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Bath Film Festival

Cinephiles gather: combat that creeping S.A.D. with the annual Bath Film Festival’s thoughtful and eclectic two week programme (25 Nov – 8 Dec) commencing tomorrow.

Undoubtedly the highlight of the entire shebang is taking place on the first evening: an extraordinary mashup of Goldfrapp, Portishead, and Carl Dreyer as the silent 1928 landmark ‘The Passion of Joan of Arc’ is screened to a new score (tickets still available) in Bath Abbey.

If you happen to miss that religion-themed extravaganza, you can book your tickets now for another – ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ – two months later, this time in Wells Cathedral. Otherwise, tuck into the (probably warmer, more comfortable) cinema-centric options including high profile productions such as Lake Bell’s comedy ‘In A World’; ‘Nebraska’, the latest from ‘About Schmidt’s Alexander Payne; and  ‘All is Lost’ with Robert Redford getting a good weathering at sea.

But film festivals are really much more about digging up hidden gems, so expand your horizons, take a risk and turn off your phone.

Start here: http://bathfilmfestival.org.uk/whats-on/

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Dear Dairy

Towards the end of October, as part of the Bath Great Feast (as if there needs to be a reason), a cheese festival hosted by the Fine Cheese Company took place in Bath. It lasted one day, and was wisely hosted indoors. The air, however, was mighty dense.

Bath is a great location for a cheese festival. It's in the South West, a region awash in talented artisan cheese producers (and the home of cheddar, of course). It's also not an awful long way from Wales and the South East is just over there, really. Because of that, old favourites such as Hampshire Cheeses, Keen's, Sleight Farm, and Caws Teifi were in attendance.

After liberal tasting and some furtive re-tasting, these grabbed Dear Dairy's attention (in no particular order):

Hafod: Relative newcomer from the Teifi Valley in Wales. Produces a delicious traditional style cheddar from its own herd of Ayrshires. 

Stichelton: Stilton made with unpasteurised milk. In other words, Stilton improved. Just look at that angry red rind. 

Baronet: Similar to Reblochon – and, dare Dear Diary say it, tastier – this is made by the Old Cheese Room (aka cheesemaker, Julianna Sedli).

Berkswell: A ewes milk cheese, crumbly and lovely. Less austere than noble Manchego, another sheep’s milk favourite. Quite pricey though.

Old Winchester: Pasteurised, but aged for 20 long and highly productive months by Lyburn. Hard, with a fruity bite and a curious finish that eludes categorisation.  

Rachel: If you’re not keen on goat, this is your “gateway goat”. A hard goat’s cheese of mild and mellow flavour without any goaty vapours released on the bite. Named by a White Lake cheesemaker as a way of scoring with a Rachel. Unfortunately, the stratagem proved ineffective. They also have a Katherine (named for Katherine Jenkins). Dear Dairy was happy to learn that their Little Eve was named after 'evolution'.

This was not a major cheese festival, but these were serious cheeses in attendance. More a Telluride than a large-scale Cannes or Toronto type affair.

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Dear Dairy

A choice slice of Quickes Mild Cheddar materialised in the Dear Dairy in-tray last week. Quickes is based in Devon, has its own cows (500 dairy cows plus youngstock, in case you were interested), and has been producing well received cheese since ‘73. A traditional operation, but not afraid to take a punt (see: Quickes Elderflower cheddar, just released). Family run, Quickes’ leading light is Mary Quicke. She writes a blog about cheese making and farm life. It has lines like: “The hen pheasants, so courted and sought after by the cocks, disappear into the hedge to lay eggs, then disappear into the fox.” Dear Dairy has blog envy.

Now on to the cheese. The Mild Cheddar comes across all coy and modest, but it’s really a bit of a scene-stealer. It’s attracted great acclaim in its time, and in 2013 alone took 1st place at the Devon County Show and gold at Royal Bath & West. A younger cheddar aged 3 to 4 months. Only those truckles with the correct “buttery” flavour profile are selected for sale at this tender age.

The taste is creamy, smooth, elusive, nutty and, indeed, quite buttery. Most of it disappeared into a lasagne for my parent-in-laws. Despite the presence of mozzarella, ricotta, and a rather lairy parmesan, the Quickes could be detected singing beneath the clamour like a lark in a bar brawl (this simile inspired by Mary Quicke).

All this excellence at a tender young age put me in mind of Academy Award-nominee Saoirse Ronan, who at the age of 19 is already an extremely well respected actress (the director, Kevin Macdonald, described her as a “young Meryl Streep” in reference to ability as well as looks). Even more remarkable is that, despite a decade in show business, she hasn’t fallen prey to the traditional Hollywood child star meltdown; drowned in the lasagne of the party scene, if you will. She has claimed in the past that she “wouldn’t ever want fame like them (other child stars)” and prefers to focus on her work rather than her celebrity. In Quickes’ terminology, she’d be “buttery”. Ron Howard would also be buttery. Ryan Gosling—who seems to have cleverly transposed his meltdown into his art—also buttery.

