Metropolis and what i am up to this week

 

Busy week this week, so certainly won’t be much chance for writing much, as am really, really busy.

On Monday – I went to watch Metropolis at my local arthouse Cinema in Manchester called the Cornerhouse. I have been A big fan of that place for years and years now, certainly for a good 15 years or so now and prefer going there than to one of the major cinemas for it’s independence.

                                                                                                         

Metropolis according to a certain well known film site is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science-fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of this context to explore the social crisis between workers and owners in capitalism. The film was produced in the Babelsberg Studios by Universum Film A.G. (UFA). The most expensive silent film ever made, it cost approximately 5 million Reichsmark.^[2]

Metropolis was cut substantially after its German premiere, and much footage was lost over the passage of successive decades. There have been several efforts to restore it, as well as discoveries of previously lost footage. A 2001 reconstruction of Metropolis, shown at the Berlin Film Festival, was inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in that same year.^[3] In 2008, a copy of the film 30 minutes longer than any other known surviving copy was located in Argentina. After a long period of restoration in Germany, the restored film was shown publicly for the first time simultaneously at Berlin and Frankfurt on February 12, 2010.^[4] The event of the Friedrichstadtpalast was shown live on a screen at the Brandenburg Gate as well as on TV on ARTE. This version was also shown in New York at the Ziegfeld Theater in the last two weeks of October 2010. ^[5]

I myself first saw it a good few years back in both a black and white release which was by no means a long version (I then saw the 1980’s coloured version which had

Some terrible rock music backing it) and was amazed by the vision of the film which

Had to be influentical on films such as Star Wars and the Star Trek films. This new version I saw was the version which has been worked on with the additional 30 minutes of footage which although now still hasn’t made the film complete, it’s

certainly the closest version to completion until now.

Sadly the newly discovered footage is of a poorer quality than the remastered main film (which I have got to say is impressive by any stretch of thought), and it shows in the film if you sit through this version and some of the missing footage as well perhaps isn’t really needed (I reckoned it could have been trimmed vy 15 minutes or so), but it was still at worth interesting and at 145 minutes makes for a full evening’s worth of entaintiment.

Tuesday  yesterday was band rehearsals. Some of you may or may not know about my previous band Words and Music which later became Wordmusic. Sadly the band went onto hold at the end of Summer owning to the health of several members, and so instead of waiting for people to get better, I have formed a brand new band which currently doesn’t have a name which currently looks like it will have a core axis of myself, my buddy Jeff on guitar and Rachel on fiddle. Vocals will be interspread

Through the trio and we are going to keep our eyes open for additional members as I would like a keyboard player and / or a good bass player too. The plan like with my previous band Words and Music and Wordmusic will be to focus on spoken word with some music over the top, but this will be somewhat darker music than Words and Music and Wordmusic as songs so far have covered topics such as Suicide, A Serial Killer, Domestic Voilence, Mass murder in war and Joy Divison. Yep, the cheerful stuff – lol but it’s looking good.

Wednesday tonight will involve chairing a poetry discussion in Manchester City Library called Poetica (www.myspace.com/poeticamanchester). I myself have been going to this discussion group off and on since mid 2007 I guess now and have certainly found it helpful to some of the pieces I have wrote since.

I think it is due to start at 6.15pm and will finish off maybe 7.45pm or so.

City Library can be found at Elliot House, Deansgate, Manchester (0161 234 1900).

Thursday will involve helping my guitarist Jeffarama out with his open mike night ‘Guitars and Verse’ at Butterflies Bar in Bolton. Jeff’s been running this night since September monthly, and the night is doing pretty well with a nice mixture of poetry, music and anything goes really with a headline act ‘Bob Kettle’ in this case who I don’t know a great deal about but I have been told is a really good singer songwriter.

I think from my side, I will probably be doing just the two pieces one with Jeff, one solo as a poem I think. No idea what yet.

Friday will probably be quieter (will probably chill at home in bed) and I’ll be seeing Cathy my other half on Saturday for a curry to celebrate my friend Ray’s birthday and then on Sunday we are both off to a bonfire display, so all go as normal.

Manic week all in all, but progressing nicely.