A crosspost for Friday the 13th, so I don’t jinx myself with too much new writing. I thought I’d give you a flavour of the sort of work I’m doing on my other writing gig, The View From The Pier. This one in particular seems to mesh with the usual X&HT geekerie. Hope you enjoy it!
Always Take The Weather
Like all true Englishmen, I am delighted with the turn for the surreal that the weather has taken. As the safest of every true Englishman’s Default Conversational Openers/Small Talk Gambits (which include The Football, Immigrants, and Bins), the weather has been a tried and tested way to engage in conversation with people in bus queues or dull dinner parties. When it flips between record-breaking heat wave and snow, you know you can depend on all kinds of fascinating opinion.
Me, I just love the skies you get in the mornings when the weather’s all over the shop. Blue skies get dull after a while, and no-one likes the flat grey of a rainy day. The train into work is treating me to some stunning sunrises at the moment, and I’m particularly enamoured of the cloudscapes over Leicester Square as I emerge blinking from Piccadilly Circus tube. Take this beauty that I snagged last week. Enough just to give me a moment of pause before I start my day.
Five Favourite Bunnies For Easter
Happy Easter Rabbit Day! As I hope the Readership is aware, I have something of a thing for the humble Lagomorpha Lapodirae that I find tricky to either explain or justify. I just like ’em, OK?
As today is the day when the little critters are most in the mimetic spotlight, I thought I’d run down a short list of my personal faves. Please feel free to chip in if you think I’ve missed any.
Food In Montpellier
It would hardly be the most mind-boggling revelation to say that the French love their food. It’s intertwined in the culture, part of the national psyche. The French get food at a pure, primal level. In the UK we’ve come along in leaps and bounds in our understanding and appreciation of good food in the past twenty years. I’d argue that English cheese has the better of la fromage francaise, and there’s no such thing as a decent French pork pie. But food and eating are an intrinsic part of French daily life, and our weekend in Montpellier gave us quite a few different examples of that fact.
Without Subtitles, with added controversy
There’s an interesting twist to the tale of Simon Aitken’s latest short, Without Subtitles. It’s been summarily rejected for the Short Film Corner at the Cannes Film Festival.
This is, to put it mildly, something of a surprise. The SFC is famous for accepting a much wider range of films than you’d think, and it’s unusual for the committee to reject a film unless it’s overtly racist, pornographic or, in the words of the guidelines, has “no cinematic artistic value.” Yet Without Subtitles, which I personally think is one of Simon’s strongest works, was bounced back to him within 24 hours of submission – surprising for a festival that believe in letting film-makers sweat before letting them know if they’ve made the cut.
Simon and his writer and lead actor Ben Green pronounce themselves flummoxed by the decision. As do I. Simon has put a temporary link up to Without Subtitles, which I’ve embedded below. Any comments on why you believe the Short Film Corner should so quickly reject the film are welcome. Is it anti-French, or mysogynistic? As Simon points out in the comments, it’s based on a true story. Or is there another reason why Without Subtitles cannot be shown at the Cannes Film Festival?
(If the temp link is down let me know and I’ll endeavour to get you a new one.)
UPDATE: there’s a fan page on Facebook. Of course there is.
Without Subtitles
Sticking to the Gallic theme, I’m pleased to announce that the last short film I graded is now complete. Without Subtitles is a Simon Aitken joint, a bitter shot of love, betrayal, deceit, and the cruelty of language.
Welcome To Montpellier
Here in the 21st Century, distance is as much about culture and language as it is about milage. Consider. It takes an hour and a half to get from Reading to Gatwick Airport. It takes the same time to get from Gatwick to Montpellier, and all of a sudden I find it a hell of a lot more difficult to order a coffee.
Un teaser
Bonjour, mon Readership. A little photographic tease to get you in the mood before I talk about the weekend TLC and I spent in the South of France. There’s a lot to show you.
Guest Post: Pathways to Prometheus
Another guest post, which pleases my lazy blogger tendencies. At this rate, I’ll never need to write another word.
Seriously, Readership, feel free to send me stuff. You know the remit by now. At the very least, a recipe or two would be nice.
Any hoo. X&HTeam-mate Simon Aitken has obliged me with his take on the marketing push for one of the most anticipated movies of the summer–Ridley Scott’s Prometheus.
Comics And Kony
Unless you’ve been living in a cave without any kind of wifi over the past couple of weeks, the name of Joseph Kony must be familiar to you. The leader of the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army, terrorist and psychopath, Kony is the subject of an awful lot of media attention–despite the fact that no-one really seems to know where he is now or what the LRA are up to.
I’m not here to discuss the film that brought Kony, however belatedly, to the world’s attention. I won’t mention the astonishing speed with which social networks helped it to go viral. I’m not even going to talk about the breakdown of the film’s director over the intense scrutiny over his motives and the finances of his production company, that led to his arrest for public nudity and masturbation. However hilarious that might be.
Instead, I want to look at two depictions of the Uganda that Kony has helped to create, both of which use comics to come up with very different takes on the situation, and on how it has created it’s own breed of monsters.
EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS 