Silverlake Blvd.

Censoring an Iranian Love Story

 

Shahriar Mandanipour's, Censoring an Iranian Love Story (2009) is hilarious, entertaining & sad. It even provides a glimpse of Iranian TV:

 

It was around the same time that while watching a movie on television we would suddenly see that contrary to the tenets of filmmaking, and contrary to the most basic principles of cinematography, a midrange shot would abruptly change to a close-up. A hazy, staticky, faded, close-up. It took a while for us to realize that this only happens when the actress enters the scene. After much research, we learned that to avoid having to cut films by some forty-five minutes, and because eliminating certain scenes would render a film completely meaningless, those in charge of censoring television programs had, with the use of state-of-the-art technology, found an artistic-cinematic solution. If in an important scene the actress was dressed in a sleeveless shirt or a short skirt, they would refilm shots of her face in close-up and insert these images into the film.

More Pym

 

 Barbara Pym’s No Fond Return of Love (1961) begins “There are various ways of mending a broken heart, but perhaps going to a learned conference is one of the more unusual.” 

Pym, Less than Angels:

 

"I feel one shouldn’t go into libraries of learned societies smelling of drink," said Mark, at his most prim. "It might create the wrong impression."
 

"Oh, I hadn’t thought of that," said Miss Clovis, sipping her dark foamy drink. "I don’t suppose anyone would notice. Of course it’s all right for librarians to smell of drink," she added jovially.   

A mad king's music & the dance of the spheres @ Disney

Last Tuesday, Green Umbrella did Eight Songs for a Mad King, and it’s hard to imagine a more enthusiastic audience response to such ferociously thorny music. People cheered themselves hoarse.

 

Thomas Meglioranza, who played the afflicted monarch, had a lot to do with it: singing, shrieking, speaking, squeaking and crawling around stage and interfering with the sextet (at one point snatching Ms. Wang’s violin and smashing it to bits). The moments when he was permitted to sing, the loveliness came as a jolt--there was one moment when he tried to speak to a bird.

 

And there was a burst of ragtime and some good natured fooling to lighten the mood, but the current Master of the Queen’s Music puts you inside the broken head of a angry, unhappy, frustrated old man, and ends with the drummer marching him off stage with menacing thumps as he howls, howls, howls. Intense stuff, and totally engrossing.

(Does Master of the Queen's Music mean he's in charge of QE2's ipod? There's something to contemplate. I'm listening to his sassy "St. Thomas' Wake" and can just picture Liz letting herself go with a little cake-walk before a meeting with Gordon Brown.) 

Wednesday night's concert was such a good idea! Tafelmusik’s Galileo Project was intended as a celebration of the 400^th anniversary of the publication of Galileo’s cosmos-picture-changing Starry Messenger, linking the astronomer—who came from a family of musicians—and the music of his era. 

Immediately beautiful sounds and images come to mind: all that stupendously decorative classicizing astrological/zodiacal mythology, the wacky Renaissance interest in the Pythagorean music of the spheres, geeky Renaissance polyphony, the unequalled melodrama of Galileo’s life story, ….

Too bad there wasn’t a dramatist involved equal to the challenge of doing justice to the man, the myth, the music, and the mathematics. Diderot would be a first choice, followed by Leopardi, followed by Bernard Shaw, followed by Aldous Huxley, followed by Tom Stoppard, ... (followed by, I don't know who is left, given the obvious decline and fall.)

Fortunately the evening was saved by the infectious fun of the performers. The Tafelmusik instrumentalists always seem to be having the best time. Like a jazz band, they play to each other, for each other. They are intensely caught up with each other and have so little regard for the audience that we, breathless, struggle to keep up.

 

Greenwich Village, 1944

Roberto Rossellini

“When you have a preconceived idea you’re doomed to produce a thesis. That’s a violation of the truth, and a violation of instruction.” 
 

Fanny & Alexander

I finally have the courage to watch it again, after watching it in Champaign 28 years ago. I forgot that the first hour is the best Christmas movie ever.