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Each Labor Day weekend, we begin a new year of Consortium of Seven: A Daily Blog. To find current posts, just follow THIS LINK.

Scotland in Art: Water - Esther

Splash! They say in the UK you’re never more than 72 miles from the sea. Island nations have to know where they stand, lest they get swept away. But as we know, the UK is a series of islands & some areas are much closer to the sea than others. It’s nice to know that you can always be near the coast & as we said in the dreaded bridges blog, there are lots of other water features in between. Scotland is a ragged scrap of a country, geographically speaking, embroidered with a multitude of watery stitches.  

Scotland has a special relationship with the sea & the tales that surround it are many. It’s weirdly grounding to live near water & besides the rain, there is a lot of water in Aberdeen. We’re on the coast & two rivers – the Dee & the Don – join forces here. It’s surely the only reason anyone would have thought to settle here 8,000 years ago as it’s just that little bit too far from mainland Europe. Even the name of the town comes from one of the rivers, “Aberdeen” translating as “mouth of the river Don.” 

Whether it’s for fishing, oil production, tourism, sea ports, the water in Scotland has an impact. Different areas of sea water are given different names which always seemed weird to me, given that they’re only 72 miles apart (apparently) & ultimately they all swish into each other. It has to be taken seriously too. It’s unpredictable & things can go wrong fast. Scotland’s figures for drowning are three times higher than those in England, seeing fifty-seven people accidentally dying in Scottish waters last year, up by fifteen from 2020.

Anyway, whether fresh or salt, in good weather or bad, Scotland’s water has provided a constant source of inspiration for artists from our shores or beyond. 

View of Tantallon Castle & the Bass Rock (date unknown), Alexander Nasmyth (1758-1840)

Tantallon Castle is a 14th Century ruin by the Firth of Forth. Nasmyth (the guy who gave us our image of Robert Burns) has shown it at its turbulent & dramatic best. You can almost hear the foam on the water fizzing & the waves crashing wildly against the cliff. Like all good land & seascape artists, Nasmyth understands the need for a sky reflective of the sea’s mood, so here the heavens are louring & that black cloud can only mean one thing.

Loch Lomond (1861), Horatio McCulloch (1805-1867)

The loch of “bonny banks & braes” fame.

Barra (1902-03), S.J. Peploe (1871-1935)

The sea comes in all moods of course & Peploe depicted them a fair few times. He & often his old pal J.D. Fergusson would toddle off to Iona or Barra to record the changing atmosphere & forms of the Hebridean island seascapes. Barra is an inhabited island in the Outer Hebrides, formed from one of the UK’s oldest rocks, the Lewisian gneiss. & when I say “oldest” I mean from between 3 to 1.7 billion years.

The Wave (1961), Joan Eardley (1921-1963)

It’s an odd depiction of a wave; as it’s seen breaking over a pier, it looks more like cliff faces. It was one of four Eardley – who painted outdoors - was working on at the time & she went from one to the other depending on the tides.

Bell Rock Lighthouse (1819), J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851)

Bell Rock is the oldest standing sea lighthouse in the world & was built by Robert Stevenson between 1807 & 1810. It is located near the Firth of Tay & its light can be seen for thirty-five miles inland. In this painting, Turner shows us exactly why that lighthouse is there. Not only could a boat be swept away, it could be smashed against the rocks. What it doesn’t show within the maelstrom is the odd little series of rocks surrounding it (see photograph), a feature resulting from the power & relentless battering of the ocean.

Fingal’s Cave, on the Isle of Staffa, Scotland (1740s), William Hunt (active 1790-1842)

Fingal’s Cave is a peculiar geological feature, a sea cave with natural acoustics. It has featured in popular culture in poems, music & films. Like the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland & the island of Ulva in Scotland, it is comprised of basalt columns like hexagonal prisms. Note: this William Hunt is not to be confused with William Holman Hunt who came later...

Winter Sky, Westsandwick, Yell (date unknown), Shona Skinner (?)

