Friday 13 January 2017

Bartok Concerto / Post-Truthisms / Career (1959)


Recent vinyl find, in excellent nick and what a cover. Love the way the strict geometry of the cityscape lines dissolve into what looks like an abstract representation of an ocean with huge wave but is actually pure design effect to contrast with the rigid skyscraper forms. No artist credited. Aside from that, I like the fact that it's from Bartok's homeland, Hungary...



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Post-truth everything, even the weather - forecasts of snow and subsequent freezing temperatures across London proved unfounded, thankfully, because it would have made my cycle ride to work tricky yet I couldn't help feeling betrayed by an overly-cautious BBC because what they said would happen didn't, just like they said the temperatures would plummet during the day on Wednesday so I warned LJ to wrap up - that didn't happen. I'm doubting the validity of all predictions. Post-Brexit 'disaster', didn't happen (although there's plenty of time for a slow-burn descent into economic sludge). Trump as president couldn't happen, it will. World War 3 won't happen either when he's in power, mainly because it's in the interest of Republicans to maintain their cosy lifestyles by not encouraging a large-scale war that escalates and goes nuclear. 

The new series of Question Time on the BBC has started. I became addicted to it late last year; fascinated by endless variations on the theme of evasion/defence/attack demonstrated by politicians. The sense you get is that the only honest people on the panel are the unaffiliated, politically. These are Political times. We can't escape it. So we read the 'papers, watch TV and then say 'Oh it's all bollocks'. That, in a nutshell, is why Trump won. No matter how much dis/information we read we're none the wiser and those who've already aligned themselves to a party won't change their minds. The rest of us just watch, zombie-eyed at the spectacle of 'democracy' knowing that our opinions can't be represented because they don't coalesce into convenient Left, Right or Centre thinking.  

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Film recommendation: Career, 1959. Smart script, classy acting, even from Dean Martin, who plays the fine line between scoundrel and victim perfectly. Good cinematography and Shirley MacLaine looks fantastic. If you want a story about the conflict between trying to realise a dream and the price paid for being persistent this is a great one. 

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