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Mikio Naruse | Midaregumo (Scattered Clouds, aka Two in the Shadow)
in purgatory
Nobuo Yamada (screenplay), Mikio Naruse (director)乱れ雲 Midaregumo (Scattered Clouds) aka Two in the Shadow / 1967, USA 1968
A couple, Yumiko (Yôko Tsukasa) and Hiroshi Eda (Yoshio Tsuchiya), is looking forward to moving to the United States where he has been reassigned by his company. She is 3 months pregnant with a new baby and is attempting to better learn English when she receives the horrible news: her husband has been struck by a passing automobile and has died.
Against all advice, the driver of the car, Mishima (Yūzō Kayama), attends the funeral, where the dead man's father and his grieving widow angrily respond, forcing him to quickly leave. We later discover that the accident has legally not been his fault—the car was the problem—but in that car he was also chauffeuring two geishas as he had been ordered to do by higher-ups in his company, a kind of tourist service; afraid of media-attention, the head of the company not only chastises his employee but transfers him from Tokyo to a country outpost.
Despite these setbacks and rebuffs, however, Mishima determines to pay, in retribution, a small amount of money each month to Mrs. Eda, and when he finds that, after having revoked by the Eda family (perhaps having something to do with fact that the forthcoming baby suddenly goes missing in the plot) she is now living in nearby a country inn run by her sister Ayako (Mitsuko Kusabue) as a maid/possible geisha, he pays another visit.
The meeting, once more, is tense, but at least more peaceful, and gradually we begin to perceive that the two, despite that tension, are beginning to fall in love, both of them being absolutely beautiful beings, who dress in western-style dress and obviously share a modern way of looking at the world—along with sharing so many disappointments in their lives. Yumiko, being no longer part of her husband's world, now refuses Mishima's monthly payments.
So begins the Japanese film director's deeply saturated color film, his very last, Scattered Clouds (also titled in some venues as Two in the Shadow). Immediately, this 1967 melodrama, seemed somehow familiar; it was only a bit later that I realized just how much kinship this film has with Douglas Sirk's 1954 film, Magnificent Obsession, a film wherein Rock Hudson's character not only kills the husband of Jane Wyman's character, but later is responsible for her being hit by a car and going blind. And suddenly I realized that in nearly all of the now six films I had seen of Naruse, mostly about women with thwarted loves and lives, were beautiful melodramatic studies very much in the manner of Sirk—even though they lack his deep Hollywood Technicolor treatments or their sometimes almost operatic-like flair (particularly in Sirk's later works). Yet, I think the comparison is fair, and it helps me to explain why I was drawn to Naruse time and again. I now intend to see as many of films of as I possibly can.
If in this film, the two unlikely lovers are increasingly brought together, and have quite clearly grown to care for each other, we know, simply from Naruse's images of heavy rains, trains rushing off into space, and, most notably, their observation of another accident, in many ways similar to Eda's, that their love cannot be fulfilled. They're not just in the "shadows" of each other but are unfortunately outcasts to the societies to which they once belonged. With its deep censure of the self and its inability to speak openly of illness and death, their world ostracizes people like them. Might the handsome Mishima driven a bit more carefully and discretely? Did Yumiko abort her baby or simply have a stillbirth? Both of these very beautiful people are doomed it appears by their very commitments and successes. Mishima, even though beloved by his fellow employees, is yet again to be sent away, at film's end, to a more remote location, Lahore—a place in the Japanese imagination that is the birthplace of cholera.
Without any other financial support, we suspect, Yumiko may well have to submit to becoming a geisha in her sister's employment. The few hours of boating and enjoyment they experience are set against not only "scattered" clouds but an endless downpour of rain and unfortunate events.
By film's end, we can only hope that these remarkable individuals might find a way to climb out of their purgatory, meeting up finally in the urban center to live the life to which they might otherwise have been destined. But, as in so many of his films, Naruse presents us with little hope for the "best of all possible worlds." And their departure is a true tear-jerker in the manner of so many Sirk films. Independent-minded women particularly do not fare well, nor working men who have lost the faith of the firms which they so faithfully served (see Ginza Cosmetics and the brilliant, A Woman Who Ascends the Stairs). If Naruse's films don't always have the polish of Ozu's or the innovation of Kurosawa's films, in my mind he is still one of the Japanese film masters.
Giogos Lanthimos | The Killing of a Sacred Deer
what's wrong with this picture?
Giogos Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou (screenplay), Giogos Lanthimos (director) The Killing of a Sacred Deer / 2017
Like the two previous movies by Greek director Giogos Lanthimos his 2017 film, The Killing of a Sacred Deer is rather quirky work that in its highly fictional elements blends a kind of Kafka-like world with a naturalist presentation. In all three films, despite the impossibilities of the plot, Lanthimos treats them as full realities in which we have no choice, if we are to follow his movies, but to enter; and once we do enter that world we realize despite their lack of credulity, his stories still have deep meaning and connection to our own lives. No, we are not living in separate, imaginary
world such as that the parents create for their children in Dogtooth; nor are we forced into marriages, as in The Lobster, with a danger of transformation into animals if we do not marry. Yet, metaphorically speaking, we are the products of our parental upbringing, which we can all perceive as rather strange at moments; and we are, in our societies, often shoehorned into the marital condition.
Nor are we all punished, as in The Killing of a Sacred Deer, for our major failings in the past, particularly not by being forced into a decision for which our children will be permitted to live or die; yes, we have similar stories throughout literature, including the Biblical tale of Abraham and Isaac (in that instance the child was saved), William Styron's painful novel (and later movie) Sophie's Choice, and Euripides' ancient drama Iphigenia at Aulis, which is referenced in Lanthimos' film. In that play the Greek warrior Agamemnon is forced to sacrifice his eldest daughter, Iphigenia, in order appease the goddess Artemis who has refused to allow the winds to rise enough so that his fleet might leave its port.
In this case, it is Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell), a successful cardiothoracic surgeon with an almost perfect family—a beautiful wife, Anna (Nicole Kidman), an intelligent older daughter, Kim (Raffey Cassidy), a talented and precocious son, Bob (Sunny Suljic), and lovely home—who is required to make the sacred sacrifice. Although everything may seem perfect in his life and household, we immediately recognize, as critics have pointed out, that something is not quite right. When he has sex with his wife, also a doctor, they play roles, she pretending to be an anesthetized patient so that we might get an erection and, so to speak, rape her. Although Kim is pretty and sweet, they overpraise her singing skills, which, it is clear, are not very impressive. Bobby is praised for playing the piano, although—perhaps fortunately—we never hear him play. Steven may now be a much vaunted surgeon, but in the past, he has evidently had serious drinking problems, one such incident perhaps responsible in a long-ago patient's death after a car crash.
A bit more troubling is that before the first frame of this film Steven has been regularly meeting with a teenage boy, Martin (Barry Keoghan), giving him money and gifts. Obviously, we can only wonder, at first, why they are meeting, and we are set up to expect that Steven may be a kind of pedophile; certainly, when Steven's anesthesiologist friend, Matthew (Bill Camp), perceives that his friend has bought the boy an expensive watch (one which Matthew himself previously recommended), he might have come to the same conclusion. Accordingly, despite the picture-perfect vision of Steven's life, we know there is also something amiss.
The surgeon's relationship with Martin, Lanthimos gradually reveals, is not an issue of illicit sex but of guilt, for Martin is the son of the man who Steven, ten-years earlier had operated on after drinking. It is this occasion of bad medical practice that clearly haunts our hero, and his friendship with Martin is an attempt to assuage his guilt and to rectify the years the young boy has been fatherless.
But in his bland appreciation of Steven's good intentions, we realize there is also something strange about Martin. Nonetheless, the surgeon eventually invites the boy to share a dinner with Anna and his children, Kim immediately taking a liking to the polite and seemingly shy boy, despite the fact that he, quite apologetically, has recently taken up smoking. The family has little knowledge of why the boy is in their home, since Steven gives only a vague notion of his interest in the teenager, but all seems to go so nicely that Martin returns the favor, inviting Steven into his own far less well-off home where he lives and seemingly dotes on his mother.
In retrospect, I perceive that his invitation into his home is almost an possible antidote to what later happens, for in many respects, he is inviting the guilt-ridden Steven to actually replace the father he has lost, sharing with him one of his favorite films; Martin's mother (Alicia Silverstone), in fact, attempts to seduce him, encouraging him to stay, even after Martin has gone to bed, to try her "tart." It's quite clear that she would be glad to become his mistress or, if possible, his wife; and perhaps had Steven taken the bait, his own family might have been saved. True to his own wife and family life, however, he hastily departs.
Soon after, Steven's son Bob finds that he can no longer walk. Rushed to the hospital Bob is found to have no neurological problems, and his parents can only imagine that his inability to walk has been psychosomatic, a diagnosis confirmed, apparently, when the boy eventually regains the use of his legs. Yet, as he leaves the hospital, in a long and quite shockingly-filmed scene, the child descends the escalator with his mother, only to collapse as he comes to street level. He also finds that he wants nothing to eat, and later begins to bleed profusely from his nose.
