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'Sicario 2: Soldado' (2018)
Some missions need an assassin – others need a soldier
- Publicity
A sequel to 2015's superb story of personal revenge mixed with geopolitics set against the background of the US-Mexico drug and illegal immigration war was not required but has nevertheless arrived, again written by Taylor Sheridan but directed by Stefano Sollima rather than Denis Villeneuve. It begins with a twist on the people-smuggling theme of its predecessor that is as original and audacious as that film's core plot point and is sufficiently rich with potential to carry proceedings on its own. Sadly, this promise is discarded quite quickly in favour of layer upon layer of additional ideas that eventually create confusion and implausibility in equal measure.
Those opening scenes, as a new threat depressingly familiar to those in contemporary Europe slips into America under cover of an old one, are viscerally shocking and upsetting and set the tone for the first, strongest section of the film. They lead to a government cabinet member calling for action and bending the definitional rules to allow it, in turn releasing returning protagonist Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) to act as the deniable instrument of state that such an order requires.
A 'shopping' sequence as Graver matter-of-factly enacts his master's wish is coldly stripped-down yet utterly compelling; the casual diner conversation between him and what appears to be a private military contractor over equipment and prices recalls the workaday realism of Steven Soderberg's Haywire (2011), whilst the cynicism surrounding the next steps Graver takes is breathtaking. Here, one is watching a sequel that is worthy of comparison to the original yet takes it in a different direction, even if the occasional line of dialogue and thus crucial plot detail is lost to too-casual delivery and a downbeat audio mix.
Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro) also returns as a partner – or perhaps weapon – in this venture, which we now learn links to his motivation in Sicario. Again, though, this is unclear since the cartel boss is different in each case and the connection between them is only loosely alluded to. Since this particular storyline goes nowhere one could argue it doesn't matter.
The assassination and kidnap actions that follow are competently staged by Sollima in what is now the default filmic style of the 2000s – sharp, sudden and serious, with none of the flashiness that characterised product from the previous decade let alone the flamboyance of the 1980s. Isabela Moner, as old as the century more or less, impresses as Isabela Reyes, convincingly essaying a spoiled schoolgirl who is queen of her milieu one minute and a terrified victim of something much larger another.
It is though here where I began to part company from the material. Geography began to feel ill-defined, with uncertainty over precisely who was where or heading to what and why, and small moments seemed lost, missed or undeveloped.
Yes, a speeding convoy in a forbidding desert attempting the next move in a false flag operation is nicely handled with a growing sense of unease – "I hate dirt roads," growls Graver as his airborne assistance begins to be compromised by dust – and the firefight that follows is snappy and brutal, but exactly who is attacking, how and from where remains unexplained and the editing of what happens now and immediately afterward leaves much to be desired if clarity is wanted.
When Isabella and Alejandro are cast adrift on a quest of their own this dislocation is intensified, whilst things also become annoyingly sentimental if sometimes also affecting. Convenient co-incidence appears, surely unnecessary when a writer is so clearly gifted as Sheridan. That this returns repeatedly, especially in relation to a parallel storyline about young Miguel (Elijah Rodriguez), soon becomes grating in the extreme.
Having the rug pulled from under Graver and Alejendro decisively shifts perception of the overall source for the film – Tom Clancy's Clear and Present Danger, also about a biddable yet cowardly politician spurred by an act of moral outrage – from obvious but acceptable homage to lazy derivation. And unlike Phillip Noyce's 1994 film adaptation, which took pains to depict a realistic timescale for the reversal, here everything is rushed to the point of risibility. The film is thus simultaneously overlong and uncomfortably hurried – a television series would have given this approach room to breath.
The finale insults the viewer twice, first with more sentimentality and then by replacing the weary inevitability recognisably of the real world that ended the first film with a crude hook for a 'threequel'. Given the present instalment can best be summarised as occasionally gripping but ultimately maddening, it won't be one I will be experiencing.
Art, Past & Present: Part 3 of 3 - 'Thomas Cole: Eden to Empire'
By Chris Rogers, Jun 24 2018 8:58AM
By chance, three different art exhibitions in London currently all engage with the same subject – how particular artists considered the old and the new. Specifically, shows looking at Auguste Rodin, Claude Monet and Thomas Cole explore how they each viewed societal developments in their own times, wondered what their work should look like in the context of that and whether they followed, built on or reacted against those practitioners who came before. Fittingly all three finish on the same date, so you have about five weeks to experience all of them. My own encounters concluded with the National Gallery's Thomas Cole: Eden to Empire.
Though clearly the least-known artist of the three for many, I was aware of his work through the Tate's revelatory American Sublime exhibition in 2002. Alongside Fredrick Church (Cole's pupil at the Hudson River School) and others, Cole – an Englishman by birth – was responsible for framing forever the Old World's view of the New as a place of immeasurable, untamed wildernesses of unparalleled beauty and awesome splendour. But, as this major exhibition is at pains to point out, Cole actually took a very different view of the great American landscape and what it could be than his compatriots. And even if his US-set works don't always make this clear, his magnificent Course of Empire sequence sets out his stall with power and elegance.
Born in Bolton in 1801, Cole was an admirer of Turner and his portrayals of nature, but was also aware of how the controversial artist confronted modernity – especially technology – in his works. Both Turner and his contemporary Philip de Loutherbourg were awed by what the curators call the 'demonic spectacle' of forges and factories of the Industrial Revolution, and both drew comparisons between tradition and contemporaneity when including such sights in their pictures. Thus Turner's Fighting Temeraire showed a derelict sailing ship towed to its grave by a steam tug, whilst in his fieryCoalbrookdale by Night, included here, de Loutherbourg placed discarded sections of manufactured iron pipe as if they were the columns and capitals of some vanished classical culture. The seeds of Cole's work are seen in these artists and in John Martin, another English artist whose apocalyptic scenes of catastrophe and Biblical ruination evidently appealed.
After his family emigrated to America Cole began depicting the grand open spaces of his adopted country, with an evident love for its flora and fauna and the immensity of nature's creations. Colossal valleys, winding rivers and bucolic scenes soon emerged from his easel, and did much to promote the early settlers' belief in manifest destiny. Cole's The Oxbow, recalling Constable in its thick clouds but showing a panorama of the Connecticut River Valleyrather than of the Thames and London, has become a touchstone of American art. And yet Cole was adamantly against the development of these places and their industrialisation, unlike Church who welcomed man's impact on the natural world, and a hint of this is found in what was for me the most striking piece of the show. Utterly fantastical, Titan's Goblet depicts a colossal stone drinking vessel hundreds of feet high standing on a rocky coast, "the imagined artefact of an extinct race of giants" as the caption puts it. Classical ruins surround the rim of this wonderful thing, complete with tiny aqueduct, and the spill from its lake-like bowl dissolves in the wind as it cascades over the side.
Cole's opinions found their greatest form, though, in Course of Empire, his five paintings of a fictional landscape showing its chronological discovery, exploitation and abandonment over the centuries. In the first, The Savage State, an unspoilt expanse of land at the mouth of a river is laden with greenery and inhabited only by natives. Human intervention begins with The Pastoral State – a stone circle, boat building, farming – but is in balance with nature. The weight of 'culture' has tipped the scales utterly by the time of The Consummation of Empire, in which a vast Romanesque city of marble, gilt and luxury sprawls across the valley; groaning with indulgence, its fate is sealed in Destruction when a brutal war ravages everything. I was struck by the bold imagery here; spattered blood, grey-faced corpses and attempted rape all feature. In the final instalment, Destruction, nature is reclaiming the ruins of what once was. Though retaining something of the imagination seen in the Goblet, this is a firmly human and thus relatable morality tale. Highly charged in its evening moodiness, that final picture is Cole's Old World warning the citizens of the New.
A welcome window into a less-well-known British talent who made his name abroad, this was an enjoyable show that rounded of a trio of fulfilling exhibtions.
'Thomas Cole: Eden to Empire' continues at the National Gallery, London WC2 until 29 July 2018.
Art, Past & Present: Part 2 of 3 - 'Monet & Architecture'
By chance, three different art exhibitions in London currently all engage with the same subject – how particular artists considered the old and the new. Specifically, shows looking at Auguste Rodin, Claude Monet and Thomas Cole explore how they each viewed societal developments in their own times, wondered what their work should look like in the context of that and whether they followed, built on or reacted against those practitioners who came before. Fittingly all three finish on the same date, so you have about five weeks to experience all of them. My own encounters continued with the National Gallery's Monet & Architecture.
Forget, if you can, Monet's water lilies. This exhibition is about his response to the built environment around him, in Normandy, Rouen, Paris, London and Venice, whether featuring incidentally or as the principal – sometimes only – subject. It looks at how painted architecture directly, and at how he used it as counterpoint to the natural world for which he is best known. It considers his selection of structures old and new, and it looks at repetition – how the same topic could be painted again and again yet be different each time.
Beginning with Monet's love for the traditional aesthetic of the picturesque allows simple scenes of village and harbour life to impress with their dancing light, bright colours and clever effects, such as the apparent blurring of grasses in the foreground of The Hut at Sainte-Adresse, although the captions are curiously silent occasionally on obvious points, such as the dramatically vertiginous viewpoint down a winding lane cutting through the centre of one picture of the same location even as its vertical orientation – surely designed to enhance this exact effect – is noted. A developing mastery of colour and composition is also seen, with the former employed to suggest weather effects (a View of Amsterdam appears as though seen through a rain-spattered window) and the latter starting to use architecture as a highlight or framing device. Both skills come together in the superb The Cliff at Varengeville, which is almost Pre-Raphaelite with its keen atmosphere, and the warmly coastal The Church at Vethéuil.
Already the variation in Monet's approach is apparent, and this is not always to the viewer's advantage in my view. Many of his works are aggressively naïve or pointillistic, these last effective only at a distance. The exhibition is silent on this, disappointingly. Even when he takes this road however other sides of his technique impress, such as the almost monochrome Snow Effect at Giverney which nevertheless drew me in through its complex textures and implied motion, both of which reminded me of Rothko.
The modern city was a touchstone for many late 19th century artists, including the Impressionists, but this show presents Monet as ambivalent to its charms. It appears that the cost of living an urban life – plus ça change – along with a lack of great interest from buyers in the works he produced eventually dissuaded him. The heavier, darker colours of his images of the Gare St-Lazare are an effective contrast with the earlier rural works and show a solid artistic response to a change of scene, but Monet's true sympathies seem to lie in the quieter moments along quaysides, near bridges and – in one soft, subtle masterpiece – with a distant View of Rouen, where a row of slim trees is echoed by the tall mast of a barge and a chimney, and barely-there clouds and a slight pink sunset radiate evening calm.
All three subjects include water, with Monet's talent for reflection also well to the fore. His ability to differentiate one form of light from another in variant circumstances is seen in the spectacular The Boulevard des Capucines, where two men in top hats stand on a balcony (they are almost pushed off the edge of the canvas) and watch a teeming crowd of several hundred individually-painted figures on the street below with half the scene bathed in winter sunlight and half in shadow.
Monet's astonishing ultra-grainy close ups of Rouen cathedral done from slightly different angles and at very different times of day and his heavily atmospheric scenes painted from London bridges close this section. The first is perhaps the most powerful room of the show, with half a dozen frames reading as massively enlarged photographs from further away. The artist often had several canvases on the go simultaneously in Britain's capital, storing them in rented or gifted rooms and adjusting each in turn at the relevant time of day to properly capture the shifts of light, colour and time, effectively caught with a trio of works featuring the Houses of Parliament from across the river in fog, a storm and at sunset.
Late-period portraits of Venice's palazzos and more – the term must be correct, since no people feature – close this excellent show. It is well-curated and superbly hung. The number and choice of canvasses and their considered disposition is a perfect fit for the basement Sainsbury galleries, working with their variety and the clever theming to ensure that things never become overwhelming. As something of a Monet sceptic, I am – just about – convinced...
The Credit Suisse Exhibition: Monet & Architecture continues at the National Gallery, London WC2 until 29 July 2018
Art, Past & Present: Part 1 of 3 - 'Rodin and the art of ancient Greece'
By chance, three different art exhibitions in London currently all engage with the same subject – how particular artists considered the old and the new. Specifically, shows looking at Auguste Rodin, Claude Monet and Thomas Cole explore how they each viewed societal developments in their own times, wondered what their work should look like in the context of that and whether they followed, built on or reacted against those practitioners who came before. Fittingly all three finish on the same date, so you have about five weeks to experience all of them. My own encounters began with the British Museum's Rodin and the art of ancient Greece.
The putative originator of modern sculpture visited the British museum repeatedly. He took direct inspiration from what he saw there, especially the Parthenon Sculptures or Elgin Marbles. Uniquely, this innovative show presents the visitor with more than half a dozen instances to examine the source alongside the result. Thus a plaster cast of The Kiss (plaster, we find out, was often the only medium a clay original was reproduced in, pending its commissioning in bronze or marble by a buyer) sits next to a pair of Parthenon goddesses from the workshop of Greek sculptor Phidias or Pheidias, believed to be the creator of the monument's integrated sculptural programme. In both, the Museum contends, faces are subordinate to bodies – Rodin found the ancient figures "participants in something that we do not see" and also believed in the lyrical concept of 'phantasia', whereby the sculptor's apparition of beauty resided in the mind and was revealed by the hand. In both cases this shaped stone into flesh.
Matching a dying Lapith warrior with Rodin's The Martyr is also illustrative of this connection, as is a single figure in an extract from the superb cavalcade sequence – it is impossible to avoid cinematic terminology when describing this outstanding piece of 'stop motion' from 2,500 years ago, and indeed the curators note that a sense of movement might have been apparent when this frieze was seen through the screen of columns on the temple – and his The Age of Bronze. Rodin drew and had casts of such architectural elements to help him in his work, and recalled the "little mould makers" who sold convenient A4-sized replicas in the streets of European cities.
Architecture is another link between these ages in and of itself, since not only did Rodin at one point go into business making architectural sculpture but The Kiss and many of his other works – including The Thinker, presented here in two very powerful versions including a terracotta – began as components of a vast pair of doors, the forbiddingly titled Gates of Hell, for a Parisian art museum. Patterned after the compartmented, richly-carved portal to Florence's Renaissance Baptistry by Lorenzo Ghiberti, the doors were never made and the museum never built but for Rodin the detailed development work he undertook for the project acted as a kind of living sketchbook for the rest of his life. The exhibition takes pains to identify how those works derived from it made the transition to stand-alone pieces, including when Rodin decided to conjoin more than one source to form a new single form (that Rodin used the same fragments repeatedly but in different combinations is clear in the latest iteration of the wonderful Musée Rodin in Paris, where dozens if not hundreds of casts of arms, legs and torsos are displayed in cabinets, like a fin de siècle Airfix kit of Man awaiting assembly).
For Rodin an ancient stone torso could seem as "real flesh [that] must have been moulded by kisses and caresses", yet he also sought to prove that torsos in and of themselves, created as such from the start, could become valid artistic statements. This is shown when Lissos, a headless river god from the Parthenon, is put next to Rodin's Ariadne, and Hermes stands adjacent to The Falling Man. With the first of these the Frenchman removed the head from a figure on the Gates, evoking an ancient sculpture eroded by time as the curators insightfully have it and so creating instant if self-assured comparisons with the past as well as supporting his thesis. I wondered at this point whether the distinctive cropping of statues in the paintings of Lawrence Alma-Tadema, a near-exact contemporary of Rodin who also looked to the past for his subject matter, might have aimed for the same reading. Fascinatingly, Rodin collected items of sculpture, domestic artefacts and the like that COULD have been created by his hero Phidias as inspiration or for incorporation into his work whilst Alma Tadema carefully selected archaeological finds to be depicted in his paintings, even if he often then deliberately mixed-up or distorted materials, periods and scales for effect – he would frequently take say a Roman marble copy of a Greek sculpture and imagine the lost Greek original, or take a bronze bust designed for a room pedestal and enlarge it to Colossus size. Both men employed the modern technology or photography as an aide.
Despite his clear love of the past, Rodin was no preservationist. He campaigned against restoration of the Parthenon, preferring to see it crumble, and felt that buildings in general should, like the human body, be born, mature and decay. Keen only to retain his library of inspiration, he looked to the future whilst referring to the past. This enlightening show shows both sides of his personality to good effect, and if it could have benefitted from a little extra layering – more context at the start, an audio guide, more on the techniques of past and present sculptors – and a slightly more intimate setting for some of the works than the cavernous unadorned black box of its new temporary exhibition gallery, it is still well worth seeing.
Rodin and the art of ancient Greece continues at the British Museum, London WC1 until 29 July 2018
Forty-five years ago, Travemünde on the Baltic Coast of what was then West Germany was at the very edge of the Iron Curtain. Sitting – appropriately – on the west side of the estuary that gave the hamlet its name ("Mouth of the River Trave"), the peninsular of Priwall jutting out from the eastern bank also fell within its boundary but only up to a point – the neck that attached it to the land beyond was cut by the Inner German Border. This line of separation then ran south, all the way to the Adriatic, as Churchill said. But in 1974, Travemünde residents were given a new vantage point from which to contemplate their former compatriots in the East with the opening of the 35-story-high Maritim hotel. With its period décor largely unaltered to this day, this remarkable addition to a genteel, Victorian seaside resort ironically if winningly recalls the architecture of the East.
The hotel's roots are firmly in the Federal Republic of Germany. Founded by Hans-Joachim Gommolla in 1969, the private Maritim group opened its first hotel not far from Travemünde at Timmendorfer. This was at the height of the Cold War, which had split the country in half and seen culture and the arts deployed on both sides in furtherance of opposing ideologies. By building along the Baltic Sea – a traditional German holiday destination but one into which the German Democratic Republic had pushed that divisive border – Maritim challenged its neighbour; by building so high at Travemünde, Gommolla arguably thumbed its nose at her, just as Axel Springer did with his towering publishing headquarters right on the Berlin Wall.
As constructed by Hochtief from 1972, the Maritim Strandhotel Travemünde was to climb 119 metres into the sky and have 35 usable floors. In a further touch of showmanship-cum-assertive diplomacy, a rotating red shipping navigation light was mounted one storey higher. The hotel thus became one of the tallest lighthouses in the world, replacing the hamlet's 16th century predecessor at its base.
Resolutely Modernist in style, the hotel's façade is defined by the projecting grid of concrete piers and beams that create its rooms and the continuous perimeter balconies that wrap the entirety of every floor. These last maintain a surprising horizontality that avoids the building's height becoming overweening. Rectangular in plan, the hotel's tower is oriented north west-south-east, giving all rooms views of the river, sea and land.
As was common in this period, the hotel has a top floor eating and bar space that today – rather unaccountably – is restricted to daytime hours only. Located at the south-eastern end of the floorplate, it faces Lübeck further up the river.
The base of the building takes the form of a wide, two-storey podium that is partially embanked and has a basement. This houses the main public spaces, which again reflect their time – lobby, restaurant, a bar, a 'pub' (so named) and a bowling alley, all with large windows and overlooking the water. A vast, double height and windowless conference/banqueting hall complete with mezzanine and its own dedicated foyer balances these to the landward side. The hotel was originally linked to a large indoor swimming pool complex but this was demolished and the land disposed of in favour of new resort buildings under separate ownership. A smaller pool now forms part of a spa for the hotel.
No matter what their date, almost all hotels undergo regular refurbishment. Unless exceptionally notable, interiors seldom survive these periodic convulsions of taste. What distinguishes the Maritim Strandhotel Travemünde today is the fact that so much of what is clearly its original scheme remains intact, complete with rich materials and warm colours.
In that lobby, veined white marble columns, tremendous polygonal chandelier light fittings and the inevitable veined-gold mirrored glass walls survive, as does an attractive metalwork grille to a retail unit. Padded leather half-moon door handles are first seen here and recur elsewhere in different colourways – cream, burgundy, dark green.
The double doors to the restaurant are a highlight – their insides and outsides, as well as a frieze-like panel above, are feature beaten metal bas reliefs illustrating a mediaeval feast. Slightly naïve in style, they are nevertheless utterly charming. Inside, the serving area is backed by a delightful metalwork screen on an appropriately nautical theme.
The foyer of the function hall has many more of the chandeliers, as well as sconces in a matching style. An attractive staircase flanked with deep, padded leather side rails leads down to the lower level of the podium.
Unexpectedly, the guest rooms also show elements of this original scheme. The crystalline light fitting over the full-length mirror, built-in wardrobes with recessed handle, bedside radio controls and hardwood window frames with bronze handles all recall the early 1970s in winning fashion.
That this hotel has not succumbed to the latest trend is not entirely a surprise. Even today, as new apartment blocks are carved out of the ground across the water, Travemünde is an old fashioned kind of place and a popular retirement destination. Perhaps it is fitting, then, that some of the more positive aspects of that time many decades ago are still with us.
'The City & The City' (2018)
By Chris Rogers, Apr 30 2018 5:04PM
China Miéville's 2009 novel The City & The City is an outstanding depiction of the structures, conventions and customs that comprise a modern city, as well as a solid police procedural. I have read the book several times and referenced it repeatedly in my architectural writing, lectures and tours, and yet was cautious when I heard it was being brought to the small screen by the BBC. The actual plot – intricate but conventional – appeared to present few difficulties, but the adaptation would also have to address a key conceit: the studious 'unseeing' of the other city required by citizens of both Besźel and Ul Qoma. The real surprise of the resulting serial, which has just finished its broadcast run, is that the former is more of a failure than the latter, yet in truth the entire enterprise must be regarded as misjudged from the outset.
In the narrow context of that difficult social custom, then, so disarmingly simple to describe in prose yet presenting obvious challenges when rendering it visually, early signs were promising.
Beginning, as the book does, in down-at-heel Besźel, the home of protagonist Borlú (David Morrissey), we encounter a place rendered in sepia tones. The more prosperous Ul Qoma, when it appears, is in metallic blues and reds. Explained in publicity material (though not, revealingly, in the screenplay) as the result of competing street lighting systems, this is a straight lift from the novel. What is new is that everything in Besźel is crisp and in focus, whilst everything in Ul Qoma – which, of course, Borlú and thus the audience in these first-person scenes is required to unsee – is smeared and blurred. It's an ingenious device that is deployed sparingly at first and enhanced by occasional subtlety, such as when a Ul Qoman child's fidget spinner lands at Borlú's feet but he is unable to return or even look at it.
But it soon becomes apparent that the truly intimate separation of the two cities described in the book, whereby alternating buildings in the same terrace or two people at a single table can be in Besźel and Ul Qoma respectively, has been radically simplified for television. Ellen E. Jones, previewing for the Guardian, described this as like "two maps, one placed on top of the other, then held up to the light", but such delicacy is absent here.
Yes, the differences of alphabet, vocabulary (a linguist was actually employed to formulate Illitan, the language of Ul Qoma, using the real-world Georgian alphabet as a base), food and clothes given in the book are all picked out, but they are segregated behind a straightforward linear border, depicted most obviously in a shot of cars driving either side of a wide road, the one stream in the one city, the other in the other, even if a momentary lane-jumper causing concern also borrows from the original.
