Some pictures must be taken, some things must be blogged. Photography and pop culture.
This week’s Weekly Prompts Wednesday Challenge–wheels–was reading my mind (I think it happened once or twice before), because I was just about to post some of my wheelbarrow pictures.
I have quite a collection of them now. Wheelbarrows are among my favourite things to photograph.
Two in one shot. How lucky!
They’re such a useful invention. Can you imagine how difficult life would be without them?
Cake!
You may have heard of the Amazon Prime TV show Daisy Jones And The Six, an adaptation of the book of the same name by Taylor Jenkins Reid, about the rise and fall of a fictional rock band in the 1970s.
My favourite guy, Sam Claflin, plays one of the two main roles (or the main male role) in the show, the band’s frontman, Billy Dunne.
This is him with his guitar in the series finale.
Sam is the reason I know about the existence of DJATS in the first place. I got the book on Audible before the show aired, but it’s not something I would likely pick up under normal circumstances–I’ve never been into 70s music, or 70s anything really. I confess right here and now, I only started listening to Fleetwood Mac because of DJATS. They’re that type of band whose songs you know without knowing you know them. The last bit of Chain has been used as theme for Formula 1 coverage, for example.
I became a fully-fledged Sam Claflin fan sometime during the first lockdown. (Based on the posts on my Tumblr, I’m going with May 2020.) At that time, he already had been cast as Billy Dunne, but filming had to be delayed when the pandemic hit. In the end it would be delayed for 18 months. This turned out to be an advantage–the actors had plenty of time to master their respective instruments, and their singing. (And the men could grow out their hair instead of having to rely on wigs.) The band members are :
Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin) – lead singer/songwriter, rhythm guitar
Graham Dunne (Will Harrison) – lead guitar
Eddie Roundtree (Josh Whitehouse) – bass
Karen Sirko (Suki Waterhouse) – keyboard
Warren Rojas (Sebastian Chacon) – drums
I knew this would be a big role for Sam, one of the biggest of his career, in fact. I knew he would nail it without a fault. And he did. I also discovered that he can sing, and he’s quite good at it. Sam dedicated himself to the part in full, he lost a lot of weight and learned to play guitar; he transformed into a true rockstar. As far as his fashion choices go, he wears double denim almost exclusively–and he makes it work!
Mild spoilers to follow.
Billy Dunne is a charismatic, talented frontman and songwriter, but he struggles with alcohol and drug addiction. He forms a band in his hometown of Pittsburgh with his younger brother Graham and some friends. He meets Camila Alvarez (in the book she was, I think, called Martinez and the actress who plays her is a namesake–Camila Morrone) and they fall in love. When the band leaves for LA to seek their fame and fortune, she joins them. They get married when she finds out she’s pregnant, on the eve on the band’s first tour. In the book, Camila is a waitress, in the show she is a photographer. Which, needless to say, made me happy, although I think they could have done more with it. (Also in the book, she doesn’t come with the band to LA but arrives later, but I don’t sweat that detail.)
The band, initially called The Dunne Brothers, renames themselves The Six, even though there are only five members. (They explain why. This is a change from the book–the bass player, Pete, doesn’t exist in the show and in the book they have three guitarists, in the show one of the three guitarists plays bass instead, but let’s not complicate things, I’m here to talk about Sam.) Billy’s addiction spirals out of control and this is when Camila, wanting to surprise him on tour, catches him in a… situation (Boris Johnson’s initials) with two groupies. She tells him he has until the baby is born to start behaving himself. When she gives birth to their daughter Julia, Billy, unable to face the child in the state he’s in, enters rehab. He comes out, having missed out on the first months of his daughter’s life. Now I get to what is my most favourite scene in the show. Billy is at home, now sober, but can’t seem to be able to bond with baby Julia. This is when Camila sits him down and orders him to pick up his kid.
