Slow West : A Film Review

Slow West. UK/NZ 1hr 24mins 2015. Cert. 15 Thriller Western.
Director John Maclean, Cast includes Ben Mendelssohn! Michael Fassbinder, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Rory McCann, Cary Pistorious, Brooke Williams, Edwin Wright, Jeffrey Thomas, Madeline Sami, Andrew Robert, Michael Walley,
Go West
A 16 year old Scotsman barely grown into his lanky frame sets out to pursue a love across the classes and across the Atlantic. His background is Cavendish and he is alone, a surviving aristocrat. Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee) journeys across the American plains towards the West.
It is the late 1800’s let’s say 1870 and by this time he would have had choices which for the purposes of this story are rejected. He could have joined numerous Scots Irish groups as a driver and forged and travelled with safer links.

For the sake of this preposterous narrative he is already nearing his destination of Colorado. Perhaps he got of a train in Denver or Boulder, such is his good fortune of trekking alone while Indian territory and insurrection abound. The seceding of the states took place in 1860.
Confederacy was to carry forward many ills as far as British ‘settlers’ were concerned.
The high ranges of hills cross the cinematic gorgeous backdrop of the Rocky Mountains.
Given New Zealand to work with cinematographer Robbie Ryan transforms New Zealand convincingly to be showy and big picture effective.

On a small budget, grafted together by John Maclean and Michael Fassbinder as Silas Selleck whose previous work together was small making this a first mainstream big picture in scale which delivers for its craft-work.

He, JM, has made band videos for his music career with The Beta Band and often the sharp short shot is a kind of music ingredient which he calls on to make an altogether obvious point. The plainer it is the better it seems.

Then there are the cinematic references which is indulgent at the best of times and unnecessary flannel at the worst. The singing trio on route, the skeletal leviathan remains on the valley between mountains, the incidental absurdities. All are there offering little of cogency to a narrative.

The join up between Silas and Jay is central and into it enters the scalawag Cowboy, Ben Mendelsohn as Payne – no heads up there then – in the mere costume affectation of a fur coat stolen from Granny Henderson of Cullybackey no doubt, as an erstwhile – what else – sock to Fassbinder’s foot. He is unconvincing as a malevolent bully – the down payment for the role as such – but excels at attempting to upstage Fassbinder in their limited scripted parts.
they claim to have aims similar but different and i would not argue because it is as a gang leader BM acts out a fantasy role which his life expectancy goes beyond his cerebral count.

Silas is as we know a bounty hunter. A competitor also arrives in a sub-plot.
The intensity is nowhere near that of frontier or discovery movies.
you may not accept the comparison but this film, Slow West is essentially about self discovery. The grown ups (Silas and the merry band are all outliers) so it is no shift of imagination to take it to the high seas.?
The Bounty, admittedly entirely different, (boats adrift, seas and chronic conditions) which I recently watched again.

So many levels of complexity with character and incredible levels of acting at its best, – Antony Hopkins in his prime possibly, Mel Gibson acting with humility which he later lost maybe were evident.
Silas is able to extract Jay from an improbable word exchange quickly entering killing and body scavenging. He steps in, off frame and Jay is rescued. Then he forges the mentor, guide role which Jay entrusts him to.
The morality of not killing a sixteen year old is with him as a part allowance in ethical consideration.

Jay signs him up as his needed guide as the story unfold sol with more embarrassing crossed paths. Still they bond over the leviathan carcass as miniature scale earners.
Small print
Another little episode involves a random ‘Dutchman (?)’ who is another lone traveller of a writerish kind, one who is not lacking in courage but falls over his own propriety.
Jay asks for guidance here when estranged from his own hired hand Silas.
This is another sidetrack of black comedic note.

The playing of each actor fluctuates. Sometimes MF is accustomed to being on target with the complexity of the story he is conveying. It is when he is using stillness. Pure Clint.
Then again sometimes westerns go long without dialogue. The camera follows unobtrusively. Not this one, in his knickerbocker glory (flesh is not displayed much to his annoyance) when a flood washes them – a scene(s) as convincing as a studio set down the studio lot – strung out like a washing line literally the joke is lank.

Bounty of a different kind
There is no debate about whether Michael Fassbinder can act. there simply has not been a robust enough character for him to perform. The likes of Niall Tobin, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole come to mind as actors whose skills were kept in store until they reached a part suddenly Harris and O’Toole were exceptionally out of the blocks and Tobin was around with little of consequence until later life. How is it going to be for Michael Fassbinder?
Does it matter to him? Is it possible these days to become a ‘comet’ of an actor?
The reason the subject came up is because i reminded myself of Antony Hopkins forgotten piece the in The Bounty and all the outstanding performances around him. It just falls in place.

A Le Carre piece perhaps. Alec Guinness remembered years later for his role above all in Tinker Tailor. The cadences are remembered through the actors provision of inhabiting the character of an exceptional reading brought forward by the writer. In both instances the originating author let go of the screenplay and the story became cinematic gold.
Understatement
Some spontaneously funny moments arrive and go without overstaying however which makes this doubly inordinate. There are the sub-plots, on the subject of bounty hunting, a character, name forgotten. This ‘Bill Stickers’ ‘Bill Posters’ whatever, concerns how notoriety travels and how to manage it. Comic relief from the violence except the quickening, advancing abattoir of dead bodies spurs on relentlessly.

The tragedy is only a downward spiral from the very first non accidental killing. The film manages a very bleak tragedy which is corporeal and of a kind which startles. The story moves outward and leaves a question of discovery and recovery unanswered.

Conclusion ###3+
When it comes to a story there is indeed quite a weave of one but it is remarkably short of realism given it has core western ingredients.

The given – he has reached Colorado unscathed – is landlocked by the arrival of Bounty Hunter Silas (Michael Fassbender), – Silas, wily old fox has lightened upon him on his own journey in basically the same direction except he knows we’re it is best to find the thing Jay is looking for, for they are one and the same.

Flashback tells the story of why Jay has found himself chasing the love he constructed in his proprietorial heart. He has accustomed himself to seeking out, through a modicum of guilt Rose (Caren Pistorius) and her father Michael McCann.

There is entertainment aplenty in this freshing of a genre, the last one I liked concerned dead people burials etc. Gruesome also.

This has a very violent ending sequence which sorts matters out as far as a conclusion is concerned so do not worry about feeling short changed in that regard.
take it for what it is as a traditional Western scoping of the nerve endings with lots of unintended consequences running in and out with very little to learn about real life except the telling is a reminder of our potentiality (existing – intact) to be entirely wicked and stupid and never satiated or satisfied by what is in front of us.

