Shallow and inconsequential

Taking the more serious mode

...or road. I am writing this in the morning when I should finish my dissertation. I have done the printing off some useful procrastination kickers from the internet. I have got dressed and had 2 cups of tea, a banana, 2 plums and a hot cross-bun with blackcurrent jam (no wonder the weight stays 0n!). It is early enough to take the bus to Bury and sit in the Library there...

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But on Tuesday at the Departmental Book Launch I met a fellow post-grad who has finished his PHD and has his viva in 2 weeks time !!!
But I know that it has taken 4 plus years, cost him relationships,some of his hair and sent him to the depths of despair at times. But he is finished, and so should I. Any way he has been researching in Recife like me, and knows my subject Amarelo Manga, so he asked me an intelligent question about it, and I could answer, so I just know it is time to wrap it all up. But yesterday I could not force myself to write, especially as it was very sunny outside, and is again today. Eventually I went out to met my nephew in Cambridge to see Be Kind, Rewind, which I justified as kind of the same rethinking of film cultures that I find in AM, but of course it is gussied up as a feel good movie and a laugh with the leading actors, so the reviews do not really tackle the internal criticism inplicit in the title of rethinking the whole grip of the Hollywood dream machine on our expectations of movie culture. I must see if there are any more considered discussions about this film.But not as a distraction from my own writing, you understand. Just as an added understanding....



Introspective as some of the discussions were on Tuesday (there were lots of anthropologists and people from other universities there), I found myself in serious conversations about New Zealand with a couple of people who had spent some time there. One is doing a PHD on tattos and Polynesia. They both had reservations about the country and the people which were more incisive than the usual gushing about the scenery and the food. That made me feel more emotionally settled about my own mixed feelings about my friends and relatives still there.

My younger sister who completed her Masters with a first last year while holding down a full time job (admittedly below her professional capability, and in the same university) is treating me to a weekend in Birmingham (no laughing, our mother was born there). And she also lives away from New Zealand because she finds Europe more interesting. But she has been looking at writing about women in sport, which is actually something that is much more equal and better done in New Zealand these days. Every experience and location has its influence. But mine is now Brazil and I want to spread the word. So I have a major incentive to be finished and give her something to read from me. And there is more, but I realise that I am in danger of putting all my limited social life online and unmasking all my friends and enemies. So to the serious work...


The picture by the way, is from an old CD of National Geographic pictures, available for use on web-sites it says, but marked by that publication's habit of cute pictures of natives in the Amazon that is quite naive tourist and racially demeaning too. But as his face is hidden and he represents a metaphor for my own instincts at the moment I will risk the anthropologists critique. Sorry to anyone who feels offended by the idea of attributing internal feelings onto other peoples in the photographic representation, but that is part of my dissertation writing too. Just to clarify to myself. Stop digging a hole, girl !!

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.