OUR CLASSICAL MUSIC COLUMNIST LIZ LEATHERDALE, FOUNDER AND OWNER OF COLCHESTER CLASSICS, BRINGS YOU HER PICK OF OCTOBER’S CLASSICAL MUSIC EVENTS IN, AND AROUND, COLCHESTER.
In Colchester and the surrounding area there always seems to be music available at various festivals, on-going series and visiting international artists at concert venues. Here is a sneak peek at some taking place in October in our musically rich region.
The 65th season of the Stour Valley Arts & Music 2016/2017 series begins with the Calder Quartet from America performing chamber music including Debussy’s only String Quartet (a work that takes me back to my A Level music class when it was one of the set works!) The Calder Quartet is widely recognised as an outstanding ensemble and this concert forms part of its European tour which also takes in London’s Wigmore Hall and concert venues in Zurich, Frankfurt and Madrid. Sunday 9 October 2016 at 4pm in St Mary’s Church, The Street, East Bergholt CO7 6TA.
Colchester’s Roman River Festival enters its final weekend of events with the usual varied mix of music. Friday 30 September sees Mahler’s Symphony No.1 being performed in a new version for fifteen players plus a rare chance to hear Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin with its story of lust and power. This will be the first time a Mahler symphony has been performed at the Festival. Friday, September 30, 8pm in Stoke by Nayland Church
Saturday 1 October in the same stunning location, international cellist Tim Hugh performs Britten’s Cello Symphony accompanied by the Festival Orchestra. The orchestra will also perform Vaughan William’s heart-felt response to the horrors of World War Two with his Fifth Symphony. Saturday October 1 at 6pm in St Mary’s Church Stoke by Nayland
In complete contrast, the Festival Finale on Sunday 2 October at 4pm showcases much of the education and outreach work which has been taking place over the last few months with a folk-inspired musical journey around the British Isles and beyond.
To view the remaining concerts at the Festival and to check for ticket availability please contact (07759 934860) www.romanrivermusic.org.uk
Two lunchtime concert series begin early in October. Firstly, Allan Granville and Christopher Roberts perform piano duets on the Boston piano with Borough Organist Ian Ray playing music by J.S. Bach, Herbert Howells and Alexandre Guilmant. Tuesday October 4 at 1pm, Colchester Moot Hall.
Admission is free with a retiring collection in aid of The Friends of the Moot Hall Organ.
Secondly, the following day also at 1pm Charles Hine (clarinet) accompanied at the piano by Ian Ray presents the first concert in the Autumn Lion Walk Church Lunchtime series. Wednesday October 5, Colchester.
Free entry with retiring collection.
Many Colchester musicians will be performing in the British Clarinet Ensemble’s 21st Anniversary special concert where Charles Hine conducts works including music by Colchester-based composer, Alan Bullard. Saturday, October 2016 at 7.3opm, Stapleford Granary, Bury Road, Stapleford, Cambridge, CB22 5BP.
Tickets from £8 (01572 756128).
If you have a forthcoming concert of classical music, you would like previewed, contact Liz Leatherdale on 0800 999 6994.
Start your love affair with Classical Music at www.colchesterclassics.co.uk and take a minute to watch their company video:
Pete Hope, the man behind GO4 Enterprises and the Market Café in the town’s Holy Trinity Church tells us about his latest scheme, Breakfast Payforward.
GO4 Enterprises origins lie in homelessness, an experience fortunately most of us never have to even contemplate yet experience.
A roof over our head, food in the fridge, warm bed are things we probably all take for granted.
In our Market Café in Holy Trinity Church, Trinity Street, we often have homeless drop in and we help them out whenever we can, having recently initiated a Breakfast Payforward for anyone unable to afford a hot breakfast or hot drink, and we have been amazed and humbled by our customers’ response. Hopefully we can sustain this with continued customer support, no grinding grant making applications, and a simple human response to another human’s need.
The scheme relies on customers buying a breakfast in advance for someone down on their luck. It costs £5 and is an adaptation of an idea from of Naples where customers of a coffee shop were invited to buy coffee in advance for people in need.
The first day we went “live” Wednesday 14th September, our very first customer of the day was a lad I knew to be on the streets. Coincidentally he had come to us because he had no money – his benefits had been stopped and he had no place to stay – he was sleeping rough on the Hythe Quay, and hadn’t eaten. He looked emaciated to how I remembered him before, his face was bruised and his arms and legs lacerated from being beaten up.
He had been denied a tent from a local charity working with the homeless. The reason being was that they wanted to “see him around” for a longer period of time before giving him a tent. He didn’t have the money to get into the night shelter, and in any event had been banned for a previous misdemeanour.
£3 though for a night in the shelter buys a lot, and is only the price of a coffee, almost, but is a king’s ransom to some people
He had been going round all the charity shops asking if they had a tent they could give him. He found one but they wanted £6, so that’s why he came to us, hobbling on crutches, his foot in a cast, he wanted to know if we could give him a job for the day so he could go and buy the tent and a pillow, which had been put aside for him.