However, stars such as Corey Feldman, Lindsay Lohan and Macauley Culkin—not buttery. They might have benefitted from the oversight of someone who knew that several more months of maturing in the dark of the cheese cellar might have produced a more balanced and lasting flavour—alas, perhaps something truly magnificent.

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Interview: Sam Firth

Screening at the BFI London Film Festival (starting tomorrow) in the Contained Movement strand is Stay the Same, a 14 minute “personal documentary” by award-winning director, Sam Firth.

Described by the director as “an experiment in film and time”, Stay the Same (the last in a series of three films) compiles a collection of moments filmed of Firth at exactly the same time and place every day for a year. The images are moved by a striking original soundtrack by composer Fraya Thomsen (Thomsen is currently studying Composing for Film and Television at the NFTS and previously collaborated with Firth on the second in the series: The Worm Inside).

The effect of the dialogue free (and almost action free (actions are restricted to: looking around, smiling, crying)) movie upon the audience is an interesting one. For this narrative-driven reviewer, you become hyper-aware of potential symbolism in the choice and order of the clips while the beautiful, almost jaunty soundtrack offsets the sense of profound isolation projected by the images. By the close, you feel that you’ve shared in a remarkably intimate experience that challenges narrative conventions.

Arts Jacket caught up with Firth and Thomsen at the Encounters 2013 festival in Bristol where Stay the Same was in competition.

AJ: Why did you make this film?

SF: Each of the films I’ve made, with varying degrees of experimentation, have been personal documentaries. When I started with I.D. and The Worm Inside (the first and second films), it made me think about why we make personal stories, and how to capture personal experience.

With Stay the Same, I had several things going on with my health and was being confronted by my own mortality. The film came out of the desire to capture the entirety of personal experience, and the impossibility of even trying to attempt that.

AJ: What were your criteria for selecting which clips went into the finished edit?

SF: I first went through the footage and collected the clips where I was present, where I was connected to the moment. If you sit still for ten minutes, the amount of time that you’re in the moment and not thinking about a lot of other stuff is actually quite small!

That was my aim every day: to get in front of the camera and be in the moment. I looked for footage where I was connecting with my surroundings—moments of honesty. You can’t help performing in front of cameras sometimes and I didn’t want that to enter into the film.

AJ: Does Stay the Same have a traditional narrative?

SF: I think there is. Like any film, particularly documentary, you look at the rushes and try to find the narrative that is there already—I didn’t try to impose a narrative. I was particularly interested in the narrative that came about as a result of making the film. There’s a moment in the film when you see me crying, and maybe there were a few other moments in the year when I was crying, but in that moment I was crying specifically because of what was going on for me in relation to the film. There is also a darker stretch which has its own emotional potency.

AJ: Was it an isolating process making this film?

SF: Quite lonely, self-exiled on this remote peninsula (Knoydart). Bizarrely, someone turned up and I fell in love towards the end of the film. When we screened in Knoydart, an audience member said that you can see when that happens onscreen. I’m not sure whether that is the case, or that it was nice weather and the project had only a few months to go that you can see on my face, but there you go!

AJ: Who are your influences?

SF: I saw Koyaanisqatsi in my teens and I think it had a profound effect on me as a film with no dialogue or conventional narrative that is about the whole of humanity. Filmmakers: Agnes Varda, Margaret Tait, Jonas Mekas, Clio Barnard.

AJ: (to Thomsen) What was it like putting music to a film like this?

FT: This was an intimidating job. The brief from Sam was: “I just want to capture the whole of existence in a film.” Okay! The only advantage that I had was I could really relate to wanting a moment to last forever—I hope that has been translated into the music.

Firth and Thomsen at Encounters 2013

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Recommended from Encounters 2013: short films to look out for

A Removals Job (Dir: Nicholas Keogh): Removals as done by David Lynch Removals Co. By “maverick Belfast artist” Nicholas Keogh, this 13 minute composition of the dismantling of a house blends wanton destruction with humour, introspection, and video games. Original and off-key. Beat (Dir: Aneil Karia): Described as a film “about a man walking a paper-thin line between hopelessness and euphoria”, actor Ben Whishaw (the new Q) throws himself about the city streets to a soundtrack he and the audience can hear, but the public can’t. Whishaw’s character is subsequently ridiculed, threatened, and beaten during this visceral and unhinged performance. (fantastic soundtrack supplied by Battles and Godspeed You! Black Emperor). Teaser trailer below:

Finally, Pouters (Dir: Paul Fegan) tells us to look to Glasgow for the next mutation of avian flu. Glaswegian pigeon fanciers explain (with subtitles) their passion and rivalry. Charismatic subjects and perfect photography capture a strange and unforgettable subculture. This trailer really doesn’t do it justice: http://www.scottishdocinstitute.com/films/pouters/

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The Telegraph Bath Children’s Literature Festival (27 Sept - 6 Oct)

The 7th edition of The Telegraph Bath Children’s Literature Festival, the largest dedicated children’s book festival in the country, is kicking off in Bath this Friday.