No sooner after Steven, despite all of his scientific education, begins to perceive that something supernatural is occurring, his daughter also loses the use of her legs and shares the same inability to consume food. The two siblings share the same hospital room, while Murphy revisits Martin's home, where those within refuse to respond.
Only later does he again meet with Martin, who calmly explains that both children will die if their father does not make a decision to kill one of his beloved offspring as retribution for his acts.
Murphy's relationship with Anna is also in jeopardy, particularly since he had hidden his connection with Martin and she discovers, through Matthew, that Murphy had drunk during the morning of operating on Martin's father.
Critic Brian Tellerico argues that the situation is one of a kind of "god and devil" playing out their destinies:
Steven plays God. He saves lives and he makes mistakes that take lives. And he sees the world in that kind of black and white. Martin breaks down his perfectly controlled worldview, and demands something rarely asked of the gods, personal sacrifice.
Yet, we also perceive just how ungodly Steven has truly been, despite the suburban castle which he inhabits and the moral sacred ground in which he has pretended to live. Like all of us, Steven is an ordinary sinful being of whom the devil or simply a supernatural force is now demanding revenge. As in all of this director's films to date, we are forced to ask the simple question: "What is wrong with this picture?"—not necessarily the "motion picture" we are watching (although by extension Lanthimos also asks you to judge his highly improbable conceits) but the extravagant societal structures which his films represent. Something is truly rotten in all his various Denmarks—the Danes now described as one happiest of people on earth.
By film's end it appears that Steven has no other choice left, as he covers his children's heads and shoots randomly toward them. The first two bullets miss, but the third kills his youngest.
Later, at the diner where Steven first met with Martin, the remaining family sits, Martin entering and all exchanging horrific glances. The family quickly stand and exit while the devil, or perhaps just a still-longing boy, stares after them.
André Téchiné | Les Sœurs Brontë (The Brontë Sisters)
becoming ghosts
Pascal Bonitzer, André Téchiné, and Jean Gruault (screenplay), André Téchiné (director) Les Sœurs Brontë (The Brontë Sisters) / 1979
French director André 's Téchiné's1979 film, The Brontë Sisters, focuses on the daily lives of the famed Brontës while basically ignoring their literary contributions. Of the 3 featured sisters and one brother, Emily (Isabelle Adjani), Charlotte (Marie-France Pisier), Anne (Isabelle Huppert), Branwell (Pascal Greggory), Branwell's art is commented on and actually shown. The fiction and poetry of his own and his sisters is briefly mentioned, and, at one point, Charlotte and Anne do travel to London to convince one of their publishers, Mr. Smith (Julian Curry), that their writings, published under the pen-names of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell are actually their and Emily's work. Yet, I would think it might be safe to say that if a young viewer had never read the original novels or seen the movie versions of Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, or The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, he might wonder what all the fuss is about. These provincial daughters of a religious leader living on the moors, although seeming basically intelligent and pretty, seem to lack the talents which might allow them to easily survive within society. Although Anne finds a position with a local gentrified family to educate their daughter, the others seem, as Branwell argues, to need to get out and see the world.
Perhaps recognizing this fact, Charlotte convinces their moneyed aunt to pay for her and Emily to travel to Brussels to study French which, hopefully, will allow them to return to teach that language to locals.
The journey ends in a kind of disaster for both. Although Charlotte loves the school, secretly falling in love with the married and rather heartless Monsieur Héger (Xavier Depraz), Emily is terribly unhappy faced with the bourgeois young Belgian women who make fun of her plain and English manners.
She prefers the moors, where, often dressed as a man (it allows me to walk faster and more easily, she argues) she wanders, at times accompanied by Anne. Emily likes the hardy and plain holly, while Anne prefers roses.
Their Brussels episode, however, is interrupted by the death of their Aunt Elizabeth (Alice Sapritch), which Emily appreciates as an opportunity to return home, while Charlotte, when they arrive too late to see their aunt before she dies, chafes at having had to return, rushing back to Belgium and the unresponsive Héger.
Perhaps it's inevitable that the director of numerous gay-themed films should, instead, focus on the male of the family, Branwell, an alcoholic and, later, opium addict, upon whom his sisters dote. Emily (and later even Charlotte) wait up nights to allow him secret entrance back into the house after he has wasted his evenings at the nearby Black Bull Inn. Ann even procures him a job as tutor in the same house in which works, for the Robinson family's young son.
Indeed, we might at first suspect that Branwell is confused about his sexuality, particularly given the immense effect that his sisters—two of whom, not portrayed in this film, died while he was still a child—had upon him. Téchiné even toys with this idea in presenting his relationship to the sculptor Leyland (Jean Sorel), whom Branwell describes not only as a would-be mentor but as a man of great beauty and power. Clearly, the proud Leyland was also taken with him, deigning to even visit the young artist later in Branwell's life, when he no longer had any talent and could offer the elder no intelligent company. Even the biographers speak mutedly about his possible gender problems.
But it was the flirtatious wife of Robinson (yes, just like the Mrs. Robinson of The Graduate) that led to his downfall. Although Téchiné's film shows us some rather racy scenes, particularly given his lowly position—and especially in the eyes of her cruel husband, who she dares not cross—we are never quite sure just how much of their passion has been realized. Mrs. Robinson, in fact, complains bitterly about his own lack of commitment to their relationship; she too, apparently, is a Romantic,
seeking a man who might simply kidnap her, allowing her to escape her husband's boorish world. What is clear is that Branwell is not that man; and seeing her mistress toy with her brother as he falls for her wiles, Anne quits her job with the household, Branwell being fired soon after. In one of his opiate fits, the Brontë brother removes himself from his own portrait of his sisters. He has become a ghost.
It quickly becomes clear that Branwell prefers the manly laborers he finds in his drinking buddies at the local inn. But even when Mrs. Robinson's monstrous husband dies, she will no longer allow Branwell to visit her, having failed in his "heterosexual" commitments.
It is almost as if Branwell's debauchery, resulting in his death from excessive drinking soon after, that signals a downward spiral of the entire family. Soon after, Emily is diagnosed with tuberculosis, refusing to receive medical treatment and also dying. Anne, ill as well with tuberculosis, requests that she see the ocean before she dies, Charlotte traveling with her to the water's edge, where Anne also dies.
Only Charlotte—perhaps the most romantically inclined of them all—survives, beginning a relationship with her father's curate, Arthur Nicholls, and traveling with him to London where she sits in the opera box of British author William Thackeray (performed, in a brilliant moment of casting, by French literary theorist and semiotician Roland Barthes).
In the end, if the director does not literally tell us about these four siblings actual literary contributions, he shows them, elliptically, through their lives. We have enough of all their fictions presented—the romantic hauntings of the moors, the harsh teachings of both religious and secular leaders, the unhappy marriages of the husbands and wives who surrounded them, the near-impossibility of lovers being able to sustain their relationships, and the magical moments of imagination that allowed their fictional figures to transcend their worlds, even while being destroyed by them—that we still get a strong sense of these individuals' literary oeuvres. If nothing else, we certainly learn the context in which their wonderful tales were hatched. The harsh world in which they lived killed them while also giving birth to their remarkable writings which history would not forget.
Posted by greenintegerblog at 11:02 AM No comments:
Věra Chytilová | O něčem jiném (Something Different)
unhappy women
Věra Chytilová (script and director) O něčem jiném (Something Different) / 1963
Czech director Věra Chytilová is often seen as the bad girl of the filmmakers of the Czech revolution of the 1960s. Her best known film was her 1966 work, Daisies (see my review below), after which she was banned from making films and found it almost impossible to continue as an active film-maker until later in her life. Yet, as Criterion has recently revealed by releasing earlier works, Chytilová also made other noteworthy movies, particularly her first feature film, Something Different of 1963.
This film is made even more fascinating through its ties to documentary filmmaking focusing on an unhappy housewife and an aging gymnast (Věra Uzelacová and Eva Bosáková), and for its quite outspoken feminist positions.
Intercutting scenes between the two, and at one point through a television screen bringing the gymnast into the housewife's home, we observe that both hard-working females must apparently sacrifice everything, including love, the males, and in this gymnast's case, other females' demands.
The director focuses on the housewife's repetitive kitchen chores, her daily housecleaning and cooking duties, and, particularly, on her caretaking of her loveable but truly rambunctious son. But even those endless duties don't seem to be enough for her husband, who in an attempt for them to save up enough to buy a car, insistently asks her to consider washing and ironing all the clothes instead of paying a woman who does them in her house.
And when the husband returns from work each day, he has little time even for conversation, determined as he is to spend hours reading the newspapers. Even when the couple entertain friends, it ends generally, so the second couple admit, in a fight between the husband and wife guests, along with hurried goodbyes. Clearly the husband has little to do with his son, not even at the dinner table where the boy often refuses to eat the soups the housewife has cooked up.