John Graham

26 June 2015

Belfast

Opens tonight at QFT Belfast for a weeks worth of scheduled screenings and on general release.
It is sure to be popular.

if you are into art movies then check the work on Youtube of

Lílian Campesato: “V Encontro Mulheres na Música Experimenta” whose take of Black and white film with her soundscapes makes for a memorable set of pieces which is explained through her medium of Brazilian. I have set a few questions to her on the work and poised a few intangibles!

Take a look.

A Pre – Nuptial Agreement Part1

Bringing into your life some new living thing is our expectation of giving up something of ourselves. In reality all that is being considered is that in order to be a person we will need another person. That might be a mirror of the self and we see their self in us. Will they see themselves in you?

I understand I need you you as you I am being true to you and I?

This need be said of The Lord. For this essay is on God.

One week last week I found I was writing about God at the foot of the Mountain. At the foot of the Mournes. Now this week after the dozen or so young travellers took off their clothes in a far away place as an act of liberation stood naked male and female a discreet distance apart and took what was felt spiritually in, at the top of the Mountain.

They had reached there communally and found it affected them and gestural though it was of freedom and of each individuals feeling of connection with a place it was again the nature which became the souls bonding with a universal. Firstly the minor separation in order not to distract its value to sexual expression became evidence of soul.

So how is the soul? I ever was aware, haing not paid much attention to that often asked question laid at children’s feet when they encounter practice of religion of the organised kind.

Here we are .. As The Blue Nile song goes .. Caught up in this big ..
Why did we ever come so far ?
I knew I’d seen it all before
Tall building reach up in vain
Tinseltown is in the rain
I know now love was so exciting
Tinseltown in the rain, all men and women
Here we are, caught up in this big rhythm
One day this love will all blow over
Time for leaving the parade
Is there a place in this city?
A place to always feel this way
And hey, there’s a red car in the fountain

It could be many things. Here we are this gathering in Belfast offering together the opportunity to explore the fundamental challenges beset our world of today. Each being there to listen to a series of talks, readings of significance as small measurable interventions.

The speakers using their writings, readings as reinforcements of the beliefs and how they conduct their minds to create the organization sought within their intellect of the union with the word and the oneness of in this case, Christianity.

It is not a Buddist form of faith, nor Muslim, even Hindu or Judism but intrinsically Western and Christian.

It is also those religions as it seeks union with them as the separations are significantly minuscule as to be inessential. The sense of identity is what makes this clear. Everyone gathered is it seems, European or American or of a Western mindset. They are of a habitué of the inter-rail adventurous kind, gone to the top of the mountain and found a soul apparently amongst them or even individually. The identity is it seems the burden.
Others are of the elements of Churches of wider thinking, of a kind perhaps who are wholesome lay rejected by in the kindest way as belonging, if they do to formalities of Church.
Wanting some meaning in reaching a person whose life before or now is more rigid than his, Gareths, life is flexible so seeks to bend towards grace as a ruminant of this persons or ‘types’ ‘ faith’. He uses pastoral advice from a John (Barlow) whose advice was to always respond to those who cannot help understand your faith an beliefs in a state of graceful reply at the same time leaving them perplexed rather than on the cusp of an argument.

That is basically a nonsensical attitude and is without grace. I disagreed with someone who asked me to become involved in something in order that I fought their cause for them just a day or so ago. I explained I disagreed wholeheartedly with them and I was but an individual and in any case should they not address the person they need discuss the matter with more directly and put to them what they put to me. They were an individual with a right to question and challenge I said and should, though I disagree fully with them, did not have an issue with which to make a case on their behalf, they should not be afraid. I did it in a fairly robust way so as to leave no doubt or leeway in seeing plain they were perfectly capable themselves of ‘acting’ of facing rejection maybe at the heart of the difficulty?

Within a nano second they acted and went to the person and succinctly found themselves being listened to and being won to a compromise (of sorts) through their own imboldenment. I got rewarded with a repost that I was of no use and they were strong enough to do the work themselves. I smiled through their strength and wondered why more people did not project their own set of assessments more radically. The direct approach is useful. So the path of grace is a cop out in many ways and it is one world we share not divisions of sects made up of groups.

The way the talk dealt wit it was two fold – “I believe this, am I welcome here?” – “become a gracious advocate.”
First ask the question though will it make a difference should you not share beliefs though are welcome? Simply if disagreement is going to be continual then plainly that group or faith community will not be suitable for you. To ignore it or dismiss it is akin to considering it diseased. Like leprosy it need be shunned. That also need not be the attitude to adopt. More helpful would be to search the innermost feelings and explore the differences with time open ended. With an open mind. Second. Graciousness is your default or should be.
Tolerance perhaps the most powerful word of all. Alongside forgiveness. I often ask what is the most important word of all lying beyond the axiomatic word love which manifests in a multitude of ways.
Brian I think took out three things in respect of graciousness.
1. Courage.
2. Difference.
3. Graciously.
They probably have more to do with emotional intellect.
Position, usage, according to attitude and circumstance?
There happen to be no fixed ways. Flexibility is another tool to achieve understanding.

Another mantra of mine is –

To know is to understand.

I’m not being helpful am I? I do not adhere.
Nor should you other than to the summoning within your heart and mind to the very strong instinctive good you are capable of and this vestige of soul driven virtue is our most valuable gift. How improperly and and others use it. Or fail to act with it when we should.

The animal behaviour of groups is sometimes and often cherished a pathway but as individuals God is beside us among is and we are never alone.

The speaker, Gareth, from Belfast introduces Brian via. an excursion. An inter-rail ticket somewhere on or near his person 16 or so years ago, tells of his moment of epiphany, my word not his – is there one?. He confides therefore it must be epiphany and he values we all may have a similar tale to tell.

It is not January 6, nor, is it cold but is a hot summers day and the rank, dank to smell of an observing French man. Jean Luke I’ll call him, meets our speaker whose cigarillos, set of Cuban cigars aside for the present is attracted to the man spread still and perhaps as a cruciform under the plan shape of the Eifell Tower amid the four corners and tourists encountering the point mentally from below.

A transaction is considered or a gesture of sharing a cigarillo exchanged only it is the act of Jean Luke’s whose full on embrace creates a sense of wonder, of sensory experience which is offered as a doorway to more. The us ping hands along with gracefulness in the kissing Jean Luke is instilling a further kind of encounter.
It is not the case however, just a sharing of pleasure so plain and direct as to be eschewed as the act of a ‘madman’ or other than person whose begging is at once insatiable and unstilted except by the beggar.

Do you decide together with the one you love most of all whether you will love God forsaking all others? Shall you discard all preconceived, taught ideologies because in this resent enlightenment on your journey you have arrived at a the point where it is natural to be in the presence of God.
You are not depending on an evocation of God or betokened God but are one with God. The nuptial is intact in place and ever present.

With you and beside you. Your partner, nearest can see you are with another and that other is with them. Take up the glass and add water.
Offer the glass to the other person and ask that they too add water.
Pouring it you see both are indivisible when they symbolise the joing made by you as it has been facilitated by God.

