burnt by the film

hmm, highly questionable title for a blog entry, but just wanted to lavish some praise on one of my favourite films of all time, which I saw again last night. Nikhita Mikhalkov's Burnt By The Sun starts out as if it were a Bergmanesque pastoral, all wacky aristocrats romping in and around a beautifully shot Carl Larsson-style dacha, with some Soviet-era spice thrown in for surreal good measure - and it's only gradually that the film reveals itself as an extraordinarily menacing, and moving, political/psychological thriller. Fantastic pacing, and even after watching it three times, hugely disturbing and tension-inducing.

Last night's entertainment makes me think about spoilers too - it's difficult to read much about this film, including the back of the DVD, without being told crucial plot information which is not revealed until about two thirds of the way in and radically changes the experience of watching it. (Don't follow too many links on imdb or wikipedia either if you don't want to know.) Is it only me who thinks there should be a law against this? Novels are just as bad, and I expend a good deal of effort on avoiding catching sight of the backs of books until I've finished reading them. grrrr . . . .

more dreams of glory

Dreamt last night that I was performing with the Tord Gustavsson trio in a large concert hall, improvising on something I knew to be a bassoon, but which in fact was a huge modernist beech block (a little like an Ikea chest of drawers) with only two holes. I blew directly into one of them, and wiggled my finger in the other, altering the pitch of the note. It made a noise like a bassoon with extra overtones and was quite beautiful. I suspect if someone actually made an instrument like this the results might be somewhat different.

This is not quite in the same league as the dream where I was on a festival stage with Thelonious Monk, Pete Marsh and Björk, but I enjoyed it all the same.

saying hello, saying goodbye

Yesterday we picked up the keys for the new place and started measuring the rooms. We think we like Forest Hill and East Dulwich a lot. This marks almost the end of a mini-era of several months living homeless-style on floors and in sitting rooms, and spending every other weekend shuttling back and forth to storage facilities laden with boxes and furniture in varying degrees of obsolescence, struggling to compress the necessities of life into overnight bags.

It also marks the end of a maxi-era as we clear out our old family home in boring North London, taking some very difficult decisions along the way. Among which, bidding adieu to the personages pictured - the principals of our animistic/polytheistic childhood pantheon. I might post some more details of their lives, myths, characters, politics etc in the future, but on the other hand it's a bit embarrassing, so I might not.

got there in the end

It's rather complicated and I'm not convinced it's worth it. Essentially it's all about using "bookmarklets" and storing your categories in del.icio.us. But it's a many-click process, and has the disadvantage (if you see it that way) of cluttering up your tag pages in del.icio.us. I suppose I could create a separate del.icio.us account simply as an accessory to the blogger blog. But that seems a bit of a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Categories: blog, hack

category making

For my second post I am trying something really clever which I will probably screw up. Here goes.

Categories: hack, design, folksonomy

venturing south

After two months imposing on the kindness of family and friends, we pick up the keys tomorrow for our new place in South London. Hurrah! But it feels a bit like moving to Outer Mongolia. I've probably only spent a few evenings of my life south of the river and now I am making my home there. Here's where I will be telling the rest of the world what it's like, whether they have trees there, if people eat with cutlery etc. God, but you're all going to enjoy the ride!