Two reviews in one day. I must be trying to avoid something. Actually I am. I start college next Tuesday and there will be no time to read books, watch great films and write about them afterwards.
A review of an amazing film.
Dogville
a film by Lars Von Trier
What if God does not forgive us? What if, faced with the death of his one and only son, he decides to judge and condemn rather than forgive? These are some of the key theological issues raised by Dogville a film by Lars von Trier.
These issues are played out among the people of a small, remote and poor town of Dogville. Set during the thirties depression.
A woman appears after the sound of gunshots to the town. She is reluctantly taken in and given refuge by the inhabitants. She offers to pay for their silence and support by doing jobs for each of them. Gradually each person gives her work to do. These are good days. It is summer and she is highly valued and respected by the town. But when the police arrive looking for her the townsfolk feel she should work harder. This changes the relationship between Grace – the woman – played by Nicole Kidman – and the townsfolk. And gradually she becomes more and more exploited, humiliated and enslaved. The men exploit her sexually, the women become jealous and torment and torture her. And then one begins to realise to be discovered by the police would save her. It is her that needs protection and not as we have been led to believe the townsfolk. We see how each relationship descends into exploitation and corruption. The man who loves her makes the final betrayal. He is the man that persuaded the town to take her in and so they give her up to the gangsters that came looking for her at the start of the film. And it is at this point that the film pulls into a higher gear and changes direction in a surprising, disturbing and provocative way.
So here is biblical allegory played out on a minimal and stark set that intensifies the action. It is not an easy film to watch. However it is brilliantly acted and compelling to watch – almost three hours long – one is riveted to the end.
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
A Book Review
I've just finished reading this book. I bought it for Katy when it won the Booker Prize a few years ago but she did not want to read it. I started it when I was discharged from hospital in early Decemeber. I'd usually finish a book like this in a week but we've had so much to do I've discovered reading a couple of pages before the lights go out in my head.
I highly recommend it to you.
The True History of the Kelly Gang
Peter Carey
A wonderful book. Carey has taken Ned Kelly’s voice, full of passion and energy, and breathed life into a story that forms part of Australian mythology and legend. This voice is raw and semi literate. It ignores all punctuation – except for the full stop and is littered with abbreviations. And yet Kelly’s voice is at times, richly poetic, full of humour, starkly realistic and emotional.
The novel – a memoir, written in the first person chronicles the main – largely accurate events of Ned Kelly’s life aged thirteen to his death aged twenty-six.
The first part of the book concerns life in the Kelly home. We see the intense relationship between Ned and his mother and the young Ned struggling with his father and later after his imprisonment and death Ned’s conflicts with the lovers and suitors of his mother Ellen Kelly. Here is Ned full of energy and love for his family trying to be a man, trying to make a real honest life and home for his many brothers and sisters by farming Eleven Mile Creek.
However the emotional intensity and stress of life sharing leadership of the home with his mother’s lover’s forces him out of the home and he is apprenticed to one of his mother’s admirers, Harry Power. He is a highwayman, a bushranger and teaches Ned a different way to live. It is this relationship that sets the tone of Ned’s life.
In this second part of the book Ned is drawn further and further away from home and the ties with his mother seem to be loosening. He is a wanted man now and is on the run from the police. He meets and falls in love with a young Irish girl, Mary Hearn. And she becomes pregnant with the daughter he will never meet but to whom these chronicles are addressed. We see him killing one of his mother’s lover’s and eventually Harry Power is caught and imprisoned.
Throughout Ned has dealings with the police. And we see their brutal and corrupt behaviour. It is hard to be objective about the character of Ned. However the people he helps and his friends are extremely loyal to him. He is loved and admired by many ordinary people.
For the book is also about a way of life. That of the poor Irish – those victims of transportation and the British Empire.
The final section of the book concerns the small group of young men that surrounded Ned. He is their ‘captain’ . Mary Hearn leaves him and travels to America to safety and a new life. The police hunt him and his gang. They want him and the gang dead. It ends with the final shoot out at a hotel where dressed in home made armor he is shot in the legs and later hanged.
A strong, vivid account of Ned Kelly’s life. An Australian Robin Hood.
I highly recommend it to you.
The True History of the Kelly Gang
Peter Carey
A wonderful book. Carey has taken Ned Kelly’s voice, full of passion and energy, and breathed life into a story that forms part of Australian mythology and legend. This voice is raw and semi literate. It ignores all punctuation – except for the full stop and is littered with abbreviations. And yet Kelly’s voice is at times, richly poetic, full of humour, starkly realistic and emotional.
The novel – a memoir, written in the first person chronicles the main – largely accurate events of Ned Kelly’s life aged thirteen to his death aged twenty-six.