The combination is of two uniform things such they are as one.

Where next to and outside the world seems no different than it was encountered Millions of years back. You are aware some bits have been taken away in the form of space craft and satellites but hence there they shall be outside ever to return.

So what was the assembled group here to discover or confront. The immensity of good vibes was there, a few Budwieser bottles, many glasses of wine, hummus, strawberries, food taken, babies breast fed, orange juice and coffee taken in abundance.

The talk centered on CHRISTIANITY CONVERTING the theme chosen by Brian Ammons who has many followers from a standing, start in a little part of North Carolina. As a chaplain his congregation has grown and his marriage to Gareths who is soon also to be ordained in he is not yet already fully a minister has found a wider context of meaning through attitudinal upsurge of equality, socialist forms of convergence, basic Christianity and taken in from many other belief systems support and harmonious appraisal.

In my own words it equates to the same thing I have held to for many years particularly resulting from growing up here and explaining further afield the basis of difference clouded by sects and creeds, by belief and tradition et al.

Religion cannot divide, it converges on the same spirit.

I found myself making a connection on Gareths behalf as he said to the international audience as he pointed through the South East corner of the nave he was born less than a mile from here in Tate’s Avenue.
If you take a look at the earlier blog in my postings – Religion : Something New (put the title or the name John Stewart Bell in the white box top right) you will come across the said John Stewart Bells phenomenal theory regarding universality which defies reduction.

It goes something like this.

Action at a distance.

If a small explanation of his principle theorem is made it is this – Our world is non-local as sub atomic particles act on each other no matter how far apart. Regardless of relation in time or light.
Problematically it has of its relation to quantum theory one thing most evident.

Here we are…
Caught up in this spell-binding world with a Bible as a wondrous history and guide. We are asked by Brian what happens now or what the projections and traumas after (whilst acknowledging us still to be harnessed to the divisions, chasms) unsettled ness do we do? Do we make new statements ends, cast out old statements?

That there is no place for paralogism and we can be certain of uncertainty. I believe he draws into the reasoning he is making, wrongly, cosmology. Since he has been around more surely can we gather that for ourselves. We have in truth an ascendancy, not declension, in that the ability is proven we as human have the improvability within us and collectively have reached out to the universe quite literally and extended the natural lifetime of the species even two fold. Returning to the Bible for thoughts of the cosmic is only partially rewarding. The Psalms are evocative passages of intersellar thinking. Psalm 91: 1-8 among the more direct in that it uses the metaphor device –

‘He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High
Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.’

It comes at a time when we are considering the travails beset the world. It compares the unknown place of the goal we are set ‘outside’ of us. The curse described in Deuteronomy 28 is of our earth laden sin out of ‘original’ sin for which repentance is offered through acceptance of the word through Gods greatest sacrifice. A refuge of safety? We provide our neighbour, deprive our neighbour of safety, continually. We choose to despise their actions and lack of morality despite it being visited upon them continually for as long as their actions persist they will suffer. Those neighbors who share the knowledge of the word on the other hand stand and suffer to be helped and so are helped. Every action is theirs not ours. The key difference is the enlightenment force which Psalm 91 encourages each to seek and it shall be a force for their salvation.

The knowledge often then is not of a cosmic dimension though is in the Psalmist writing taken forward as doubly metaphoric being of the plumage and winged ‘buckler’ kind sets us of a mind where ‘universality’ the quantum level of physics need not be so alternative a leaning for thought of our abiding thirst for learning. The extraordinary nature making wings and atoms things of flight and distances covered. It is as we are.

As we are is realizable to us. Who a short while ago would have believed humans could be capable of barbaric acts in such common currency today? Few. To gas millions. To create chemical weapons, nuclear destruction, operate as lone evangelists or jihadists.
‘There will be…’ Luke 21: 11. These are not Jesus’s words so not the word of God. They are a reinforcement of the kingdom as a source of evil and self destruction however. As Daniel in the lions den is such a powerful tale of delivery it flexes Gods abundance to forgive and protect.

To effect change Daniel trusted in Gods protection. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego too we’re not perishable in defiance of their ‘Ruler’ who had instead destroyed his servants who worshipped false idols. Nebuchadnezzar is an exotic pre-Christian King circa 550 BC and also a volume circa 19 liters bottle to contain wine. The wine is like the Bible you could say.
The tale of Daniel new wine in old bottles, something new placed in or superimposed on an old or existing form, system, etc. Matt. 9:17.

The force of the story is all the more for acknowledging the truth within it, not that it itself is the system of life.

The series concept of time is as if it is a plateau of which we know very little. Therefore we cannot commit to series as a word of sequence in belonging to an era of pre-God effectual God or with the advanced nature of God. We are on plateau looking to prophets who came before.

To return to God we have to do it through the teachings from a time that existed from a prophet that existed.

It is something we do in any case. We reconceive. The DNA even changes within us we now learn. Our bodies survival conditions rematerialise differently and environmentally.

We adapt to massive upheaval and fundamental destructive forces – force change upon us. So it is not a case of refreshing practices but a continual re-evaluation needed at every possible level.

The curative mind
Antinomy – opposition between one law, principle, rule, etc., and another.
Philosophy . a contradiction between two statements, both apparently obtained by correct reasoning.
It is reasonable to ask if the theories we espouse as part of a series. If in Kants mind the antimony of separateness makes it impossible for us to take up the think inking alone in series form. That everything occurring occurs to pattern and in God, freedom and immortality, (that last one is even dismissible) is the metaphysical. The dialect (Kants) contains room for disjunction. That there is no place for paralogism and we can be certain of uncertainty. I believe he draws into the reasoning he is making, wrongl, cosmology. Since he has been around more surely can we gather that for ourselves. We have in truth an ascendancy, not desencancy in that the ability is proven we as human have the improv ability within us amd collectively have reached out to the universe quite literally and extended the natural lifetime of the species even two fold.

The series concept of time is as if it is a plateau of which we know very little. Therefore we cannot commit to series as a word of sequence in belonging to an era of pre-God effectual God or with the advanced nature of God. We are on plateau looking to prophets who came before.

To return to God we have to do it through the teachings from the Bible. It is the most important resource we will ever have besides faith. Whatever ‘consumes’ you take to seeking out answers and guidance from the Bible first.

Theism is found in Mills and the Cartesian approach is reckoned with by Goethe, by Hume, Rousseau all conject to the extent their is a common defiance if not philosophical outlier question. The unresolved. Darwin’s ‘notion of a providential government by an omnipotent Being for the good of his creatures must be entirely dismissed.’ (X:482) was a stumbling block to Mills for he realised quite ordinarily magnificently, ‘something grander and more beautiful than we see realized in the prose of human life’ (X: 419) was as a flood on Mills mental being. Clearly both Darwin and Mills as we cannot find the words to express the infinite unknown while in awe of its evidence in existence.

