Sunday, March 30, 2008
Canons Park
We've finally had a nice dry day in London for the first time in what seems like weeks, Spring started last weekend after all, but the weather over the last month has been windier, wetter and colder than early January. Last weekend we had snowy spells, some of which were substantial, even if nothing settled.
So, with no rain I had to head out for a walk, first to Kingsbury, then going north along the Jubilee Line to Canons Park. It was unsurprisingly rather damp, I ended up splashing through massive puddles heading back to the road.
So, with no rain I had to head out for a walk, first to Kingsbury, then going north along the Jubilee Line to Canons Park. It was unsurprisingly rather damp, I ended up splashing through massive puddles heading back to the road.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Giant Lego figure fished out of the Dutch sea. Oh sure, they say 'they just found him'...
Labels: cool stuff
The weather has been douche-tastically poor in recent weeks. We actually had a mild and clear January, but March has felt as though it was always raining, even when it wasn't. Last weekend we ran the gamut, hail on Easter Friday, rain on Saturday, snow on Sunday and the odd sunny moment interspersed with the rest. It's also, in defiance of common sense, got colder as the year has progressed, I barely needed the central heating at New Years, now it seems as though it's on all the time.
Anyway, Portishead! I'm looking forward to the release of the album I'd given up hoping for at the end of next month. Having listened to a download there's no real clunkers that jump out, though at the same time only a few that stand out as being amazing. Machine Gun, which quaintly is apparently being released as a single, is my most immediate favourite, for most of it's duration cleaving to a minimalist ethic which reminds me of Tricky's Poems from way back in the last decade.
Anyway, Portishead! I'm looking forward to the release of the album I'd given up hoping for at the end of next month. Having listened to a download there's no real clunkers that jump out, though at the same time only a few that stand out as being amazing. Machine Gun, which quaintly is apparently being released as a single, is my most immediate favourite, for most of it's duration cleaving to a minimalist ethic which reminds me of Tricky's Poems from way back in the last decade.
Labels: music, Portishead, YouTube
Thursday, March 27, 2008
There's no news today, so a number of papers have followed The Sun on the Thomas Beatie story...
'Pregnant' man stuns medical profession.
Married 'man' claims to be five months pregnant.
American man claims to be five months pregnant with a baby girl.
Sex change bloke set to be a mum.
Interesting that it's only the Indy that feel it necessary to question his gender in their headline. They also, for some reason, quote one Margaret Somerville who also has a reputation as being down on gay-marriage.
"You're not a man, you're a woman and you're having a baby and you're actually having your own baby."
Um yes, in the way that women always have their own babies. Unless they are surrogates I suppose... Or is she trying to suggest that Beatie supplied both sperm and egg?
"Just because you put on a clown suit, doesn't mean that you don't still exist underneath.'"
I don't even know what this is supposed to mean!
'Pregnant' man stuns medical profession.
Married 'man' claims to be five months pregnant.
American man claims to be five months pregnant with a baby girl.
Sex change bloke set to be a mum.
Interesting that it's only the Indy that feel it necessary to question his gender in their headline. They also, for some reason, quote one Margaret Somerville who also has a reputation as being down on gay-marriage.
"You're not a man, you're a woman and you're having a baby and you're actually having your own baby."
Um yes, in the way that women always have their own babies. Unless they are surrogates I suppose... Or is she trying to suggest that Beatie supplied both sperm and egg?
"Just because you put on a clown suit, doesn't mean that you don't still exist underneath.'"
I don't even know what this is supposed to mean!
Labels: children, transgenderism, transphobia
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008
The extraordinary story of a transman's pregnancy. The uplifting part about a family awaiting the birth of their first child is balanced by the depressing part of the community and family around them putting so many barriers and prejudice before them.
Labels: transgenderism
Monday, March 17, 2008
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Xenu has a Posse
Saturday, March 15, 2008
A useful little widget from the National Statistics people that tell you exactly how depressed to get about the area where you live in terms of health 'and that'.
Labels: sociology, Statistics, United Kingdom
Comics Are Sometimes Shit... It's Official (Part Two!)
You may remember that some four weeks ago I started talking about why comics were shit and had two reasons for which, the first of which I only got part way through explaining before losing too much enthusiasm to carry on.
So Spidey makes a deal with the devil to save his hundred-year-old granny, bloggers frothed and Joe Quesada sits back and waits for the quality of the stories to magically improve.
