Here’s my top ten overbearing mothers in film for Grolsch Film Works, and what a grizzly bunch they are! The wonderful Maysles’ brothers documentary Grey Gardens didn’t make the top ten, but I figure any excuse to post some stills is good by me.
Two articles for Cinevue coming up. My review of The Paolo Sorrentino box set collection, out now on Artifical Eye, and a special feature on the Popcorn Horror Iphone app. Smokin’.
Posted in Film, Horror films, Writing
A small feature I wrote on the Ryoji Ikeda exhibition in Flux magazine can be read here.
All photos mine apart from the last (from the Hamburger Bahnhof museum website).
My “non fulminating, non Daily Mail” review of Nima Nourizadeh’s ‘Project: X’ (2012) for Permanent Plastic Helmet is here. OH MY GOD, BEER PONG!!
Here’s an article I wrote for Flux magazine on rock stars and hot beverages. Has anybody tried Bonnie Prince Billy’s coffee yet? Any good?
The above image is from a 60′s cutlery advert.
I love this. This image, from a Russian elementary school textbook called The Miracle of Life, is (natch) from best blog ever 50 Watts. Brains definitely look like that, all squiggly and crammed with crap in various compartments.
So…. my brain is as ever filled with crap, and here is some of it.
* A rather tongue-firmly-in-cheek review I did of Jessica Edwards’s 1940′s style A Midsummer Night’s Dream over at The Spectator Arts blog
*A short article on occult magician and general pervert Aleister Crowley over at Dissocia Zine
* General feelings of confusion at what the hell I’m meant to do with this accumulation of crap post-university, otherwise known as The Quarter Life Crisis.
WOOO!!!
‘The morning after the night before’- taken by Hapsical
Posted in Art, occult, Photography, Writing, Zines
Sydney Smith, Letter to Lady Georgiana (Feb. 16, 1820):
Dear Lady Georgiana,
Nobody has suffered more from low spirits than I have done—so I feel for you. Here are my prescriptions.
1st. Live as well as you dare.
2nd. Go into the shower-bath with a small quantity of water at a temperature low enough to give you a slight sensation of cold, 75° or 80°.
3rd. Amusing books.
4th. Short views of human life—not further than dinner or tea.
5th. Be as busy as you can.
6th. See as much as you can of those friends who respect and like you.
7th. And of those acquaintances who amuse you.
8th. Make no secret of low spirits to your friends, but talk of them freely—they are always worse for dignified concealment.
9th. Attend to the effects tea and coffee produce upon you.
10th. Compare your lot with that of other people.
11th. Don’t expect too much from human life—a sorry business at the best.
12th. Avoid poetry, dramatic representations (except comedy), music, serious novels, melancholy, sentimental people, and every thing likely to excite feeling or emotion, not ending in active benevolence.
13th. Do good, and endeavour to please everybody of every degree.
14th. Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue.
15th. Make the room where you commonly sit gay and pleasant.
16th. Struggle by little and little against idleness.
17th. Don’t be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself, but do yourself justice.
18th. Keep good blazing fires.
19th. Be firm and constant in the exercise of rational religion.
20th. Believe me, dear Lady Georgiana,
Very truly yours,—Sydney Smith
image copyright: The Selby
Posted in Art, Inspiration, Literature, Writing
“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken.”
— Anaïs Nin (The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1)
Photography by Neil Krug
Posted in Art, Photography, Writing
Here’s my gig review on CocoRosie for Soundblab.com. Read here.
If you haven’t got into CocoRosie, then give them a go now. The new album Grey Oceans has come out, and its brilliant. My favourite is still The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn. They’re an acquired taste, but if you like freaky folk of the Joanna Newsome variety, but trippier and with beatboxing, then give them a try.
Today’s the 20th anniversary of David Lynch’s cult tv series Twin Peaks. To celebrate, I’ve written an article on coffee in film for the culture blog Touching From A Distance.
Here’s one of the shots I mention in the article, from Jean-Luc Godard’s Two Or Three Things I Know About Her (1966).