This is a disappointment. Perhaps the production felt that a more nuanced approach would confuse the prospective audience, despite the obvious appetite for complexity amongst speculative fiction adherents, or perhaps it was founded in the same budgetary restrictions that prevented filming in Eastern Europe (Manchester and Liverpool substitute, on the whole successfully). Regardless, it does betray a certain lack of creativity. For example, even the way in which citizens walk and carry themselves varies between cities, something which attains crucial import at the climax of the novel, yet it does not appear to have occurred to the makers to employ as extras two groups of trained dancers or movement artists who, suitably costumed in the colours of the two cities and properly rehearsed, could walk 'through' – without seeming to notice – each other.
In fact not only is the split less shaded than it should have been, extra emphasis has been added to the idea of a physical boundary by clumsily laboured parallels with East Germany before the collapse of Communism and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Thus posters and unrelenting public address system announcements injunct "When in Besźel, see Besźel", passengers on a train suddenly shut their eyes en masse to avoid The Other and even Morrissey is required to theatrically frown and rub his forehead almost every time he 'unsees', as though he has been caught in possession of samizdat. And then there is the crude portrayal of Breach. Truly unseen in the novel, and far more effective a threat as a result, it is depicted as a Staasi-like secret police force with yet more posters warning that its operatives "look like you", its activities recalling Nazi-era scientists behind the scenes and other characters signing off conversations with the warning "Be safe". Admittedly their appearance when they take Borlú at the end of episode three is somewhat effective, but even here they loom hammily out of the night as if in an Expressionist film rather than emerge instantly from the crowd, always 'there' but never seen.
The serial fails to honour its own rules, too, in a way that surely insults the viewer. In a scene that, done properly, could have been a perfect representation of the novel, Borlú and his aide Corwi talk on mobile phones, each in separate cities and each framed in separate shots. As their conversation climaxes the camera pulls back to reveal that they are sitting on the same bench, allowing Corwi to leave a wrapped parcel containing a gun that Borlú then picks up – that is Breach, more blatant that any seen or avoided so far, yet an act that passed entirely unnoticed by the supposedly omniscient watchers in order that the story can advance.
That scene does not come from the novel, and nor do many, many others. Its detective protagonist needed neither a missing wife nor a Difficult Last Case, but writer Tony Grisoni unaccountably lumbers Borlú with both, themselves shown mostly in torpid flashbacks by director Tom Shankland. Much of the remainder of Miéville's work suffers conflation, inversion and distortion. It is especially depressing to find the construction of Borlú as a convincingly flawed hero so lacking that he cannot, in this version of the story, be permitted to shoot a killer dead without immediate provocation.
Changing the sex of Dhatt, Borlú's opposite number in UI Qoma, from male to female works better than I had expected thanks to Maria Schrader's world-weary playing, though retaining Dhatt's wife and thus making that character gay probably says more about the straining-to-please mores of today than any flaws in Miéville's writing. It is, though, bitterly ironic that in seeking to improve the representation of women in these ways (Borlú has two girlfriends in the book but neither speaks) the only decent female character of the novel, Corwi, has been destroyed thanks to an excruciating performance by Mandeep Dhillon as kind of 'gor blimey cockney' and the decision to centre the manifestation of Breach with her.
It is commendable that an adaptation was commissioned, but hugely disheartening that the outcome is so confused and confusing and burdened with so many additional complications that add nothing and indeed take much away.
The City & The City, a Mammoth Screen production for BBC Two, is available on iPlayer until the end of May
'The Peripheral'
By Chris Rogers, Feb 26 2018 6:32PM
Thirty years ago I was exposed to the sub-genre-defining work of William Gibson, the writer who coined the term 'cyberspace' to define the then nascent digital realm in which information flows and – as he presciently saw it – societal change is effected. His multi-award-winning 1984 novel Neuromancer was the platform, bought in paperback from the original Forbidden Planet shop and read with astonishment. Its depiction of a mid-21st century America characterised by gritty street life seamlessly intertwined with glossy high technology was utterly winning, especially as this was allied to a lean yet rich writing style where every word counted and conveyed something of the milieu in which its protagonists moved. The pace was fast, the ideas fascinating and the world-building absorbing.
Two further books – Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive – broadened and deepened these ideas and, along with the first, became known as the Sprawl trilogy. Two more trilogies followed, and I soon began to feel that as Gibson's style matured his actual content became less and less innovative, not helped by his decision to set the third trilogy in the present day and to eliminate almost all of the technological strands that had made his work so distinctive. Abandoning the Blue Ant trilogy part way through, therefore, was disappointing but not difficult.
This did, however, mean that I missed Gibson's next book, 2013's The Peripheral. Which – it turns out – was a mistake. Complex, densely-layered and detailed, it is a gripping page-turner that flips between two timelines and attempts to tell us a little about our recent past and possible future. Near-future America and further-forward London are both well realised, not least through one of Gibson's other skills: the ability to write different characters in convincingly different voices. Coupled with an in media res opening this does require some dedication to initially, but once the reader's eye (and brain) is in, the narrative skips along very briskly indeed though in fact this is Gibson's longest book by far. And, uniquely for Gibson in my experience, it is a novel where the characters – and thus Gibson's thoughts – are very explicitly political, in a context that immediately resonates.
For long-term Gibson fans who yearn for his earlier works there are plenty of references to the that pioneering first novel. The description of Operation Northwind, a war-themed online game, more than echoes that of Screaming Fist, the failed mission that nevertheless kick-starts the world of Neuromancer; chameleon-like camouflage squidsuits have been encountered before as mimetic capes in that same book; the neurological weapon nicknamed Party Time parallels the similar Blue Nine, and opposing power blocs remember the two artificial intelligences who war around lead character Case. Elsewhere in The Peripheral there also ex-soldiers both regretting and missing their service, the atmospheric importance of softly-spoken foreign tongues and even an electric buggy at a crucial moment.
Overarching all is the titular peripheral, an autonomous or inhabited humanoid complete with the telepresence and AI by which it gains motive power (and motivation) and sensory capacity. It is presented as a method of virtually experiencing space and time and events. This has concerned – even dominated – Gibson's fiction for decades, from the Apparent Sensory Perception modules of his 1970s short stories to the SimStim of the Sprawl saga and the augmented reality of Virtual Light. Even media firm Blue Ant might be deemed another iteration, 'agency' having a double meaning in the context of those three books.
With The Peripheral, however, the idea moves from McGuffin to central tenet. From the reader's point of view it occasionally feels intrusive, more so than Freeside, the vast orbiting colony and the closest pure SF object equivalent in the Sprawl books, but even this is not the limit of Gibson's imagination. Peripherals work in conjunction with the more audacious – some might say outrageous, for a Gibson story – era-bridging mechanism that connects both timelines and makes the entire book possible. Entirely unexplained beyond an absurd throwaway reference or two to "a Chinese server", its presence at the heart of the narrative is though crucial as it permits a kind of retrospective benevolence whereby the inhabitants of what one reviewer called the novel's second future (the one in London) are able to help those of the first (America) by transmitting technology and information back in (across?) time. Gibson's far-future Londoners thus equate to the intervening aliens of Carl Sagan's Contact or, perhaps more relevantly, Arthur C. Clarke's bittersweet Childhood's End.
In truth this is handled so deftly that the lack of any actual explanation for how it's done actually feels surprisingly unproblematic, and one anyway should remember Gibson's well known opinion that he himself is something of a 'techno innocent'. This may be disingenuous, but yet another far-out feature of the book – the absurdly powerful, nano-scaled 'assemblers' that can instantly dissolve or reform matter at scale – does give this view some weight.
It is then refreshing to find The Peripheral confirming that the mid-level tech of the street is where Gibson seems the most comfortable, and here he makes a welcome return to the best aspects of those early forays. Brilliantly envisaged items, systems and products are scattered subtly yet convincingly through his text. By focusing on real-world advances, Gibson essays concepts ranging from the amusing to the terrifying, such as cardboard cars, chain store 3D printing, veritable swarms of drones and brutally effective orbital weapon systems. Invented consumer brands such as Hefty and Coffee Jones sit comfortably amongst actual names like eBay. The book was coloured by wider cultural happenings, of course.
The cloaked cars that prowl future London must surely have been inspired by 2012's Bond film Die Another Day, whilst the ranks of super-tall towers that puncture the skyline of the same city have their own contemporary inspiration ("they're called shards" explains one character to another). Russian oligarchs (or 'klepts') living in the British capital tune in to another anxiety that remains live five years later, as does one such man's massively extended townhouse and its seemingly endless basement garage where much of the action of the London-set chapters takes place. Here is to be found what is for me Gibson's star invention at this more intimate level of tech: the Mercedes Gobiwagen (it is never clear whether this is its formal or nickname), a lorry-sized, ultra-luxurious "land yacht" built for comfortable cruising in the desert. With motorised furniture, a robot bar, bathroom and rooftop observation dome, this fabulous vehicle might seem futuristic but has an ancestor in the customised, leather-lined six-wheel-drive Range Rovers and the like that specialist British coachbuilder Tickford and other companies produced in the 1970s and 80s for Arab customers.
Indeed it is Britain and especially London that appears to have particularly stimulated Gibson's imagination this time around, generating plenty of neat extrapolations and perhaps predictions. Many are architectural or topographical twists on familiar places, including the central conceit of Oxford Street turned into a vast linear park, thickly wooded and grown out of the ruins of its current buildings. Perhaps inspired by the Blitz, and if so forming another link back to Mona Lisa Overdrive's holographic commemoration of the Battle of Britain, this also suggests numerous post-apocalyptic domestic works. It also allows for Selfridges to become a domestic residence, a striking image. As with Mona Lisa Overdrive, though, characters inhabit a London seemingly altered as much by Gibson's (mis)understanding of the real city as deliberate authorial decision. It therefore feels a little 'off' in places, with a meeting offered at one of the "guildhalls" ('Livery Halls' seems meant) and implied jurisdiction of the Metropolitan police over the City, this last particularly odd given the plot thread mentioned below. That oligarch's house, though, sees Gibson returning to the Notting Hill that final Sprawl book and is thoroughly sound as a conception.
There is little indication that Gibson has ever intended a satirical reading of his work, but it's hard not to think that must be the case in certain passages of The Peripheral. In future London calls are taken on surgical implants – a send-up, surely, in and of itself, but also enabling a wonderful double meaning to the otherwise entirely organic line "he's had to have his phone removed". Having this London run by a menacing cabal comprising the police, the City of London's Livery Companies and Big Business, headed by the sinister (and, again, real) Remembrancer, might also produce a wry smile from those familiar with the Square Mile's peculiarly individualistic yet highly effective present-day power structure. And although almost all of this appears directed at the British end of the plot, the eponymous peripheral reducing or at least distancing social interaction to a virtual experience must be counted as social commentary, at the very least, on American society today.
This is a terrific return to form from Gibson, even if the abrupt and unsatisfactory ending dissolves logic and tension as brutally as those assemblers attack walls. It would seem to confirm his fit with things to come, rather than things that are. And another trilogy appears to have begun.
William Gibson's new novel Agency, which continues to explore the world created in The Peripheral, is published later in 2018 by Berkley Books/Penguin
'The Final Year' (2017)
By Chris Rogers, Jan 22 2018 5:50PM
We've all experienced that feeling of not having enough time left to get a series of jobs done, or hoping that we can complete something that we've started because we know it will make life better. But imagine how Barack Obama felt in 2016, as time ticked away until the end of his constitutionally-mandated second and final term as President. Curbing the nuclear ambitions of Iran, normalising relations between Cuba and the US, a super-power-backed war in Syria, the apparently endless bloodletting over domestic gun violence and the knotty problem of affordable healthcare at home all vied for attention in these last 12 months. His team, too, felt that pressure, and film-maker Greg Barker along with his own team were there to capture it in remarkable detail for this gripping and sobering documentary.
A zippy beginning complete with split-screen, colour-toned titles evoking movies made in another time of political optimism and early scenes showing some of the featured participants forgetting their phones or getting clumsily caught on bag straps might set a tone of comic observation, but it soon becomes apparent that theirs is a business that is deadly serious. We follow the final year through the endless corridors (and car interiors, and airport runways, and office lobbies) of power and the eyes of three principals: Secretary of State John Kerry, Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power and Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, with occasional contributions from the latter's boss, Susan Rice. POTUS himself appears often but speaks to Barker's camera only sparingly, a device both pragmatic and effective.
The film could have been titled 'war and peace', since those are the concerns that most often drive events. The Syrian disaster prompts Power to describe her time addressing it as "pained and fraught", and her face sometimes confirms this; in one of several powerful moments Rhodes terms the Russian government's presumed airstrike on an aid convoy there coupled with its repeated attempts to deny this "fucking sick". Kerry, responding in the UN, is visibly angry as he berates the Russian delegation and suggests that diplomatic judgements must be based on facts, not fiction. Immense symbolism arises when Kerry, famously both a veteran and critic of the Vietnam War back in that optimistic age, visits Hanoi and Saigon and when Obama meets Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the Hiroshima peace memorial. Security is ever-present, from bomb-sniffing dogs working the seats within the United Nations chamber to the half-a-foot-thick doors of armour-plated limousines.
Frustration at actions that can't be countered and attitudes that should have been loom large. A US military response in Syria is deemed impossible thanks to the black stain of Iraq, a lack of consensus and the sheer complexity of the situation, whilst Rhodes' contention that Russian president Vladimir Putin acts only for himself and not (even) for his country acquires a horrible prescience when media coverage of the pending Republican convention decision to elect a candidate throws up a certain burly New York property developer.
As hinted, Barker is good on the daily slog of representing the most powerful country on earth. When a brief sequence shows the same view out of the window of another official plane alternately in sun, gloom and at night, the endless hours at 30,000 feet are fully felt. Arguments, disagreements, mistakes and regrets all make an appearance. But this is balanced by a kind of weary joy when things go right, such as the historic Cuba and Iranian agreements. We are never allowed to forget the risks in such efforts, either, as with a desperately ironic incident where a seven-year-old boy – about the same age as Power's son – is accidentally knocked over and killed by a car from her motorcade during a negotiating trip to Africa.
This is a very young team for the most part, we are reminded (Power is 45, Rhodes not even 40 when the election takes place), and one with the same concerns in rare off-duty moments as the rest of us. Power plays with and talks to her children, Rhodes retreats to a grim semi-furnished basement under the West Wing to seek quiet and walks home wearing a rucksack and with his own son on his shoulders.
Feelings of another kind are on display in the most emotional portion of the film. The rangy, flame-haired Power makes a speech to a group of newly-sworn US citizens that begins as you would expect and adds a few words of thanks to her Hispanic nanny who is one of them. But it then takes a different turn, revealing Power's own status as an immigrant to the country after a childhood in the Republic of Ireland and leading to some crying from her and others.
There are tears, too, from President Obama when announcing yet more gun-enabled massacres throughout the year. Obama will of course be the main draw for many. Off-duty, insofar as that status is possible, he is relaxed, natural, humane and generous, as when joining in with a joke at Rhodes's expense over the latter not getting to Stanford; "Me neither", the President immediately adds. In the footage of him meeting and greeting, in carefully-assembled montages of stills, and on hearing that voice, his 'official' qualities are as obvious as they are lacking in his replacement. Rhodes may write much of those speeches as part of his job description, but it is his Commander in Chief's message and the enthusiasm, sincerity and articulacy when delivering them drives the point home. Throughout the entire film, the establishment of a legacy is the clear goal of Obama and his team; the locking in of a range of agreements, initiatives and laws that hey believe will make a genuine and positive difference to the people of the USA and of the world. By the end of the film the looming threat of that replacement and his likely response to such effort ceases to loom and instead seems to smirk in our cast's faces. That the year that followed only confirmed Donald Trump acting "like an ill-tempered child kicking over a stack of wooden bricks", as reviewer Philip Kemp despairingly noted in his own review of Barker's film, only makes one more depressed.
Fortunately for this slice of reality at least Obama has the last word, and Barker frames it masterfully. Obama's round of global diplomacy ends where the film does, in Greece. This is the literal home of democracy, and Obama demonstrates his clear understanding of the concept's roots by stating that the most important office within that system is not the leader but the citizen. It is what one or many citizens can do with their lives, working within a wider community, that has always been his passion. Over a selection of images showing him at the Parthenon and at other historic locations round the world, including Petra, Jerusalem and Nepal, Obama talks of those places and the civilisations that made them as a chain of history. Each age has its own responsibility, he says, to ensure we leave something for the next. In other words, "we do our best," Obama explains, "with the link in that chain that is handed to us."
The Final Year, A Dogwoof release with Passion Pictures and Motto Pictures for Home Box Office and directed by Greg Barker is on current release and is also available through a variety of platforms
'The Twilight Zone' at the Almeida
Between light and shadow, science and superstition, fear and knowledge is a dimension of imagination. An area we call the Twilight Zone.
- Almeida publicity, based on the television script
Decades after the last episode was transmitted, the original run of the popular American television series created by Rod Serling and first aired in 1959 on CBS remains a touchstone for short, sharp doses of (un)reality. Combining original scripts with adaptations of literary works, these explorations of the rum and uncanny from the Cold War era can still chime closely with the concerns of the present. How closely can be judged (to an extent, at least) by the Almeida's theatre's new presentation.
As what unfolds – inside a simple, forced-perspective black box spattered with white stars – quickly suggests, multiple episodes were sourced for this energetic production. Stranded in an all-American diner complete with chrome-edged counter, juke box and cap-wearing barman a bus driver and seven of his passengers wait out a storm – but an investigating state trooper notes that only six people actually boarded and, what's more, something odd has crashed nearby. Outside her apartment door a woman with deeply-buried troubles finds a strange young girl who seems to know a surprising amount about her neighbour. A different girl, who has vanished, is the focus of another woman, as she and her husband become increasingly distressed by their daughter's empty bedroom and some echoing cries. An astronaut is sent on a fifty-year trip to a newly-discovered galaxy with the benefit of suspended animation to keep him young – as launch time nears, though, he finds he has fallen in love with someone here on earth. Elsewhere acclaim greets three astronauts returning from their own pioneering flight – or are there only two of them? Or one? And a patient and his psychiatrist explore what it means to be too terrified to fall asleep…
Though not a complete summary – and in truth even this restricted list suggests a slate that is rather too ambitious – it is clear all have a science fiction sensibility. The appearance of three-eyed and –armed aliens confirms that genre in very obvious terms, but for me it was the tales that ground themselves in suggestion, temptation and loss that proved the most attractive. Sam Swainsbury and Franc Ashman underplay convincingly the literally star-crossed lovers doomed never to meet again, helping to bring genuine pathos to the story of the half-century traveller, whilst the perfectly in-period looks, speech patterns and style of John Marquez, a ringer for Henry Goodman or John Slattery, build considerable empathy for the terrified, tired patient scared of dreaming. And there are other subtleties beyond this. Some carefully-observed gestures in the initial diner scene rewarded those happening to look in the right place, and the text include some tight, smart lines where Marquez once again dominates. Thus "I've lost my marbles" he worries; "Marbles can be found", reassures the doctor. "It's a dream", he exclaims when meeting in his mind the Burlesquely sexy Cat Woman: "I know I'm a dream" she replies, knowingly. In the penultimate set piece, in which panicked residents fight over space in a Bomb shelter, one desperate home owner bemoans the lack of a basement in his flashy new pad: it has "every wonder of modern science taken into account...except the one heading right for us."
There are plenty of incidental pleasures, such as an alien with a heart as big as his head and a bandaged woman who becomes The Ugliest in the World. You won't look at a cigarette in the same way again, either. Best of all, there is that feline femme fatale. As played - actually, inhabited - by Lizzy Connolly she stunned my audience with a fabulous, Ken Russell-meets-Inception song and dance number that I will for lack of its actual title call Never Be Afraid to Dream.
The staging eschews the cinematic, multimedia integration common in today's plays for a hands-on, low-tech approach in which stage hands costumed to match the walls shift props (sometimes still carrying actors) in full view and 'animate' scene transition cards. The playing is broad in parts, occasionally directed to the audience, and the tone often sits somewhere between David Lynch and student union camp. For me these wide, not to say wild, variations limited my enjoyment. Those writers of the 1950s and 60s were clearly in touch with the human condition, their prescience aside, but it might have been better to take a more serious view of the material and across fewer threads. Yet it is perhaps the most thoughtful comment of the entire piece that also encapsulates the true intention of adapter and director: imagination, a character observes, is welcomed in children but discouraged in adults.
Hundreds of years ago Englishman Robert Herrick's poem Dreams came to a similar conclusion, confirming the power of the unconscious and the freedom that it can produce:
Here we are all, by day; by night we`re hurled
By dreams, each one, into a several world.
The Twilight Zone, based on stories by Rod Serling, Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson, adapted by Anne Washburn and directed by Richard Jones, continues at the Almeida Theatre, London N1 until 27 January
Bricks & Words #12: 'Secrets of the Walls'
By Chris Rogers, Dec 29 2017 10:36AM
Stockholm town hall perches dramatically on a rocky outcrop jutting into Riddarfjärden bay. A tall bell tower topped with the national symbol of three golden crowns forms a fitting landmark for a maritime country. Closer-to, arched Gothic windows, delicate pinnacles and gilded statues recollect styles of old, whilst bricked-up doorways and extensions in different brick speak of centuries of incremental development. And yet all of this is a carefully crafted architectural fiction, because the entire building – 'old' and 'new' parts, changes in materials, pseudo-mediaeval touches and all – was built between 1911 and 1923 to a single, unified design. The result is one of the most compelling and beguiling civic structures in Europe.
Architecturally, Scandinavia in general and Sweden in particular led the world between the wars. Libraries, hospitals and other public buildings combined rational, Modernist layouts and geometric shapes with minimalist but carefully-designed details, these often demonstrating traditional craft skills. The results were widely admired and published extensively and globally. This led to them becoming inspirations for others, most famously, London transport's director Frank Pick and head architect Charles Holden. They modeled the latter's new stations for the Underground's new lines on what they found in Sweden, the Netherlands and elsewhere, using the same concept of simple platonic volumes and restricted detail.
It is, then, something of a surprise to find Ragnar Östberg creating a richly textured, ready-made history for his new town hall, with layer upon layer of convincing yet utterly manufactured accretions built into his design from the start. The explanation lies in the perceived need to gift his homeland with a prefabricated mythology, which in turn gave rise to the architectural style dubbed National Romantic. To that end, Östberg incorporated authentic-seeming historic touches into the fabric of his brand new building, each calculated to convey a sense of heritage and time. This begins with the very earth on which the building stands, since the naturalistic rock terrace is entirely man-made. On it, a four-posted freestanding cenotaph commemorates national founder Birger Jarl, King Arthur watching over the city – and by extension the nation's – inhabitants. The arcade facing the water is derived from the Doge's Palace in Venice, once a great sea-faring power itself. Within the courtyards, those clever touches of simulated age include fake repairs, walls that half-obscure 'previous' features and pavements laid over pavements… at the same time, add an extra level of verisimilitude – at least, as seen by the desinger.
Both the building and Rikard Larsson's superb book tells the story of, and is unmissable for anyone with an interest in what architecture can do and can mean.
'Secrets of the Walls: A Guide to Stockholm City Hall' by Rikard Larsson (Bokförlaget Langenskiöld, 2011)


