*
Memory loss affects an insurance investigator.
He attempts to trace his actions, making use of a Polaroid camera
Unusual film, a sot of Noir, with many provocative ideas about experience, identity and responsibility.
It is elegantly filmed by Christopher Nolan and beautifully acted by Guy Pierce.
*
*
J. Robert Oppenheimer works on the Manhattan Project in the desert, seeking to develop an Atomic Bomb.
Is his team infiltrated by Soviet Agents? The Un-American Activities Committee investigates.
Cillian Murphy and the rest of the cast are excellent. The dramatisation of events is very effective. The camerawork is striking, often beautiful.
However, the film is too kind to Soviet Communists sympathisers and is overlong. Concision is a virtue in art.
*
*
The tribulations of Odysseus as he returns by sea with his crew and fellow warriors from the Trojan Wars to reunite with his, anxious wife, Penelope.
There are some striking set pieces, particularly featuring the Cyclops Circe, and the Sirens.
It can be hard to follow the plot, though the long running time passes without longeurs.
The moronically obvious soundtrack consists largely of loud drums: boom! boom! boom! as if created for the hard of hearing.
Anne Hathaway is disgrace as Penelope, grimacing all the time. The rest of the cast are unmemorable except for creepy, clunky Eliot Page.
In short: competent standard-issue macho cinema, with zero subtlety, which has generated more interest than it merits.
*
*
The Residency is for the whole of July
My equipment perhaps looks old and messy but the paints are all great quality and my tools are tested and thoroughly dependable.
I wouldn`t recommend travelling with flashy stuff. Even if you don`t get robbed, you`ll attract attention or become nervous about about losing it.
I`ve decided for the residency to paint small about A5.
I`m getting the cards together, priming them and preparing carriers.
I am weather dependent. So far the weather this summer has been very wet. I do hope it improves in July.
I think perhaps of making Clashnettie videos, but I`m not sure. It will depend how I feel when I get there.
*
*
Documentary tracing events in a Glasgow street when the Home Office attempt to arrest two foreign men, presumably for not having appropriate visas.
Neighbours and locals protest, successfully preventing their removal in a van. The crowds are joined by local politicians.
The documentary attempts to contextualise these events withing Glasgow`s history as a radical city.
The presentation of events is entirely celebratory. No effort is made to question the legitimacy of the collective action, or the reasons for the arrest of the two men: sentimentality prevails.
The film is watchable, however, reminiscent somehow of Ealing films such as Passport to Pimlico.
*
I have ten Moroccan paintings hanging at Frauhaus, Chattan Place, Aberdeen. These include paintings from 2025-6, as well as older paintings.
*
An artist began painting a series of portraits of a lover which he then abandoned. His talent long since diminished, now he resides, embittered, in a huge London apartment.
His two children want these paintings as they ae highly valued. They hire a young woman -an art restorer- to find the paintings and complete them while masquerading as an assistant.
There then ensue are all manner of plot twists.
The film is not a success.
While interesting themes are touched upon (talent and what permits it to flourish, resentment, aging, use of technology) these are not given their due. The many subplots are fussy and irksome.
The acting styles, attempting humour, of the two siblings played by James Corden and Jessia Gunning jarr with that of Ian McKellan and his opposite, Michaela Coel.
*
Valencia
Valencia is the most depersonalising big city I`ve spent much time in. I think you could become quite depressed living here.
It`s one of the least inspiring places to make art, despite the sunshine.
There`s a lot of flatness in Valencia. Flatness is very bad for a sense of place. You can feel quite hemmed in by buildings. The seafront is oddly uninspiring and sad and sits some way from the centre.
There are grand and often fantastical structures in the centre: railway stations, a fine food market, and of course the absurd but undoubtedly memorable City of Arts and Sciences building, but most of the city consists of eight storey peach, ream or light yellow blocks going on and on for mile after mile.
*
This flat had some sort of nastiness in it so we were always suffering from faint maladies Sick building syndrome.
*
*
*
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