Three Short Films to Hypnotise

  Heartbeats and skateboards.

The Indian government once unwittingly funded experimental film.

                                            

Canadians recently restored a hand-painted film.

The Perfect Pair of Black Jeans

There is nothing more elusive, more chimeric, or more enigmatic than the Black Jeans beast. Trying to find one is not a problem—trying to find the perfect one is nigh on impossible.

Men have it far too easy. I wish I could look as devastatingly perfect in a pair of tight black jeans as they do. Actually, maybe not exactly like they do. A number of men have jeans so tight that I honestly worry about the circulation to their dangly bits. It can’t be healthy, smooshing your balls up against a pair of black jeans and going out in the sun. No oxygen can reach them. Surely even sperm incased in testicles encased in scrotum need space every now and then? If the birth rate is falling, I think you can look to the perfect-yet-physically-debilitating black jeans for that.

But on to my hunt. I explained to the girl in the first shop my predicament, my predicament being that as a woman I HAVE HIPS LIKE EVERY OTHER WOMAN. This is a disability when needing new jeans. She looked at me and said; ‘we’ve got jeans for that.’ Hosanna, hey sanna! A cure! Alas it wasn’t to be. They didn’t. I tried on every pair of black jeans they had. No black jeans for hips like mine.

The second shop turned out to have a lot more range than the other store. I stood in front of the bank of jeans in wonder, awe and just a little bit of fear. At least the colour was decided. But then there was the choice between boot cut, tube, straight, skinny, stovepipe, wide, second skin, mid-rise, low-rise, high-rise, Brazilian rise…. With the added factor that high-rise isn’t actually high-rise anymore, it’s mid-rise so people don’t get confused. What? But changing it confuses me! Have all our rises sunk a level or two? When did this happen? I blame the hip-bone crushing low-rise-skinny era myself.

People try and tell me I have a classic hourglass figure. I see it more as a pear shape, or like a slightly meaty hen. I also wonder how ‘hourglass figure’ was described before the invention of the hourglass. You look like a particularly fine boulder I once saw. You undulate like sand dunes, only upended and not so gritty. I don’t quite know what you look like, but someone should invent something like it soon to make the descriptive process more straightforward.

In any case, I have found no black jeans. The perfect pair remains elusive. However, because of the confounding nature of the store layout and indeed the whole retail experience more generally, I did buy something. It was a pair of jeans. They are navy blue, of that high-rise-that’s-really-mid-rise variety. The experience almost made me cry; I went in intending to stay strong. NO, I thought, I AM SPARTACUS AND SPARTACUS NEEDS BLACK JEANS. Instead I bought a ridiculous pair of jeans completely contrary to my colour preference and shape. Damn you denim. Damn you to the murky depths of fabric hell.

Art Leading Art Makes The Whole World See

The Flaneur Is Alive In Paris

This video shows street mapping in Paris, with a fantastic projection for help. The flaneur is still alive. He has just traded his turtle for a tiger.

A 'Fro By Any Other Name....

What Not To Do In A Mosh Pit

Mosh pits have a very specific smell. The overriding odour is underarm, followed by spilt alcohol, weed, the sweat of hundreds of strangers and- if you’re really unlucky- blood and semen. If your olfactory senses move past these immediate batterings, you will soon notice the behaviour of your fellow mosh-pitians. Don’t get me wrong, I love the rock and roly-poly of the mosh pit; the dirt, the dehydration, the lost shoes. What I don’t love is a lack of consideration of your fellow mosh-pitians, trying to run around inside a crowd being the most abhorrent. Think about it; running around inside a crowd. Fool boys.

Worse than even this senseless violence is the senseless un-mosh pit behaviour visible when you dig deeper into the sweaty flanks of your fellow music fans. Read the list and be repulsed.

Snuggle: Love is grand. It really is. But there is no place for it in a mosh pit. As tempted as you may be to give a reassuring cuddle to your beloved, or give them a bear hug, hold their hand, or perform a series of vomit-inducing budgie kisses, please refrain. What would be more appropriate? Jumping on your partner, wrapping your legs around them and sticking your tongue down their throat. Nothing says mosh pit like tight black jeans and a bulging package.

Continental Greetings: Kissing both of someone’s cheeks (facial of course) is a common and accepted practice amongst most of the cooler European countries. If you do it in a wine bar, a French Film Festival, an art opening or an awards ceremony you will fit right in. If you do it in a mosh pit, you will look like a wanker. Appropriate greetings for a mosh pit are either a single nod, or a non-waving hand- or beer- raise.

Beyonce Moves: Jumping up and down and dancing madly is exactly what is desired of a mosh pit partaker. You don’t have to be moving in time to the music all the time, which is an unspoken rule put into place for those more inebriated music lovers. What is categorically repulsive is choreography and wild pelvic movements which ideally would have died out with Elvis. The mosh is about your arms and your head; Beyonce is about hips and arse. Learn the difference.

