Museum Hours

There are those rare days when summoning the energy for the latest special delivery film on MUBI - typically a 2 hour plus piece set in a sanatorium where people speak the language backwards, make statues and Marienbad  topiary look athletic, have a fixation with the deep symbolism of a dripping tap and stare silently and endlessly at the middle distance - is just a bit too much. For those occasions there is genre television: crime dramas, comedy dramas and the like.  Rather than the resonant, perfectly formed  madeleine  of the best TV, honed and balanced, these programmes are like a particularly decadent slice of cake. They lure you with the promise of their confection but you rapidly find that the cream was whipped UHT, the ingredients came out of a packet and the fruit is tasteless. This appreciation has been tested during recent experience of watching the British crime dramas Fearless  and In The Dark  and the US dramadies Casual...

A new explanation for the delay to my train this afternoon: cows on the line. This did, however, provide some time to reflect on other rather more serious characteristics of modern life than the inconvenience occasioned by the peregrinations of the odd Friesan.  So here are six which seem to me to be particularly pernicious aspects of our current situation.  1.  Libertarianism : otherwise known as letting me do whatever I want and a plague on everyone else. Such a convenient doctrine for the already powerful and utterly malign as a philosophy for the common good with a resolution to remove everything that might be a constraint or require a contribution to the commonweal. This is wholly distinct from liberalism and indeed individualism which are both important and positive. The basic issues that libertarianism always avoid are that a free for all never serves those without agency. The deep structural imbalances in society that fuel inequality have to be collecti...

I've had a few glasses of red wine and watched a bit of Glastonbury (and thought, not for the first time, that the ridiculously talented and ethereal Laura Marling is really not of this world and is most likely on furlough from Lothlorien) and almost inexorably I reach for Spotify. And after a short while I am drawn to the Blue Aeroplanes. It's not surprising. They are my favourite band of all time: a mix of experimental Beat poetry semi-intoned over a generally driving beat with that beautiful 1987-92 period of post REM semi-jangle guitar and just a slight inflection of folk whimsy.  There's really nothing quite like it even if almost no-one now remembers them. But for those that do there's this slightly magical aura of being part of a secret club.  And the song that I almost always end up playing at maximum volume is Colour Me  from the 1991 album Beat Songs.  Why? It has the most stunning tune. Mesmerisingly lovely both in terms of the melodic...

It has Jeanne Moreau. It has the most exquisite andante from Brahms String Sextet. It has extended sequences that involve both Jeanne Moreau and the (exquisite) andante from Brahms string sextet. It  is directed by one of the most fabulous French film makers, Louis Malle, and probably ranks alongside Smiles Of A Summer Night as amongst the most swooning meditations on romantic love (albeit on this occasion without Russian roulette). Did I mention, it has Jeanne Moreau. It has a sequence in which a very a la mode Parisienne wakes up with a groomed daschund already in the crook of her arm. It has the most extraordinary sequence of laughter in any film in which the laughter is both such a release and a realisation of how much laughter has simply been missing for so long that it is delirious and painful in equal measure. It is a beautifully observed portrait of Paris and the provinces with all the droll superficiality that implies. But above all it is the utte...

The Exquisite Corpse was one the favourite games of the surrealist artists. It involves a number of participants successively adding to an initial collage or drawing without being able to see the previous contribution(s). Often this involved folding a paper to hide what was already there.  As such it is a supremely democratic art form; an example of the notion that the artists are the people and that the expression of their subconscious through automaticity is further enhanced when the manifestations of those expressions are combined in themselves in a chaotic manner. Although doubtless the surrealists would consider that to be objective chance. That term 'manifestation' (or manif  in the book) is critical for the purposes of this profoundly disturbing and very timely book by China Mieville which considers a version of the 1940s in which surrealist artworks are coming to life following the 'S-Blast" (classically this explosion occurs in Les Deux Magots) in...

'Don't drink and dial' is the sage advice given to one character in the film  Sideways  meaning that ringing your ex wife after two bottles of Pinot Noir (and certainly not Merlot) is probably not a good idea. A more contemporary version would be along the lines 'don't text after midnight'. So how by 11pm last night, after two modest glasses of Singha beer, a very good Thai Green Curry and having been out to see a gloriously humane Finnish film called  The Happiest Day In The Life Of Olli Maki , am I writing the most horrific things about a person I've never met and with whom I simply have a major difference of political opinion? It all started so innocently by coming to the aid of a friend who was being assailed on Facebook and was looking for some support. Some initial posts seemed to do an effective job of contesting some of the more ludicrous things that were being said.  Then there started to be a longer exchange that became increas...

It's that time of year again so here are my favourite films seen in the cinema this calendar year: Julieta  : the latest Almodovar is stunning and intensely moving. If this tale of a lost daughter is inspired by the myth of Demeter and Persephone, you can see the pomegranate seeds of guilt and loss in each generation. Embrace of the Serpent  : I can report that my serpent was, so to speak, fully embraced. Bracing, evocative, heart rending, psychedelic and beautifully photographed and directed. Arrival  : It was remarkably  emotional watching a film about the empathy of the alien in a dark and depressing week in which a narcissistic sociopath was elected to be the next President of the US. Forget the plot holes, this is a tour de force; Amy Adams is stupendous and the film gives us a faint glimmer of hope for humanity. Manchester By The Sea  (which hasn't opened in the UK yet) : the third great film by Kenneth Lonergan (after You Can C...