Paris that, though intensely real, was imperceptibly migrating from flesh to spirit.' In her idiosyncratic yet incisive introduction, Lila Azam Zanganeh rightly challenges Green's nostalgia and even his tendency to exclude others from experiencing 'the Paris of the Parisians'.<br />
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In my favourite chapter, 'Museums, streets, seasons, faces', Green contends: 'The posers you could set, even for teachers, just by running through the history of our city (what happened to the mummies brought back from Egypt, where were they buried, what lies beneath the column on which the spirit of the Bastille is forever taking wing, where did they divert the Phantom of the Opera's underground lake, who posed for the statue of Pierre de Wissant, who lived in the château des Brouillards?), but in Paris you may always be sure there will be someone, secretly in love with his city, who will know all the answers.' That must be true of London nowadays, too.<br />
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(The answers to Green's posers can be found at the back of the Penguin Modern Classics <i>Paris</i>.)Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-13242271798923235682012-11-13T20:37:00.000+00:002013-03-28T10:41:57.988+00:00Ceci n'est pas un blogpost<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-66175355879028020832012-10-15T06:00:00.000+01:002012-10-15T06:00:06.027+01:00Berlin brought to bookIn his latest pre-WWII thriller, <i>Mission to Paris</i>, author Alan Furst's film star hero, Fredric Stahl, briefly checks into Berlin's Hotel Adlon. It seems an intrusion into the territory of another wartime character: Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther, who becomes the hotel's house detective in <i>If the Dead Rise Not</i> (2009).<br />
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Just over 80 years ago, the city was the setting for another detective, a child: Emil Tischbein. In <i>Emil and the Detectives</i> (1931), Erich Kästner's plucky hero teams up with local kids to retrieve his stolen money after Emil takes the train to Berlin. Kästner is as careful in his description of the boys' attempts to recover the cash as he is in his portrayal of the city:<br />
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'The noise was indescribable, and on the pavements crowds of people kept hurrying by. Out of every turning vans and lorries, trams and double-decker buses swarmed into the main thoroughfare. There were newspaper stands at every corner, with men shouting the latest headlines. Wherever Emil looked there were gay shop windows filled with flowers and fruit, books, clothes, fine silk underwear, gold watches and clocks. And all the buildings stretched up and up into the sky. So this was Berlin!'<br />
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The chase leads the gang from Friedrichstrasse station, along Kaiserdamm, Trautenaustrasse, to Nollendorfplatz. In a sentiment that might be replicated by Hans Fallada, Emil initially believes, 'No one has time for other people's troubles in a city. They've all troubles enough of their own.'<br />
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Writing just one year after <i>Emil..., </i>in<i> Little Man, What Now?</i> Fallada has 'little man' Pinneberg trudge the city's streets in a pattern also recognisable from Alfred Döblin's earlier <i>Berlin Alexanderplatz</i> (1929), which was adapted as a 15-and-a-half hour film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder in 1980. In the latter books it is not children who dominate the streets but the unemployed, hopeless and hucksters.<br />
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Pinneberg realises Berlin is not the place for him following an altercation with a policeman on Friedrichstrasse: 'Then Pinneberg went on his way, one step at a time, through Berlin. But nowhere was completely dark, and going past policemen was particularly difficult.'Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511802669547483479.post-2449287007295577482012-09-13T10:45:00.001+01:002012-10-18T16:21:43.104+01:00Outsiders' London<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Tate Britain's 'Another London' comes to an end this weekend. Subtitled 'International photographers capture city life 1930-1980', the show is a roll call of refugees fleeing the Nazis pre-World War II: Ellen Auerbach, Dorothy Bohm, Hans Casparius, Herbert List, Felix H Man...<br />
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Prime among them is Bill Brandt, born in Munich, and moved to London in 1933. The handful of his works chosen here, from the Eric and Louise Franck London Collection, are symptomatic of the exhibition as a whole: they're all exterior shots.<br />
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As if to underline the outsider status of these emigrés and visitors, the vast majority of the photos show familiar landmarks and everyday characters but rarely scratch beneath the city's surface. James Barnor's 'Mike Eghan at Piccadilly Circus, London' (c1967) is typical, and full of incidental information (posters in the background advertise <i>Doctor Zhivago</i>, Michael Caine in <i>Funeral in Berlin</i> and Lionel Bart's <i>Oliver!</i>, 'London's longest running musical'), although there is no explanation of who Mike Eghan is, unless I missed it.<br />
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Ghanaian Barnor (Eghan is a compatriot broadcaster) has one of the few indoor shots on show - '<i>Flamingo</i> cover girl Sarah with friend, London' (c1965) - and how atmospheric it is: we all know these stairwells of shared accommodation. Eve Arnold goes one step further and invades the bathroom for 'One of four girls who share a flat in Knightsbridge' (1961). Along with Willy Ronis' 1955 interior of a barely changed French House, these are the exhibition's best images.<br />
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I've always been troubled by Bill Brandt's latent sadism, but how I longed for one of his nudes - 'The Policeman's Daughter, Hampstead' (1945), say, or 'Eaton Place Nude' (1951). The Eaton Place images are unforgettable to anyone who has ever visited any of the central London townhouses, while the former hints at the perversions perpetrated behind our close doors.<br />
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And if not these, why not his 'Late night coffee stall' (1939), 'Alice at the Crooked Billet' (1939), 'Young woman at Charlie Brown's' (1946) or Brandt's 1941 portrait of Dylan Thomas in the Salisbury pub. In his work, perhaps more than in any of the images on show, the German was someone who never lost his outsider's eye, but was part of British life, exactly as he wanted.Omer Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852456094167433710noreply@blogger.com1