The Guest Artistic Director, award-winning author David Almond, has created a programme for Bath that, according to the PR blurb, “puts children, their opinions, their concerns and their creativity firmly at its heart.”

In real terms this means a panoply of events featuring such literary luminaries as Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, the new Children’s Laureate Malorie Blackman, veteran storyteller Judith Kerr and former Children's Laureate Michael Rosen (pictured below).

Find the full programme at: www.bathfestivals.org.uk

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Authorial: Evie Wyld

A book tour stop for Wyld promoting her second novel, ‘All the Birds, Singing’, at Toppings & Co. in Bath. 11th Sept, 2013

750pm

Drizzle. Autumn has arrived. On the blackboard paneling of the book store frontage the names JEREMY PAXMAN and DAVID GOWER shine in the gloom.

Ten minutes early. Surprise bowls of crisps and olives on offer alongside the usual free wine. Scoop a handful of each. Inside, tables have been set up. Layout offsets the small crowd. Older, 50 and up. Shiny black pumps with bows. Chopped curly grey hair. No frills, Atlantic-blue mackintosh. Two college-aged girls at the back who may have mistaken the book store for a concept bar.

People have taken their own bowls of crisps and olives! Too late to go back, everyone's watching - squeeze into a nook in front of generous old man who doesn’t seem to mind having his view blocked. “Do you know this author?” he asks. The generous old man turns out to be a botanist who lives nine months of the year in Uganda, three months in his house in Bath. I think about the imperious local housing prices and wonder if he’s going to share his address. A squatting fantasy plays out in the back of my mind as I tell him that I was hooked by Wyld’s extract in the Granta Best of Young British Novelists issue.

8pm

Wyld’s introduced by Toppings staff member who looks like a twenty-something prophet just returned from the wilderness. He trips up his intro, begins again with admirable grace.

“She’s been compared to early Iain Banks, early Ian McEwan.”

“We’re big fans!”

“Evie Wyld.”

Wyld enters. Dressed mostly in blackish shades. Pirate boots. Twice mentions the loveliness of the flowers that have been bought for her. She’s begins talking about how her first book was set entirely in Australia (where she grew up). Her second novel: half in England, half in Australia. Third to be set entirely in England (where she lives now, running a bookstore in Peckham).

“The more distant the landscape, the easier it is to put a character to it.”

The English island on which the protagonist is marooned in All the Birds, Singing is "an intense version of the Isle of Wight.”

She reads an extract: a dog cries. An egg is thrown up. A much older man controls a young woman. Undercurrents of abuse and exploitation.

Applause.

Opened to questions.

Q: How did you figure out the structure?

A: No planning, I work best when thinking on the page.

After the first draft, I made a big plan of the dual narrative created and worked it out, made charts like a maths problem.

I was resigned to two narrative strands, UK and Australia. In the later stages, the plot folded over onto itself. This improved the tension, which was lacking before that. It’s satisfying putting two chapters that don’t go in order together, as they create a third space that has nothing to do with me.

Fingers crossed the next novel will be linear.

Q: You work in a bookshop. Is it difficult to be disciplined surrounded by all those books?

With the three and a half years it took to write the first book, I was very disciplined. Living at home, it felt like my only chance to make this work. Disciplined in a way that I can’t imagine now…

For the second book, I went to some writers’ retreats which helped, but I’m not sure anything I wrote while at a retreat actually made it into the final book. But you have to do a certain amount of work before the good stuff comes out.

If you can stand to put it away for six months, you can see all the terrible crap you’ve written.

Q: Where do your ideas come from?

My first book (After the Fire, A Still Small Voice) was scantily based on my Australian family. Very close relationship with an uncle who’d been in the Korean War, and I came to realize that he must have done some terrible things in the war. That made me ask the question: Are people the sum of their actions? And the first book was sort of an examination of that.

This novel reflected my early discomfort as the woman I was, my tough upbringing.

I also get ideas by buying anonymous snapshots from the flea market.

Q: Where did you get the title for the first book?

A: I was working at an art gallery, and this etching came in of Elijah emerging from the flames with his arms around his head. Seemed to be the same as emerging from war.

