Saturday, July 25, 2009
The Race to the Clouds is an annual event where drivers must drive up over 4700 feet of the Pikes Peak mountain in Colorado. Near the bottom the road is regular tarmac, as things get higher, not so much. Even if you don't care much for cars, you'll still find this amazing.
[via Autopia]
[via Autopia]
Labels: cars, United States, YouTube
Friday, July 24, 2009
Bloomsbury Press put a white girl on the cover of a book about a black girl because 'black covers don't sell'. Is anyone else flashing back to the NME and Melody Maker explaining that they never put black artists and groups on the front cover because that would supposedly automatically drop their sales by tens of thousands each time they did it?
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Wall, 'Seizure' by Roger Hiorns
Artangel are reopening Roger Hiorns 'Seizure' in Newington. It was originally open before Christmas so at least now as you queue for three hours to see it the weather will be warm and you can try for heatstroke instead of frostbite.
I must say I wasn't that impressed when I went to see it, not least because Hiorns copper sulphate solution budget ran out after doing what was probably the bedroom and the bathroom leaving the large main room and kitchen untouched, also that the rooms had been emptied of furniture before all this so visitors were looking at crystals growing on bare walls. Sure it's pretty and you have to admire the process but it was somewhat underwhelming and I doubt time has added much to the charm.
I must say I wasn't that impressed when I went to see it, not least because Hiorns copper sulphate solution budget ran out after doing what was probably the bedroom and the bathroom leaving the large main room and kitchen untouched, also that the rooms had been emptied of furniture before all this so visitors were looking at crystals growing on bare walls. Sure it's pretty and you have to admire the process but it was somewhat underwhelming and I doubt time has added much to the charm.
Labels: art, artists, Flickr, London
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Telstar
The second entry into the terribly exclusive canon of 'films about dead gay men with four letter surnames that begin with 'M' and end with 'K'', Telstar seemed to vanish from the cinemas surprisingly quickly for a film that had posters up in the underground. Still, the Prince Charles had one showing this weekend and I found out just in time, popped along and got a ticket for only four pounds, which is what they charge all non-members. I'd been there before, years ago, for 'Jeremy Hardy Versus the Israeli Army' but for ticket prices like that, I must pay more attention to them in future. Support independent cinemas!
'Telstar' is the story of the productive and final few years of the life of Joe Meek, a talented but unstable record producer from the middle of the last century. From the flat over a shop that he converted into a recording studio he produced songs that would become genre classics, only to finish it all bankrupt, paranoid, depressed and with a shotgun bullet through the back of the skull.
'Telstar' starts with about twenty-five minutes that is comedy gold as we see the chaos Meek already lives in, and ends with forty-five harrowing minutes as we see his total mental collapse, fuelled by drugs, the homophobic era he lives in, bad luck and his galloping ego pushing away almost everyone who could have saved him. However, it would be charitable to say the script is uneven and badly paced, through the first half of the film we have several flash-forwards towards what happens near the end, at the end we have some flash-backs towards some events in his childhood, both are unnecessary and disrupt the flow, especially the flash-backs as they are just an illustration of something Joe describes earlier in the film about a childhood encounter with phosphorous. I know biographical films have always chosen to concentrate on some key point in their subject's life but 'Telstar' never really gives much of a suggestion that Joe Meek didn't just magically appear on the Holloway Road in his early Thirties. Interestingly, despite the fact that the script keeps Meek in his studio for the bulk of the film no effort is made to suggest a claustrophobia to this, sure people throw things about every now and then but it generally seems a pleasant environment even when Joe is trying to summon the devil or is smashing and burning all his possessions. However, without those closest to Meek available to give their opinions of the man and those still going (like Chas from Chas and Dave) unlikely to be favourable, an endeavour like this is bound to be more writer's guesswork than grounded in verifiable fact.
The strength of the film, and boy is it really a strength, is the performances. Everyone is superb. Con O'Neill as Meek is wonderful and has to be, his performance rounds out a character that, on paper, doesn't have much depth. His performance sends him right round the block, sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying, loving, casually-cruel, bloated with self-importance, racked by self-doubt. As a gay man before homosexuality was decriminalised he has the de rigeur arrest for public indecency which seems to end up with a gang of young men waiting outside his flat to throw abuse at him and anyone connected with him with no apparent attempt made to do anything about them. Some of the criticisms about 'Milk' was that the film whitewashes Harvey's sex life so as to try not to lose the sympathy of monogamous straight people who might be turned off by the truth of his lifestyle. British queer films back to 'Prick Up Your Ears' have tended to be a little bit more honest and we have Meek sloping off to Hampstead Heath (about two miles up the road for anyone unfamiliar with North London geography) and cottaging in the capital's public conveniences. His one apparently serious relationship is with Heinz Burt, played by JJ Feild.
