Skip to main content

Desert Island Discs picks

Image
By
I've been irregularly listening to Desert Island Discs since about 2008 (weirdly enough it's my grandfather that put me on to it. Guess he used to talk to the Brits about BBC Radio back in the day). I always thought it was a cool concept (format outlined below) and I was supposed to (try to) determine my picks. So here goes:

Format:
Guests are invited to imagine themselves cast away on a desert island, and to choose eight pieces of music, originally gramophone records, to take with them; discussion of their choices permits a review of their life. Excerpts from their choices are played or, in the case of short pieces, the whole work. At the end of the programme they choose the one piece they regard most highly. They are then asked which book they would take with them; they are automatically given the Complete Works of Shakespeare and either the Bible or another appropriate religious or philosophical work.
Guests also choose one luxury, which must be inanimate and of no use in escaping the island or allowing communication from outside. 

^ From Wikipedia, obviously.

Book: In Search of Lost Time (A la recherche du Temps Perdu) by Marcel Proust ( translation by C.K. Scott Moncrief). I'm going to be greedy and get the English and French versions (if  the presenter allows it) so I can kill time by seeing how well the translation is.

Luxury: Endless supply of footballs

Religious Text: Ramayana (Usually they give the Bhagavad Gita but I lean toward the narrative epic more than the discourse/ dialogue, though I suppose if I took the Mahabharata I'd get both forms of writing). English and Hindi/Tamil/Sanskrit version needed obviously since my knowledge of Indian languages is poor and reading ability non-existent.

Record Choices:

  1. John Coltrane - Equinox  ( from the album Coltrane's Sound (1964) )
  2. Bruce Springsteen - Racing in the Street ( from the album Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978) )
  3. Journey - Don't Stop Believing ( from the album Escape (1981) )
  4. Bob Marley & The Wailers - No Woman, No Cry ( from the album Live! (1975) , originally on Natty Dread (1974) )
  5. Coldplay - The Scientist ( from the album A Rush of Blood to the Head (2002) )
  6. Sergio Mendes - Mas que Nada ( from the album  Herp Albert Presents (1966) )
  7. Oasis - Stop Crying Your Heart Out ( from the album Heathen Chemistry (2002) )
  8. Between the Buried and Me - Selkies: The Endless Obsession ( from the album Alaska (2005) )

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Oscar Predictions-Film Awards (i)

By
Best Director Most likely winner :     Steven Spielberg   for Lincoln. Leaving out Ben Affleck, Kathryn Bigelow and Quentin Tarantino pretty much made this Spielberg's to lose. And doesn't reflect too well on the Academy either. Backup Pick :    David O. Russell for  Silver Linings Playbook. The production company of Weinstein have been campaigning hard for this and it's a good film with the acting performances set up well. The thing about best director is it's the easiest award to give to someone the academy likes because it's ambiguous and the academy doesn't really love Russell. Most deserving :      Michel Haneke for  Amour. Haneke has the most carefully crafted film here. All in all it is definitely his film in every scene. His presence is all around the film and it is an excellent film. If they give it for the greatest impact a director has on the film, this is it. Best Adapted Screenplay Most li...
3 comments
Read more

(Short) Analysis of the (length of stay for) teams at World Cup 2014 - Groups A and B

By
I like World Cup, quite a lot, and think it's the best of all the tournaments that exist in football and very possibly in all of sport (at least for any tournament focused on one sport since the Olympics is amazing because of the variety). So I'll be trying to figure out how likely each team is to get out of the group stages and how far they'll probably go if they do. All the odds are from  www.bet365.com  which is the site I use most for trend spotting in sport (it's like my sport-Bloomberg). Group A Brazil- Automatically qualified as hosts and at 1/20 to qualify have the second best odds of any team to make it out of the group phase behind Argentina (who have probably the softest group). It's with good reason Brazil have such low odds and they're considered favourites. Winning or even coming second in Group A doesn't mean an easy run as it probably would result in a round of sixteen clash against either defending champions Spain or the ...
3 comments
Read more

Best Films of the Decade - 2010s - Third Part

By
11. Get Out (2017)-  Directed and written by  Jordan Peele. Horror seems to be an excellent medium to describe racism and it's somewhat amazing how obvious it seems in hindsight. One of the best debuts of a director in recent times, with a script that amps up the tension marvelously and serves up a twist in the tale that was impossible to see coming. Normally horror movies are seen as niche, but this film was popular with the wide audience and also at the award ceremonies further proving everyone was able to be captured by the film's quality. There has been talk of the film fitting into horror-comedy, probably due to Peele's comedy background, but while it is never laughably funny but does serve as a clever satire on the state of racial affairs. 12. The Death of Stalin (2017) - Directed by  Armando Iannuci.  Written by  Armando Iannuci, David Schneider and Ian Martin. Few topics are as ripe for satire as the workings of communist governments (provi...
1 comment
Read more