24 March 2008
Nessie Hunter
"To say that I am a patient man would be an understatement." Back in the 90s I remember watching a documentary about Steve Feltham, who seventeen years ago sold up everything, bought an old mobile library van and parked up alongside Loch Ness to look for Nessie... I'm glad to see he's still there.
19 March 2008
Food For The Soul
Great Poets of the 20th Century. From The Guardian... Introduction, William Boyd on Siegfried Sassoon, John Banville on Seamus Heaney, Jeanette Winterson on Ted Hughes, Andrew Motion on Philip Larkin, Margaret Drabble on Sylvia Plath, Rowan Williams on WH Auden, Craig Raine on T.S. Eliot.
17 March 2008
Thirsty For Creativity
Award winning short Flash animations by Ilias Sounas:
Space Alone
The Circle Of Life
15 March 2008
Drawing Superheros
Videos of comics artists sketching and inking.
John Romita and Joe Kubert
John Buscema and Bill Sienkiewicz
Dave Gibbons and Travis Charest
13 March 2008
Commie Kids Telly
One rather strange minor cultural phenomena you experienced as a kid growing up in 60s and 70s Britain was a number of television programs that originated from beyond the Iron Curtain. Most infamous was the downright scary The Singing Ringing Tree from East Germany.
There's an interesting Radio 4 documentary on the program. It was later spoofed by The Fast Show
But there were several others including The Little Mermaid from Czechoslovakia, The White Horses from Yugoslavia (with its beautiful and much loved theme tune) and The Mole, also from Czechoslovakia, by acclaimed animator Zdeněk Miler … of which there are many many examples on Youtube.
I doubt it the BBC at the time were really trying to further world revolution (MI5 put a stop to that) the documentary explains that is was just trying to fill up the schedule with cheap imports. And apparently The Singing Ringing Tree was criticised by the powers that be in it’s own country for being too bourgeois with its princesses and princes and certainly The Mole was pretty subversive in its own way:
Mr. Miler said he steered clear of politics, but as Krtek became his life's work, the films did not shut out the real world, before or after the fall of Communism. Bureaucrats were poked fun at. He lamented the destruction of the environment. He showed a rabbit graphically giving birth. One film had Krtek travelling the world, stunned at an American mole's superior burrowing technology.
12 March 2008
Who Thought Cancer Could Be So Beautiful.
The Wellcome Image Awards. Gallery. How they were made. From the Wellcome Collection.
Smile kids!
Kids on Aciiiiid! In order to protect her pupils from internet pervs a British headmistress has censored photos on the school's website by slapping smileys all over them. The result is like some combined fever dream of Chris Morris and Banksy.
Watching Paint Dry.
Prof Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan looks at the physics of wrinkles, creases and folds - from the small to the very large (video demos), feeds his venus flytrap, then rides on his magic carpet.
05 March 2008
Oscar Predictions - The Aftermath.
Last mouth I made a few Oscar predictions… and I'm sort of quite surprised of how many I got write. Of course if I had put actual money on them, them I suspect they results might have been different. And some of them were pretty much close to coin-tosses. I was out on the actresses categories, as was most everyone else with the outside chances coming in there. I was quite surprised that The Diving Bell And The Butterfly came away empty-handed but it was probably no real shock that the Animated Film was scooped by another Pixar instant 'classic'. Bourne Ultimate was a sort of a covering bet, It'll get one of these, punt… I definitely didn't expect it to get all three of the technical Oscars it was up for.
Now I've seen both No Country For Old Men is probably the more obvious one to sweep up the awards but There Will Be Blood is probably the more deserving… especially for Daniel Day Lewis. The cinematography was excellent, especially the night scenes (which apparently is where other cinematographers often judge their fellows work).
And finally I'm very pleased that Norbit managed to miss-out and so we are not currently living under Satan's rule.