Aside related to character of Otto in All the Birds, Singing who is an awful character, but one she empathises with: Just returned from Moscow  - I’ll crowbar that in – and on a show called Moscow FM, I think, with author of Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell - the nicest man. The DJ was this brash, sexist, racist ex-pat, they must’nt have known what he was saying otherwise they would have sacked him. I had steam coming out my ears. But David Mitchell asked him his story, and the ex-pat described how he’d been an ex-preacher, lost his faith, went to Nicaragua to drink and finally moved to Russia so that his family couldn’t visit him.

Aside related to name of Jake assigned to a female protagonist: Friend of the family’s name. Met her again, and she mentioned how it was strange that my protagonist was called Jake when she was called Jake as a nickname by her family. I thought it was her real name!

She reads an extract: Are local kids ripping up sheep? Frightened dog. Frightened woman. Is something stalking her? Dream of all the sheep in the bathroom, turning to look at her.

Applause.

“Evie Wyld!”

Applause.

In my haste to beat the queue to purchase the second novel, I forget to say goodbye to the botanist.

As she signs the inside page, we make small talk about the difference between the Australian cover of her book and the English version. The Australian is much more romantic: bold red with blackbirds flocking.

She says she thought the woman on the cover was pregnant at first, but actually it’s her bum.

When I get home, I realize I’ve bought her first novel by mistake.

http://www.ma-agency.com/authors/evie_wyld

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Weekend Picks: Marlborough Litfest & A Word In Your Ear

Marlborough Litfest 2013 (Fri - Sat) - Writers include Fay Weldon, Carol Ann Duffy, Jackie Kay, and A N Wilson.

The 2013 Marlborough LitFest programme welcomes a diverse range of talent for its fourth year (27-29 September), with 22 events held over two days in the historic surroundings of the Wiltshire market town. Catalogues and tickets are available from www.poundarts.org.uk, the LitFest website (www.marlboroughlitfest.org) or from the White Horse Bookshop in Marlborough. Massive image of Carol Ann Duffy to follow.

A Word in Your Ear, Friday - Listen to short stories on a theme at Burdall's Yard, Bath. (Apparently the drinks are cheap as chips)

http://www.awordinyourear.org.uk/story-fridays/outside-the-city-walls-september/

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Film: Populaire (DVD release)

Debut director Régis Roinsard presents touch-typing as a romantic conceit in semi–successful Populaire, his 50s repackaging of My Fair Lady as a sports movie.

The plot follows Rose (Déborah François), a modern-minded mademoiselle from the local village with a WPM rate that will blow your mind. Despite her professional experience extending only as far as her father’s shop, she’s hired by eligible young insurer Louis (Romain Duris) after furiously hammering at his typewriter until her clothes start to fall off. But it transpires that Louis wants her for more than just typing: yes, he wants her for competitive speed-typing. Convinced he can nurture a world champion, he moves her into his mansion—suitcase, sexual tension and all—for typing training, making a very French mockery of the concept of “professional boundaries”.

There’s much to like in Populaire, but most of it turns up in the movie’s sport-inclined second half. The first half, from the Bewitched-inspired title track, presents itself as an homage to 60s style romcoms and the innocent scripted flirtation as best evinced by Audrey Hepburn. Cue klutz comedy, mucho pouting, and a grinding sense of the inevitable. The difference here is that the romance feels sped up (in the same way as the fingers of the speed-typist are sped up in the competition scenes), delivering the impression that the director grudgingly accepts the necessity of the romantic slog but is anxious to arrive at what he’s really interested in: speed-typing.

And the competitive speed-typing, the sports-minded second half of the film, is well done. The world of 50s competitive speed typing is finely realized (even the production values of the movie seem authentically dated) and Roinsard’s meticulous research produces a compelling backdrop to Rose and Louis’s relationship that yearns to overpower the staid romcom plotting. That said, past the halfway point the barren antics of the first half miraculously bear—admittedly scant—emotional fruit and the tone seems to level out, although there are still laughable swings (Louis recounts a laugh-out-loud military experience which tries to convince us that death could be at all possible in this world where when a woman falls from a bicycle she lands looking cute and pointing towards the nearest gentleman with her legs widely spread).

The casting of Duris (The Beat That My Heart Skipped) and his character’s deranged single-mindedness suggest the desire for a darker, more complex movie, but the ultimate unevenness of his character ensures that any hint of a troubled—and potentially troubling—interior is never truly convincing.

A frothy, good-looking romp that’s ultimately enjoyable, Populaire suffers from being made in a post-Secretary/post-Mad Men world; it’s in the filmmakers’ stubborn denial of the modern context into which they’re releasing this bemusing throwback that they demonstrate the full extent of their empathy with the 1950s.

