Liam and Noel meet the matchstick men

Here's a great video from Oasis to promote their new greatest hits CD. The song is 'The Masterplan' and the video is inspired by those wonderful matchstick men paintings by L.S. Lowry. These paintings, in turn, inspired Status Quo to write 'Pictures of Matchstick Men'. Status Quo, in turn, helped inspire the sound of Oasis. And the cycle of life continues...



And here's one of Lowry's paintings; 'Coming Out of School' painted in 1927. More about him here.

And on a lighter note...

My Halloween activities continued last night with a trip to a haunted village with my sister and nephew Jack (dressed up as a little crocodude). Had a great time trick-or-treating with him, riding the carousel and making him roar at strangers. He was a pretty brave little guy considering all of the scary noises, dry ice, and costumes (like witches on stilts) surrounding him. At his age, I probably would have wet myself. Mind you we didn't really celebrate Halloween in England when I was a kid. Instead we had Guy Fawkes Night where we watched fireworks and burnt effigies on huge bonfires. Much more wholesome.

If you go down to the woods today...

Halloween started early for me this year. This past Saturday, I went to the Vancouver International Film Centre to see a film called Rituals, part of their current 'Terror on the Tundra - Canadian Horror Classics' series. It's the first time the film has been shown on screen since 1977 when it was first released. It's never been released on DVD and is nearly impossible to find on VHS. I still remember seeing it on TV way back when(maybe the early 80s) and that it scared the crap out of me. It's still very scary, despite some pretty dodgy choices for the soundtrack music (hey, it was the 70s) and some poor lighting in some of the night scenes.
The plot is pretty basic; five doctors go on a hike in the Canadian wilderness and are terrorized by an unknown maniac. What makes it so different from your standard horror movie is that the hikers are five intelligent middle-aged men, not your stereotypical group of hormone-charged teens. Apparently the whole shoot was a hell of an ordeal for everyone involved. They shot it chronologically to add more realism to the physical and psychological changes in the actors. Also, the actors did all of their own stunts - falling down mountains, floating down rapids, fighting off swarms of bees. You can see them getting dirtier, growing more stubble and deteriorating right before your eyes.
The movie owes a lot to Deliverance, but is much more of a psychological horror film. Like The Blair Witch Project, much of the horror comes from the wilderness around them and how their relationships slowly break down during their ordeal. A very effective and very Canadian movie, with some truly frightening and disturbing scenes.
By the way, I love the poster (see above) for this - there's nothing really 'GOTHIC HORROR' about it. It's Canadian eh?

Psome pseriously pswirly psychedelic pstuff

Here's a website I just discovered for a designer/artist called Si Scott (even his name is kinda swirly). He has a wonderful portfolio of beautiful flowing artwork and typography. You can see it here.

Found on Kaliber 10000.

Remake/Remodel

Here's a great clip that I had to post - Roxy Music performing on a German TV show in 1973. This is the Roxy Music that I really love, before they started making slick make-out albums like Avalon. Remake/Remodel is a song that really goes over the top, giving all the guys in the band a chance to strut their stuff and show off. I love the part at the end where they all get to do their own quirky little solos.
Oh and check out Brian Eno on the keyboards, dressed like a gay vulture.

Which one are you?

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are
always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
- Bertrand Russell

Another fine mess

Here's an incredibly ambitious Sony Bravia TV ad directed by Jonathan (Sexy Beast) Grazer. It used:

70,000 litres of paint
358 single bottle bombs
33 sextuple air cluster bombs
22 Triple hung cluster bombs
268 mortars
33 Triple Mortars
22 Double mortars
358 meters of weld
330 meters of steel pipe
57 km of copper wire
And no CGI!

It took 5 days and 60 people to clean up the mess. I guess they wanted to get their damage deposit back.

Hi-res version is here.
Lo-res version is here.

More Mew?

