Little did I know just 18 hours later, the Euro was to fall under its watchful walls. Despite, Bratislava's castle's air of history, the castle was in ruins for over a hundred years in Pressburg before the Slovaks rebuilt it in Bratislava.

I'm still astonished that Radicova foolishly linked her government AGAIN (this is about time number five) to a vote in Parliament. While she has been a very good prime minister, this death wish in the form of votes of confidence is an absurd game of Russian roulette.

Well now we'll have an election. Hopefully the bailout package will still not pass. This EU becomes troublesome: a plaything of the international banks, like Congress in the United States. The majority of the European population is against these unlimited bailouts.

It's somewhere near Alt Wien in the first district. The light is very distinctive and dark. Service is Mad Hatter-like from Alice in Wonderland. The waiter comes three times to ask you what you like to order but you never get your drinks. But's always well-spoken and friendly.

Wunderbar post-MAK nite actress Jaschka Lämmert and photographer Rita Nowak

Wunderbar post MAK nite Jaschka Lämmert, Rita Nowak, and Irina Gabich

Wunderbar post MAK nite Jaschka Lämmert, Rita Nowak, Irina Gabich, Christoph some musician who stepped out of the original Shaft

Jaschka Lämmert can be seen now at Künsthistorisches Museum in the project Ganymed Boarding (twelve writers create monologues about twelve historical paintings played by twelve actors). Jaschka interprests live the Cornelis Corneliz van Haarlem painting, Child Murder in Bethlehem. Last performance September 28.

Juliet Berto as Frederique, Jacques Doniol Valcroze at Etienne:
Life is just a giant chess game but for keeps

The problem with the film Out 1: Spectre is that it is all on the spot improvisation. If you've ever done much improvisation, you know that even when it goes well it usually takes some time longer to develop. There is a lot of going in circles to get the plane off the ground. Spectre One documents those circles. For the twenty five minutes of successful drama you are forced to sit through four and a half hours of film, three hours of which are actors warming up to their subject and another half hour just extraneous long shots.

Perhaps most interesting as a social document if we trust the director to accurately document avant garde theatre practice and mœurs of the time. Some contemporary French critics did praise the sociological side at the time, so let's presume that the clothing and behaviour is correct. In that case, it is astonishing how much people smoked and drank in that time. They didn’t take it easy on the coffee either.

Out 1: Spectre ostensibly treats Balzac's Thirteen: thirteen who consider themselves above society and who are willing to cooperate to break any laws to get what they want.

The Fat Director (Michel Lonsdale as Thomas) is one of the most irritating personalities to ever grace the silver screen. He has a huge head, a great big rump, tiny shoulders, persistently dirty hair. Throughout the film, he pontificates with his mouth full of nuts or sandwiches or booze or cigarettes. He manages to put his oily hands on every attractive woman crossing the screen. Partcularly incredible is when he sits on the bed stroking his ex-mistress Sarah, while his current mistress sits on the floor, even bringing water to Sarah at his request.

Very amusing is the scene where he shares an apartment by the seaside with the most beautiful actress of his troupe and a bearded youth. The relationship isn't sorted out clearly but it looks like this Dionysian young acolytes are sharing the same bed with old Satyr. What Michel Lonsdale is doing to merit this very special treatment is difficult to fathom. His carnal facility must rival the gourmandise of his eating - a hideous image but at least one level on which one can engage with Spectre One - distaste for a personnage so strong that you can taste it. He seems to have built a cult of personality within the group.

The most engaging actor is Juliet Berto in her role as seductress/thief/blackmailer. The different tricks she plays to part foolish men and their money are entrancing for a man. Have you ever been a dupe to a broad on the make? Watch her performance and you know you have been. Her most formidable adversary is Etienne (Jacques Doniol-Valcroze) who is one of the conspiratorial ringleaders. His gravelly voice and polite strength were incredibly impressive. Apart from a single scene at the end where he and Michel Lonsdaleare talking around the conspiracy, Doniol-Valcroze's improvisation is the most fluent and convincing. You know that he's dealt with any number of duplicitous women and is not phased by them in the least.

Jean Loud seems to be lost here. He is the glue binding all the different parts of the film together with this investigation of the thirteen.

My favorite director Eric Rohmer appears briefly in a cameo as a university professor discussing Balzac. Not a particularly convincing performance but an amusing enough inside joke. It's amazing how old Rohmer was even back in 1972. Astonishing that he is still making movies. Eric Rohmer gave up on automobiles in his thirties and since then cycles everywhere (I am not sure that is presently true granted his age). Rohmer made the decision to abandon automobiles for environmental reasons. Hopefully, cycling/car abandonment has a very positive effect on my own long term vitality and productivity.