He wasn’t seeking charity from us, he didn’t know about our Payforward Breakfast scheme, he was clutching at straws, desperate for a tent.
We couldn’t give him a paid job for the day, but were able to give him a hot cooked breakfast and drinks.
We went to the charity shop to confirm that his story was true, and it was, so we bought the tent for him out of our petty cash float – explaining why we need a tent in our catering operation will be tricky with our bookkeeper!!.
Some people have a problem accepting Social Enterprises as “proper businesses”. Some would rather the issues that surround homelessness, poor, not be seen in High Street settings where image is paramount.
We counter those views with positive action. In reviving our High Street areas we want to embrace those who are less fortunate, help them eat, work with other agencies that support them, but also serve our own customer base, whose amazing response to our scheme is a big vote in favour of what we are doing.
In every High Street, retail area, there are empty lifeless shops, we brought an empty lifeless Church back into being again… a contemporary resurrection.
If we can do it, anyone can do it.
Colchester Borough Council extended us an opportunity, but how long we can remain is unknown as our future tenure in doubt. The principle worked here and can work anywhere. The challenge to the council is to continue supporting “edgy” initiatives, because they bring life and diversity, as well as commercial activity in disused buildings.
We can count ourselves lucky at Colchester 101 that our resident movie critic has written this review of Pete’s Dragon as he wasn’t expecting to like it. Instead he loved it.
It was a very different person who walked out of the darkened cinema to the one that went in. A grumpy, middle-aged cynic took his seat for the remake of Disney’s underwhelming Pete’s Dragon, a cutesy-cute confection of a kid’s film from that studio’s doldrums years; it was a small child, heart full of hope, joy and the possibilities of an unlimited imagination, cheeks still damp from tears, that emerged into the bright Summer sunshine 100 minutes later.
Pete’s Dragon is an absolute gem of a movie, a family film that is enchanting, beautiful, terrifying, funny, glorious. In short, it delivers everything that the very best of cinema promises: it lifts you up, carries you on a journey and leaves you way up high with emotions, characters and story that will live long in your heart.
The film opens with five-year-old Pete and his family heading out for an adventure in America’s densely forested Pacific North-West. Pete is sat in the back of the car reading Elliot Gets Lost when a deer wanders into the road resulting in a devastating crash that kills his parents. Young Pete crawls from the wreckage his picture book in hand and wanders off into the forest. Things go from bad to worse for our young hero when he is set upon by a pack of ravenous wolves, but then a huge, lumbering form intervenes and saves the child from a horrific death a great, green dragon, its shaggy fur bristling with anger and menace. When the child places his hand on the dragon its fur changes from dark to a light, friendly green and I think this was the moment I fell in love with not only Elliot (as Pete names him) but also with the film itself.
We then skip to six years later and civilisation begins to encroach upon the idyllic, fun existence the boy and his dragon chum enjoy, loggers are clear-cutting the forest in which the pair have played, romped and flown. Only park ranger, Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her kindly old dad, Meacham (Robert Redford) stand between the loggers and the destruction of the wilderness, but this is further complicated by the fact that Grace is engaged to Jack (Wes Bentley), the owner of the logging company responsible. Jack’s brother Gavin (Karl Urban) is determined to push further and further into the forest and cutting as much as possible and it is here that he encounters the now feral Pete (Oakes Fegley).
Pete is the boy many of us wanted to be, tough, self-sufficient, effortlessly athletic, brave and living his life and adventures with his very best friend. Oakes Fegley is yet another wonderful find in a year stuffed with great child actors, especially in the moments where he realises the other side of the fantasy – the loneliness, fear and isolation, the pull of reality and that first pre-teen love (provided here by Oona Lawrence, Jack’s snappy, street-wise daughter Natalie).
It’s a great cast and everybody gives nothing less than their best, especially Karl Urban as the movie’s villain, Jack. Whereas the big bad of the original was a two-dimensional cartoon baddie played by Jim Dale, Urban plays Gavin with nuance and depth, a deeply wounded man who is just doing what he believes must be done. And it’s always great to see that winning twinkle in the eyes of Robert Redford.
But it’s Elliot who’s the standout character. Maybe not every shot of him is perfect but every shot he’s in is perfect. With his big eyes, wonky under-bite, stumpy legs and bright green fur it’s impossible not to love him. He’s silly and sad (sometimes in the same scene), exuberantly full of life and love for his forest and for Pete and full of happiness.
Director and writer David Lowery has crafted a beautiful and awe inspiring cinematic experience, that’s not afraid to wear its heart on its sleeve and yet is full of goofy fun and buckets of snot. All the characters are allowed to be fully human, or in Elliot’s case fully dragon, and there are hints of their back stories carefully hidden in plain sight. It’s difficult not to compare Lowery’s approach to that of classic Spielberg, there’s a sense of awe that permeates the entire film and not just those fantastical scenes where Elliot appears. Pete’s Dragon is a big screen movie that is unashamedly big screen, that’s where it was designed to be seen and that’s where you should see it, you’ll thank me later.
