Annie Hall

I cannot accurately explain the genius of this film. Though the characters are quite unrealistic as much as is the storyline, Annie Hall still manages to be a beautifully appealing feature. Woody Allen was a greatly talented fellow. This film is rich with cinematic devices that (I'm guessing, judging by other films I have seen from the 70s) were way ahead of its time. The script is also awesomely entertaining. You couldn't go two minutes without hearing someone say something pessimistic, witty or wraught with insecurity. The fact that, in a few scenes, the film would draw upon the cliche of having a character (mostly Woody) pull himself out of a scene so he could begin narrating it (there must be a word for that) didn't even bother me, because I'm sure back then that device was nowhere near to being as over-used as it is now.

I sum this film up to be very casual and chocolate-coloured. Like going to a coffee shop on a lunch break. Easy, romantic and somewhat quirky (this analogy may not add-up quite right because going to a coffee shop on ones lunch break is certainly not considered quirky - but it might have been in the 70s).

Anyway, I went in expecting a dated, un-funny and lenghty piece of film, but came out feeling rather warm and fuzzy... in a good way.

WATCH IT NOW

Current Photography Work

Hello boys and girls. Now it is time to show you some of the work I am doing at the moment. Usually, my work is portrait-based. I get a little uneasy when there isn't a person in an image that I've made. I feel it isn't visually interesting enough for some reason. But I think these ones work alright. What I am doing is photographing places from my past. At first, I did have a person from that place to sit in front of the camera, but my tutor suggested that a person wasn't needed in the frame. So I just photographed rooms.
First off is my secondary school art rooms. Notice all the over-sized pencils and soup cans. I never actually engaged in making larger than life everyday objects while I was there, but as I got older, the amount of cerial boxes and donuts grew a vast amount. Quite strange. I'm not sure what that teaches the youngsters about art. Anyway, as you can see, there is nothing in these images that really suggests this was a school I used to attend. This could be any school. This is partly why I was worried that these wouldn't be interesting. Same goes for the next string of images, which are from my primary school.



Here we see the assembley hall which, of course, seemed so much bigger back then. There were two classes of about 30 children for each year (from years 3 to 6), and they would all manage to fit in this rather small hall. Oh how tiny we were at that age. I've also taken a shot of the hall from the stage. Everything is how I remember it, but different. The walls certainly weren't this
grotesquely bright yellow. It was quite hard to get the white balance just right so all the images didn't look as though they had a layer of yellow cling film resting on top of them. I also had to tweak them with photoshop in the end. I don't like to do that. I'd rather have them right when I take them. That is where
some of the skill lies, afterall. This last primary school image is of the classroom I was in for year 6. I must say, it is quite different. Yet... not. Allow me to attempt an explanation. The arrangement of tables is relatively the same (I think), and we did have the walls covered in all kinds of brightly covered pieces of art and old diagrams that tell you how to tell the time or where to put a speach marks when writing a story. But that big wooden chair I've included was not in the classroom. I could have sworn it sat out in the hall for someone to sit on if there was no other space. I could be mistaken. And again, I'm sure the walls weren't yellow. Disgusting.



I have left the best for last. This is my grandma's house. This is a place I still go to, but very ocassionally. As a child, my sister and I would stay there whenever our parents were away. I haven't included any images from our room because I felt they were... lacking something that these ones have. This top one is the living room. So much red. Also, very dark. Something that I wanted to keep in the images. I didn't see the point in making the exposure longer so the room looked brighter. This is how light the room is when you are standing in it.The next one is my grandma's room. Not a room we went in a lot, but would sometimes sneak in to look at her 'old person things'. Like, make-up and jewlery from the 50s and such. Also, just look at the wallpaper and the curtains. JUST LOOK! quite amazing. I'm very please with the composition of this photograph; though the dressing table was the most important thing to include, the mirror allowed me to include the bed as well, which looked (quite frankly) rubbish when photographed any other way. This last image shows what you see when you first enter the house. Again, very dark. The stairs are also important. I rememer how they used to smell. Or... still smell

Swolen Eyes

Hello to the two or three people who read my blog. I just made this graphic piece. It's not my best idea, but I still got it to work visually, I think. My initial idea was meant to be showing a face which was over-tired due to stress, but this looks more like a person watching TV. I have a feeling that to the objective viewer it will be seen as a sort of statement about how our society watches too much television. Quite possibly.

