the king of kong: fistful of quarters

Spent a rather amusing 80 mins watching this last night. A little bit ‘Oliver Stone’ in that it’s entertaining while you watch it but then the factual inaccuracies kind of grate.

Design and the Elastic Mind

Brilliant exhibiton from NYC.
More photos here and soon to be here too.

Short and Sweet

 

Travelled over to Shoreditch for this little weekly delight over in Cafe 1001, Shoreditch.  Brilliant surprise, ok the quality fluctuated but the atmosphere is awesome and presented by someone passionate and uplifting.  Came away feeling inspired and happy – not bad for a Monday eh?

This is most certainly the trick – get inspired on a Monday and let your creative juices grow and flow for by the end of the week you are tired and it’s harder.

More of this please.

Much more.

AHB

Annie get your gun

I know for a fact that there are a good few people reading this blog, thinking; “a musical? As If I’m going to spend £10 or £12 (I’m not sure how much exactly as the dear Barretts paid for me), of my hard-earned cash on that! Why does she have to lower the tone?” A few of my friends (mostly the boys), really don’t enjoy musicals and that’s fair enough. Many of them want to watch things that will provoke, inform, shock, amaze. Musicals, generally speaking, do not do any of those things. They don’t change your life: they entertain. At their best, they make you wish your life was sometimes punctuated with singing faces and camp dancing. A large part of why I enjoy musical theatre is the absurdity of grown adults skipping around, singing in falsetto as though it were a perfectly normal way of communicating.

Annie Get Your Gun is an honest to God good ol’ fashioned thigh slapper. As you might expect, it is totally unrealistic. The story even struck me as quite odd. It is in fact a fictionalized version of the life of Annie Oakley who was a sharpshooter from Ohio, and her husband, Frank Butler. When the traveling Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show visits town, Annie Oakley enters a shooting contest, wins, and is asked to join. She falls in love with the star, Frank Butler, and agrees to join, although she has no idea what “show business” is. Over the course of working together, Frank and Annie fall in love, but his pride is put seriously out of joint when Annie becomes a bigger star than him. What ensues is a battle of the sexes and a typical love story.

Part of the delight of seeing this was stumbling upon the cosy little Union Theatre; a tiny little family run venue with home made sandwiches, a make shift bar and sloppily painted walls as well as sweet, passionate staff who are surely working for free? Love was literally oozing out of the cracks. The auditorium is tiny and was filled with more than slightly wobbly chairs. Bless ‘em – even the actor’s costumes were falling apart.

The famous number, There’s no business like show business opened the show with a  blast and given that many of the actors were literally close enough to smell (one had slight BO), the sound of their beautiful harmonies was a musical smack in the face. The choreography, at first, rather out of proportion with the small space, was pleasing to the eye, and the presence of a wonky old piano and tiny band in the corner, felt wonderfully intimate. There were some beautiful performances; notably Claire Trusson who played the cute, good-natured Winnie Tate with a well accomplished Southern drawl (her and Tim Walker’s Who do you love, I hope was a highlight), Jacob Chapman’s brilliantly OTT Charlie Walker and Matthew Eames perfectly played lead Frank Butler. The star of the show, Vanessa Barmby as Annie Oakley started a little shakily with a slightly odd accent but by the second half, I loved her as the defiant strong woman who deals with Frank Butler’s male ego with such style. The high point of the evening was the brilliant Anything You Can Do, which had my companions and I laughing aloud. By the end, I think I literally was slapping my thigh.

So, try and get tickets for the last night tomorrow. Don’t go and see it expecting to discuss it intensely or intellectually after, just go to be entertained, made to feel warm and fuzzy inside and to keep little London gems like The Union Theatre going. As I sit here writing this in a soulless corporate cavern, It feels as though places like it may soon be a distant memory.

Oh, and if you like it, tell the director. He’s also the barman.

At The Union Theatre SE1 until Sat 9th Feb 

KER 

before the devil knows you’re dead

Saw this classy film from Sidney Lumet on Saturday. As with Dog Day Afternoon he has the ability to turn quite sensational plots into personal journeys without needing schmaltz.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is a truly awesome actor and the supporting cast (Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei) do a fine job of engagement plot driving.

One thing that kept going through my head is the knock on affect the middle class malaise is having on films.  Here was another example of the existentialist preoccupation with relative success and relative failure.  It is not desperation that drives the central action of the film, at least in the early stages, it is mild greed.   Not Scarface greed – just enough to carry on living the mundane hedonism they had become accustomed (addicted?) to.  It made me want to go back to Dog Day Afternoon and see what had changed in this respect over the last 30 odd years.

Anyway – I would urge you to watch it -  fine way of spending 2 hours during these cold months.

Greenspiration

Plumen. Low energy light bulbs that work as decoration.

The idea is good. The lack of need to buy a lamp + the fact that is a low energy bulb seems to be a stylish Money/Energy saver. The design could be better, Bibbles thinks, but it’s still only a prototype.

No excuse not to save 80% on your electricity bill.

Ecochic and Cheap.

