In my father's den (New Zealand 2004)... a serious film review point by me!!!

I have finally got serious about commenting on film and put a 'review' remark on IMDB, partly because I get tired of all the crass and ignorant remarks by people who expect everything to be like dumb Hollywood stuff, or only happy enough for 12 year olds etc. And I would not bother except I meet so many nice ordinary intelligent young university students who think that this site is the best way to find out about movies - and it does seem to have some kind of remark for most movies that have at least subtitles in English. So here is a link to my first effort:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0385017/usercomments?filter=chrono

and can I ask you to look at the comment by Marilou of New York on the same page - because I didn't know she had commented, and she is my husband's cousin who grew up next door to him in Green Island, Dunedin, New Zealand but has lived in New York for over 25 years. She is not a budding film academic like me, but does a lot to support New Zealanders in the arts (especially music) in the USA. So if you can help her to get the film distributed in the USA, please...

If you read my comment you will see I had personal reasons for finding the film particularly revealing, as I lived in the area in which it was set (Central Otago) as an educated British immigrant teenager, an interesting experience ! It is very beautiful, as a hot dry mountain desert place that also has cold frosts in winter...

this still from the film captures it perfectly.

I picked up on the migration issue really, because it is about a brother returning home from a journalistic career in the world's trouble spots on the death of his father, to confront the reasons why he left. It is a proper 'film noir' in plot, but the characterisation and issues discussed are what make it so good.

Anyway I am now going to do more of these for various films that I feel are not supported enough, on various sites. And I have some friends who do the same, so expect more links like this. But this blog is not going to be a mere 'stop' for passing the reader on to all sorts of other sites. I hate that. It is about growing in confidence to express my own views and some of my friends as considered and important. Gosh - v. serious !

Last point. I seem to be surrounded by people who spend a lot of time collecting and storing their own huge collections of videos, DVDs, itunes, even youtube clips, and passing them on and sorting them out, so they can then spend loads of time re-watching the same old re-runs and few films. Well I like to collect books, but at least it is easier to just dip into them and get the bit you want. And I still borrow them from the library, even if reading recent journal articles is easier if you can download them from Jstor or whatever. More serendipity and renewal that way.

I like to go to the cinema, maybe once a week, and then turn that film over in my mind and remember it.

This weeks film - Los Olividados (Luis Bunuel, Mexico, 1942??). Seen at Arts Cinema, Cambridge. Wonderful Black and White film about street kids in Mexico City. Precursor to Pixote(1989) and Cidade de Deus (2002) from Brazil and various other 'social' Latin American and European films. A newly restored print - but the English subtitles, probably the original are awful - listen to the Spanish, which is fairly 'standard' unlike the street language of Cidade de Deus.

There is a fallow deer sitting in my garden...

For the second time this year there is a young deer sitting in the garden... just in the middle near the greenhouse and it has got one front leg amputated.... We don't usually have them any more because some hideous neighbours secretly bought the paddock land behind us and put a fence up - plus they keep a large and stupid dog, so our wild life has been a bit depleted in recent years. I just went down to take a picture but frightened it, so it has escaped back under the trampoline and into my other neighbour's garden. If his son was around he would shoot it - but it looked quite healthy despite the injury.

I wonder about animal symbolism...? Last time I went for a 'thinking' drive in the countryside near here about thirty fallow deer charged across from one field to another in front of me !Yesterday I went down to Kent to take my appendix-scarred daughter and her flatmate back for the summer term. She is 20 today and having a bit of a party, and my older daughter is coming from London to join her and then going on to Zurich for the weekend with her boyfriend. When we were in Margate hospital with the doctors who finally woke up to the fact that she needed to have that appendix out right now, a seagull came down and tapped on the glass door of her room until they went. I try not to be superstitious !

Must say journey was v. bad to start with - had to go up the A14 between Cambridge and Huntingdon first - anyone who lives locally will know that this road is a minefield of frequent accidents and long traffic jams - and sure enough... luckily we only had about half an hour delay (for about 1 mile..!) because I was able to shoot off through the villages and because the jam had just started. By the time we were heading south again the tailback was huge. On to Canterbury crossing the Dartford Bridge and the A2 roadworks about 3pm which is optimum time to be there, and not too bad. Reminds me so much of the joy of driving in Otago and Canterbury in New Zealand last year - no traffic at all!

I took advantage of journey back with a nearly full tank of petrol paid for by my husband (rare of him at 95p a litre !) to drive right up the A13 into London, parking behind the Appeal Court at 7pm and going to my University Library in Chancery Lane, which is doing the civilized thing of being open 24 hours for a couple of months for 'exam revision'. It was the second time this week I had managed to get there - and I had left my student ID card in another jacket - luckily one of the security guards is a New Zealander and knows I'm a regular so he let me in, and I tucked myself up at the top of the post-grad clock tower with a nice blank room and my laptop and got a load of work done.