The first part of the book concerns life in the Kelly home. We see the intense relationship between Ned and his mother and the young Ned struggling with his father and later after his imprisonment and death Ned’s conflicts with the lovers and suitors of his mother Ellen Kelly. Here is Ned full of energy and love for his family trying to be a man, trying to make a real honest life and home for his many brothers and sisters by farming Eleven Mile Creek.
However the emotional intensity and stress of life sharing leadership of the home with his mother’s lover’s forces him out of the home and he is apprenticed to one of his mother’s admirers, Harry Power. He is a highwayman, a bushranger and teaches Ned a different way to live. It is this relationship that sets the tone of Ned’s life.
In this second part of the book Ned is drawn further and further away from home and the ties with his mother seem to be loosening. He is a wanted man now and is on the run from the police. He meets and falls in love with a young Irish girl, Mary Hearn. And she becomes pregnant with the daughter he will never meet but to whom these chronicles are addressed. We see him killing one of his mother’s lover’s and eventually Harry Power is caught and imprisoned.
Throughout Ned has dealings with the police. And we see their brutal and corrupt behaviour. It is hard to be objective about the character of Ned. However the people he helps and his friends are extremely loyal to him. He is loved and admired by many ordinary people.
For the book is also about a way of life. That of the poor Irish – those victims of transportation and the British Empire.
The final section of the book concerns the small group of young men that surrounded Ned. He is their ‘captain’ . Mary Hearn leaves him and travels to America to safety and a new life. The police hunt him and his gang. They want him and the gang dead. It ends with the final shoot out at a hotel where dressed in home made armor he is shot in the legs and later hanged.
A strong, vivid account of Ned Kelly’s life. An Australian Robin Hood.
Saturday, January 22, 2005
It is about time I updated my website don't you think. I'm in the process of re-writing some of the blurb and changing one of the pages. I also need to add some new poems as the poems have been up since the beginning of the site which may be 2001. Its been so long ago.
I'm not going to change things radically.
The booklet has still not seen the light of day. I've shown the layout to a couple of friends and they like the cover and the look of the pages. I may change the font. However one friend who has become a sort of editor over the years has been and still is rather unhappy with two of the poems. He says I should get rid of them completely. He said that they weakened the whole booklet. So now I'm wondering what to do with them. Shall I leave two pages blank? Shall I try and write something quickly to fill the space?
I do have ideas for poems but I have nothing written at all - no notes or any thing. So I do not feel very hopeful that I can get anything written in time. I have given myself a deadline for the end of January. And there is a lot to do before that. I'm back at college on the first of February and there is a lot of preparation for lessons. Also we are beginning to see people again after our Christmas hibernation.
The Troubadour season starts soon and I would like to go at some point soon.
I've been reading The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams. The children know it off by heart. It is a beautiful poem. As a result I've been looking into the five simple machines. I've come to the conclusion that our whole civilization depends upon a red wheelbarrow.
I'm not going to change things radically.
The booklet has still not seen the light of day. I've shown the layout to a couple of friends and they like the cover and the look of the pages. I may change the font. However one friend who has become a sort of editor over the years has been and still is rather unhappy with two of the poems. He says I should get rid of them completely. He said that they weakened the whole booklet. So now I'm wondering what to do with them. Shall I leave two pages blank? Shall I try and write something quickly to fill the space?
I do have ideas for poems but I have nothing written at all - no notes or any thing. So I do not feel very hopeful that I can get anything written in time. I have given myself a deadline for the end of January. And there is a lot to do before that. I'm back at college on the first of February and there is a lot of preparation for lessons. Also we are beginning to see people again after our Christmas hibernation.
The Troubadour season starts soon and I would like to go at some point soon.
I've been reading The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams. The children know it off by heart. It is a beautiful poem. As a result I've been looking into the five simple machines. I've come to the conclusion that our whole civilization depends upon a red wheelbarrow.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Interesting Book
I've just come across an interesting book. Collapse by Jared Diamond. He is the author of Guns, Germs and Steel. This new book as GGS did is dominated by social geography and anthropology. This book explores the reasons why civalizations fail and are destroyed. Disturbingly the answer is the using up of primary energy resources. For many of these societies the main fuel was wood. And as you can guess this book takes an unflinching look at our own western/global civarlization. Read the review of someone who has already read the book at The Guardian Unlimited Books - I'd put the link in but it's too long and it messes up the blog.
Collapse seems to present a similar argument to another apocalyptic book called The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight. Scarey but compelling reading too.