 

MAB

darryl’s hard liquor and porn festival

It’s been a long time since I walked out of anything. I even failed to walk out of Waterworld because my friend wouldn’t let me. So, trust me, it says a lot about this ridiculous farce of a short film festival that I physically couldn’t bear the thought of staying for the second half. I’m sorry if anyone’s reading this that is any way connected to the filmmakers or organisers but they ought to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. What makes it worse is that it could have been brilliant. The premise and especially the name is fantastic. But whoever believed that the overall quality of the movies (which by the way were apparently the ‘best’ submitted over 8 years) was good enough to show publicly is a cretin. You could spend an hour randomly viewing films on YouTube (or even QVC) and see considerably more enjoyable entertainment.

The background is this… a guy gets a few of his mates to make short (by god but they felt long), funny (NO NO NO), films (ok, I’ll concede they were films) about sex and specifically pornography. The idea grew year on year and now they receive thousands of entries a year. I mean what must the discarded entries be like? With the exception of the opening film, a perfectly fine Lego animation and a couple of lovely pieces by ‘Lev’, I have rarely seen a pile of steaming turd as pungent as this. If it wasn’t porn puns it was smut, if it wasn’t smut it was gross-out cum shots – all done with the subtlety, artistic merit and comedic talent of a Jim Davidson tribute act, performed by the Black and White Minstrels.

Even though this festival was free I still felt cheated.

But oh what a name – Porn and Hard Liquor – and I wasn’t the only one fooled. There was a massive crowd drawn to the Roxy Bar and Screen – a place well worth a visit when they’re showing something other than this bile.

And that was the second problem – too many people, not enough space. The lack of organisation or even a single flying fuck about the audience made the whole experience twice as bad. Seriously, if it’s about the money, then charge a few quid and put a limit on numbers, but at the very least make sure the punters can see the screen.

If you have five minutes go I would encourage you to visit Lev’s site and then never give another moment’s thought to Daryl or his travelling crapfest.

AHB

The Big Screen

I agree with David Lynch…

A friend of mine always says it’s only really worth going to the cinema for blockbusters, the rest he prefers to see on DVD.  For me, the blockbusters so often disappoint and I find myself angry at having wasted the money and time to see them in the cinema.  

And I kick myself time and time again for not listening – because I know that if every single reviewer has said it’s dire… it will be.

I would agree with my friend’s statement if I could reword it so… “many blockbusters don’t work outside the cinema”, i.e. they don’t tell interesting enough stories to survive without the loud bangs.  But the films that do still work on DVD provide even greater enjoyment and impact on the big screen.

This same friend (like so many people) won’t listen to reviews, arguing very fairly “I want to make my own mind up”. 

But critics are so much more valuable than we give them credit for.  They are there to serve us.  This widespread attitude of ignoring (or should that be ‘ignorance’?) means that stomach-churningly awful films like Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Transformers and Shark’s Tale are filled with punters who will leave feeling nothing except disappointment or perhaps a blissful lack of any thought process.  Maybe this is what we want

We go in our droves, mindlessly sticking up two fingers to the critics saying, “Don’t tell me I need to think.  Don’t tell me I need to be stimulated.  Don’t tell me that mindless drivel is wrong”

Don’t get me wrong – so many blockbusters are stimulating (and the critics don’t lie when they are – Monsters Inc, ET, The Godfather, Enchanted, etc, etc), but - and this is the real point…

There is such as a thing as an objectively bad film.  We should listen.

ECC

louise bourgeois

You have 11 days to go and see this amazing exhibition at the Tate Modern.  It could quite easily be the best I have ever seen.

There are some people in this world who are born artists and can transcend form or genre. From the intimate to the grandiose to pithy, witty tales she touches and inspires.  The word genius is touted far too often and incorrectly but in Louise Bourgeois’ case, i’m not sure any other word suffices.

no country for old men

I was lucky enough (cheers Dward) to go and see the latest Coen brothers film last night. I was unlucky enough to hear the reviewer Andrew Collins say it “quite literally blows all other Coen brothers’ films out of the water” and the Guardian reviewer Roger Ebert call it a “perfect film”.

Damn you hype – why must you vex me so?

I wonder at what point during Citizen Kane critics start thinking it’s the best film ever made? Is it that they start enjoying something more than any other film and that enjoyment never wanes or is it that after several viewings and much analysis they decide it just is. Such were my thoughts during No Country For Old Men. There was the Coen quirkiness and deftness of touch in telling a story. There was Cormac McCarthay’s brilliant story, which the film is apparently steadfastedly loyal to. The acting is superb – particularly the sociopathic Javier Bardem. I really thought it was going to be one of the best films ever made. Maybe on further viewing I will come to see it as that. But I left the cinema feeling a little empty, confused by the philosophy and disatisfied with the ending.

I didn’t get it.

I want to watch it again because if the film delivers on the promise of the first hour and I’ve missed something big then this will be one of the films of the decade. At least in my book – I wouldn’t want to overhype it yet further. My only advice would be to sit far back in the cinema – I sat on the front row and, I mean this seriously, it stopped me taking everything in – be patient and listen. This is not The Big Lebowski, this is not Fargo… I truly believe that it something altogether different. Time, and a second viewing, will tell if that’s a good thing or not.

AHB