What really irritates me is that the inbuilt resistance of comics to change. Soap operas try to restrict change to when an actor wants to leave or drops dead, having no such constraints comics can go round in circles until the publisher turns the lights out. It's a valid argument that Spidey was married so long that breaking it up goes against this point but by and large most comics have tinkering around the edges with hasty back-steps (or 'retcons') when something proves unpopular, they actually killed off Aunt May many years ago, only to reveal a while later that that Aunt May was an imposter and the real one was safe and sound. A few years ago they published a very well done issue where Aunt May finally discovers that Peter is Spiderman and, rather than fainting and/or having a heart attack, as had been the working assumption for years as to her response, dealt with it. A bonus of the Mephisto deal is that no-one remembers Peter is Spiderman, undoing that little story.
So Superman saves the world, so why can he never get the girl? Even Grant Morrison thinks it was a bad idea to finally allow, after some fifty years, Superman to marry Lois Lane, though he doesn't say why. Again, why should a married couple lead to less interesting stories than an unmarried one? Thanks to the interweb you can see any number of the so-called Silver Age Superman stories where the two of them dance around each other, Superman not wanting to be 'ensnared' into marriage but not wanting Lois to give up hope either. It's not necessarily 'more adult' to have the two of them married but if you work on the assumption that it was going to happen some day why not make that some day today?
The worst and most egregious example of this is DC's caving in to HEAT. In the 90s, DC killed off (alright, turned evil, turned good and then killed off) one of their underperforming heroes, Hal Jordan the Green Lantern and brought in a new character. A bunch of fatbeards took umbridge and, a decade later, Hal was back. Never mind that he was got rid of because he was a consistently boring character who wasn't selling comics. But he was Green Lantern when the people complaining were kids, so he had to be Green Lantern now. Change is bad.
I suppose all that aggravates me is the superficial trappings around the story, I'm not suggesting that Superman/Spiderman/Whoever stop their eternal battle against evil, I suppose that really, I'm annoyed that the people making comics aren't making more effort to disguise the fact they are selling me today what they sold me yesterday. Which makes me as much of a fool as the next comics collecter, or would do if it wasn't for the fact that I don't buy more than a trickle of comics these days and, when I do it's stuff in limited series with a beginning, middle and end planned.
The other point I was going to use to argue that comics was shit, was one of the big black-and-white phonebook sized collections that DC are doing of their old stuff, in this case DC Showcase Presents Metal Men but it's not really worth the time. Most of all comics at any time are rubbish and these are no different. Of course the artwork is appalling and the stories are repetative, they weren't written to be read again in a month, let alone forty years later. So they could afford to have each story follow the same basic pattern, but why anyone would part with money for it defies common sense. Even dialing down my expectations as far as I could manage and reading it based on my memories of more recent appearences by the characters I couldn't last more than about a hundred and fifty pages beforetossing carefully placing the book aside.
What I would recommend is Good as Lily by Derek Kirk Kim and Jesse Hamm from DC's appallingly titled 'Minx' range of comics aimed at women. School aged Grace Kwon suddenly finds herself meeting herself at three different ages, one a brattish pre-teen, one a twenty-something and one an old lady. As she struggles to help put on a school play she and they come to terms with the history they all have in common. Unlike the samples of other titles in the series at the end of the book which all look like they are entirely generic stories with 'teenaged and female' pasted into the lead character's position this somehow manages to have an 'everywoman' feel about it, with each of the four ages of Grace's clearly defined. Where it does fall down is in the relationship of Grace and Lily, her dead sister. This gets all of a couple of brief mentions in the story and doesn't occupy Grace's thoughts much, I did wonder if Kim meant to beef that up in a later draft of the script and forgot, it's a plot point that could be excised with absolutely no harm to the story. The artwork is halfway between cartoon and 'realistic', but Hamm has a gift for expressing emotion through a character's body language. It's dei=finitely worth your time, unlike most of the rubbish out there.
So Spidey makes a deal with the devil to save his hundred-year-old granny, bloggers frothed and Joe Quesada sits back and waits for the quality of the stories to magically improve.
