Sunday Shakespeare film : King Lear in Russian
| again not as good as the text, the play is confusing, but this film was even more so. Like when the characters are in disguise it's not clear who they are & some intricacies of the plot are lost
Synopsis 3rd daughter CORDELIA refuses to flatter Lear so loses her split of his land. (But is she being clever and refusing to be trapped into a bad marriage ? Ie being valued only for her property). He also kicks out his best friend Kent for sympathising with C.
Once landed the other 2 daughters turn against their father, accusing him of burdening them with his hunting and drunken entourage. Kent returns in disguise to serve the King.
In a subplot a bastard brother Edmund connives to get his brother Edgar out of the way and he to is left wandering.
- Why is Kent so aggressive towards Oswald, if the king were respected then he'd get away with it, but instead he's sent to the stocks
Is he trying to push them ..to show their true disrespect for the king ?
- Daughters try to reduce Lear's entourage to 25 then none
-So Lears out on his own
-Kent has wind of Frances invasion
- Film it was not clear who was who
- Edgar on run disguised as lunatic own father doesn't recognise
- Speech in Hovel is unfathomable - what meaning ?
- Glos warns of plot to kill King so he flees to Dover.
Cornwall and Goneril speak of King as a lunatic
-then they blind Glos cos helped King
- Glos realises Edmund is the evil one and Edgar is honest
- Servants sympathise with Glos and kill Cornwall
- Glos left guided by his son Edgar in guise of mad beggar
-Dover seems Lear is judged mad by dr
- Glos asks mad beggar to lead him to cliff edge. He jumps and now Edgar in own voice says what a miracle you jumped and survived
- Lear long confusing speech
- Oswald the Goneril's messenger tries to kill Glos, but Edgar kills him
- Letters reveal Goneril loves Edmund
- Senile Lear begs Cordelia
- we find Edmund loves both evil sisters- having affairs ?
- Edgar gives letter to Albany denouncing Edmund
- Battle lost L and C captured
- Edmund asks for secet execution of C
- Sisters fight over Edmund
- Albany arrests - Edmund
- Challenges him - 3rd trumpet disguised Edgar appears
- Edmund is beaten and confesses
- Glos is dead
- Something about Kent revealed himself
- Goneril has killed Regan and killed herself
- Edmund repents, but too late C is dead
- Kent turns up
- Lear dies of grief
- Edmund is dead
- Kent says he will shortly die
- Albany ends by saying all we young will not live long ...Death
What is Shakepeare trying to say beyond "life sucks !, evil and stupidity fuck things up". It's a very complex, confusing unsatifying play. The simple message is "don't trust in flattery"
There are 4 evil people in the play 2 sisters, Cornwall and Edmund .. they all die. Of the good people Glos has his eyes ripped out, C is hung, Kent feels he will soon die leaving Edgar and Albany. Evil doesn't win , but neither does good triumph it's a bit of a mess.
Then what's Lear mad or bad ? it's all his own fault he's a victim of his own arrogance, he refused to listen to Kent if he'd given land to C he could have stayed with her hapy happy. Arrogance has opened the door to evil and disaster.
It's also Cordelias fault she was wrong to try to do the right thing and not flatter her father. How did she expect he would react. She's not innocent ,but naïve. If she had flattered him, she would have had the land, Lear would have been happy. So it's the fault of the old for being arrogant and the fault of the young for being naïve
It's also Kent's fault he should have been diplomatic. Also Edgar and Glos should have been more sceptical of the lies they were told.
Evil would have triumphed unless Edgar intervened. even the best goodness cannot undo the mess only halt it's progress.
"Mend your speech a little,
Lest it may mar your fortunes." (1.1.97)
- Stand up to fools otherwise disaster will come ?
- Is it a comment on mental illness ?
- Is it About how Gods play with us ?
quotes -mentions football
..rain river broke banks
| Monday
Urmi - The Tempest set in Bali
| Much more conventional than I expected. The only difference was the dukes were Dutch not Italien.
And the dialogue was in English not in Malay.
Synopsis It's all about Prospero. Now he lives on an Island, with his daughter M and served by C deformed son of the witch who used to rule. P through study of books has mastered magic over the 12 years they have been on the island so now he can command the spirits led by Ariel.
Turns out P used to be Duke of Milan, but while he studied he left his brother in charge. The power overtook his brother so he came up with a plan along with the king of Naples the soldiers carried off P and his 3 year old daughter and put them in an old boat, which is how they came to the island.
Now 12 years later the people who have wronged him are passing the island . P gets his spirit to make a great storm "the tempest", the spirits separate the sailors, F, the nobles and 2 fools. P has a plan to marry M to F so F separated from the rest is introduced to M they immediately fall in love, but to make the love stronger and lasting P makes it difficult by pretending not to approve and gives P job of shifting logs. He appears to use hypnotism. He tells her to sleep and she sleeps.
Meanwhile the nobles are having their minds messed with; food appears and disappear. The Kings cries for his presumably drowned son. While his brother seems to conspire with evil Milan to get the Kingship.
