One of our spy’s wives is missing
Posted: September 25, 2011 Filed under: books, culture, films, published work, TV | Tags: alec guinness, alex cox, Critics Notebook, darren aronofsky, ed harris, edward tudor-pole, gary oldman, george smiley, john le carre, kathy burke, michelle winstanley, miguel sandoval, sian phillips, tinker tailor solider spy, tomas alfredson Leave a comment »George Smiley’s school days. And Connie Sachs’ too for that matter.
Trace almost anything interesting in new films back a bit and Alex Cox will pop up at some point. Come on film gods: The man links Ed Harris and Miguel Sandoval with Edward Tudor-Pole and Michelle Winstanley. Let him loose more often.
My main memory of watching Gary Oldman in Sid and Nancy is of wanting to keep perfectly still in case he saw me and took my head off. Seeing him disappear behind the complicated defenses of George Smiley all these years later is like watching a nuclear reactor boil a kettle, but no less engaging for that. Shame that the new version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy decides not to tackle one of the characters that made Smiley’s defenses complicated in the first place.
Some thoughts on Tinker Tailor and the absence of Ann Smiley are posted online over at Critic’s Notebook.
He said, she said
Posted: September 20, 2011 Filed under: culture, festivals, films, published work | Tags: Celine Sciamma, director, French film, interview, Little White Lies, Tomboy Leave a comment »Céline Sciamma’s effortlessly touching film Tomboy gets its message across in so many subtle ways that the one moment of deliberate directorial flourish leaves you suddenly adrift. Having made a point of regarding Laure, the ten-year-old girl in the process of passing herself off as a ten-year-old boy, with a minimum of nervous excitement and plenty of Gallic égalité, the camera suddenly deserts her. In her moment of keenest need it swings away into the trees for a bit, where the natural world rolls on. Eventually it wanders back to find that Laure has rolled on too. Poetry for the eyes.
My interview with Céline Sciamma about the film and her obvious encounter with the gods of casting is online here at Little White Lies.
Summer of discontent
Posted: August 14, 2011 Filed under: business, lasers, market research, optics, photonics, published work | Tags: economics, lasers, longbow research, market research, Optics.org, photonics, second quarter 2011 Leave a comment »So the unalloyed good news didn’t stay pure for long. In April the US optics and laser sector was not only happy to find itself recovering, but daring to use words like “optimistic” and “robust.” Since then: complete mayhem.
I spoke to Mark Douglass of Longbow Research for Optics.org, and discussed why the clouds were gathering in July even before the storm broke in August. This time it includes words like “clear as mud.”
The appliance of science
Posted: August 8, 2011 Filed under: edinburgh, films, published work, science | Tags: asif kapadia, bob ingersoll, herb terrace, james marsh, nim chimpsky, project nim, werner herzog Leave a comment »
Project Nim gives the scientific method a long withering stare, and in the process deserves a place on the Christmas lists of scientists everywhere, ready to be produced the next time someone asks why their profession can sometimes have such trouble getting from A to B. It won’t answer the question, but it’ll prove that at the moment when the rational men involved realise they might have been building on sand, the shadow behind the eyes always looks the same.
James Marsh’s documentaries bear all the hallmarks of his parallel career as director of fiction, which is a polite way of saying that his knack for using the techniques of one in the context of the other plays the audience like a harp. Compared to the atmospherics of Werner Herzog or Asif Kapadia, Marsh’s tactics are positively tub-thumping. But in the circumstances, given the film’s clear and proper biases, his decision to let the researchers who inserted themselves into the life of Nim Chimpsky speak for themselves with a minimum of on-screen demonization or ridicule and their dignity intact was surely the right approach. The audience will supply the incredulity when required.
But the point about Nim from a science perspective is that the project’s instigator, the easily mocked for several reasons Herb Terrace, came to realise that he was on a hiding to nothing. At which point that shadow behind the eyes is on full display. A lay audience will see it as just desserts. A science audience may see it as that, plus something rather more illuminating about the price of certainty. Since the trickster god of film distribution has arranged for Project Nim and Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes to come out at the same time, everyone involved should probably be grateful that poor Nim didn’t pick up a jawbone and go to town.
I spoke to Bob Ingersoll, originally a primate studies student and now a tireless advocate for Nim’s legacy and the welfare of animals used in scientific research, at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Our conversation is now online at Little White Lies.
Immigrant song
Posted: July 28, 2011 Filed under: edinburgh, festivals, film music, films, published work | Tags: a better life, alexandre desplat, chris weitz, demian bichir, Edinburgh International Film Festival, film music, films Leave a comment »
The absence of grit in A Better Life is more about director Chris Weitz taking a thought experiment out for a spin than any lack of nerve. All the space that a story of migrant workers and familial strife would normally fill with hand-held camerawork and hard-core frowning gets used instead for deliberately lush photography of some very un-lush bits of East Los Angeles and a sweeping score by Alexandre Desplat. Much of the rest is occupied by the very fine Demian Bichir, honest self-sacrifice oozing from every pore in exactly the way it didn’t when he played Fidel Castro as a self-propelled agent of revolution in Steven Soderbergh’s Che a while back. Weitz’s tactic of addressing the immigrant experience through colour and music and high production values rather than friction and noise and aggression is clearly deliberate, the work of a man who knows whose shoulders he stands on. So naturally he’s getting some stick for it.
My talk with Chris Weitz about the film and why he made it the way he did is now online at Little White Lies.