My University Library
It used to be the Public Record Office until it moved to Kew. A very high Victorian Gothic Grade I listed building converted at great cost to a modern library - but they had to keep all the old small rooms and mezzanine floors that used to house all the 'Rolls' and manuscripts, so the book shelving sequence is very long and hard to follow . As a professional Librarian I would have to say it is not entirely 'user-friendly', but very nice to work in.

Clock Tower - haven for PostGrad thinking, but I always choose an internal room

Because this is too beautiful !

This is the distracting daytime view from the tower - at night the lights are really cool too!

And this is the Round Room - Reference Library - too quiet to disturb others with laptop noise, but it always make me feel a 'serious' researcher when I work in there.

Drove home at 1.30 am, only having to stop twice to refill the leaky radiator on my car - thanks to the 24 hour garage by the Millenium Dome - a regular stop of mine - thanks guys!

Actually the previous day I went to London by train to the Institute of Education so I will tell you about that in the next post - and why I now have a resurgence of faith in my dissertation.

Margate is...suprising !!

www.theburlingtonmargate.co.uk

Buenos Ayres, Margate.

I always thought Margate was very tacky, but I didn't really know it at all. My husband used to do some work at Ramsgate in the winter months many years ago, and that was dire in those days. I don't like overdone British Beach places in principle - I must do a blog on my favourite beaches. And I went to Aldburgh and Lowestoft with my New Zealand Tourist nephew last week, because we have had such lovely sunny days recently, but they are different to Margate.

Anyway I took Adri to Margate with me on Monday and took him down to the seaside area at lunchtime, to find that as well as the wonderful but decayed Regency houses at the front, there is a whole interesting 'old town' behind to explore. The other 'tourists' consisted of hundreds of European teenagers who poured off the train (good place to park - £2.20 for the day). They are probably here for the compulsary 4 week English lessons - we get the same in Cambridge and my sister Dublin has mostly Spanish youngsters there. So excitable! The local white youth are overdressed and badly mannered, lots of people with drinks, but also lots of different nationalities.

I think Margate is a place where a lot of asylum seekers went a few years ago, because they have the cheap boarding houses and it is close to London. Anyway money is being spent there, and if I could snap up one of the Regency houses before they are all turned into retirement appartments I would! (I deny being a capitalist, but I appreciate spacious historic houses)

Ari was happy to explore the cash machines and games areas, and win himself a disgusting orange furry dice. My good friend Joc, who is a professional clarinettist, and also at University in Kent doing a MA in performance, just did a recital at the Winter Gardens in Margate - and was staggered to find herself playing to over 200 people!!!! And it was sunny enough to sit on the beach yesterday too.

More Latin Americana.. Row of cheap hotels by the Railway station, with a view over the beach and town but no sun - priced between £22.50 and £11.50 a night!!! Best bit - The street is called Buenos Ayres (sic!!!) . British/International/Observation without over-diagnosis I suspect. I comment no more.

When in Margate...

Today I am at home. But yesterday and on Sunday I was in Margate ... It was very sunny but ...

My younger daughter is at university at Canterbury in Kent. And on Sunday we were going to go down to Canterbury to pick up Lou and her boyfriend. But on saturday she said she wasn't feeling very well. Now I had been getting really bad tummy pain all week, and especially on Saturday. And my family are all a bit psychic like that - we know when others are sick or hurt - or die actually. Or at least my younger sister in Dublin and I always feel these things and exchange notes from times to time. Lou is at the independent stage and wouldn't share the exact problem. but when her boyfriend rang us at 5.30 am Sunday morning from the hospital I was up and dressed and ready to go - but we couldn't get him back on the phone to get any more detail. When we rang the hospital they said she had been discharged. Then Jo her flatmate who had driven them to the hospital said she hadn't come home. So off we went then, first to Canterbury and then to Margate - because that is where the emergency hospital is. Boyfriend Stubbs finally rang and said which ward they were in - so we went through more road works - they are digging up the whole of Kent I think, and when we got there and enquired they still said she wasn't there - discharged apparently. So we went to the ward we thought she might be - a women's ward - and there she was - v. sick my poor darling with Stubbs who was v. tired and amazing hanging in there while she tried to be sick yet again.

