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)