When attending a business mixer, act like a host, not a guest. You are wasting your time at networking mixers if you stand around visiting with coworkers or others whom you already know rather than meeting new contacts and introducing them around. These networking meetings offer a great way to increase your visibility! The more visible you are the more your contacts will start to consider you a connector and contacting you about anything they may have a need for in their business and personal life. You can ask to be the ambassador or visitor host in the organizations to which you belong this will ensure you meet as many people as possible.
The use of picture can also be very effective. If you have used graphics in your previous postcards, then try a real photo this time. The real photo is more attractive compared to graphics. Real photos are easier to present your product and service business. Always hire a professional photographer for this purpose and always use high resolution pictures for your postcards.
In addition, you should write when you are in a great mood. If you are feeling energized and positive, your articles will be brilliant. Avoid writing articles when you are too fatigued and needing sleep.
However, the downside to this is that you'll have to handle customer support, deal with the financial side and pack and ship the products yourself. Not to mention overhead costs of owning a building, housing equipment, etc. As there are only so many hours in a day, you'll be limited to the amount of goods you can create, pack and ship without taking on extra staff. Regardless, if you're willing to do the work, this can be a very effective method to make easy money on the Internet.
In public relations terms, a boilerplate is a statement that is placed at the end of a press release (or other public relations document). It simply and quickly covers the 5 W's of your business, products, and services and lets the press and general public know what your business has to offer.
Social media is different from other forms of media. Here people come to hang out and pass time without feeling a burden. The amateur lead generation team pushes across links to friends and followers randomly added on social media networks like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. They hope that the persons they are sending the link to will click on it and they will be directed to the product/service webpage that they are selling. This is entirely wishful thinking. BPO agents who have done so have realized that things don't work that way. No random add of significant number can be directed as healthy, productive traffic without a proper plan in place. And that plan is all about understanding the metrics of social media networks.