What really irritates me is that the inbuilt resistance of comics to change. Soap operas try to restrict change to when an actor wants to leave or drops dead, having no such constraints comics can go round in circles until the publisher turns the lights out. It's a valid argument that Spidey was married so long that breaking it up goes against this point but by and large most comics have tinkering around the edges with hasty back-steps (or 'retcons') when something proves unpopular, they actually killed off Aunt May many years ago, only to reveal a while later that that Aunt May was an imposter and the real one was safe and sound. A few years ago they published a very well done issue where Aunt May finally discovers that Peter is Spiderman and, rather than fainting and/or having a heart attack, as had been the working assumption for years as to her response, dealt with it. A bonus of the Mephisto deal is that no-one remembers Peter is Spiderman, undoing that little story.
So Superman saves the world, so why can he never get the girl? Even Grant Morrison thinks it was a bad idea to finally allow, after some fifty years, Superman to marry Lois Lane, though he doesn't say why. Again, why should a married couple lead to less interesting stories than an unmarried one? Thanks to the interweb you can see any number of the so-called Silver Age Superman stories where the two of them dance around each other, Superman not wanting to be 'ensnared' into marriage but not wanting Lois to give up hope either. It's not necessarily 'more adult' to have the two of them married but if you work on the assumption that it was going to happen some day why not make that some day today?
The worst and most egregious example of this is DC's caving in to HEAT. In the 90s, DC killed off (alright, turned evil, turned good and then killed off) one of their underperforming heroes, Hal Jordan the Green Lantern and brought in a new character. A bunch of fatbeards took umbridge and, a decade later, Hal was back. Never mind that he was got rid of because he was a consistently boring character who wasn't selling comics. But he was Green Lantern when the people complaining were kids, so he had to be Green Lantern now. Change is bad.
I suppose all that aggravates me is the superficial trappings around the story, I'm not suggesting that Superman/Spiderman/Whoever stop their eternal battle against evil, I suppose that really, I'm annoyed that the people making comics aren't making more effort to disguise the fact they are selling me today what they sold me yesterday. Which makes me as much of a fool as the next comics collecter, or would do if it wasn't for the fact that I don't buy more than a trickle of comics these days and, when I do it's stuff in limited series with a beginning, middle and end planned.
The other point I was going to use to argue that comics was shit, was one of the big black-and-white phonebook sized collections that DC are doing of their old stuff, in this case DC Showcase Presents Metal Men but it's not really worth the time. Most of all comics at any time are rubbish and these are no different. Of course the artwork is appalling and the stories are repetative, they weren't written to be read again in a month, let alone forty years later. So they could afford to have each story follow the same basic pattern, but why anyone would part with money for it defies common sense. Even dialing down my expectations as far as I could manage and reading it based on my memories of more recent appearences by the characters I couldn't last more than about a hundred and fifty pages before
What I would recommend is Good as Lily by Derek Kirk Kim and Jesse Hamm from DC's appallingly titled 'Minx' range of comics aimed at women. School aged Grace Kwon suddenly finds herself meeting herself at three different ages, one a brattish pre-teen, one a twenty-something and one an old lady. As she struggles to help put on a school play she and they come to terms with the history they all have in common. Unlike the samples of other titles in the series at the end of the book which all look like they are entirely generic stories with 'teenaged and female' pasted into the lead character's position this somehow manages to have an 'everywoman' feel about it, with each of the four ages of Grace's clearly defined. Where it does fall down is in the relationship of Grace and Lily, her dead sister. This gets all of a couple of brief mentions in the story and doesn't occupy Grace's thoughts much, I did wonder if Kim meant to beef that up in a later draft of the script and forgot, it's a plot point that could be excised with absolutely no harm to the story. The artwork is halfway between cartoon and 'realistic', but Hamm has a gift for expressing emotion through a character's body language. It's dei=finitely worth your time, unlike most of the rubbish out there.
Labels: comics, DC comics, Marvel Comics, Spiderman, stupidity, Superman
Gay GAy GAY!
Scissor Sisters to write songs for new musical based on Tales of the City . I think my gay-o-meter just broke. This could be awesome!
Labels: authors, gay, music, Scissor Sisters
The infamous bit of video where Happy Days went shit.
Henry Winkler talks about, amongst other things, the bit of video where Happy Days went shit.
Henry Winkler talks about, amongst other things, the bit of video where Happy Days went shit.
Labels: comedy, Television, YouTube
Friday, March 14, 2008
Well, Tony Blair's gone, Bush is into his last 365 days and the troops will be pulled out 'soon', so it must be time for the fragile left-wing anti-war coalition to fall apart, and to do it quicker than you can say "What ever happened to the Popular Front Reg?" All coalitions are like a family, and in this family Class War are like Kevin the Teenager, sitting in their bedroom, sulking.