Concluding. Part 1.

The group organizing the All Souls Meeting on Sunday 14 June 2015
Will be involved in the Corrymela, Ballycastle, Co. Antrim Aperture event over the weekend there of 30 July > 2 August 2015.

They are currently changing their group title however which is not always a good way of finding out more about their work.
From Progressive Christians to DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES IS TO BE FASHIONED HOPEFULLY A CONSOLIDATION OF FORWARD THINKING ON MATTERS OF THE PLACE CHRISTIANS FIND TODAY MOST CHALLENGING.

It should be quite easy to find in your area people on this journey. Every best wish to your hopes and feelings as they are relevant as you must know to the thoughts and progressive ideas and collective voices you can hear being channelled.

Symbol
The meeting at All Souls was of a centuries old tradition on converse within a formal prosaic setting. Out of such places and since Churches mediate and meditate on Gods word.

We make a road by walking.
Learning a Religion is like learning a language.
Passing on the faith by coming together Elishah to Elijah.

Over the heads of us were certain steps to our communion with Christianity. It seemed a time to bring these closer to earth and amongst us.

Through the discussion unfolded
1. Christianity Connecting to a way of life.
Staying remaining connected. Challenge isolation.
2. System of Belief. Produce loving People.
That our way of life is the way of love through our understanding of God.
3. Institutions are dangerous.
Bringing togetherness is adverse to separations.
4. Inspire change through the Bible and the word.
The progressive. The Christian. The Perspectives.

So much is unsaid that needs to be said.

You are welcome ‘here’ and can contribute so much by the enlightenment you have and can share.

For instance

The individual level. Let it be known that you are uncertain in this or that and the readings of the Bible are proving difficult to assemble through a plethora of issues and concerns.

Stand apart from them and use the force of the Bible to overcome them. Let the word advance into you.

Unsettledness we may be in but it has been always so.
From Moses came new beginnings. Choose a point of connection each time and reconcile the immediate with the present about to unfold. The encryption of certitude is not what is important. I would go so far as to say the Books of the Bible are small windows upon the life and work of the Creator.

The abundance is everything.

John Graham

23 June 2015

Belfast

The Look of Silence : A Film Review

Director, Joshua Oppenhiemer. Denmark/Finland/Indonesia/Norway/UK. 2014. 1hr 43 Mins. Subtitled. Cert. 15. Documentary.

The Look of Silence
From the Director of The Act of Killing. Assisted by Werner Hertzog.
Live talk with Joshua Oppenheimer via. Satellite open Q&A hosted by Louis Theroux on Sunday 14 June 6pm. Tkts £8.

This film follows the aforementioned and is a story of the quest of a 44 year old man to find out the truth about the imprisonment, execution, loss of his elder brother Ramli. The director begins the film by showing Adi’s skills as an ophthalmologist assessing the eyesight of his Indonesian community. We witness also his very frail and tiny father being washed by his loving mother in their humble home.

Mysterious jumping beans appear in close up across the titles as we nudge towards the detail which will bring you almost to suffocation limits as it entombs you in its dreadful narrative.
The family is to be taken back if only by memory to the mid sixties and the imperial and military genocide brought upon the islands of Indonesia by the attempts of anti-communist forces empowered from within and abroad to revolutionise the regime who remain untouched by democracy.

Adi who plays with his daughter in the opening sequences , has been accustomed to a way of life without questioning the remaining cloud of silence and discomforting presence all around of unanswered questions but here is his desire to know the truth and make it open to us as well as him..

In South Park there was the expression of ‘derp’ for the adherence to features of an intellectual – physical or mental landscape which repeated despite constant reminders and understandings to the contrary – the perceptions of things not being as they appeared or were. The appearance constructed to avoid truth. In the world of make believe politics very little is said of these arenas of past conflict lest they erupt and on from the Arab spring which is an ongoing morass of infiltrated disrupted and corrupted political divisions and shifting mediation apparatus we notice little from where we are of course, the underlying savage brutalities which came about and remain unaccounted for in Chile, Indonesia etc,.
The year 1965.

The reason we adopt a blurred vision is because of our own lack of control over our looking back. Several recent instances of cover up, state interventions which we’re appealing acts each and of themselves are held under the auspices of the erstwhile serial denier Ms. Villiers acting as the British Governments shield and firewall she ignores the exposure of information and sits on secret agents files and dossiers which would upset the status of her beloved Sovereign state – the British Empire in all it’s mire of brutal governance. And her summary allegiance is itself her purpose.

The collective assertion of Government being worth a hill of beans when it uses the people for group deceit. It this place the use of the wealthy and elite meeting, now joined in the Austrian Mountains; how appropriate by Michael O’Leary for the Bildenberg ‘G7’ and the a arrangement and navigation through the spoils of war.

The floodgates will not be opened on her watch. No instead a lot of noise on meaningless pond life corruption in sports will suffice. The Football of bread and circuses. The Resurrection of feudal Welfare regimes and dismantling of a Health system which could be cured by the execution of a willingingness to provide proper foods and diets is scraped off the land and soils of her merry land and anew the cupboard is full of exotic flannery.

It is hideously delusional in this case, not a case of South Park cheap cynicism employed for thin shifts of tonality. No this is the delusion met when genocide has been borne by families and those living with it are bound perpetrator close to victims family. When did Britain endorse mass slaughter if not back through the Tony Blair era then more in the bombings of Israel and drones of recent deployment. It continues.

That mankind must adjust is never forgotten here. The purpose of the documentary here is the erosion of fraud. The inevitable presence of God in sharing the spiritual renaissance of humans who have transgressed, whose forgiveness is central to a society requiring healing is encountered here also.

Some reflecting on the horror of humans killing barbarically are often found summoning up the thought that they wish and hope those requiring forgiveness shall be found answering in finality to God.

It is not in anyone’s gift to implore Gods intervention as God as spoken.
The advancement into Gods peaceful existence is a matter of personal faith each single journey implores and since those times there has been a journey taken by many within Indonesia which has summoned up extrordinary depths of forgiveness.

There has also been a lack of remorse or summary exclusion of guilt or regret issuing from the perpetrators of the violence.

When you look at the study forms of the people formed and repeating here their crimes, such as Reicher and Hopuris 2001. “Social identity is the psychological process that makes group behaviour possible.” Alongside the ‘in-group’ membership consolidation, often found in jihadist mind sets, looking with intent at ‘out-group’ responses to acts of barbaric and violent visual and media amplified example, it is abundantly clear these reasonings come from identity challenges.

The Republican challenges of here in the sixties and seventies were about drift away from collective substance, underlying degrading abuses – clerical and political and exploitation were also a contributing factor and the subsequent guilt of the knowledge of the significance of the Wars, First and Second were dispatched to the minds of tiny teenage infidels who began with showbands progressing to rock rebellion of the James Dean kind in their land of mocked self identity.

