The views of the white, British people in this documentary is foul, ignorant, pathetic and odious. I’m embarrassed and disgusted. (This is a link for the World Service ‘Assignment’ documentary and will change in a few days).
Before reading this, I’d been very much in the ‘well, I’ll take my business elsewhere camp’ but I think Cory makes a lot of valid points, and therefore I will endeavour to be more of a pain the arse in the future.
JK Rowling is so amazingly off the mark here. If you publish a work, you should be grateful that someone loves it so much to write a lexicon like this, even if you do intend to cash in further on fans in the future with your own guide.
A charity that provides technology for people that can’t afford it in Portland, Oregon. Worth supporting for the the title ‘helping the needy get nerdy since the beginning of the 3rd millenium’ alone.
As if we needed reminding quite how right wing our current ‘left’ government are, they’ve decided not to protect sex workers, in order that they can insure that an underpaid, underappreciated group in the workforce can’t strike.
Aaah, the joys of passive/aggressive responses to morons. As a flickr commenter pointed out, the response is even better if you replace the redacted blocks with ’shithead’.
Because there’s a load of stuff that I find each day that doesn’t really seem worthy of a full blog post, but I feel like I should do something or other with, I’ve set myself up a scrapbook-style blog at Tumblr, and so far it’s not looking too bad, even if I do say so myself.
It’s a rare moment on Screenwipe that Charlie Brooker starts eulogising a show. However, with The Wire it’s more than deserved. I’m gradually working my way towards the end of series two as we speak, and I have three sitting on the side ready to go.
TV in the UK is so utterly terrible that it seems almost surreal to watch a show that is such high quality. The show has depth, intelligence and is so cumulative that it would be nigh on impossible to arrive at it towards the end of even the first series and have a clue what’s going on. If you haven’t seen it already, then get going now - the fifth series is drawing to a close in the US at the moment and you’ll want to be ready for that, believe me.
“the more you look at the real world, the more you realise that it’s just as interconnected, in just as preposterous a manner, as the fictional one you’re creating.” There’s always room for another Alan Moore interview.
I broadly agree. There are a few mildly dodgy things going on at City Hall, but whether Ken Livingstone enjoys a glass of whiskey is not something I can bring myself to give a flying toss about.
Blogger has been annoying me for too long, so I’ve bitten the bullet and shoved everything across to WordPress. I’m extremely happy with the new service, even if there are a few DNS-related hiccups ongoing at the time of going to press. But then DNS issues are par for the course really, aren’t they?
I’m still not entirely sure about the template, and there are a few problems to be finally ironed out, but if you can read this, something or other’s worked alright. You shouldn’t need to change much other than those who are subscribed to the old feed. The Feedburner feed’s the best one to use. If you’re using it already, there shouldn’t be any need to change anything at all.
Let me know what you think of the new look and if you spot anything that’s really not working properly!
Ever since I heard Jonny Greenwood’s beautiful soundtrack for this movie, I’ve wanted to see it. Since it was Oscars night and it was nominated in a few categories, it seemed like a good opportunity. First, I should lay my cards on the table and point out that I’m a huge PT Anderson fan. Magnolia’s one of my favourite films, and that’s despite the fact that Tom Cruise is one of my least favourite people.
There Will Be Blood does not disappoint. Daniel Day-Lewis was right to receive the Oscar for his extraordinary performance, the cinematography and direction are both beautiful and there is, indeed, blood.
There’s not much worth telling about the story, not because it’s bad, but because the gist of ‘it’s about a man who drills for oil in the early 20th century’ is more than enough to describe the film since it’s the immense amount of style and skill that makes the film rather than the plot.
A lot has been made of the fact that there is no speech for the first half-hour of the film, and it is impressive, but this is not used to make a point, rather because it’s the best way of introducing the film and the characters. Despite the style, there is nothing about this film one could call gimmicky.
There’s little here one could criticize. PT Anderson has made another classic film, and has pulled some of the best performances from the actors he’s cast, as he generally does. The hype here is well-placed.
Sir Richard is not the chattiest of fellows. There are various reasons for this. One is the fact that all of his solo guitar music is instrumental, and therefore he doesn’t even have a microphone pointing at him. Secondly his instrumentals are so long that he doesn’t have many gaps between songs to fit much chatter in. In a 45 minute set, he only plays about 4 songs. Finally, I would imagine that his profuse facial hair might impinge his speech. In this last respect, he fitted in well with the crowd for Earth at the Underworld (the gig having been moved from Dingwalls because of the Great Fire of Camden of 2008).
Sir Richard’s music is not the easiest to categorise. If you imagine Dick Dale taking rather a lot of psychedelics and deciding to set out on a career playing lengthy blues tracks, you’d be somewhere near the money, but still not quite there. He doesn’t seem over-endowed with a lot of all-out rawk ego, but he can coax an electric guitar into making some remarkably hypnotic sounds that skirt on the outer edges of prog-rock, but done with a very lo-fi ethic.
If I’m being honest, 45 minutes of lo-fi experimental improvised psychedelia is probably enough for most people, and certainly for me, but a glance across the crowd shows them to be focussed entirely on Sir Richard’s guitar meanderings and in the quieter parts of his improvisations, you can almost hear the sound of beer being sipped between extensive facial hair. The fact is that the man is very good at what he does. Making lengthy guitar extravaganzas intriguing is a rare skill.
Whereas Sir Richard’s music is best described as hypnotic or, perhaps, fascinating, the music of Earth themselves is summed up better with the single word ‘dull’ or maybe ‘plodding’. When you find yourself part of a musical movement that is described as ‘Drone Rock’ it might be time to give up the good intentions and find a job in McDonalds. Not, unfortunately, for the heroically hirsute members of Earth.
The front man, Dylan Carlson, is probably best known for buying Kurt Cobain the shotgun he used to shoot himself. You shouldn’t judge him badly for this, however. I mean, who of us can truthfully say that we haven’t bought lethal weaponry for a drug-addicted, depressed friend of ours? Exactly. No, what Carlson should be judged badly for is the excruciatingly tedious band that he has founded and insists on inflicting on the unwary.
