There's a Kafka short story called 'Blumfeld, an Elderly Batchelor' in which the protagonist is inexplicably followed around by a couple of floating balls:
Read MoreLondon Film Festival 2016: DEAREST SISTER
A friend once told me that Laos is the most bombed country on Earth. For a country one doesn't hear that much about in the UK, that fact astonished me.
Read MoreLondon Film Festival 2016: ZOOLOGY
The tagline for this Russian-set film is 'It's never too late to grow a tail'. I think 'The tale of tails' would also work (and tip the hat to a great Russian film, The Tale of Tales), as would this homage to Sam Cooke: 'Don't know much about zoology' (well if Theresa May can quote him, hollowly, why can't I?)
Read MoreLondon Film Festival 2016: SOUVENIR
I can't recall what triggered it, but I've been having an Isabelle Huppert season at home and in the cinema (she seems to be busier than ever). In quick succession I've recently watched Merci Pour Le Chocolat, Things to Come, Ma Mère , La Cérémonie, Rien Ne Va Plus (wow, that's three Chabrols; I love Chabrol also) and, at the London Film Festival the other night, Souvenir (Belgium-Luxembourg-France, 2016, dir. Bavo Defurne).
Read MoreLondon Film Festival 2016: DAVID LYNCH THE ART LIFE
There's something about David Lynch and vintage microphones. He lights them beautifully, makes them strange and terrifying, turns them into symbols of the links between his imagination (aural, visual) and the nostalgia, memory, other-worldliness of the recent past.
Read MoreLondon Film Festival 2016: WILD
My week has been dominated by wolves and rabbits. I'm working on a poem about David Bowie for an anthology and decided to write about his narration of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. I've been listening to it several times per day and I can't get the wolf's French horns (or the cat's clarinet) out of my head.
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