Ok, now I'm totally hooked on the Mew CD I bought last weekend. The guy has such an incredible voice. Great music to listen to when there's fog in the air and leaves falling around you. Here's their video for 'The Zookeeper's Boy'

Kasabian and Mew

I went to see Kasabian a couple of nights back at the Commodore. Their new album, Empire, is great. It has the kinds of songs that lend themselves to being sung with arms outstretched, backlit by spotlights and dry ice. They put on a really good show to a very enthusiastic crowd with lots of 'na-na-naaa' sing-alongs and shout-outs to the great city of 'Vancoovah'. They have a great video for their new single 'Shoot the Runner' on their website here.



One of the opening bands, Mew from Denmark, was also very good. They reminded me a little of Sigur Ros - very atmospheric and glacial. Singer looked a little like a blonde Tom Hulce in Amadeus. I ended up buying their CD after their set at the show. It's called 'And the Glass Handed Kites'. How's THAT for pretentious? Or maybe something was lost in translation.

What about Bob?

Saw Bob Dylan last night with my Dad, my sister and her friend. Very good show, considering it can be kind of hit and miss with the guy when you see him live. His band was incredible, breathing new life into songs nearly 40 or more (!) years old. It's always a nice change of pace to go to a concert and see 'real musicians' sometimes. Songs like 'Tangled Up in Blue' and 'Like a Rolling Stone' will be around for ever. I'm glad he played 'All Along the Watchtower' for the encore; it has to be one of my favorites. As every year goes by, it makes more and more sense.
I must admit that, growing up as a teenager, I didn't really appreciate his stuff. Dad loved him, buying every album that he put out, while I was listening to, oh I don't know, stuff like Sigue Sigue Sputnik or Power Station. Kind of embarrassing really - maybe I just wasn't ready for good music yet.

Now that's a nice set of conkers

The beautiful Fall weather continues in Vancouver (thank-you global warming). The Fall always makes me nostalgic, particularly when I happen across the many horse-chestnuts littered around the West-End. They remind me of when I was a kid in England, playing conkers with other pasty-white boys with names like Gareth, Nigel or Gavin.
By the way, did you know that ex-Python Michael Palin was disqualified from the 1993 World Conker Championships for baking his conker and boiling it in vinegar? Well, now you do.
More about conkers here.

Some record-breaking sex and violence

Now why didn't anyone think of this before? This is a funny, gory motion piece using classic album covers. Directed by Ugly Pictures and animated by Man vs. Magnet. It takes a little time to download, but it's well worth the wait. You can view it here.

Found on motionographer.

Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolverine

Saw a couple of movies recently. Completely different, but both very good.
Firstly, there was Hard Candy, an incredibly well-acted movie about a 14 year-old girl who meets a sexual predator in an internet chatroom. Back at his place, she turns the tables on him and gets revenge in the MOST squirm-inducing way. Let's just say that if you're a guy, double ouch. Ellen Page as the Hayley was incredible, going from vulnerable to menacing in the blink of an eye. It's one of those movies, like American Psycho, that I enjoyed but find hard to recommend. People ask if you liked it and you go "Yeah, but..."
Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it really seems like films seem to be obsessed with the idea of torture as entertainment, perhaps tapping into the American psyche of today. From horror movies like Saw and Hostel to TV shows like Lost and 24 (starring everyone's post-911 superhero Jack Bauer) we just can't get enough of seeing people held captive and abused in horrific ways. Even shows like Jackass and Fear Factor involve cringeworthy tests of human endurance. And of course, American Idol is a different kind of torture altogether.



The second movie I rented (coincidentally also starring Ellen Page) was X-Men: The Last Stand. I think the X-Men series is definitely one of the better comic book interpretations done recently and this one was no exception. There's always a lot more emotion and subtext than you expect. Plus you get see lots of stuff getting smashed and blown-up. The special effects were incredible. I particularly liked how they managed to make Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen look twenty years younger in the prologue. Really impressive stuff. The only downside was that they seemed to rush things, trying to wrap up way too many loose ends to complete the series. I imagine there'll probably be an extended directors cut in the near future. There usually is.