For the gold-winning gymnast life is also a series of routines, walking the Balance Beam, swinging on the Uneven Bars, etc. while her trainers shout out orders to her. Even when her husband arrives, he evidently a former gymnast himself, makes further suggestions to improve her routine.
Moreover, Eva is knowingly coming to the end of her career, suggesting that she intends to retire after one more competition. Her legs aren't holding up as well, a foot is often in pain, and she has grown fearful of the flying leap off the Vault the trainers demand. Her dance instructor (she was a former ballerina) adds his own derision when she can no longer lift her leg to an impossibly high position while keeping her balance as she does so. One might describe her daily regimen more like abuse, just as the housewife feels is nightly doled out a more passive abuse by her no longer loving husband.
At one point, both women momentarily rebel, seeking clearly "something different" in their lives. While out shopping, the housewife meets a handsome younger man and begins an affair with him, leaving her son in the hands of others on some afternoons.
The gymnast suddenly rebels, refusing to continue with her workout and storming off to her home for a few days. Ultimately, she returns to the workouts and wins another gold medal for herself.
The housewife's lover proves to be a petulant and selfish as her husband and breaks off the relationship returning to her home and family, begging for her husband's forgiveness. Yet both these women have shown the family and friends that they are something of value and are able to move into different worlds if pushed too far. These independent-minded women are both extremely capable of what they do, but they need more variety in their lives if they are to successfully continue.
Sean Baker | The Florida Project
so close yet so far
Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch (screenplay), Sean Baker (director) The Florida Project / 2017
As in Sean Baker's earlier film Tangerine, his film The Florida Project deals with individuals who most of his audiences would never have otherwise met. Baker does not sentimentalize these figures but is able to create sympathetic portraits that help us all to comprehend, in this case, families at the lowest end of the economic spectrum—particularly in Moonee's case (6-year old Brooklynn Kimberly Prince, the real star of this film), a mother, Halley (Bria Vinaite) who finds it difficult to raise even the $38 a-week necessary to stay in the low-budget motel, one of several lying just outside the gates of Kissimee, Florida's Walt Disney World. The Disney office originally called the new construction of Disney World near Orlando, "The Florida Project."
The names of these motels, The Magic Castle, Futureland, etc. almost mock the tourist paradise. Yet Moonee and her friends, Scooty, Jancey, Dicky and others will never be able to afford the entry to that magic kingdom and are left alone to roam the scruffy urban territory throughout most of every day. Living the hardscrabble lives they do, these kids are tough and, like many young children everywhere, find ways they can to get into trouble: spitting on the windshield of cars below the second-story balcony of the motel, shutting down the electricity to their building, spying on a topless elderly sunbather woman by the pool, and, in the worst of their delinquent activities, accidentally setting on fire an empty condominium home, which results in Scooty (Christopher Rivera) being removed from the children's group when his father perceives his son's involvement in the fire.
Yet Moonee—and by extension, we suspect, many of her childhood friends—also has serious responsibilities, collecting each day the waffles one of Halley's friends hands out the back door of the restaurant in which she works, and gathering up provisions from a local church food-bank truck.
In fact, we suspect this little "pistol" of a child is more morally responsible that her childlike mother, who, after losing her job as a pole dancer takes up prostitution in her room, locking away her daughter in the bathroom wherein the young girl plays with her plastic toys, creating a kind of imaginary Disneyland for herself. If nothing else, she is the film's emblem of imaginative thinking, at one point taking her adventurous followers on a tour of what she describes as "Safari Land," a field of cows.
Almost like Tatum O'Neal in Paper Moon, Moonee plays a wonderful con when her mother buys up perfumes and soaps at a local wholesale shop and sells them to tourists at higher prices. Yet at other moments the child in her comes out as she lags behind her mother to create "sandcastles" in the mud outside one of the hotels. At one point earlier, just to get enough coins to purchase an ice-cream cone for herself and her friends, Moonee approaches a stranger:
Moonee: [to tourist at ice-cream stand] Excuse me. Could you give us some change, please? The doctor said we have asthma and we have to eat ice-cream right away.
If there is any true hero in this ragtag community, it is The Magic Castle's manager, Bobby Hicks (the always wonderful Willem Defoe), who must play bad cop to many of his customers, including
Moonee's mother, while still gently protecting their kids, scolding them while simultaneously trying to protect them from the nudity of his elderly customer and, most importantly, scaring off a creepy man—obviously a potential child predator—while yet offering these poverty-stricken kids a place to hang out in the lobby and even hide under his protected computer space in one of their hide-and-seek games. He is a kind of hidden saint in a world of no saintliness.
If there is any one father who might responsibly care for them, it is this gentle, hard-working, janitor, care-taker, and enforcer for those, like Halley, who constantly break the motel rules. But even his caring ministrations have a limit, particularly when Moonee's mother steals Disney passes from one of her clients and then charges a huge breakfast with her and Moonee at the very restaurant where her now former friend works—to the same man's account. Halley's robbery is clearly a step too far, beyond even the prostitution which has cost her the friend she had long counted on.
It is almost inevitable, after the fire and Halley's robbery, that workers from Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) show up at Halley's door to take the child into public custody. Moonee, now perceiving her destiny, quickly runs off, her mother chastising the officers:
Halley: [while being confronted by CPS after Moonee runs away] You just let her get away? And I'm the one who's unfit? FUCK YOU!
Moonee proclaims that she is off to the Magic Kingdom, and although we never know and certainly doubt she might ever be able to enter it, we do know that through her imagination she might enter another world even more remarkable. The director himself wrote of enigmatic ending:
We've been watching Moonee use her imagination and wonderment throughout the entire film to make the best of the situation she's in—she can't go to Disney's Animal Kingdom, so she goes to the 'safari' behind the motel and looks at cows; she goes to the abandoned condos because she can't go to the Haunted Mansion. And in the end, with this inevitable drama, this is me saying to the audience, "If you want a happy ending, you're gonna have to go to that headspace of a kid because, here, that's the only way to achieve it."
Moonee and her kind can only seek salvation in their heads. There is little room for them on earth, and it is only in her daily wanderings that she might find a place to live out her dreams.
Los Angeles, November 21, 2017
Catherine Breillat | Une vieille maîtresse (The Last Mistress)
lustful listening and the venomous tongue
Catherine Breillat (screenplay, based on the novel Une vieille maîtresse by Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly and director) Une vieille maîtresse (The Last Mistress) / 2007
To describe Catherine Breillat as one of the greatest women directors in the world, while appropriate, would also be to qualify her; it might be better to simply describe her as one of the best international directors of her generation.
Beillat's work generally involves romantic tales, some based on fairy and folktales, that involve strong women who outwit the men with whom they are involved, creating a kind of feminist twist, yet calling up the whole genre of romance fiction, with handsome heroes and strong-willed women. The Last Mistress fits many of these patterns, with a more than handsome male lead playing the
libertine aristocrat Ryno de Marigny (Fu'ad Aït Aattou) and his beautiful, impetuous and demanding mistress and later wife, Vellini (Asia Argento).
Using richly hued colors with detailed, luxurious sets, and filming her figures often in deep close-ups, Breillat uses all the tricks of romance novels, taking the viewer into steamy sexual relationships without blinking. Yet there is also a sophistication about Breillat's works that utterly separate them from their cruder forms.
Particularly, in this film, the feminist-like hero, Vellini, of royal Spanish blood (her royal mother having had an affair with a matador) speaks her views numerous times, including at a costume party hosted by Ryno's friend in order to introduce him to the rare treasure he has discovered in Vellini. The two do not hit it off well, and at that party, where she dresses as the devil—"not a she-devil" she corrects one of her female cohorts; I do not play the feminine, I like that in my men. She apparently also has a lesbian affair with her maid.
But the real wit of this film appears even earlier in the form of the grandmother of the young naïve beauty, Hermangarde (Roxane Mesquida), who Ryno is now prepared to marry, having divorced La Vellini years earlier. The young girl's elder relative, who identifies more with the 18th century than the century in which she now lives, is what one might almost describe as a prurient voyeur, forcing the young Ryno to tell her the lurid details of his previous love affair with Vellini while she, dressed in full gown, slowly downs several glasses of port and lounging in pleasure while he details his previous sexual intrigues.
For most of the film, La marquise de Flers (the brilliant Claude Sarraute) luxuriates in the sexual titillations of the thick-lipped Ryno as he recounts their hatreds and passions, and a love that has become almost become a mad compulsion. I think that the best way to describe this film is imagine a Technicolor version of Hitchcock's Rebecca with characters from the opera Carmen tossed in, spiced up with a bit with scenes out of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos' Les Dangerous Liaisons.
