'So no one told you life was gonna be this way...'

Life I feel like I need to apologise for not typing in anything longer than the pithy words which accompany what has basically become a linkblog over the past couple of days. For various reasons I've not been in the mood to write because I can't really write about what I want to write about -- it's never been that kind of weblog as you know. I think I'm going through a bit of late twenties angst really. In twenty-nine days they're over and I still don't feel like an adult or that I should be let out into the real world. Watching NY-LON the other week (of all things) I saw that shot of the little boy lost in the big city and I really identified with it. And I know I'm not alone, but why isn't anyone brave enough to say it?

I have plans, but as usual it's a waiting game -- waiting for the next thing to happen leading onto the thing after that. Like Anthony Rapp and friends in Dazed And Confused I'm in a perpetual state of preparing for something, like a train creaking slowly from station to station. The other issue being that I'm the only passenger and the destination seems to be moving further and further away. At least on an Arriva train someone apologises for the delay (even if they don't mean it). Now can you see why I haven't been writing about things much lately? I think I'll just go back to linking to stories about films for now if that's OK...

Links for 2004-10-01 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2004-10-01 [del.icio.us]

  • tipping the sacred cows
    inner workings of a monkey at their keyboard
  • "I'll Find Out Things - I'll Find Out Who Done It"
    Ian Jones on The Singing Detective
  • Heat Magazine wierdly gives 'Jersey Girl' a great review
    I wondered why they were flying off the shelves at Woolworths. Linked graphic held at News Askew.
  • Mt. St. Helens On "Orange Alert"
    Possibility that it could erupt. Scary stuff.
  • Newsweek assesses last night's US Presidential debate quite succinctly
    Of the bits of footage which turned up on the BBC tonight, Bush looked slightly stoned by the lights and annoyed that he still has to go through the process being asked all the questions as though everyone is try to prove he's not clever.
  • And a Google News search for the word 'debate'.
    Kerry looked like your girlfriend's father debating politics at the dinner table and wonder what his daughter is doing with a geek like and you. I know which one I'd be picking to run a country (you know I mean Kerry right?).
  • Substitute Bank Holidays
    According to the DTI website, there are substitute bank holidays on the 27th and 28th December 2004 to make up for Christmas being over a weekend.
  • Another in a hundred reasons I use Amazon.
    That's good customer service. Via jkottke, but I'm not ashamed.
  • Album List for Winamp
    Creates a playlist with album covers -- like a virtual HMV
  • Film of the Day: Coyote Ugly (2000)
    What's not to like? No really?
  • Links for 2004-09-30 [del.icio.us]

    Links for 2004-09-30 [del.icio.us]

  • BBC Four's Graham Greene Season
    Featuring a documentary about the making of The Third Man in which scenes from the film are projected into the real locations they were shot
  • The Ex reviewed by Kim Newman
    In my head this really is the sci-fi author and writer of a million articles about 2001: A Space Odessey in Empire Magazine
  • What ever happened to Teri Hatcher
    Or what has happened to Tru Hatcher? The reason to watch Lois and Clark, as she is now.
  • Ono's image of naked breast offends Liverpudlians
    I was wondering when this would make the nationals. It's been in the Liverpool Echo every day and no one is happy.
  • The Chinese Flying Squad
    (sorry. couldn't resist)
  • Woody Allen on the 2004 Election
  • Things you wish your computer had...
    .. any other suggestions?
  • Defeat for teacher who sued over film profits
    Not sure if I'll be able to watch 'Etre et Avoir' in the same light
  • Film of the Day: Boudu Saved From Drowing (1932)
    Steptoe and Son meets To The Manor Born. In French. And old.
  • Tom Paulin discusses a new biography of David Trimble, mostly as a holiday read.
    "When I say I want to write about 'Himself Alone', he exclaims: 'A thick brick like that! I thought you were on your holyers!'"
  • Terry Waite talks about the Iraq hostages.
    He describes his own captors thus: "Some were humane and understanding, others were psychopathic and couldn't give a damn, but they were bound together quite tightly, for reasons of security, as part of a terrorist group."
  • John Sayles still writing 'Jurassic Park IV'
    Looks like that 'Ain't It Cool' leaked synopsis may be close to production. Are they mad?
  • 'I'll remember this conversation.'

    The Road to Beijing "Abi Oyepitan, Britain's leading female sprinter who finished seventh in the 200m final in Athens, said: "I can't see the women ever overtaking the men to be quite honest - I don't think it's physically possible. "There's a second between the men and women in the 100m and that's always going to be the case as far as I'm concerned. But if it happens in the next 50 years, then I'll remember this conversation."

    'She had more screen time. And she rode a horse...'

    DVD Having previous reviewed Kevin Smith's Jersey Girl (and I just want to echo everything I said then) I thought it would be interesting to look at the audio commentaries which accompany the dvd. Long standing readers who remember my Scene Unseen columns will know I have a thing about audio commentaries which are about the film making process not about how good everyone was. But I also love it when the spectators disregard the film and decide to talk about what they were up to that day, what else is going on in their lives or indeed what they'll be doing once the commentary is completed. These two sit somewhere in between.

