Good Morning

Monday Musings

Another warmish day. Another sunny morning that clouded over to dullness by the afternoon. With that in mind, and being less windy than of late, I headed off to Canterbury. Another of these covert shop visits to another charity shop.

Picked up a baseball cap with Guinness written on it, plus a DVD box set which I will sell.

Tomorrow I will be heading off to Sheerness, Wednesday train trips from Tunbridge Wells, and Thursday I will be going to Orpington and then Paddock Wood, which is not far from where poliphilo lives. Friday I will be in Maidstone. So a busy week ahead.

Oh, and I love the new Stagecoach bus services X3 and X4 from Canterbury to Maidstone. Arriva has been dumped!

Monday At The Movies

Today it is the music of Arthur Bliss. a classical composer who also did film scores. This is one he did for an H.G Wells novel adaption.

Sir Arthur Bliss - Things to Come Orchestral Suite

Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss 1891 – 1975. An English composer and conductor.
Bliss's musical training was cut short by the First World War, in which he served with distinction in the army. In the post-war years, he quickly became known as an unconventional and modernist composer but within the decade he began to display a more traditional and romantic side in his music. In the 1920s and 1930s, he composed extensively not only for the concert hall but also for films and ballet.
In the Second World War, Bliss returned to England from the US to work for the BBC and became its director of music. After the war, he resumed his work as a composer and was appointed Master of the Queen's Music.
In Bliss's later years, his work was respected but was thought old-fashioned, and it was eclipsed by the music of younger colleagues such as William Walton and Benjamin Britten. Since his death, his compositions have been well represented in recordings, and many of his better-known works remain in the repertoire of British orchestras

Things to Come (also known in promotional material as H. G. Wells' Things to Come) is a 1936 British black-and-white science fiction film from United Artists, produced by Alexander Korda, directed by William Cameron Menzies, and written by H. G. Wells. The film stars Raymond Massey, Ralph Richardson, Cedric Hardwicke, Pearl Argyle, and Margaretta Scott.
The dialogue and plot were devised by H. G. Wells as "a new story" meant to display the "social and political forces and possibilities" that he had outlined in his 1933 story The Shape of Things to Come, a work he considered less a novel than a "discussion" in a fictional form that presented itself as the notes of a 22nd-century diplomat. The film was also influenced by previous works, including his 1897 story "A Story of the Days to Come" and his 1931 work on society and economics, The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind; speculating on the future had been a stock-in-trade for Wells ever since The Time Machine (1895). The cultural historian Christopher Frayling called Things to Come "a landmark in cinematic design",

This video is a celebration of the works of H.G. Wells and the composer Sir Arthur Bliss. The images are mixed some taken from the film, others from Fritz Lang's Metropolis which represent the art deco, 'jazz age' era. The bold visions of the future represented in architecture are here mixed with a certain foreboding of what secrets this 'bold future' actually holds. The video shows what menace was to shorty come and the eventual triumph of good over evil represented in the defiant image of unscathed St. Paul's Cathedral standing amidst the ruins of post blitz London.



ENJOY

Just Wondering

Do you have any radios(or combination radio/CD players) in your house? If so, how many?

Be honest now, do you still have any cassette tapes laying around? When was the last time you played one?

IN the same vein, do you have any vinyl records around the house? Can you remember the title of the last one you bought?