Breillat, so it is reported, discovered her Algerian-born hero, a model then working in Paris, in a local café (the sort of casting that big male white studio executives did in the days of Lana Turner), and she portrays her figures, that goes far beyond the Hollywood Studio films, as objects of titillation. Both men and women, gay and lesbian can equally enjoy this film. In a sense, Breillat uses a kind of light porno to take home her message that women have the power to turn their admirers into pawns, mere playthings that destroy the male's sense of privilege and sexual superiority. La Vellini totally enjoys her sexual encounters, while, ultimately, destroying Ryno's marriage to the far more chaste Hermangarde. All men, Vellini insists, as she locks away Ryno early in their relationship, are "prisoners," "later you will be my slave." I can just imagine the excitement of many males, particularly those like Trump.
Even when Ryno is determined to escape her, moving off to an oceanside coast, far away from his beloved Paris, the cigar-smoking siren moves in on her prey.
To Paris high-society, such as the snippy La comtesse d'Artelles (Yolande Moreau) and Le vicomte de Prony (Michael Lonsdale)—who himself has clearly experienced pleasure in her arms—Vellini may simply be a "slut," the real woman, far outside their gossipy corridors, could care less. She is the victor over their obsequious whisperings by her acting out what they merely insinuate.
By film's end it is clear the "treasure" of La marquise de Flers' world, Hermangarde, has lost her beautiful husband, yet she is still pregnant with his son or daughter and will surely rise anew, this time more wisely, to create a new generation out of the old. Besides, she is presented as such a cypher that we hardly care.
One might almost describe Breillat's engaging film as a kind of purposely voyeuristic work, the way one might characterize Michael Powell's Peeping Tom. In the end, we must ask ourselves are we more interested in the prurient content like La Comtesse and Le vicomte or as the obviously lustful listener La marquise de Flers? In the end, the director suggests, it doesn't really matter. Passion is passion; we are not the lovers possessed. Observers, as Vellini makes clear, have no role in the matter. The scorpion may bite the innocent—as it has her daughter, killing the child—but the stronger adult can simply remove itself from the venomous tongue.
Éric Rohmer | L'Amour l'après-midi (Love in the Afternoon, also called Chloé in the Afternoon)
the winding, never-ending staircase
Éric Rohmer (writer and director) L'Amour l'après-midi (Love in the Afternoon, also called Chloé in the Afternoon) / 1972
Éric Rohmer's films are not so much about their slight stories or plot but are more about characters and the interrelationships between men and women. In that sense, Rohmer's work is perhaps closer to François Truffaut's films than those of any other French director. As in Truffaut's work the males are unknowing bumpkins, trying to please the women to whom they are attracted.
One of Truffaut's major figures, however, Antoine Doinel performed by actor Jean-Pierre Léaud, if likeable, is also a kind of bad boy, attempting throughout the five films in which he appears to find a beautiful woman who might care for him a bit like a mother, particularly since his own mother was not so very loyal to her husband and not always loving to the child. But Rohmer's hero Frédéric
Carrelet (Bernard Verley) in Love in the Afternoon (titled Chloé in the Afternoon in North America) is anything but a bad boy and is very much in love with his school-teaching wife Hélène and their child; his wife is also pregnant and about to bear another baby.
That does not mean that the couple have no problems. Frédéric admits to himself and the audience that he is a bit intimidated by his wife, and often playing the clown, feels unable to fully share his ideas with her. Moreover, he does have fantasies about other women, even recounting his youthful fantasy that he had a magical amulet that would make all women bow to his will. But his fantasies are harmless; he has not been unfaithful to wife.
But when the former girlfriend of a close friend suddenly appears in his office, things quickly go downhill. Chloé (Zouzou) is what you might describe as a dangerous woman, a highly independent-minded being with a deep sense of cynicism, a good portion of selfishness, and, admittedly, usually gets what she wants out of men; having dealt with bad previous relationship, she is also somewhat vengeful. The only thing she doesn't desire is another marriage. But she is clearly seeking sex, and later takes that even further in demanding that Frédéric be the father of her desired child without any of the strings attached.
Frédéric not only feels comfortable with this attractive woman but becomes quite loquacious, speaking to her openly about his life with Hélène and offering her advice. If at first Chloé seems to want only friendship and emotional support, before long she has manipulated him into shopping with her for an apartment and breaking and entering her former lover's apartment so that she might collect her clothes and records. And Chloé, it quickly becomes clear, is not as desperate as Frédéric might suppose; she easily gets a job as a waiter in a trendy Paris restaurant, meets a wealthy businessman, and runs off with him to Italy, dumping him there for a young 19-year boy. Upon her return she suggests that Frédéric make time for weekly afternoon meetings which quickly escalate into continued hints that the two have sex without telling Frédéric's wife. Most people do it every day, she argues; the whole society is polygamous, and hints that his sacred Hélène may be having an affair since she has seen her with another man in one of the major Paris train stations.
Meanwhile, Hélène gives birth to their second son, Frédéric demanding that she hire an au pair to care for their children. For a period of time he attempts to resist meeting with Chloé, while she succeeds in getting a far better job in an up-scale dress shop, finding a perfect small apartment just above it, to which she now lures her would-be lover. A couple of times he comes close to having
sexual intercourse, since now they are at the kissing stage, but backs out at the last moment. He suggests another meeting to discuss their relationship, but when he arrives at her apartment he discovers her in the shower, after which she insists he dry her off. He accepts the responsibility, but when she moves off nude to her bed, demanding he join her, he abandons ship, so to speak, racing down a marvelous, almost-never-ending staircase to return to his office, where his secretaries exchange rather knowing smiles.
But Frédéric, still in flight, simply calls his wife to tell her he will be home early, his meeting having been cancelled. When he finds her alone, they begin a true discussion, which is apparent that they have long needed. She feels "out of sorts," and suspects something is going on with her husband.
For the very first time, Frédéric admits his silences and his intimidation, while she seems also be expressing something she has long kept from him. When he finally announces that he has something to tell her, you can almost see her bracing for the worst. Hovering, in the corner of their couch she prepares to understand why he has done so many minor strange things lately. For his part, he cannot even perceive her fears or imagine any that he might need himself. He simply admits that he has been able to tale freer with strangers, but that he deeply loves her and their life.
In one of the most beautiful scenes of this film, showing the great humanity of Rohmer and a director and Hélène as a character, she begins to cry, all the while insisting that she is simply laughing; yet as he goes to kiss her, holding her gently against his chest, we recognize it as tears of joy, although laughter may surely follow, since they quickly agree to retreat to the bedroom for sex.
In this film, the last of Rohmer's "Six Moral Tales," morality wins out, not just what Chloé has previously described as "bourgeois morality," but a true inner morality which involves love, kindness, honesty, and faithfulness. Certainly, Frédéric has not told her everything, nor she, possibly, to him. Yet something within them has truly shifted, and we are certain they will become even closer to each other, with the great possibility that Frédéric may in the future be able to better communicate with his wife.
Miloš Forman | Hoří, má panenko (The Fireman's Ball)
the horror of celebration
Miloš Forman, Ivan Passer, and Jaroslav Papoušek (screenplay), Miloš Forman (director) Hoří, má panenko (The Fireman's Ball) / 1967
This year, on April 13, the Czech-born film director, Miloš Forman died. I'd seen several of his American-produced films—after the post "Prague-spring" crackdown he determined to stay in France and, later the US—including One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (which I quite enjoyed) and Amadeus (of which I am not as fond). I determined, however, in celebration of the filmmaker to focus on his last Czech film, The Fireman's Ball, a hilarious satire that, without actually being structured as an allegory of Czech Communism, nonetheless speaks volumes for the ideals and, most importantly, the general cynicism of the society.
At the center of this comic masterwork is the Retired Fire Chief (Jan Stöckl), who at 85 is now suffering from cancer—although the volunteer firemen working under him are not certain he knows of his diagnosis, since current doctors refuse to tell their patients the worse new about their health (much, one supposes, like the politicians who run the government). Nonetheless, a group titled "The Committee," (headed by Jan Vostrcil) determine to celebrate their former leader in a big way, including a grand dance replete with a lottery of foods and smaller trinkets—perhaps as a way of paying for the event—as well as a beauty pageant. They also have purchased a ceremonial fire axe brandishing a special commentary of praise to the retiree.
Even in the film's very first scenes we suspect that this seemingly joyful tribute might very wall end badly, given the fact that, like the school-board members of Meredith Willson's The Music Man, these provincials cannot agree on anything, and have no potential to become a barbershop quartet. And indeed, once they have agreed to never mention their former head's illness to him and that they will all work together to make the best celebration possible, they move, more and more quickly, into choppy waters.
For, from that moment everything begins to go wrong. While creating a banner for the event, the artist, using a flame to char the banner's edges, presumably to suggest their vocation, falls from a high ladder, while a small fire consumes his art. Another committee member perceives that some of the consumables laid out on the lottery table are now missing, a bottle of wine and, later, a large piece of headcheese (which he ultimately discovers in his wife's purse).
