Category: Culture

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Being Frank

This is the time of year for the London Film Festival.

One of the things they had every year was Live Cinema, or Thames Silents, or Channel 4 Silents.

With orchestral accompaniment conducted by and/or written by Carl Davis, we saw some great ‘silent’ films like The Big Parade, The General, City Lights and Napoleon.

Live Cinema continues around the world, and, of course, in London. Wilton’s Music Hall has some, as does Cadogan Hall, near Sloane Square.

This Sunday sees the 1931 Frankenstein, with a new score played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. There are two performances, afternoon and evening, a bit more than one hour though no doubt there will be chat. There are still some tickets available.

We’ll be there, so do say hi!

This actual film is, of course, not silent but this event follows a popular trend of taking a talkie, removing the recorded music and playing it live. The first we ever saw was 2001 at the Royal Festival Hall, when it was a novelty, but now it is something done very often, even for modern films.

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The Kubrick Kollection Kash Grab

The Criterion Collection releases a number of films, some well-known some obscure, on physical media. Often, they are well-produced and worth having.

A new one, for Xmas, is the Kubrick Collection aka The Complete Kubrick.

It’s a 30 disc set in a red and black box. Here is a link to one YouTube video where someone goes through the contents: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPUuEXu8lvY

The list price is nearly $600 in the USA, though it’s not available yet (at the time of writing) and is already discounted (and Amazon UK have a used one for sale already). It’s not clear what the price is elsewhere, but we guess similar. It’s not even clear it will be released in the UK, at the time of writing.

It endeavours to bring together all the work by director Stanley Kubrick in 4K format in a fancy box. There are also lots of documentaries, many of which have been seen before but some are new.

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A box of Soul

The newest Beatles box set has been released. Actually, there are multiple sets, various cd versions, Bluray and lp. The title is Rubber Soul, the album from 1965 that comes before Revolver.

We have made out thoughts clear before on this album. It’s OK, but rather unmemorable.

There are very many YouTube creators who have reviewed the various sets available, and we’re not going to do that, but we will say a few words about the four cd and book box set.

It was originally announced in the UK at nearly £150. When it finally appeared, it was cheaper at around £125.

What you get for your money is a cardboard sleeve, a thinnish hardback book and four cds: a remix of the album, a mono cd, an American stereo version and a cd of sessions and backing tracks.

The album itself runs for a little over 35 minutes, not long but typical of the time. There are 14 tracks.

The 2026 stereo version is remixed by Giles Martin, whose qualification is that he was George Martin’s son (and has done the previous ones).

Six of the tracks have appeared before, eg on the 1962-1966 compilation, and these are exactly as they were pretty much. The set also includes Day Tripper and We Can Work It Out, and these have also been released before in a remixed version and are again unchanged from those. So it seems like eight of the songs are newly mixed and available for the first time. And that’s not including any material on any Anthology disc.

The American version of the album has fewer tracks and is shorter. We have boxed sets of The Beatles’ USA albums on cd and they are so short that mono and stereo versions fit on one disc with room to spare.

There is also a disc of rehearsals and backing tracks, mostly the latter.

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