So, after our last post, this popped into my inbox. That damned elusive DocoBanksy has been busy with Final Cut, it seems. Our adventures in the tunnels of Leake Street, condensed into thirty seconds. And it honestly felt like it went that quickly as well…
Paint Under Skin: On Becoming A Graffiti Artist
Making graffiti is like playing the guitar. It’s very easy to pick up and do very, very badly. Getting it right and creating something that people might find pleasant to the eye takes a lot of skill and practice. I discovered this for myself when that damned elusive DocoBanksy lured me down to the free-spray zone at Leake Street, near Waterloo, to do a bit of promo work for his film.
Turns out he had a much more realistic idea of his skill level and the likely end result than I did.
Continue reading Paint Under Skin: On Becoming A Graffiti Artist
State Of The Noir Nation
Dark fictions flourish in dark times. As we lurch from financial crisis to social meltdown, our reading habits change and our idea of what constitutes light relief gains some weight. This is a simple truth that the editors of new anthology title Noir Nation understand all too clearly. It’s the perfect time to launch, and the premiere issue is stuffed as full of hardboiled treats as an old fashioned sweetie shop.
A well-curated genre collection will take pleasure in the display of a wide range of voices, opinions and stories. Noir Nation hits all the buttons hard. It’s broad, wide and deep in scope, which suits a journal with a truly international remit. Standout stories for me include Tristan Davies “Surgeons”, which introduces us to a doctor who makes Gregory House look like that nice English actor Hugh Laurie, and RF Warner’s “Dog Of A Different Breed”, the story of a drug run gone bad, an unfortunate incident with a dog, and a serial killer with a yen for poetry and gameplay.
Speaking of poetry, there’s also room for a piece by Bonnie Parker. Bonnie and Clyde Bonnie Parker. Seems like she could shoot better than she could sling a rhyme, but it’s a fascinating curio from a famous gun moll.
The first ish also gives us a fascinating discussion on what constitutes contemporary noir (Alan Ward Thomas, the Eastern Hemisphere editor, pulls together a fascinating take that includes transhumanist SF, Alvin Toffler-style future shock, Cubism and Jung) and a forum on whether the genre has a moral compass. The jury’s out on that one, but there are equally compelling arguments for and against.
The one misfire is Jon Danko and Danda’s graphic novel, Fired On Deadline. It’s muddled, and text-heavy, with none of the bite of the prose pieces. It also, at least in my preview copy, looked as if it had been inserted at too low a resolution, leading to blurry, rasterised artwork. That’s a real shame, considering my predilections. It also does Danda’s lovely expressionistic art (he did the cover, shown above, which is a much better showcase of his talents) no justice. It’s apparently the first part of a larger work, and I’d be interested to see where Danko and Danda take the idea of Flamenco Noir. But for now at least, the whole thing looks like something of an afterthought.
But that’s a minor quibble regarding a strong anthology bulging with good stuff. You can pick it up at the Kindle Store and still get change from a poorly cephalopod. Noir Nation shows a genre that is in very rude health indeed. Live and goddam kicking.
Tales Of The Beeranauts: Very Merry Men
The Beeranauts have been pretty quiet this year. The Great British Beer Festival had to manage without us, and it was a minor contingent that made it to the London Drinker gathering back in the spring. Apart from that, nish since Battersea. A bit of a poor show, frankly.
We made up for that on Friday, with a trip up to Nottingham for the Robin Hood Festival. Held in the grounds of lovely Nottingham Castle, it’s perhaps the biggest British Beer Festival after the Earl’s Court spectacular. And it’s far and away the best.
Nanowrimo – A Sad Announcement
I wanted to make it work this year, I really did. But the pressures of three blogs plus re-write duties on Habeas Corpus and other pipeline works means that something just had to give.
That something, alas, is Nanowrimo.
I will be buckling down and writing, sure, just not on a new 50,000 word project. It will be interesting, I think, to try and do 1700 words a day across all the projects I have on the table this autumn, and this is certainly not goodbye forever.
This will be no break for me. If anything, I will use the Nano excuse to up my game in solidarity with all the word warriors out there. Expect some big posts this November.
To everyone, and especially the Oxfordshire Nanos, good luck and be magnificent. Let’s be verbose out there.
The Vanished: A Reappearance
Some very good news from Leading Man Clive about his short film The Vanished, which he wrote and directed for maritime charity Seafarers UK.
