Anthony Galvin

Ryan's Daughter (1970) - a short review

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:37:17 +0100

A critical failure on it’s release in 1970, David Lean’s follow up to Lawrence of Arabia is an unusual and beguiling film. Robert Bolt’s screen play reworks Madame Bovary to occupied Ireland in 1916. The star studded cast includes Robert Mitchum, Trevor Howard and John Mills. Sarah Miles is the ‘daughter’ of the films title, the emotional heart of the film as Rosy Ryan/Emma Bovary. However, it’s the scenery and dramatic west of Ireland coastline that dominates the film.

Shot on Super Panavision 70, by Lean’s cinematographer Freddie Young, the rugged coastline of the Dingle Peninsula is both beautiful and sinister. More than just a backdrop, the coves, castles and storms play an important narrative role in the film. The vast beach at Inch (now one of Ireland’s leading surf spots) is the setting for many of the films most important scenes. The film was nominated for 4 academy awards, winning 2 Oscars for John Mills, Best Supporting Actor and Freddie Young, Best Cinematography. If the Oscars had a category for best supporting scenery then the film would easily have won another.

Whilst the plot centers around the relationships between the Rosy and her lovers, the emotional heart of the film is the relationship between Miles’ character and reality. Her perception of love and life are so at odds with the day to day reality of living in a poverty stricken village that she exists in a parallel dream world, only occasionally visiting the mundane struggle of daily existence. Sarah Miles’ portrayal of this vibrant yet troubled and dislocated woman is excellent, her vivacity smashing onto the rocks of Mithcum’s taciturn school teacher who, although initially seems emotionally literate, sinks into a sullen silence in the face of his wife’s infidelities.

The film was much criticised on it’s release and seen by various interested parties as a critique of the Easter rising and the church’s dominant role Ireland. However, to read the film in this way is surely to see this subtle and complex film as a simple piece of agit-prop. Such a view also underestimates Lean as a film maker who makes great use of the location and cast. Audience attitudes to Ireland and the central characters have changed considerably in the 30 years since the film was made, in some ways this highlights the strengths of the film rather than undermine it.

Dustanburgh Castle, more pics on Flickr.

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:50:01 +0100

Dustanburgh Castle, more pics on Flickr.

Head in the cloud

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:25:00 +0100

This post originally appeared on the Altogether Digital blog.

Last year at the conference I was fortunate enough to catch Simon Wardley’s excellent presentation on open source and ‘cloud computing’. It was interesting and engaging, but didn’t really seem to be something that the technical team at Altogether could really utilise - the projects we were working on didn’t appear to need ‘the cloud’.

A few months later, and although the sun is shining on Great Portland Street we are happily working ‘under a cloud’.The concept of cloud computing has been around for a while and there’s plenty of definitions and not a little controversy about whether some of the larger cloud players are really providing a silver lining. I don’t think the team here at Altogether is that hung up on a formal definition of ‘the cloud’, we just like effective solutions that work for our clients. However, as a broad definition: Cloud computing is a way of virtualising data in order to provide a specific performance benefit. The performance benefit may be the ability to provide a rapidly scalable hosting environment or fast access to rich content using edge served data.

Earlier this month Ciaran blogged about how Altogether were working with Kleenex to produce a Twitter based hayfever map of the UK. What he didn’t mention was that as the campaign progressed it was picked up by the press and traffic to the site started to increase pretty rapidly. In order to keep up with the demand for the service we simply moved some of the data storage out into the cloud, in this case Amazon’s S3 service. In Amazon’s words S3 provides “a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web”. Or in our words, the site stays up and performs well.

Whilst the hayfever sufferers have been keeping a sore eye on Twitter, we’ve also been working with Vertu on their new global website. The site has lots of content including rich video and some hefty photography, all delivered in 7 languages. There’s a lot of data flying around. To improve the performance of the site we’ve been working with Akamai who provide ‘edge serving’ technology, which is basically a way of putting the content nearer to the customer - in Akamai’s case on 48,000 servers in 70 countries.

In both cases there’s some pretty geeky stuff happening, which to some people is pretty exciting in itself, but what’s more important is that we have another tool in our digital armoury that ensures the solutions we deliver for clients stay online and perform well, whatever the weather.

Film binge - the menu

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 13:03:00 +0100

Looks like I’m about to start on a small film binge over the next few months. Here’s what I’ve queued up:

Aaltra (2004)
Man on Wire (2008)
My Winnipeg (2008)
Ryan’s Daughter (1970)
Saint Etienne - Finisterre (2005)
Uzak (2002)
Belleville Rendez-vous (2003)
Bicycle Thieves (1948)
Big Wednesday (1978)
Helvetica (2006)
Jules Et Jim (1961)
Subway (1975)
The Endless Summer (1964)
The Getaway (1972)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
Wild Strawberries (1957)
An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
Beckett On Film (2004 - 4 discs, 19 films)
Blindness (2008)
South (1919)
The Lost Weekend (1945)
The Grocer’s Son (2009)
Breaking Away (1979)
Gerry (2002)
Hell on Wheels (2006)
Looking for Eric (2009)

Lifes a beach. 1800 miles of driving, lots of walking, some...