FILM: Margot At The Wedding

When I said Nicole Kidman wasn't in anything decent last year, I was mistaken. This is because Margot At The Wedding was only just released here, which left us with The Invasion and The Golden Compass last year - neither of which were very good. So I was of course delighted to discover this film, which made up for everything.

Now, this film was... interesting. The first time I've seen Nicole Kidman in such a film AND Jack Black too. I applaude him for not being dwarfed by her excellence, and also that of Jennifer Jason Leigh, who is also in it. I think what makes this film so good is that it is about a family who have severe insecurities about one another, and in many cases, some psychological problems - but the these problems never really get adressed, you just see them play out. It works very well. I think the only problem is that it could be seen as quite un-realistic. Is any family really that [for lack of a better phrase] fucked up? This movie is a swirling mass of sibling rivalry, incest, paedophilia, child cruelty, masturbation and manic-depressives (well, only one of them is a manic-depressive).

In conclusion, don't watch this film if you get depressed easily. It is a very dark film. Almost ugly in terms of what emotions it contains. I, however find its morbidity quite refreshing... do try and watch it (even given it's only being shown in about two cinemas in the entire country)

There's A Face In My Door But I Like It

Today, I came down stairs and saw there was a face lodged in my front door. My first instinct was to move it, but then it occurred to me to photograph it. It was a rather snap decision, which is why the photograph is quite grainy and has a slight yellow tint. The reason why I wanted to photograph this was because it just made me think about the long proccess that came to build this image. A photoshoot had to be organised to photograph this woman's face, and then the most desirable had to be selected to be printed on the back of whatever magazine this is. Then a million copies were made and shoved through a million letter slots. This particular copy, however, was not pushed through entirely. Bad postman, you may think. But if it was forced completely through, it would only land with a great splat on the other side, potentially bending the cover or creasing some pages. Perhaps this accidental presentation of the magazine is better. There is a sense, if you were to look at this image objectively, that this magazine does not belong there, yet fits so well. For me, when I saw it casually hanging there, it made me think, "Why should I care about this woman's face?"

(It sort of looks like Mariah Carey, though. If it is her, my question still stands)

The 80th Annual Academy Awards

Oh, the Oscars. I cannot miss the oscars. They seem to like to show it live even in the UK, which means it was on our screens between 12 and 5am on sunday morning. Who's idea was that? It is all very well having the live experience, but no one would stay up to watch that (well, I wouldn't). So I recorded it of course. I watched it in segments throughout this week which is why I'm a little late in making comments on it. The Oscars is a bit of an emotional thing to watch. It's beautiful seeing someone rewarded with such a prestigious award for their debut, whatever it may have been. Imagine working so hard on something and then getting the best kind of recognition for it, especially if it's your first.

Anyway, I don't have much to protest about in terms of who won what award, partly because I still haven't seen most of the big winners of the night (even though I claim to love film so much. I really do, I promise). I was delighted to see that one film I did see - The Savages - got a couple of nominations. It was especially lovely to see this, for until then, I thought I was the only one that had heard of this film (never mind seen it), so I was starting to wonder if it even existed. This now leads me to the only true disappointment of the night. Laura Linney (from The Savages) was nominated for best actress in a leading role. But Marion Cotillard got the award for La Vie En Rose. That does look like a wonderful film, and by the looks of things, Cotillard had to undergo a huge transformation everytime she got into character, but I was still disappointed. Linney deffinately deserved that award just as much as her. She has gone unrecognised for so long. It's not like she hasn't done her share. As well as being in The Truman Show, she even did a one-off ITV drama with Julie Walters and that ginger boy from Harry Potter who can't act very well.

This now leads us to Cate Blanchett, who was also nominated for best actress in leading role. Of course I was hoping for Linney to pick up the award, but expected Blanchett to get it for her role in Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Then if she didn't get that (which she didn't) I assumed she would win the award for best supporting actress for her role as Bob Dylan (yes I know, when casting a film about the life of Bob Dyaln, Cate Blanchett wouldn't be the first person I think of either...)in I'm Not There . But, alas, she didn't get that either (never mind, she has an Oscar already). The other favourite was Saoirse Ronan for Atonement. Again I was wrong. It was Tilda Swinton (for her role in Michael Clayton) who picked up the award. Not at all surprisngly - she is fantastic. The academy (god bless them) must have had a pretty tough job this year.