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Encounters 2013 Award Winners - list

British filmmakers Jamie Stone and Felix Massie take the Grand Prix Awards at Encounters Short Film Festival 2013, making this year the first with a double British win.

Festival audiences have the chance to see a selection of the winning films screening today (Sunday 22nd September) at Watershed Cinema 3 at 11.00am and 5.00pm.

Director Jamie Stone took the Brief Encounters Grand Prix Award for his short film Orbit Ever After for its ‘creative ingenuity, inspired casting, humour, clarity of storytelling and poetic ending’. Felix Massie won the Animated Encounters Grand Prix Award for directing In the Air is Christopher Gray which the judges unanimously agreed had a special quality and witty script. These films now qualify for Oscar nomination.

The full list of award winners and special mentions is below.

Encounters 2013 Award Winners:

Grand Prix

Animated Encounters Grand Prix Award: In the Air is Christopher Gray directed by Felix Massie (UK)

Special mention: The Hunter directed by Marieka Walsh (Australia)

Special mention: Tap to Retry directed by Neta Cohen (Israel)

Brief Encounters Grand Prix Award: Orbit Ever After directed by Jamie Stone (UK)

  Best of British Awards

Animated Encounters Best of British Award: Anomalies directed by Ben Cady (UK)

Brief Encounters Best of British Award: Rosemary Jane directed by Carolina Petro (UK)

  Cartoon d’Or nomination

Cartoon d’Or nomination: Cargo Cult by Bastien Dubois (France)

Special mention: The Maggot Feeder by Priit Tender (Estonia)

Special mention: Hollow Land directedby Michelle Kranot and Uri Kranot (Denmark, France, Canada)

  European Film Awards 2013

Bristol Short Film nominee for the European Film Awards 2013: Orbit Ever After by Jamie Stone (UK)

Special Mention: Fear of Flying by Conor Finnegan (Ireland)

  DepicT! '13 Awards

DepicT!’13 British Special Mention Award: Return by James Young (UK)

DepicT! ’13 Shooting People RPS Audience Award: Cool Unicorn Bruv by Ninian Doff (UK)

DepicT! 13 Random Acts Special Mention: Sun by Paul Hill (UK)

DepicT! '13 RPS Cinematography Award: A Thing by Chintan Gohil (India)

DepicT! ’13 Award: Cool Unicorn Bruv by Ninian Doff (UK)

  Encounters 2013 Awards

Children’s Jury Award: Fear of Flying, Directed by Conor Finnegan (Ireland)

Encounters Audience Award: Home by Thomas Gleeson (New Zealand)

Music Video Award: Stardust by Mischa Rozema (Netherlands)

Documentary Award: Adrift by Frederik Jan Depickere (Belgium / Colombia)

Special mention: Feeding Five Hundred by Rafed Alharthi and Ray Hadded (UAE)

  UWE European New Talent Awards

Animated Encounters: UWE European New Talent Award: Plug and Play directed by Michael Frei (Switzerland)

Brief Encounters: UWE European New Talent Award: Beat directed by Aneil Karia (UK)

  Best of South West Awards

Animated Encounters Best of South West Award: Winter Trees by Karni and Saul (UK)

Brief Encounters Best of South West Award: Behind The Journey by Bristol Sprout (UK)  

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Picks: Encounters Short Film Festival (Brits 2: The Eyes of Others)

Strong selection of short films exploring notions of identity, representation, belonging and acceptance. AJ picks included Flight of the Pompadour (Dir: Karan Kandhari is an Indian filmmaker based in the UK. His work focuses on misfits and loners, and this film is the second in a trilogy: A United Howl), a stylish, deadpan comedy following a geeky youth’s initiation into rockabilly culture; Untitled, 2013 (Dir: Anna Valdez Hanks and Anna Blandford have co-directed three award-winning shorts. They experiment with the creative limits of narrative to explore ethics, sex and identity): beautifully shot in monochrome, this film examined the exploitation of the vulnerable (Colombian prostitutes) for consumption as art (fine art photography). Tits (Dir: Alex Winckler was nominated for a BAFTA in 09 and has directed several other shorts, Channel 4’s Coming Up strand and has a feature in development with BBC Films) follows a boy at a new school trying to maintain his secret – an admirable pair of man-boobs. This delicate comedy touches upon issues of transgender and acceptance with a remarkable lightness of touch and laugh-out-loud moments (“Isn’t puberty a bummer?” consoles the GP). Also includes a wonderful cover of Radiohead’s Creep. Described by the director as “an experiment in film and time”, Stay the Same (Dir: Sam Firth has won awards for her short films which cross boundaries between cinema/art, fiction/documentary, personal and objective experience) compiles a collection of moments filmed of the director at exactly the same time and place every day for a year. The images are moved by a striking original soundtrack by composer, Fraya Thomsen. No Kaddish in Camarthen (Dir: Jesse Armstrong, creator/writer/producer of Peep Show ), the directorial debut from Jesse Armstrong, charts a Welsh oddball trying to find his place in the world and in his best friend’s relationship. Sharp comedic dialogue in this sensitive tale of friendship and vulnerability.