Conversations: In an ideal mosh, you won’t be able to hear anything except the music. Sometimes not even the music; all you will hear is delicious ear-splitting guitar-y feedback. Nevertheless, you will encounter people who cannot wait for the between-bands downtime in order to discuss things with those around them. Often people who think it’s okay to talk in a mosh pit also have loud, obnoxious voices and will give dirty looks to the performers on stage, as if they were interrupting their deep and meaningful. In an ideal world, these people would be shot on sight.

Wear A Hat: Besides the impracticality of hat-wearing (if shoes can get lost then hats are an immediate write-off), there is no health benefit to wearing one in a mosh pit. The dirt and sweat you will be covered in will give you a natural sunscreen in any case, and a hat will become an encumbrance for you and for those around you. Particularly offensive hat types are; the fedora (too hipster), the floppy rasta hat (reggae died with Bob Marley), the boater (too nouveau riche) and the beanie (too hip hop).

Drink Wine: Music that goes with wine include jazz, blues (if it’s red wine), folk (if it’s white wine) and particular forms of nouveau country (if it’s that wine that comes in foil bags). Mosh pits and wine do not mix. Appropriate beverages for the mosh pit include beer, bourbon, bourbon closely followed by beer or your own blood once someone has accidentally hit you in the face during vigorous moshing.

Compare: This goes for comparing one band to another band, or the same band to a previous gig of theirs. Especially irritating are phrases such as; ‘I saw them when they were first starting out. They were better then,’ ‘It doesn’t sound like it does on the album,’ ‘I like their old stuff better than their new stuff,’ and ‘I liked those guys who were on before this.’ Each band is different and unique and each gig is different and unique. You don’t have to like every gig, but keep your opinions to your home life.

There Is Nothing Trashy About Tattooed Women

I Went To See A Kid's Film And All I Got Was This Lousy Blog Post

I saw Martin Scorsese's film Hugo. It was a kid's film. It inspired my co-watcher, who loved it. I wanted to love it. It just didn't impact me. I couldn't suspend disbelief; for a film set in Paris, why was everyone speaking in a variety of British accents? And why is it that as long as you copy the colour scheme from Amelie you can safely pretend that your location is French? Bah.

The two good things about this film were the bookshop and its owner (who were shown all too briefly), and the variety of knits on display. They were the only things I couldn't stop looking at. Hugo's garter stitch jumper was lovely.

As was the wide garter stitch scarf below, which I think I will make one day. The humble garter stitch scarf may be the most easiest thing to knit, but it is a beautiful bit of texture to have on hand on a cold day. Especially in the colours here, even if they are poached from Amelie.

Okay, so I do also like the amount of references of early cinema this film had. It might just have been better in a documentary form rather than this film. It was all a little bit not quite right for my liking.

Classy Ways to Break Up With Someone

Three words: Big Band Swing. How classy would it be to get your former love into a music hall, jump up on stage wearing a glittery dress or coattails, surround yourself with tuxedo-ed musicians and chorus girls and sing a beautiful rendition of Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off? It’s a fairly universally acknowledged fact that you can’t be sad AND listening to show tunes. This way, at least they can tap their feet to the sound of their heart breaking.

Bring it full circle. Think of when you were first courting. Where did you go? What did you do? What crazy unique things happened that made you fall madly in love and then brought you to wanting to dump their sorry arse? Ahem. I mean, if you revisit all those early memories, maybe your break up will feel more like a chapter closing rather than an amputation. Closure is always so much more calming than taking a hack saw to your relationship.

Find a way to become James Dean. No one would ever deny that man anything. If you can find a way to morph into the aforementioned brooding young man with his tight white t-shirt, denim jacket and dangling cigarette, there is no way you can come off second best. Your freshly dumped ex would merely sigh and pity what vagabond future your bad boy ways will lead you to. You will become the immortal one-that-got-away, but in a good way.

Say it with diamonds. People make the mistake of thinking that a massive rock is only welcome during a proposal. Try getting down on one knee, tiny box in hand and saying; ‘Will you be my ex?’ It will go down a treat, trust me. Who would care about a failing, mediocre relationship after getting wrist strain from wearing a 24-carat behemoth? But a few.

Mutually. This is the classiest way to break up with someone ever in the history of the universe. You both want it, so there are no hard feelings. What could be sweeter? So beautiful and so rare. Take your cue from Joey and Rachel in Friends. Just try and avoid the slaps.

