Sansho the Bailiff (Mizoguchi)

I was born on Groundhog Day 1961. I’m from Wales the magical land of Merlin. I’m a fan of Mizoguchi, Fred Astaire, Jean Renoir, Andrei Tarkovsky, Eric Rohmer, Satyajit Ray. Music: Amalia Rodrigues, Elton John, Sibelius, Anouar Brahem. Art: Vermeer, Hiroshige, Turner, Titian, Gwen John, Kyffin Williams. I love North Portugal, where i have felt both at home and in a wonderful adventure told by the beautiful Scheherazade. Portugal, Land of my Dreams. I like walking with my 2 beloved dogs Bryn and Kiki (Bryn’s a great singer) and running with them on beaches. Woof woof. Rivers, green meadows, wildlife, sun-dappled glades, canal boat holidays,Sports, hot air balloons

I have had an addiction, in only partial remission, to making lists here, e.g Kenji’s Japanese Canon, The Kenji Awards, The Auteurs World Cup Films, The Welsh Connection, 19th Century Britain, The Labyrinth, A Library of Film Books, Essential French Films, Favourite Indian Films, Essential Films by Women, Tumbleweed and Tomahawks, A Rosefinch Sang:The Czechoslovakian New Wave, The Caucasus, Kenji’s Canon, Canada: A Collection of Contraband Curiosities, Spain:Mystery, Passion, Life, Mubi Short Films poll, Under the Spell of Shahrzad in the Realms of Silk and Spice, Shadowy Whispers:The Wonderful World of the Brothers Quay, 365 Directors, The Nicest Man in Britain

and for a bit of relaxation Kenji’s Oasis of Love, Joy and Peace

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Puttin on the Ritz (Blue Skies)

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I love your daring hang glides over meadows and ravines,
I love your scrummy puddings and the way you stir the beans.
I love the Cleopatran contours of your eyebrows when you frown,
I love the smile that lights your face outside the shops in town.
I love the way you snuggle furry bunnies to your chest,
I love your flair for reading maps that turns the East to West.
I love the riffling breezes that flow up your summer dress,
I love your feisty frissons when the room’s left in a mess.
I love your dainty frolics on a wet and cobbled street,
I love it when your nipples and the autumn moonlight meet.
I love your warm compassion and Scheherazadean eyes,
But most of all i love to run my fingers up your thighs.
(Kenji)

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Leonor Silveira in Abraham Valley (Oliveira)

My favourite films: Sansho the Bailiff, Mirror, The Green Ray, Alice in the Cities, Andrei Rublev, Abraham Valley, Maborosi, North by Northwest, Sunrise, Rules of the Game, Celine and Julie go Boating, The Band Wagon, Paris Texas, Pather Panchali, Some Like it Hot, Gamperaliya, Vertigo, Seven Samurai, Spirit of the Beehive, Mulholland Dr, Hiroshima mon Amour, Casablanca, Tale of Tales, Eternity and a Day, L’Avventura, Casque d’Or, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Hugo, Pierrot le Fou, Late Spring, 8 1/2, The Colour of Pomegranates, Letter from an Unknown Woman, Singin in the Rain, A Day in the Country, L’Atalante, Night of the Hunter, Citizen Kane, Tales of the Taira Clan, My Childhood (Douglas), Berta’s Motives, The Life of Oharu, Children of Paradise, Claire’s Knee, Aniki Bobo, The Searchers, Ugetsu Monogatari, Tokyo Story, Story of the Late Chrysanthemums, Top Hat, Comrades, The Name of a River

My favourite books: The Wind in the Willows (Grahame), Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez), The Little Prince (St Exupéry), The Wind up Bird Chronicle (Murakami), Tom Jones (Fielding), House of the Spirits (Allende), Cutting it Short (Hrabal), Nature Diary (Opal Whiteley), Pillow Book (Sei Shonagon), Jacques le Fataliste (Diderot), I am a Cat (Soseki), Manon Lescaut (Prévost), Snow Country (Kawabata), Madame Bovary (Flaubert), Macbeth (Shakespeare), Anna Karenina (Tolstoy), The Garden of Forking Paths- short (Borges), Life of Pi (Martel), Evening Clouds (Shono), Master and Margarita (Bulgakov), Jude the Obscure (Hardy), The Hungry Tide (Ghosh), Tristram Shandy (Sterne), Tales (Miyazawa), 1984 (Orwell), Treasure Island (Stevenson), Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky), Flickers (Adair), Alice in Wonderland (Carroll), Slaughterhouse 5 (Vonnegut), Our Mutual Friend (Dickens), The Rings of Saturn (Sebald), Hopscotch (Cortazar), King Lear (Shakespeare), Kafka on the Shore (Murakami), Phedre (Racine), Stalingrad (Beevor). The Alchemist (Coelho), The Rainbow (Lawrence)

Poems: somewhere i have never travelled (e e cummings), The Lady of Shalott (Tennyson), The Destruction of Sennacherib (Byron), Fern Hill (Dylan Thomas), At Anchor in the Evening by the Maple Bridge (Chang Chi), Home Thoughts from Abroad (Browning), Nicholas Nye (De la Mare), The Unfaithful Wife (Lorca), Poem in October (Dylan Thomas), The Frost at Midnight (Coleridge), This is the Creature (Rilke), I Speak of the City (Paz), Ode to a Nightingale (Keats), Being on Duty all Night (Po Chu-i), Me at the Bottom of the Sea (Storni), In Memoriam (Tennyson), Strange Meeting (Owen), Le Dormeur du Val (Rimbaud), The Mill Pond (Edward Thomas), The Lemon Tree (Montale), The Visitant (Roethke), Railway Children (Heaney), Ballad of the Civil Guard (Lorca), The Old Ships (Flecker), The Garden of Five Trees (Espriu), I’m Explaining a Few Things (Neruda), Old Pond (Basho), A Marriage (R.S.Thomas)