But in the end Out 1: Spectre disappoints. So much time for so little.

The image is also hideous. I don't know what the original print looked like but what's left in the can is a washed out pink and orange mess. You can hardly see the colours. The visual inadequacy of the material in this case is a substantial problem. Out 1: Spectre is most successful as a social document. In a social document, one wants to be able to clearly see the clothing and design, to taste and feel the surroundings.

So somebody saved some money with inadequate development facilities. No wonder they were worried about cost issues with dozens of hours of footage to tie together.

Curiously enough, the full Out 1 times in at twelve hours and forty minutes. It was supposed to be a miniseries for French television. TF1 refused to air it. Jacques Rivette didn't want to see his work thrown away so he edited it down to the 225 minute version we saw. Apparently, the longer version makes more sense. I don't have twelve more hours of my life to find out.

Timing in at 246 minutes and even longer, La Maman et la Putaine is otherwise the inverse of Out 1: Spectre. There are only three core characters. The action takes place in a minimum of settings (Café aux Deux Magots, a street by the Pantheon, a dormitory room and a filthy apartment).

All the three characters do is talk and drink. But the relationship lives its own life. Every moment is absorbing as you sink further and further into their psychosis and realise that despite their connection, a trainwreck is up ahead.

Most people are familiar with Jean-Pierre Léaud flippant work in Truffaut's film as his own alter ego Antoin Doinel. Later in life Léaud slummed with half hearted efforts at acting. But here in La Maman et la Putaine, he is entirely persuasive as the café wastrel pocket philosopher. The line between life and cinema seems to disappear entirely.

While the text seems absolutely natural, it is in fact tightly scripted. None of the improvisational excesses of Spectre One. The difference in quality between these two similarly dialogue driven films from the same epoch with many of the same concerns should be a case study in the dangers of improvisation in the feature film format. A tight script makes all the difference between inspired and boring.

Both Bernadette Lafont and Françoise Lebrun are brilliant as Léaud's companions in their ménage à trois.

Jean Eustache made few feature films in his relatively short life (43 years), committing suicide.

The one trait the two films have in common are the prodigous quantities of alcohol, coffee and cigarettes consumed.

No wonder most Parisians in their forties look a damn wreck.

References

It can be hard to find good information about Out 1: Spectre so here are some references to help.

Detailed plot entry at Wikipedia.
Jonathan Rosenbaum review with pics
A rather weak IMDB entry

Draft originally written in April 2009

What are they thinking of?

Leica has a reflex camera: the R. R glass is brilliant and holds up just find to even the best full frame sensors. I shoot an Leica R 90mm on my Canon 5D and it's my favorite lens.

With all that great legacy R glass out there, all they needed to do to make a killing is make a new R. The new R could be bare bones. Only one issue is important, the size of viewfinder and the ground glass in it. You should be able to really use Leica's new R as a manual focus camera.

This camera is too big in an era where people want to scale down. The lenses are too expensive.

The next issue with the new Leica cameras is image quality. There is just not much all that exciting about the images I've seen floating around from either camera. The pictures themselves would look better if you put top R glass onto a Canon body (it works).

What Leica should have done here is build a high quality manual focus camera to use R glass.

The viewfinder should be like the Olympus OM-1, with a brilliant prism and very clear focus markings. I'd recommend a a simple a diagonal or horizontal prism. The approach of Canon in the 5D enhanced focus screen is not too bad either: everything goes sharply in and out of focus. In combination these two could be very strong, allowing one to focus away from center when necessary. Size and brilliance are the issue.

If I had the resources, I'd make that body myself.

I'd partner up with Samsung or Sony for the sensor (if Samsung could do the full frame, otherwise Sony's full frame sensor that is in their A850, A900 and Nikon's D3X). For electronics, it would be nice to partner with Nikon but if they won't play along, Pentax has some good technology.

For the body and viewfinder and assembling I would go to Ukraine's Kiev, as they have quite a bit of experience with Leica lens mounts and high quality glass viewfinders.

I'd go further and make the mount swappable so that one could use manual Leica R, Pentax screw, Pentax K, Nikon and Canon FD lenses. Each mount adapter would cost a few hundred euros but would allow normal stop down focusing and have high quality parts making it as easy to swap lenses as on the original camera.

Unfortunately, the camera business is extremely capital intensive so this is not a project that can be undertaken by a small business. The danger in the project is the disparate parts. If the Ukrainians made a mistake somewhere in machining or assembling the cameras, they would only be liable for the broken parts. The investor would then be responsible for Pentax and or Sony or Samsung's order.

