Several composers have written new scores for silent classics - Michael Nymann is playing music for Battleship Potemkin later this year in Birmingham- but I have not heard of anyone doing it for talkies. I'm not sure the idea works well as a concert because we found it difficult to concentrate on both dialogue and music. Usually when watching a film the music is secondary to the images on screen but with the Philip Glass and the Kronos Quartet being the main attraction, the music took on a much greater importance.
The fact the sound quality of the film was not good also made it hard work for the listener.
Despite these reservations I really enjoyed the evening, though I would still like to see the Philip Glass and the Kronos Quartet perform without the distraction of a film.
I must have seen the Bela Lugosi Dracula sometime long, long ago, when I was young and life was a bowl of cherries and the moon a pizza pie, but I had forgotten most of it except for some of the famous lines that my beloved Elsie (LC2) used to say whenever I booted her up.
I had certainly forgotten the armadillos. Why are there armadillos in Dracula? There are none in the book or even the suggestion that Dracula kept a menagerie in his Transylvanian home.
I did an internet search but found little. I did like this explanation though:
The Armadillos of Castle Dracula.
Watch the movie above to see the armadillos they're there right at the start. Just after the scene with the opossums.
Yes, those are opossums! No rats as you might have expected.
There is also the matter of the California Cricket. The wasp like insect after the possum may be a California Cricket. It is hard to tell. I have not managed to stop the film at a place where I get a good view of the back legs to see if the are properly crickety. It makes s sort of sense to use the cricket rather than a large wasp with a nasty sting, but why would you want a wasp in the first place? And that still doesn't explain anything about the opossums and armadillos.
Was there some kind of contract that forced Universal Pictures to included them in their movies?
Did some madman release them on the set?
Did they escape from a neighbouring lot?
Inappropriate animals are not uncommon in films, in fact the appear with a strange regularity; recently there were the llamas in the film Troy for example.
I suspect it may be the work of some bizarre secret society. A bit like crop circles, though the makers of those have now admitted the hoax.
There are some other interesting things about Dracula on the International Movie Database that you may want to read:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021814/trivia
After Dracula we watched the Birmingham Laptop Ensemble -BiLE - play in the foyer of The Symphony Hall. A very difficult venue with all the background noise from the bar and passers by. The pieces BiLE played reminded me of Pierre Boulez and IRCAM and the music of the 1970s and 80s, but it was still interesting and we got to talk to one of the musicians who had programmed the software and designed the network they were using, and we got to have a look at the score for one of the pieces.
There are some sound clips on the BiLE website if you want to listen.
Next week it is Finnish Accordion Wrestling at The Royal Northern College of Music.
Now that sounds as bizarre as Transylvanian possums. We're going because the performer is a world famous accordionist, not for the wrestling.
Today in the Job Centre + the young woman helping me fill in the forms and putting it all on her computer had a small patch of plaster right on the end of her nose -band aid, as they say in the US of A -.
It is strange how in these situations you lose control of your eyes and no matter how hard you try not to stare and how much you look away your eyes spring back as though on elastic.
I remember when Lisa wore a low cut tee shirt in Malang and then gave Maksum hell for ogling. After that when they all the young ones were sitting on the long settee and Lisa would lean forward to pick up a krepek dozens of Indonesian boys flung themselves violently out of the way, often risking injury as they hit the hard floor, rather than risk the elastic eye effect and subsequent wrath of Lisa.
The strain of trying to keep my eyes under control and not stare at the patch of
plaster was exhausting. I looked up at the ceiling. My eyes shot back.
I looked down at the floor. My eyes shot back to the plaster.
I forced myself to look out of the window.
Twang!
No more than five seconds later my eyes flew back the poor girl's nose and the piece of plaster.
Thankfully it was a brief interview and soon I was able to flee Job Centre +. For all I know today it may have been packed with girls in low cut tee shirts, opossums and armadillos. I have no idea. All i can remember is a tiny piece of pink plaster.