Billy gets teary-eyed. When Camila asks him what he’s afraid of, he replies: “what if she loves me and I fuck it up”, to which Camila says: “welcome to the club.”
The emotions are strong in this scene and Sam gives it all. But I let the man speak for himself:
(Embedded from my Tumblr blog, but the source is linked.)
Anyway, Billy does pick his daughter up–and doesn’t let go of her again.
At this point, the band is sort of dead in the water, as their tour was cancelled when Billy went to rehab. The music producer Teddy Price (Tom Wright), who develops into a sort of a father figure for Billy, suggests collaboration with an up-and-coming singer Daisy Jones (Riley Keough). So they collaborate, she joins the band, they are now Daisy Jones and The Six, they record an album titled Aurora and hit it big. Here’s the thing, Daisy is also a songwriter and she and Billy work together on songs for the album. They clash more often than not, she laughs at him for writing songs about his wife (Aurora is meant for Camila), he points out that she can’t work without drugs. But they’re also drawn to each other. It’s not clear, however, whether anything took place between them or not. Not in the book.
The book is written as a series of interviews. The band abruptly broke up after playing a sold out gig in Chicago in 1979, after which they never performed again. The interviews take place in the present time, around mid 2010s. (In the audiobook, the characters are all voiced by different voice actors, making the listening experience that much better.) In the show, the last concert happens in 1977 and the interviews are set much earlier–probably because if the characters were supposed to be in their late 50s/60s, the aged up actors would look ridiculous. In the show, they are being interviewed for a TV documentary. But the interview scenes are minimal and what we see is what went on back then in the 1970s. Or at least one interpretation of it.
Unfortunately, here’s where the show’s writers screwed up big time: they decided to focus solely on the Billy and Daisy relationship, at the expense of everything else going on in the story. To make matters worse, instead of keeping it entirely platonic, they had them kiss twice or three times, I don’t remember exactly, I purged it from my memory. Whether they aimed to appease the Billy/Daisy shippers (who are of the insane, rabid kind), or they’re Billy/Daisy shippers themselves, or hate Camila, or don’t know how to handle her (she is a very strong character, make no mistake), or whether they’re idiots, I can’t tell. Worse, all the official channels are promoting this relationship. I understand they’ve got a product to sell, Amazon will make money from selling the music and the merch, not just from the streams. But I do wonder why they’re so carefree about elevating what is essentially infidelity.
So, if you couldn’t tell, I’m not a fan of the Daisy/Billy ship and the writers’ obsession with it has soured my viewing experience. In times the show descended into ridiculous, soap opera style melodrama and cringey lines. It was like a fist bursting out of the TV screen with Daisy and Billy have INSANE connection written on its knuckles, hitting you in the face. Forget the shipping wars–this type of in your face stuff just cheapens the story. The actors deserve better than that.
But let’s get back to my guy, because that’s what I’m here for. Sam’s acting was flawless, which is no surprise, because it always is, but this role demanded more than any of his previous roles did. In the last episode, especially. The finale was nail biting, even if you had read the book. It was a well done episode, they showed us the last concert in Chicago, with flashbacks to what was happening earlier, events that led to the band’s inevitable breakup. I actually panicked two days before the finale upon seeing a particular picture on Instagram (which I was afraid might mean the show would split Billy and Camila up) so I looked up a spoiler-filled review from a critic to reassure myself that it would still end the way it should end. And I was still stressed. Even my cat was stressed. Pepper, who’s normally very chilled at night (I watched the episodes as soon as they dropped at midnight, they released them in chunks of two and three), kept running around like crazy, getting under my feet and on my nerves. And she wasn’t even watching it.