I've just come across an interesting book. Collapse by Jared Diamond. He is the author of Guns, Germs and Steel. This new book as GGS did is dominated by social geography and anthropology. This book explores the reasons why civalizations fail and are destroyed. Disturbingly the answer is the using up of primary energy resources. For many of these societies the main fuel was wood. And as you can guess this book takes an unflinching look at our own western/global civarlization. Read the review of someone who has already read the book at The Guardian Unlimited Books - I'd put the link in but it's too long and it messes up the blog.
Collapse seems to present a similar argument to another apocalyptic book called The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight. Scarey but compelling reading too.
Saturday, January 15, 2005
Starting college is very close now and I have to get into shape. Preparation is always the key, not necessarily to good teaching but to levels of confidence - which is helpful to me but vital to students especially if you meet them for the first time a third of the way through their course.
Here is a list of texts and writers I shall be working with over the next few months. I always find that my own writing is influenced by the writing of others.
Plays
The Tempest - Shakespeare
Othello - Shakespeare
Translations - Brian Friel
Poetry
from The Penguin Book of American Verse
Anne Bradstreet
Longfellow
Walt Whitman
Emily Dickinson
Robert Frost
William Carlos Williams
Ezra Pound
H.D.
T.S. Eliot
Langston Hughes
Robert Lowell
Allen Ginsberg
Sylvia Plath
Nikki Giovanni
Ai
This all seems rather optimistic looking at this list now, we shall see.
I went into college today to try and make peace with my fears. Try and get a feel of the place after so much of a gap. It felt as if I had not been away at all. When I start back it will swallow me whole. Take up so much time and energy. And a smiling student came running up to me so pleased to see me, could not wait till I was teaching again. It was good to see her.
Here is a list of texts and writers I shall be working with over the next few months. I always find that my own writing is influenced by the writing of others.
Plays
The Tempest - Shakespeare
Othello - Shakespeare
Translations - Brian Friel
Poetry
from The Penguin Book of American Verse
Anne Bradstreet
Longfellow
Walt Whitman
Emily Dickinson
Robert Frost
William Carlos Williams
Ezra Pound
H.D.
T.S. Eliot
Langston Hughes
Robert Lowell
Allen Ginsberg
Sylvia Plath
Nikki Giovanni
Ai
This all seems rather optimistic looking at this list now, we shall see.
I went into college today to try and make peace with my fears. Try and get a feel of the place after so much of a gap. It felt as if I had not been away at all. When I start back it will swallow me whole. Take up so much time and energy. And a smiling student came running up to me so pleased to see me, could not wait till I was teaching again. It was good to see her.
Thursday, January 13, 2005
Hi Happy New Year. I hope that 2005 is a happy, healthy and positive year for you all. We have had a quiet and relaxing time. There is a time for disease and a time for healing. And since the summer solstice we have been in a time of healing and transformation. I hope this time of growth and healing continues. We need a time of stability - and strengthening as we try and sell our house and move to one with wheelchair access.
Over this holiday time I've been finishing off the poems for a booklet called Slaying A Dragon. It's about the last eleven months when I had a relapse of a disease.
I've also been checking out "Blogging" to see what other people do. And that has been quite a disappointing revelation in most cases. However I have found a huge global network community out there, blogging every day, blogging three or four times a day. Blogging at work, blogging in bed, blogging at home, blogging at school, blogging. What about living? Is blogging a secular form of prayer I wonder?
So I thought I ought to drag my puny excuse for a blog into 2005 with a bit of a make over - a little nip and tuck. Hope you like it. Its in preperation for upgrading the website which needs some serious work on it.
Returning to work is very close now. 1 February. Very scarey. Lots of stuff to do for that as well as get mobile with a hands control car, moving - that means, selling, buying, adapting our new home, practice my walking, day to day children, Katy, the booklet. There is no time for anything least of all posting a blog.
Over this holiday time I've been finishing off the poems for a booklet called Slaying A Dragon. It's about the last eleven months when I had a relapse of a disease.
I've also been checking out "Blogging" to see what other people do. And that has been quite a disappointing revelation in most cases. However I have found a huge global network community out there, blogging every day, blogging three or four times a day. Blogging at work, blogging in bed, blogging at home, blogging at school, blogging. What about living? Is blogging a secular form of prayer I wonder?
So I thought I ought to drag my puny excuse for a blog into 2005 with a bit of a make over - a little nip and tuck. Hope you like it. Its in preperation for upgrading the website which needs some serious work on it.
Returning to work is very close now. 1 February. Very scarey. Lots of stuff to do for that as well as get mobile with a hands control car, moving - that means, selling, buying, adapting our new home, practice my walking, day to day children, Katy, the booklet. There is no time for anything least of all posting a blog.