Brooklyn, a film by John Crowley starring Saoirse Ronan

Showing all posts about legacy

Brooklyn, a film by John Crowley starring Saoirse Ronan

8 February 2016

Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan), a young Irish woman, seems set to live an ordinary life in Enniscorthy, on the south east coast of Ireland. Aware of Eilis’ potential, and the lack of opportunities in the country in the 1950’s, older sister Rose (Fiona Glascott), arranges for her to emigrate to New York, in Brooklyn, trailer, the latest feature of John Crowley (Boy A, Closed Circuit).

Eilis is all too happy to farewell her routine job, and spiteful boss, Miss Kelly (Brid Brennan), at a local bakery, and leap into the unknown. What she doesn’t initially count on though is debilitating home sickness, and a way of life not much different to the one she left behind. Even the support of kindly Irish priest, Father Flood (Jim Broadbent), seems to be of little consolation.

Things change when Eilis falls in love with young Italian-American plumber, Tony (Emory Cohen), and finally she begins to feel that she belongs in New York. A family tragedy however sees her return to Ireland, where her mother, and friends, pressure her to remain, forcing Eilis to make a difficult choice between her old life, or a future with Tony, in her adopted homeland.

Based on the 2009 book of the same name, by Colm Tóibín, Brooklyn is an engaging, albeit mildly predictable, tale of the struggles of an immigrant making a new life for themselves, far from home. This might have been a lesser story, if it were not for Ronan’s convincing portrayal of a person who has to decide which side of the fence the grass is greener on.

Originally published Monday 8 February 2016.

Wuher: A Star Wars Story, and other films you may not live to see

18 November 2015

If a single movie, Rogue One, a Star Wars “spin off” story, slated for release in late 2016, can be spawned by way of a few words taken from the opening crawl of A New Hope, then imagine what else seen in the six films released to date, has the potential to inspire? A point that’s not lost on current series producers, the Walt Disney Company:

And if the people at the Walt Disney Company, which bought Lucasfilm for $4 billion in 2012, have anything to say about it, the past four decades of Star Wars were merely prologue. They are making more. A lot more. The company intends to put out a new Star Wars movie every year for as long as people will buy tickets. Let me put it another way: If everything works out for Disney, and if you are (like me) old enough to have been conscious for the first Star Wars film, you will probably not live to see the last one. It’s the forever franchise.

I think Wuher, the gruff bartender in the canteen at Mos Eisley, is worthy of a film. In fact, I’m of the opinion that the significance of his role in the saga has been greatly understated so far. Read his profile. I think you’ll agree there’s far more to him than meets the eye.

Originally published Wednesday 18 November 2015.

Only the Dead, a documentary by Michael Ware, Bill Guttentag

16 October 2015

“Only the dead have seen the end of war” is a phrase Greek philosopher Plato is said to have uttered the better part of two and a half thousand years ago. They are words bluntly contending, that for some, combat is an experience they will always live with, no matter how much time, or distance, they place between themselves and the battlefield.

War does not only scar the belligerents, and the hapless civilians caught up in the middle of it, but also those whose part is considered ancillary, including medics and journalists. Only the Dead tells one such story, of Australian reporter Michael Ware, and is based on video footage he recorded while working for Time Magazine in Iraq, between 2003 and 2007.

Although American lead coalition forces quickly took control of Iraq, and ousted long-time leader Saddam Hussein, when they invaded in 2003, the real struggle commenced afterwards. Groups of insurgents, some backed by al Qaeda, began engaging in guerrilla warfare, using terrifying tactics that included suicide bombings, kidnappings, and beheadings, against the occupying army.

Gradually Ware was able to make contact with members of some insurgent groups. This eventually resulted in Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who was considered one of al Qaeda’s most vicious leaders, handing him video footage of their attacks against the occupying forces. It soon became apparent to Ware that the insurgents were far more organised than was first realised.

Co-directed by American documentary maker Bill Guttentag (Death on the Job, Nanking), Only the Dead is a harrowing, first-hand, account of the war in Iraq. It is also very much a personal story, and audiences are not only witness to some of the conflict’s most disturbing, horrific moments, but also Ware’s own dark, inner, turmoil.

Originally published Friday 16 October 2015.

How do bookshops stay in business in the e-book age?

21 September 2015

By rights bookshops should have long since ceased to exist. Swept aside by e-books, electronic publishing, and online communication, and square into the dustbin of history. Indeed by now these quaint shelf lined emporiums should only be recalled via dwindling references, solely in nostalgic exchanges between older and younger generations, about the way things once were.

But that’s not quite what has happened. Booksellers are still with us. And rather than going into retreat, some are expanding, and opening new shops even. For all their convenience then, why have bookworms refused to wholly embrace the electronic successors of the bound paper volume? So what is it that bookshops are doing today to prosper, and remain in business?