An Open Letter To The Stop The War Coalition. I suppose we should be thankful, if this were fifteen years ago Class War would probably be LULzing out with 'your so gay' rather than hil-lar-ious flaccid dick jokes.
An Open Letter To The Stop The War Coalition. I suppose we should be thankful, if this were fifteen years ago Class War would probably be LULzing out with 'your so gay' rather than hil-lar-ious flaccid dick jokes.
Labels: stupidity, The War Against Terror
Thursday, March 13, 2008
A huge Pentagon study finds no link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Despite the fact the American military have trashed the place, Saddam is dead and the report's existence wasn't exactly going to be sung from the rooftops, Shrubya is stopping it from being generally released, presumably in the hope that if it isn't published, it isn't true. Send an SAE to the Pentagon and they'll send you the report on a CD.
Labels: George 'Shrubya' Bush, Iraq, The War Against Terror, United States
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Replace the current national anthem with "The National Anthem" by Radiohead.
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to stop deporting gays and lesbians to countries where they may be imprisoned, tortured or executed because of their sexuality.
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to stop deporting gays and lesbians to countries where they may be imprisoned, tortured or executed because of their sexuality.
Labels: gay, homophobia, immigration, lesbians, music, petitions, Radiohead, United Kingdom
Christian Voice Incitement-to-Violence Watch
On the 6th of March Stephen Green, head/sole member of charmless bigots Christian Voice, wrote on his website, in relation to the Government getting rid of the Blasphemy Laws:
'I believe that one way or another, and by God's grace, there isn't going to be blasphemy in this United Kingdom. It is a pity that it will probably have to be stopped in many cases without recourse to the law, but obviously the Lord is calling Christians to stand up for His holiness in other ways in these God-defying days.'
'I believe that one way or another, and by God's grace, there isn't going to be blasphemy in this United Kingdom. It is a pity that it will probably have to be stopped in many cases without recourse to the law, but obviously the Lord is calling Christians to stand up for His holiness in other ways in these God-defying days.'
Labels: Christian Voice, Fundamentalists- Christian, Stephen Green, terrorism
Plan for ID cards announced.
...The first people to get ID cards will be non-EEA foreign nationals living in the UK. They will begin carrying cards in November of this year. The roll-out will start with people historically most likely to abuse the system - including people living here on student visas or marriage visas.
Define 'system', define 'abuse', back this up with some proof or otherwise apologise.
...The first people to get ID cards will be non-EEA foreign nationals living in the UK. They will begin carrying cards in November of this year. The roll-out will start with people historically most likely to abuse the system - including people living here on student visas or marriage visas.
Define 'system', define 'abuse', back this up with some proof or otherwise apologise.
Labels: Government, ID cards, Labour
A cynic might suggest that The Bush Tragedy: The Unmaking of a President by Jacob Weisberg is a book designed to appeal to me the most. An attack on George W. Bush from the left, it uses the two common views of him, as an empty cypher for the villanous policies of Cheney, Rove et al, or are the bloodiest mass-murderer in American history. Anyone following the Great British pantomime at the Royal Courts of Justice will be aware that it seems increasingly difficult in the modern age to define objective facts about people any more and, given that the Bush family obviously didn't help with the book and are not given to public introspection anyway, it would be fair to point out that all of Weisberg's suppositions are based on his reading of history. That said, it's a thrilling reading of the story, casting Shrubya as a largely empty vessel who has defined his adult life by trying to surpass his father by doing the same as him in the hopes of doing better, hence his laughable business career followed by the transition to politics. Weisberg points to mistakes in his father's era in the Presidency that could be argued to inform how the son became Texas Governor and then President.
Weisberg reserves most ire for Cheney and Rove, the former a Machiavelli who knows exactly how to push Bush's buttons to get him to do what Cheney wants while the latter worships Bush to such an extent that he's willing to dismantle the American Constitution on his behalf.
I did enjoy zipping through The Bush Tragedy but I expect that one's appreciation of the book will depend on how strongly one believes the central premise about the key players before they even pick the thing up.
Weisberg reserves most ire for Cheney and Rove, the former a Machiavelli who knows exactly how to push Bush's buttons to get him to do what Cheney wants while the latter worships Bush to such an extent that he's willing to dismantle the American Constitution on his behalf.
