‘It needs to be loud’: Jozef Van Wissem’s one-man mission to make the lute rock again

The Dutch ex-punk and Jim Jarmusch bandmate talks about his passion to free up a hidebound repertoire and make its strings ‘a real pop instrument’ Nobody can accuse Jozef Van Wissem of doing things by halves. The musician, very likely the world’s most notorious contemporary lutenist, owns a sonic arsenal of eight of the string instruments: some bespoke, and all boasting remarkable features. With them he has created a huge body of work, nearly 50 titles to date. Another album, This Is My Blood is released this May. Each Easter, Van Wissem settles down to compose a new record. He finds the peace of Warsaw, where everyone has “gone away for the holidays”, more amenable for work than “noisy” Rotterdam, where he also has a flat. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/lIktvjD via IFTTT

Frederic Forrest obituary

Consummate character actor who came close to stardom in the 70s with roles in Apocalypse Now, The Conversation and The Rose

“He’d kill us if he got the chance.” Those words, spoken by a bespectacled, beige-suited young man (Frederic Forrest) as he wanders through Union Square in San Francisco with his lover (Cindy Williams), are secretly recorded by the surveillance expert Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) in The Conversation (1974). Their meaning, mulled over at length, becomes vital in unlocking the story’s mysteries. One of the key thrillers of its decade, Francis Ford Coppola’s film was also an eloquent expression of paranoia in a country reeling from Watergate.

Forrest, who has died aged 86, was the ideal actor to throw certainties into doubt. In The Conversation, he is bookish, furtive and opaque. The audience never becomes properly acquainted with him, though recordings of his voice and image are repeatedly offered up for our scrutiny so that the act of studying his expressions and intonations becomes central to experiencing the film. Without realising it, we channel a good deal of energy into deciphering his motives.

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