Rather than attempting to extract trade secrets, or delve through annual reports, I asked myself what I could learn from booksellers, simply by looking at the way they appear to be operating, on the basis I was going to open a shop. So consider this more of a thought experiment, and a series of deductions, rather than in-depth or scientific research.

Paperback is the new black

In order to broaden their customer base, booksellers have become more exclusive by making a concerted effort to appeal to a more select band of consumers. These are people who favour the paper over the electronic, and see the endangered species that is the paper book, as having a certain desirability. But that’s not the only way booksellers define customers.

Harry Hartog, a name that somehow sounds like it should be familiar, is very much the new kid on the block when it comes to bookshops, having only opened in Canberra last October, and then Bondi Junction, Sydney, last month. But they have no doubt as to who their clientele are, being a “shop for the adventurer, the student of life and the next generation of reader”.

That’s no shop, that’s a boutique

If shopping for books was ever a perfunctory task, and a visit to a bookshop was uninspiring, and something to be dreaded, it certainly isn’t anymore. It’s not as if buyers have to navigate bland rows of overladen shelves bleaching in the cold glow of harsh fluorescent lights. Indeed, a keen eye to aesthetics on the part of booksellers, has transformed book shopping in recent years.

It’s not just about books

Once upon a time a bookshop used to be just that, a bookshop. You may have been able to source items of stationery, and maybe there was a shelf or two bearing accessories of some sort, but that was it. Today booksellers stock just about anything you care to imagine, from chocolate, lamps, posters, ornaments, toys, board games, to DVDs, and more, but why should I go on?

Ariel Booksellers, in Paddington, Sydney is a case in point. Scan through some of the photos of their merchandise (Facebook page) and it becomes clear that booksellers are turning to diversification as a means of attracting, and retaining customers. Bookshops don\’t have to become one stop shops, but it can\’t be too bad for business to offer customers a few extra options.

Engaging customers

Social media, and the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, are boons for contemporary bookshops. Here are platforms that allow them to quickly and readily connect with their customers, helping them maintain a vital edge. Online channels aren’t the only ways of fostering interaction though, and book launches, and community events, also play a role.

Small is better?

In the bookshop survival stakes, it might be thought the bigger operators have the upper hand, on account of being part of a wider chain, and the benefits that must bestow. Sadly, that’s not always the situation, as shop closures, some years ago, by high profile sellers such as Borders, and Angus and Robertson, illustrates. So if the big shops can’t make it, what hope do others have?

More than you might imagine. Smaller, independent, booksellers, especially owner operated stores, are probably more motivated to focus on their customers, and build up relationships, something that may not always be a priority for the bigger players. Buyers are also more likely to find staff at smaller shops better attuned to their interests, than they might elsewhere.

Electronic purveyors of paper

So far it’s been a case of the electronic supplanting the paper when it comes to books, but Sydney based bookseller Big Ego Books (Instagram page) have adopted another tack, they operate as an electronic, or online only, seller of paper books. Hardly ground-breaking, but perhaps their speciality, sourcing “rare and hard-to-find titles”, is. There’s market niche for you.

And there we have it…

Well, a few suggestions at least. I for one am not keen to see the end of bookshops, but it certainly looks like plenty are doing something right, so hopefully they’ll be with us for a long time to come. As to the notion of opening a bookshop, it could hardly be considered a lost cause, even if it might not be easy, but here at least are a few pieces of the puzzle.

Originally published Monday 21 September 2015, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

Anas Aremeyaw Anas, investigative reporter, master of disguises

21 July 2015

There’s no limit to the lengths that Anas Aremeyaw Anas, a crime reporter based in Ghana, will go to in his efforts to file a story.

This by way of numerous disguises, where he has variously masqueraded as an assembly line worker, a parent with a (fake) baby, a sheikh, a vagrant, a woman, and, best of all perhaps, a rock.

Anas has succeeded in digging up the dirt on all manner of criminals, undertakings that have often resulted in their arrests.

Of Anas’s many faces, there’s one in which he doesn’t have a face at all — just two small eyeholes cut into what looks like an enormous, crinkled paper bag. Silly? Maybe. But his impression of a giant rock is also effective: In 2010, Anas used the disguise near a border post at the Ghana-Côte d’Ivoire crossing to spy on trucks from the roadside. As it turned out, the trucks were smuggling cocoa beans across the border. Anas’s report helped the police build a rock-solid case.

Originally published Tuesday 21 July 2015, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

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crime, journalism, legacy

Pluto, the solar system’s other red… planet?

14 July 2015

Photo of Pluto and Charon, image by New Horizons, NASA

NASA’s New Horizons space probe will probably be skimming, mere thousands of kilometres, passed Pluto around about now. That means the photos it sends in the next few days will doubtless be far sharper than the above image of Pluto and Charon, taken from a distance of approximately twenty million kilometres.

