AT LAST SOMEONE WHO AGREES WITH ME – EMILY HILL author of the short-story collection ‘Bad Romance,’ published by Unbound. DIOLCH EMILY.
The trouble with Normal People
The BBC’s adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel was suicidally boring.
Month: July 2020
The Lonely Hunter?
The Lonely Hunter by Fiona McLeod
Green branches, green branches, I see you
beckon; I follow!
Sweet is the place you guard, there in the
rowan-tree hollow.
There he lies in the darkness, under the frail
white flowers,
Heedless at last, in the silence, of these sweet
midsummer hours.
But sweeter, it may be, the moss whereon he
is sleeping now,
And sweeter the fragrant flowers that may
crown his moon-white brow:
And sweeter the shady place deep in an Eden
hollow
Wherein he dreams I am with him – and,
dreaming, whispers, “Follow!”
Green wind from the green-gold branches,
what is the song you bring?
What are all songs for me, now, who no more
care to sing?
Deep in the heart of Summer, sweet is life to
me still,
But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on
a lonely hill.
Green is that hill and lonely, set far in a
shadowy place;
White is the hunter’s quarry, a lost-loved hu-
man face:
O hunting heart, shall you find it, with arrow
of failing breath,
Led o’er a green hill lonely by the shadowy
hound of Death?
Green branches, green branches, you sing of
a sorrow olden,
But now it is midsummer weather, earth-
young, sun-ripe, golden:
Here I stand and I wait, here in the rowan-
tree hollow,
But never a green leaf whispers, “Follow, oh,
Follow, Follow!”
O never a green leaf whispers, where the
green-gold branches swing:
O never a song I hear now, where one was
wont to sing
Here in the heart of Summer, sweet is life to
me still,
But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on
a lonely hill.
A LONELY HUNTER? I HOPE NOT
Hagia Sophia on the 24 July 2020 A.D.
I had to smile to myself when I heard this just now on TV news – when a Turkish Muslim man standing outside Hagia Sophia, uttered these words …
“TODAY IS THE DAY HAGIA SOPHIA RETURNS TO ITS ORIGINS …” Really!
ORIGINS – HISTORICITY – FACTS THAT CAN NEVER BE ‘COVERED UP’
Dedicated on 27 December 537AD as a basilica or cathedral church for Greek Orthodox Christians. Emperor Justinian declared: “My Lord, thank you for giving me the chance to create such a worshipping place.”
It became a different kind of ‘worshipping place’ in 1453 after the Ottoman Conquest of Constantinople (Istanbul), when it became a Grand Mosque.
I think the Muslim gentleman was referring to the event of 567 years ago and not the original Christian dedication of 360A.D, 1,660 years ago or the dedication of the current building to Sancta Sophia (Holy Wisdom) 1,483 years ago.
Blessings on all who continue worshipping on this site. May its Christian origin and history continue to be respected and honoured – a heritage that can never be covered-up, erased or denied.
RUSSIA!
WOW! ALL IS REVEALED !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Russian Embassy, UK@RussianEmbassy·2h”So what has Russia done?” – “That’s the question.” https://pic.twitter.com/fnBG0hVesC
‘Incremental genocide … ’
I think that’s a word that gives a lot of people pause and it certainly should … the attempts to erase a people, to just erase them, to erase their history …
writes Ben Ehrenreich ( author of ‘The Way to the Spring‘)
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
This blog is primarily about my films, my screenplay, the influences behind it and my efforts to get ‘The Fugitive Stag’ on the small or big screen – OK, sometimes a few other interests sneak in from time to time. Last night we both enjoyed an excellent black comedy, as above. An intriguing story, brilliant acting all round, great screenplay, producing and directing, by Martin Mc Donagh. Don’t know how we missed it when it came out in 2017. It was a great cast, with superb performances from Frances and Sam.
While traveling through the southern USA at thr end of the millennium, Mc Donagh came across a couple of accusatory billboards about an unsolved crime, which he described as “raging and painful and tragic” alleging the murder of a woman named Kathy Page by her husband Steve Page in Vidor, Texas. The billboards highlighted the incompetence of police work and deeply affected McDonagh; he said that the image “stayed in my mind […] kept gnawing at me” and presumed that they were put up by the victim’s mother. This incident, combined with his desire to create strong female characters, inspired him to write the story for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri – Wikipedia.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 90% based on 387 reviews, and an average rating of 8.41/10 – On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film had a weighted average score of 88 out of 100, based on 50 critics, indicating “universal acclaim.
We both gave it 9/10.
The Painted Bird
The TELEGRAPH (UK) ASKS: ‘Is The Painted Bird an exploitation movie or a piece of respectful, if brutal, art cinema?’
THE PAINTED BIRD Official Trailer (UK & Ireland) https://youtu.be/ECUiSb2WEvU via @YouTube
The most horrifying war film ever made: the painful history behind The Painted Bird https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/horrifying-war-film-ever-made-painful-history-behind-painted/
Many poems have inspired the genesis of ‘The Fugitive Stag’ …
THIS IS ONE OF THE LAST ONES, BY MINA LOY
Marble
Greece has thrown white shadows
sown
their eyeballs with oblivion
A flock of stone
Gods
perched upon pedestals
A populace
of athlete lilies
of the galleries
swoop the facades of space
with spiral curves
of idol substance
in the silence
A colonnade
Apollo haunts Apollo
with the shade
of a lost hand
The Fugitive Stag 