Do You See

Japes From the Vine : NSFA

I had considered tagging this link Not Safe For Work, but truly it is Not Safe For Anywhere. One of my favourite parts of watching the Daily Show is when they show the ridiculous graphics and bombast of American election reporting. And then, on a night like last night, with a few council elections I have to shake my head at the nonsense that now presents itself as election coverage here. David Dimbleby has now ossified in his role as presenter, snappy, rude, not listening to anyone and making jump-cut links whenever he decides and usually when the gallery aren’t ready. I am used to that. What I am not used to yet is Jeremy Vine, who has taken over Peter Snow’s role as the man with the graphics. Snow had a way with stats, and an expansive excitement in the ways that new technology could help explain in layman’s terms how an election was progressing.

Vine is just a twat. No, sorry that’s a bit harsh. ON TWATS. Sorry, I still haven’t recovered from this bit of footage which was on at about 1am last night. … read on …

Do Polar Bears Dream Of Bickering Humans?

I don’t know why I am still watching Lost. It makes me feel terrible about my own ability to follow a narrative storyline, and how easily my buttons are pushed but the simplest of TV trickery. I have never believed that the writers have really known where the whole things was going from the beginning, though I have based this belief on the fact that the writers of 24 don’t know how their series will end - and there are only 24 episodes of those. Lost, with its endless pointless mysteries, time wasting flashbacks (and now flash forwards) and bunch of on the whole unlikeable characters should have driven me off by now. Take the Lost “numbers”. Important in series one and two, they haven’t been mentioned since, and I still can’t see a way of their quasi-mystical importance being explained. Do I think there will be anything like a satisfactory conclusion to the mess which is now taking in time travel, faking the death of hundreds of people and massive conspiracy theories? Nope. Yet I keep watching.

Of course the show trades on its mysteries, though the web of unexplained nonsense is so tangled that I believe nothing coherent will really come out of it (its at least one persons dream*). But this has been further confirmed by USA Today running a competition for viewers to submit what they think is going on to the producers to be graded. … read on …

more reasons (as if anyone needs em) to despise nick broomfield

i: yes this was entirely my fault for sitting down in front of a “michael barrymore: what really happened” documentary…

ii: viz that i (and all viewers) have to endure jacques peretti constantly concluding that “no one can possibly know what really happened” ftb HE THE GREAT JACQUES PERETTI cannot get someone to confess all on-camera after a rigorous interrogation of duration 23 seconds

iii: to be fair the depth of JP’s bad faith is by no means of broomfieldian dimension, and he spent a fair part of the show angst-ing at the awfulness of it all: which if yr generous you can interpret as “i JP am ashamed of myself for plunging this low”

iiia: but basic rule — … read on …

P-1? P-2. P-3.

Do you know of anything artistic knocking around at the moment called P1? Maybe a novel, or a collection of poetry. A play, preferably a good one, or maybe one of the English National Opera’s experimental jobs at the Young Vic? Why? Well I kind of want, in a male collectorish manner - to collect a full set of P1, P2, P3. And all I’m missing is P1.

Where P-2 is a dodgy two handed horror thriller film coming out this weekend. Staring Rachel Nichols (who I quite liked in Alias), it is a mash-up of a survival horror flick and Die Hard Inna - where the Inna is a parking garage. Level P2 no less hence the name of the film. Whilst I doubt it will be much good, I fancy a slightly brutal horror where the female lead uses her brains to get out of the situation. (And you can’t begrudge a film with such an awesomely stupid tagline: “The only thing more terrifying than being alone, is discovering you’re not.”

And P3 is the new Portishead album. … read on …

Not Brand Sex

Russell Brand isn’t the best thing about Forgetting Sarah Marshall*, but he is very good in it. And interestingly what is so good about Brand in thsi film is that he is so gosh darned nice. Which has made me think about the Brand brand over here if you will, and how he has turned from a likeable TV host into a very divisive celebrity in two years. And perhaps the secret of his success in Marshall (and lack of success in St Trinians and most of his other projects between this and Big Brothers Big Mouth) all boils down to the difference between what he is and what we want him to be.

