Casanova and all that

One of the many pleasures to follow from the absence of television from my living places is the selection of videos to buy and watch – and the serendipity of buying videos in Cyrillic script! The writing on the covers is so small and indistinct that I generally don’t know what I am buying here in Sofia – relying generally on the photos of the actors. A good source is the bookshop in the University underpass. On Sunday I emerged with 8 films costing an average of 2 euros. One I bought only because of it starring Helen Mirren and it turned out to be a touching film about the last days of Tolstoy - The Last Station.
Another hero of mine is Casanova who is generally totally misunderstood. He did not “have” as many women as is generally assumed – more importantly he respected and loved most of them. He is such an interesting figure that I collect books about him – and another video I took home and watched last night figured Peter O’Toole as the old Casanova  in the castle in northern Bohemia I would often drive past 20 years ago on my trip from Prague to Berlin; and David Tennant as his younger version. It’s the best of the 3 films I’ve seen so far on the subject

An art blog I discovered recently has just completed an excellent set of vignettes on the Scottish colourists - Peploe; Cadell; Fergusson; and Hunter.

I’m not really into abstract art – but liked this review of a couple of New York exhibitions of key figures a century ago who spearheaded that art form