I did enjoy zipping through The Bush Tragedy but I expect that one's appreciation of the book will depend on how strongly one believes the central premise about the key players before they even pick the thing up.
Labels: American Presidency, books, George 'Shrubya' Bush, The War Against Terror, United States
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Hampstead Heath Tree
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
If you're running short on your cute allowance for the day, you need the video of a Jellyfish swarm. [via Bad Science]
In one of those dumb ideas that, like marching the misbehaving to cashpoints to fine them on the spot, make a big splash on announcement but are hopefully never heard of again, Lord Goldsmith reckons that making school-leavers swear an oath of allegiance to the Monarchy will give them the sense of citizenship that they are so obviously currently lacking. Which is really one of those special kinds of dumb that reeks of the committee suggesting it staying up late the night before it had to be shipped to the printers and writing down the first half-arsed thought that comes to mind.
I can see it resonating with the Prime Minister though. Maybe we can make the pledge while having our ID Cards grafted to our foreheads?
I can see it resonating with the Prime Minister though. Maybe we can make the pledge while having our ID Cards grafted to our foreheads?
Labels: citizenship, Government
Sunday, March 09, 2008
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Stop ISP's from breaching customers privacy via advertising technologies.
More specific information, involving the mysterious Phorm, here.
More specific information, involving the mysterious Phorm, here.
Labels: Government, Internet Service Providers, petitions, privacy
A Challenge
Fancy trying something impossible? Simon Munnery is suggesting you might like to try getting the BBC to rebroadcast/release on DVD his seminal Attention Scum! It's been described by director Stewart Lee as 'impossible', so it's surely worth a try, right?
Labels: comedy, Simon Munnery
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Here's hoping...
If you want me I'll be getting in the alcohol and party-streamers, just in case.
If you want me I'll be getting in the alcohol and party-streamers, just in case.
Labels: Margaret Thatcher
Friday, March 07, 2008
Poor old Stephen Green, head/sole member of charmless bigots Christian Voice. He's not having a great time of things at the moment. First, The Law Lords have ruled that his spat with the BBC and producers of Jerry Springer: The Opera has indeed reached it's end.
The decision of the House of Lords, in conceding that there was a point of law at issue - that of whether theatres and broadcasters have a legal loophole to blaspheme - but declining to hear it on a pretext, brings the Jerry Springer the Opera case to an end. It means there is no redress in British law against those who portrayed Jesus Christ on stage and on the BBC as an infantile coprophiliac, told by the character of Jerry Springer in the show to 'Grow up for Christ's sake and put some f***ing clothes on.' Apparently Jesus Christ, Mary the mother of the Lord and Almighty God may now be ridiculed and insulted on stage and by broadcasters free from the sanctions of the law.
Stephen Green said, 'Contrary to the finding of these Law Lords, it is indeed a matter of great general public importance at this very time that the Almighty Creator of the universe and the Saviour of mankind have been insulted and vilified in this United Kingdom. It brings down the judgment of God on us all. I love my neighbour and I do not want that to happen.
'Christians will now have to take matters into their own hands when Christ is insulted on stage and on screen. As it happens, our campaign against the theatre tour of Jerry Springer the Opera was highly successful, by the grace of God. The producers and theatres lost a fortune and Stewart Lee himself said it was 'ruined'. Blasphemy isn't going to happen on stage in the United Kingdom, it's just that unless and until this loophole is closed, Christians will have to find avenues other than those of the law.
Notice that? If Stephen Green had dark skin then surely the Plod would be feeling his collar and he might expect a visit to Camp X-Ray, seeing as we have a barely coded incitement to violence right there in the third paragraph.
Unfortunately it gets worse for the Christian extremist hate-peddler as, in an as-yet unreported move, the UK blasphemy laws are taken round behind the shed and humanely put down. The National Secular Society celebrate, though the Government will still be trying to bring in the Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill which will do much the same thing. Still, anything that pisses off Stephen Green is a good thing.
The decision of the House of Lords, in conceding that there was a point of law at issue - that of whether theatres and broadcasters have a legal loophole to blaspheme - but declining to hear it on a pretext, brings the Jerry Springer the Opera case to an end. It means there is no redress in British law against those who portrayed Jesus Christ on stage and on the BBC as an infantile coprophiliac, told by the character of Jerry Springer in the show to 'Grow up for Christ's sake and put some f***ing clothes on.' Apparently Jesus Christ, Mary the mother of the Lord and Almighty God may now be ridiculed and insulted on stage and by broadcasters free from the sanctions of the law.
