Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them; more men are daily bound down as slaves to tend them, more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life. The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question. Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort should be destroyed by the well-wisher of his species. Let there be no exceptions made, no quarter shown; let us at once go back to the primeval condition of the race. Samuel Butler; Darwin Among the Machines ; 1863 "You can't Un-thunk a Glunk!" Dr. Seuss; The Glunk that got Thunk ; 1969 You may or may not be familiar with the poet Dorothy Frances Gurney, but ...
Please note that this week's film has been rated 15 in the UK. One of the hallmarks of the "noir" film style has to be its stark and very distinctive black-and-white cinematography. Black and white was by no means unique to film noir, but there were few other film styles of the era that made such constructive use of the contrast between light and shadow. A lot of this was of course a legacy of the German Expressionist style, which had exerted an outsized influence on many of the film-makers who found themselves in Hollywood in the 1930s and 40s. Shadows in noir are not just a side-effect of room lighting; they are almost characters unto themselves, advancing the story, establishing the dynamics between characters and giving noir its distinctive flavour. This is what Expressionism means. The images themselves are telling the story. Black and White. But Not Necessarily in That Order. When talking about noir (or about any aspect of cinema from this particular era in Am...
Update; December, 2022: To anyone reading this page now, the roof work is now complete and the building is fully re-opened. Our film nights are back in the main hall, and we can use the entrance on Grove Road. We have witnessed a number of truly cataclysmic events in the past year or so: a Global Pandemic; an attempt to overthrow the Government in the US; the catastrophic but entirely foreseeable fallout from Brexit. And then the Church Roof Collapsed. Okay, I suppose a leaking roof isn't the worst problem most of us have had to face this year (the horrors never stop: all the local grocery stores are completely out of grapefruit juice ; truly we are living through Armageddon) but (a) it is symptomatic of the kind of year this has been, and (b) it does mean that we won't be organising these film evenings in the usual Church Hall. While the fearless roofers and scaffolders tirelessly wage their battles against the Forces of Entropy ...
Our new series of films at the Victoria Park Baptist Church is set to begin on Thursday, the 25th of January, and I can promise you it's going to be pure fun , from beginning to end. But not quite yet. Before we get to the "fun" part, I beg your indulgence while I talk to you about some personal stuff. It's relevant, I promise. I am writing this on Sunday, the 14th of January, and the BBC has just published an article noting that 100 days have passed since Hamas launched its "unthinkable" (their word) attack on Israel. I'm sorry, but "unthinkable"? Of all the words they might have used to describe what happened on the 7th of October, unthinkable is probably one of the least appropriate. It was traumatic; savage; horrific; barbaric; nightmarish. But (unfortunately) it was not even remotely unthinkable . I was born in the United States. The reason I was born there was because about 120 years ago, the Russian Empire decided it would be a good id...
I Regret to announce that this film presentation has been cancelled for unavoidable personal reasons. Please check back for further updates, and thank you for your understanding. **Original listing follows** Please note that this week's film has been rated 18 in the UK. Remember Too Late for Tears ? Lizabeth Scott's Jane Palmer is often regarded as the femme fatale to end all femmes fatale, in part because she proves herself to be so completely amoral. Outwardly, she is a typical post-war housewife with a devoted (if slightly bland) husband... but then someone drops a bag of blackmail cash into the wrong car, and sweet, demure Mrs. Palmer reveals herself to be capable of extremes that would give Joan Bennett and Barbara Stanwyck pause. Her film ends (a trail of corpses in her wake) with her almost, almost getting away with it. Too Late for Tears was released in 1949, and Scott's character was the perfect expression of the femme fatale for a society in transition. All ...
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