majorarcana

Archive for April, 2008

A local post for local people

Tonight was spent at the Comedy Bar, watching comrade Kershaw’s new band.

Londoners - remember tomorrow that this is not a first-past-the-post election. If you’re voting just to get Ken out or keep Boris from getting in you can still vote for your preferred candidate with your first preference vote, whether that be Brian Paddick, Sian Berry or even God forbid Richard Barnbrook, and use your second preference to cast the traditional “may the worst man lose vote”. And if your apathy has become so entrenched that you’re considering not voting, please reconsider. As increasingly silly as our continued exercise in democracy has become, I’m sure we’d all miss it if it suddenly went away somewhere.

Posted on April 30th, 2008
by
nick.brownlow
3 Comments »

Year in film 17: No Country for Old Men

The project resumes with a film I originally intended to see back in February. Since then it’s had critical praise heaped upon it from all quarters, won several Oscars, and, I’m happy to report, deservedly so. No Country for Old Men is a really good film. The plot is simple and straightforward, the script tight and entirely utilitarian. The Coens invest the stuff of genius in it however, and the result is a masterclass in filmmaking; a resounding demonstration of the difference between genuine talent and mere competence.

It’s also probably the most nakedly unsentimental film to win an Oscar in some time, but it’s worth mentioning it’s far from being the darkest film I’ve ever seen. Or even just this year, for that matter. Javier Bardem’s chillingly intense performance aside, the general tone is more one of melancholy and disappointment, ultimately segueing into sad resignation. It’s simply a superbly executed film I can happily recommend to anyone.

Posted on April 30th, 2008
by
nick.brownlow
1 Comment »

The continuing decline of Western civilization, pt 223,005

Interesting post by Charlie Stross on brand dillution as pertains to the Virgin brand. he’s unloading on Virgin Media (who lest we forget are actually NTHell in crimson garb), but mentions Virgin Trains a an early example of the sort of thing he’s talking about. I concur. At the time I wasn’t terribly impressed with the divvying up of my country’s rail network by a venue of opportunistic vultures, but I was cautiously optimistic about Branson’s involvement - Virgin was, as Stross observes, a brand associated with quality and ambition, and he certainly talked the talk about making substantial investments in his new business. I was wrong of course - Virgin Trains are cramped, uncomfortable, poorly equipped and whilst they may be quicker, I’ve never actually noticed as I’ve never travelled on one that’s been even remotely on time. Consequently, last Friday afternoon I was feeling a bit apprehensive about travelling up north on one to see the folks. Turns out I needn’t have worried - they’d cancelled all their northbound services out of Euston. Cheers, Richard! Your Alternative 230 self’s fate would be too good for you.

I couldn’t find a copy of last week’s 2000AD (in order to pick up pt 2 of Paul Holden and Al Ewing’s Dead Signal) , despite going into three different Smiths in Central London. I’ll grab a copy of the relevant prog next time I’m in FP, but this does beg the question of where you can buy the ‘Tooth these days if not WHSmiths. Do they just sell out really quickly or something?

Posted on April 25th, 2008
by
nick.brownlow
3 Comments »

Year in film 16: The Orphanage

Regular readers of this blog (both of them) may be wondering what happened to the whole year in film project. The answer is that March was largely a cinema free month on account of the circumstances described in recent posts. Annoyingly, there was also lots of good stuff on as well. The project continues though, and I’m not so far behind I can’t recover things with a few film heavy weeks. The problem is, of course, finding the time to fit them in. I’m going to try and maintain a once a week routine for a bit so as not to fall behind any further. Thank Cthulhu festival season is almost upon us.

The Orphanage has done rather well for itself both commercially and critically, but it’s by no means terribly original or groundbreaking in of itself. It lacks the weirdness of producer del Toro’s own forays into the genre, and whilst it might not be a traditional traditional ghost story, it wears its (Henry) Jamesian credentials on its sleeve, and from a stylistic point of view it has plenty of recent antecedents as well. For most of its duration it’s a competent genre piece from a director who has clearly read and fully assimilated the stock horror playbook, and I’d have been happy to give it a thumbs up on that basis alone. What elevates it is the ending (not really a twist as such, although there is a slight swerve), which manages to be genuinely powerful and genuinely horrific, but also mildly cathartic, in no small part to the superb performance by Belén Rueda all the reviews seem to be raving about. If I had one complaint, it’s that it’s going to be a bit too easy for someone to remake in a few years time with disastrous results. Nonetheless, an entirely admirable first feature.

TV extra: The Things I Haven’t Told You was another BBC 3 pilot watched on iPlayer. The Twin Peaks-esque set up was moderately intriguing, but didn’t really grab me in the end, plus the acting was a little flat and the setting just a bit too non-descript. Also, teens taking drugs and having sex? Really not shocking at all, especially when most of the cast appear to be in their twenties. It probably doesn’t help that it hasn’t been long since I saw the sublime Funland, which succeeds in almost every way this didn’t.

Posted on April 8th, 2008
by
nick.brownlow
3 Comments »

In the Footsteps of Arthur (maybe)

Easter saw us decamp to North Cornwall for the week, home to a magnificently rugged stretch of coastline haunted by phantom fishing boats, grail knights and sinister, hooded apparitions. I’d been there before, almost thirteen years ago and had always planned to return, almost succeeding on at least two occasions (the last time, in 2004, I’d planned to go to nearby Boscastle only for the town to be destroyed by a freak flood the weekend before I was due to go). This time we stayed in Port Isaac, a small fishing village which doubled as a remote Scottish island port in the Robert Holmes penned 1981 science fiction thriller The Nightmare Man. Although a working port the town is mostly given over to tourism now, but the oddly early Easter weekend meant not all the schools were broken up yet, allowing us to enjoy its narrow winding streets and warm, intimate pubs after a few long walks along the coastal path in relative peace.

A little further up the coast is Tintagel, reputedly the birthplace of King Arthur and home to an extraordinarily tacky Arthurian themed cottage industry, along with the truly spectacular ruins of a medieval Norman castle. We took a day out to stomp around the ruins whilst I related the story of Arthur’s conception to my long suffering girlfriend, leaning heavily on the version in John Boorman’s flawed masterpiece Excalibur. Afterwards we drove over to Boscastle, a strange place to find Austin Osman Spare’s scrying stone or Aleister Crowley’s favourite ceremonial chalice, but both are there, on display there at the superb Museum of Witchcraft. I was pleased to see the town has mostly picked itself up since the floods, although there’s still plenty of damage evident.

We also visited Padstow for a day, a fishing port probably most associated in people’s minds with celebrity television chef Rick Stein, who owns a number of properties there. I was actually a little horrified as to the extent of Stein’s grip on the town, which was disappointing as I own a few of his books and feel slightly soiled by association now. Padstow retains its quaintness on account of the Doom Bar - a large sandbank which sits in the estuary just outside the harbour rendering it an unsuitable port for large shipping. The Doom Bar lends its name to a rather nice ale by the local Sharps brewery, and was supposedly created by a mermaid, who after being shot by a fisherman for spurning his advances consigned the port to centuries of economic mediocrity, which is a much more interesting thing to remember Padstow for than “Stein’s Shop”…

Managed to avoid reading anything degree related, instead devoting my time to Greenwitch, the third book in Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence, and Peter Morville’s Ambient Findability, which wasn’t quite as exciting, but was certainly thought-provoking. Audio-visual entertainment on an evening came from my marvelous new Jeeves and Wooster DVD box set and Pete Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.