Tag: armour

Middlesex Hospital Blues

Middlesex Hospital Blues

Curators – Iain Forsyth, Jane Pollard – 2026 – UK

****

A chapel interior is repurposed as a reinvention of Derek Jarman’s final film Blue – exhibition / installation at Fitzrovia Chapel from Friday, October 16th to Wednesday, November 18th

Pollard and Forsythe’s third and final installation / exhibition at the Fitzrovia Chapel is a deceptively simple setup.

With the space opening from mid-morning to midday to five or six pm depending on day of the week, most visitors will be entering the building from daylight – although, as the evenings creep in, towards the end of the day, and losing an extra hour of daylight in the evening after the clocks go back an hour on Sunday, October 25th, some visitors may be entering from fading light or even darkness.

Entering from daylight as this visitor did, one is immediately struck by the lighting.

In a reimagining of the late director Derek Jarman’s final film Blue (1993), the interior is lit in that colour, which has the effect of locking the architectural interior into a sort of perpetual twilight, and not one in which the light goes slowly from light to dark but which seems more or less fixed. … Read the rest

Tags ‘caught in the web of capital’, 1987, AIDS, armour, artwork, Arup, blue, Byzantine, chapel interior, church interior, collective care, contemplative space, death, Derek Jarman, dying, empathy, exhibition, experimental, final film, final journey, Fitzrovia, Fitzrovia Chapel, font, gay man, hospital, hospital uniforms, Iain Forsyth, installation, International Klein Blue, Jane Pollard, knight, LGBTQ, light sculpture, light show, lighting, London NHS teaching hospitals, loudspeaker system, medieval dignitary, meditative space, mercy, Middlesex AIDS unit, Middlesex Hospital, Middlesex Hospital Blues, minimalist, music, numinous, paint hue, personal tragedy, Princess Diana’s dress, Raj Patel, reflectIion, reflection, repurpose, sculpture, Simon Fisher Turner, sound field, The Spirit of the World, Tilda Swinton, tomb, transcendence, twilight, two-way mirror, upright couples embracing, Verbal texts, vocal collective, Yves Klein

Movies Animation Features

Early Man

Early Man

Producer-Director: Nick Park – 2018 – UK – Cert. PG – 89m

*****

Ancient caveman Brits, rabbits, mammoths, dinosaurs, dastardly Frenchmen, and football – Aardman’s prehistoric, stop-frame marvel is back out in UK cinemas on Friday, 21st August

Nick Park and Aardman Animations’ epic is set in a prehistoric world of cavemen, rabbits and mammoths. For good measure it also throws in dastardly Frenchmen and football. Park coaxes great voice performances out of his all-star cast, while physical animation is in the capable hands of Will Becher (who directed the Creature Comforts TV series) and Merlin Crossingham (Creative Director for Wallace & Gromit since 2009 and subsequently co-director with Park of Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, 2024).

At one point a mallard appears in the distance. A caveman hurls a small rock at it. The rock travels an awful long way. Much farther than we expected. Eventually it reaches the mallard, revealed as a gargantuan beast on the scale of a dinosaur. The giant mallard charges towards us and the hapless tribe of cavemen.

This is very much in the spirit of Early Man’s opening sequence wherein volcanoes belch fire and a carnivorous ceratosaurus does battle with a herbivorous triceratops clearly modelled on their counterparts in Ray Harryhausen’s One Million Years B.C.… Read the rest

Movies Animation Features

Scarlet
(Hateshinaki Sukaretto,
果てしなきスカーレット,
lit. Endless Scarlet)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date March 13 2026
No Comments on Scarlet
(Hateshinaki Sukaretto,
果てしなきスカーレット,
lit. Endless Scarlet)

Scarlet (Hateshinaki Sukaretto,
果てしなきスカーレット, lit. Endless Scarlet)

Director – Mamoru Hosoda – 2025 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 111m

****

Trapped in the Otherworld, a limbo preceding the afterlife, Princess Scarlet seeks revenge on her uncle who has killed her father the King – anime reimagining of Hamlet is out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 13th

Walking across a vast desert and dying of thirst, a redhead recalls how she came to be there. Those were happier times in sixteenth century Denmark, when Scarlet (voice: Mana Ashida from Lonely Castle in the Mirror, Keiichi Hara, 2022; The House of the Lost on the Cape, Shinya Kawatsura, 2021; Poupelle of Chimney Town, Yusuke Hirota, 2020; Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro, 2013) – for it is she – spent time with her father King Amleth (voice: Masachika Ichimura from Giovanni’s Island, 2014), drawing his portrait outdoors. Amleth always had the best interests of his people at heart.

Yet there was always a dark foreboding in the background – Scarlet’s severe mother Gertrude (voice: Yuki Saito from The Third Murder, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2017) who ripped up her drawing, her power-hungry, warmongering Uncle Claudius (voice: Koji Yakusho from Perfect Days, Wim Wenders, 2023; Belle, Mamoru Hosoda, 2021, The Third Murder; Cure, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997; Shall We Dance, Masayuki Suo, 1996) with his greedy eyes on the throne.… Read the rest

Movies Features Live Action

The Crazy Family
Gyakufunsha Kazoku,
逆噴射家族)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date April 20 2024
No Comments on The Crazy Family
Gyakufunsha Kazoku,
逆噴射家族)

The Crazy Family Gyakufunsha Kazoku, 逆噴射家族)

Director – Sogo Ishii – 1984 – Japan – Cert. 18 – 105m

*****

After proudly moving into their first home as owner-occupiers, a family go berserk and destroy the building – out on Blu-ray on Monday, June 17th

This seemingly starts out as a conservative family drama. The family in question comprises father Katsukuni Kobayashi (Katsuya Kobayashi in his debut feature role), mother Saeko (Mitsuko Baisho who worked with directors Akira Kurosawa, Shohei Imamura and Kaneto Shindo), elder teenage son Masaki (Yoshiki Arizono from Ichi the Killer, The Happiness of the Katakuris, both Takashi Miike; Electric Dragon, 80,000 V, Sogo Ishii, all 2001) and younger teenage daughter Erika (Youki Kudoh from Typhoon Club, Shinji Somai, 1985; Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch, 1989; Heaven’s Burning, Craig Lahiff, 1997). The Kobayashis move in to their first home as owner-occupiers which, although it’s a little on the small side, promises an idyllic existence. Father is the breadwinner with a nondescript office job, mother waters the plants and does the cooking and housework, the daughter wants to be an idol singer and the son is spending all his time studying for school and university in his room upstairs.… Read the rest

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