Gershwin and Zatoichi

It’s time to update this site with another jour­nal entry. I don’t really feel like doing any work at the moment, I’m very tried, and this seems to be a valid subs­ti­tute. All I’ve got to do is an assign­ment; write up four lec­tu­res and some ques­tions. Ins­tead I’ll waste my time wri­ting this for all the peo­ple on the inter­web that read other people’s journals.

This week I have done a few things of inte­rest. On Thurs­day night (after my LONG uni­ver­sity day – leave for uni at 8:15a.m. and get home at 10:30p.m.) I saw “Zatoichi” at the War­wick Stu­dent Cinema. I went through a phase of watching all the Asian movies I could, horror, samu­rai, anime, drama, ping pong, etc… . In doing so I watched a few great movies and a whole lot of crap. This crap had put me off foreign cinema for a few months, the last movie I recall watching being Azumi. Any­way, Zatoichi has firmly reins­ta­lled my con­fi­dence in Asian cinema. It’s a refreshing blend of drama, samu­rai and comedy with a rip-roaringly fan­tas­tic blow out sound­track ( — “The Sun”) by Keiichi Suzuki was nothing short of breath taking. I now offi­cially sup­port all of Beat Takeshi’s (Takeshi Kitano) work and have remin­ded my self to watch “Dolls”.

Then on Fri­day I slept through my lec­tu­res and woke at 1p.m. At 3, I and Samantha left for Bir­mingham, via Lea­ming­ton sta­tion. We were going to see the Bir­mingham symphony orches­tra per­form a tri­bute to George Gersh­win, the famous song wri­ter from the thir­ties. Des­pite a few mishaps, i.e. get­ting the wrong train due to Lea­ming­ton spa’s awful tele­ser­vice and wal­king for a mile in the wrong direc­tion because someone (not me-hint) mis­read a map, we got there in good time. There we enjo­yed some free jazz befo­rehand, a nice drink of lilt and an upper circle seat loo­king for­ward and down at the orches­tra. From there we watched in awe as we were plea­su­red with the aural delights of “Rhap­sody in Blue”, “Sum­mer­time” and other clas­sics. I plan to return soon to watch the Char­lie Cha­plin movie, “City Lights” with a live accompaniment.