At the end of the book, there is an amazing scene between Camila and Daisy (note that the two women never fight for Billy, they have a lot of respect for each other) in the hotel after the Chicago gig. The show did it differently. They opted for tension more than anything, but the good thing is that we got the best out of Sam. Anger, despair, love, hate, jealousy, grief, the whole spectrum of emotions. And he still gives the rockstar act on the stage. Instead of the Camila and Daisy scene, we got a scene of Billy and Camila on the hotel balcony, discussing their marriage. I’m willing to sacrifice the Camila and Daisy scene in the book for the Camila and Billy scene on the show. As they talk, little Julia, having woken up from her sleep, comes out on the balcony, and they instantly switch to being parents. It was so heart-warming, and Sam and Camila (the actress) gave it all.
It’s disappointing, not to mention frustrating, after having waited so long to see one’s favourite actor in a career-defining role, only to be let down by bad writing and bad fanservice. But I have decided to make the best of it. I’ll extract Sam and all the things I liked about it and (try to) forget the bad. If anything, DJATS the show can be used as an example how not to do things.
The Music
The music is another gift. The show hired a team of songwriters for this, led by Blake Mills. The album Aurora actually exists, and not only that–there are songs by The Dunne Brothers, songs by The Six, solo Daisy Jones songs and even a track from another fictional band, The Winters, who were the keyboardist Karen’s previous band. There’s even a song written by Daisy, stolen by a guy she was dating at the time and released by him as his own. Last but not least, Simone Jackson (played by Nabiyah Be), an aspiring disco diva and a close friend of Daisy, also sings.
Official discography playlist on Spotify:
Is There More To Life Than Billy Dunne?
Well, yes, obviously, but this post is about Sam. I like many of the other characters. Camila, of course, then Karen, whose story matters to me the most (but that’s another topic that I might blog about in the future). Billy’s younger brother Graham is an absolute sweetheart and Warren the drummer, unbothered by all the drama going in the band, just want to live his best life and sign women’s tits.
I loved Teddy, he was a true rock for Billy, Daisy and Simone. Simone’s storyline was the best change from the books. In the show, she is a lesbian and has romance with Bernie (Ayesha Harris), who is a DJ. It’s technically a spoiler, but it’s important to note that this is a black gay couple that gets a happy ending. I liked Rod Reyes (Timothy Olyphant), the band’s tour manager.
I would say I feel mostly no particular way about Eddie, but he provided a good conflict. And, honestly, I don’t care for the titular Daisy much. I like messy women in fiction, but not her.
Riley Keough is the granddaughter of Elvis Presley, the king of rock’n’roll himself. This is where I get bitchy. And you know what, I think she was the weakest link for me, both in acting and singing. Contrast the nepo baby with Sam Claflin, a most ordinary boy from Norwich. This is where I end being bitchy.
Let me end with my personal favourite song of DJATS, The River, here on YouTube.
Because I’ve not been taking pictures as I usually do, but still want to run the blog, here’s this silly snap from New Year’s Day:
If you’re gonna spray graffiti, at least make it positive! The shop the wall belongs to is a Chinese takeaway. Which should put a smile on your face just by existing.
The arrival of 2023 welcomes, among other things, all of Sherlock Holmes stories (and I think that means all of Arthur Conan Doyle’s works too, unless I’m missing some of the last ones) into public domain. You can now write and publish any Sherlock story of your own, without worrying about getting into trouble with the estate.
One of Agatha Christie’s best books, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, has also entered the public domain. All these works are available for free in digital format.
I hoped Kenneth Branagh would tackle the case for his third Hercule Poirot film, especially as he mentioned “wanting to retire to grow vegetable marrows” in last year’s Death on the Nile, but it is not so. The next instalment (which is being filmed now) is A Haunting in Venice, an adaptation of Halloween Party. It seems Poirot retired to grow vegetable marrows, not into an English village, but to Venice. (It will be a loose adaptation, as Halloween Party doesn’t take place in Venice.) Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a tricky one to adapt for screen, because of its unique twist, but it can be done. The David Suchet TV episode was unfortunately not good, but I still hope someone will do it well.