As the large audience begins to dance some of the younger women and men get more and more inebriated, resulting in under-table sexual events and numerous other pratfall situations, including a kind of banana-peel incident when one of the women loses all her fake pearls, one by one.
The Committee members begin to go on a hunt to find eight women for their beauty pageant, some preferring to explore legs and faces from deep within the crowd, while others take to the balcony to spot the women dancers' bosoms. But, in the end, they find it difficult to find even eight beauties, while fathers and mothers attempt to intercede on their choices, insisting their own
daughters be included. When they do find at least 8 women, the girls seem quite plain and truly awkward in even having been chosen. Only one, who is late because she has gone home to get her bathing suit (about which nothing has previously been said), has any panache, as the elderly fireman ogle her, finally locking the door to protect their activities.
When they do finally attempt to parade the women before the crowd, the shy local girls rush away from the supposed festivities, locking themselves in an upstairs bathroom, embarrassed now by their sudden if momentary celebrity.
Fed up with the chaos, the dancers themselves begin to nominate their own companions, bringing them forward in chairs and arms, while the women cry out in distress. A real fire, fortuitously, interrupts events as the firemen and the entire audience rushes out to the house of an old man, whose large home is already burning beyond control. Only a few pieces of furniture and the old man himself is saved.
In sympathy to what has happened to the man, the crowd returns with him to the ball, giving up all their lottery numbers so that he may have first choice. By that time, however, the Committee discovers that almost everything upon their table has been stolen. They offer the possibility that they will briefly turn off the lights so that people may return what they have illegally taken, but no one except the Committee member whose wife has stolen the headcheese returns it, caught unfortunately when the lights go up again.
When they finally attempt to award their former chief their ceremonial hatchet, they open the box to discover that it too has been stolen!
One can easily comprehend how such a dark satiric message suggesting that nearly everyone in this small community is corrupt, despite at a few moments of meaning well, would not go down well in Forman's home country. And several small-town Czech firemen strongly protested the film's presentation of their kind. When the new Czech freedoms were squelched, Forman's film was banned "forever." Presumably the Czechs can now show this film, particularly after the film's nomination for the 1967 Academy Award for best Foreign Film. But I might imagine that its darkly cynical view of his countrymen still rankles some sensibilities.
The only moment that this small community actually come together with a sense of communal purpose is during the great fire, but even here we suspect it is more for the spectacle of the event than for any empathetic concern—although some do encourage the fireman to turn the old man away from his view of the fire now destroying his entire life. And once the event is over, as we see, they are perfectly ready to leave the now homeless and fortuneless man with nothing. Forman, in a surrealist scene, shows the old man returning to his bed, now sitting in a snow-filled field near the desolation of his former house. Already another man lies in the bed, which he is simply now forced to share with the intruder.
In a world of even best intentions, as Forman has written, nothing can work out when the leaders attempt to import their own shared notions of what is right: "That's a problem of all governments, of all committees, including firemen's committees. That they try and they pretend and they announce that they are preparing a happy, gay, amusing evening or life for the people. And everybody has the best intentions... But suddenly things turn out in such a catastrophic way that, for me, this is a vision of what's going on today in the world." As Forman's contempoary, Jan Němec, has shown us in one of his own films, even an invitation to dinner can suddenly become a threatening reality when one cannot refuse the invitation.
Mikio Naruse | Midaregumo (Scattered Clouds, aka T...
Catherine Breillat | Une vieille maîtresse (The La...
Éric Rohmer | L'Amour l'après-midi (Love in the Af...
Marcel Pagnol | César
Marc Allégret | Fanny
Alexander Korda | Marius
Hiroshi Shimizu | 按摩と女 Anma to onna (The Masseurs ...
Luis Buñuel | Gran Casino


If you need to do more than the demo version let me know.
In general FORTRAN conversion (any conversion) is a tricky thing.
every code can be better parallelized by user intervention.
In this regard, BERT provides a PROCESS for doing a parallelization.
sequentially. Concurrency does not imply parallel execution.
With respect to efficiency BERT does a good job.
> they could get some help to make the transition.
> I am very interested in how well Paralogic's program perform.
aid in the placement of BERT directives.
> and see if it gave any reasonable results.
We have done some large codes - in excess of 100K lines.
> Have anyone of you done test with programs this size ?
> many nodes, but in real lift things are different.
Of course we give some examples that show good speedup.
poor results on some of the example machine profiles.
concurrent parts of your algorithm to a specific machine.
BERT attempts to help the user do this.
It should also be noted that BERT can provide "negative"


text:
Appleby reveals her Magnificent Seven
Home/Exeter Chiefs, News/Appleby reveals her Magnificent Seven
Exeter Chiefs women's head coach Susie Appleby has outlined an exciting vision for the future with news that the club has created it's own apprenticeship scheme for aspiring, young players from across the region.
In a move which aims to echo the success of the club's men's squad, which in recent years has unearthed some fine Westcountry gems into senior rugby professionals, Appleby says the creation of the seven apprenticeship roles will be seen as a major move in helping to bolster the playing ranks for the newly-formed team.
"These are very exciting times for us," said Appleby. "We've seen with the programme on the men's side, they've been able to identify young, local talent at an early age, introduce them into the club's apprenticeship scheme through Exeter College, and assist them in making it through to being in the senior squad and obtaining a playing contract.
Exeter Chiefs Women's Head Coach Susie Appleby. Picture: www.jmpuk.com
"It's been a breeding ground for some fantastic talent to emerge and it's our aim to do the same now with young girls from across the region. Offering them an opportunity like this, not just to play and improve their rugby to a level where they can play at a higher standard, but to also come out of it with an academic qualification and a chance to improve their life skills and their life experience is simply fantastic.
"What we can do with these girls, both individually and collectively, is something that hasn't been done within the women's game before. As I said, it's an exciting opportunity for all of us to not only only nurture some amazing, young talent, but offer them a stepping stone to really put themselves and the Chiefs on the women's rugby map."
It was only confirmed in April that the Chiefs Women had been accepted into the Premier 15s for the first time. Since then, Appleby has been battling around global lockdown caused by the Coronavirus pandemic to put together a competitive squad for the new 2020/21 season.
"It's certainly not been easy," she admitted. "We had so much in place to get the team up and running, only for lockdown to come along and put things a little on the back burner. Ideally, we had hoped to kick this apprenticeship scheme off in July, but we couldn't and it's only now that we're starting to get things really moving.
"Exeter College, I have to say, have been brilliant and so pro-active in getting all the prep done for the scheme and now we can't wait to get it all going and get working with all of the apprentices."
The seven girls selected to be the club's first-ever apprentices are Michaella Roberts, Abby Middlebrooke, Milla-Lynch-Barsby, Georgie Grimes, Amelia Dennis, Gabby Gower and Meg Davies.
Helping to oversee the whole apprenticeship process for Appleby will be a new Women's Academy Manager. As yet the identity of the person filling this role has yet to be confirmed, but Appleby insists the new manager will mirror in many ways the role Rob Gibson performs on the men's side.
"Having someone there to help nurture these young girls if hugely important," continued Appleby. "Not only will they be there to assist in terms of their rugby development, but it's what they can offer away from training and games which is equally as important.
"For some of these people, this could be the first time that they have been away from home, experiencing new challenges. It's therefore vital that we have that support system in place to help and encourage them in whatever they need.
"What we are doing doesn't happen at our clubs and I am sure there will be a bit of a 'wow-factor' when others get to hear about what we are doing. Personally, I hope the girls have an amazing experience and that word will spread because that is what we want to create down here.
"We want to offer the very best opportunities we can to players because ultimately that is what is going to help make us successful."
Original post here by Mark Stevens – https://www.exeterchiefs.co.uk/news/appleby-reveals-her-magnificent-seven – Re-posted with kind permission of the Exeter Chiefs
Exeter Chiefs Women v Bristol Bears Women
Surrey Sports Park
Harlequins Women v Exeter Chiefs Women
Exeter Chiefs Women v Worcester Warriors Women
DMP Durham Sharks v Exeter Chiefs Women

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Air Conditioning Repair Hillsborough County: Your HVAC Issues: Repair or Replace?
Your HVAC Unit Issues: Repair or Replace?
Living in the Tampa area, we get used to a certain climate. Though our winter months tend to get quite chilly, Florida summers are anything but mild. With high temperatures and high humidity, the hottest days of summer make us feel like we're melting, and our outside activities are pretty much limited to water-related fun. We rely so heavily on our air conditioning that if someone were to tell you that their Hillsborough County home didn't have AC, you'd definitely be incredulous.
We love our air conditioning! Though you might not remember how much you rely on your cool temperature setting during these cold months, when summer comes back around, you'll once again get a taste of what it's like. You and your family count on your HVAC unit to be consistent and functional so that you can maintain comfort in your home. But what happens when, for whatever reason, your AC stops working? We know that there are worse things that could probably happen, but in the middle of a hot and humid Florida summer, we'd be suffering without AC.