Old pond
Frog jumps in
Sound of water

Kenji’s Poetry Anthology- Part 1, Kenji’s Poetry Anthology- Part 2, Kenji’s Poetry Anthology- Part 3, Kenji’s Poetry Anthology- Part 4, Kenji’s Poetry Anthology- Part 5, Kenji’s Poetry Anthology- Part 6, Kenji’s Poetry Anthology- Part 7, Kenji’s Poetry Anthology- Part 8, Kenji’s Poetry Anthology- Part 9

Hiroshige: Mokubo Temple and Vegetable Fields by the Uchi River, from 100 Famous Views of Edo

Claudia Williams

Paintings: Rest on the Flight into Egypt (David),100 Famous Views of Edo (Hiroshige), Hunters in the Snow (Brueghel), Ginevra de Benci (Leonardo da Vinci), Procession of the Magi (Gozzoli), Whistlejacket (Stubbs), Girl with a Pearl Earring (Vermeer), The Fighting Temeraire (Turner), Las Meninas (Velasquez), Solitary Temple amid Clearing Peaks (Li Cheng), Ranuccio Farnese (Titian), Venus of Urbino (Titian), Norham Castle, Sunrise (Turner), The Jewish Bride (Rembrandt), The Birth of Venus (Botticelli), Woman with a Balance (Vermeer), The Dream of St Ursula (Carpaccio), The Swing (Fragonard), A Wall in Naples (Thomas Jones), The Precious Book (Gwen John), Tiger in a Storm (Rousseau), Susanna and the Elders (Tintoretto), Storm at Trearddur (Kyffin Williams), Early Spring (Guo Xi), Starry Night (Van Gogh), Bacchus and Ariadne (Titian), Adoration of the Shepherds (Giorgione), Madonna of the Meadow (Bellini), Fall of Phaeton (Rubens), Bougival, 1876 (Sisley), Ville d’Avray (Corot), Descent from the Cross (Van der Weyden), 36 Views of Fuji (Hokusai), Krishna Lifts Mount Govardhan (Ustad Sahibdin), Carmencita Playing (Lopez Garcia), The Temptation of St Antony (Bosch), The Gust of Wind (Renoir), Mont St Victoire, 1886 (Cézanne), Gabrielle Cot (Bouguereau), The Death of Sardanapalus (Delacroix), Nympheas- Orangerie (Monet), Jacob Blessing the Children of Joseph (Rembrandt), Supper at Emmaus (Caravaggio), Glass of Water and Coffee Pot (Chardin), The Great Gate of Kiev (Kandinsky), The Arnolfini Marriage (Van Eyck), Dog (Goya), Olympia (Manet), Pilgrimage to Cythera (Watteau), Sistine Chapel Ceiling (Michelangelo), Harlequin’s Carnival (Miro), Perseus Frees Andromeda (Piero di Cosimo), Lovers (Utamaro), View of Deventer from the North West (Van Ruysdael), Annunciation (Van der Weyden), Cecilia Gallerani (Leonardo da Vinci), Virgin and Unicorn (Domenchino), Bay of Naples (Hodgkin), La Grande Jatte (Seurat), The Family (Rego), Breezing Up (Homer), Our Country (Tjapaltjarri), The Virgin and St Anne (Leonardo da Vinci), Tretower (Hicks-Jenkins), The Nemesis of Nations (Kher) …many on the list Kenji’s Gallery of Great Paintings, Kenji’s Japanese Art Gallery, Kenji’s Welsh Paintings Gallery, Paintings by Women in the Lists section

Music: The Art of Amalia (Amalia Rodrigues), Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy (Elton John), 2nd Symphony (Sibelius), Born to Run (Bruce Springsteen), Le Pas du Chat Noir (Anouar Brahem), Concierto de Aranjuez- Adagio (Rodrigo), Aman Iman (Tinariwen), 7th Symphony (Beethoven), Tumbleweed Connection (Elton John), Violin Concerto (Sibelius), Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (Elton John), Vltava (Smetana), The Union (Elton John and Leon Russell), Spring Sonata 2nd Movement (Beethoven), My Way: The Best of..(Frank Sinatra), Verdi and Tchaikovsky arias (Dmitri Hvorostovsky), La Boheme (Puccini), Songs for Swinging Lovers (Frank Sinatra), Concerto for Orchestra (Bartok), Com que Voz (Amalia Rodrigues), 6th Symphony (Beethoven), La Traviata (Verdi), Fleet Foxes (Fleet Foxes), 3rd Piano Concerto (Rachmaninov), OK Computer (Radiohead), The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle (Bruce Springsteen), Elephant (White Stripes), The Protecting Veil (John Tavener), Unfinished Symphony (Schubert), The Healer (John Lee Hooker), Tombola (Meinir Gwilym), Elis and Tom (Elis Regina & Antonio Carlos Jobim), The Astounding Eyes of Rita (Anouar Brahem), Journal for Plague Lovers (Manic Street Preachers), The Queen is Dead (The Smiths)

Kenji’s Favourite Classical Music

TV: Around the World in 80 Days, Life on Earth/The Living Planet, Black Adder 3, The World at War, Fawlty Towers, Monty Python, Pride and Prejudice, Columbo, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Cheers, Time Team, Have I Got News for You, Antiques Roadshow, Morecambe and Wise, Q.I, Porridge, The Power of Nightmares, Boys from the Blackstuff