Little Brother – The Minstrel Show
Ben Westbeech – Welcome to the Best Years of Your Life
Black Dog – Book of Dogma
TTC – 3615TTC
Quasimoto – The Unseen
And on the book front: Bo Burlingham – Small Giants: Companies that choose to be great instead of big.
is not a place I frequent. In fact, my visit there on Saturday must be the first in 15 years (it is at least 12 since I have been in Fareham at all). It had not changed. The lighting has improved. The signs are now of early noughties vintage, rather than the late 70’s/early 80’s when it was built. Many of the same shops are there. BHS – how they are still in business, I don’t know – the only remaining member of the great C&A, Littlewoods and BHS triumverate that defined the British High Street for many 30-somethings as children. Is there really still such a passion for badly designed polyester clothing? The labyrinthine nature of the shopping centre as a whole remained, along with the small specialist shops that pervade in the less popular passageways – do people really go to a shopping centre to buy double glazing, or insurance, or Chinese medicine? There was no Starbucks. No Gap. No Uniqlo. No H&M. There were bubble perms. There were cheap gold earrings. There were an excessive number of tattoos. And I’m sure I saw at least one shellsuit. It was a step back to the way provincial Britain and my life used to be prior to 1997.
Away this weekend. Enjoy.
is amazing. Please post any thoughts you have about it if you have seen it here. Let’s have a roundtable. And if you have not yet seen it, get yourself down to the video store pronto.
No, not this delightful Soviet architectural and artistic movement. But this evening. Since getting in at 8pm, I have managed to do all of the following (in no particular order):
Reply to e-mails.
Make sausages and potatoes and red cabbage for dinner. Eat it and half a tub of Ben and Jerry’s.
Have a bath.
Edit my CV more.
Import 4 new albums into itunes.
Decide against an £80 petrol reward from my credit card company.
Do a large load of washing.
Load and start the dishwasher.
Watch an hour of TV.
Reply to my own blog posts (worrying, that one).
Shave.
Realise I am in no state to post about Czechoslovak cinema.
Make this post.
And they say men can’t multitask.
are a Dublin band who’s debut album I have just got – they have been described as ‘Blending elements of trip-hop, reggae, drum & bass and ambient, Dublin-based Analogue Mindfield’s music was described by Cheshire Cat of Leftfield as ‘a heavyweight mix of reggae, old school dub with a vibrant brass-driven trip – they skank like a mouthful of liquorice allsorts’. Analogue Mindfield are Snapper J, Gizzy D, Lariman, Yolazy and Kitty B. Their mission statement is simple ‘create auditory soundscapes of challenging yet accessible music, whilst retaining an inspired socially conscious theme to our tunes.’ – Gizzy D.’ I have got the trackson my Ipod for tomorrows 10.02 to Paddington, but, if you are intrigued, please head over to their myspace.
has finally arrived from Second Run DVD – after repeated delays I finally managed to see the film banned forever by the Czechoslovak authorities in 1973. The film had been made in 1966, banned, released in 1968, and then, as I said, banned forever. Or until 1989 at the very least.
And not without reason, I might add. The film has a dark absurdism, rooted firmly in the very nature of Czechoslovak history, especially of the 1950’s and 1960’s, yet also drawing on literary works, both Czech (Kafka looms large over the film, especially the Trial and the Castle), and more international – Beckett and Ionesco would both have revelled in the situation the director dreams up for the protagonists. And yet as allegorical and playful as the film is, one cannot help but see the dark heart that beats just beneath the surface, as the various characters change their behaviour over the course of the film.
The film opens with an idyllic scene of the main characters, four men and three women, three couples and a charming single man, enjoying a picnic in forest clearing (standard Slavic romantic images of birches and meadows along with a sense of bourgeoisie calm) – they are going to a banquet/celebration/party (the word ’slavnosti’ is problematic to translate – similar to the German ‘Fest’) to be held nearby later. So, they eat, drink, and be merry.
They then dress up and head off to the party. As they walk up a path, they are accosted by a strange individual, Rudolf, who asks them numerous personal questions and refuses to leave them alone. As they try to leave him, a group of men appear from the woods and lead them off to a clearing.
The men form a perimeter, and a table and chair are set up at one end of the clearing. The seven guests stand before it, and the Rudolf sits down, holding a folder. He again questions them, and at the suggestion of the other men, they split themselves in to two groups, men and women, and stand in an area marked out as an enclosure. The single charming man engages with his interlocutor, whilst another falls silent, and a third tries to leave. He is grabbed by the thugs and beaten.
At this point, the host arrives and apologises profusely – Rudolf and the other men, it turns out are his adoptive son and other guests from the party.
At this point I need to head off to bed as I am still recovering from a cold, but more will follow tomorrow, hopefully with some images and maybe even a trailer. There is so much more to outline, before I even try to get started properly on analysing it…
is what I’m feeling at the moment – the clips of NY bands on BBC4 last week inspired me to dig out tracks by all of the following:
Sonic Youth (a return to my teenage years)
The Velvet Underground (Shiny shiny shiny boots of leather, etc)
MC5 (has there ever been a greater opening to anything than Kick out the Jams?)
Plus, on another note, the new Air album has arrived – a return to form, or so they claim. I shall have to listen tonight and get back to you…
apart from expressing my admiration for Tim Robinson’s Connemara – up for numerous Irish literary prizes, this book manages to combine history, geology, biology, folklore, literature in a beautifully evocative picture of this small part of the west of Ireland – the author has lived and worked mapping this part of the world for the last couple of decades, and the depth of understanding of the various processes (historical, meteorological, geological and so on) that go to shape this most peripheral part of Europe combined with his eye for small cultural details (he frequently deviates from the grand narrative to engage the reader in some village gossip, or in an old folk story) ensure that the area truly comes alive.