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AJ Recommends: Encounters Short Film And Animation Festival, Bristol

Next week (17 - 22 September) sees the Watershed and Arnolfini host the 19th Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival.

Here’s the trailer:

Didn’t Bristol look clean?

An exciting programme awaits, as broad as it is deep, with delights such as a Masterclass with Aardman’s Creative Director Peter Lord on how to make animated movies; So You Think That’s Funny (featuring Peep Show writer, Jesse Armstrong) where a panel will screen and discuss their favourite comic short films/sketches; plus over 300 short films.

Start here: http://www.encounters-festival.org.uk/

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Dear Dairy

It’s Great British Cheese Week (bad timing for a blogger who has been hitting the cheese a little hard of late).

But, duty before dishonour: cheese has been eaten and ecotopic heartbeats roundly ignored. Hopefully also Arts Jacket’s first cheese awards coverage: the Global Cheese Awards at Frome happening on Friday (watch this space).

Last Friday saw another major event on the cheese calendar: the 20th Great British Cheese Awards, pegged by organiser Juliet Harbutt as the “Oscars” of the dairy world.

Somewhat ironically, the GB cheese that triumphed as Supreme Champion was a camembert-style cheese, but there you go.

Tunworth, a soft white style cheese produced by Hampshire Cheeses, is described as having a “thin, white, slightly wrinkly, uneven rind that encases the pale yellow, almost runny interior that feels luscious in the mouth. The aroma is earthy with hints of mushrooms while the flavour is like melted butter and wild mushroom soup, with just a dash of sherry… it finishes on a delicate hint of green grass.”

No wonder it won: it’s an octogenarian’s entire dinner in a slice of cheese (yes, even the grass). This is the second time Tunworth has waltzed off with the top prize, a feat achieved by only two other cheeses in the history of the awards (Celtic Promise and Innes Button).

This puts me in mind of Jack Nicholson, also white and slightly wrinkly as well as being two-time winner of the Best Actor Oscar for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and As Good As It Gets. Apparently unable to remember his lines at the age of 76, his retirement is an unconfirmed rumour which the international press has accepted as fact; in turn, Arts Jacket shall accept it also as fact.

Hollywood will be literally and figuratively poorer without him.

Here we watch Nicholson in retirement, accompanied by a cheeky soundtrack, in Alexander Payne's 2002 About Schmidt:

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Interview: Jari Moate

Jari Moate is a novelist and the festival organiser of Unputdownable: The Bristol Festival of Literature (Oct 19 – 27). Now in its third year, Unputdownable has managed to carve a unique identity out of a crowded South West literary scene

How would you like Unputdownable to be viewed in the UK lit fest universe?

I would like us to be seen for our warm atmosphere and our willingness to take risks by putting on writers who we think are absolutely fantastic but might not be household names. We’d love to be noted as the place where above all you’re inspired to pick up a new book or actually start writing, whether for publication or just for yourself.

Above all, we want to be known as a place where you can have literature and fun together.  One of the things that I really enjoy is the way that we present literature as important and powerful among all of that. It is a way of looking at the world afresh, and it’s not about sitting and listening to someone thump a heavy idea onto a podium in front of you.

Literature, when it switches on your imagination, takes you to an entirely different place where you see the world from someone else’s angle. You can come back from that, once it has ceased being unputdownable, and you are reactivated in the world. You’re empowered in your real world, and how you view it. (laughs)

Which literary festivals do you admire?

Cambridge WordFest. Manchester Literature Festival is really interesting, slightly rebellious. I also like the Greenbelt Festival of Literature, which focuses on a dirty word: faith. And they’re avowedly not afraid to delve into that.

Describe the current Bristol literary scene.

It sings. In the middle of a recession we’ve had a new bookshop open—a major national bookshop—Unputdownable has started, and there’s also been events at the Birdcage with Bookslam coming up from London. The scene has really burgeoned… little things like Word of Mouth—a fiction and poetry evening once a month, and we incorporate one of their sessions into the festival.

There’s also the Bristol Short Story Prize, it’s just going from strength to strength. Since we sat down in late 2010/early 2011, to look at the possibility of organising a festival and saw that the literary scene in Bristol was a desert, it’s just exploded. I think, in the middle of a recession, you’ve got to ask yourself what’s going on.

Writers coming out of Bristol?

