When feeling nothing’s more there to say, be open, adventurous, mischievous, curious. Quite. Own terms. No one else’s. Julia Loktev’s 5hour doc could easily have been a 90min slot. Sound bites like everything else, only more ruffling notable. Thank you. Very very much. Thanks moving on. Not something possible with My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow. Julia Loktev is Frederick Wiseman in that one needs see all the details, their context ever getting involved beyond simple, soulful, sorrowful voyeur. Brave, beautiful Russian people. Citizen journalists jumping through all the hoops without becoming Rodchenko relegated to pics of the State Circus. World parallel political obvious. Scary so closer to home. Centuries wars of sovereignty. For what? For whom? Meow!
Inevitable questions at Cannes Film Festival 2026 about what role film in a world wrought in political upheaval. Ken Loach’s screen writer and Cannes jury member Paul Laverty: “the Greek polis, means about the city, the meanings of how human beings behave with each other … in the deeper sense of how we treat each other. Power values are encrusted in every type of script or any type of story.”
You may assuaged watch The Choral? Only Brits could make a movie seemingly quaint, twee, melancholic. Okay, too broad the statement. So just English: no American signposting, simply fire forever roaring inside! It has bite! Such the British bulldog. Beware, pay attention. Affection…Lives easily so senselessly lost. Lives replenished. Past another country? Still same: Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, Danny Boyle, Lynne Ramsay, Esme ‘ma’ Cat.
Ivor Gurney
Of course, question is: who cares about anything anymore?! All these films at festivals, all these artists at art fairs. Science and medical make more sense but do people believe any more so in them? What makes Steven Spielberg and composer John Williams any better than Mikio Naruse or Ryuichi Sakamoto? All a level playing field until moral compass lost. So easy for power inflect those magnets. If the copper coil of culture breathes no more what’s left? Mold growing in our minds? Then again, slime mold mentality might just save us! Go figure mortals! Overheard in a queue today: “a dog doesn’t know it’s a dog”. Yes. But as all other creatures utterly understands mortal coil. Not just ‘man’s best fffing friend’. Sentient beings. And I’m sure there are stupid aliens just as humans…and we were doing just so well for 2026 life commencement!!!! Don't go changing, to try and please me…
Only gallerist Marian Goodman saw an alt abstract ‘Clement Goldberg’ expressionist art future in Gerhardt Richter’s blurred ‘cool-realist’paintings. Meow!
For Stephen [from Andrew and Kitty]
Not simply the end of Stephen Colbert hosting The Late Show but the end of an American TV institution since 1982! Some things haven’t just changed have…Stephen Sondheim saw the ‘thing’ in Mr. Colbert. Careful, he might hear you: BOO!
American artist Charles Seliger (1926-2009) isn’t exactly unknown amongst artistic circles, less so perhaps to a wider audience. Reimagined echoes of Charles Burchfield??
KITTY’s Weird Wonderful Wednesday Double Bill.
The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo
Wedneswhere’s ANDREW?…Meowoof!
Felines stepping’ up! GMrrrr…
Tony Awards 2026 this Sunday. Don’t screw it up creatures of paradise! 10 years since William Ivey Long and Anna Wintour declared, we deserve more than a birdcage! Gosh! Ragtime vs Cats: The Jellicle Ball. Whodathought! Credit where due for Andrew Lloyd Webber initially breaking the mold decades ago, embracing now new eyes of Jamie Lloyd and Jellicle. And Chess always was a great show! No Suffs this year. Maybe nextime.
Not sure what’s worse! Imagining Nathan Lane as Willy ending Death of a Salesman. Or triptych ‘Tony award winning’ Kitty Litter as Cordelia: King Lear limp by limp towards the audience, grasping Cordelia the dead cat by her tail, piece of meat. Thence clutching
No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison:
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage
to his heart.
Theater may not change the world. Just maybe, maybe though, a few million hearts are moved to mind.
This feather stirs; she lives! if it be so,
It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows
That ever I have felt.