Apparently free-machine embroidery “allows you to draw with your sewing machine.” I have a very talented friend that can do this sort of thing & as an avowed non-seamstress, I find her skills staggering. Shona Skinner turns this skill into art, as seen here. The brilliantly-named Yell is one of the northern-most islands of Shetland. Yes, the already very northern Shetland Islands have even more northern islands.

Loch Ness (date unknown), Marshall (active late 19th Century)

No monster pictured.

The Herring Fleet Leaving the Dee, Aberdeen (1888), David Farquharson (1839-1907)

In the distance you can see Aberdeen’s spiky skyline. I just had to get us in here.

Volunteer Spirit (2000s), Ken White (1943?)

We may lose too many people in our erratic waters but we would lose a lot more if not for the Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI). This mural in Invergordon pays tribute to the selfless volunteers who risk their lives in service of the largest UK charity to save lives. The RNLI has had various name changes & has rescued over 140,000 lives since its inception in 1824 & now has outreach programmes in education & training. It was criticised by one shabby right-wing UK politician in 2021 for aiding refugees attempting to cross the English Channel. Satisfyingly, this resulted in a 3,000% rise in daily donations to the RNLI.

Support them here: https://rnli.org/support-us 

Shipyard (2017/9?), Lachlan Goudie (b. 1976)

Although the sea & waterways themselves don’t feature in this work, shipbuilding was once an enormous part of Scotland’s industrial landscape, particularly on the River Clyde. Until the end of the 20th Century, Scotland boasted one of the largest shipbuilding industries in the world. Indeed even today, 7,000 jobs still exist in the building of military ships, although this is currently under review. In this piece, we’re given a taste of the scale, skill, danger & complexity of creating such vessels.

Machrihanish Bay (1878), William McTaggart (1835-1910)

We love our beaches in Scotland but sadly, the water quality is not always good due to pollution & poses the threat of illness to swimmers & surfers. Then there’s the ever-present danger of the McTaggart’s painting shows the waves’ impending arrival – once it hits, a damp towel may be the least of your worries…

Float To Live campaign:  

https://rnli.org/safety/float?_gl=1*13bvatt*_up*MQ..&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI9Lfjqd6v-QIVEu7tCh1KjgTrEAAYASAAEgJBavD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

Artifacts, Artifice, and the Human Touch - Sept 2 - What's To Watch?

 

  (Notes for any who are revisiting any of these pieces: First, I apologize for any of the inevitable, broken links. Things get pulled from YouTube all the time. Second, for the most current streaming availability for anything, go to JustWatch and type in the name of the show or movie. Streaming platforms are swapping material all the time these days. That JustWatch link will pop out into its own window. - Mike)
 
    I'll open with a decidedly non-streaming entertainment note: Saturday has been set as the first annual National Cinema Day. For this inaugural event, some 3000 theater locations (it's a mix of AMC, Regal, Cinemark - all the major movie theater chains) will be offering $3 movie tickets for any showing in any format for the day. It won't matter even if it's the newest release, and/or in Imax, though I suspect those tickets will quickly become scarce.
     The general thrust of it is to close the summer out with a nudge they're hoping will get a broader variety of movie-goers back in those seats. They're hoping it'll press a reset button such that they'll go back to pre-pandemic habits. While the industry is generally touting a very profitable summer, they're still aware that many people are continuing to regard the idea of shutting one's self in with large groups of strangers for two to three hours during an ongoing pandemic as a less than swift notion.
     While there was perhaps a momentary tug from knowing this - that any movie out there could be seen for $3 plus tax a pop - it was minor and fleeting lure. Part of me is almost taking impish glee in the notion of orchestrating such a viral super-spreader event on the final, holiday weekend of the summer, with all those kids and teachers headed back into the classroom to begin the school year proper next Tuesday. Why, saving on ticket prices might help cover some of the costs (testing, etc.) that are about to

be shifted back to the public thanks to the federal government abandoning the rare bit of good sense it showed during the majority of the pandemic concerning free, open, humane access to such things.
    A budget-driven, close-quarters, marathon-viewing-encouraging, cinema viral exchange, I've extemporaneously tagged it as Steerage Cinema Day, though I suspect you'll come up with something so much more clever that it'll seem obvious in hindsight.
    Okay, now on with the (far more hygienic) show!