There are many reasons why your unit might stop doing what it's supposed to do. Especially if your HVAC unit is older, it can start showing signs of wear and tear. When your faithful and trusted cooling unit communicates to you that it needs some TLC, you could start to notice a change in airflow, a change in air coolness, your unit's continuous running, or sporadic turning on and off. If you start to notice differences in your HVAC's behavior or the quality of the air that it puts out, you might need to call your local AC repair professional. Benjamin Brothers will come out, diagnose the problem, and present you with your solution so that you can get back to your comfortable life of coolness. In this two-part blog, we're going to talk about some of the most common problems to befall your HVAC unit and whether the problem requires a repair or a replacement.
Most people don't realize the extent of what their HVAC unit does for their home. Not only does your HVAC system distribute the right temperature of air throughout your entire home, it also ensures that the air you're breathing is clean and free of dust and allergens. You are breathing this clean air because your unit has filters. However, as these filters start to get dirty or even clogged, you'll start to notice a change in air quality. If you do notice this change, call your local HVAC or AC service pro.
Repair: Since the problem is just a dirty filter, your unit probably doesn't need to be replaced, unless, of course, you're also dealing with other HVAC issues. Your solution is probably as simple as your AC technician replacing your HVAC filter.
If you've noticed that your house isn't maintaining the temperature that you're setting your thermostat to, you're probably assuming that there's a problem with your HVAC unit. However, the issue might be with your thermostat. Diagnosing this problem will definitely require the help of your service pro, so make sure you give them a call when you start to notice issues.
Repair: Since this issue has nothing to do with your actual unit, we'll put this into the repair category because you'll definitely want to get your thermostat looked at, and perhaps even replaced.
When you start to feel warm air from your registers, the problem might be frozen or dirty coils. Several things can lead to frozen coils; if you have a block in your condensate lines, moisture that needs to flow out of your unit will become trapped. Another reason for frozen coils is a dirty filter or broken fan; both of these will hinder the cold air from moving out of the unit. If your problem is excess dirt on your coils, this may be the result of an overaccumulation of dust in your unit because of a dirty filter, broken fan, or lack of regular maintenance.
Repair: Now, we're not saying that your coils will never stop working on their own. When that's the case, you'll definitely need to call your service pro right away so that other issues don't result from your broken coils. But with frozen or dirty coils, the underlying problem for the improper function of your coils is caused by another factor, like an accumulation of dust or moisture.
Whether your unit is only a few years old, or it's going to a decade, it's never too late to contact your service professional for your yearly maintenance. And if you've started to notice issues with your home's air quality or temperature, give your professional AC repairman a call. Living with a unit that isn't functioning the way that it's supposed to can lead to further damage to your unit, poor air quality in your home, and higher utility bills.
In part two of our blog series, we'll discuss the HVAC problems that occur from a lack of regular maintenance, a refrigerant leak, or blocked and leaky ducts. Stay tuned for that portion so that you don't miss any of our exciting HVAC system facts.
Benjamin Brothers is proudly serving the Hillsborough County and Pasco County area and we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call or visit our website for a free estimate.


Phil Dunphy loves leap day. He lives to do something extraordinary during those extra 24 hours that come around every four years. This time the Dunphy family and Manny are going to fly high on a trapeze. A full day of family fun is threatened when the guys realize that it's that time of the month for Claire, Haley and Alex. Phil calls this phenomenon Satan's trifecta. He says, "The day I most dreaded had fallen on the day I most love."
Phil, Luke and Manny conspire to ditch the women so they can trapeze in peace. The plan backfires. Manny decides to head home, but Phil won't go quietly into the night. He wants Luke to pour some fake blood on his finger so they can make a fake trip to the doctor's office. Too bad Luke spills the entire bottle all over his body. The jig is up. The ladies know what they are doing and why.
Gloria gets into a shouting match with a fellow soccer fan at a sports bar. Jay settles the beef by offering to buy the other guy a beer. Just like that, all is calm. Later, Jay gets the sense that Gloria wanted him to fight that other fellow. She doesn't exactly deny this. But after Javier disappoints Manny again, Gloria realizes how lucky she is to be married to a calm man like Jay.
Cameron is 10 years old. Okay, he's actually 40, but opts to stick with the literal benefits of being a leap day baby. Mitchell has a plan to fulfill his partner's high expectations for a grand celebration. He's putting together a Wizard of Oz-themed party. There will be a scarecrow, tin man, cowardly lion and at least two flying monkeys. Sounds like a great party until Mitchell remembers that Cam's family farm was recently devastated by a twister. Time to roll up the yellow brick road and come up with a Plan B.
Mitchell makes some last-minute arrangements to have a party on a yacht. The entire family meets up at the dock where it smells like a blue whale has just died nearby, but that's only because a blue whale has just died nearby. Things go from bad to worse when the captain of the boat says there isn't enough room to accommodate the entire party. Then Cameron learns that Mitchell slapped this party together last minute.
Jay wants to fight the boat captain to prove he's still a tough guy. Cameron is nursing some major leap day disappointment. And Phil looks like he'd like to trade places with that dead whale instead of having to deal with the three most important highly-emotional ladies in his life. All he wanted to do was have some fun at the carnival just down the road.
Mitchell realizes the reason Cameron has been so emotional lately is because he's having trouble with the fact that he's turning 40. What he really wants is to be 10 again. That's why the entire family heads down to that carnival for the best last-minute leap day ever. Phil even gets to go on the trapeze after Claire, Haley and Alex force the attendant make an exception to the cutoff time rule he tried to enforce. You don't want to mess with the Dunphy women on leap day.


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text:
Planning Application for Twickenham Pool Buildings & Water Lane Public Toilets
In accordance with the aims and purpose of the Twickenham Riverside Terrace Group, a further planning application has been made to Richmond upon Thames Council for Phase Two of the renewal and return of the former Twickenham Pool Site and its environs to beneficial public use (Phase One is now under construction by the Council).
Phase Two is an application for the refurbishment and additional accommodation for the existing Pool site buildings, namely:-
The Superintendents House, known as the Bath House and at present providing accommodation for HANDS (Help a Neighbour in Distress)
The original pool side Cafe and Restaurant to provide community meeting, conference, exhibition space and a community shared office facility – allowing hot-desking and the provision of offices services – for a number of charity or social enterprise organisations
The public toilets, with an upper level providing cafe and viewing area.
All Buildings will be refurbished, and will have an extra floor added with a lightweight barrel vaulted roofs and sustainable timber structure and cladding, with a "wharfside" appearance reflecting other new buildings along the river (i.e. the existing Cafe Building on the pool site and Eel Pie Island).
An open, viewing terrace will be provided on the upper floor of both the Bath House and the Public Toilet block (there will also be an Accessible Toilet at Embankment level, located within the existing Bath House garage) and new stairs linking all levels, together with an external life between the Embankment and the Diamond Jubilee Gardens levels. It is also hoped an internal lift can also be provided, to improve accessibility for all to the buildings – which would become a focus for the community's use of the riverside.
For more plans and designs click here
Categories: Cafe, Children's playground, Diamond Jubilee Garden, Embankment, Old swimming pool site, Planning, Planning Application, Town Square, TRTG Designs, Twickenham Riverside Site, Twickenham Riverside Terrace Group, Water Lane | Permalink


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Home » Naval Aviation Hot Topics » HASC Seapower OKs New Carrier $, But Tightens Oversight; CNO Replies
HASC Seapower OKs New Carrier $, But Tightens Oversight; CNO Replies
(BREAKING DEFENSE 21 MAY 13) … Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
House Armed Services seapower chairman Randy Forbes promised a "rebirth" of oversight in my interview with him last week, and he makes a down payment on that in his subcommittee's markup of the defense bill. It includes a host of new reporting and certification requirements.
Top of the deck comes the Navy's over-budget aircraft carrier. The subcommittee grudgingly raises the cost cap on the immensely expensive USS Gerald Ford (CVN-78), the first of a new class intended to replace the venerable Nimitz and now expected to cost $12.9 billion.
Although Forbes does not punish the Navy in any way for it, the subcommittee mark does warn: "Continued [cost] escalation on the entirety of the ship construction accounts…is unsustainable."