I was glad I saw Pete’s Dragon with a real audience and not in a screening room full of cynical critics (myself included). I revelled in the joy, giggles, awe and occasional sniffles of the children (and some of the parents) in the audience. It’s a movie that makes adults feel nostalgic, not for the original or for toys but for the nostalgia of a time when we felt anything was possible and for younger viewers just starting out on the journey that cinema offers, Pete’s Dragon is a giant, furry, welcoming pair of friendly arms that say, “Come with me, let’s go on an adventure”.
Andy Oliver is fresh back from the Odeon with his review of Suicide Squad. Read on to hear what he thought of it.
This is my third attempt at writing a review of Suicide Squad, basically the first two drafts were spent feebly attempting to put a positive spin on what is, possibly, the most disappointing movie of the year, so far. Disappointing mostly because the marketing campaign was so fabulous, a couple of really fun trailers, exciting dayglow posters, star-studded cast, interesting choice of director (David Ayer, known for his visceral, gut-punch style of movie making) and a promise that it would be everything Batman Vs. Superman wasn’t. The problem is that there is so little to like in a movie that looks and feels like that old adage: a camel is a horse designed by a committee. And, boy, is Suicide Squad one ugly looking camel.
As destabilised as the appearance of Superman made the world, his (spoiler) death has created even further chaos and uncertainty. Every nation and terrorist group is desperate for their own super-powered protagonists and, to cope with any potential threat, government agent Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) puts together a task force, a suicide squad, from the super-powered inmates of Belle Reve prison. This is obviously a bad idea, especially when The Enchantress (Cara DeLevigne) manages to escape Waller’s fail-safe and becomes the first major threat the group has to face.
In the first thirty minutes of the movie we are introduced to the individuals via flashback/origin tales that play out like extended dvd extras, all to the beat of far too on-the-nose choices of music tracks. Deadshot (Will Smith) is a conflicted assassin, the World’s greatest marksman, who constantly worries that his daughter will she him as a villain. Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) is a former psychiatrist and psychotic sex-doll girlfriend of The Joker. Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) is a crocodile skinned killer (obviously). Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtenay) is a notoriously silly Flash villain and comic relief whose name pretty much explains his skills. El Diablo (Jay Hernandez) is a tattoo-faced former gang member who can wield fire. The Enchantress is a six-thousand-year-old spirit who inhabits the body of archaeologist June Moon. There’s also Slipknot (Adam Branch), but he disappears from the film so quickly I couldn’t tell you anything about him.
To control this dirty half(ish) dozen is soldier Rick Flagg (Joel Kinnaman) and his sidekick: sword-wielding, woman of mystery, Katana (Karen Fukuhara). Can this conglomeration of misfits form a cohesive team and fulfil their appointed assignment? Put their collective differences aside and become an effective force? What do you think?
So when The Enchantress sneaks away from Waller and Flagg’s control and resurrects her brother, Incubus (a cgi character so bad it makes The Mummy Returns’ Scorpion King look like the absolute apex of special effects), the squad gains its first major mission. Cue explosions, shouting, incomprehensible action and hordes of blackberry-headed cannon fodder (The Enchantress transforms men into fruity-headed minions. Seriously).
This film is a mess. It’s been well documented that major reshoots were ordered by the studio after initial photography was finished, those reshoots stick out like a sore thumb, poorly edited in in an attempt to inject more humour and “fun”. There are tonal shifts that destroy any flow the story might initially have had; characters disappear without reason, some are introduced multiple times, some are hardly introduced at all; there’s way too much brooding from the male characters and the female characters are either trying to be the brooding male characters or exist purely as fan-boy sex fantasies; the motive of the villains is unclear, if not totally inexplicable (in a movie about bad guys taking on worse guys there really shouls have been stronger villains); an already flawed script is muddied by the obvious reshoots; the editing is all over the place (at one point a character leaves the group and, in the very next scene, is seen walking in slow-motion with the rest of the squad; and then there’s Jared Leto’s Joker…
The Joker appears mostly because he’s the only recognisable DC Comics villain/character mainstream audiences will probably know, he’s shoe-horned into the film “Just because” and serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever. You could cut virtually all of the five minutes he appears and have no impact on the story at all and he’s such an irritating presence that you’ll wish they had. Leto’s version of The Joker is bad. Really, really bad. So bad that it actually harms the character, the legacy of Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, Mark Hammill and Heath Ledger is marred by every second he’s on the screen.
Leto is bad, yes, but at least he’s trying to act, Cara DeLevigne on the other hand… DeLevigne is truly awful. She puts in a performance (if you can call it that) that’s not only a career low but might also stand as one of the worst ever captured on film. I have no words…
Ben Affleck appears as Batman for a few minutes but his appearance culminates in a scene so sex-creepy that my jaw almost hit the floor. It’s one of the most uncomfortable things I’ve ever seen in a superhero movie and so misjudged that it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the character that, and I don’t say this lightly, I’m not sure I’ll ever feel comfortable watching Batman on film ever again.
