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Posts Tagged ‘Film’

The year we make contact

Highlights of the year thus far:

Breaking Bad - discovered through work colleagues, the ongoing saga of a middle-aged chemistry teacher who discovers he has terminal cancer, and with nothing to lose sets up a crystal meth lab, proves to be consistently entertaining and amusing well into its second season, although I’m slightly concerned that the friends who recommended it were pretty insistent it was the ‘wrongest’ thing on television, bigging it up in my head as Chris Morris’s Oz or somesuch, and yet sitting there watching it, all I can think is how utterly reasonable it all seems.
Not freezing to death during one of January’s many cold snaps. Fucking hell, it’s been cold in the flat though. I hand in my notice next week, which means I should be out of this shithole by mid-April, thank fuck.
Catching up on As It Occurs To Me, which I completely failed to listen to in the run up to Christmas. Richard Herring as brilliantly puerile as ever. Why won’t people let him be on the telly? I also caught his Hitler Moustache show at the Leicester square theatre last week. I saw a pre-Edinburgh preview last year, which was pretty funny, but this was a much more refined, focused act, with lots of new material. He’s a very funny man.
In a similarly late to the party vein, I also picked up the first issue of Dodgem Logic. The Moore stuff is predictably essential, Graham Lineham and Josie Long’s contributions are brief but brilliant, with everything else coming across as a bit meh… And yet, whilst there’s a vein of knee-jerk hippy bollocks there, something appeals about the just-throw-everything-at-the-page editorial direction. It’s the sort of thing I feel should be being done better somewhere on the internet, and yet for some reason isn’t. Interesting to see how it develops.
Saw Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes. Not great, but nowhere near as bad as I thought it was going to be.
My love of Grant Morrison’s ongoing Bat-saga is unconditional and unfailing, which I’m sure will come as a surprise to no one, so isn’t something I’ll go into here. His new creator-owned series Joe The Barbarian on the other hand, was an unknown quantity as I managed to completely miss all the hype and the interviews. I needn’t have worried of course - the first issue is a slowly paced scene-setter, but sets up the series concept beautifully, with incredibly lush artwork by the previously unknown to me Sean Murphy.
Booking myself a trip to SXSW in Austin next month. Not that physically booking it was really much of a highlight, but something to look forward to. I used to joke about how I was boycotting America whilst George W. Bush was in power, but I’ve recently realised I did, in fact, boycott America whilst George W. Bush was in power.

I like the way I teased doing essay-length posts in my end of year round up, but have in fact made even less effort, resorting to bullet points rather than full posts. Something else I started doing this year was Project 365 - a photo a day for a year. Well, the loss of my camera lead, coupled with a few drunken nights where I forgot I was supposed to be taking a picture at some point meant I didn’t even make it through January (seems wholly appropriate the dream was born and died in a pub, mind. I only heard about it the day before NYE, chatting to a colleague in a pub, moments before he made off into the night with a stolen clay pot). Looks like my online fail is destined to continue. Thank you for your continued patience.

Posted on February 14th, 2010
by
nick.brownlow
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Oh God, why is the internet so slow in this house?

Hmm. I did promise to say something about my holiday, didn’t I? A post of sorts exists in notebook form, but looking over it, it’s a rather dull effort so I’m probably going to consign it to the ether. The short version is I went walking in the Lake District towards the end of October, and had a very nice time. There’re pictures and everything.

At the start of the year, I had the goal of doing a minimum of a blog post a month, which obviously I didn’t stick to, and then after my personal life imploded I assumed I’d have a lot more time on my hands and thought hey - maybe I can manage two or three a month - but that didn’t happen either. To be honest, I’ve thrown myself into my day job a bit over the last eight months, and haven’t felt I’ve had a lot to write about (although 15 posts is slightly better than what you would have got in the original plan…). I have to rethink what I want to use this place for again, I think. Most of the blogs I’ve followed over the years have abandoned news/links/micro-posts because there are better outlets for that sort of thing now. The trend seems to be for longer essays, which of course takes time and effort. And if I was going to go down that route, I’d like to do something that might actually be of interest to anyone apart from immediate friends and family - as I’ve pretty much done everything a blogger could do to drive casual traffic away from this site over the last few years, it might be nice to come up with something that might conceivably attract an audience for a change. Less prattling about meeeeeeee next year whatever happens, I reckon.

Creatively, as ever, I need to get more writing done. I’m also getting a bit hacked off with stuff I actually make the effort to finish and place ending up with publications that subsequently crash or disappear without trace. I’m hardly prolific, and the fact the one or two pieces I’m proudest of have effectively been in limbo - in some cases for years - is pretty sickening. I recently found out my major completed project of last year, for a book that was supposed to be out last January, probably now isn’t going to be in the book at all, and will likely end up as a promotional pdf. All very demoralising, and I certainly need to rethink my focus next year.

I’d thought about doing a separate best of the year post, but I think I’ll just blurt it all out here: Book: Bad Vibes, Music: St Vincent - Actor, Film: Moon, TV: Err, The Inbetweeners? Was that this year? It was for me, Comic: Batman: RIP - fuck you internet, I loved it.

See you next year, unless I get chatty between now and new year. Have a good one.

