Vivid Media

Cycling

My Newton

Crikey

NotGoodEnough

Gumbo Ya Ya!

Clogwog

Memepool

	Sunday, 11 September 2005

Sorry for the stuffups If anyone has visited in the last few days, you may have noticed some weirdnesses. I've stuffed up my template for this blog. I'm gradually fixing it, but the problems might last for a few days yet. Sorry 11:20:55 PM

comments? []

My birthday A windy, but sunny morning found me walking along the beach for a breakfast at Zootz in Henley Square; not too expensive, excellent food and coffee. I love that they serve "A dogz breakfast" - a free bowl of water and dog biscuits for the punters' dogs. Because, let's face it, many people are walking their dogs at this time along the beach. Met up with the kids and went to Marion to see Sin City. What a trip! This was shockingly violent, but all presented in a comic book art mode, although with live action. The CGI was stunning and used to reproduce the graphic novel look. There was a kind of recursive feeling, in that the look exposed what film noir and the comic book owed each other, in terms of shots, lighting, focus, POV, and so many other techniques that now seem old fashioned. But, of course, by using CGI to achieve effects film noir couldn't, and by mimicking current popular culture, the film is paradoxically extremely modern. Or is that post-modern? Or post-post-modern? It uses all the comic book effects of (mostly) black and white, sometimes in reverse, extreme use of tone, stylised and obscure backgrounds, grotesque characters (visually, and as characters), and dutch angle after dutch angle, and other distorted perspectives. Or is this another example of where the comic book has imitated film? The form was also a now familiar one. Quentin Tarantino was a guest director, and with essentially three interweaving stories told slightly out of chronological order, it was reminiscent of Pulp Fiction, and of course, can you get any more pulp fiction than the comic book? The music was excellent, all performances beguiling, and it was an altogether wonderful film. Not that edifying; it didn't make me feel a better person, being violent, sexist, and pushing the film noir sense of honour to the extreme, but damn, it was entertaining. After all this it was home for some exercise, a take away Indian meal from Hurry Curry, and some television. 11:15:16 PM

comments? []

Saturday radio Saturday morning was an excellent time for listening to Radio National. Among the best items were The Music Show and The Science Show. On The Music Show, Andy Ford played the interviews recorded during The Music Show's 2000 visit to New Orleans for Jazzfest. From the ABC website: Guests include Clarence "Frogman" Henry whose big hit "Aint Got No Home" takes on a whole new meaning now; Barbara Hawkins of the Dixie Cups (Iko Iko) who lost everything in Katrina, and the soul queen of New Orleans Irma Thomas ("It's Raining" was her hit song!) who amongst all these other musicians is alive and well; young lion of the jazz trumpet Nicholas Payton; another resident whose home was right below the Mississippi levee, bluegrass player Mike West; and New Orleans musical legend Dr John. It was a wonderful show, and can be heard for the next few weeks via (uggh!) RealAudio. Following this The Science Show played a recording of Jared Diamond delivering the Deakin Lecture; again, wonderful stuff. This can listened to as (uggh!) RealAudio, (aarrgh!) Windows Media, or can be downloaded as (phew!) mp3 podcast. Professor Diamond tells us what we can learn from past societies who have suffered environmental collapse. 10:15:12 PM

comments? []

© Copyright 2005 Peter Nixon. Last update: 2/10/05; 8:11:56 AM.