The Gosla-thon Part 3: The Ides Of March

I hope I wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand the title of this film before the enlightenment of a Google search. According to a number of sources reliable and less than reliable, ‘ides’ is derived from a Latin word which means ‘halfway’; thus the ides of March means roughly the 15^th of March (give or take a day or too, depending on the lunar cycle). Now besides being the birthday of such varied musicians as Eduard Strauss, Ry Cooder and Will.i.am, the Ides of March was also the date on which Caesar was assassinated. In Shakespeare’s play, Caesar is warned by a prophet to ‘beware the ides of March’.

Cultural history lesson over. The film is set in Ohio during the Democratic Party’s presidential primaries. Ryan Gosling plays Stephen, a junior campaign manager under his boss Paul (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and nominee Mike Morris (George Clooney). He plays an idealistic young man who sees politics as a way to change people’s lives for the better. However, he soon learns how dirty the fight for political survival is.

The Ides of March is a quiet little corker of a film. Within the limit of its plot, it manages to draw out a Shakespearean tragedy that would give Macbeth déjà vu. The script is tight and the story line is deftly woven. It is good to see a Hollywood film that doesn’t try and fall back on melodrama, especially with the kind of subject matter IOM deals with. That would be an easy trap to fall into, but IOM maintains its dignity and narrative integrity absolutely.

It was sad to see how cold and hard people can become because of their experiences. It is especially saddening to see disillusionment creep in upon idealism. While idealism may ultimately be naive and innocent, it is still sad to see it wither. The scenes I found most potently illustrative of this were the interactions between Marisa Tomei’s character Ida the journalist and Stephen.

You couldn’t really go wrong with the actors they had in this film anyway. Indie heavyweights were aplenty; Marisa Tomei (underused and underrated- give the woman a lead!), Phillip Seymour Hoffman (he must be good with three names), Paul Giamatti (the dude is in everything) and Evan Rachel Wood (dated Marilyn Manson. Enough said.) all gave fantastic performances. Like anyone was surprised by that.

And then there was Ryan. The man behind the Gosla-thon. He gave a solid performance throughout, and was especially brilliant at the cold hard politician bit. I’m so glad he has range besides taking off his shirt a lot. But that range is good too. More of that next film please, Mr Gosling sir.

The Ides Of March is a delicious morsel. There are shots of pure brilliance, which is a nice surprise from fourth time director George Clooney. This is without a doubt a film to watch and think about.

Really Stupid Perfume Ads

Perfume ads really suck. You know the drill; supermodels with closed eyes and half open mouths, breathy noises, sexually suggestive imagery and stupid special effects. I’m sure it’s incredibly difficult trying to sell a smell through a medium that doesn’t, but really? This is the best all those moneyed creative heads can come up with?

There seems to be an unwritten rule that when making a perfume ad you must reference Marilyn Monroe in some way. Her infamous quote about only wearing Chanel No. 5 to bed has stuck in the minds of every fashion house’s perfume department right across the globe. They are like a dog with a bone; just won’t let it go. Charlize Theron has done it; Christina Aguilera has done it; Jennifer Lopez has done it; Scarlett Johansson has done it.

I guess ultimately they are trying to sell a concept of a lifestyle or a personality which they think is related to the perfume. Here is a short and uncomprehensive list of some of the more ridiculous perfume ads I’ve seen.

Thierry Mugler Angel: Gorgeous Eva Mendes catches a bullet train, opens her mouth a lot and closes her eyes. Apparently this perfume is somewhat of a hallucinogen; it allows Mendes to fly and imagine she can carry stars in her pocket.

Prada Candy: The promotion for this ad would have you believe that this is a classy perfume. Even when Lea Seydoux keeps flashing her pink granny knickers? There is, of course, the customary reference to the delectable Ms Monroe; the song Seydoux mouths is Running Wild from Marilyn’s 1959 film Some Like It Hot, when she says dripping with innuendo; ‘I always get the fuzzy end of the lollipop’. I have a feeling that Prada Candy would smell somewhat like that.

Armani Code: There is nothing particularly offensive about this ad. It is just boring. Lots of people dressed in black wandering around aimlessly in a fancy apartment. It is all fairly pointless and not very captivating. And why is Megan Fox wearing a wig? Sweaty black plastic is not mysterious or enticing.

Britney Spears Fantasy: This one is narrated much like a fairy tale. I find it all corny and sleazy. It also begs the question as to who really wants to smell like Britney Spears? That would entail notes of fried chicken, crack den and dodgy tattoo parlour sweat. No thanks.

J'adore Dior: What is the best and quickest way to associate a perfume with the classics? Special effecting in Marlene Dietrich, Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe will do it. Of every cheap and nasty stunt that comes out of the world of Hollywood, this is one of the crassest. I’m sure they couldn’t have made it without the permission of whoever owns the likenesses of those actresses these days, but even so it feels dirty. Resurrecting the dead for a perfume ad? Flagpole the downfall of society there please; I’m sure the Mayan Apocalypse mentioned this kind of thing somewhere.

What Is The Collective Noun For Pixies?