While it’s been known for sometime Pluto is reddish-brown in colour, I didn’t realise it was referred to as the solar system’s “other red planet”, with Mars being, I guess, the red planet. While both have reddish hues, their colouring comes about in quite different ways:

What color is Pluto? The answer, revealed in the first maps made from New Horizons data, turns out to be shades of reddish brown. Although this is reminiscent of Mars, the cause is almost certainly very different. On Mars the coloring agent is iron oxide, commonly known as rust. On the dwarf planet Pluto, the reddish color is likely caused by hydrocarbon molecules that are formed when cosmic rays and solar ultraviolet light interact with methane in Pluto’s atmosphere and on its surface.

Also, isn’t referring to Pluto as “other red planet”, with the operative word being planet, likely to start all sorts of arguments?

Originally published Tuesday 14 July 2015.

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astronomy, legacy, Pluto, science

All you need to know about finding dropped coins in the street

23 April 2015

New York City resident Roger Pasquier has been keeping a record of the money he picks up along the footpaths he wanders each day, and for almost two decades collected about fifty-eight dollars a year. His… earnings however jumped to about ninety-five dollars annually from 2007 though.

This has been attributed to the arrival of the first of the smartphones. People are now so busy gazing at a screen, they miss any money that may have been dropped on the ground.

From 1987, when he began recording his findings, through 2014, he retrieved a thousand nine hundred and twenty dollars and eighty-seven cents. From 1987 to 2006, he averaged about fifty-eight dollars a year. Then Apple introduced the iPhone, and millions of potential competitors started to stare at their screens rather than at the sidewalks. Since 2007, Pasquier has averaged just over ninety-five dollars a year.

I tend to find coins on, or near footpaths, from time to time (hey, I’m a writer, I need all the help I can get). This usually over the summer months, and more often than not, two-dollar coins, rather than anything of lesser value.

I put this down to Australian two-dollar coins being, for whatever reason, the smallest coin, aside from the five-cent piece of course, and people thus not noticing when they fall from their pockets or wallet. Other coins are big enough to probably make some reasonable clink when they hit the ground, but not the two-dollar coin.

Pasquier meantime has all sorts of advice for those hoping to collect a dollar or two as they go about their affairs, worth a read really:

Good spirits, he said, are a liability. When you’re happy, you tend to look up, not down. “It takes a lot of will power to focus when you’re in a cheerful mood,” he said.

Originally published Thursday 23 April 2015.

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economics, legacy, trivia

Graffiti, with punctuation and grammar, only in Quito, Ecuador

13 March 2015

Just as one Wikipedia member is intent on ridding the online encyclopaedia of the grammatically incorrect phrase “comprised of” from articles, counterparts of a sort are on a mission to tidy up errors made by graffiti artists and others, in the Ecuadorian city of Quito:

In the dead of night, two men steal through the streets of Quito armed with spray cans and a zeal for reform. They are not political activists or revolutionaries: they are radical grammar pedants on a mission to correctly punctuate Ecuador’s graffiti. Adding accents, inserting commas and placing question marks at the beginning and end of interrogative sentences scrawled on the city’s walls, the vigilante editors have intervened repeatedly over the past three months to expose the orthographic shortcomings of would-be poets, forlorn lovers and anti-government campaigners.

Originally published Friday 13 March 2015.

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graffiti, legacy, street art

Independent self-publishing, or blogging, here to stay I’m afraid

16 February 2015

A prominent blogger, or independent self-publisher, if you will, decides to stop writing online, and next thing we’re hearing about the imminent demise of the medium.

Sure, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Medium, and the like, have all come along and splinted the domain of the blog/personal website. But, as a media property, or communications tool, a writer’s own website has one distinct advantage over many social media channels. It belongs to the writer, and not some other autarchic entity.

And so, to be clear, when I speak of the “blog” I am referring to a regularly-updated site that is owned-and-operated by an individual (there is, of course, the “group blog,” but it too has a clearly-defined set of authors). And there, in that definition, is the reason why, despite the great unbundling, the blog has not and will not die: it is the only communications tool, in contrast to every other social service, that is owned by the author; to say someone follows a blog is to say someone follows a person.

Originally published Monday 16 February 2015.

Artificial Intelligence, nothing to worry about, just yet anyway…

13 February 2015

Much is being said about artificial intelligence, or AI, and how AI powered entities stand ready to take over the world. Well, this might be a concern in the future.

But right now? Maybe not. That’s if Twitter page INTERESTING.JPG, “a smart computer looking at popular human images”, and the commentary it offers of the photos it sees, is anything to go by.

According to INTERESTING.JPG, this image is of a number of birds flying through the sky in front of a cliff. Mind you, INTERESTING.JPG can sometimes be on the mark, but not too often by the looks of it.

For now, at least, there’s not a whole lot to worry about…

Originally published Friday 13 February 2015.

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