Best of 2018

 

Cold War

Film:

Vice

Cold War

Green Book, Bohemian Rhapsody

Last year: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, The Florida Project

Foreign-Language Film:

The Square

Cold War

Last year: The Square (Sweden)

Documentary:

Faces Places

Three Identical Strangers, RBG, Bombshell, The Ballymurphy Precedent

Male Lead:

Rami Malek – Bohemian Rhapsody

Christian Bale – Vice

Viggo Mortensen – Green Book, Robert Redford – The Old Man & The Gun, Steve Coogan – Stan & Ollie

Last year: Daniel Day-Lewis – Phantom Thread, Steve Carell – Battle of the Sexes

Female Lead:

Olivia Coleman – The Favourite

Joanna Kulig – Cold War

Last year: Frances McDormand – Three Billboards

Male Support:

Terry Notary – The Square

Steve Carell – Vice, Sam Rockwell – Vice

Last year: Woody Harrelson – Three Billboards, Sam Rockwell – Three Billboards

Female Support:

Amy Adams – Vice

Sissy Spacek – The Old Man & The Gun, Rachel Weisz – The Favourite, Emma Stone – The Favourite, Nina Arianda – Stan & Ollie

Last year: Brooklyn Prince – Florida Project, Mary J Blige – Mudbound

Director:

Adam McKay – Vice

Last year: Martin McDonagh – Three Billboards

Writer:

Adam McKay – Vice

Last year: Martin McDonagh – Three Billboards

Editing:

Vice

Last year: Dunkirk

Cinematography:

Lukasz Zal – Cold War

Last year: Roger Deakins – Blade Runner 2049 (went on to pick up his 1st Oscar for this, after numerous nominations)

Film Music:

Bohemian Rhapsody

Cold War

Last year: Three Billboards

Single/Song:

I Want You (Sam Reid & Claudia Jolly – The Girl from the North Country)

Last year: Willie Nelson – God’s Problem Child

Album:

The Girl from the North Country (London cast)

The Prophet Speaks (Van)

Last year: undecided

Gig:

David Byrne – Hammersmith Odeon

The Midnight Special – White Album anniversary; Tom Robinson – Shepherds Bush Empire; Hothouse Flowers/Hot Press anniversary – Nells; Donal Lunny & Andy Irvine – Barbican

Last year: Hothouse Flowers – Electric Ballroom, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Millennium Dome, Avishai Cohen – Barbican

Play:

Girl from the North Country [2nd viewing]

Last year: Girl from the North Country, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Art Exhibition:

Picasso: 1932 (Tate Modern)

Collections Privees (Musee Marmottan)

Last year: Basquiat (Barbican)

Book:

The Leithen Stories – John Buchan

Last year: Everybody Lies – Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

TV:

Mrs Wilson (BBC)

13 Reasons Why (Netflix), Maltese (More 4)

Last year: Stranger Things S1

Sport:

Ireland beating the All-Blacks

The demeanour of the England team at the World Cup in Russia

Event:

50th anniversary of The Beatles’ White Album

Dearly departed:

• Amos Oz
• Philip Roth
• Aretha Franklin
• William Goldman
• Chas (Hodges)
• Burt Reynolds
• Eric Bristow
• Stephen Hawking
• Ken Dodd
• Roger Bannister
• Dennis Edwards
• Peter Wyngarde
• Dolores O’Riordan

[Nov] Ireland beat world champions New Zealand for the first time ever on home soil – Jacob Stockdale scores the only try of the match

Best of 2017 – with links to all previous years

Quote of the Day: New beginnings

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.     

Lucius Annaeus Seneca aka Seneca the Younger (c.4 BC – 65 AD)

Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise / Adam et Eve chassés du Paradis – Marc Chagall (1961)

Quote of the Day: Social Media

Comparison is the thief of joy.

 

 

Attributed to Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt (1858-1919), 26th President of the USA – but seems to be disputed.

 

Quote of the Day: Choose Life

“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”

― Agatha Christie

4 quotes of Amos Oz

10th September 1979

1

Every single pleasure I can imagine or have experienced is more delightful, more of a pleasure, if you take it in small sips, if you take your time. Reading is not an exception.

2

The best way to know the soul of another country is to read its literature.

3

The kibbutz way of life is not for everyone. It is meant for people who are not in the business of working harder than they should be working, in order to make more money than they need, in order to buy things they don’t really want, in order to impress people they don’t really like.

4

I find the family the most mysterious and fascinating institution in the world.

4 great Amos Oz books:

1. Black Box
2. A Tale of Love and Darkness
3. To Know a Woman
4. Don’t Call It Night

Quote of the Day: The 60s

 

Get Carter (1971)

 

… the whole point of the Sixties was that you had to take people as they were. If you came in with us, you left your class and colour and religion behind, that was what the Sixties was all about.

Michael Caine, actor

Quote of the Day: As the new year approaches

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe by Andy Warhol (1982)

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.

Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe by Andy Warhol (1982)

 

Goethe In The Roman Campagna by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (1787)

Quote of the Day: Hippocrates

Walking is man’s best medicine.

Hippocrates

Regarded as the father of Medicine (c.460-377 BC), gave his name to (though not sole author of ) the Hippocratic oath

Extracts of the Oath:

I swear by Apollo the Healer, by Asclepius, by Hygieia, by Panacea, and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture.

To hold my teacher in this art equal to my own parents …

I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrong-doing. …

Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free. And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession, as well as outside my profession in my intercourse with men, if it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge, holding such things to be holy secrets.

The bedside manner of Dr Mopp of Camberwick Green

The blue plaque tribute to Dr Hannah Billig of London’s East End

(Why are there no images of Hannah Billig online? Do you have one?)

This may be Dr Hannah Billig but I’m not 100% sure

 

Update 28/1/19:

A friend of mine, a specialist in East End history, sent me these photos of Hannah Billig.

Dr Hannah Billig 1901-1987 – young & old

Quote of the Day: The birthday boy

Jeffrey Hunter in ‘King of Kings’ (1961) Directed by Nicholas Ray

 

So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

Jesus

Christ And The Two Marys by William Holman Hunt (1847-97)

Quote of the Day: The Notorious RBG

at Cornell University

 

I’m a very strong believer in listening and learning from others

Ruth Bader Ginsburg – Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America

For RGB’s story, watch the excellent feature documentary ‘RBG’