Review: “Battle of the Sexes”

By Alan Mattli

There is a moment in the climactic sequence of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’ new film where the cinema audience is presented with a series of shots showing the people lining the stands of the Houston Astrodome, come to see the much-publicised “Battle of the Sexes” – the 1973 tennis match between feminist ace Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) and senior pro and self-proclaimed “male chauvinist” Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell).

Women and men with bellbottom jeans and patterned vests hold up signs in support of “BJK”, older couples carry placards adorned with Riggs’ garish colours of choice – red and yellow –, young men wear t-shirts on which they proudly claim the title of “chauvinist pig”. In keeping with the staging of the whole sequence, which mimics the well-established format of televised tennis in all its static glory, it is both unclear and wholly beside the point whether Faris and Dayton, best known for directing the Oscar-winning Little Miss Sunshine (2006), used actors or stock footage to create these establishing shots. What matters is that the scene credibly reflects the social reaction to the titular battle.

Or else, I’ve done mischievous deeds

Or else, I’ve done mischievous deeds

planting but sorrow, harvesting seeds

unripe, that others had interred.

The dissolution of souls deferred

my strikes, mirrored them. I fell.

Pluck a petal, pick your passion.

I take no pleasure in tiring my head,

stirring, recurring to stratagems

of deviant kind.

Lands of gems,

single islets producing but doublets.

It’s getting harder and harder,

ardour’s betraying all,

or else, I’m doing mischievous things.

Still feeling, feeling still, stings

– I feel the pain draining through

acts.

Shall I compare you to a summer’s day,

you should, but I need to go away

too soon to listen, too far back to stay,

the only thing I want to live for is today.

Each of them looks alike

not a critique of pure dishonesty

but I attempt to see whom I’d like

to see.

Scraping leaves – hello

I say. Is it you?

Tourists? I’ve been one

back in the day,

when beer was cheaper than food. And now

I travel around the house, tomorrow

I’ll be sitting in a better place.

Hunger doesn’t leave me,

it makes me write, and then

it scares me with dyslexia.

Alas, I want to eat, yet I don’t,

I’m no use fat nor skinny. The only want

of me is me.

Thersites was my friend, the best,

he gave me a helmet with a crest,

“Put it on and walk around”

he said, “falling to the ground

you’ll see the chicks.”

I’m done with this,

to hear the switches, to hear the mis-

sing of a name.

O, give me fame.

Vök: Album Review Figure

 

By Aisling Ehrismann

Now this is a debut album to look out for. The Icelandic four piece Vök swivels in a psychedelic out-of-this-world like atmosphere with their first full length album release. The band started out as participants of an annual music battle contest in Iceland and won as a result of their uniqueness. Now their first album Figure is out, it reminds of the XX’s debut but still manages to step out of their shadow. Figure is more bold and innovative as the synths in the electronic hymn Polar show. Its avant-garde style is also suggestive of Björk’s lasting impression on the Nordic music scene.

Figure is about the many facets, forms and shapes the band has. Cold but also passionate currents weave themselves through the arrangements. There is a dusky, atmospheric tenderness as well as a romantic throbbing just waiting to burst out. A dystopic sense distorts the more dreamy sequences in their melodic synth tracks. The album opener and current single Breaking Bones particularly stands out. With its moody and pounding attitude it sort of glides over the listener. Eeriness and melancholy define this ethereal electronic-pop debut.

High vocals from lead singer Margrét pierce through and her lower tones soothingly coil around you throughout the whole album but especially in Lightning Storm. The song alludes to the harshness of the cold Icelandic winter. The heaviness of the snow completely covering the landscape is brought about with Margrét’s understated velvety vocals. But not only fans of slow melancholy soundtracks get their money’s worth. There are a few more upbeat and danceable tracks as well. Therefore, don’t miss them playing live (tonight)!

Tonight (14^th of May 2017)

7pm at Mascotte, Zurich.

On Revisiting “Big Hero 6” and “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World”

By Alan Mattli

If, by any chance, you have been occasionally checking in on my film writing over the past few years, you might have noticed that I have a weakness for lists. Every year, I look forward to December, when the time once again comes to go through what I’ve seen throughout the year and to then choose my top ten movies of that period (while we’re on the subject: 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016).

So it might not come as a surprise that there is a special place in my mind for the year 2019 – the year in which, hopefully, I will get to pen two lists; my take on the best of 2019 and my round-up of the decade’s standout works. Fully aware that this is not the most reasonable or urgent preoccupation to entertain in the early days of 2017, I nevertheless compiled a longlist of potential contenders for the latter collection as well as a year-by-year rundown of what I have to catch up on recently. In other words, I’m always on the lookout for list material these days.

