Graphic Journey Blog

Benedetti and Marsalis: The birth of a concerto

I have always loved insights into the creation of art, be it literature, design, architecture, sculpture, film, theatre, music and the many cracks in between.

The Making of a Concerto is a fascinatingly intimate documentary by Chris Eley revealing the differences between a classically trained, virtuoso violinist, Nicola Benedetti and Wynton Marsalis the Pulitzer prize-winning freeform improvisational jazz musician.

Over many months we followed the trials and tribulations during the creation of a new violin concerto penned by Marsalis especially for Benedetti. Both are dedicated to their art with wildly different in personality, Benedetti, open, emotional and vibrant. Marsalis contained, intense and seemingly calm. There are some marvellous moments where their personalities clash. One such was when Benedetti was fretting over a deeply complex section in the score which she was expected to play in a rehearsal but hadn't had enough time to absorb it. "I just don't know it," she says. "Don't worry, just feel it, make it up," says Marsalis. "I can't do that.", Benedetti replies. Thus exposing the differences of their respective musical worlds. There are many wonderful unguarded moments during their collaboration making this documentary so intimate and fascinating.

After many months of dedicated work from Wynton and Benedetti, the concerto, a fusion of African American spiritual, Scottish folk and jazz, was premiered at the Barbican with the LSO conducted by James Gaffigan, the tension was palpable.

It received a standing ovation. At the end of the documentary, Gaffigan said a beautiful thing about the creation of a new work by a composer and its meaning to them...

"You have a child. The child is yours. But then one day that child is going out into the world and that child is going to grow."

Thank God for the BBC. You can see the programme HERE.

Ken Loach: Fighting fit.

At 80 Ken Loach is still able to deliver a devastating body blow.

Cathy Come Home 1966. The story of the underclass in 60's Tory Britain.

in 1966 Cathy Come Home exploded onto our TV screen with its shocking revelations of the plight of the homeless.

I, Daniel Blake 2016

50 years on it would seem little has changed. I, Daniel Blake is Loach's targeted indictment of our Welfare State and its use of a Kafkaesque and Catch 22 web of confusion for the many individuals trying to hold a life together.

Once more Loach has focused his camera on the plight of the ignored and often forgotten in society. It is a profoundly upsetting and moving film, made with utter integrity from all concerned.

There should be compulsory screenings in the House of Commons and the Lords with the doors securely locked. Perhaps then it will distract their self-serving minds from ensuring that they get every last penny of their expenses claims. It should also be shown to all those anonymous civil servants responsible for penning the nightmarish jargon for the Social Security office forms.

Kes 1969. The boy with a wealth of hidden knowledge

The Wind That Shakes The Barley 2006. Exposing the brutality of the British in Ireland.

I find it extraordinary that we live in a country that awards greed driven individuals like Philip Green with a Knighthood and overlooks the very many individuals who have spent their entire lives giving to others. I feel sure that over the years Ken Loach has been approached by the honours committee but, has no doubt quietly declined. But he is already a king, the king of social realism. And his film is a worthy winner of the Cannes Palme d'Or.

 

See the trailer for I, Daniel Blake HERE

Behind the logo

"A calculated advertising ploy to present itself as a respectable society-loving organisation."

This was the actor Mark Rylance's criticism of BP's funding of the arts on BBC's BH programme last Sunday.

BP have renewed their sponsorship of the Royal Opera House, British Museum, National Portrait Gallery and Royal Shakespeare Company. Rylance's view is that BP is using these organisations to 'white wash' what is going on behind the scenes.

His views chime with my own about the many bank's force feeding us with their sudden conversion to 'caring ' about their customers and society.

Michael Woolf wrote a thought-provoking piece about logos for Design Week. You can read it here.

I posted a comment expanding on the topic but, for whatever reason, Design Week chose not to publish it - the second time this has happened to me within a month. A pity as I had mistakenly thought that one could use the comments space to open up the debate to a more thought-provoking view beyond the purely visual. It would seem not.