The film has been nominated for one of the Martime Foundation’s prestigious Maritime Media awards. It’s up for the Donald Gosling award for Best Television, Film or Radio Contribution.
It’s a big old longlist, but it’s worth pointing out that The Vanished is the only film there that’s not from a broadcasting heavyweight. It was put together on a tiny budget in a very short period of time. It’s the talents that Clive and his producer Keith rallied to the cause that have made The Vanished such a satisfying, emotive and chilling piece.
Read more about the Maritime Media Awards.
And here’s my original post on The Vanished (declaration of interest: I have a colourist credit on the film).
The awards are announced on November 22nd, at the Institute of Directors, Pall Mall, London. More news as we get it.
A Couple Of Random Thoughts On Siri
The Voice Control on the iPhone has been broken for as long as I’ve tried to use it. There’s an entertaining random element to what happens when you ask it to dial a number, and it’s pretty much guaranteed that you will not be getting the call you need.* If Siri fixes that problem then there’s a step forward right off the bat. If Siri works as well as Apple claim, then we have a genuine game-changer in all kinds of ways.
My sis-in-law Sandi is blind, and has become an Apple fan over the past year or so on the strength of the accessibility that’s baked into OSX at a core level. She’s excited about Siri for the same reason. A phone that you can use effectively without the need to look at the screen is a pretty big deal. Paired with a Bluetooth headset, there’s no reason for it to ever leave her handbag or pocket. This is a step towards the idea of the hardware vanishing into the cloud. If you can order your phone around, then the barrier between interface and user pretty much disappears, especially if, like Sandi, that barrier has prevented you from using the phone in the first place.
Although, as numerous wags on Twitter have pointed out this week, if the Siri developers don’t put an April 1st eater egg in where Siri will, just once, respond to a query with “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that,” then they’re missing a trick.
*TRUSTOREE: I once asked VC to phone home, and it responded by playing the Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Equal parts hilarity to creepiness.
Modern English
DocoDom and I have been working together for quite a few years now, and it’s always nice to see some of the material from our archive popping back up on the interwebs.
Dom’s just uploaded the first major project that we worked on as a team to YouTube, and I’m delighted to showcase it here. Modern English is a half-hour show about the mod subculture, featuring interviews with some of the faces of the scene. Enjoy!
Legacy
I’m really not sure how I should be feeling today. I’m sad, of course, as anyone should be where they hear of a life cut too short, when there was still so much left to do. But at the same time, I have to say the sadness is tinged with admiration. The legacy that he has left is one of the most influential on the planet. Even if you don’t own one of the products that made the company that he founded, left and then resurrected, you’re pretty likely to have used devices that he had a major hand in popularising. He didn’t invent the Graphical User Interface, the mouse, or the tablet computer, or the hard drive music player. All he did was make them easier and more intuitive to use. And in doing so, he changed the technological landscape of the late 20th and early 21st century.
His influence is everywhere – in the design, colours and finish of hundreds and thousands of products that he had nothing to do with. In the way we consume music, TV and films. He is the driving force behind one of the most innovative and consistently surprising film studios on the planet. His company could make headlines not just by launching a product, but by allowing rumours of those products to circulate.
I find it impossible to write about him in the past tense, because he’s still around – when I lift the lid of my laptop, when I pick up my phone. He’s part of the technological, social and artistic landscape, and always will be. That’s a legacy that we should all wish for.
The point is, I can write this piece without mentioning his name once, and you all know who I’m talking about.
From Here To Hilversum
I try not to talk about work on X&HT, which is in general a solid rule for most bloggers. But this is too cool not to share.
That cool chunk of Lego is the Beeld & Geluid (Sound and Vision) building, in a leafy town called Hilversum about a twenty minute train ride from Amsterdam. It’s the home of Dutch radio and television, and contains all the archives of getting on for 100 years of broadcast history.
The building is just as remarkable on the inside – five stories high and five deep. As well as the archive, it’s home to a huge multimedia museum. The glass wall here has imprinted pictures of Dutch stars of stage and both big and small screen.
These pods contain the contestants of Last Man Watching, a competition where you watch TV until your brains leak out of your ears. It had been running for about 30 hours when I visited. Loads of people had dropped out at the 24 hour mark. Not a sign of the limits of human endurance – if you make it that far you get a free TV.
It’s a fascinating place, and well worth a trip out if only to marvel at a building that’s like a supervillain’s lair if only they were really into Dutch film and TV.
Of course, it was important to find time for a spot of refreshment before we headed back…
EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS 