The reunion celebration that I will be at the end of this month: http://yakimavalleymuseum.org/special/japanese.cfm

A video about the 'Land of Joy and Sorrow' exhibition at Yakima Valley Museum:

Time is Swift.

I cannot believe how fast the past two months have gone . . . and yet it seems a million years ago as well (so much has happened). Where should I begin? I guess I will start with music. One of my favourite musical artists at the minute is 'Public Service Broadcasting'. They have been using stock footage and historical sound clips to create mediated music experiences. I had the chance to see them in performance when they came to Leicester 21 March; brilliant. Here is one of their videos, 'London Can Take It':

Happy Birthday, MVR!

I am so grateful for Mom's friends--who I am told, had a surprise birthday party for her! Happiest of birthdays to 'Mam' (as they say here in Leicester) and I am looking forward to re-celebrating when I visit for the reunion at the end of the month!

Brown Bag Seminar with Prof. Piotr Bienkowski.

What a wonderful Brown Bag Seminar with Prof. Piotr Bienkowski on Wednesday! The work he is doing with the Hamlyn Foundation's 'Our Museum' is very promising. Here is a link to the 'Attic' report for that session: http://attic-museumstudies.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/brown-bag-seminar-report-for-prof-piotr.html

When I was a child and someone said, ‘You look lovely!’ I assumed that they meant I was appropriately dressed and clean (no mud smudges on my nose, my clothing wasn’t torn, no scuffs on my ‘good shoes’). When I was a ‘young lady’ (teenager) and someone said ‘You look lovely!’ I assumed that they meant I looked very fashionable. As a young woman, having hit the twenty-somethings, when someone said ‘You look lovely!’ I assumed that they meant I wasn’t yet showing significant signs of age. Now that I have hit midlife, when someone says ‘You look lovely!’ I assume that they mean ‘You don’t look dead!’

I strongly suspect that about twenty years or so from now, I will have cycled back around to the beginning and when someone says ‘You look lovely!’, I will know that what they really mean is that I am well dressed and clean (no mud smudges on my nose,  my clothing isn’t torn, no scuffs on my ‘good shoes’).

To the left: many thanks to Paul for taking a photo of me ‘not looking dead’ during our recent visit to ‘The Villiage’ (Portmeirion).

On the train, passing by Berwick-upon-Tweed towards research in Edinburgh, 27-28 February.

Hell in the Pacific (1968)

Welcome to the all new 'what I've learned from . . .' series of posts. Today's subject: 'Hell in the Pacific' (1968):

‘Hell in the Pacific’ (1968) proves that it isn’t always necessary to have brilliant dialogue in order to have compelling film.  It was an amazingly powerful experiment in how a story can be formed in the absence of conventional narrative coherency. Powerful acting from Toshiro Mifune and Lee Marvin, creative direction from John Boorman, brilliant cinematography by Conrad Hall.

I also had something of a history of media technology realisation moment. Because Paul and I watched ‘Hell in the Pacific’ in VHS standard format I was reminded that early VHS releases of motion pictures almost never came out in ‘letterbox’ format. Most early VHS releases (back in the dark days before DVDS) were edited with the standard dimensions for a television screen in mind, rather than the standard for a film screen, resulting in visually non-sensical moments during the film--moments of scenes displaying part of a nose or ear, rather than the two faces confronting each other from opposite sides of the screen.

It is easy to take for granted how well some directors/cinematographers make use of the full frame of the film  . . . until a third of the image has been arbitrarily lopped off from both sides of the picture! Hell in the Pacific is certainly a film that I will need to watch again, in a proper format. Brilliant concept, acting and filming (from what I could see of it).