Spotlight Saturday

In honour of the fact the Miss V, Puppy and I are going to see this fab band tonight I would like to sing the praises of........IDLEWILD.

Made up of Roddy Woomble, Rod Jones, Colin Newton, Allan Stewart and Gareth Russell, Idlewild are a Scottish band that formed in 1995, albeit with a slightly varied line-up. Named after the quiet meeting place of Anne and Diana in Anne Of Green Gables. They have released 7 albums over the past 12 years and it was The Remote Part that caught my attention. You see, every Friday night for two years Miss V and I would go dancing with our assorted friends to an indie night around the corner from where we lived (ah student days) and autumn of 2002 one song would be played every week (mainly because we requested it!) called American English...

from here

There is a lot to say about this band and how I feel about them but after due consideration I think it's best to post a lot of videos and listen to a lot of music!!!

This was released on the same album:-

from here


And a few early ones (Seriously this band has Gertrude Stein as a part of their bridge!)

from here



from here


from here

From the The Remote Part

from here

From Warnings/Promises

from here

And from Post Electric Blues

from here

Just pretty pictures for this one but an awesome song none the less:-

from here

Spotlight Saturday

Joe Anderson

Born 26th March, 1982, this English actor is probably best know for his portrayal of Max Carrigan in Across The Universe.

His first major role was in the odd but interesting film Silence Becomes You with Alicia Silverstone and Sienna Guillory, This is a very pretty, if overly attempting mystical story of two sisters brought up in almost isolatation, lost in the world their father created for them and the stranger they bring into the house with a clear purpose that gets muddled along the way. Then came playing Jane Austen's brother in Becoming Jane and Peter Hook in the wonderful film Control, which is about Ian Curtis and Joy Division. Anton Corbjin's film is wonderful, sad, intense and haunting with stand out performances by Sam Reily and Samantha Morton and the director's history as a still photographer results in some the most beautiful representations of Macclesfield. The black and white format adds the bleakness of the lives being lead and at the same time captures perfectly the grace and beauty which makes their music so enduring.
Across The Universe by contrast is a colour explosion and Joe portrays the enthusiam and chaos of Max who is part of the generation who embraced the freedom and insanity of the 60's while showing the price paid by those who were enlisted to the Vietnam War. It is Max and Jude's relationship that stands out in the film to me, the friendship that springs naturally and means so much to both of them. Since then Mr Anderson (yes, I had to say it) has done horror movies, The Ruins and The Crazies, the Hilary Swank bio-pic Amelia, a heist move High Life, an action-comedy Rogues Gallery with Ellen Barkin, Zach Galifianakis and Emilie de Ravin and a road movie called The 27 club about a rock star whose best friend and lead singer has just committed suicide and who goes on a road trip with a checkout boy and a fan in order to reach the funeral. He is currently filming Flutter with Billy Zane and Laura Fraser.

Also possibly working on being a director? :-

JA - I’m a big fan (of the horror genre), but I’ve also of late been getting really annoyed with the whole genre – why am I not being disturbed? I’m being disgusted a lot of the time, and I cringe a little bit, but I’m not really deeply being affected by what I’m seeing. So consequently I’ve set out to write my own psychologically disturbing thing for myself. It’s sort of a pet project that spawned out of doing research for things like The Crazies – just watching horror movie after horror movie, and asking “how I can change this and get back to where we were?” It’s such a great medium for a first time director as well because you can have a human aspect to it and use the cinematic medium to tell a story, but you have to get it right or there won’t be any jumps or anything. Also, it’s very easy to shoot something on a video camera and do a sort of Paranormal Activity type movie, but I think the genre deserves a little more respect than that to a certain degree. It’s an exciting challenge.

quote from here, an excellent recent interview with Joe by Michael Holder









1. http://www.last.fm/music/Joe+Anderson/+images/2339433
2. http://www.brandimills.com/blog/tag/the-big-lebowski/
5. http://www.screenrush.co.uk/film/galerievignette_gen_cfilm=136101&cmediafichier=19178791.html
The rest are of unknown source. If you know or can claim them then please let me know so I can credit you.

Spotlight Saturday

Wonderfalls

Do you like Pushing Daises? Did you fall in love with the Pie-maker, the dead girl named Chuck, Olive Snook and Private Detective Emerson Cod? Well let me suggest to you it's predecessor - Wonderfalls.

Bryan Fuller's earlier project went the way of cancellation long before Pushing Daises was put into candy coloured existence and yet PD came from the spark of a potential plot line involving a man who could wake the dead. Wonderfalls is set on the US side of Niagara Falls (but filmed on the Canadian side shhhhush!), it follows the life of Jaye Tyler and her loving, over-achieving, pushy family. Well meaning as they are Jaye has taken her Ivy league philosophy degree and general frustration with the world and run...as far as her tourist shop employment and trailer park home will let her. The show starts with the day a little mushed face lion talks to her, and follows the twisted paths that he and all the inanimate objects that talk lead her on. She never means well and yet things always end up being for the best, much to Jaye's annoyance. Caroline Dhavernas (pronounced Caro"lean"Da-ver-nas) is wonderful as Jaye, you feel her frustration, her fears for her sanity, fear her sharpness and yet still identify with her. She is not an easy character but she is a wonderful one.