Stephen Green said, 'Contrary to the finding of these Law Lords, it is indeed a matter of great general public importance at this very time that the Almighty Creator of the universe and the Saviour of mankind have been insulted and vilified in this United Kingdom. It brings down the judgment of God on us all. I love my neighbour and I do not want that to happen.
'Christians will now have to take matters into their own hands when Christ is insulted on stage and on screen. As it happens, our campaign against the theatre tour of Jerry Springer the Opera was highly successful, by the grace of God. The producers and theatres lost a fortune and Stewart Lee himself said it was 'ruined'. Blasphemy isn't going to happen on stage in the United Kingdom, it's just that unless and until this loophole is closed, Christians will have to find avenues other than those of the law.
Notice that? If Stephen Green had dark skin then surely the Plod would be feeling his collar and he might expect a visit to Camp X-Ray, seeing as we have a barely coded incitement to violence right there in the third paragraph.
Unfortunately it gets worse for the Christian extremist hate-peddler as, in an as-yet unreported move, the UK blasphemy laws are taken round behind the shed and humanely put down. The National Secular Society celebrate, though the Government will still be trying to bring in the Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill which will do much the same thing. Still, anything that pisses off Stephen Green is a good thing.
Labels: Christian Voice, Fundamentalists- Christian, Jerry Springer The Opera, law, Stephen Green
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Extinction Timeline: What Will Disappear From Our Lives Before 2050. Repair shops go next year, but blogging will survive the demise of the library in 2019 by only three years.
Labels: future
Viola's Bookshelf. Viola’s Bookshelf is a project blog dedicated to publishing altered out of copyright, or creative commons licensed fiction, where the character’s genders have been reversed. The idea behind this is to help provide an understanding of gender construction in fiction and to an extent in everyday life.
Labels: fiction, sex/gender
Monday, March 03, 2008
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Kulchur 2
The Vanity Fair Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery is worth visiting although whoever laid out the room needs a good slapping, laying things out so as you enter the flow of the story encourages everyone to bottleneck into a narrow purpose-made corridor on the left? The NPG always gives the impression of being a large building that has been split in to too many small rooms and the staff always struggle to fit what they have in to the space. Vanity Fair Portraits should have been a bigger exhibition in a bigger room, from my limited number of visits I'm not sure the Gallery has that space.
Labels: art, London, National Portrait Gallery, photography
'Rock Number 59' by Zhan Wang, British Museum
Kulchur
More to come, including part two of 'why comics are shit', but my family is coming up to London with the mistaken belief that I was aware they were going to do so, so I have to leave in half an hour to go meet them at one of the few stations which are open to both train and tube this weekend.
For now, just a quick note on Derek, the film by Isaac Julien about Derek Jarman. It's very good, I could have happily sat through something that was twice the length so it didn't feel quite so rushed. I could have done without the shots of Tilda Swinton walking through modern-day London talking about how boring it all is these days, as though you couldn't move in eighties London for laudanum and bumming. Tilda, you want to talk about boring films? You did Vanilla Sky and Constantine, so please be quiet.
You can see Derek and Blue at the Serpentine Gallery exhibition, though be prepared to go for a walk around the Park if you miss the times they are showing the film. Annoyingly they don't have this up on the website and while the dozen or so pieces of Jarman's art are good, I doubt they can hold your attention for the hour or more you may have to wait.
For now, just a quick note on Derek, the film by Isaac Julien about Derek Jarman. It's very good, I could have happily sat through something that was twice the length so it didn't feel quite so rushed. I could have done without the shots of Tilda Swinton walking through modern-day London talking about how boring it all is these days, as though you couldn't move in eighties London for laudanum and bumming. Tilda, you want to talk about boring films? You did Vanilla Sky and Constantine, so please be quiet.
You can see Derek and Blue at the Serpentine Gallery exhibition, though be prepared to go for a walk around the Park if you miss the times they are showing the film. Annoyingly they don't have this up on the website and while the dozen or so pieces of Jarman's art are good, I doubt they can hold your attention for the hour or more you may have to wait.
Labels: art, artists, gay, London, queer, Serpentine Gallery