Mike Manson is a great comic writer in the town; Chris Wakling is fab and very talented indeed; we’ve obviously got Helen Dunmore, we all know about Helen. Sanjider O’Connell is local, while Emylia Hall and Nikesh Shukla are incredible recent additions to the city and bring an incredible energy.

Final word?

Writing matters, not for book sales, but because it can change your life.

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Authorial: Margaret Atwood

A book tour stop for Atwood promoting MaddAddam at St. Mary’s Church, Bathwick. 29th Aug, 2013 (Some quotations complete, others summarised or sketched)

720pm

Arrive ten minutes early according to ticket. Front five pews already full. Staff from book store organiser, Toppings & Co., mill around in unusual finery. Just inside: signed books selling well and a table with regiments of free wine—plastic thimbles of white or red. “Going for the fullest, eh?” The jolly old guy leans in. I hadn’t looked, so I check—mine’s not the fullest, must be his patter. Join the procession down the aisle looking for a seat. Median age of audience is… 29.6. 20% men. Arty students mix with arty pensioners. I find a seat. My glass is cracked and dribbles wine onto my crotch. A sneeze behind me like a duck whistle.

730pm

A video camera stares at an empty steel lectern. Beside it, a round table with a glass of water sits on a lace doily screaming to be yanked out. Ornate gold decoration on the organ pipes and—suddenly walled in behind the broad shoulders of a linen-suited gent with snowy white hair. Square-jawed with grey skin and a permanent expression near to horror but minus the shock.

Glance over what audience is still visible: white silk shirt with raven print. Arts and craft trainers. Earth Mother breasts. Thick Black Glasses. Witch’s hunch. Tan leather handbags the size of greeting cards. Solitary old ladies with white hair and kind faces dot the audience like some kind of ministry. Sweater vests. Signet rings. Round Brown Glasses. Ultramarine pendant possibly repurposed hotel soap.

750pm

Beside me, a lengthy conversation about how a new diet is helping her skin. “Especially avocado.” 

Atwood apparently sighted in the toilets.

A collapsible chair collapses near the lectern with a loud clacking noise, draws nervous looks.

Crotch wine stain has almost faded completely… watered down?

Let there be light. Broad shouldered gent departs, his wife and daughter easily fitting into his space on the pew. Mother is well turned out, sparky. Daughter has inherited Dad’s chin. Round shouldered posture all her own.

8pm

Someone is approaching the lectern. A kind-faced man from St. Mary’s. His vest is visible beneath his white pin-striped shirt. He points out the location of fire exits and toilets. “We’re open Wednesdays and Thursdays and we’re usually not this crowded!” Exit stage left.

Enter thirty-year old MC in black shirt and stylish glasses.

“Deals with the greatest problems of our age!”

“Incredible imagination and foresight!”

“Margaret Atwood!”

Applause.

Margaret Atwood. Sartorial summary: a blackboard down the centre of which someone’s dumped a tin of artfully blended magenta, orange and blue paint.

Whispered: “She’s smaller than last time.”

Atwood sings a funny hymn from The Year of the Flood. A plastic glass cracks loudly toward the rear of the church. At the hymn’s conclusion, she waits for us to sing “good” back to her. We do.

Laughter.

A brief history of the cover of MaddAddam (website “Coverflip” is mentioned). Original cover had flowers and a bee. “Why not a pigoon,” she suggested to the publisher. (Pigoon derived from pig + balloon, embarrassed not to have realized this). “It’s not about flowers and it has some cannibalism and evisceration in it.” Next cover proof offers a sad-looking pigoon with a pigeon on its head.

Atwood pauses to allow an ambulance siren to pass.

“There are no pigeons in the book. Some ravens and crows, but no pigeons.” Pigeon dropped, and eventually the “dynamic, in-flight noble-looking pigoon we have today” was realized

Spoiler: “Would I put a flying pigoon on the cover if there wasn’t going to be one in the novel?”

She has precise, descriptive hands. As she talks about “Jimmy’s world” her left hand goes through the motions of deftly opening a spin-dial safe. “A footnote: today there are more private security people than policemen”—hand gesture like a piece of paper tossed away behind her. What she refers to as giving a “small answer” is accompanied by a mime of tuning in a station on a car radio.

Another ambulance, another pause, with a swivel-headed expression combining outrage and disbelief.

Opens it up for questions. “I promise to tell the truth most of the time.”

The first two questions are not questions, but people announcing that they are from Alberta.

Q: A question about Atwood’s depressing view of women. Has suppression by men improved?

A: I don’t make predictions. Can someone tell the Republican Party that “The Handmaid’s Tale” is not a blueprint? I present a vision. Do you like it? Do you not like it? Go from there. Women and men: it’s a global ongoing problem of push and push back. We’re in a period of rejecting our mother’s values and taking up our grandmother’s. Topics being discussed today were being discussed in the 70s.