I’ve been thinking about writing a lot lately. More than usual, more than photography. Even the algorithms know, I keep seeing ads for writing classes on Facebook and Instagram. I posted three stories in quick succession over on my writing blog, to my own surprise. It turns out the secret to writing is… writing. As opposed to thinking about writing, daydreaming about fictional characters and noting down ideas. It was like discovering the pearl of wisdom. I hope to continue with it this year. I’d like to experiment with different genres.
It’s been raining almost constantly. No walks in the park, no taking pictures. I have to march in my living room to meet the steps target on my FitBit!
That’s about it for my random and weird thoughts. Have a good January.
A new year is here and it’s important to start it well.
First, make sure you’re going in the right direction.
And two, take a bold leap.
Happy new year!
The year is ending, it’s time for another recap post.
Let me get this out of the way first: this is a personal post on a personal blog. This is not a current events blog. There’s been a lot of bad stuff this year. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, most of all, the cost of living crisis, the absolutely insane weather brought on by climate change. But for me, on purely personal basis, it has been a good year.
My mum said the other day when we spoke on the phone, that things happen that we have no control over and can’t do anything about. So what is left but to live one’s life? I’m devastated at the state of the world… I hope it gets better and wish I could do something… I hope Putin’s head explodes… I want a better world, for everyone. I want the Star Trek future to be real, not just a fantasy. But to want something is just that.
So, the recap.
I have made 106 posts on Some Photoblog. That’s not just a record, that’s outstanding. I thought last year’s 89 was an achievement. (Note, these numbers are correct at the time of writing, I sometimes delete old posts, sometimes without a trace, sometimes I republish them later, keeping the original text and adding new pictures, or keeping the pictures and changing the original text.) Over on my writing blog it was 13 posts, also a record. Although not all of them are technically stories, writing is writing.
And in 2022, I’ve had my share of nice things.
Well, it can hardly get any better than meeting one’s favourite actor and travelling to one’s home country after seven years of not travelling to one’s home country, like the proverbial prodigal daughter.
Meeting Sam Claflin was without question a highlight of the year (and one of the highlights of my life), not only because of how nice he was, and how magical the experience felt, and how his smile is really like that, but also because the whole trip to London for the convention (by coach, because one can’t rely on trains anymore in this kingdom united, meaning I had to leave the day before and spend a night at a hotel) thrust me out of the familiarity of my comfort zone straight into the uncharted waters of the big wide ocean. For someone who never goes anywhere and sticks to the same places and activities, my stress levels reached the stratosphere. I knew once I got through it, I’d be able to do anything.
At the convention, aside from meeting Sam Claflin, I also got an autograph of Ben Barnes. He, too, was very nice–and chatty! (Sam seems more quiet.) His eyes are really that dark.
Another favourite I saw was the band Bastille live in concert. They were my most streamed artist on Spotify wrapped.
Taylor Swift released her album Midnights. But I still keep listening to Evermore.
And it was a good year for an Agatha Christie fan. Death on the Nile was finally released in the cinemas, after numerous delays (and a scandal involving one of the actors), with Kenneth Branagh directing and playing the role of Hercule Poirot. Then there was the film that directly honoured the queen of crime: See How They Run. A murder is committed in the theatre that hosts her play The Mousetrap and Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan of the London police force team up to solve it. It takes place a year after the play opened, 1953. The film very meta–and the character of Agatha herself appears too. And finally just in time for Christmas, Glass Onion came out on Netflix. After the success of Knives Out, Rian Johnson gives us another case for detective Benoit Blanc, played (with much fun) by Daniel Craig. Rian once again brilliantly combines Agatha Christie-like tropes with current issues and lots of humour. If you hate Elon Musk, you’re gonna love this movie.
I’ve seen a few articles talking about how murder mysteries are back, but I think people have always liked them.
The above mentioned Mousetrap celebrated its 70th anniversary in 2022 and I went to see it when they came to Manchester as part of the anniversary tour.