text:
Low Income Housing Guide for Renters
Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher
How Do I Find a Unit After Receiving My Voucher?
Where You Can Use a Section 8 Voucher
Where You Cannot Use a Section 8 Voucher
How To Find A Unit
Know the HCV Porting Policy
There are multiple HUD regulations that determine what properties may accept a Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher:
1. The unit's monthly rent must meet the housing authority's Payment Standards. Payment Standards are the maximum monthly rent a household may pay with their voucher. To find the Payment Standards for your area, visit the housing authority's website. If the Payment Standards are not available on the website, or the housing authority does not have a website, contact the office for this information. You can search our website for housing authority website and contact information.
2. All units must be inspected and approved by the local housing authority to comply with HUD's housing standards. Inspectors check for the overall condition of the unit, including its structure, mold and other possible contaminants, and animal infestations.
3. There are several areas of the country that protect Section 8 voucher holders by making it illegal for a landlord to deny a tenant solely because they have a voucher. Voucher holders not in those areas must find a landlord that agrees to accept their voucher.
Step 1: Where You Can Use a Section 8 Voucher
1. Any apartments or houses owned by a private landlord in the Section 8 protected areas identified here.
2. Apartments or houses owned by a private landlord that will accept the voucher, unless the unit is located in an area protected by source of income discrimination laws.
3. Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) units, unless the unit has an additional Rental Assistance subsidy attached to it (See Step 2 below).
4. Section 515 Rural Rental Housing units, unless the unit has an additional Rental Assistance subsidy attached to it (See Step 2 below).
5. HOME Investment Partnerships Program (HOME) units, unless the unit has an additional Rental Assistance subsidy attached to it (See Step 2 below).
5. Eligible units owned by the housing authority that administers assistance under an Annual Contributions Contract, as long as the following conditions are met:
The housing authority has informed the household orally and verbally that they have the right to select any available eligible unit, and the housing authority-owned unit is selected without influence by the housing authority.
The household is not benefited by an additional form of housing subsidy.
The housing authority uses a HUD-approved independent entity (such as the local government) to determine reasonable rent, assist the household in negotiating rent with the owner, and inspect the unit.
Step 2: Where You Cannot Use a Section 8 Voucher
1. College or other school dormitories.
2. Penal, reformatory, medical, mental, or similar public or private institution units.
3. Units that already provide a Rental Assistance subsidy, including:
Public or Indian Housing
Section Project-Based Rental Assistance
Section 8 Project-Based Voucher
USDA Section 521 Rural Rental Assistance
Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly
Section 811 Supportive Housing for Persons with Disabilities
Any other federal, state or local housing program that offers a Rental Assistance subsidy (this does not include welfare or social security).
Step 3: How To Find A Unit
You can use these steps to use Affordable Housing Online to find a unit that accepts your voucher:
1. Search Affordable Housing Online for the city or county you will be living in.
2. While scrolling through community listings, look for those with the "HCV Welcome" tag.
3. Select the community image or link for details about the property.
4. Contact the community by using the online submission form or phone number provided on the page, and ask about applying to be a resident with your Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher.
Also, the housing authority that manages your voucher may have a list of landlords that accept vouchers. Contact the housing authority office for more information.
Step 4: Know the HCV Porting Policy
A Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher holder may transfer their voucher to a different area once specific conditions are met. This process is referred to as "portability."
A HCV participant may only port out to a different area after one year of residency in the jurisdiction of the housing authority that issued the voucher. If the voucher holder was a resident in the jurisdiction when they initially applied for the voucher, they may request to port out to a different jurisdiction at any time. (For example, if you live in New York City, New York, and apply for the Chicago Housing Authority Section 8 waiting list in Illinois, you must live within the Chicago Housing Authority's jurisdiction with your voucher for 12 months before porting. But, if you live in Chicago, IL and apply for the Chicago Housing Authority Section 8 waiting list, you may port to a new area any time after you receive your voucher.)
When searching for a new area, it's important to know the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher income qualifications, as well. If your household does not qualify for the housing authority's income limits, you may not port there.
Housing authorities are given a lot of leeway by HUD in their porting policy, so there may be other specific factors required to be able to port your voucher.
To begin this process, you must first contact the housing authority that currently manages your voucher. You will then be instructed to contact the housing authority that serves the area you are interested in moving to.
That housing authority must either be "absorbing" or "billing" vouchers. "Absorbing" means that the housing authority takes full control over your voucher. "Billing" means that the housing authority will take you in as a resident, but it will bill your previous housing authority for its share of your monthly rent.
It is important to consider any expenses involved in moving to a new location such as your current lease, rental deposit, moving and travel costs, and utility costs. Have a plan for transportation, school registration, employment, and childcare before you start the porting process to ease the transition to a new home.
You can use the search bar on the top of this page to search our website for housing authority contact information.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