  While I've read both The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I freely confess that I've never been a Tolkien fan. Particularly with respect to the latter, larger work, I often had the sense while slogging through it that Tolkien would have been much more well-suited to compile a "bible" - a combined atlas and history - for Middle Earth, and leave it to others to tell the tales. I read them so many years ago, though, that I likely owe them an attempted re-read, as I'm in so many ways not the person I was in my teens. Exaggeration in memory could only work in their favor, as the tedium's likely swollen to mythic scale, festering there all these years, and the reality can almost certainly only be better.
   My standing view has been that the spirit of Tolkien's work was best taken in through the channel of an enthusiastic fan, often naturally filtering out unnecessary elements and concentrating both characters and action.
   Therein lies the hope that the new Amazon Prime series, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power - a prequel tale set millennia before the tales of Bilbo and Frodo, among other things it's meant to flesh out the details of the Second Age of Middle Earth, including the rise of Sauron, the forging of the Rings of Power, and cover the details of the final alliance between Elves and Men. Visually and with respect to the main musical score, the series is meant to feel as if it's simply an earlier part of the Middle Earth we saw in the two, big-screen trilogies, albeit with recastings for the particularly long-lived characters who manage to bridge the tales.
     The eight-episode first season (the rights were purchased with a five-season production commitment, with season two scheduled to begin filming next month, so viewers should feel reasonably protected against it being cancelled) has just begun to drop. The first two episodes arrived today, with the remaining six set to appear weekly through October 14th.

    
     Today on Netflix, Emily ("Bones") Deschanel stars in an eight-part limited series, which seems to be of the Let no good deed go unpunished variety. In it she plays a hospital psychiatrist who shelters a mysterious young woman who's escaped from a cult. The young mystery woman soon threatens to tear the doctor's family apart. It's Devil In Ohio.

  
     On a more practical front, sticking with Netflix, next Tuesday (the 6th) sees the arrival of an anecdotal tutorial on money management skills. The general mindset behind it seems to be the very valid commentary that our primary schooling does not, in general, produce citizens with basic budgeting and finance skill sets. (Part of me can't help but wonder if our economy would survive financially-savvy consumers.)  It's Get Smart With Money.

     Arriving today on HBO & HBO Max is something of little initial interest to me, but my mom would've been all over it: The Elvis Presley biopic from earlier this year: Elvis (2022 PG-13 2h 39min)

     I know from experience how often biographies - well-written and performed ones - can turn me around even when I had little to no interest in their subject. The human story, origins, aspirations, relationships, and conflicts often prove to be compelling. It may be that the talent and skill set that made them famous remains of little to no interest to me - as with a sports star, or, in this case, a singer and performer whose body of work has not been to my tastes - so those parts largely become filler. Still, that human story can reach and connect.
     Beyond that, it can come down to the details of whether what we're being handed are the facts or simply someone's self-serving legend. Still, even with the latter, we each must make our own choice as to what's the priority. If we were touched, moved, even inspired, how important is it to each of us whether it was purely by sincere historical fact or by conveniently-tailored and manipulated legend? Those are questions to be decided by each of us.
     Anyway, the above all came to mind to remind me that I may decide to watch this, even though I've never folded an Elvis performance into a personal playlist, and have never been drawn to the things that made him famous.

     Saturday (the 3rd) Paramount+ will see the arrival of a live-streamed (and then, of course, available on a whim) tribute concert for late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins. It'll also air as an encore performance on CBS at 10pm Eastern that night. Plainly enough, it's the Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concert. Presumably your excitement with it will largely depend upon how many of the names listed significantly pop! for you.

     Sunday night on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, we'll have the season six kick-off for the genre-blending and reality-hopping Rick & Morty.

     Next Thursday, the 8th, is Disney Day -- which will be mainly significant to Disney+ subscribers, and likely to those who aren't yet subscribers but have been considering it. Part of the general expectation is that they'll announce some special discount option(s) on the day itself, so if that's of possible interest look for some notice of it in general media, likely on the day itself.