Here's a rundown of the rest of the subcommittee's draft bill. If these make it through the Senate version and conference, the Pentagon would have to
Demonstrate that the X-47B drone, which just last week made its first launch from and first "touch and go" landing on an aircraft carrier, can refuel itself in mid-air from flying tankers just like a manned aircraft;
Certify that software and system engineering for the X-47B's combat-capable successor, the Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike drone, are "at a low level of … risk" before proceeding with the UCLASS program;
Keep retired KC-135R aerial refueling tankers flyable and ready to return to service until the new KC-46 enters service;
Tell Congress whether the Navy's mainstay destroyer, the DDG-51 Arleigh Burke class, can really keep being upgraded to accommodate a power-hungry new radar for missile defense (there's an interesting suggestion that the radar might be installed instead aboard the roomier LPD-17 San Antonio-class amphibious warfare ships, built in Pascagoula; someone in Mississippi must be happy that provision made it in);
Do a report on whether the Arleigh Burkes and other surface combatants can accommodate another high-energy technology, laser weapons (this may be a plug for the competing DDG-1000 Zumwalt class, which was cut off after three vessels because of its cost but which boasts far more electrical power)
The mark-up language would also require the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which is quite independent of the Pentagon, to report on two sensitive priorities:
The status of the Marine Corps's prized Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV), the replacement for the disastrously over-budget Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle cancelled in 2011;
Whether the Navy's current contracting structure, based on so-called "fixed-price incentive fee" (FPIF) contacts, is really reaping the savings it was intended to.
For all this, the mark places few constraints on any major programs. To the contrary, it adds money to protect a perennial favorite of both Congress and state governors, the C-130 Hercules cargo plane, adding $15.7 million for engine upgrades and $47.3 million for an avionics modernization program (called AMP) that the Pentagon had tried to cancel. (The oft-neglected full name of Forbes' subcommittee is seapower and projection forces, which includes jurisdiction over the Air Force's long-range bombers and airlift).
As for nine aging but still serviceable ships that the Navy wanted to retire to save on maintenance costs, Forbes's press release said the full committee mark-up "is expected" to demand the Navy not only keep them but also pay for their modernization.
For the long term, the mark includes a requirement – which as of last week's interview Forbes had still been unsure would make it into this year's bill – that the Navy report to Congress on what kind of fleet they could actually afford if the shipbuilding budget stayed at its historical average of $16 billion a year. The Navy's official 30-year shipbuilding plan instead assumes funding will spike in the outyears to a Reaganesque $19 billion. That plan Forbes is not alone in dismissing as a "fantasy."
I had the opportunity to ask the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, about this proposed reporting requirement at a question-and-answer session he held this evening. The Navy will certainly comply with whatever Congress directs, the CNO said. Under current law, he said, when the Navy presents its 30-year plan to Congress, "we certify that we have enough money in the year that we deliver the plan" — in other words, not for the full 30-year term, which to be frank is an awfully long way in the future for accurate forecasts.
"We look at very closely at what we have through the Future Years Defense Plan, the FYDP, and we feel very comfortable with those numbers," Greenert went on. "When you get beyond the FYDP, you get into the 15 year, 20-year, certainly the 30-year, it becomes an extrapolation."
If the Congress wants an alternative 30-year projection based on "constrained numbers," Greenert said, "we can certainly do that, we have done it in the past, and we'll comply with directed language."
http://breakingdefense.com/2013/05/21/hasc-seapower-oks-new-carrier-but-tightens-oversight/
Maintaining A Double-Digit Carrier Fleet
U.S. Carrier Launch Pushed Back 4 Months
McCain: Navy Shipbuilding Plan Is A 'Fantasy'
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text:
Remarks on the Meaning of "Income"
by Jim Davies
Amendment 16 says only: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration" and so fails to define the term "income". A whole mess of confusion has followed - and even preceded its apparent 1913 ratification.
Its other major terms are defined elsewhere in the Constitution; for example "congress" is the subject of the whole of Article 1 and "apportionment" is explained in Article 1 Section 9. But "income" itself, by far the most important term used, is not. Given that Amendment 16 is said to be the clause enabling the whole of the trillion dollar a year "income tax", that omission may be highly significant.
Since the term "income" is used inside Amendment 16, part of the US Constitution, it cannot be defined outside the Constitution; for that would amount to a further amendment, which can be done only by the procedure shown in its Article 5, with three quarters of the States concurring. Whatever the term meant or didn't mean in 1913, therefore, we're stuck with it.
If the meaning of the term was obvious and unambiguous, this would not be a problem; for as Profesor Jonathan Siegel of George Washington University has said "The general rule is that where a statutory term is undefined, it should be given its ordinary, common meaning." However, this paper suggests that there is (and was, in 1913) no such thing. If that's the case, we cannot know what Amendment 16 means, and never will know unless and until it is further amended with a definition. Likewise Title 26 Subtitle A, which is the body of law that Congress enacted after being so enabled, cannot and did not define the term - though it makes use of it extensively. That is absurd! A vitally important body of law about an entity which is, literally, meaning-less!
For example 26 USC 1 imposes a tax upon "taxable income", a term defined in §63 in terms of "gross income", a term defined in §61 in terms of "income." Since the latter is undefined and undefinable, the appearance of a tax imposition in §1 is an illusion: a tax is imposed on something whose nature is unknown and un-knowable!
Before we set that astonishing conclusion about Subtitle A in stone, let's consider why "income" is not a term with a common, unambiguous meaning, clear to any ordinarily intelligent person. Reflect on how the word is used in four contexts: everyday, legal, political, and judicial speech.
Everyday Speech
Most often, "income" is a term used interchangeably with "salary" or "wages". A person earning $1,000 a week may be said to have an income of $52,000 a year. Also, however, a business may be said to have an "income" of so many million dollars per quarter, or per year, and it may issue a quarterly or annual "income report." There, the term is used interchangeably with "profits" or "earnings" - meaning, profits. Both these kinds of everyday use were current in 1913 as today - with the latter more frequently than now.
Note the confusion between those two groups of usage. If a person has a salary and that's called "income", then the higher the salary the higher the income. However if a company pays salaries to employees, the higher the salaries the lower the profits - the effect is opposite. To a person, wages always add to income; to a business, wages always reduce income (except when it hires out contract labor, see below.)
Further, in everyday speech "income" might sometimes refer to "everything that comes in" and in the case of a person that might be close or identical to his salary - but in the case of a company "everything that comes in" would normally be many times greater than its income or profit. For that reason it's more usually called "sales revenue". Note also the difference between the parties doing the earning: if "income" means wages it can be earned only by individuals, whereas if it means "profits" it can be earned only by businesses; the definition therefore directly determines who is being taxed and who is not.
Conclusion: in everyday speech there are striking differences among several alternative ways in which the term "income" is used. If it's to be used in the law, the exact meaning there must be spelled out because no single "ordinary, common meaning" exists.
Legal Speech
Bouvier's Law Dictionary defines "income" as "The gain which proceeds from property, labor, or business; it is applied particularly to individuals; the income of the government is usually called revenue." The aspect of gain seems pre-eminent and is troubling. Clearly a business can receive gain, by trading; that's what it's there for, to produce profit for its shareholders. But can an individual receive gain, for his labor? Is not his labor provided in a straight exchange for wages or salary, with no profit or gain arising? Here are five court cases that clearly say that it is - and if there are others to contradict that, the contradiction further confirms that "income" is not a term with a "common, ordinary meaning" in legal speech.
However if it's said that a worker can derive a gain from a wage, then why would not the border between exchange and gain not be subjectively set in different places by two or more different workers? One may say Yes, I gained enough (profit, income) to take a 2-week vacation from my year's work - while another may say that his gain amounted only to the sum he was able to squirrel away; a third may recognize that his savings took the form of increased equity in the home on which he's paying a mortgage. It's a rats' nest of questions and uncertainties and indeed there may have been court cases that have ruled one way or another; the point is not to choose here between these but to remark that the meaning of "income" is by no means ordinary, common and singular.
There's more. Both Amendment 16 and 26 USC 61 use the curious phrase "income, from whatever source derived" and in the latter case 15 examples of sources are listed. This falls far short of a definition, but it does clearly say that "income" in the law is an entity "derived from sources." Among the examples of sources listed in §61 is "compensation for personal services" which is often taken to mean the same as "wages and salaries" even though that phrase was removed from that Section in 1954 - see below. If it does, then we have a statement that "income" can not consist of or include "wages and salaries" because, of course, nothing can ever be derived from itself; beer is derived from hops, but certainly does not include any or consist of them. In any case unlike corporations (see below) individuals cannot derive anything from a salary; they either receive it, or they don't.
Conclusion: in legal speech, the meaning of "income" is obscure as well as undefined, though these clues indicate it may have something to do with the profits earned by a corporation.
Political Speech
During the 1909 Congressional debates that drafted what was to become Amendment 16, it is clear that if any of the speakers knew what the term "income" meant, they were not about to say so. Their confusion is almost unintelligible, and is described here, notably on and from page 162. Note from pp 165-66 that Senators Cummins and Shively evidently knew that Congress was not empowered to define the term, and actually (but falsely) said that the task would be performed by the courts! So much for the Legislature crafting an unambigious law.