I'll never forget my first summer in the northern part of Europe. It was back in 1998 when I was doing a traineeship in Mannheim, Germany. One day the sun came out and suddenly everybody was half naked, everybody had sunglasses on and going out in the streets, people were SO happy, So cheerful, everybody was sitting outside in the terraces, in the parks, they would cram themselves in tiny little balconies (that I would have never called balconies myself)....summer was here (at least for a day)...and they HAD to enjoy it.
I think there's enough evidence by now to prove to the more sceptics that Global Warming is here, been reading a very interesting special about it in the latest Newskeek. And regardless of the fears and the politics behind, besides the potential scenarios that make me actually wonder if I should invest in a beach house by the Baltic sea ;-)...the fact is that since Friday not only Spring was here but with a breaking record of 28.9 degrees Celsius for the month of April in the Netherlands it felt like Summer was actually here.
On Friday evening I joined Joost, Geert Jan and some other friends for a quick drink in De Pijp...and there was some holiday feeling to people sitting in the terraces or just standing outside with beers, white beers, white wines or Mohitos in their hands.
On Saturday Aissa and me decided that we HAD to go to Bloemendaal, one of the closest beaches to Amsterdam. I have to point out that Aissa is Brazilian and we actually became quite good friends since last Summer when we would get into the train on Saturdays and Sundays ready to make the most out of the beach...we both have grown up by the beach and we definitely LOVE it! However this time we decided to cycle to Bloemendaal (for Non-Dutch pronounce "Blue-mendal"). It took us 1 hour and 40 minutes at a steady pace to ride the 30kms to Bloemendaal and 1 hour and 30mins for our way back. As the Netherlands is so flat and as we cycle almost every day, it was not hard, we didn't get soar legs or were tired, however as we have just plain city bikes...God did our asses hurt on the way back ;-) And we spent a really GREAT day laying down in the sand and feeling the gorgeous rays caressing our bodies!
For a few photos of Sat and Sun click here and for a 1 min video of my cycling through the park click here.
Happy Easter!! Felices Pascuas! Buona Pasqua!


