Well, its been an eventful couple of weeks. Finished my assignment at Tower Hamlets, had my birthday and fitted in an exhibition, some cinema visits and a gig – entries are being prepared for the last two. I’m looking forward to relaxing for a couple of weeks now before actively seeking anything new, I’ll enjoy exploring my new part of the world and there are some other exhibitions and places I’d like to check out. 

A week on Saturday I celebrated my triple celebration – my new place, my birthday and being unemployed!! After a exploration around Limehouse and Canary Wharf we hit some pubs and had what I think was a pretty good curry – things were getting sketchy at that point so I can’t testify to the food’s quality. In any case, many thanks to all my mates who visited and here are some amusing film clips which (Spoliers beware, more on this film below and thank you Neil for my present, it rocks) should stir some dormant memories….

I paid a visit to Tate Modern and had a look at the ‘Street & Studio‘ exhibition that has been praised in the press. It was very good, I gravitated to the Weegee and Diane Arbus photos but my favourite was this which looks like its escaped from a fashion shoot from ID magazine in 1994 – quite remarkably it was actually shot in 1949. 

BBC4 are continuing a fine mini season of films from some mainstream and neglected genres – the Western, the British B Movie (which showcased this masterpiece) and this week Courtroom Films. The 90 minute documentaries to accompany the seasons have been pretty good, and I strongly urge you to catch ‘The Verdict‘ which is on this week as it is something of an overlooked treasure with probably Paul Newmans finest performance. 

 

We will also be treated to a documentary on the great Werner Herzog this week as part of the Imagine strand, maybe he can explain his recent exodus to Hollywood and shed some light on the disappointing ‘Rescue Dawn‘ which I reviewed here.  More distressing is the mooted remake of ‘Bad Lieutenant‘ which is a great and very challenging film in its own right, of all the projects he could secure why on earth has he opted for this with Nicholas ‘Possibly the worst actor in Hollywood’ Cage in the title role? Anyway, no I’m not going to link to that scene in the movie (if you’ve seen it then you’ll know what I mean), so here are some clips which may give you a feel for the film.

Staying with the film theme for a change, I am excited to see that the Barbican is hosting a film season on Alex Cox which gives me the opportunity to see one of my favourite ever films on the big screen – ‘Repo Man‘. It’s a shame that Cox has never matched the achievement of his cult debut and some of his recent efforts have been mediocre to say the least. Still, I still haven’t got round to catching up with this which is supposed to be good and discussions of this event on some of my favoured film sites have led me to some terrific free downloads of the Moviedrome programme notes which is cool. On the bad news fromt, it appears that Tartan films has finally folded which is a real shame as they are responsible for bringing many superb films to the UK and arguably are most responsible for bringing the phenomenon of Asian J Horror movies to our shores. RIP.

 

Finally, just to disprove my cold cynical image here is a link that bought a mist to my eyes and rendered my bottom lip all a quiver. All you cool kids who know your way round the Interwebs may have seen this before but it’s new to me. If it doesn’t activate a tiny spark of shared optimism in our future in an era of sabre rattling in the middle east, global financial holocaust, energy and foot riots coupled with climate catastrophe then nothing will. Even if he is a smug lucky git who has travelled the world. Bastard.