Burt is the main comic relief of the film, apparently willing to be seduced and cosseted by Meek, Burt isn't the sharpest tool in the box and ends up following the same career trajectory as Meek, only quicker due to his lack of talent and able to jump off before reaching the tragic end. Feild plays him as a cockney spiv of the type that should be able to talk without moving their mouth. Blind to his lack of talents Meek puts a lot of his time and money into trying to make Burt a star in order to win his love, when it doesn't work it has to be the fault of everyone including Meek, not Burt. At an early gig Burt has a tin of beans emptied over him and doesn't have the wit to realise that his attacker, a teddy boy, has a knife, so his bandmates have to ridicule him in order to save his life and defuse the situation. He then lashes out at them because he doesn't understand the danger he was in.
James Corden and Ralf Little through in admirable turns as the long-suffering Tornados, session musicians for Joe and backing band for Burt. Little played Peter Hook in '24 Hour Party People' and plays another guitarist, Chas Hodges, though I don't know what it says about him that he's only willing to walk out on Meek after he's lost it to the point that he uses a gun to try and threaten the performance he wants out of artists. Tom Burke plays the tragic Geoff Goddard, a painfully shy man who loves Meek from the moment they meet but is never appreciated by Joe who is far more obsessed with Burt. Often unable to meet the gaze of other characters Goddard tries to give Meek a gift to celebrate eighteen months of 'their professional relationship', only to have Meek toss it aside carelessly and break it in seconds. The film positions him as being the person most responsible for transferring a demo tape of Meek's tuneless humming into what would be their biggest hit, 'Telstar', but the film then takes such a confused gallop through Meek's professional life it's hard to see what Goddard hangs around for, other than to be a verbal punching bag.
Rounding off, Kevin Spacey manages a performance as Meek's financial partner, Major Banks, that despite being a fusty old traditionalist, avoids becoming a parody. He hangs in long after common sense would dictate to bail on Meek and is genuinely disappointed that Meek is determined to follow a path that can only lead to self-destruction. Pam Ferris as Meek's very long suffering landlady Mrs Shenton tries her best but when the script requires her to do little more than complain about the noise and that the rent is late she is wasted, and by the end that becomes true in more ways than one.
So the film is certainly worth seeing, though desperately uneven. To it's credit it's not about a self-destructive gay man, it's about a self-destructive man who just happened to be gay. How close it is to the truth is probably impossible to tell, but Con O'Neill gives such a performance it doesn't matter, and it's worth recommending it on that alone.
'Telstar' is the story of the productive and final few years of the life of Joe Meek, a talented but unstable record producer from the middle of the last century. From the flat over a shop that he converted into a recording studio he produced songs that would become genre classics, only to finish it all bankrupt, paranoid, depressed and with a shotgun bullet through the back of the skull.
'Telstar' starts with about twenty-five minutes that is comedy gold as we see the chaos Meek already lives in, and ends with forty-five harrowing minutes as we see his total mental collapse, fuelled by drugs, the homophobic era he lives in, bad luck and his galloping ego pushing away almost everyone who could have saved him. However, it would be charitable to say the script is uneven and badly paced, through the first half of the film we have several flash-forwards towards what happens near the end, at the end we have some flash-backs towards some events in his childhood, both are unnecessary and disrupt the flow, especially the flash-backs as they are just an illustration of something Joe describes earlier in the film about a childhood encounter with phosphorous. I know biographical films have always chosen to concentrate on some key point in their subject's life but 'Telstar' never really gives much of a suggestion that Joe Meek didn't just magically appear on the Holloway Road in his early Thirties. Interestingly, despite the fact that the script keeps Meek in his studio for the bulk of the film no effort is made to suggest a claustrophobia to this, sure people throw things about every now and then but it generally seems a pleasant environment even when Joe is trying to summon the devil or is smashing and burning all his possessions. However, without those closest to Meek available to give their opinions of the man and those still going (like Chas from Chas and Dave) unlikely to be favourable, an endeavour like this is bound to be more writer's guesswork than grounded in verifiable fact.
The strength of the film, and boy is it really a strength, is the performances. Everyone is superb. Con O'Neill as Meek is wonderful and has to be, his performance rounds out a character that, on paper, doesn't have much depth. His performance sends him right round the block, sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying, loving, casually-cruel, bloated with self-importance, racked by self-doubt. As a gay man before homosexuality was decriminalised he has the de rigeur arrest for public indecency which seems to end up with a gang of young men waiting outside his flat to throw abuse at him and anyone connected with him with no apparent attempt made to do anything about them. Some of the criticisms about 'Milk' was that the film whitewashes Harvey's sex life so as to try not to lose the sympathy of monogamous straight people who might be turned off by the truth of his lifestyle. British queer films back to 'Prick Up Your Ears' have tended to be a little bit more honest and we have Meek sloping off to Hampstead Heath (about two miles up the road for anyone unfamiliar with North London geography) and cottaging in the capital's public conveniences. His one apparently serious relationship is with Heinz Burt, played by JJ Feild.
