David Bowie - Magic Dance

David Bowie - Magic Dance

Bowie! Fucking Bowie innit. Chameleonic denizen of all musical shapes and sizes. Ziggy, The Thin White Duke, bloke in silly pointy hat in 80's VHS looking videos shot by Kevin Godley, 90's D&B superstar.

We've all played the 'which Bowie are you?' game. NO ONE ever says they want to be mid-80's cod piece sporting, girly bell-end Bowie from Labyrinth. Do they?

Cobra Cut - Night Prism

Cobra Cut - Night Prism

You know how it is, you're crashing around on the internet, you download something and love it but you were drunk at the time.

I have no idea how I got this tune, probably from 20JFG but as I say, I was drunk.
Great song though.

"I'm not intersted in what you fucking take love, I'm want to know whether you've read it?"

This is what north London is really like.

Vincent Kartheiser

Pete Campbell from TV's Mad Men, he's one day older then me.

Love the cardie.

Sir Victor Uwaifo & His Melody Maestros - Osalobua Rekpama

(Evangaline Lilly from TV's Lost)

Sir Victor Uwaifo & His Melody Maestros - Osalobua Rekpama

Screw you Vampire Weekend (although I do love that album, as much as that may make me a bellend in the eyes of some. Good memories of the south of France last year), this is a proper summer song.

Corens

I want to be part of this family.

I found Alan endlessly entertaining on the News Quiz


Victoria made me laugh out loud this morning with this column in The Observer and I kind of like her book about making a porn film (I find it attractive the way she deals with spunk, knobs, lesbian sex and her fascination with watching two men doing it).


Giles is the one I am still on the fence about. I loved Edwardian Supersize Me and the infamous e-mails are brilliant. A friend mine get's fizzy knickers thinking about the G-man, who we both once saw in a boozer, but I get the feeling we wouldn't get on.

Wes Anderson - The Substance of Style

Wes Anderson - The Substance of Style
A five part video essay on the work of Wes Anderson

Lovely shelving

From http://menandwomenofindustry.blogspot.com/

I really like these shelves. Plus the amps looking amazing.

Betrayal

Christina Hendricks dyes her hair!

Darn fine crisps

"Peaks"

The Informers (2009)

Film might be shit. Trailers fucking brilliant.

Lightspeed Champion - Midnight Surprise

Lightspeed Champion - Midnight Surprise

"Wake up, smell the seamen..." might be my favorite lyric of all time.

It's just so sad

Study: Children Exposed To Pornography May Expect Sex To Be Enjoyable

Percy Faith - Theme from a Summer Place

Percy Faith - Theme from a Summer Place

I have been complimented a couple of times today about my summer look. And this after someone mentioned that a friend had asked for their hair to be cut like mine.
Bam!

The Taking of Pelham 123 (1974)

David Shire - Money Montage
David Shire - End Title

Quintessential 70's, New York film. I suppose for most moderneo folk in Cool Britannia we are too young to remember that New York was, before it's current middle-class play ground profile, a fucking shit hole. A very nearly bankrupt city in the middle 70's whose fame world wide was for high crime rates, disco, the .44 calibre killer and a black out that lasted for 25hrs.

I am not saying it was all bad because, as ever with a recession or depression or a down right horrid time, creative types swoop in when the middle classes fuck off to suburbs and thrash about being annoying whilst making art we will all remember. I wouldn't want to live next door to Lou Reed though.

There is a funny scene toward the start of the film when Mathau's harried controller must briefly babysit some Japanese gentlemen from the Tokoyo underground who have come, sans cameras I think, to have shufty at the 'advanced' American train traffic control techniques. I like this because it gently shows the growing influence of Japan in the 70's in the lead up to the mammoth financial boom in the 80's. This is in desperate contrast to the late surge in 'yellow peril' type films in the late 80's/early 90's such as Black Rain and Rising Sun. Both films, whilst not perhaps being outright racist show a very definite streak of paranoia about the Japanese and also use them as simple stand ins for an enemy that was no longer there, Ruskies!