text:
By Class of 2023 Officers and Students
We would like to express our gratitude and say thank you for your continued support through countless drive-thru feeds and other fundraisers.
Due to being unable to have concessions at sporting events this school year, classes such as ours are having to come up with other ways to bring in funds for senior trips.
The Class of 2023 is hosting the Holiday Penny Auction Sunday, Dec. 12, from 1-...


text:
require File.expand_path('../../../spec_helper', __FILE__)
require File.expand_path('../fixtures/methods', __FILE__)

describe "Time#year" do
  it "returns the four digit year for time as an integer" do
    with_timezone("CET", 1) do
      Time.at(0).year.should == 1970
    end
  end
end

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


This Summer make it Fun! Join Vibe Performing Arts SCV for our Summer Camps & Musical Production Camp.
Love to sing, act, and dance? Everyone is featured and all levels are welcome. Learn character development, voice and stage techniques while performing in our musical production of The Lion King!
Professor Doug will teach you to impress your friends and family with sleight of hand and card tricks. Comedian Rocky will show you how to deliver a punchline, write and develop comedy & work on improv skills.
Fundamentals of acting including audition techniques on & off camera with Industry Professional Susan Olsen (Cindy Brady, Gunsmoke & more). Learn to write a script and film to create a mini-video!
Vocal training and choreography in the style of current Pop Stars. Students learn singing technique, stage movement, microphone technique and more. Camp ends with a performance.
Learn how to play in a band. Guitar, bass, drum, keyboard/piano & singers welcome. Basic instrument knowledge is required.


text:
Scartichthys viridis is a species of combtooth blenny found in the southeast Pacific ocean, from Peru to Chile. Members of this species feed primarily off of plants (including benthic algae and weeds), phytoplankton, amphipods, and mollusks.  This species reaches a length of  SL.

References

viridis
Fish described in 1836

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Reflective Gear Whether you are commuting in heavy traffic or riding on quiet unlit roads, cycling in bad light or the dark is a risky business. Reflective Strips & Jackets It cannot be solely the responsibility of the driver to see the cyclists so it is important for all riders to make sure they are as visible as possible. This can be done by wearing bright clothing or special cycling clothing with reflective strips or purchasing reflective tape and jackets. Life Saving Accessories At AW Cycles we stock all sorts of reflective tapes, belts and bibs to wear in the dark and make your bike and your body highly visible. As a car approaches, their headlights will reflect off you and light up the strips. All of these items are inexpensive, but could prove vital to your safety when out riding your bike in the dark.


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For more stress-free gardening, choose well-adapted plants for your climate and space and gradually cull out what doesn't work. "I mean, who actually waters summer-flowering monkey grass?" says Felder Rushing.
Hunkering down like Minnesotans in a snowstorm might be the way to go for gardening in our torrid summers.
Gardeners aren't farmers; one way to avoid suffering during our long dry spells, insufferable humidity and all-night heat is to garden in the opposite season of how we were raised.
To set this up, I got asked the other day about the difference between how I garden in both Mississippi and England. Answer is, not much, except plant choices.
Unlike Mississippi, England cools down at night in the summer, so they can grow a whole bunch of garden favorites like peonies, lilacs, fuchsias and lupines that suffer in our August's 80 degrees at 3 in the morning. On the other hand, English summers are too cool for decent okra or sweet potatoes, and crape myrtles stay covered in mildew.
But though our climates dictate different plant palettes, gardening itself is basically the same. It's still about digging a hole and putting something in it green side up, then watering until it gets rooted enough to make it on its own. There are all sorts of subtleties of course, such as mulching, weeding, fertilizing, pruning, controlling pests, on and on. And dragging water hoses hither and yon.
Oh, and replanting stuff that doesn't want to grow there in the first place.
But it doesn't have to be this way, if you plan ahead by choosing well-adapted plants to begin with and gradually replace those weenies that can't cut the mustard. I mean, who actually waters summer-flowering striped monkey grass?
The real difference is in timing -- at least with savvy gardeners. Folks up North and in Europe basically plant in the spring and tend it until fall, then sit out the cold winter until starting over the next spring. We can easily do the opposite.
Perfect examples: Snapdragons, pansies, kale and hollyhocks grow well all spring, summer and fall in cooler climates, but freeze in the winter; here, we have to plant them in the fall for winter color and accept that they will die in our early summer heat.
Now that I'm older, busier and lazier, I've mostly adopted a new strategy for dealing with our climate. I approach it like Northerners do their winters by avoiding it as best I can by planting mostly in the cool weather, and try to just squeak through the summer.
It's smarter to plant in the fall and winter so plants get pretty well established before the next summer and in less need of watering. This leaves me to only have to set out a few heat- and drought-hardy summer annuals in the spring, then hunker down under the AC until the stifling summer eases up in the fall.
The trick is in finding plants that will make it all summer without a lot of care.
Over the decades I have searched through small towns, country gardens, and even cemeteries to note which plants can easily survive our summers with little or no watering. See for yourself with a short walk or drive around any older neighborhood.
Considering how much sun or shade you have, you can combine these tried-and-true plants into any garden design or style. Plant them in regular dirt without a lot of amendments, get them through the first summer, and they will be with you for good, without depending on artificial life support.
So, I'm pretty much done for the summer. One more good weeding and mulching, and I'll admire my lovelies from the porch swing and get back to it when cooler weather rolls back around.
Interested in my much-vetted list of commonly grown, tried-and-true Southern garden workhorses that don't need babying? Shoot me an email.