The labyrinthian byways of Yeats and the minor authors; minor in the quest for disrobing status, O’Brien, Donleavy, other diaspora all came forcefully into the canon of national identity framing a new rebellion.
Began so identity meaning quest. A chief aspirant at the alcohol bar pumps replaced, subjugated by the hoods and violent gangmaster idealists whose functions were defined by armaments with politics to follow later in a violated form. They would not have been on the life removal brutal edge of the people in this film, they may have been of equivalent cruelty in privacy but the connections can still be made and even attributed to each other as exponents exemplar. The tears and broken feelings pouring out to God for help is the same.

The asylum was now open for new boarders.

The collective conscious is blamed each time Adi reaches someone whose job it was to be a component of the killing or do the Act of Killing.

Adi scours the Indonesian islands finding willing confessions to the Killings and methods used. He encounters, and while he encounters, remains expressionless not betraying any emotion as both he and camera operatives, the Director, recover ever document of personal confession.

A television showing interview tapes of previous interviews conveys the stories of two central figures. The self confessed assassins of his brother.

Other documentary pieces are interwoven of Political exponents for genocide.

Adi interviews in a central element of the films accredited exposure, a current leader of the Indonesian regime. Their approximation to self understanding is incredulous to watch. They are perpetual deniers of any failure of self. Of being of Gods kingdom. They have not found within themselves the evaluation of having taken a life against Gods will.

The horror is implicitly theirs and their ownership clear yet they no not what they have done and find it within reason. The reason is axiomatically unexplained.

Conclusion. ####4
This is a challenge not on our part in viewing but for the participants coming to terms with the discoveries continually emerging. The confessions, open expression, learning insights are unimaginably raw and incredibly direct and frank. They are told in the main with the perpetrator usually resorting to humour or acting as though any sense of improper participation was not normal or a transgression of their contract with God. Their part in creating and exercising by executing their often known neighbour.
Distance of killing is often important as the person issuing the orders often finds his past easily adjusted.

Adi
While Adi who has now relocated with his near family in order to survive what the has now done – the sitting in rooms asking the perpetrators, in exchange for new glasses to disclose their past I with Director Joshua Oppenheimer and his carefully briefed crew all on their nerve ends listen intently to the newness of the stories Asi is able to extract.

Adi has realized that the conflict set up in these peoples minds exists as a sense of guilt and in aimlessly asking, though it is not aimless in any manner, being explained as inquisitiveness ‘as to how people in the past lied, he has been curious as he ages, the tumult is also under the surface as the momentous revaluation comes out in each individuals case. It bis a disclosure the guilt factors to expand and it is nature to or the human weakness to try and assuge that guilt by any other means than it being left inside them as ‘guilt’. There is no visible connection to guilt yet it is the vehicle which drives on this outcry, the speech and story.

The encroachable is the Directors cue to produce it on film. The act of trespass has to happen, be unfurled. This is done exquisitely by the use of a highly inventive soundtrack.
He has around twenty tracks of insect noise. At first it is not noticeable but gradually they lift individually. When a scene is developing the track of insects sounds like the listener. As the viewer is walking into a temple and hears the presence of ghosts. Those millions of ghosts. The temple could be the forest or the room with an open window. The sound sixths ubiquity of a collective summary of silence contrasted. It speaks to me as the opposite of the time of the persecution, of the time of the consciousness being taught or told not to speak a word, or now even to tell a soul of the dehumanation of the acts found of killing.

Self stereotyping, Solidarity, Social influence, Consolidation function, Mobilisation function, Social identity performance, Normative fit, Comparitive fit, Maslow heirachy of needs, Self actualisation, Zuckerrman 1994, Sensation, Hans Eysenck, personality traits, Gray, reward and punishment, Classical conditioning, identity motives, Davidio et al, 2002, Representative Heuristic judgements, Cognitive dissonance.
There are above continuities of the sources of human behaviors while the outcomes are continually challenged by study and new manifestations not anticipated or seen in sets of circumstances.

The Ebola fear brought new assumptions of choices taken en-route to the possible/probable eradication of a deadly scourge. It was and is a deadly communal tide of destruction requiring extrordinary nuanced development of answers and facilitation of objectives.

War is on the other hand a defined judgement which is now entering a non – national hindrance. The questions asked are to be the solution.
To make up the question is like the invisible computer. It is the fulfillment of what is right and needed. As in technology – the ownership of which often directs the killing, – this week sees the paper confirming the invention of an invisible cloak being published, to the Don Norman from the Kerberos, the three (dogs) heads of the Computer, we in the period which can be isolated to ones lifetime have adaptable means but little presence of mind to question the dubious intuitions offered daily as explanation.
We are unable as yet to discern and evaluate of the Don Norman (MIT) insightful psychotic state often hand in hand with the human races striving through existence by means virtually misunderstood.

The Documentary itself can be seen from Friday 12 June through to 18 June 2015 at QFT Belfast.
On Sunday 14 June 2015. A Q and A. Precedes the evening screening but please check for details as the June edition of the Paper booklet does not list the dates I give here which are taken from the Conversations about Cinema pages of the same booklet. 18/19 Impact of Conflict.
So please make sure you are suitably informed of the up to date scheduling

Try http://www.queensfilmtheatre.com for your reliable guide.

The other more subject related location is conversationsaboutcinema.co.uk
and @ConvoCinema
The Look of Silence
From the Director of The Act of Killing. Assisted by Werner Hertzog.
Live talk with Joshua Oppenheimer via. Satellite open Q&A hosted by Louis Theroux on Sunday 14 June 6pm. Tkts £8.
The Act of Killing exposed the consequences for all of us when we build our everyday reality on terror and lies. The Look of Silence explores what it is like to be a survivor in such a reality. Making any film about survivors of genocide is to walk into a minefield of clichés, most of which serve to create a heroic (if not saintly) protagonist with whom we can identify, thereby offering the false reassurance that, in the moral catastrophe of atrocity, we are nothing like perpetrators. But presenting survivors as saintly in order to reassure ourselves that we are good is to use survivors to deceive ourselves. It is an insult to survivors’ experience, and does nothing to help us understand what it means to survive atrocity, what it means to live a life shattered by mass violence, and to be silenced by terror. To navigate this minefield of clichés, we have had to explore silence itself.
Directors notes
The result, The Look of Silence, is, I hope, a poem about a silence borne of terror – a poem about the necessity of breaking that silence, but also about the trauma that comes when silence is broken. Maybe the film is a monument to silence – a reminder that although we want to move on, look away and think of other things, nothing will make whole what has been broken. Nothing will wake the dead. We must stop, acknowledge the lives destroyed, strain to listen to the silence that follows.