Fortunately, Will Smith and Margot Robbie sparkle with on-screen charisma, not enough to save the movie but enough to make it just about watchable. It might sound bizarre but Deadshot is far more heroic than the current Henry Cavill iteration of Superman, he’s the moral centre of the movie and, unlike Cavill’s Superman, he actually wants to be a hero. Stand out for me, though, is Jay Hernandez as El Diablo. Hernandez brings a wounded humanity to his character and in a smaller roster this might well have been a break-out role for him, as it is he is mostly left in the background but when he comes to the front he is both magnificent and tragic.
Suicide Squad has its moments, but they are just that: Moments. Technically Batman Vs. Superman is a worse film but the disappointment I felt coming out of Suicide Squad weighed much more heavily upon me.
Our resident movie critic Andy Oliver selflessly taken himself along to Colchester’s Odeon cinema to see Pixar’s 3D computer-animated sequel to Finding Nemo. Here are his thoughts.
Finding Nemo was a pretty great movie, from the emotionally devastating beginning to its uplifting and exciting finale; it was stuffed full of great characters; there were plenty of laughs and a few tears; oh, and it was beautiful to look at, really, really beautiful.
Dory, the big-hearted Blue Tang with short-term memory loss (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres) was a terrific sidekick, but the idea of basing a whole movie around her? I’m not afraid to say I was more than a little sceptical about the idea, I was worried she might just get a little, um, annoying.
Turns out, I was wrong (not for the first time). Dory is a terrific central character, full of warmth, heart and bravery, a fully realised, emotionally vibrant protagonist whose journey every bit as heart-warming and heart-breaking as any Pixar has offered up before.
It’s such a shame that Finding Dory falls apart in the second act when it moves from the open ocean to an aquarium.
When a memory is sparked by the migration of hundreds of stingrays, Dory sets off in search of her family only to fall into the hands of some well-meaning marine biologists, Marlin (Albert Brooks) and Nemo (Hayden Rolence) in pursuit. Dory ends up in an aquarium/fish hospital from which she enlists the aid of a cranky septopus (a seven limbed octopus wonderfully played by Ed O’Neill), a short sighted whale shark (Kaitlin Olsen) and an echo-locationally challenged Beluga whale (Ty Burrell).
Finding Dory begins with a series of flashbacks that lead up to Dory’s first head-on meeting with Marlin and then Finding Nemo happens. The opening scene itself is beautifully touching as Dory’s parents (Eugene Levy and Diane Keaton) try to teach her coping mechanisms for her short-term memory, parents of special needs children will no doubt recognise the small triumphs and the struggles portrayed here.
The problems begin to appear as Dory first remembers that the aquarium is the place she was raised and tries to get from one pool to the next and then the next and so on. Then she tries to escape, which basically involves trying to get from one pool to the next to the next. Meanwhile, Marlin and Nemo are trying to break into the aquarium which involves… well, you get the idea by now. It’s all a bit frantic and, as a consequence, character development suffers, especially for Destiny the whale shark and Bailey the beluga. There’s just too many set pieces and not enough story and by the time you get to a highway car chase (yes, really), it’s all a bit tiresome and exhausting.
It’s a shame because there’s a lot to enjoy and some great comic relief characters like two sea lions played by The Wire alumni, Idris Elba and Dominic West, and a seriously freaky-weird bird called Becky. Ed O’Neill is great as Hank, the escape obsessed septopus, snarky and broken-hearted by turns. A couple of old friends return, there’s cameos by the seagulls and Sigourney Weaver, but not enough of the sea otters (seriously, you can never have too much sea otter “Cuddle party” action).
Dory isn’t as funny as she was in Finding Nemo, but that’s okay, it allows DeGeneres the space to go deeper into the character and note-perfectly plays sad resignation and childish excitement.
Listen, Finding Dory isn’t a bad film, at times it’s really, really good and less demanding audiences won’t complain too much at its repetitive, hyper final two acts. The problem is that Pixar have set the bar so high with so much of their output that it’s really noticeable when they dip slightly under it.
Oh. And if nothing else Finding Dory is really, really beautiful to look at.
A few months ago we took a look at Colchestersoup, a simple idea with its origins in Detroit, USA. The Colchestersoup events have come a long way since those early days and Karen Taylor now brings us up to date.
Looking back, looking forwards
It’s well over a year now since Colchestersoup first opened the doors in Colchester at the Hythe community centre and it’s been an absolute rollercoaster of a year!
Back in January 2015 the soup concept was a new one to the UK with Colchester being the 3rd town to host soup evenings.
We constantly had to explain the concept… no it’s not a soup kitchen… and we still do. But that’s OK. Since then we’ve met up with the originator of Detroitsoup (who we nicked the idea from) after she was flown over by Richard Branson and have learned that after 6 years of Detroitsoup she still has to explain it to her own father.
But it’s a whole lot easier now. BBC world news visited us in Colchester town centre in March last year, wrote a stunning write up and soup exploded all over the country. Figuratively.
We’ve been in newspapers, on the radio, in magazines and blogs and visited other soups as far north as Newcastle- They had been trying to get funding for 2 years but nobody ‘got’ the concept. Until the BBC article.
Now there are more than 50 in the UK. We’ve had visitors to Colchester who have flown down from Scotland to see how it works, visitors from the Czech Republic and on no soup night is there a room full of entirely Colchester people – the last one included Lithuanians, Czech and Chelmsford people amongst others.