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 23:06:00 +0100

Lifes a beach. 1800 miles of driving, lots of walking, some cycling and one haggis. More pictures from Harris and Lewis on Flickr.

Economic Analysis In 140 Characters

Wed, 13 May 2009 10:59:17 +0100

This post originally appeared on the Altogether Digital blog.

The economy is in crisis and the government announces its latest budget in an attempt to try and dig the country out of the deep economic hole that it is currently in. Whichever side of the political divide you’re on this is clearly serious stuff.

I’m certainly no economist, so last night I tuned into Channel4 news for some serious analysis of what’s going on. There was a panel of experts and politicians from across the spectrum discussing the political and economic fallout from the budget. Mid-debate something strange happens; Jon Snow interrupts and they cut over to Krishnan Guru-Murthy who’s sat in front of a PC reading out detailed economic analysis (in 140 characters or fewer) from random people on Twitter.

Now these people aren’t actually random. They’ve tagged their tweets with #c4budget, as @krishgm has asked them to do throughout the day. But I don’t know who they are and have no idea whether they know any more about the economics than Vince Cable or Mickey Mouse.

I’m a big fan of Twitter, it’s brilliant for lot’s of things but detailed economic analysis isn’t really it’s strength. But it’s easy to see the attraction for the ITN news team, who produce Channel4 news:

They don’t have to send someone into the street to get the usual vapid one liners from people stood at a bus stop (which was how the 10 o’clock news on BBC1 gathered public reaction).
It makes them look like they’ve got a finger on the pulse of the electorate and shows that they are technologically innovative.
It’s cheap TV.

However, there’s a bigger issue here. I’m watching Channel4 news because it can do something that I can’t: get leading politicians and experts in a room and hold a debate on the budget. Searching twitter for #budget is something I can do in a matter of seconds. We don’t really need to have a publicly owned (and theoretically public service) TV station paying someone to read out tweets on air. It’s a bit like getting Simon Schama to Google the year Henry VIII was born.

But of course with media companies around the globe struggling to find new business models that will continue pay for all of these annoyingly expensive journalists, this could well be a depressing foretaste of what’s to come.

Photo

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:01:03 +0100

Blackheath sky (lo-res from iPhone)

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:54:17 +0100

Blackheath sky (lo-res from iPhone)

Photo

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:24:00 +0100

Great April fool from the bike show

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:10:05 +0100

Great April fool from the bike show

Pictures from Day 4 and Day 5 online. All the picures from the...

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:40:52 +0000

Pictures from Day 4 and Day 5 online. All the picures from the trip are on flickr.

Gourmet lunch, Norway style. More day 3 pictures online.

Sat, 07 Feb 2009 16:43:04 +0000

Gourmet lunch, Norway style. More day 3 pictures online.

Day 2 pics from Norway 09 boarding trip. Chilled out day, with a...

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 19:17:30 +0000

Day 2 pics from Norway 09 boarding trip. Chilled out day, with a home spun kicker session, which we hit during the day - and then took a lamp and hit in the dark.

Norway 09 boarding trip. Day 1 Pictures on flickr

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:34:10 +0000

Norway 09 boarding trip. Day 1 Pictures on flickr

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - an update

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:05:12 +0000

Not that I’m taking all or any of the credit for this but the government backed down on introducing legislation that would allow MPs to suppress the details of their expense claims:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jan/21/mps-expenses

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 13:30:00 +0000

FOR THE ATTENTION OF:
Nick Raynsford MP, Greenwich and Woolwich

Dear Nick Raynsford,

I am writing to you to express my concern about the contents of the draft Freedom of Information (Parliament) Order.

One of the key aspects of democracy is the ability of the electorate to hold it’s representatives to account. There are many ways to do this, such as looking at how MPs vote and the things they say in public. In recent times the register of members interests and MPs expenses have become a valuable tool in ensuring that parliament and parliamentarians continue to serve the interests of the people it seeks to represent.

Where public organisations choose to be less open and restrict access to information there is always the risk that a small number of people will seek to exploit this secrecy for their own gain. If this was to happen in relation to MPs expenses, not only would the hard earned tax revenue of ordinary working people be wasted, but also the important covenant of trust between MP and electorate be fundamentally damaged.

Yesterday in his inauguration speech Barack Obama eloquently expressed the importance of trust and transparency between public and polity: “And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account - to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day - because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.”

Therefore I’m urging you to continue to represent the best interests of the people of Greenwich and Woolwich by voting against the draft Freedom of Information (Parliament) Order.

Yours sincerely,

Anthony Galvin

—-
Find out more about MPs concealing their expenses.

24 Hours in Paris. New Years eve / New Year day pictures on...

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 21:14:00 +0000

24 Hours in Paris. New Years eve / New Year day pictures on flickr

Cold. Windy. Mountains. Cycling in Snowdonia on Boxing Day. More...

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 13:47:54 +0000

Cold. Windy. Mountains. Cycling in Snowdonia on Boxing Day. More pictures on flickr.

Hanson Street - 09.12.2008. New post on Soho Breakfast...

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 13:36:00 +0000

Hanson Street - 09.12.2008. New post on Soho Breakfast photoblog.

fireworks

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 10:31:51 +0000

fireworks