Posted on December 26th, 2009
by
nick.brownlow
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I am now responsible for the spiritual and moral development of someone else’s child

A few weekends ago, I made the trip up North to become Godparent to my nephew. Fortunately, my brother and his wife don’t take the massive responsibilities they’ve asked me to accept too seriously, so mainly this meant going into a Church for an hour and then onto an afternoon do at a local public house, where said nephew regularly admonished me for spending too much time at the bar and not enough time at his party. I’m pleased to report he’s developed a keen fascination with trains, and can now readily discern between an electrically powered Pendelino and a regular diesel train (both pass through his local station regularly). Whilst there is something impressive about the speed of the Pendelino trains that run up and down that west coast line, not to mention the engineering that allows them to do it, I hope he doesn’t become too disillusioned when he travels on one and finds they’re hideously cramped, uncomfortable, and always ludicrously overbooked coming out of London. Branson, if you allow that to happen to my young charge, they’ll be Hell to pay.

After the main party I continued drinking in town with my brother and Terry Christian, which was unexpected, where they attempted to convince me Bramhall, Cheshire was a better place to be single than London.

Meanwhile, been to the cinema recently:

Moon - reservations about how much you’d actually save, economically speaking, by establishing the kind of set-up that serves as the the film’s premise aside, I really enjoyed Bowie Jnr’s directorial debut. Was pleased the much talked about twist was actually the premise, and that it turned out to be a rather touching, thought-provoking movie about alienation, identity and compassion. A great performance from Sam Rockwell also cements his place as one of the best actors of his generation.

District 9 - This, on the other hand, was just silly and tedious. Tonally it veered all over the place, from humourous to horrific to po-faced cod-meaningful, and never in a particularly entertaining way. I also think if you’re going to make a film about the evils of racism, then making the ‘others’ part of a caste system in which the entirety of the lower-caste act throughout the film exactly as the human racists describe them as acting, probably isn’t a particularly smart decision.

Next: what I did on my holidays

Posted on October 24th, 2009
by
nick.brownlow
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I keep forgetting about the Goddamn tiger

The Hangover is gloriously stupid and mostly hilarious, the latest in a string of Hollywood comedies that remove or else sideline the obligatory romantic subplot and concentrate on the business of actually being funny. See also anything by Ferrell/McKay, Superbad, 40-Year Old Virgin, Tropic Thunder et al. I saw it in the incongruous environs of the Tricycle Cinema, which I can get to from my front door in about three minutes and costs only a fiver, so there is the plus of easier access to cool stuff to mitigate the minuses of tides of insatiable vermin and casual street crime here in Kilburn.

Been keeping my weekends busy of late; firstly, had the family down to the big smoke for a couple of days, leading to many touristy things being done, such as paddling in Hyde Park, heckling people on the Plinth and pretending to be pirates on the Golden Hinde. Revelation of the weekend was that the Original and Big Bus companies’ employees really hate each other, and bad-mouth their competitors at every opportunity. Glorious visions of the two uniformed tribes engaged in pitched pub battles ensued. Also, ate at Planet Hollywood for the first time and was seated beside Bruce Willis’s vest from Die Hard with a Vengeance and one of Freddy Kreuger’s gloves, which went some way towards making up for a disappointing steak dinner.

Then last weekend I ventured out to Bristol to meet up with old chum Andy, and we went drinking on the Whiteladies Road. Our evening culminated in the Victoria pub and an increasingly dark conversation (”what this country needs is a dictator”) with an old boy who eventually announced he’d voted for the BNP in the last election (in his defence, he had nothing kind to say about Hitler). After a leisurely start the following morning, we went for a walk along the Downs, taking in Clifton and the Avon gorge, which was nice.

Rattled through Sarah Pinborough’s The Taken last week, which was a solid, enjoyable mass-market horror novel concerning a remote English village under siege by a multitude of evil ghost children rather than the traditional solitary apparition. Liked it enough to pre-order Feeding Ground, at any rate.

Posted on August 20th, 2009
by
nick.brownlow
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February Calling

Am late posting about February, which is bad, because I actually did stuff. Firstly, I went along to Gipsy Hill Comedy Night at the Black Sheep on the 13th, a local night for local people with not so-local acts. It was Richard Herring headlining that caught my eye and got me through the door, but it turned out to be a really strong line-up, with four great sets and even a compere who was pretty decent. Also: handy for an early Palace Spice. Then there was Black Box Recorder’s second night at the Luminaire in Kilburn, my second dose of Haines in two months, this time with added Moore and Nixey, and predictably great. March already all the poorer for being a Hainesian desert of a month.

I also caught the preview of Let The Right One In at the BFI, which I was looking forward to after pleasant rumblings from across the pond. It doesn’t get a general release here until April, so for once my movieblogging might actually be of use to somebody. In short, it’s very good. I’ve had the book it’s based on on order from Amazon for a while, and I understand it’s a lot more convoluted, but the film itself is elegantly spartan and understated, with moments of warmth, horror, violence and even (black) comedy. For my money, certainly the best Cold War era-set Swedish Vampire film I’ve ever seen.

Reading for Feb:

The Wine Dark Sea by Robert Aickman

Err, that’s a bit rubbish really isn’t it? I’ve now read all of Aickman’s short fiction currently in-print, however, and it’s definitely been something of a revelation. As a frequently cited influence for many of my favourite authors, I wasn’t really expecting to find much I hadn’t already encountered elsewhere, but Aickman was a true master of the form, and his voice is still very much a unique one.