On the other hand, Leica could have built such a camera quickly and easily. That they didn't indicates that Leica is not a company to be trusted. They preferred to obsolete their R glass than build an updated camera.

Why not?

With an updated R, there is a sea of great legacy glass out there. So there is no great win for them. Would I trust Leica with the money that a P5 costs?

Never.

Sometimes one opens up a mainstream magazine or newspaper and one is just astonished at what is considered acceptable thought.

A principal example of just how decadent contemporary American business culture has become is the Wall Street Journal. I've never had the chance to read the Wall Street Journal much as I've mainly lived in foreign lands where it was either a hassle or very expensive to get copies of the WSJ. One of my site promotion team at Foliovision is a business school student. At his school they get copies of the WSJ for free.

Indoctrination for young minds. Anyway my employee is kind enough to bring the leftover old copies to Foliovision where some of the other site promotion team members take the odd copy. But frankly the keenest reader is myself - I have acquired a morbid fascination with the entitlement and backpatting editorial of this ragged daily apologia for the excesses of capitalism.

When I used to write for The Economist, we at least had to show a pretence of solid economic argument and a sense of noblesse oblige. While we were definitely on the side of the monied lords, we were working for a better world. When we procribed hard remedies, it was that we thought they would do good in the developing lands. When we naysayed environmental concerns, it was because the science looked doubtful.

In more recent years, The Economist itself has become less intellectually rigorous and has often flirted with being a simple cheerleader for the carpet baggers of globalisation. One could call it economic rape and pillage - spoiling of water and soil for centuries in pursuit of ten years of financial growth for the privileged classes.

But I digress - nothing prepared me for headlines like this one from the WSJ: Heavenly Tax Havens.

A certain Daniel J. Mitchell of the Cato Institute has been given space to tell us that while "wealthy tax evaders may not be sympathetic figures, especially with those of us who meekly comply with the law...low-tax jurisdictions serve a valuable role in the world economy."

So those who don't pay their taxes but enjoy the benefits of "high tax" host nations are bold heroes while the rest of us are meek and stupid sheep!

I'd like to transport Daniel S. Mitchell back to the Dark Ages where he belongs. In that era, local fiefdoms and duchies were set up by bold murderers who paid no taxes and took what they wanted. There was no running water (after the fall of the Roman Empire) and life was brutal, nasty and short. General misery is the inevitable result of low tax and low infrastructure regimes.

Daniel S. Mitchell has the gall to point out the "big benefits" of low tax/flat tax regimes for host countries, like Ireland, Estonia and Slovakia.

I happen to live in one of these flat tax havens. While the economy is booming, it doesn't help the country much as there is little tax revenue from the business boom. So hospitals fall apart, pensions are small, unemployment insurance is almost non-existent, the streets are filled with potholes, many Slovak police are corrupt and/or lazy. The education system is falling apart as well.

In Bratislava, civic planning is atrocious. At the turn of the century Pressburg/Pozony (the original name in German and Hungarian) was one of the Danube's prettiest towns with manors lining the hills and a beautiful old town and riverfront. Now Bratislava is on its way to becoming one of the Danube's ugliest towns with highways and cheap skyscrapers blocking all access to the river.

Last time I checked - the high tax regime of Austria, the healthcare services are excellent, the water is the best in the world, nature is extensively protected and Vienna is one of the most attractive and carefully developed cities in the world. The education system is one of the best in the world.

Tax havens are a race to the bottom, with a huge price in terms of infrastructure, health and education. If you are one of the very wealthy, perhaps the money looks better in your personal bank account. The problem is not just your quality of life but the quality of life of all of your compatriots is the cost of these low taxes. You have to drink the water, breathe the air, drive the roads and visit the hospitals.

If you are wealthy enough you can go to entirely separate hospitals and congratulate yourself that you are not in an endless emergency room line: last time my girlfriend got sick in Bratislava she called the emergency room and learned there would be a seven hour wait. Well, it solved the issues of medical shortage: she left her injuries untreated until Monday when she could visit her regular doctor.

In any case, I am still shaking my head that the WSJ is advocating tax fraud to its readers: "How the Liechtensteins save the world economy."

Rather curious that the WSJ would publish an article encouraging tax evasion, as criminal solicitation is a crime in the United States: "The penalty for criminal solicitation is the same as that authorized for the crime that was solicited".

According to the IRS, the penalty for attempt to evade or defeat taxes is 5 years imprisonment, fines of up to $250,000 or both.

If any of the students enjoying free copies of the WSJ is caught out stashing their money in tax havens in the next five years, I would suggest they make a plea bargain. In exchange for a suspended sentence, cite Daniel J. Mitchell's criminal solicitation. Let the WSJ or Mitchell pay the immediate fines for tax fraud.