Timbuktu : A Film Review

Director, Abderrahmane Sissako,Cast, Ibrahim Ahmed, Abel Jafri, Toulou Kiki. Cert.12a. France/Mauritania. 1hr 37mins?

Whence comest thou?
Origins, our beginnings, are often referred to as African. This film is a of Country and way of life running to escape while having nowhere to run.
It is set in another Country overrun by militia. Dictated to by extremists.
Through landlocked Mali In the North and to the West in Africa runs the Niger. You can hear the Deduc playing in this former French Sudan.

It has been left in peace since 1960 to overcome its colonialism. The former territories and losses of culture were immense for this huge place. Yet the people have survived and many practices, of survival, remain.

The Deduc is a solemn softly spoken wind instrument which is my favourite of all musical instruments. It carries on the wind like a lute and cadences reverberate of the life of the player. It is mesmeric and haunting and so too this film will leave you.

The watchful waiting
We see the family of Tuareg herder Kidane (Ibrahim Ahmed), with his wife Satima (Toulou Kiki) and child observe the herding of their 12 year old boy as he negotiates the river across from a fisherman tending to his nets.
A another child, a young daughter sits alongside and conversation is drawn delicately humanely out as basic enquiry amongst themselves. Like private conversation anywhere.
Timbuktu film and location is a carry through of modern political reality.

Music instinctively felt.
The likes of Salif Keita quiet small musician and highly provocative disturbing and soulful reflecting elder statesman of the wise heart of Africa is in, I would suspect deep mourning for what goes on in the land which broke free from the junket of African imperialism having realised his talent throughout the world bringing happiness and joy with a distinct and awesome voice for Africa. And yes he did speak for Mali. He brought its history back to bear on Europe and wider further afield. To Australia, where the aboriginals were clamouring for their history to be heard, he was there. He was amongst the oppressed in South Africa.

How he must dread the present divisions and needless hatred found in the Jihadist infiltration of the identity of Mali.

Music is seen as a target for the Islamic militants’ campaign in Mali. suppression of music, world renown artist, singer-songwriters Rokia Traore
sat on the Canne jury (2014). Fatoumata Diawara sings out in the heart of this film. It is a memory which figures recognisbly as fundamental to Director, Mauritanian, Abderrahmane Sissako’s wide visioned film.

I have stood in front of Salif as he sang. Not one person between myself and him. It was in an old Clapham Theatre revamped as a music venue and I have nothing to compare the notes he sang or the extreme powerful ness of his music. His voice sublime and his songs telling the tale of the otherness he felt. Without his music, the hearing perhaps there would be no seeing.

Unsighted
The commander of the jihadists is Abdelkerim (Abel Jafri) whose disturbing character creates a range forming a realism which is rooted in this time.

Abdelkerim’s negative values and portrayal is copper fastened in some scenes where his will is subjected to rebuke even to the sexual taunting of the landscape when shots are fired, initially at emblems, symbols of fertility then maram grass as fluffy pudena poking ridicule skyward.

Violent incidents
There are grossly violent acts repellent and compelling. Some hard to watch. One is the widescreen one take long form and then interspersed portrait frames of death painted on the river of a confrontation apart from the jihadist enclave. It is not ‘one take’ in the conventional sense but appears seamless in its gratuitous focus on violence.
A savage act nevertheless shown, due not through religious conflict, but as being a brother of all killing and acts of revenge and vengeance being wrought with dangerous authority within the cast of mankind.
Off the desert floor
Timbuktu is not even its capital but a focal point for its wilderness location.
It has a nomad seasonal population.
Population accord.
There is defiance at the heart of this and in the location a cinematic intrusion of what can only be described as a long view of what remains so complex and over contexturalised a subject; Western media show many outcomes and talks over emphasis differences that I ask do we have any point in considering it in this filmic media terminology.
The basics are drawn and not contested ground.
Humans behave so violently and with such incomprehensible vile hate.
Film reporting becomes an act which seems, along with watching the film a betrayal of something. A betrayal of values, of sacred life? A place of pompous safety?
This is no outback or long way from Tipperary but a moment in time Timbuktu is non-fictional. Yet here it is fictionaliased.
Show us
It is brave and necessary for us to allow the art of Cinema to encourage our growth of understanding. We are in the morass. Timbuktu is here amongst us.

Wider than a Continent
Further down is found Bamako where the Niger, Mande language that is used as a trade language in the upper Niger drainage basin in Africa where
a member of an agricultural, Mande-speaking people of Mali live in what could be termed simple elements given to their settlement.
All the languages associated with this part of Africa define its ancient co-habitable life style. Mande a branch of the Niger-Congo subfamily of languages, spoken in western Africa and including Mende, Malinke, Bambara, and Kpelle. Mandela, remember him. How shall we always remember him? By his many strands?

Political roots unreligious.
In Idlib, in Northern Syria will be found jihadists known as ‘Khorasan’, directors of the war on Christians and willfully outside of the Syria cause or leadership and they bring the Islamic fundamentalist genocide guidance to those they see as against the creed and doctrines as their motivation of access to rule and empowerment.
Fundamental losses
For this is fundamental; as fundamental as the Wests belief in War as a means to an end, they have held violence as part of their integral belief system. They can be followed or linked to the al-Qaida messages familar across the world. They commonality of the human oppressor is monochromatic.

Beyond Syria, foe it is not there lies there hope of their ends, countries such as Mali, the Nigerian Delta and Congo. So far away also Somalia. Eritrea. So similar the patterns. So evil the distinction of right and wrong without the word to renounce another’s freedom. No place like home.
The massacres are extensions of the pride in violence taken by our homegrown terrorists then multiplied and manifested in this few decades when the emerging youth took up their grievances and found human beings on which to inflict torture and extreme violence.
Heritage tracks
From here where the car bomb first became a weapon propaganda needs fed and techniques promoted and carried out are insular compulsions of these misled humans. They defile themselves and destroy life and it is response to an urge found through history yet not found related in essence to the will of the creator that we can overcome, have the capacity to do no harm.

The power they wield through their smaller groups such as al-Nusra, through guidance in Syria in Idlib as they provide the means for Syrian opposition forces to take on their chosen targets.

To the north or cities of Africa are spread the jihadist presence. Wherever a form of Muslim religion is in place and alongside other practiced religions century old, thousand years old human unity in one creator is swept aside and infiltrated as being against the concept of fellowship and all principles as found in the word of the teachings of the creator.

Those basic essences and intuit beliefs are fore saken in the cause of creating a world without love and without the prospect of the creators will.

The need to take part of the day in prayerfulness is shown strongly in this film as a basic human right. The infiltration of the mosques, temples are seen as a violation. On the one hand a defiant football match, outside looses the ball into the temple and both prayer and play is halted.

Outside as inside however the play and the prayer continue.

You will see this masterly dealt with, in another core direction within the film.