Did they understand that they were asking the States to grant permission to tax the earnings of ordinary working Americans? - very likely so, for it would become an incredibly lucrative source of government revenue. But what they said in debate certainly obscured that intention, possibly out of fear that it would, if exposed, ruin any chance of getting it ratified. So they may have deliberately obfuscated the matter, and instead of a forthright "Congress shall have power to tax wages, salaries and any other form of individual receipts..." they coined the phrase "...incomes, from whatever source derived." Perhaps they didn't define clearly what they meant because they didn't want it clearly understood. Or so, at least, we might speculate.
When Title 26 was extensively revised in 1954, the joint chairmen of the Congressional Committee charged with drafting the new §61 from the old §22 stated that it would use the term "income" in its "Constitutional sense" rather than its other or ordinary sense; the two Sections are shown here side by side.
They were not so helpful as to define what either of those "senses" meant (they probably realized that, as above, they had no power to define a term used in the Constitution) but they did at least confirm that there are (at least) two distinct ways in which "income" can be used.
In the same Section (#61) the confusion is deepened by the wording change that Committee made, when forming §61 from its predecessor, §22: the phrase "wages and salaries or" was deleted, as was the word "personal" in "compensation for personal services"! - so that it now says only that "income" is something "derived from... compensation for services..." Is such compensation meant to include wages, or is it distinct from them? It's hard to explain the removal of either of those deleted words if the intention was to include personal wages. Further, corporations can derive profits from such compensation when they hire out contract labor (in the consultancy and temp-help trades for example) at an agreed rate, higher than the wage they pay the worker - but individuals cannot derive anything from their own, received compensation except the compensation itself; there is no "derivation." The deletion seems only to conceal the contradiction and add to the confusion.
Conclusion: in political speech also there are several separate ways in which the term "income" is used - and in the very discussion that spawned Amendment 16 the lawmakers were badly confused about how many more there were and what they meant. Again: any term used in the law must either have a clear "ordinary, common meaning" or else a definition within the law. This has neither. Obvious consequence: the law is void for vagueness.
Judicial Speech
In this context also, confusion reigns about the meaning of "income" in the law:
Some lower courts have said that it includes salaries and wages, while the five court cases cited above say that it does not
The Supreme Court has emphatically said (eg in Merchants' Loan) that it consists of corporate profit and that the income tax, far from being an unapportioned direct tax on individuals' earnings, is actually an excise tax on corporate profits
Regardless of the varying opinions they gave, by the very act of attempting to define the term "income" all those courts clearly implied that it was in need of a definition - that is, that no coherent, ordinary, common meaning exists that would obviate such a need
One Supreme Court decision (Eisner) pointed out that Congress has no power to define the term, yet failed to comment on the fact that those Supreme Court opinions had set out to define it! - as if courts had a mysterious power, not found in Articles 3 or 5, to amend the Constitution while Congress does not.
Usage of the term "income" is very far from uniform and unambiguous, so it should not be used in law without a definition and only a new Amendment can legally produce one. Since in Subtitle A of Title 26 it has been so used anyway, that Subtitle - the entire alleged "income tax" - is based upon a literally meaningless term and is, therefore, void.


text:
Posted on 02/09/2015Reckless Driving Lands Washington Nationals Player in Jail
The state of Virginia has some of the toughest penalties for speeding/reckless driving in the country. Motorists can receive fines, a criminal record, license suspensions, and even jail time for even relatively minor speeding infractions. But now, the state's transportation department is considering raising speed limits on some Virginia highways.
The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) has stated that it may hike some speed limits on Interstates 81 and 64 in west central Virginia just northwest of Lynchburg. But VDOT officials stress that these limits will not be changed on all portions of these two interstates.
Areas Targeted For Increased Speed Limits
The parts of these two highways that are being mulled for an increase in speed limits are:
I-81 in Botetourt County; and
I-64 in Alleghany County
State police officials stress that a "highway safety corridor," where drivers cannot exceed 60 miles per hour, will remain intact on these interstates.
VDOT also says that it will ask for input from police agencies to determine if elevating the speed limit is feasible. The transportation department will also look at other factors, such as the number of interstate entrance and exit ramps and the frequency of accidents in targeted areas, before making a final decision on the speed limit issue.
Securing Legal Representation for a Virginia Speeding Ticket
Virginia Reckless Speeding Lawyer Bob Battle understands the drastic and unfair consequences that a conviction could have on both Virginia licensed motorists and out-of-state motorists caught in one of Virginia's "Yankee speed traps" as they drive through Virginia for business or vacation.
If you have been ticketed for Reckless Driving Speeding in Virginia, there is no time to waste! Get a free copy of Bob Battle's consumer guide, The Shocking Truth About Reckless Driving/Speeding in Virginia. Or, contact 804-673-5600 to schedule your legal consultation today.
Urgent: the Clock is Ticking!
From the moment you are charged with a DUI, the clock begins to tick.
If you want to try to get your license back, you have less than 5 days to hire a lawyer.
Your trial date is almost always less than 2 months from the date you were charged and, thus, waiting just 14 days to hire a lawyer could severely handicap your defense
Former Prosecutor Bob Battle reveals the TRUTH about lawyer website hype & B.S.! His FREE Consumer Guide "How to Choose a DUI Lawyer in Virginia" arms you with the 10 Questions you must ask to have the best chance of winning your DUI case. Don't hire Bob Battle or ANY lawyer until you get straight answers to these questions, including:
Who is going to be my lawyer at trial? (p. 20)
What are his/her qualifications?
Are they AV rated? "AV" = Highest rating possible for Legal Ability and Ethics (p. 22)
Are they a former prosecutor?
Where did they prosecute? (p. 24)
Time is short. A DUI conviction has the potential to ruin your job, family, life, and freedom. Get your FREE copy today!
by Bob Battle Bob@BobBattleLaw.com
100% of my practice is devoted to serious traffic defense and criminal litigation in state and federal courts
As you may know, Virginia is the only state that bans the use and sale of detectors. There is no evidence that the detector ban increases highway safety. Our nation's fatality rates have fallen consistently for almost two decades. Virginia's fatality rate has also fallen, but not any more dramatically than it has nationwide. Research has even shown that radar detector owners have a lower accident rate than motorists who do not own a detector. Maintaining the ban is not in the best interest of Virginians or visitors to the state. I know and know of people that will not drive in Virginia due to this ban. Unjust enforcement practices are not unheard of, and radar detectors can keep safe motorists from being exploited by abusive speed traps. Likewise, the ban has a negative impact on Virginia's business community. Electronic distributors lose business to neighboring states and Virginia misses out on valuable sales tax revenue. Radar detector bans do not work. Research and experience show that radar detector bans do not result in lower accident rates, improved speed-limit compliance or reduce auto insurance expenditures. • The Virginia radar detector ban is difficult and expensive to enforce. The Virginia ban diverts precious law enforcement resources from more important duties. • Radar detectors are legal in the rest of the nation, in all 49 other states. In fact, the first state to test a radar detector ban, Connecticut, repealed the law – it ruled the law was ineffective and unfair. It is time for our Virginia to join the rest of the nation. • It has never been shown that radar detectors cause accidents or even encourage motorists to drive faster than they would otherwise. The Yankelovich – Clancy – Shulman Radar Detector Study conducted in 1987, showed that radar detector users drove an average of 34% further between accidents (233,933 miles versus 174,554 miles) than non radar detector users. The study also showed that they have much higher seat belt use compliance. If drivers with radar detectors have fewer accidents, it follows that they have reduced insurance costs – it is counterproductive to ban radar detectors. • In a similar study performed in Great Britain by MORI in 2001 the summary reports that "Users (of radar detectors) appear to travel 50% further between accidents than non-users. In this survey the users interviewed traveling on average 217,353 miles between accidents compared to 143,401 miles between accidents of those non-users randomly drawn from the general public." The MORI study also reported "Three quarters agree, perhaps unsurprisingly, that since purchasing a radar detector they have become more conscious about keeping to the speed limit..." and "Three in five detector users claim to have become a safer driver since purchasing a detector." • Modern radar detectors play a significant role in preventing accidents and laying the technology foundation for the Safety Warning System® (SWS). Radar detectors with SWS alert motorists to oncoming emergency vehicles, potential road hazards, and unusual traffic conditions. There are more than 10 million radar detectors with SWS in use nationwide. The federal government has earmarked $2.1 million for further study of the SWS over a three-year period of time. The U.S. Department of Transportation is administering grants to state and local governments to purchase the SWS system and study its effectiveness (for example, in the form of SWS transmitters for school buses and emergency vehicles). The drivers of Virginia deserve the right to the important safety benefits that SWS delivers. *** A small surcharge($5-$10) or tax(2%-3%) could be added to the price of the device to make-up for any possible loss of revenue from reduced number of speeding tickets and the loss of tickets written for radar detectors.*** Please sign this petition and help repeal this ban and give drivers in Virginia the freedom to know if they are under surveillance and to use their property legally: www.stoptheban.org http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/repeal-the-virginia-radar-detector-ban
by Repeal_The_Va_Radar_Detector_Ban August 11, 2010 at 04:07 PM
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