It was so good to see my home town of Bratislava again. I was so happy I finally took some pics there with my Canon (last time I had gone there I didn’t have a DSLR camera). November is not perhaps the best time to travel (right after the clocks went back too, so days became even shorter) but I made the best of it and I got lucky with some nice weather.
I was a bit worried about putting my cat in a cattery, fearing that she would think I was abandoning her. It was her first time staying in a cattery. But she got through it alright. (Imagine running a cattery, though, it seems like one of those dream jobs.)
I cannot do a 2022 recap post without mentioning the death of the longest reigning monarch, Elizabeth II. I’m not keen on monarchy, it’s inherently anti-democratic, but I can’t deny Elizabeth was an impressive person. She’ll be remembered for centuries to come.
The UK also went through three Prime Ministers. One of them, Liz Truss, was at the job for 49 days–and was outlasted by a lettuce.
The chaos in British politics would not have existed had Leave not won the referendum in 2016. But, you know *shrug* I have said everything that needs to be said about it.
So as not to end the post on a depressing note, let us remember the heroes of the year. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the women of Iran who rose up in protest of the regime. And also you. The person reading this, for getting through whatever you had to get through. Keep on keeping on.
Bring on 2023!
We’re in that time of the year again, so here is my Christmas post for 2022.
Two quick smartphone shots with Christmas theme.
Drawing inspired by Caffe Nero festive cup.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, and if you don’t celebrate or don’t want to celebrate, then have a peaceful time.
Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, the longest running play in the world, is celebrating its 70th anniversary. It first opened in London’s West End in 1952 (and has now outrun the reign of Queen Elizabeth!) This milestone is being honoured by a tour around the country, of which one of the stops was Manchester.
Yeah, you know I went, you don’t even have to ask. Duh, I’d lose my Agatha fan card if I didn’t go see it!
Opera House looked pretty nice with the displays.
I was there on the 3rd December, so their last night in Manchester (yeah, it was a few days ago, I just forgot to post it…). From what I could see, it was a sold out performance.
The Mousetrap is a classic Agatha Christie locked room mystery. A group of people at a boarding house are cut off from the rest of the world by snowy weather, someone gets murdered–whodunnit? The tune of Three Blind Mice is a recurring motif, hence the title of the play.
When the murder was about to happen, all the lights went out, including the fire exit signs. Truly spooky!
I didn’t manage to get the program, so I had to look up the cast on the website.
Everyone was excellent–I keep saying I need to go to the theatre more often. It requires quite a different calibre of talent than film and TV acting. Fun fact: in its first opening in 1952, the role of Detective Sergeant Trotter was played by Richard Attenborough.
And finally, as it has recently been announced, The Mousetrap is heading to Broadway in 2023!
I saw this weekend’s Weekly Prompts Weekend Challenge was Flight–and I knew I had the right content for it!
Taken on my recent flight from Bratislava back to Manchester. The geolocation shows as Karlovy Vary (also known as Carlsbad) in Czech Republic, a popular spa resort not far from the German border.
The fluffy white clouds would almost make you believe you were in a fantasy castle in the skies–but only almost. It’s a Ryanair flight after all!
(For readers outside Europe: Ryanair is a budget airline that operates to and from most of the major cities here, so not very romantic, but honestly, they do exactly what you need them to do, i.e. fly you from A to B, and what more do you need?)
Note: A post titled A Work Of Art was originally published on Some Photoblog in June 2021. I have come to a decision to delete and republish it with some changes to the text and expanded title (the pictures remain the same as in the original post). I explain why below.
This painting hangs in Manchester Art Gallery (quite high up, hence the awkward angle).
It’s Hylas and the Nymphs by John William Waterhouse. Waterhouse was an English painter of the Pre-Raphaelite movement and Hylas and the Nymphs is one of his best known works.