The Talbot Agronomy Program has been active for over 60 consecutive years. This makes the Talbot Corn Club the oldest in the nation.
Each year, local farmers enter the contest. Entries are tabulated and the awards are given out at the annual banquet. Our annual program includes a keynote speaker, a crop report, and a weather summary. Sponsors are also recognized at this event.


text:
Home রাজনীতি আ.লীগ
ধন-সম্পদ কাজে আসে না: ছাত্রলীগকে প্রধানমন্ত্রী
in আ.লীগ
পৌরসভা নির্বাচন: আওয়ামী লীগের জয়জয়কার
ওবায়দুল কাদের ভাইয়ের বিজয় নিয়ে যা বললেন
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has instructed the leaders and activists of Chhatra League to accumulate knowledge without running after wealth. He said, wealth is of no use, only knowledge is beneficial.
He made the remarks at a discussion organized by Bangladesh Chhatra League at Khamarbari Krishibid Institution auditorium within the capital on Monday (January 4) afternoon on the occasion of its 63rd founding anniversary. The Prime Minister was present within the virtual KIB auditorium from Ganobhaban.
বাংলায় পড়তে ক্লিক করুন
Sheikh Hasina said, "If you acquire knowledge, you'll never stumble in life." Now that schools, colleges, and universities are closed, don't sit down and drop whatever you'll get your hands on. Acquire the maximum amount of knowledge as you'll alongside the textbook. The more knowledge you acquire, the larger it'll be. '
Bangabandhu's daughter said, 'Corona has taught us that houses and cars are useless. Knowledge is an asset that nobody can ever deduct. If you acquire knowledge, you'll never stumble in life. '
The Prime Minister also directed the BSL leaders and workers to show illiterate people to read and write in their area. "If there are students within the family or within the neighbors' house, help them in their studies," he said. Education is the favorite principle of the Chhatra League. With this in mind, we've to follow the trail of Bangabandhu. you cannot get older in life without following the norm. Inspire your patriotism. The organization has got to be strengthened keeping the tradition of the Chhatra League. '
The Prime Minister also praised the role of BSL leaders and activists during the coronation. He said, 'Chhatra League has played an impeccable role in Corona. once I told them that, they left everything. My Chhatra League boys are standing next to me where people were leaving after leaving the Corona victims. Chhatra League has also worked to deliver food to people's homes. I'm really proud. When the farmers were in crisis over the cutting of paddy, Chhatra League decreased to chop the paddy. They set an example, no task is little. '
Sheikh Hasina said, "The history of Chhatra League within the history of Bengalis. The history of Bengalis is that the history of the Chhatra League. In every struggle of Bangladesh that we got today, there was a Chhatra League. Bangabandhu formed Chhatra League to determine the rights of the Bengali language. Chhatra League is involved in every political activity of this country. The BSL has given the foremost blood in any struggle including the movement for restoration of democracy and anti-authoritarian movement.
Describing things after the assassination of Bangabandhu, Sheikh Hasina said, "After '75, when Zia became the President, his first job was to torture the leaders and workers of Chhatra League. At first, he was dragged into the party by temptation, otherwise, he was killed and tortured. Relatives didn't find the bodies of the many.
The Prime Minister also said that she was trying to determine the democratic rights of the people of Bangladesh, fulfill the essential needs and fulfill the dream of the daddy of the state to steer a far better life.
Sheikh Hasina highlighted the necessity to form Bangladesh digital, establish a broadband line to the Union, distribute books across the country in difficult times like Corona, and introduce technical education within the Upazila.
"Why should we lag behind where the planet is moving forward? we've to stay pace with the Fourth technological revolution. '
The Prime Minister said special attention is being paid to agriculture also as industrialization. "We have opened the private sector after coming to power," she said. The goal behind it's one, employment. Our remittances are increasing, we've been ready to increase our exchange reserves tons. '
The Prime Minister also criticized some media outlets. "There are some magazines, regardless of how good you are doing, they never write," he said. But if you discover a touch flaw somewhere, it makes it bigger. It's their mental misery. '
On the occasion of the founding anniversary of the organization, former and current leaders and workers of the country greeted and congratulated the organizational guardian Bangabandhu's daughter Sheikh Hasina.
On the occasion of the founding anniversary of the normal student organization of education, peace, and progress, the founding anniversary cake was cut at the sting of Ganobhaban and KIB auditorium. Former president and general secretary of Bangladesh Chhatra League spoke. Mostafa Jalal Mohiuddin and Advocate Jahangir Kabir Nanak. Besides, the presidents and general secretaries of the previous Central Chhatra League, who are on the stage since 1981, were also present on the stage.
The discussion was chaired by Bangladesh Chhatra League President Al Nahyan Khan Joy and conducted by General Secretary Lekhak Bhattacharya. Also, present on the stage were the presidents and general secretaries of Dhaka University Chhatra League and Dhaka Metropolitan North and South.
না.গঞ্জ মহানগর আ.লীগ সম্পাদকের বিরুদ্ধে মেয়র আইভীর মামলা


text:
2022 in-person events:
Click on the links for full event descriptions and to register.
Hike to Tremper Mountain Fire Tower Saturday, October 1st, 2022 @ 9 AM This fire tower is situated in the heart of the high peaks. The trail is one of the most scenic in the Catskills.
Hike to Pratt Rock Saturday, October 1st, 2022 @ 10 AM Hike to see the unusual rock carvings by a traveling stone carver, commissioned by Zadock Pratt on his property. Pratt Rock is considered to be the first Civil War monument and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Fall Foliage Hike at Snake Rocks Preserve Saturday, October 1, 2022 @ 10 AM Fall in the Catskills is an abundantly colorful time of year, offering countless lookout points for hikers to enjoy the painted vistas the changing leaves provide.
Hike the Headwaters Trail Sunday, October 2nd, 2022 @ 10:30 AM We will follow a trail up to the top of Bald Mountain where we will have a 270 degree view to the Catskills, one of the best views of the Catskills. The trail is on some old ski trails.
Hike Dry Brook Ridge Monday, October 3rd, 2022 @ 8:30 AM Enjoy a 7-8-mile out-and-back hike from Hill Road to the ledges along the higher portions of the ridge.
Hike Rochester Hollow Tuesday, October 4th, 2022 @ 10:30 AM The main trail is a former road with marked loop trails off the road. It follows a lovely stream for the first part. We will visit the monument to John Burroughs placed by the boys from the Raymond Riordon School in Highland.
Loop de Loop Beginner Hike Wednesday, October 5, 2022 @1 PM This woodland hike offers a 2.2-mile loop around scenic Frick Pond that is suitable for beginners who are comfortable walking this distance. Winding through the hemlocks, with views across the pond, there may be sightings of mushrooms, great blue heron, and other woodland wonders.
Hike Slide Mountain and enjoy mindful Yoga at Summit of Catskill's Highest Wednesday, October 5th, 2022 @ 8:30 AM The Catskills highest summit at 4284′ is a moderately difficult hike with some great views along the route. Optional yoga exercises and meditation available from the Yoga Master who will lead the hike.
Hike Cabot Mountain Wednesday, October 5th, 2022 @ 10 AM We will follow a section to the Finger Lakes Trail to Cabot Mountain Over Look of Little Pond, about 3 miles. It is a little steep to start with, but levels off along the top.
Hike to Dibble's Quarry Thursday, October 6, 2022 @ 10 AM Dibble's Quarry was in operation until sometime around the late 1800s, and it is said that some of the bluestone quarried there was used for sidewalks in New York City. Long abandoned, this lonesome mountain of rock shards in the middle of nowhere has fantastically transformed in recent years.
Giant Ledge, Leave No Trace Awareness Workshop & Guided Hike Thursday, October 6, 2022 @ 10:30 AM Join New York-New Jersey Trail Conference's Trail Steward Program Coordinator, Myra Romano, on a leisurely hike up to Giant Ledge in the Slide Mountain Wilderness.
Rail Trail Walk in Pine Hill Friday, October 7, 2022 @ 2:30 PM Join us for a short hike on an historic rail trail in Pine Hill.
Hikefest at the Mountain Top Historical Society Saturday, October 8th @ 9 AM Situated on the Mountaintop in Greene County, MTHS will offer four interpretive hikes in the vicinity, each visiting historic sites.
Manitou Tour to Westkill Ceremonial Stone Landscapes Saturday, October 8, 2022 @ 10 AM Join Overlook Mountain Center(OMC) to visit two ceremonial stone landscapes consisting of stone walls, cairns (stone piles) and effigies, considered Manitou Hassannash (spirit stones) to Native Americans. Well also visit Diamond Notch Falls in Spruceton Valley.
Hike Slide Mountain and enjoy mindful Yoga at Summit Sunday, October 9th, 2022 @ 8:30 AM The Catskills highest summit at 4284′ is a moderately difficult hike with some great views along the route. Optional yoga exercises and meditation available from the Yoga Master who will lead the hike.
– Event Type
Trails Less Traveled Hikes
Earn a Patch: Catskill Mountain Club Hikes
Tour the Catskills Fire Towers
Scenic Drives and Short Walks to Great Fall Views
Virtual Presentations and Programs