3. here is a strange subplot with C meeting up with the 2 drunken fools and hatching a plot for them to be King of the island so that he doesn't have to work for P. There is a subplot whilst on their way to kill P they get distracted by stealing some beautiful clothes.
At the end He agrees M & F can marry, Forgives his brother. Is begged for forgiveness by everyone else and vows to give up magic and go home.
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Meaning - villains get away with it for a while. Study brings profits
Is Prospero really Shakespeare ? He has read books and aquired skill, therefore he is able to conjure up strange worlds and control them. Certainly if he retired he would be free. Who is his evil brother ? why is he unfair to Caliban and Ariel ?
He says that the audience can only release him by applauding, and asks them to remember that his only desire was to please them. He says that, as his listeners would like to have their own crimes forgiven, they should forgive him, and set him free by clapping.
End speech is very good. and we got to meet the star Malaysia's "Ben Kingsley" and the director afterwards.
As with the films I find that the magic of Shakespeare is in the words and spectacular things which distract from the words are detrimental. Though this productional wasn't that bad in this they did have eleaborate dance routines, but they kept most of the text
| Tuesday Roland VTopia gig
| It turned out to be a show about demonstrating Roland equipment. link
myspace.com/rolandvtopia First a heavy metal guitarist guy demonstrated effects pedals etc. Then VTopia came on to demonstrate the next drumkits. Like real drumkits except when you turn the amp off you can't hear anything. The keyboards and mixers all now feature light beam control. The MC-808: Sampling Groovebox was real impressive.
They were able to demonstrate some real good sounds. sample
| Wednesday OMG That's what I call Music gig
At about 4 o’clock I got an email from Joe Kidd telling me that tonight a minute gig had been organised featuring 4 Malaysian alternative bands and the Travelling Cyclists Circus. http://www.spaz.org/~cyclown
Reza Salleh - was pretty good. The circus featured 5 members playing violin, accordian, snare and spoons etc. in kids party style , falling off the unicycle dropping the juggling clubs half the time etc; so it was funny but not amazing.
| Thursday National Museum
As ever there was only me on the free tour; so you go Tues 9am or Thurs 11am.
| Thu: movie Ciplak
| There was a FYI filmakers show, but I decided it was too far so I watched the local movie Ciplak.
I thought Peter's music sounded good in the film indeed it was one of the most professional stuff. Although it's always refreshing to see some local made instead of Hollywood stuff, it had the same major failings as Hollywood films ie they always fill the movie with lots of action and hope you don't notice that the story doesn't fit together and isn't finished usually cos filmakers are not good story writers.
It was disappointing that it has the same old lies about sex just like Hollywood movies do, that every protagonist finds a beautiful girlfriend .. And then he can't leave a house cos another teenager wants to fuck him. ... That's reality not ! it's particularly immoral in that he's a grown man and his girlfriend is 15. Though it was good that at least one female role was positive - the pragmatic female singer.
I thought there were some great characters in the film : the stuck up girl, playgirl, jealous brother, "I think I am so cool" dude. Given more time it could be a great movie. The action though didn't seem to flow, I think the idea of the main character explaining everything to camera was boring and slowed the film down. Like, if you got rid of the explanations and just let the scenes explain the story the film could have really flowed well. All the people
in my house were bored after 10 minutes and walked out. And that filmakers trick of showing people for whole minutes just smoking and not speaking really pisses me off.
How did they get Peter to play that character a rich eccentric, know everything, homosexual pervert ? It's not a very positive character is it ? It seems to be a negative stereotype of foreigners .. Wheras the playgirl, and jealous brother one sees all the time surely there aren’t many foreigners like your character... Are there ? To me it wasn't believable at all, maybe cos I know Peter is a good person so seeing him as a bad person isn't plausible. It also re-inforces a bad stereotype of homosexuals in that they are sexual predators who grab straight guys crotches .. Really this is not acceptable. But I kind of expect Malayians to be immature and homophobic.
It was interesting to see how the pirate industry operates in Malaysia though I think it shows only half the story. I think that Malaysians feel that it's fairly innocent, but surely when you cross the boundary into illegality it gets wrapped up with all the other ganster stuff. That the business inevitably ends up in the hands of gangsters cos they have the experience in bribing police not to close their shops, the coercion into to handing over the mastertapes cos "you wouldn't want your child involved on an accident". In the UK the line is piracy cross-subsidizes drug exploitation and sex-slave trafficking.
I've never bought a pirate DVD, but then I have never bought one in a shop either.
The technicality of the film was excellent and if they have good writing they could make some great films in future.
| More Virus tips
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See USB Virus Tips The Cybercafe has another tough virus which puts the cmd.exe file on your stick
I have found a neat trick : most of the viruses put an autorun.inf file on your stick. So I created a blank autorun.inf file with notepad and then set it to read only so a virus cannot write an autorun.inf file to the stick cos there's one already there.
Also I recommend virusscan.jotti.org great tool for checking viruses it takes your suspected file and runs it through various checkers
I came acoss a prog against USB viruses http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/483643 download Flash_Disinfector.exe
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