Now, the other day, I watched two movies I hadn’t seen in years.

Aisling Ehrismann: My Favourite Books from 2016

This post is part of a series of posts in which students of the English Seminar present their favourite books they have read in 2016. The lists are not restricted to books that were published this year. If you want to participate as well, send your list to zest.editor@gmail.com.

Today’s list comes to you from Aisling Ehrismann.

To be honest, I have no idea how many books I’ve actually read this year. I’m not the type to strategically analyse how many books, pages or words I read, and I don’t set myself a particular goal to achieve – especially when my reading has to compete with my series watching. So for me, it’s not the number that counts but the quality of books read. With some captivating and beguiling works, here are my top five of 2016.

Review: “Arrival”

By Gabriel Renggli

The number one priority, Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) explains, is learning why they are here. The problem with that, linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) explains, is knowing whether we are capable of asking the question, whether they are capable of understanding it, and whether we are capable of processing a potential answer.

In linguistics, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that how you see the world depends on the language you use. I’m not a linguist myself (my speciality is literature), but I’m an intuitive believer in at least a weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. I know from experience that I think and act differently in English than in my native language. By the end, Arrival will have asked you to accept a very strong version indeed of this idea: our physical reality itself is structured by how we speak.

The reason this rather large claim does not fall flat on its face is that Arrival is so well made. This is captivating film-making, employing a simple three-act structure to stunning effect. The first act is more or less taken up by establishing the stakes, and they are high. Aliens land on earth, twelve crafts scattered over the globe in no discernible pattern. What follows is, in a way, pretty formulaic. Yes, we focus largely on the American landing site; yes, the military rushes in to cordon off the ship; yes, they soon helicopter in a number of experts. Godzilla films use that structure. But director Denis Villeneuve’s film-making is delicate, alert to the significance of the events.

The Best Films of 2016

By Alan Mattli

Outside of the world of cinema, the past twelve months have been eventful, to say the least. So compiling a list of my favourite Swiss cinema releases of 2016 felt ever so slightly more significant and tied to real-life goings-on than it did in the past. But maybe that’s just another way of trying to put my opinions into a somewhat more “meaningful” context than would otherwise be the case. Ultimately, everybody can judge for themselves, which is why I will stop hedging now and, after pointing out that Oscar hopefuls like La La Land, Manchester by the Sea, Moonlight, and Jackie (which already makes a strong case for being my Film of the Year 2017) are not in the running here because of their January and February Swiss release dates, get started.

the generation that lost

the generation that lost

the classics are long past

erudite talking too

jumps in the primordial soup

and their embellished unadorned

outcomes failed.

then came a new way of fighting

of beating lines of pox

piles of rocks

open roads in enclosed streets

elites of masters

without degree.

all is past

they all lost their vibe

the last of which

against present vibrations.

now facts not feelings

post facts not facts

feelings and nothing more

Lenore and other angels

remember without thinking

or think to think of deeds.

displaced realities

a sour land loved

rejected. objected

voices from every corner

each a wanderer.

all these

a lost generation

with or without nation

breaking grounds anew

already old marked

by earthworms

coming out of the ground

and retreating with

contaminated nutrients.

Plagiarism. Or: An Honest Mistake.

Dramatis Personae:

Student (hereafter: S)

Professor (hereafter: P)

Setting: The professor’s office. The professor is sitting behind the desk reading through some papers. A knock on the door is heard.

P: Come in please!

A Breath From the North

A man and a man in a room with a name unknown.

Some people call it a house of terror, some

they say it’s a place of fun, of drug and liquor,

of smoke and needle. Then he’s come, alone,

from far away to feel the frenzy. – What?

– Away! Away!

– May I help you, sir?

He asked while opening the door – he had no right

to ask, the Smurfs this time were close to get him.

– I thought there was a bar, here around.

Dee doo dee doo dee doo dee doo duh

– There’s none. Now come. You’re mine. – he shut the door.

– Come out! – We know you’re there! – Show yourself!

– I do not wish to come.

– I don’t wish to come!

– Come out! – We know you’re there! – Free him!

Unharmed a man and a man from a room unknown

came out. Unknown what might have happened inside.

The side of right, the side of wrong, unknown

to all involved.

The situation resolved

in nothing still, still in nothingness,

uneducated paths of fullness.