Soundtrack kicks ass, I am still trying to hunt down the special edition vinyl version which greatly expands the paltry CD release.

Late 50's/Early 60's

Nelson Riddle - Lolita Ya Ya
Marilyn Monroe - I'm Through With Love
The Ventures - Walk, Don't Run
Del Shannon - Runaway
Lord Rockingham's XI - Hoots Mon

I have no idea why I feel like listening to 50's/60's music tonight, I think it may be influenced by seeing the trailer for the new film about Mr Joe Meek of Holloway Rd, N7 or maybe it's because I am thinking about how I would like to live then. Not for the music or clothes or even the fucking political climate. No, I think it's because if I had similar brains to what I have now, I could be working in a job and possibly afford to buy a house or at the very least live on my own. Heaven. Total heaven.

Music supervisors for adverts - All cunts

Spank Rock - Put That Pussy On Me (Diplo Tonite remix)

The sample in the remix is The Seeds - Can't Seem To Make You Mine, now I don't give two fuck about the song itself but I do feel that it's inclusion on a Lynx ad somehow devalues the Spank Rock/Diplo remix as that is actually a tune I really really like.

What a boring dilemma.

Whicker Island

The Game (1997)

Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit

David Fincher's seemingly overlooked 1997 film starring Mickey D. Mickey plays Nicholas Van Orton, a super rich recluse haunted by family shit. Ya knaw, dad topped his self in front of the kid. Bad juju. On his 58th birthday he is offered a gift from his bro, Seany P, to participate in a 'Game'. One, profoundly life changing game.

A wonderful conceit builds and builds through the film until a great revelatory scene towards the end of film, which at once pulls the rug from under you but only reaffirms that the film is nothing but a giant MacGuffin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin).

I think some viewers felt cheated by the end of the film. I found it to one of the most truly uplifting in cinema, better perhaps then Tillsammans, when they all play football in the snow to SOS by ABBA.

Loathed as I am to call it a truly post-modern film, it very much is. The whole world of the film's narrative consists of a films narrative but played out in real life to build the concept of
movie-like events taking place in the very ordinary life (in context, he is a millionaire yes, but one with no real friends or life outside of an echo laden home and office in which Lt.Cmdr Shelby from Star Trek: TNG - The Best of Both Worlds 1&2 plays his PA) of someone with no knowledge that his is the center of a small, distilled, corporeal world.

Blogg Off!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8002304.stm

I hate the twunt even more after this. Policial views, bah. He say his T's in that terrible mid-Adlandic way.

SAVE THE CLOCK TOWER!

A friend mentioned these fellas who I hadn't heard of before.

http://www.c20society.org.uk/index.html

They are all about the 20th Century baby.

This came up because at South Kensington station (on my journey home every evening) you can see one the few remaining example of the K8 phone box.
http://www.c20society.org.uk/docs/campaigns/k8.html

Seems like people didn't like the K8 and only like the k6. Twats.

I say

The Lemonheads - Frank Mills

The Lemonheads - Frank Mills

One of only two songs I know all the words too.

The two sides of Rowley Birkin QC

Boats n Hoes

Smoking is cool, says Mrs Cabot of Boston

More ads here

REM - Nightswimming (Kissy Sell Out BMore remix)

REM - Nightswimming (Kissy Sell Out BMore remix)

I stole this post whole sale from http://winniecooper.net/

Arab Strap - The First Big Weekend

Arab Strap - The First Big Weekend

First bank holiday weekend of the summer! GO FUCKING NUTS!

Snatch Wars...

With all the talk of the 'mashup' entering the literary world with Pride & Predjudice...And Zombies I thought I would post something as well in this vein.

The 90's

I know preppy is the look back for men at the mo. Well, it is according to the ASOS free style mag I got in the post. And I like it. Trouble is, I was actually a bit of a preppy dresser in my first year of uni. Oh yeah, I had an oxford shirt and a pair of chinos but little to no irony. I just thought it was cool. And now it is. And that is tragic for me. I have seen the return of many styles that I remember in from my youth and if you remember it first time, you cannot wear it again. Fuck!