The idea is simple – we rent a room, provide some soup and invite 3 people to speak about their idea and what they would do with any money won. The 3 people will have already submitted forms telling us about their idea – that way we can select a varied group for the entertainment of the room. Visitors pay a donation at the door for soup and a vote, the money goes in a pot, 3 people speak, everybody has homemade soup and a roll while discussing who they are going to give their vote to. Votes are counted – highest votes takes all the money. On two occasions people have shared with joint top votes. The community in the room decide who gets the cash – not us, not a grant form, not a committee. People for people.
We like our numbers here at soup. After all there would be no point if we couldn’t measure the impact so a few statistics…
We’ve run 15 soup events over a period of 17 months. We’ve run 3 events for councillors where the councillors put their community grants in a pot, one for Essex County Council alongside Harwichsoup to show ECC how it could work, one for Colchester Voluntary Services, and the other 10 were ‘normal’ soups. At those events 60 people have stood up and talked about their ideas (there are more at councillor events- everybody that asks gets a turn) Of the 60, 4 were charities, 23 were other organisations, 24 were individuals with good ideas and 1 was a local business. The councillor pots accounted for £10,000 distributed across 23 different organisations. The remaining soups have ‘redistributed’ £3,130.68 from visitor pockets to pitcher pockets.
The pitchers have included such ideas as:
Fitting out a van to travel and educate people about autism – Individual Star ratings for restaurant and business doors showing accessibility – Individual Clay for free pottery lessons – Individual Potters wheel for special needs adults – Organisation not related to individual above Exoskeleton for badly damaged leg – Individual Funding for book publication – x2 – Individuals Korfball awareness – Individual – didn’t want to win just wanted to let people know it exists Minecraft overlaid with Camulodonum – Individual Grief Counselling – Individual Disability adjustments to houses – Charity
Some of those won, some didn’t but let’s use those as examples…
Fitting out a van – his 50th birthday – he raised awareness and gained extra donations outside of soup Star ratings – someone else in the room offered to create the website which the money was needed for – doubling it’s value – he won Pottery lessons – they won – someone else in the room gave them access to heavily discounted clay Potters wheel – they won – it’s probably spinning as you read Exoskeleton – this was the final amount of money needed for revolutionary health care usually only available to the forces – he won and is the first civilian in the UK with this intervention. He was due to have his leg amputated the following week. Funding for a book – one is published and has great reviews – the other – watch this space Korfball – didn’t win – someone else in the room offered an entire team of players Minecraft overlaid with Camulodonum – hopefully will be in all schools in Essex soon – he won but gave his money away to joint winners Foodbank Grief counselling – she won – needed money for office space but someone else in the room gave her the office space – free – money used for sourcebooks instead – doubling the value Disability adjustments – strong East of England charity – there to raise confidence of the presenters speaker skills – he’s come back from devastating injury – now a confident presenter
With numbers that good we should be really pleased to continue. To be honest it’s the stories at the bottom of the page that are our reason for being. Every time we go home we are buzzing with the new ideas that WILL happen in Colchester just because a group got together in a room for a few hours.
All we did was rent the hall and bring some soup along.
Find out more about soup HERE Or follow us on twitter @colchestersoup
And like us on Facebook www.facebook.com/Colchestersoup
Listen to soup in action courtesy of brilliant community person Adam Roxby Here.
Over the past couple of weeks some extraordinary images of Colchester have been appearing on social media. Combining both old and new photographs of the town local photographer Xav Marseille has been creating a collection of stunning images, each of which is an incredible fusion of the town as it was decades ago, and as it is now in the 21st century. He aptly has named this collection Then and Now.
If you would like to see more of these amazing photographs, along with Xav’s other work, pay a visit to his website www.about.me/xavmars and follow him on Twitter @XavMars.
In Xav’s own words:
As a Parisian who arrived in Colchester over two decades ago, this town has become part of the fabric of my life. I studied Art and Graphics in France, but photography has always been my real passion and in more recent years I have experimented with a range of editing techniques that has culminated in the production of a series of interesting artwork – some of which prompted a recent exhibition at the Mercury theatre which ran for over 8 weeks.
A recent discovery of some old photographs of Colchester inspired my latest project – which explores how Colchester has changed over the years. It’s been interesting to consider how the landscape of the town has changed and, using various editing techniques coupled with my own modern photographs, fuse the two images together. The results have been both striking and insightful. Part of the project has allowed me to go on a journey delving back into the past, where as a photographer, you suddenly realise that you are standing in the same spot as the photographer 40, 60 or even 80 years ago. The equipment and technology may have moved on, and the landscape may have changed but the desire to capture the essence of the town from that perfect angle remains the same. The project has gathered momentum with the help from locals who have submitted old photographs and suggested ways to incorporate the artwork (postcards, calendars, publishing a book) and generally encouraged me to produce more of the “Then and Now” fusions.
I would like to see the project develop into an exhibition at a local venue where people can perhaps experience the journey that I have taken during the artistic process and step back into the past with the images whist still enjoying what they capture about modern society.