The Gallery’s label:
(Look, I don’t know. Maybe the nymphs were just like: dude, you’re trespassing. It doesn’t have to be that deep. Waterhouse can hardly be blamed for some femme fatale shit, when it’s a story from the Greek mythology. Also, I like Pre-Raphaelites. I like nice things. I’m a visual person.)
The image below is a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, the fourth film in the series, released in 2011, directed by Rob Marshall:
Okay, so you have to squint a bit. But you can see it.
The two stunningly beautiful people are Philip and Syrena, played by Sam Claflin and Astrid Berges-Frisbey. Syrena is a mermaid, not a nymph (and there are no water lilies, obviously), but she does look like something Waterhouse would have painted. He seemed to have had a thing for women of mythology and legends, and bodies of water. (Waterhouse, get it?) Philip is no Argonaut, he’s a missionary, which is why he wears that cross, but he was on a ship. Which is, I suppose, a logical occurrence in a movie centred on pirates. On Stranger Tides is probably the weakest in the series, but it’s still worth watching for these two, if nothing else. Their romance would surely inspire artists and poets alike. There was something so pure about it, stupid as the word is. I love Philip and Syrena, they own my heart.
*spoilers* Interestingly, much like Hylas, Philip was never seen again either. His fate is a bit ambiguous, as he’s injured, likely quite critically, and the above scene is the moment just before he and Syrena kiss and she pulls him into the water. It was established earlier in the movie that a mermaid’s kiss can heal, and she does tell him: “I can save you, just ask,” though he doesn’t ask, he says he wants only forgiveness, as he blames himself for her capture. She kisses him anyway (get in there, girl!), and the last we see of them is when they float underwater. But I’m positive Philip didn’t die, the reason why neither him nor Syrena appear again is that The Powers That Be decided not to use them any more. *end spoilers*
So, now for the controversial part. My original June 2021 post was a silly entry about how film snobs need to get over themselves and step on a Lego, because the similarity between the Philip and Syrena scene and the Waterhouse painting proved that Pirates of the Caribbean films were a work of art. Not that I no longer believe this to be true (because the similarity cannot be denied), but it is a frivolous matter compared to… well, everything surrounding the lead actor of the franchise.
However, I maintain that the Pirates movies don’t necessarily have to revolve around the character of Jack Sparrow because they still have a lot going for them that is not Jack Sparrow. (In fact I think the later instalments should have reduced his role). Adventure, humour, horror, romance, and a lot of swashbuckling action. There are plenty of other great characters; the first trilogy truly belongs to Will and Elizabeth. I mean, it’s Elizabeth who becomes the Pirate King. Not Jack. There’s Tia Dalma and Davy Jones. Weatherby Swann (Elizabeth’s father), James Norrington, even Cutler Beckett. And the films always nail their romances. Will and Elizabeth, Philip and Syrena, and Henry and Carina in the fifth film. And I think Geoffrey Rush’s performance as Hector Barbossa is just as iconic as Johnny Depp’s Jack. The scene in The Curse of the Black Pearl “you’d better start believing in ghost stories, you’re in one” where he’s revealed to be a skeleton in the moonlight, is so bone chilling and so, well, iconic! I also love Elizabeth and Will’s wedding in the third film, At World’s End. On a ship, in the middle of a battle, Elizabeth shouts to Barbossa: “Barbossa, marry us!” To which he responds: “I’m a little bit busy at the moment!” But he nevertheless marries them, while all three of them are fighting their enemy.
Plus Ragetti and Pintel are a hilarious duo.
All that and the theme tune (composed by Hans Zimmer, no less) is the best.
On Stranger Tides was Sam Claflin’s first film. You know how I feel about the guy.
In conclusion, Pirates of the Caribbean films are a lot of fun. But if you feel you can’t watch them any more, that’s okay too. And if you’ve never liked them anyway, then it doesn’t matter.
I wonder if Waterhouse would have been a fan?
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