Tag: coughing

The History of Sound

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 23 January 2026
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Director – Oliver Hermanus – 2025 – UK, US – Cert. 15 – 128m

****

A Kentucky man falls for a music professor in Boston and accompanies him on a field trip recording folk songs – out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 23rd

In 1917, having grown up on a farmstead in rural Kentucky and his remarkable singing voice being noticed by a local schoolteacher, Lionel Worthing (Paul Mescal from Hamnet, Chloé Zhao, 2025; Gladiator II, Ridley Scott, 2024; All of Us Strangers, Andrew Haigh, 2023) gets a student scholarship to Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music. One Saturday evening in a Boston pub with friends, he makes the acquaintance of David White (Josh O’Connor from La Chimera, Alice Rohrwacher, 2023; Mothering Sunday, Eva Husson, 2021; The Crown, TV series, 2019-20; God’s Own Country, Francis Lee, 2017) who is playing folk songs on the piano and, it turns out, is a tenured academic with an obsessive hobby: travelling around the country collecting, recording and cataloguing folk songs. David has what Lionel describes as the sound equivalent of a photographic memory: he can remember word for word and note for note, any song sung in his presence.… Read the rest

Tags 1910s, 1920s, 1980s, abusive relationship, academic holidays, army, assistant, bereavement, Boston, Briana Middleton, call up, catalog, catalogue, choir, Chris Cooper, church choir, collect, college, community, coughing, countryside, death of mother, Dion Graham, drafted, Emma Canning, England, ethnic, ethnomusicologist, eviction from the land, family farm, farm, field trip, fireman, folk songs, Frist World War, gay relationship, Hadley Robinson, hobby, indigenous, indigenous folk songs, Italy, Josh O’Connor, Kentucky, Lake District, letter, LGBTQ, LGBTQI, mail, Maine, Malaga Island, Michael Schantz, military draft, mixed black and white ethnic, Molly Price, mothers and sons, music, musicologist, negro spiritual, New England Conservatory of Music, obsession, Oliver Hermanus, Oxford University, paper candle, parents and children, Paul Mescal, performing, photographic memory: Silver Dagger, pianist, piano, police, policemen, poor people, porch, post-WW1, promote a book, pub, record, recording, relationships, Rome, rural, rural and urban, scholarship, sex, shell shock, socialite, song, song gathering, spiritual, stately mansion, student, suitcase, sweet-talking, tent, tenured academic, the happiest time of your life, The History of Sound, travelling, truncheon, tuberculosis, TV appearance, UK, US, war, wax cylinders, wax phonograph cylinders, widow, working the fields, World War 1, World War I, World War One, WW1

Animation Features Movies

A Greyhound
of a Girl

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 28 June 2024
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of a Girl
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Director – Enzo d’Alò – 2023 – Luxembourg, Italy, Ireland, UK, Latvia, Estonia, Germany – Cert. U – 88m

****1/2

A young, cookery-obsessed girl with a fear of dogs must come to terms with the fact that her beloved granny is dying – animated feature is out on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital Monday, August 26th

Ireland. Faced with an unsympathetic interview panel for the Ballymaloe Cooking School when she unwisely makes a tatty tart with bananas, young girl Mary (voice: Mia O’Connor) finds she has an ally in her granny (voice: Rosaleen Linehan) who gives the judges a friendly talking to when they reject her granddaughter. The girl can always come back next time. She and granny are driving home on a minor coastal road and granny is refusing to talk about her own childhood – apparently there was an incident involving a dog and a well – when granny swerves to avoid a dog and dents the car. Mary doesn’t like dogs, although she’s a caring child who stopped granny accidentally running over a hedgehog earlier.

Granny has been coughing all day. With the news that Mary’s bestie Ava (voice: Amelie Metacalf) is soon be leaving as her dad has got a job in England, it’s not a great time for the young girl, and it gets worse, when she discovers her gran has a fever and her mum calls an ambulance.… Read the rest

Tags 2D animation, a dog and a well, ambulance, Amelie Metacalf, animation, Ballymaloe Cooking School, bananas, bereavement, bestie, Brendan Gleeson, car, car accident, CG, CG animation, Charlene McKenna, childhood, childhood experience, coastal road, cookery, coughing, country road, dappled light, death, dent the car, disappear, doctor, dogs, dream sequences, driving, Estonia, family car, fever, Germany, ghost, grandmothers and granddaughters, granny, great-grandmother, hand-animated, hedgehog, hospital, imaginary friend, interview panel, Ireland, Italy, keep in for observation, Latvia, learn the craft, life and death, Luxembourg, Marco Zanoni, Mia O’Connor, minor road, mothers and daughters, parents and children, Paul Tylak, Peter de Sève, Peter Orlandi, psychiatrist, put the hours, reappear, Regina Pessoa, Roddy Doyle, Rosaleen Linehan, self-starter, Sharon Horgan, subconscious, swerves, tantrum, tatty tart, tests, the ‘flu, UK, walk, well, woods

Features Live Action Movies

Luminous Woman
(Hikaru Onna,
光る女)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 25 May 2024
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(Hikaru Onna,
光る女)
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Director – Shinji Somai – 1987 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 118m

*****

A Hokkaido farmer comes to Tokyo in search of his vanished fiancée but finds a world he has not expected – on Blu-ray from Monday, Monday, May 20th

At a rubbish tip on the outskirts of Tokyo, a barefoot man (Takeiji Muto) in cheap trousers and top encounters a suave-looking sophisticate (Kei Suma) and a woman opera singer (Michiru Akiyoshi), the latter performing gracefully atop the rubbish heap. The woman is dependent on the sophisticate. The barefoot man has travelled from Hokkaido to find his fiancée Kuriko Sakura, who was supposed to return after studying accounting to help him run a farm.

The sophisticate knows someone of that name, and drives the barefoot man into the city. In his nightclub, he offers the outsider a deal – if he’ll fight the club’s pro-wrestler for ¥100 000, the other will tell him where to find Kuriko. However, she may not be the person he seeks. Out of her boss’ earshot, the woman warns the outsider that the wrestling may be to the death.

In the club she plays the piano while another woman sings opera and, on the circular dias bordered by a water pool, a challenger fights the incumbent wrestler and loses.… Read the rest

Tags accounting, Agfa, barefoot, be my wife, bereavement, bloodlust, bus, cheap clothes, circular, club, coitus, coughing, coupling, dias, drug, ecstasy, farm, fiancée, fighter, fire, fish-out-of-water, flame, flat share, fractured rib, gentle giant, Hide Demon, Hokkaido, human torch, idealised view of women, inferno, innocence and experience, innocent and corrupt, Italy, Japan, jarring, Kei Suma, land, Louis Vuitton, lowbrow and highbrow, marry, Michiru Akiyoshi, naive, naive and sophisticated, Narumi Yasuda, nightclub, outskirts, piano player, poetry, pole, poor, primal scream, private party, pro-wrestler, race, red suit, rubbish tip, rural community somersaults, sex, sexual partner, Shinji Somai, sophisticated, studying, suave, swimming pool, Takeiji Muto, Takinoue, to the death, Tokyo, tree stump, unoccupied, urban and rural, voyeurism, wheelchair, winter blizzard, writhe