Numbers game
Posted: July 21, 2011 Filed under: biophotonics, lasers, medical, optics, photonics, published work, science | Tags: biophotonics, Hamilton Thorne, infra-red, IVF, lasers, Optics.org, stem cell research Leave a comment »
One of the more modest notable features of stem cell research is the contrast in numbers. Researchers perform precise and exacting microsurgery on individual cells, prizing minute openings in the membranes of eight-cell embryos so that stem cells can be introduced through the gap. And to prepare, they carry out large-scale housekeeping operations on cultures containing millions of cells, ablating and scoring and where necessary destroying them in bulk. The pattern holds for fertility studies and IVF too.
If the same basic kit could do both kinds of operation, things would not only go faster but be cheaper too. Hamilton Thorne has designed a family of microscope objectives that incorporate miniaturized laser diodes but still fit into standard laboratory kit. Pick the right one, and your microscope has just acquired a laser powerful enough to do the housekeeping or delicate enough to do the prizing.
My chat with the company for Optics.org about the goal of making lab-scale eye-safe lasers a practical proposition for cell biologists, and the small matter of a $1.3 billion market sector to be tapped, is here.
The bad old days of cavorting and revelry
Posted: July 7, 2011 Filed under: art, comics, culture, published work | Tags: 2000AD, Celtic mythology, Pat Mills, Simon Bisley, Slaine, Tripwire Magazine Leave a comment »
2000 AD and I were through by 1989, so I missed the moment when Pat Mills and Simon Bisley began Slaine: The Horned God and jointly shifted the orbit of the whole publication. Painted comics have travelled a rocky road since then, but The Horned God has never gone away.
The latest round of the story’s immortality is a US hardcover edition, which prompted my retrospective review and interview with the writer and the artist in the latest digital edition of Tripwire Magazine. Free pdf download at the link.
Optics and Photonics News catch-up
Posted: July 5, 2011 Filed under: business, lasers, optics, photonics, published work, science | Tags: European Commission, Optical Society of America, Optics and Photonics News, Photonics21, science funding, Technology Innovation Centres, Technology Strategy Board Leave a comment »Two articles of mine have been in issues of Optics and Photonics News recently:
Sailing in Stormy Seas (April 2011) dug into the vexed question of UK science funding, an area where the Technology Strategy Board is making a valiant effort to square the impossible circle. That currently includes spreading its funds over a number of new innovation centres, one of which might end up being dedicated to photonics.
A Bright Future For Photonics21 (June 2011) assessed the success Europe’s photonics community has achieved by acting in unison for maximum political impact. The Photonics21 group has persuaded the European Commission to designate photonics as a Key Enabling Technology, with consequent opening of doors and federal wallets. Now the companies have to deliver.
Both available in print and online, for now to OSA members.
To the wilds of Iberia with Carolina Bang
Posted: July 2, 2011 Filed under: edinburgh, festivals, films, published work | Tags: Bobby Fischer, Brand Upon The Brain, Carolina Bang, Celine Sciamma, Craig Viveiros, Critics Notebook, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Guy Maddin, John Lynch, Katherine Scharhon, Life In Movement, Little White Lies, Page Eight, Perfect Sense, Tanja Liedtke, The Divide, The Last Circus, Tomboy Leave a comment »
The 65th Edinburgh International Film Festival was what it was. Some of the well-publicised flaws were not technically disasters, just a substantial retreat from the glory days of old. And some of them were so fundamentally wrong-headed that they seem unfixable short of breaking the festival back down to the ground and rebuilding from scratch. On top of which, for every truly stupefying mistake concerning ticketing or press relations or unfortunate programming, there was an act of god which just made the whole unlucky enterprise seem cursed. Many of these involved the Cameo’s lavatories.
For Little White Lies, a festival report in two parts.
Part One including Celine Sciamma’s tender view of childhood uncertainties Tomboy, and a sympathetic portrait of Bobby Fischer’s internal torments.
Part Two including David Mackenzie’s divisive Perfect Sense, the clearly star-making Albatross, and the poignant Life In Movement which happens to be one of the best documentaries about dance I’ve ever seen.
I also did some interviewing for LWLies, to appear at various points in the future. Here’s one: Craig Viveiros and John Lynch talk about their bruising prison drama Ghosted.
Mubi Daily Notebook once again picked up some of my coverage.
Over at Critic’s Notebook, four films worthy of deeper wordage:
Perfect Sense is an emphatic return to form for a director last seen disappearing beneath the waves of Hollywood seemingly never to return. And a litmus test for film reviewers, by the look of things.
The Last Circus is so utterly bonkers that Carolina Bang swinging on a trapeze in front of a big picture of Telly Savalas counts as one of its more rational moments.
Page Eight really had no place being at the festival but gave me newfound appreciation of Bill Nighy’s approach to tailoring.
The Divide is every bit as downbeat and dour and post-apocalyptic as its makers intended, which is a lot.
EDITED TO ADD: Wayward programming can have its advantages.
Hello again, Lightbulb Kids.
Man on wire
Posted: June 3, 2011 Filed under: edinburgh, festivals, films, published work | Tags: Edinburgh International Film Festival, James Mullighan, Little White Lies Leave a comment »All change at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. My interview with James Mullighan, the new man in charge, is over at Little White Lies.
The deluge of commentary in July about what’s happened at EIFF will be vast. Let’s see if it shows any interest in reading a timeline, spotting the difference between corporate decision and personal preference, and remembering that the writing on the wall at last year’s festival was clear.