Now I will defend the NHS to the hilt despite years of rarely used private cover for the whole liberal ethos of giving equal care to everyone. And Margate Hospital is modern and very clean. But a computer system not properly used??? Losing a patient from the system???. Now, sick enough to admit -- but then no doctor or diagnosis for 9 hours?? A young registrar turned up at 2 pm talked to Stubbs and Lou and concluded it might be a 'urine infection', might be appendicitis - didn't say to stop eating and drinking and didn't order any scan. Lou will not admit to pain. I gave birth to her without any anaesthetic and she was a breech baby (my second). She won't even take asprin. If she bravely says 'It doesn't hurt' you have to be careful. So I was telling the nurses 'look she is sicker than you think'... And then like all nice university girls she had loads of visitors in the afternoon. Then she was very sick - and finally another female registrar appeared, called I think by the nurses, who asked more questions, ordered the scan (I think it might have just been a small hand held machine - but it confirmed the probablity of appendicitis) and they then rang for and got a surgeon in , who took a look and ordered morphine (!), checked she had thrown up every thing she had eaten and took her off to surgery. Meanwhile the first registrar came and apologised for mis-diagnosis!!! Lou returned looking much better but unable by then (midnight!) to tell us what had been done, followed by the nurses throwing us out of the hospital, and we have not mananged to talk to a doctor since, although I was able to glance at her notes while the nurse explained that they had to remove the appendix and a section of bowel lining - as Louise herself said " It would have been better if they had got to it before it burst!!

So now I have to thank Stubbs and Jo and Lou's flatmates and Darcy who came down especially from Cambridgeshire to Margate only to see Lou being very sick indeed. And I will thank Margate Hospital, but they didn't really cover themselves in glory over what is quite a common diagnosis, partly because it seems to me that they have a poor cover of personnel and equipment access at the weekend. The first registrar should have been sent much sooner - we wonder whether the lack of a computer record of admission was a problem here - and then should have had back up to check his diagnonsis and Lou's prognosis. But pushy middle class mums like me are better at asking questions and seeking action. And I spent most of last year in New Zealand while my father went through a series of operations following a DVT in his leg, where in a remote country area I made mistakes in not getting help quickly enough. But a large teaching hospital - the wonderful Dunedin Hospital and the University of Otago Medical Hospital or our own Addenbrookes in Cambridge clearly has more resources than one stuck in a small town at the edge of Kent. So we just hope the surgeon has cleared up the damage - we don't know because we haven't spoken to him, and Lou has no long term damage to her bowel etc.

And hopefully both will be home for Thursday night, along with my older daughter Nic and her boyfriend and we will have a full house which means I lose my office space for a few days. Blogging doesn't really romantise such issues, but I guess it means you can bore in secret about the mundane ... . I have been thinking about the academics of the banal - the descriptive over the deeper analysis lately. I didn't mean to get sidetracked into family - but hey, I' m a mother!

Happy Easter to all.

It got a bit busy this week...

Barone 192 -193, Shoreditch High Street, London, E1 6HU. Tel 0207 729 8049

Not about the job, which is a step back in my life that I don't think I want to take just now, but afterwards when I thought I would try to drive across NE London around the congestion charge area heading towards St Katherines Dock which is a good place to park for a day and get a no 15 bus to my university. So nosing along Shoreditch High Street (don't ask, I have no sense of direction!), My beloved mercedes did what it often does in these circumstances - overheated and started to smoke from under the bonnet. I was loking to see where I could turn off, and a man rushed out from a nearby cafe to tell me to 'Stop - or your engine will explode!!!'

Any way he made me come out of the traffic and park on a bus stop right by his cafe, put a piece of old cardboard over my number plate so that the cameras on the intersection wouldn't read it and send me a traffic ticket, put up the bonnet so the car engine could cool down and had me (dressed in my interview suit and bag) in his coffee and lunch place with a lovely cup of Camomile tea while I waited and he organized water for the radiator (I didn't know how to tell him I had a bottle full in the car boot ready for this particular emergency!)

So, as I rang my daughter to tell her I would not be coming round to her place in South London, I enquired the nationality of my rescuer. He was, as I had guessed Latin American - from Chile. The other chap there was Portuguese, who made me a lovely tuna baguette for my lunch. And next door was a very interesting shop with Che Guevera t-shirts and Latin American flags and things for the trade. So another little Luso- Hispanic place to visit...

Its a long time since I was last in Shoreditch - I used to work in the area about 25 years ago, when it was very different!! So I was thrilled to find such lovely kind people, I have said my best thank-yous in Portuguese and Spanish, and have found a photo of the cafe for you all, because it is clean, smart, comfortable, lovely food, lovely people - you can sit and use your lap-top there and I can highly recommend it! Barone 192 - 193 Shoreditch High Street.