Jordan Knight - Give it to You
Young Black Teenagers - Tap the Bottle

No NRG

I have no NRG today because the world is against me, for the day at least. So I am trying to induce NRG in me.

Lime - Babe We're Gonna Love Tonight
Patrick Cowley - Menergy

Thief (1981)

Tangerine Dream - Dr Destructo

Michael Mann film. You see the themes and styles that have preoccupied him in his later films beginning in this, his first 'proper' film and a great soundtrack fron Tangerine Dream.

Runaway Train - Best midnight movie ever!

Runaway Train, probably looks like a Cannon cheapie but it's so much more. A pretty brutal film, with plenty for both train film fans and prison movie buffs alike. And it also has a stunning performance from Jon Voight and an alright one from Eric Roberts.

One of those films that popped up on BBC 1 ages ago, it was on about two Sundays ago. It was getting late so I thought I would only watch the first half hour, then I thought I'd catch the first hour and bing, before you know it you're at the amazing last shot.

Scripted by Kurosawa, directed by a guy who went on to direct Tango & Cash with Stallone and Kurt Russell, it's an amazingly odd and brilliant film.

VHS Adventures

Films I remember seeing trailers for but have never seen:

China O'Brien


American Ninja


Iron Eagle 2

Ennio Moricone - Humanity (Part II)

Ennio Moricone - Humanity (Part II)

So remakes. Some complain that people are now just remaking anything - The Wicker Man, Last House on the Left (just down the road, past the post-office, can't miss it), Alfie, Assault on Precint 13, The Taking of Pelham 123, Dawn of the Dead (zombies don't run!) to name a few. And they are awful for the most part.

Then we reach John Carpenter. He built his sodding career doing remakes. His own Assault on Precint 13 is a remake of Howard Hawk's Rio Bravo but with more afros, The Thing is Howards Hawk's The Thing from Another World but with more heads falling off.

I'm not against remakes; the sancitity of your beloved film is not in question just because some new French/German, former music video/short film/ad director gets hold of the film and decides that, despite his protestation in the EPK on the DVD about wanting to 'honour the film that made him want to be a director in the first place' makes a fucking mess of it. The older film still exists! Check out Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, the Kaufman version is great. And not just because Leonard Nimoy is in it.

No idea what got me onto to this. I only posted the Ennio Morricone track because it was on Newswipe the other day.

lost

It is putting my head out there a bit but I shall say it anyway. I think Lost is a damn damn fine piece of network television. Yeah, I don't buy the religious aspects. I don't really like some of the choppier elements of the multi-narrative structure. I sometimes get bored at being forced to remember that that geezer from season 2 is related to that geezer from season 3's flashback. Blah blah blah.

After nearly 3 seasons of meandering about like twats, the producers did seemingly stop, scratch a nut and go 'what the balls have we done for the last couple of years?' The last 4 eps of season 3 saw a restructure of the narrative to actually drive it forward instead of pissing about in the jungle shouting 'Others!' every two mins or finding yet another Flower or Hatch or fucking Orchid or whatever. The move to a shorter season from season 4 onwards has really really livened up what was quickly becoming a programme which looked to have badly stalled.

Season 5, so far, has been excellent as a bit of bubble gum pop TV. The recent episodes and the discussions of time travel and how one cannot affect the past because the past has happened has frankly forced me to reexamine the whole of Back To The Future's time travel theorems.

Mama Cass Elliot - Make your own kind of music from season 2, ep 1.

Western Grip Handjobs

About 4:44 for a demo by George Bush.

Widelux

I want a Widelux camera http://www.widelux.net/

LiLo's got her bangers out

Recreating Marilyn's last photo shoot or some such.
http://nymag.com/fashion/08/spring/44247/

Jeff Bridges takes Pictures

He takes pictures as well. Find out more here.

I love the picture from The Fabulous Baker Boys with bro, Beau.

UK Road Safety videos - A personal selection of favs

At the end of this one I always say outloud, 'Two pints of lager please'.

7"

Bob Stanley lays the blame for the death of the 7" single at the door of Culture Beat - Mr Vain.

Yeah, well what about these wonderful fuckers?