Our resident movie critic Andy Oliver is fresh back from a trip to the Odeon to see Stephen Spielberg’s big screen production of Roald Dahl’s much loved children’s book The BFG. This is what he thought of it.
The sound of a falling bin in the dead of night usually alerts us to the midnight hunger of the neighbourhood cats or the occasional urban fox, but for young, insomniac orphan Sophie (Ruby Barnhill), there is something far, far larger that disturbs her wee small hours. A giant stalks the London night and, once seen, he has no choice but to kidnap the curious youngster for fear that she will reveal his existence to a world he secretly fills with dreams and wonder.
A relationship that begins with fear and suspicion blossoms into a warm and loving friendship, the giant and the little girl finding in each other that which they are both missing in their lonely existences. The Big Friendly Giant (Mark Rylance) lives in a world where he is bullied and threatened by bigger giants, he needs a friend as much as Sophie needs a family, they are two halves of one greater whole and, together, they are an unstoppable force for everything that is good and brave and decent. Together, the BFG and Sophie must figure out how to stop the larger, more vicious giants from eating children and how to live in a world where both are exceptionally sensitive to the pain of others.
As much as Sophie and the BFG are bound by their kindred spirits, so are Roald Dahl and Steven Spielberg: Two of the greatest storytellers ever to grace their respective, artistic fields. Dahl is one of the treasures, if not the crowning jewel of children’s literature and Spielberg the undisputed master of a cinema that speaks to the child in all of us. Forget Batman and Superman or The Avengers, this is the team-up to beat all team-ups.
Working from a script by the late Melissa Mathison (who wrote ET), based on the Dahl’s favourite of all his stories, Spielberg creates a vision that, although narratively slight, is a beautiful love letter to both writers and, also, a statement of his own body of work. The BFG takes Sophie to a magical realm where he harvests the dreams that flit around like technicolour fireflies, remixes them to his own recipe and distributes them to the world of slumbering human beans (sic). If that’s not metaphor for the work of the writers and of himself, then I don’t know what is. A lesser director might have mined their back catalogue for nods and winks, but Spielberg is way too savvy to use obvious (and over-used) Jurassic Park tumbler of water/approaching footsteps gags or overplaying the giants’ fear of going in the water.
The film is a mixture of live action and wildly inventive computer effects, the giants and their world standing just on the right side of cartoonish. The opening scene, a sweeping, descending shot of London at night and the production design (especially of the idealised architecture) both recall Mary Poppins, a live action/animated classic that also perfectly nailed this mix. The effects are seamless and carry you on a journey that enters through wide eyes and nourishes the soul, it is a landscape of wonders beautifully realised.
Mark Rylance, who brings the BFG to life through motion capture performance is wonderful. He delivers his Dahl-isms with a charming, and occasionally heart-breaking, bumpkin accent (“Use your titchy little figglers”) and slowly brings you into the head of a character that you initially distrust to that of someone suffering crushing loneliness and a desperate need to connect. Whilst in Ruby Barnhill, Spielberg has found another natural gem of a young actress, she’s sassy, tough, smart and caring as Sophie and has charisma to spare. The Flight of the Conchords’ Jermaine Clement is marvelously evil as the movie’s big bad, Fleshlumpeater and Penelope Wilton puts in a wonderfully understated performance as The Queen.
The BFG is squarely aimed at children but there’s much to enjoy for mums and dads too, though Spielberg doesn’t throw in any sideways winks of adult humour. There’s fun and scares and wonder and fart gags aplenty (three of the Queen’s corgis realising, in unison, that an explosive exhalation of bottom-gas is on its way is going to take a lot of topping in the laugh stakes this, or any, year). Yes, there’s a bit of a pacing issue (the film occasionally dips) but you’d have to be a World-class cynic not to enjoy anything The BFG throws at you. Unless it’s a Snozzcumber.
Pete Hope, co-founder of GO4 Enterprises who run the GO4 Market Café in Holy Trinity Church, Trinity Street, and Café on the Rec in Old Heath, tells Colchester 101 readers about himself, how he came to found the social enterprise, and the challenges they face.
I was born in 1952… I’ll let you do the maths, Al Martino, “Here is My Heart” topped the embryonic music charts, not that I can remember ever hearing it.
I guess I am very fortunate to have lived through the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and having a good go at enjoying the new millennium.
When I left school there was no such thing as a NEET (Not in Employment Education or Training). That was how you dressed for an interview.
Gay was a brightly coloured article.
I wasn’t a major success at school and obviously suffered from some form of juvenile amnesia as I often forgot to go.
Lack of qualifications didn’t hinder my progress into work, I learnt three good things at school – how to bunk off without getting caught, how to type and do shorthand – I told the school I had aspirations to be a journalist… the truth was a little different.
Wherever I worked I ended up typing and taking notes. Employers seemed to be surprised that I could type, and quickly, but also that I was a male who was able to touch type.
I often wonder how things would have panned out if I had learnt woodwork or metal work, but Lyndon Croney the love of my life, didn’t do woodwork or metalwork she did RSA Stage 1 typing and shorthand… it was a no brainer.