The characters surrounding her are as well detailed as she is, reveling in an oddness that seems perfectly natural given the extremity of Jaye's perception. Her method of interaction is both charming and concerning and one of the people glad to be trailing in her wake is Eric Gotts (Tyron Leitso) , the man who has just pressed the ejector seat to his life after coming to Niagara on his honeymoon only to catch his wife being unfaithful. Mahandra (Tracey Thoms) is Jaye's wonderful, brutally honest best friend, Sharon (Katie Finneran) is her closeted, lawyer older sister, Aaron (Lee Pace - the Pie-maker himself) is her perceptive, concerned brother and her parents Karen and Darrin Tyler (Diana Scarwid and William Sadler) who are mainly confused by all their children's behaviour.

It was a great show, cancelled before it even had a chance. Thankfully now available on dvd!


Here are some quotes :-

• Karen: Your sister's not a cold-blooded murderer. She's never been a planner.

• Gretchen: Did you end up over-educated and unemployable like you said in the yearbook?
• Jaye: Yep.
  

• Mahandra: Disappointing your family is an extreme sport for you

• Aaron: Meaninglessness in a universe that has no meaning — that I get. But meaninglessness in a universe that has meaning... what does it mean?!

• Jaye: She's nice. We should take her clubbing.
• Mahandra: ...baby seals?
  

• Bianca: Your home is a trailer. Don't you see the beautiful poetry in that? It's a thing that's been designed to go someplace, and yet the hitch isn't hooked up to anything. So it just sits here, never living up to it's potential... but never in any danger of breaking down either.

• Jaye: [resigned] I don't have a choice; I'm a puppet. The universe just sticks its hand up my butt, and if I don't dance, people get hurt!

1 http://kihm2.wordpress.com/2007/11/29/wonderfalls/
2 http://lettersfromlouis.wordpress.com/2009/06/15/as-melhores-series-canceladas/
3 http://www.wvah.com/programs/wonderfalls/leepace.shtml

Spotlight Saturday

As a big film/reading/all round geek I often find myself saying how great certain people are and seeing blank looks. Not that these people are obscure, often I'll find forums, tumblrs and facebook pages dedicated to their wonderful selves. Anyway, I have a great deal of enthusiasm for certain people's work and would like to use my little piece of the internet to celebrate them. So:-

Amber Tamblyn

Amber Rose Tamblyn was born May 14, 1983 in Santa Monica, California. She is the daughter of actor Russ Tamblyn, and her mother, Bonnie Tamblyn, is a singer and artist. Russ Tamblyn was a childhood love of mine, especially as Gideon in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, so when I got dragged into seeing The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants by my Alexis Bledel-loving friend I made the connection to her.
She is a wonderful actress, she grew up working on the TV show General Hospital but after acting in a few movies (including the Wim Wenders segment of a short film compilation Ten Minutes Old: The Trumpet) she landed the lead role in Joan of Arcadia. The show follows Joan as she comes to term with the fact that God is taking a rather more direct interest in her life than most, and grumbles her way through it. The show is very much written by people who like science and questions, and it benefits from that, along with the genuine affectionate bonds the family group seemed to have. After JOA was cancelled and S of T P came out, Amber starred in the movie Stephanie Daley, a difficult look at a court case involving a teenage girl whose baby died immediately after birth and whether it was murder and the events running up to it. The movie is brilliant, sensitive and harrowing and wonderfully acted by Amber, Tilda Swinton and Timothy Hutton who play the pregnant criminal psychologist and her husband. After that she worked in The Grudge 2, S of the T P 2 and a number of films which I haven't had chance to see yet. Recently she has been playing Casey Shraeger on The Unusals which also starred Oscar nominated Jeremy Renner, playing a young cop out to prove herself in the bizarre dept handling the more unusual aspects of New York law enforcement.

Amber is also a writer with two books of poetry out published, a co-founder of Write Now which fundraises for quality poetry programming and supports poetry communities who also put together an annual show in LA to showcase poets living and writing in the US. I have both her books, and they are wonderful. When I was little I tried to learn all my favourite poems and passages of books to recite to myself because replaying people's beautiful words stopped me from being lonely; I grew out of it but began again when I read some of Amber's poems from Free Stallion. This Christmas I got Bang Ditto and love that just as much, her words are sharp but not vicious, angry without being vindicitve, introspective without being to self-involved and passionate while remaining involving. She talks about politcial issues she feels strongly about, about personal relationships, how she feels about herself and the world.

From the poem ROLE RESEARCH:

"1.

“Jumpers” he calls them, pushing a picture

under my dried tabloid-puke eyes.

The homicide detective at New York’s 19th precinct

sits across from me, the mascara maven.

Role research. He has no eyelids left,

just crumpled Polaroids. Murders, suicides,

robberies, kidnapping: seen one 36-year-old

Caucasian male impaled on a pole after

plummeting the length of New Jersey,

seen ’em all..."

All photos are from Amber's Facebook page
The section of Role Research is from here