Mali is in this morass. The film we are seeing is based around a family of nomadic life attuned again to the daily provision of life forces however they arrive. The Niger is the figure of the films central narrative.

An ‘idilic’ form of scene is set at the start, of simple daily life, they a watchful family of herdspeople, to be interrupted by the filmic change and chase of a defenseless foe. The chase down of a small antelope whose tiredness is inflicted before the fall. So the ending comes in sight.

Conclusion.

This is about a place we have heard of but not many know or have visited on the edge of the Sahara. There is no point or measure to be found by describing this film as breathtakingly beautiful, of political strength, of informative truth, of contemporary meaning, visionary staue, compellingly grotesque, hauntingly sorrowful. It offers no one answer to have us betoken some unattributable or comparative stake to. It is of itself a film like no other you are likely to see and if it is possible for you to be encouraged despite the content being of an fiction aliased account we will no doubt immediately compare to news footage or web information then so be it.

John Graham

3 June 2015

Belfast.

Irish Open Golf 2015

Breathtaking Nature Unconcealed
Bring Hope
The end of May is supposed to allow Summer to come gently in but with might and gusto the trail blazing winds and sea frets tore at the dunes covered in grassland, marram turf and whin bush making up the Newcastle County Down Golf Course sat at the foot of the Mourne Mountains.

For the last four days of May playing host to players of Golf it was to prove a vicarious tormenting sometimes toiling experience.
Not only but also.
Summoning up the skills to balance and control a golf ball over a customary eighteen adventurously man fashioned distances and contoured landscape to finish on a gauge of mastery found by the minimum of strokes it takes to convey a golf ball from tee to mug sized cup is not a conventional or apparently logical use of physical or mental skills.
Making it difficult not easy.
Yet it has for several centuries become a fascinating well
to draw from in causing endless retrospective, potential and most of all in the moment joyous sense of what I take to be primordial, elementary, fixation on the human state of natural connection with most of those places and conspiratorial configured by our perceptions of locality.

Forces combine.
Without the Mountains – they are not part of the course, – without the sea, – it too is not part of the course, what are we faced with at the course known as Royal County Down but a knot of construed sand dunes and grass lands bound into a rough cast then honed set of eighteen – the primary course, as other holes are intermittent and ‘resting’ often – towards a settlement on which to set foot with an assemblage of ironmongery, joinery and grassland tools such that a small white ball of flexible durable quality can be struck off, a European grass, Sieglingia decumbens, growing in spongy, wet, cold soils. with velocity, trajectory and proposed direction of flight to that other place.
It takes a bit of persuading some other use may have been made for it. The inhospitable links possibly a rehearsal of a Coney Island, (rabbit farm) or farming of a specialist kind. Not for living on and fit for Jurassic mammals.
The best there is.
Reaching a goal about four inches radius is tricky in most circumstances and here inestimably, unprovable, untestable, though in about 100% of people who are ever likely to have gone and been beholden of the place in certain conditions would attribute as being the wholly best golf course to be found anywhere in the world or any where else in Gods wonderous creation is spectacularly axiomatic.
Our concordats
Standing on the maram grass plans of the Slieve Donard foothills and swathes as they have long left the mountain or been carved of the sea into grains of land, a voltage of intense human credulity is experienced as the combinations of sporting witness and wonderment of the elemental forces and three co-ordinates make anyone alive to the fact they are just that, alive in a world of immense complex functional concordance.
Eighty percent automatic.
It is such a breathtaking location the eighty percent of our brainpower devoted continually to our senses, scientific fact, has within it amassed another priceline we know is the wonder of God. To that we recourse within ourselves to the outside immediacy that heavenly truth.

There is no place for anything else. Here is the human race aside the mountain and paying homage to the wonder by finding the paradoxical limits it can be persuaded to form a measure of accountable belonging.

We were not put here for games but here there it is only the beginning.

Playing and watching.

Four days.
Wind and Sea.
Like a fairground attraction the limits of elements are to be persuaded as unconquerable on this certainty resides. So the first few days of very windy and wet weather which fell on and disrupted the play to the extent very skilled Golfers frustrations grew to such an extent they got to find their limits for a round of Golf with wind howling, dragging their trajected ball off their intended target into rough, spectators, bushes, or bunkers never invisaged became common place.

Low flight, understanding the variables became a set of new honed estimation. Never clear if correct but for some near to the mark it found lack in many of a different ilk. Some even entered tamely into distracted adherence to false readings of their skills at adaption and the conditions, nature took over.

Some played over around nature.

Housekeeping.
Please note any ‘action shots’ are taken in preparation play so I did not invoke any censure of the many Marshall’s. The ban on photography with the ubiquitous iPhone is not called for and what could be objectionable would be continually filming or taking shots in the close proximity and in the flow of thinking time. People can and should be careful and acknowledge this game has heaps ridding on the slightest thing.
I also noted it was hard to follow as boards were down due to their causing spectator injury on earlier days. Knowing who it was you were looking at was often difficult to ascertain.

Day 4. Down the first. Danny Willet’s first shot came up to my elevated mid fairway position to nestle in a fairly good lie. He went on with this wind howling about him to figure at 68 for his round the lowest of the day.Reaching the green was simple but approach it seemed was to be taken with compelling skillful reading of the conditions that he found in abundance.
Similarly playing partner, Moritz Lampert was a little lower and of the green with his first.

Conditions were very often when putting into thirty mph headwinds and strong hitters still had to contend with joint higher cross winds as off the banks the shelter would alter the wind in velocity and direction.

Down this hole the wind was from the right of the photo looking back to tee but when one or two played it they shot it too high and also with insufficient force and got a lie on the other side of the mound of bank, sans bunkers, un- sighting the hole.
Angel looses it!!
From a left lie on the fairway, perfectly judged, Angel Jimenez actually could just get sight of the flag. But he fired his second shot in not allowing for the lower trajectory flight having less effect than windy conditions would appear having forgotten to afford some leniency, which was to prevail, from that bank, mound. He landed on the left of the green about thirty five feet from the hole and then putted across. It came up well short as the wind was misread again.

From a pleasant walk down this fairway to get the remainder wrong saw him fume in a fit of rage and fire his putter into the whin bushes behind him!! He, the realist, found his skills tested so much the joviality or confident air severely tested by this extraordinary course.
The Sailor down the ninth.
Earlier on, before I took this photo I saw a tall man in a white cap from the edge of the eighth green take one putt and place his hands on his hips. It went by on this exposed, elevated green. Then he tried again from the opposite direction. It failed to drop. Then in a slower address and slightly closer he managed to putt the ball. He double bogeyed.