My first job was at Stratford Magistrates’ Court, where my typing skills were used daily. I moved out of the area for a while to take a better paid job in Dunstable Magistrates’ court.
After phaffing around I managed to get arrested for TWOC of a motor vehicle – it’s a long story – fortunately charges were dropped but I lost my job.
I applied for and joined the London Fire Brigade at 19 years old. I loved it and it was a
childhood dream to follow my dad as a firefighter. I served over 16 years, but incurred a due to service injury that pensioned me out of the Brigade.
The effect of that was quite devastating, a loss of income, identity, leading to boredom and dissatisfaction… I learnt then about the Black Dog of depression. It wasn’t a nice time, with three young children, large mortgage, and no qualifications, and having to fight the Home Office over pensions rights – which resulted in a precedent being set for future fire-fighters in my position.
The FBU were fantastic throughout this period supporting me even though I had left the service. Anyone who knocks Unions has no real knowledge of the depth of work they do.
Once I had recovered from the injury I got involved with voluntary work in the Probation Service, and ended up getting paid work supervising and managing offenders on Community Service (now called Community Payback).
It was during this time that I could see the real obstacles that young men with criminal records would have in obtaining work, and by now technology was replacing manual labour, reducing the amount of work available.
The Probation Service was starting to do less rehabilitation and was turning into a more punitive government organ, so I left.
That process has continued even more so, and the on-going privatisation of Prisons and Probation Service is proving very unsatisfactory.
I joined an organisation called Frontier Youth Trust and was invited to develop a youth work amongst young offenders. We concentrated on establishing a housing/mentoring project in Colchester called Out4Good, and this is still running.
However, we came back to the old chestnut of lack of employment opportunities for ex offenders, so I left that organisation to form GO4 Enterprises, this happening in 2010.
Myself and another founding Director started the Enterprise with a £100 investment.
GO4 is a Community Interest Company, a Social Enterprise with the aim of providing work/training/support for long term unemployed, ex-offenders, people with learning difficulties, and disabilities.
In 2010 One in Five young people were categorised as being Not in Employment, Education, or Training, so we broadened the remit from ex-offenders to any person out of work. My experience of being out of work through no fault of my own was a major spur in trying to do something positive benefitting both the community and individuals involved. My involvement with the criminal justice system, both as a Court Clerk, and then from the wrong side of the Dock, gave me a real understanding of what it was like to be on the wrong side of the law.
If I had gone to prison for the offences I had committed, my life would have taken a completely different direction.
I had a family who backed me and spoke up for me. Many young people don’t have that support.
In 2013, after three years of undertaking voluntary projects with a whole range of individuals, with little funding, we took over Holy Trinity Church and turned it into an indoor market and café.
We were also undertaking a gardening contract for a local housing association, and employing three ex-offenders supervised by a paid manager.
Our young people were now getting paid, and we saw a marked difference in their attitude and a subsequent drop in criminal activity, and one lad who is still with us overturned a crippling heroin addiction as well as shedding his tag as a Persistent Prolific Offender.
We face many challenges as we journey with our staff and small group of dedicated volunteers whose support is vital in maintaining our work
Currently we are assisting several young people with learning difficulties, helping them to get work ready, giving them training and work experience. We now work with people with physical and mental illnesses as well as entrenched unemployed whatever their age.
Our two main businesses are GO4 Market Café in Holy Trinity Church and Café on the Rec in Old Heath. We are engaged in a voluntary project on Jaywick.
The challenges of Holy Trinity Church are that it is cold and poorly lit.
It is owned by Colchester Borough Council and they have said they have no resources to improve the facilities.
We have a short lease and because of this have been unable to secure funding to improve the heating and lighting, but we feel a broader feasibility study should be undertaken by the council to ascertain what improvements can be made under the Church’s Grade 1 listing
We do not have the expertise or time to invest in a major fundraising bid on the building as this would distract us from the work we need to be doing with our staff/volunteers.
At the moment, because of a council staffing issue, we have been unable to meet with the CBC Estates team to discuss options and a way forward but unless we get a clear message from CBC it will be difficult for us to maintain or improve our position.
The “café on the rec” presents itself as a clear opportunity to train more people, but again without the support of volunteers to assist us in our aims this work could be hampered through lack of investment.
We have other out of borough opportunities presenting themselves and we will explore these in greater detail if momentum is lacking within CBC.
GO4 is governed by 5 Directors and we are all unpaid.
We have a share issue whereby staff can be involved, and independent investors.
We have 18 independent traders in the Market/Café, 6 staff on the payroll and 20 individuals on either work experience or volunteering.
So including the Directors there are nearly 40 people who have a stake in GO4.
The future is uncertain, much depends on whether we are able to draw in extra investment to branch out and concentrate on developing training in catering, with less emphasis on the market/café.
I would expect over the coming months that there will be some closures of small independent cafes as consumer confidence reduces. A nearby competitor has closed recently.