So for anyone interested here follows my comment on Michael's DW piece:

I completely agree with Michael Wolff's analysis concerning the many recent inept and dubious rebranding and that horrible description, 'refreshing' exercises.

Banks, all of them, have angered me more than any other area in recent years. And even more, now that they are trying to ingratiate their way back into our pockets. I loath them for their callous disregard for the public's intelligence. The flurry of commercials, press ads and posters informing us that they now desperately 'care' about society and only want to contribute to the good. And more often than not preseeded with a rebrand (Barclays and Lloyds). Just like the recent Nat West launch. All that insignificant claptrap about the origin of the logo to signify that in was the coming together of the National Provincial Bank, Westminster Bank and District Bank is totally meaningless to a 2016 audience.
This is a bank using a rebrand as an Elastoplast in an attempt to mask the sins and criminal activities of past decades.

If you peel it back, under the surface you will discover that many thousands of hard working employees have been made redundant and many branches shut.

Meanwhile, they will roll out this farcical, PR spin and advertising lead, almost indistinguishable new/old identity to all their fascias, ATM machines, projecting signs, livery, credit cards, print etc.

Above the existing logo. 

And the new one. Is this change worth the millions it will cost to implement?

To change all of these...

and these...

and these.

Hardly anyone, except for a few geeky designers, will ever notice. It is such an obscene waste of money that will no doubt run into many millions.

Had Nat West really wanted to make a genuine gesture of recompense, far better to use that money to help society in conjunction with a press campaign sporting the headline, WE ARE SORRY .' big and bold, spelling out exactly why and what they have done about their shady past dealings with customers. To my knowledge, none of the banks has really apologised to the public in this way. Nat West and the others won't of course and will no doubt stand by their vomit inducing commercials, the Nat West black and white one pointing out the shortcomings of society. How ironic and insulting. judge for yourself here.

Andrea Arnold: Rough road trip

It has been a week of movie sneak previews for me.

American Honey, directed by Andrea Arnold, has caused a bit of a stir, with most of the national film critics awarding it 3, 4 and even 5 stars for her latest offering. And of course, it picked up the coveted Palme d’Or at Cannes this year. Both of her earlier films, Red Road and Fish Tank were excellent.

This new one propels the viewer up close and personal amidst a wild group of late teen and twenty-something nomads as they travel across the midwest of the US selling magazine subscriptions. They invent spurious stories to get sales from the potential customers.

As in her earlier films, Arnold has assembled a cast of non-actors to known and relatively unknown ones. Working along Loachian lines she collaborates closely with her cast to engender a truthfulness in the performance. This is achieved by incorporating a lot of improvisation and chance encounters. Arnold has worked again with her favourite cinemaphotographer, Robbie Ryan who, like Emmanuel Lubezki, has a wonderful fluidity in shooting, capturing seemingly unimportant random moments of great beauty.

Although the film is ostensibly a road movie set against the wide open spaces of Texas, Arnold has chosen to use the classic academy aspect ratio format. As the film progressed I realised that she is obsessed with the minutiae of all things, a wasp hovering on a window, ants scurrying over leftover food, leaves dripping with water, wind undulating long grass, in the same way that Terence Mallick and Andrei Tarkovsky have used these natural elements, and the restricted viewing format helps to heighten this aspect .

The story is seen through the eyes of Star (Sasha Lane), a disenfranchised teenager who on a whim decides to join the bunch of misfit magazine sellers to crisscross the midwest in a minibus. As the viewer, you are placed alongside them in the claustrophobic interior as they party, drink, sing, get high and sleep, to the never ending throb of hip-hop. As they are dropped off in various neighbourhoods to sell magazine subscriptions, we begin to view the stark contrast of American society, from the affluent middle class, with their manicured water sprinkled lawns, to the impoverished shack living, one parent families. Star is deeply affected by the contrast and spends some of her earned money stocking up the refrigerator of a hopeless cocaine-addicted mother, whose young children are left to fend for themselves on empty stomachs.