text:
What's Happening Today
Capital Hill News
Everything Don Lemon Says In This CNN Segment On Biden And Afghanistan Is Fake
You might think after Donald "Literally Hitler" Trump stepped down in January, CNN anchor Don Lemon would cool it. But as the Western powers learned in the '40s from the actual Hitler, appeasement never placates propagandists. It merely encourages them.
And Don Lemon is a propagandist, to be sure. Who could disagree with that? It's okay to be an opinion journalist, but opinion journalism masquerades as viewpoint-neutral reporting on CNN and other mainstream media outlets more than ever before.
And big surprise, left-of-center journalists like Don Lemon dominate this ever more agenda-driven and biased, ever more insular, news industry bubble. Things are much worse now in 2021 with mainstream news than they were five years ago when more than half of professional journalists worked in counties that Hillary Clinton won by 30% or more.
Can there be any wonder why 65% of Americans trusted news media anchors like Don Lemon in the 1980s, while today's public trust in mainstream media has cratered to 32%?
His first sleight of hand is to absolve every White House administration of the follies and horrors of the war in Afghanistan, which is your first clue. The one he's carrying the water for is the one that bears the blame for gross incompetence in overseeing the withdrawal from the region.
Lemon and his scriptwriters at CNN want you to forget about the past because that's where Americans will find Obama's Afghan troop surge to 100,000 in theater by the middle of his presidency. That's where voters will see years of the Democrat White House's efforts in Afghanistan, years and trillions of dollars that have ended this way.
Don Lemon says that there should be no accountability for Obama Administration officials or the former president, not even in the public's eyes.
But here's the CNN guy's big lie from the segment:
"And so I think the administration is getting beaten up on this a little bit too much because there's a lot of blame to go around from four different presidents, and who didn't have the guts to get us out of Afghanistan, because they were afraid of this moment, and what an exit might look like."
That fake news is a lie. The previous administration tied Biden's hands, which had negotiated peace with the Taliban and the withdrawal. Donald Trump is the president that had the guts to make it happen, delivering on his landmark 2016 foreign policy speech, calling the nation-building and regime change policies of Obama a failure.
Republican Nation
Former Obama Education Advisor 'Admits In Guilty Plea' To School Theft Plot
Popular NYC Restaurant Owner 'Challenges' Governor To 'Arrest' Him Over Her Vaccine Mandate
COVID-Fueled Divisions Only Have "One Thing" In Common
Biden 'Laughed Out' Of The Room In New 2022 Poll
Biden Will Address The Nation And Psaki Calls It A "Glorious...
Ron Johnson Has Become 'One Of The Top Follows' In Congress
Biden's Inflation Nightmare Is Sparing No Prisoners
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Lays The Smackdown On Fake News
Federal COVID Funding Has Led To Lower Standards Of Medical Care
Vaccine Mandates Being Collectively Tossed Into The Trash Bins
Biden's Failure To Boost His 33% Approval Rating
© 2022 Capital Hill News. All Rights Reserved.


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BGS Education
BGS Community
Parents and Friends
BGS Together
Enrol at BGS
Year Level Entry Guide
Visit BGS
Boarding at BGS
Boarding Community
Virtual Boarding Night 2020
History of Giving
Term Dates and Bell Times
MyGrammar(opens in new window/tab)
MyClasses(opens in new window/tab)
Old Boys(opens in new window/tab)
Virtual Tours(opens in new window/tab)
Brisbane Grammar School's founding mission in 1868 was to provide a broad liberal education to the young men of Queensland. This legacy holds strong, alongside the contemporary focus on critical and creative thinking, collaboration and communication skills.
The School's culture celebrates effort and teachers encourage each boy to achieve his personal best. As a result of this culture, BGS has consistently maintained its position as the leading academic school in Queensland.
The School's deliberately structured curriculum encourages a boy's increasing independence as he progresses through each year level and faces greater complexity.
In a time of significant change in the world of work, a BGS education equips students with the tools to achieve individual goals and all-round excellence, now and into the future.
A BGS Education is built upon Academic, Student Wellbeing and Cocurricular programs, which are all of equal importance.
Each of these programs is designed to promote the development and extension of the character and talents of students, and to nurture a strong sense of service, community, leadership and loyalty to others.
Since its foundation, the School's emphasis on a broad liberal education has enabled boys to become lifelong learners. To achieve this goal, the School has developed approaches to teaching and learning informed by principles known as Effective Thinking Cultures (ETC).
In addition to mastering subject matter, boys develop thinking skills they can use to strategically apply their knowledge and to meet unanticipated challenges. Students learn to make decisions about the most effective ways to tackle problems and to modify their thinking to suit the context.
Brisbane Grammar School recognises middle schooling as a critical phase in the cognitive, social, emotional and physical development of boys.
Boys in the Middle School learn and grow through a philosophy of continuous development across varied experiences in the academic, wellbeing and cocurricular spaces.
The Middle School is a vibrant learning community where students develop the dispositions required of effective learners, remain connected and engaged in learning, and grow into young men of character who contribute positively to their communities.
As a complement to its educational offering, Brisbane Grammar School has one of the premier boarding programs in Australia, including a Middle School program run out of newly renovated Griffith House.
Click here for more information on BGS Boarding.
Boys entering the Senior School are encouraged to maintain a broad range of interests and aspire to the BGS motto, nil sine labore – nothing without work.
Increasingly specialised areas of study are complemented with access to sport, clubs, cultural activities and various wellbeing pursuits to ensure a well-rounded education.
Destinations and Outcomes
BGS graduates attend the top tertiary institutions in Australia and around the world, and are leaders in their chosen fields.
Click here to read more about the School's academic results.
The BGS Student Wellbeing program comprises a broad array of activities and services dedicated to the holistic growth of boys becoming young men.
Student Wellbeing includes the areas of wellbeing curriculum, student leadership, public purpose, immersions and health services.
BGS students are fortunate to experience a leading Outdoor Education program, run from a satellite campus at Moogerah, southwest of Brisbane.
The program runs from Year 5 to Year 11, with boys experiencing an increasingly challenging set of outdoor pursuits reliant on developing teamwork and leadership skills.
Cocurricular
The Cocurricular program at Brisbane Grammar School embraces sport, music, drama and a range of other activities and special interest clubs. Regular and diverse involvement promotes student wellbeing, enhances academic outcomes and enables engagement as a member of the BGS community.
The Cocurricular program aims to develop students' skills to fulfil their potential for intelligent performance. The program also provides boys with opportunities to gain greater self-knowledge and awareness through exploring and extending their talents.
BGS enables high levels of participation, offers outstanding development programs and supports the pursuit of excellence through performance in sport and the arts.
Student Services supports boys in the areas of personal, academic and careers counselling. The student counselling team comprises experienced child and adolescent psychologists, as well as experts in tertiary pathways.
BGS has three dedicated library spaces for Middle School and Senior School boys. BGS Libraries offer much beyond the traditional role of book loaning, combining digital technologies and expertise with the atmosphere of a welcoming social space.
Your BGS Journey
Discover the opportunities at
Queensland's leading school for boys.
Gregory Terrace
E reception@brisbanegrammar.com
CRICOS 00489C


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Q: C++/boost way to copy part of file I know there is boost:filesystem::copy_file which allows copying the whole file.
But I need to copy part of file from the beginning to some specific offset to other file. My question is if there is anything in the boost to do that?
If not then it seems I need to use fopen/fread/fwrite and implement my own custom copying loop.
Update: I don't ask for most effective way to copy a file. I don't mention Linux. I wonder how this question can be seen as a duplicate of the "most efficient way to copy file on Linux" question. It looks like all those people marking it as duplicate didn't read my question at all.

A: The most efficient boost route would I think be a memory mapped file for the source file and a direct write for the destination file.
This program takes 2 filename arguments. It copies the first half of the source file to the destination file.
#include <boost/iostreams/device/mapped_file.hpp>
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <cstdio>

namespace iostreams = boost::iostreams;
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
    if (argc != 3)
    {
        std::cerr << "usage: " << argv[0] << " <infile> <outfile> - copies half of the infile to outfile" << std::endl;
        std::exit(100);
    }

    auto source = iostreams::mapped_file_source(argv[1]);
    auto dest = std::ofstream(argv[2], std::ios::binary);
    dest.exceptions(std::ios::failbit | std::ios::badbit);
    auto first = source. begin();
    auto bytes = source.size() / 2;
    dest.write(first, bytes);
}

As per comments, depending on OS, your mileage may vary with system calls such as splice and sendfile, however note the comments in the man page:

Applications may wish to fall back to read(2)/write(2) in the case where sendfile() fails with EINVAL or ENOSYS.

A:
If not then it seems I need to use fopen/fread/fwrite and implement my own custom copying loop.

Just to illustrate that there is a vanilla solution between Boost and C.
#include <fstream>
#include <algorithm>
#include <iterator>

int main()
{
    std::ifstream fin("in",std::ios_base::binary);
    fin.exceptions(std::ios::failbit | std::ios::badbit);
    std::ofstream fout("out",std::ios_base::binary);
    fout.exceptions(std::ios::failbit | std::ios::badbit);
    std::istream_iterator<char> iit(fin);
    std::ostream_iterator<char> oit(fout);
    std::copy_n(iit,42,oit);
    return 0;
}

Exception-handling TODO.

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