Our margins have been reduced because of increased operating costs, with a slackening of footfall, and we cannot pass increased costs onto our customers
There are plenty of coffee houses in Colchester, so as a company we need to always be considering what options we have to diversify and increase our capacity.
It’s been a busy summer at the town’s Odeon cinema for 101’s movie reviewer Andy Oliver who is freshly back with this review of the Ghostbusters remake for you.
It’s difficult to talk about the new Ghostbusters movie without first addressing the elephant in the room: that small but vocal group of misogynist internet dweebs who have taken it upon themselves to down-vote this movie on ratings sites; shout down anyone on social media who “dared” to defend the choice to switch the gender of the titular team; shout down anyone who rightly insisted that you cannot judge the quality of the film until you have seen it; they’ve even gone as far as to claim the original is an out and out horror movie with comedic elements and that turning it into an all-out comedy is somehow “Sacrilegious”, or that it is, in some bizarrely twisted-logic way, disrespectful to, and ruins, their childhoods.
Quite frankly, I have no time for these people or their hateful, whining rhetoric and empty threats. I’ve already had death threats on Twitter for not only defending the build up to this movie and accused of receiving cash for giving Batman vs. Superman a bad write-up (I wish). My response? The one that hurts them the most: I ignore them. They are the film fan equivalent of ISIS: hiding their identities behind false names and avatars; their hatred/ resentment of women in anything other than submissive roles; they want their “sacred” favourites to be the only ones that exist and think that their views are the only ones that should exist.
Now, for the sake of transparency I would just like to say that I in no way receive any payment or favours or special treatment for writing these reviews. I take every film I see on face value and never review a film without having seen it first. I try to give my honest opinion and am in no way biased in favour of any company. I just love movies and I love writing about them.
So, now that’s out of the way, the reason you’re reading this: Is Ghostbusters any good?
Actually, yeah, it’s pretty good. Not great, I’ll admit, but a perfectly good Summer movie that compares very favourably to the original. It’s funny in all the right places and scary in all the right places and makes for a very enjoyable evening at the cinema.
Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) is about to receive a tenure as a professor of physics at prestigious, if snooty, Columbia University, when she discovers that a book about ghosts she co-wrote twenty years earlier has been re-issued by her co-author and former childhood friend, Abby Bates (Melissa McCarthy).
Abby is still working on paranormal research and technology with Jillian Holtzmann at a rinky-dink college that has, quite frankly, forgotten they are still there. Erin goes to persuade her friend to withdraw the offending book from sale but finds herself helping Bates and Holtzmann in an investigation in to the sighting of a ghost at a New York mansion/tourist destination. A few gallons of ectoplasmic goo later and it’s “a-ghost hunting we will go” for the three women as the investigate and battle spooky goings-on around the city. They pick up more help along the way in the form of street savvy subway worker Patty (Leslie Jones) and thick-as-excrement receptionist Kevin (played with comedic excellence by Chris Hemsworth).
The veil between the living and the dead, it turns out, is being scratched away by angry nerd (ahem) Rowan North (Neil Casey) who wants to bring about the apocalypse in revenge for a life of being bullied and overlooked.
Ghostbusters works really well for maybe its first three-quarters and there’s plenty of great laugh-out-loud moments and a couple of genuinely scary moments. It’s in the climax that it falls a little flat, the laughs and scares kind of fall flat and it lacks somewhat in excitement drifting off into the generic. It’s okay but it never really has you sitting on the edge of your seat or falling off it with laughter, which is a shame because the journey getting there is so much fun.
There’s some really great comedy performances, Wiig and McKinnon are especially good and Leslie Jones nails all her moments. Melissa McCarthy plays a much more subdued, almost straight, role which, although she’s good, fans of her usual foul-mouthed mania might find a little disappointing. Chris Hemsworth is terrific as the good looking, but dim, Kevin and Andy Garcia makes a welcome and very funny appearance as the mayor. There’s cameos from virtually all the original cast, Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, Ernie Hudson, even the late Harold Ramis is in there or, at least, his likeness is. Oh, and don’t worry, Slimer is in there too. The cameos are nice on the whole but nothing more, they add very little to the movie and an appearance by Ozzy Osbourne is downright embarrassing.
Those cameos are not the only things that hark back to the original, there are far too many nods and winks to it as well. These Easter-egg references, whilst entertaining enough for the more forgiving fans of the original, tend to hold Ghostbusters back from being its own film, they anchor it too closely and, as such, the remake never quite escapes the shadow of the Bill Murray et al classic.
Writer/director Paul Feig keeps the fun moving at a cracking pace but lacks the action credentials to hold the climactic battle together. Feig is a terrific comedy director and sets up a couple of truly unexpected jump-scares I just wish he’d got that third act nailed, then I might be watching a movie that really annoyed the Ghost Bros.
I hope Ghostbusters does well enough to demand a sequel, I enjoyed being in the company of this gang and look forward to an adventure unshackled from the chains of the original. It’s a movie made for a mainstream audience, not for a vociferous few who believe they are entitled to a movie just for them, it’s not a feminist movie as the Ghost Bros. would have you believe, it’s a movie where the main protagonists happen to be smart, brave and funny women.
