Motion picture storytelling at its best: Claude Berri’s story of multiple competing male obsessions in his ‘Jean de Florette’ & ‘Manon des Sources’ films.

March 4, 2025

The problem with this film is that its central female character, Manon, is a kind of symbol and not a woman. The woman who I think matters in it is not her but Florette, whose life and death of repression and flight from the shame that births her son, Jean, and who generates the film’s … More Motion picture storytelling at its best: Claude Berri’s story of multiple competing male obsessions in his ‘Jean de Florette’ & ‘Manon des Sources’ films.

The danger of loaded words in questions.

March 3, 2025

Superstition is very often a word that is pre-loaded with value judgments. In mainstream modern usage, with justification in the use of it by the ancients and in the history of Christianity. Rarly and continuing internal disputes in Christian tradition is larded with name-calling (in which being ‘superstitious’ is a claim made against sects being … More The danger of loaded words in questions.

‘Would You Let Yourself In’ : Leigh Bowery’s inclusively exclusive or exclusively inclusive dilemma and other contradictions inside Leigh’s outside keeps us outside his inside. This is my blog reflecting on visiting the new Leigh Bowery exhibition at Tate Modern with the help of it the Tate’s  publication Alice Chasey (Ed.) [2025] ‘Leigh Bowery!’

March 1, 2025

‘Would You Let Yourself In’ : Leigh Bowery’s inclusively exclusive or exclusively inclusive dilemma and other contradictions inside Leigh’s outside keeps us outside his inside. This is my blog reflecting on visiting the new Leigh Bowery exhibition at Tate Modern with the help of it the Tate’s  publication Alice Chasey (Senior Ed.) [2025]  Leigh Bowery! … More ‘Would You Let Yourself In’ : Leigh Bowery’s inclusively exclusive or exclusively inclusive dilemma and other contradictions inside Leigh’s outside keeps us outside his inside. This is my blog reflecting on visiting the new Leigh Bowery exhibition at Tate Modern with the help of it the Tate’s  publication Alice Chasey (Ed.) [2025] ‘Leigh Bowery!’

Meet me in a book store that contains ourselves and the world together and apart.

February 28, 2025

Meet me in a book store that contains ourselves and the world together and apart. Lets’ go buy books or is it dreams, the painsAnd pleasures of a holiday abroadIn heaven, or is it Hell: where you learnMost about the state of the world or yourOwn soul, where these elements collide nowAnd again, collude or … More Meet me in a book store that contains ourselves and the world together and apart.

Fragments of response to ‘Oedipus’ at ‘The Old  Vic’ & ‘Elektra ‘ at ‘The Duke of York’s Theatre, St. Martin’s  Lane’. In lieu of a blog today.

February 27, 2025

My blog yesterday ended with wondering about how unhelpful assumptions about Greek theatrical conventions can be and with a particular piece of the text of Carson’s translation of Elektra.  It was the scene in which Orestes takes revenge on his mother in some place described in stage directions as ‘within’. On the Greek stage, this … More Fragments of response to ‘Oedipus’ at ‘The Old  Vic’ & ‘Elektra ‘ at ‘The Duke of York’s Theatre, St. Martin’s  Lane’. In lieu of a blog today.

‘Elektra’: To travel into inner space and not, I hope, to get lost or full of hubris.

February 26, 2025

There is a chance that today’s blog will mirror yesterday’s. That is because what I find amongst the reviews of this play is  an even more extreme version of the attack on Remi Malek as an Oscar-winner but made this time on Oscar-winner Brie Larson. The attack is the more virulent in that this performance … More ‘Elektra’: To travel into inner space and not, I hope, to get lost or full of hubris.

Tomorrow I travel to London. My first destination experience is travelling to ancient Thebes recreated on the stage of the Old Vic Theatre to see Ella Hickson’s free adaptation of ‘Oedipus’.

February 25, 2025

Tomorrow I travel to London. My first destination experience is travelling to ancient Thebes recreated on the stage of the Old Vic Theatre to see Ella Hickson’s free adaptation of Oedipus. Reviewers’ comments have ranged from deliberate disdain to the usual passive-aggressive attempts to take down the reputation of visiting Hollywood stars alongside praise of … More Tomorrow I travel to London. My first destination experience is travelling to ancient Thebes recreated on the stage of the Old Vic Theatre to see Ella Hickson’s free adaptation of ‘Oedipus’.

Lapse and the Upward Spiral of Change, sometimes!

February 24, 2025

The model of behavioural change promoted by Prochaska and DiClemente to describe the usual process of escaping addiction provides the best model of how success occurs and is more durable in nature. It applies to any human behavioural task and suggests that only when serial occurrences of apparent failure in the task occur (failures which … More Lapse and the Upward Spiral of Change, sometimes!

‘I’ve done worse things, things I am not proud of including standing here in the dark with David, I know there’s a little bit of hypocrisy there, there are shades of hypocrisy in everything. Our principles stretch like elastic bands’. This is a blog on Nicola Dinan (2025) ‘Disappoint Me’.

February 23, 2025

‘I’ve done worse things, things I am not proud of including standing here in the dark with David, I know there’s a little bit of hypocrisy there, there are shades of hypocrisy in everything. Our principles stretch like elastic bands’.[1] When certainties fail us, as they must in time, there may be no alternative to … More ‘I’ve done worse things, things I am not proud of including standing here in the dark with David, I know there’s a little bit of hypocrisy there, there are shades of hypocrisy in everything. Our principles stretch like elastic bands’. This is a blog on Nicola Dinan (2025) ‘Disappoint Me’.

‘Education, Education, Education’ seemed good rhetoric to Tony Blair, whatever he meant by it. So let’s stay with its advantages as three sustainable objects.

February 22, 2025

Fighting for a historic third term in government, Tony Blair drove to his constituency in Sedgefield and said that his three-pronged object of political desire remained ‘Education, Education, Education’, without using the by then much mocked word. Here is what he said: Education has been, is and will be the driving mission of a New … More ‘Education, Education, Education’ seemed good rhetoric to Tony Blair, whatever he meant by it. So let’s stay with its advantages as three sustainable objects.

‘In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing’. Hence why be Earnest, Ernest? Seeing Max Webster’s version live-streamed at the Gala Durham 20th February 2025.

February 21, 2025

My photograph of the screen in the interval of ‘ The Importance of Being Earnest’ at the Gala Theatre Durham The words cited in my title are from Gwendolen Fairfax, one of the two young women in this play in love with the name ‘Ernest’. Is the name or style of a man his reality? … More ‘In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing’. Hence why be Earnest, Ernest? Seeing Max Webster’s version live-streamed at the Gala Durham 20th February 2025.