One thing that did come as somewhat of a surprise was Diablo Cody (who wrote Juno) winning the award for best original screenplay. I got the impression that Juno wasn't the kind of film with a particularly strong script. Perhaps it was the heart-touching storyline that brought it to the Oscars (of course I'm just guessing. Or as certain objectors my put it - talking out of my arse). Again I think The Savages fully deserved that award as well. I can only say that since it's the only film I've seen that's been nominated...

Some minor disappointments were that there were people I like who weren't there/nominated for anything. For instance, where the hell was Meryl Streep? And I wish Nicole Kidman was nominated for something, but it wasn't possible since the two films she was in last year were quite unimpressive (The Invastion - what the hell was that?). Tom Hanks is another example. Charlie Wilson's War was a lovely film but deffinately not Oscar-worthy. Although Philip Seymour Hoffman did get a nomination for his supporting role. It was clear he wouldn't get it, though.

Anyway, I don't know why I'm giving my opinions on all of this, for most of them are uninformed. Why should you care? It is just important that everyone realises how much I love film. Quite a lot.

JUICY FILLING: A Few Interesting Things That You Might Find Interesting

I have nothing to say about art, music or film today so I will squirt you with random facts instead...


NOAH'S ARC

It is commonly known that there were two of every animal sent into Noah's Arc. INCORRECT. Now, the story of Noah's Arc could be completely untrue because it was written in the bible... and no one likes to believe what's written in there anymore. But there are of course a select few who do, for some reason. Let us just pretend that we are those people for a few minutes. The bible is of course the only source we have that tells us exactly what happened with Noah's Arc. God did not in fact order him to gather two of every animal. I can't remember the exact quote, but it was in fact seven of every clean animal and the the usual two of every unclean animal. I don't know how you would determine which animals are clean and which are unclean, but those were God's orders. I think this proves that barely anyone actually reads the bible anymore, otherwise, we would have known that.


HOW YOU CAN USE A BLACK COCK TO CATCH THIEVES

Of course when I say cock, I mean a rooster. It's a bird. Don't get excited. Right, yesterday I heard an interesting story about the man who invented the decimal point. Yes, that's right... essentially he invented a dot. Anyway, John Napier was his name, and he had a black cock (rooster) as a pet. He also invented those important things known as logarithms that only mathematicians and physicists use. Not for us creative types. So, as you can imagine, Napier grew to become a rather wealthy fellow. When you are wealthy, you tend to have nice expensive things. You also tend to have servants, some of which like to steal your nice expensive things. Unfortunately, this did happen to Napier. Far too regularly, as it happens, for he had to get is cock involved. He decided to order his servants to sit in a dark room and stroke his cock for a few minutes (please remember I'm talking about a bird). He would say that his rooster could tell when he was being stroked by the hand of a thief. What he in fact did, was cover the bird in soot. The guilty servant would pretend to have stroked the rooster, in fear that he might actually be able to tell the difference between the stroke of an innocent man and his own. This way, all Napier had to do was pick out the servant who had clean hands, and that would be his man. Very clever... but only if the servants are stupid enough to believe that the rooster is magic.


CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

Was a bit of a stupid man, if you think about it. It is i a common mis-conception that everyone all the way back then thought the earth was flat. It has never actually been recorded in history that people ever thought that way. Most of europe already knew the world was round. Christopher Columbus, however, thought it was pear-shaped. Then he went off to discover India and found America instead. Which is why we use the phrase "Native American Indians" or "Red Indians" (which is pretty offensive). They are just Native Americans... nothing to do with being Indian. Columbus wasn't that smart. Why the hell would the earth be shaped like a pear?


THE ROMANS AND THEIR HATRED OF CHRISTIANS

Another common mis-conception is that the Romans threw Christians (or people of general annoyance) into a room full of lions. Neither did anyone have to fight a lion in the Coliseum. This was another thing that was never actually recorded in history. It feels like the whole idea of being thrown to the lions came from a story-teller or something. That is all.