Here he is coming up the fairway of this ninth hole, with his usual sailors walk. Even Matt Ford, the playing partneris now in step. It is the legend in those and these arts Padraig Harrington.
A smile it seems is in place. He would bogey a few more as this relatively contestable set of conditions were to become merciless for him later. This is a save for McDowell who did impress from the little I saw of him. He is like a Rafa Nadal on clay and grinds out a result.
Out on his own for a Sunday walk, his partner Paul McGinley was scratched due to a back injury, came , to his arrival at this green which he played to with great accuracy in order to take a low lofted approach, the wind here was between twenty and forty and was at ground level, meaning it was fierce enough to cut the grass had it been your back lawn and not this deep rooted variety.
He had these two card keepers one of whom wanted to play alongside him but could not summon up the question knowing it wasn’t cricket to ask.
The ball landed in a perfect spot on the green and this guy can really play a game of Golf even if it is by himself. He is also a very strong hitter of the ball but may lack the fairway distance many tournaments go sweet by – is it for the sale of Golf Clubs? – your guess is as good as my belief!

On those holes which are relatively sheltered on both sides with low banks there was continual misreading.This poor chap. Lee Slattery, had by luck when the tee shot hit a bank on the left hit it in the mid section of its four foot height and therefore below the whin bushes rooted on top of it, made it to the green on the left with a long put.
You can tell! He is off the green with one leg to read to the relatively sympathetically placed centred hole. Few birdies here it seemed except for later leaders. The previous hole at the end which backs onto the hideous caravan park is near the the for this hole. It was a par three and Mr Shane (wedgie) Lowry made a proper save being up a short bank of the sort a mountain goat might take advantage of and holed out for the three.

There were only two birdies up to that point and I witnessed one just before which makes for good spectating. It drew from a fellow spectator in a Rosses Point, County Sligo no nonsense fleece/pullover – following Shane who hails from Sligo and that famous and beautiful links, the fullest of praise for the skills of the players and the extraordinary location which he had played around in the fifties. And he remembered this hole.
The wonderful Thongchaia Jaidee A new hero of mine who went round on his own in 72 with McGinley laid up..
Approach shot to the 12th I think.
Later he has another easy save for par.More merciless Golf.Image is everything Luke Donald enjoys the chase up with Eddie Pepperwell at the serious end on 17.
The seventeenth is fronted by a ridiculous triangle of a pond.
Every single player drew up about ten feet in front and lofted a stroke to land basically behind the flag. This is where the downfall of the consistently playing on the back nine came adrift momentarily for Soren Kjeldsen as he three putted here from the far left side of the green. A slight downward slope.
He went on, was not the only one, Rafael Cabrera-Bello and Eddie Pepperwell went down the final hole (before the expected – and looming playa off – to play the relatively benign 18th in very ragged fashion. The business end.
Wiesberger has a nice – though you can barely see it, lie.
This is the play-off hole.
This is Soren having a crafty look at the lie of Bernd’s tee shot on the play-off hole.
“Look’s like he’s in a spot of bother old chap!”
Then the chip from Bernd.The swing.
The ‘relief’of applause ripples back to here.The weather had relented by then and conditions were a lot calmer but these guys, Cabrera-Bello particularly, Kjeldsen, Pepperwell and the slightly floundering Wiesberger took to the eighteenth in a raggedy fashion. The shot across green left to right of Kjeldsen particularly was one which went from low swale over the top crown of the green to low swale on the opposite side and he was damn fortunate to sink the four/five footer for a save.
Onto the business end and at the point I stood Bernd Wiesberger struck his tee shot, he went second, SJ had a nice fairway lie, straight over my head to within four feet of me.
It was a safe enough lie as the photos here show and was within thirty feet of the green with the flag unsighted.

The rest is history and it was a brilliant finish.
We will cross that bridge when we come to it.
Darren Clarke and the crew wanting Links Golf to become a natural barometer of this decades Golf seasons afterwards went into a chorus of “it really depends what Rory’s calendar suits but it would be better to have it later and avoid the prospect of atrocious weather.” I disagree. Yes move it up into July fortnight! But it is a special course and all that played it over the 4 days can say they played as challenging set of holes as ever likely to be encountered and conditions were not for long hitting automaton Golf or for certain skill sets. It was for sportsmen well able to see and adapt and some luck undoubtedly prevailed but as a test it was truly a fantastic bewitching natural embodiment of this oddest of pastimes come 21st century addictive affliction making many people lots of money and in the background persuading them of their least available skill sets en route.
Rory Foundation.
It was straight out of the bag a heartfelt connection Rory McIlroy felt for his compatriots here in Northern Ireland going through tremendous struggle of a kind he had; and hopefully he remains free of from closeness as most want and wish, to the unexplained illness burden carried by the smallest in physical strength – children carrying Cancer genes which has diminished their access to even the briefest encounter with the opposite side of God’s wonders.
World No.1 golfer Rory McIlroy officially opened Cancer Fund for Children’s Therapeutic Short Break Centre, Daisy Lodge, in Newcastle Northern Ireland on Tuesday 7th October 2014. The new centre, which is the first of its kind in the UK and Ireland, will provide short breaks to up to 500 families a year affected by cancer.
This is by it’s very nature going to be a cause in which he will and has invested his abundance of goodwill and wish to do something with what he has acquired. He knows only too wel he has been gifted a life through be it the foresightedness of his parents, his background in one of the finest locations in the world for his adopted sport with the skill set to take him to the very top.
In those few short years his exemplary approach has been to be creative and he founded quite literally his own reasoned approach and outreach with immense approachable common sense prevailing.

This is truly a suitable accompaniment to the game of Golf and thou

John Graham

2 June 2015

Belfast

Epsom and Special places.
The very amplitude and significance of such variations though across decades are exemplified by memory and likewise I suggested from whatever era it was un shifting. I mentioned that having lived in Epsom a very long time and witnessed, walked the course and knew the undulations extremely well that it remains a true test of a racehorse and seldom a bad one wins though some years are occasionally lacking in luster.
Courses for Horses
For the record I would have let Gleneagles take his chance but knowing trainers can conceal things, (Tamure 2nd to unraced at 2 Lammtara, spent a week with his foot in a bucket of ice almost and while we knew something was array we, the Public on whose money it all depends, didn’t know what.
John Gosden kept his cards close and Tamure went lame about sixty yards out on those undulations and took a hammering as Lammtara raced to the line alone. Still, it was a sacrifice Gosden didn’t have to make, only the horses welfare which he failed miserably being laconic as usual about the vagaries only numbers game race trainers are familiar with.) so with regret I ignore his two as who knows what goes on in that yard or what suits the animals, Golden Horn and Jack Hobbs. I think the make and shape of Hans Holbein makes it possible he will have improved filled even in the past month to be settled and staying on at the finish. Other than that I would hope Elm Park got his slight ease in the ground and they similarly came back to him. The Derby always has a skyrocket setting some idiotic case and this may also be the case on this Saturday. Nothing special has appeared so far so even by default the likes of Golden Horn may stay on and win.