     Among the new arrivals that day will be a new live action & CGI, Robert Zemeckis directed & Tom Hanks-starring direct-to-streaming version of Pinocchio. Hanks plays Gepetto. (This, it strikes me, in contrast to his role as Colonel Tom Parker in Elvis, where he's playing a part much more akin to this film's Stromboli.)

     (Oh, while I'm mentioning Pinocchio, off in December we'll have a stop-motion version by Guiellermo del Toro arriving on Netflix. More on that as it draws near.)
     Another arrival for Disney Day is the latest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, big screen releases, Thor: Love & Thunder. Entertaining in parts, and with several good performances, but it struck me as lacking in story weight, deferring instead to jokes -- which would have been a touch more forgivable if more of the jokes really landed.
     I'll be curious to see if it plays better for me in a second viewing, both because I'll be more aware of what's coming (and what isn't), and will be able to pause it at will, and not have my attentions repeatedly torn between the film and my aging bladder, the latter super-charged on diuretics. Here's that trailer again:

     That won't be my go-to Disney+ item on Thursday, though, as that's also when the latest episode of She-Hulk: Attorney At Law arrives. Abysmal title (which the show more or less makes a running commentary on), but very entertaining show. That'll be the fourth episode, out of the season's nine.
     There'll also be Making of/Behind the Scenes specials covering both the Obi-Wan Kenobi series and Thor: Love & Thunder, which I may take a look at.
     
     Recently I came across a film on Amazon Prime I'd been unaware of. From just four years ago, it stars Peter Dinklage and Elle Fanning. It's a post-apocalyptic scenario set in a small town. The source and specifics of the apocalypse - why nearly everyone suddenly died where they stood or sat on a Tuesday afternoon - is never addressed, ultimately being unimportant to the story we're being told, and, really, to the characters themselves. Knowing will not restore the dead and bring back the world that was, nor is it likely to be significantly knowable and useful knowledge for these characters. That could very well be a driving force for some other survivor, elsewhere, but that would be a different film. I think it's best to rip that band-aid off ahead of time, because most of the negative reviews this little film received were from people who were looking for a different movie, and so were disappointed at what was largely just a little, human story.
     The title remains an odd, potentially distracting choice, especially as it calls to mind for at least some swath of the potential audience, a pop song of some vintage. It's going to be a function of age whether they remember it as Del Shannon or Tiffany. Either way, it's no part of this film. I now imagine some misguided soul watching it, waiting for it to show up as a title track. Heh. Now I'm wondering if there was anyone who went to see M. Night Shyamalan's 2008 The Happening (a film I still like much more than the vocal Most) waiting for Diana Ross and the Supremes' 1967 hit to start playing. (This as opposed to the 1967 Anthony Quinn/George Maharis picture of the same name, where the song did appear -- for little reason beyond marketing.)
     Dinklage plays Del, a man who had worked at the local library, but largely due to his physical condition had been an outsider all his life. While he'd interacted with many of the people, in a fundamental way he'd been alone. A quiet, orderly man, he's made a mission of methodically clearing each house of their dead, burying them, and generally tidying things up. Part of that's library-centered, too, as he gives special attention to retrieving library books that were on loan to the people who died, including the occasional scofflaw who'd been seriously overdue prior to having the excuse of death.
     There's a moment in the film when Del's talking with Grace (Fanning), the young woman who suddenly wandered into town, where she asks him if he's lonely. He tells her he used to be lonely -- when all of the people were still alive.
     As mentioned, I came across this by accident, and so with no preconceptions. It must have gotten some press when it was new, as in 2018 Dinklage was still a core player in the then immensely popular Game of Thrones, so even a little film like this that debuted at Sundance had to have gotten a spotlight. For whatever combination of reasons, though, it went past me unnoticed then.
     I've checked, and it's still there as a free-to-subscribers item -- always have to check with Prime, where things can suddenly move back behind paywalls. It's I Think We're Alone Now (2018  R 99m)

     Aside from Prime, it's available to buy or rent online, though it's not something I'd go out of my way to get. But, hey, I'm cheap that way.
     Funny note: I checked Tubi to see if it was there so I could pass along a free option - it wasn't - but I did find a 2008 documentary there with the same name, focused on two self-described, obsessive "superfans" of '80s pop star Tiffany. I marked it as something to check out sometime, as a matter of smug and morbid amusement. Wotta prick I am.