Brand’s schtick is being the erudite dandy. The juxtaposition between his look, his language and the way he uses his language creates a comic persona. Which was absolutely perfect on a strange phone in show like Big Brothers Big Mouth, a show where people ring up about the minutiae of a pretty unimportant reality TV show and this conversation is spun out into half an hour. A DAY. … read on …

IN SALAD (of all the) NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM(s)

huntin for images of BRANES in pulp culture i came across THIS via boingboing: “In November 2006 Till Nowak created the image SALAD. For this image he created 12 digital vegetable models in 3ds max using photographic references. They were combined to become a tribute to the fantastic biomechanical creations of H.R. Giger and the vegetable portraits of Giuseppe Arcimboldo.”

full size here

In Which The Last Mistress Does Nothing To Stop Other Mistresses Existing

I really enjoyed The Last Mistress, Catherine Breillat’s filmed version of d’Aurevilly’s novel. Look who am I kidding. d’Aurevilly means nothing to me, and I’ve never been a huge fan of Breillat’s sex comedies (such as the not that aptly named Sex Is Comedy). I’m here for Asia Argento, Dario’s daughter who is far and away one of the most unpredictably watchable screen presences of the moment. So whilst The Last Mistress may seem to be a pretty standard period costume drama, Argento being in it was more than enough to drag me along. And not only was I right to pick that, but the reason for it being any good at all is all down to Argento herself.

The key scene in The Last Mistress takes place just after a duel takes place. … read on …

stendernauts misled: it is to weep

p^nk s lord thingamajig is on the way to london fields lido and crossing hackney’s graham road where it meets mare street in the Easty East of End when a small but full car stops and a woman addresses him thru the window:

woman: excuse me do you know where albert square is?
p^nk s lord t: er d’you mean the real albert square or the one on telly?
woman: YES!
p^nk s lord t: ok but they aren’t the same! the one on telly isn’t a real place — it’s a film-set up in north london somewhere that they film on
anguished voice from deep inside car: what? but we’ve driven all the way from birmingham to visit it!
p^nk s lord t: ok well it is findable but it’s far from here and i don’t know the way
woman (despondently): ok thank you
*car drives off trailing collective thinks-bubble of baffled upset*
p^nk s lord t (thinks to self): oh dear i wonder if they meant fassett square — that’s what albert square is based on and it’s just round the corner

Come Dine With Me – Awesome

The Guardian’s “not Nancy Banks Smith” TV reviewer Sam Wallaston is a reliable sort of guy. I watched last night’s Come Dine With Me and was agog. “This is the best thing I’ve seen on Channel 4 in a long time” I exclaimed while watching between my fingers. Sure enough Wallaston’s review: “the worst programme on television”. He didn’t like it. And that’s why I read his reviews. “Never knowingly correct” goes his strapline. (Don’t get me started on his “ha ha geeks eh, this IS complicated and silly” he did the other day on Battlestar Galactica.)

Anyway… COME DINE WITH ME. Last night’s was more than awesome. This show has grown — a day-time staple, it’s gathered celebrity editions, and now it comes in a new format. No longer a short show every day of the week covering 5 people — they now compress 4 people in to a one hour show. It’s a sensation. Well for something that’s come from day-time. (It even has a rip off version on the beeb hosted by Simon Rimmer who seems to be trying to be on telly every day of the week for an entire year.)

But then having established a regular format, with often witty and interesting people who occasionally come to verbal blows, it goes HAYWIRE. Remember that first edition of Wife Swap with the foul mouthed racist woman — it was well train wreck. This was much the same but written by Mike Leigh. … read on …

(Write a) Cheque (to) Yourself Before You [REC] Yourself

Spanish horror movie [REC] is the second horror film this year to use the video-camera conceit. YOU ARE THERE as our cameraman films all the horror that befalls him, and who thoughtfully considers more about getting a good shot than getting away from the baddies. Still [REC] probably predates Cloverfield so its real antecedent is The Blair Witch Project. I always wondered what happened to the cheapo film revolution Blair Witch was supposed to usher in. I always assumed that the movie companies were so annoyed by TBWP’s ignoring the proper finances and procedures of movie making the studio way that they killed all further stabs at this kind of guerrilla film-making. Or maybe it just took eight years for people to make one which was any good, both of which had significantly more money.

Indeed when you look at the similarities between Blair Witch, Cloverfield and [REC], the genre tricks of the camcorder film come into shaky autofocus. … read on …