Burt is the main comic relief of the film, apparently willing to be seduced and cosseted by Meek, Burt isn't the sharpest tool in the box and ends up following the same career trajectory as Meek, only quicker due to his lack of talent and able to jump off before reaching the tragic end. Feild plays him as a cockney spiv of the type that should be able to talk without moving their mouth. Blind to his lack of talents Meek puts a lot of his time and money into trying to make Burt a star in order to win his love, when it doesn't work it has to be the fault of everyone including Meek, not Burt. At an early gig Burt has a tin of beans emptied over him and doesn't have the wit to realise that his attacker, a teddy boy, has a knife, so his bandmates have to ridicule him in order to save his life and defuse the situation. He then lashes out at them because he doesn't understand the danger he was in.
James Corden and Ralf Little through in admirable turns as the long-suffering Tornados, session musicians for Joe and backing band for Burt. Little played Peter Hook in '24 Hour Party People' and plays another guitarist, Chas Hodges, though I don't know what it says about him that he's only willing to walk out on Meek after he's lost it to the point that he uses a gun to try and threaten the performance he wants out of artists. Tom Burke plays the tragic Geoff Goddard, a painfully shy man who loves Meek from the moment they meet but is never appreciated by Joe who is far more obsessed with Burt. Often unable to meet the gaze of other characters Goddard tries to give Meek a gift to celebrate eighteen months of 'their professional relationship', only to have Meek toss it aside carelessly and break it in seconds. The film positions him as being the person most responsible for transferring a demo tape of Meek's tuneless humming into what would be their biggest hit, 'Telstar', but the film then takes such a confused gallop through Meek's professional life it's hard to see what Goddard hangs around for, other than to be a verbal punching bag.
Rounding off, Kevin Spacey manages a performance as Meek's financial partner, Major Banks, that despite being a fusty old traditionalist, avoids becoming a parody. He hangs in long after common sense would dictate to bail on Meek and is genuinely disappointed that Meek is determined to follow a path that can only lead to self-destruction. Pam Ferris as Meek's very long suffering landlady Mrs Shenton tries her best but when the script requires her to do little more than complain about the noise and that the rent is late she is wasted, and by the end that becomes true in more ways than one.
So the film is certainly worth seeing, though desperately uneven. To it's credit it's not about a self-destructive gay man, it's about a self-destructive man who just happened to be gay. How close it is to the truth is probably impossible to tell, but Con O'Neill gives such a performance it doesn't matter, and it's worth recommending it on that alone.
Labels: Flickr, gay, London, movies
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Terraces and Transmitter
Sphinxes, Crystal Palace
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Silly Men in Sensible Shocker
The non-dead bits of Monty Python have decided to put everything up, for free, on YouTube, in the hopes that it will encourage people to buy their DVDs. I already have my DVDs, bought from Amazon Germany because they were massively cheaper and in bigger bulk and still in English from Europe than bought in the UK. But this is the sensible way to go about it and it will be worth watching, if this encourages fresh sales of Monty Python merch. If nothing else, John Cleese has got all that alimony to pay...
The Monty Python YouTube Channel. Seems to have some rare-ish stuff, like the Cleese/Palin Amnesty 'Dead Parrot Sketch'.
The Monty Python YouTube Channel. Seems to have some rare-ish stuff, like the Cleese/Palin Amnesty 'Dead Parrot Sketch'.
Labels: comedians, comedy, Monty Python's Flying Circus, piracy, YouTube
Neurons of the Night, What Sweet Music They Make!
In Douglas Adam's Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency one of the characters was a computer programmer that had developed a program to turn company financial reports into music. Now philosopher Dan Lloyd has developed a computer program to turn brain scans into sound, healthy brains produce quite standard melodies, the brains of people with diagnosed mental conditions goes a bit Cage or Stockhausen-y.
Labels: brain/mind, music, science, the brain
Monday, July 06, 2009
Maharabeg Mary
Klimt Caves
Bilingual Street Sign
Old Weir Bridge, Killarney National Park
The Old Killarney Crow
The Valley Below
I'm back from a great family holiday in the West of Ireland. I'm uploading photos to Flickr right now. In the meantime, AVERT's table of the various ages of consent for hetero/homo sex around the world. [via Dr Petra Boynton's blog.]
Labels: gay, lesbian, sex, straight