One of the only redeeming people in the whole film was an old time trucker who gives Star a lift. His cab is decorated with photographs of his family and grandchildren. He chats to Star in a warm and friendly manner. He drops her off at the roadside and Star glances at the side of the truck as she passes. We see cattle looking out through the wooden bars. Star heads off through the long grass and at a low angle her boots push through the blades. She looks down at her boots and wretches. We now see tick bubbling blood squelching up. Star screams and runs, over her shoulder we see trucks lining up in the distance at what is clearly an industrial abattoir. It was a horrid moment.

Arnold makes many political observations during the course of the film, among them, the sexualisation of children. In a wealthy area, along with her sales trainer, Jake (Shia LaBeoufouf), they are attempting to sell to a rather strait-laced mother whose young daughter is having a birthday party and can be seen through patio window dancing by the pool with friends. Star takes exception to Jake's lies in trying to sell to the woman and swears at him. The woman takes exception and asks them both to leave, "This is a God-fearing house" she says. Star points to her daughter and friends gyrating in a highly sexualised way by the pool and accuses her of being a hypocrite. The cumulative effect of the vignettes during the course of the film paint a grim picture of America.

At 2 hours 40 minutes long I have to admit it is a bit of a struggle to sit through. 30 minutes could have easy been cut, without losing the story. Sometimes directors fall in love with everything that has been shot and can't bear to jettison a single frame.

Here is the trailer.

Tom Ford: Pitch perfect

I have just seen an advance screening of Tom Ford's 'Nocturnal Animals'. Having greatly admired his debut film, 'A Single Man' I went along with hesitant expectations. I say hesitant  because second films can often be weak. But not this one. It is a fantastically taught thriller wonderfully shot by cinemaphotographer Seamus McGarvey. It has the same meticulous detail as 'A Single Man' demonstrating Ford's uncompromising love of getting things just right.

Adapted by Ford from the novel 'Tony and Susan' by Austin Wright. it is a story within a story.

The main character, Susan a wealthy LA art dealer and gallery owner (pitch-perfectly played by Amy Adams) receives a package containing a manuscript. It is a novel written by her former husband, Tony (Jake Gyllenhaal) whom she hasn't seen for 16 years. While her current husband, Walker (Armie Hammer) is away on a business trip, (but actually is having an affair), she starts to read the manuscript and the film switches to the story in the novel.

A husband, Edward, (also played by Gyllenhaal) wife and daughter set off in their car on vacation across a remote desert area. Later on a lonely stretch of highway in the pitch of darkness, they are confronted by two cars ahead of them spanning both lanes. Wanting to overtake Edward sounds the horn. One of the cars moves over and he is allowed to pass. But immediately headlights flare up in the rearview mirror and the two vehicles pursue aggressively, in what becomes and incredibly tense and horrid series of events that I won't reveal here.

The film cleverly switches from present to Susan's past married life with Tony and is interwoven with the novel. It incorporates a conventional musical score by Abel Korzeniowski, verging on the feel of Bernard Hermann in Hitchcock mode. There are echo's of 'Straw Dogs', 'Deliverance', 'Blood Simple' and 'Duel' present, demonstrating Ford's love of cinema. And thank God it has a very un-American ending.

Jake Gyllenhaal gives one of his best performances and I can already feel the Oscar nominations on the horizon for both him, Tom Ford and Seamus McGarvey. I loved it.

If I had one gripe it was the opening title sequence. Three grossly obese women, reminiscent of Lucian Freud's 'Benefits Supervisor Sleeping' and Jenny Saville's work,

Lucian Freud's 'Benefits Supervisor Sleeping'

Painting by Jenny Saville

dance fully naked on podiums, all filmed in slow motion so that the excessive rolls of fat and slack skin flop backwards, forwards and up and down like jelly. I found it uncomfortably voyeuristic. At the Q&A after the screening, Tom Ford commented on the sequence saying that he found the 3 women so joyful, full of life and beautiful. Well, I leave you to be the judge of that when and if you see the film.

Here's the trailer. 