     Well, that's it for another week, though I'm sure I'm overlooking a couple things I'd meant to include. There's always something.
     The big summer-closing holiday weekend of 2022 is upon us, and I find myself contemplating more changes than usual this year. My best to you all. Knowing how many areas are being hammered by sustained heat, some being drowned in rain (locally we're in a drought zone) I hope this finds you managing personal bubbles of sustainable comfort. See you back here -- well, we may be in our Year 4 digs by then, I'm not 100% certain, but the links will get you wherever "here" is -- next week. - Mike

Trawling Through The Thrift Stores with Joseph Finn

 Happy Thursday, everyone!  It's the first day of fall here in the Northern Hemisphere and last weekend we finally took a ride out to Charlottesville in western Virginia, almost to the mountains.  An absolutely lovely drive from Richmond and my goodness, the shopping district of Charlottesville has a bunch of very nice bookstores.  (2nd Act Books and Blue Whale, in particular, are very much worth your time if you're ever in the area.)  So naturally, I went all highbrow and...bought a bunch of Star Trek paperbacks.   So let's check them out in publication order.

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So back in the 1970s, after the end of Star Trek on TV, there was a whole small industry of ancillary novels mostly written by James Blish that started out as novelizations of episodes (some of them being photo books that also included still frames from the particular episode), all of them published by Bantam until about 1981.  After a while, they started expanding the line to original novels written by other authors, like this early one by Theodore R. Cogswell and Charles A. Spano Jr from 1976.  (It's a followup to the very first original Trek novel, Spock Must Die!, also by Blish.). It's apparently not very well-regarded, not being especially in tone with the series as people knew it at the time, so I'm kind of curious to see what it feels like now, 46 years and several series and movies later.

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Diane Duane is an Ireland-based American writer who has written for a ton of franchise paperback lines as well as her own Young Wizard series; I'm a huge fan of her Star Trek work, in which she has done some very nice character work over the decades and expanded a lot of the Trek universe in interesting directions.  This one, where the Enterprise is hurled to another pocket dimension by a warp field test gone wrong, is one of her stronger works with all sorts of new characters and aliens used well.  Duane is always dependable as hell as a novelist and I was happy to find Wounded Sky, as my copy from the '80s went missing a long time ago.

As you can tell, this is from a different series than Spock, Messiah! after Bantam lost the Star Trek license and it was picked up by Pocket Books, which would have a long and fruitful line of books covering the various series going forward (and to this day; Pocket Books through various acquisitions is now a part of the Viacom company so it's all one big Paramount family).

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I have, however, skipped the novels that were put out with this terrible logo instead of just using the Star Trek font; this seemed to be a thing for a while in the early '90s and it looks terrible.  So why did I grab this one? Because I'm very curious about that Laurell K. Hamilton, now known much better for her Anita Blake and Marry fantasy/horror novels, did with Trek.

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Finally, we're back to Diane Duane, who has written a whole series of novels about the Romulan Empire (called the Rihannsu series, after their own name for themselves.  I'm a huge fan of The Romulan Way, a novel where Dr. McCoy is kidnapped by the Romulans, put on trial for war crimes and proceeds to defend himself by filibustering for days, including an extended monologue about how to properly make a mint julep that gives the Universal Translator fits as it tries to translate the concept.  That novel is a damn good piece of fun so finally I'm going to get to check out the sequel here.

Also, you can see they're back to the Star Trek font here, which is good to see.

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My recommendation for the week is that I finally caught up with The Northman, Robert Eggers followup to his fantastic The Lighthouse.  It''s not quite the achievement that was, but it's still very worth your time on Peacock if you get that.  If nothing else, it has Willem Dafoe dafoeing it all over the place before the real fighting starts.