Q: Why are visions of the future always depressing? Why not write about utopias instead?

A: Go back 150 years and there were plenty of utopia stories. This ended with the successive world wars. Utopias invariably involved whoever is in charge saying: We have to get rid of these people over here.

If we succeed in killing the ocean, we shall all stop breathing.

Applause.

Q: What made you a writer?

A: I wanted to be a painter, a dress designer, a biologist. At age 16, I started writing and it was too much fun. In 1952, the Guidance Textbook said there were five things you could do as a woman: Primary School Teacher, Nurse, Stewardess, Secretary, and Home Economist. No writer on there, but neither was it offered for men. All writers seemed safely dead, so it felt like a good bet.

Q: How’d you feel after your brother insulted you after you released your first poetry collection?

A: My brother said, “I use to do this when I was younger.” He’s very droll. It was a joke. Not an insult.  

Q: Who do you read?

A: I won’t answer this because if they’re living, then the other ones get hurt. If they’re dead, the same thing, and you don’t want a bunch of dead writers angry at you. But I will say this: you can’t go wrong with Shakespeare.

A third ambulance.

Laughter.

Applause.

[artsjacket]

Dear Dairy

Comté.

Hard, French, unpasteurised, born of the cow’s udder.

Enjoyed a hefty whack of the above slab at a well-catered picnic. It was slightly softened by the afternoon heat, and, for me, there was a meeting of minds where before had been only awkward pleasantries. Nutty, buttery, toffee-y. Magic.

There’s a twenty point grading system for Comté. If it’s 15 and above the lucky cheese earns a green badge. If it’s sub-par, they sling it out the back and label it Gruyère (Comté’s full name is Gruyère de Comté). This doesn’t delight the Swiss, the creators of Gruyère (not to be confused with crap Comté). However, the Swiss can always wheel out Le Gruyère Premier Cru. This cheese sleeps for a thousand years on pillows of unicorn mane before being summoned to win awards (it's also available at the Co-op). According to foolproof Wikipedia, it has won title of world’s best cheese at the World Cheese Awards four times.

No other cheese had repeated this extraordinary feat.

The rivalry put me in mind of Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis. Willis had allegedly demanded $4m for four days work on Stallone's next Expendables film, rather than only $3m. Outrageous. Willis was dropped from the film, and Harrison Ford drafted in to replace him. Stallone tweeted this about Willis: “GREEDY AND LAZY …… A SURE FORMULA FOR CAREER FAILURE”.

Silly me thinking appearing in an Expendables film signalled career failure.

Who is Gruyère and who is Comté? If we accept Harrison Ford as Le Gruyère Premier Cru, then it seems clear. And I’ve never really been sold on Stallone/Gruyère, which smells like farts when cooked in the oven.

I don’t care if it’s a greedy jerk—Comté, I’ve got your corner.

Photograph: Phil Mccarten/REUTERS

[artsjacket]

On reboots and Man of Steel

The word ‘reboot’ is actually derived from the Latin ‘rebus bootus’ meaning ‘to shit on your childhood’.

That said, the Casino Royale reboot was superb. Star Trek better than fine. Batman different.

Spurred on by these successes, Hollywood continues to leech off the artery of the tried and tested: look out for RoboCop next year; Terminator in 2015; and, inevitably, Back to the Future.

The economics of large scale commercial filmmaking has always promoted the cannabalizing of other art forms: theatre, the novel. Now it’s going after its own back catalogue. Originality remains an ugly word and film—at least coming from this source—is being warped by commercial forces, its development as an art form arrested.

Good for Nicholas Winding Refn creating something nearly unwatchable after his supremely watchable Drive.

None of this is terribly new, but it seems to be getting worse. Hollywood’s obsession with the megabucked ‘tentpole’ blockbuster (perhaps a tactic that Sony might reconsider after this summer's After Earth, White House Down and, probably, Elysium) means there’s less space for producers to pitch original scripts asking for smaller budgets. This producer, Lynda Obst (Adventures in Babysitting, Flashdance), has written a thing about Hollywood’s “New Abnormal”.

Reboots of successful comic book franchises are currently the golden goose Eggs Benedict. And here we get to the prompt for this rambling post: Man of Steel. $225 million budget. Miscast Bambi stand-in Amy Adams as hard-edged journo Lois Lane. Superman as played by the looks-right-brings-nothing-else-to-the-role Henry Cavill seems not to suffer the surprise boners of Christopher Reeve’s 1978 fumbling Man of Steel. Cavill's is perfect; more icon than character. Zack Snyder directing, so it was fun to look at with decent action… but also entirely humourless, with the charisma of a pasty.

Smash the photocopier. Bring on the new. Dammit.