Tag writerslife

Reading can be so very quiet

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I came across a nice insight, while reading. “Its quiet sad tension is a writer’s quality”, writes Raymond Durgnat, in his review of True Confessions, in The Film Year Book 1983. Yes, quiet sounding prose is a writer’s quality, a being imperative, for writers have many different qualities. And reading a quiet piece of prose is actually a quiet experience. Therefore, reading something can be a very quiet sort of engagement. It’s just feels quiet reading the piece. Sometimes, reading is so very quiet. And, yes, it can be a sad experience, too. But a quiet experience doesn’t necessarily add up to a negative one.

Dream of the Blue Turtles (1985)

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Sting’s solo debut, Dream of the Blue Turtles (1985) is an 80’s album, but is what I call alternative pop music, rather than bubble gum pop. The artist, Sting, had been doing The Police for several years then released his first solo record. Opens with the infectious (less so today) If You Love Somebody Set Them Free, which has Sting singing about something thoughtful in an accessible package for mainstream listeners. Love is the Seventh Wave follows, a spirited reggae-styled political song. Russians is the highlight of the first half of the album, with its clear, distinctive voice on prejudice and Cold War paranoia, that’s musically compelling, followed by Children’s Crusade and a steady list of quietly assured tracks, while inserting the idiosyncratic title track, ending with the powerful Fortress Around Your Heart. Unremarkable stuff, but quietly assured, with a few highlights.

3 1/2 out of 5 stars

Now I get it

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When one gets all the grimpy I mean grumpy editors, When one has empathy with their predicament, that being having to read through a creed of emails that contain “stuff”, mostly rubbishy contributions (including mine at one time or another), and understand when one faces a similar creed of emails. I feel for you. I understand, at last, why you never got back to me.

Life to the max and all that jazz

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Fill life with living life to the max or empty life from the need to? Sometimes, we want to fill life by embracing all of it, but then we find we’re empty. Is living life to the max detrimental to living life? According to the gospel of All That Jazz, perhaps it is. All That Jazz (1979) has an angle on living life to the max. Simply, it’s when Max living gets out of hand…

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Amour (2012)

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The following review has appeared nowhere on the web recently, although it “was there” on the web a few years ago. But I still have the content that I can re-post. I’m not 100 percent satisfied with the quality of that once published review, as a writer knows when something they write is not feeling perfect. This review is one of those moments. So, I’ve revised it to reasonable satisfaction. Here’s the revised review.

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Done with a sense of purpose

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I wrote twenty-two film reviews for Anglican Taonga online during the 2013-2014 year, that covered films released on DVD during that period, apart from one. Some of those are still posted on their website here. Others have been taken down it seems and don’t even appear on a Google search. Online publishing can be like that, here one day, gone another, but “i was here”. Unless there’s an agreement between the publisher and the writer over what happens to archived material, which is something I didn’t have, as I wrote for the ‘fun of it’ although with quite a purposeful outlook. I’ve always taken film reviews quite seriously, even when writing reviews for free. Sometimes in writing, a purposeful attitude is all one needs.

The one I forgot

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The article, review, what have you–that the author forgot, even though he wrote it. He expects the piece won’t be that good — and that’s what I thought about a review I did six-and-a-half years ago, a review I forgot existed, but discovered when I did some digging around in my filing cabinet. Alas, it was better than I thought, and if I may, much better than I thought!

Thinking twice before publishing

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A reader doesn’t know what’s in the heart of the author, but can only tell by what’s put on paper or delivered to the screen. That’s why it’s essential to make sure written communication is transparent and says what it is supposed to. A slight omission here and there may produce the wrong meaning, although the writer has good intentions. Looking back, I know I have done this sometimes, but since I’m more aware of it, I am aiming to make sure my work always says what it’s supposed to.