 

Related articles

Watch Amy Adams And Jake Gyllenhaal In This Teaser For NOCTURNAL ANIMALS! The Trailer Arrives Tomorrow! | Rama's Screen

Things I like...

Poland 1966

USA 1970

 

Bank robbery

I know I sometimes tend to have the occasional rant. But banks really do it for me. Over the past year, many of the British ones have been, so called, 'refreshing' their brands.

The latest to do this is Nat West. Call me cynical but I can't be alone in thinking that all this is just a strategy to divert us from the fact that they have all been abusing their customers for years. Most are downright criminals, but will never see the inside of a prison. Suddenly we are all expected to believe their new slogans like "We are here for you", they now want to be our best friends. Barclays refer to themselves as 'Your Bank'.

Lloyds say " Because your family matters", RBS, "The bank that earns you trust". And back to Nat West, they are saying "We'll help you along the way" and "We know a helping hand is always nice". Just wait until there is an economic downturn. Where will your new friends be then?

How can the people that write this stuff look themselves in the mirror? It is unbelievable.

The new (not really) Nat West logo has three interlocking cubes. How original.

Hang on a mo, I walked around my neighbourhood in Clerkenwell yesterday and noticed this in a tile shop window. Pretty naff yes, and they are also using multi-coloured boxes.

And then there's the blocky multi coloured typeface.

Actually a bit like this.

Apparently, the idea is “... a gentle evolution of the brand rather than a reinvention.” With no doubt, a great deal of money behind the project, a little more research wouldn't have gone amiss.

And to support this Nat West rebrand they have produced the above commercial, get the box of tissues ready, here it is.

Not so long ago we had Barclays feeding us with Loachian-style commercials centring on the loyalty of good old British football supporters in a variety of scenarios showing ordinary people cheering on Barclays-sponsored teams. “Thank you – you are football,” says Barclays as 86-year-old Everton supporter Billy Ingham sets off to see his beloved team play. Utter sentimentality to pull at the heart strings to make you feel all warm and cuddly about Barclays.

Meanwhile, behind the scene, banks have been cutting tens of 1000's of staff and closing 100's of local branches, all due to the crisis created by their criminal activity of miss-selling of protection insurance and all the other scams and schemes going back decades.

But of course, the banking top dogs (and they are always mostly dogs) continually increase their annual salaries and perks to engorge their already obscene amounts. And even if they are occasionally fired, they walk away with a mini lottery win in their pockets due to their watertight contracts concocted by top lawyers and accountants.

Hearing Teresa May on Wednesday telling us she is going to clamp down on this kind of greed is just pure waffle. We all know that absolutely nothing will happen. Yet more vacuous PR for a few sound bites in the media.

Now that the banks can no longer rob us under the radar, they are  going to do it directly. Those of you with bank business accounts will soon receive letters informing you that you will  have to pay for having your money in the bank. So not only will you receive no interest on your deposits, but you will now find yourself having to pay for every transaction and many other services that were historically free.
Well, they need to pay for all this brand refreshing and topping up the top dog bonuses. But actually we, the gullible customer, will be paying for all that. What suckers we all are.

The greed and deception are so well ingrained in the banking fraternity that it is still filtering through and there are many more skeletons in the safe.

And they say we should stop bashing the bankers. I say get out the baseball bats. They are shameless. One also has to question the morality of our creative community in colluding in this kind of cynical subterfuge. Not a single bank has run a press campaign to say SORRY. 

Meanwhile, across the pond, there is a fearless woman (my current heroine) Elizabeth Warren (above) who is taking the US bank robbers to task at the Banking committee Hearings. Just watch her dismantle the CEO of Wells Fargo, John Stumpf, she is truly amazing.

 

Don't miss this...

"Outstanding talent."

FRANK AUERBACH on KEITH CUNNINGHAM Aug 2016

Things I like...

I love the quality of line in this drawing by Bernard Blatch for a BBC Schools title caption card. Back in the mid-1960's motion graphics and digital were the stuff of dreams.