    The most avant guard of the two features Kevin Smith (director), Scott Mosier (producer) and Jason Mewes (not in the film at all). With only a few mentions of the film playing out, this becomes an ongoing investigation into why Mewes didn't appear in the film, what happened to him after Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back and his years sobriety. It's a real gift to Smith fans who might feel burned because they're going to be buying the film twice (they promo a directors cut which is coming next year) who frankly have been worried. It feels like an audio epilogue to An Evening With ... as we delve into Mewes sexual abilities, his attraction to Liv Tyler and reaction to preview screenings. Which is the other main subject of conversation -- what happened to the film in the wake of Gigli and the Beniffer backlash, the editing process, critical reaction, and the release. It's all irrevent, hilarious and crude as hell -- and turns what would have been a PG dvd into a 15. This may well be one of those rare occasions when a dvd is worth buying just to hear these tracks.

    In the second commentary, Smith is joined by Ben Affleck in a conversation which has more to do with the film and the process if not necessarily again as the film plays out. Affleck is extra-ordinarily frank about his relationship with Jennifer Lopez and again how the perception of that worked against the release of the film. The first ten minutes are a blisteringly funny attack on the 3am girls from The Mirror, and it's deeply incongruous that two American would be able to gauge such a British institution so correctly -- and quite shocking when they say our tabloid are so much worse than the Americans -- I was always led to believe it was the other way around, but through their eyes I can see what they mean. Affleck talks to an extent about the track of his career and how he doesn't have any illusions about who he is and his place in the world. The word isn't necessarily humble, but it is realistic. Illuminating.

    Me at a Kiosk

    Photography


    Me at a Kiosk
    Originally uploaded by feelinglistless.

    Liverpool City Council have fitted a series of kiosks throughout the city to allow people to interact with them quickly if need be. One of the features is video and picture messaging. So I decided to try it out. Here is my first shot. So this finally is a straight up picture of what I look like after three or so years. I don't always wear a suit -- I was on my lunch hour. Surprise...

    Me at a Kiosk

    Photography


    Me at a Kiosk
    Originally uploaded by feelinglistless.

    When taking the picture, a quick click on the screen and you have three seconds to pose (hence the slightly stunned first shot). Here I look like I've been taken with the spirit of Bob from Twin Peaks. Or something else. Captions please.

    Links for 2004-09-29 [del.icio.us]

    Links for 2004-09-29 [del.icio.us]

  • A dream come true - and that's FACT dream
    Good sumation of FACT and everything before on the occasion of its leader Eddie Berg leaving ...
  • William Shatner's new album 'Has Been'
    In full streaming glory at VH-1
  • Kevin Smith to produce new Star Wars tv series?
  • Tim Minear or Jane Espenson to produce new Star Wars tv series?
  • Film of the Day: Petit soldat, Le (1963)
    Love, spies and torture from Jean-Luc Godard
  • 'Happy Birthday...'

    Life I've spent the past couple of hours fulfilling a promise which I made to someone weeks ago of sending a mix cd (you know who you are and it'll be in the post by the end of the week). It's been more complicated than usual because rather than offering twenty or so tracks on a cd, I offered an Mp3 cd which eventually became some one hundred and sixty. It's in those circumstances that my music collection was laid bare as I worked my way through realising that I don't have any seminal albums and that the female/male ratio of performing artists is 7-1. I eventually ended up with some which inadvertantly melds the playlists of Late Junction, John Peel and Michael Parkinson with a hint of Mary Ann Hobbs. I have very wierd mix of tastes.

    Not Pan du Chocolate

    Photography


    Not Pan du Chocolate
    Originally uploaded by feelinglistless.

    I tried one of those instant do-it-yourself pastry tins tonight to make some 'home baked' pan du chocolate. I followed the instructions as best I could, but it all when horribly wrong. The thing unrolled itself and ended up looking like a bunch of slightly depress sausage rolls. In an exciting move, though, you can see part of my kitchen in this photo. It think the one on the left feels like it has something to prove.

    Not Pan du Chocolate

    Photography


    Not Pan du Chocolate
    Originally uploaded by feelinglistless.

    More from the horrific mutant pastry tragedy. Not even my poor photography can hide this ...

    Links for 2004-09-28 [del.icio.us]

    Links for 2004-09-28 [del.icio.us]

  • Tired of Men
    "The good, the bad, & the very ugly in my quest to not only meet a good man, but to educate & entertain about the dodgy men & even the few good men I meet!"
  • Seminal pop culture moment
    Paul Daniels walks from Five's new 'reality' 'tv' show after having an argument with Vanilla Ice about the Iraq War.
  • Mal Young, Doctor Who benefactor, leaves the BBC
  • Simon Pegg
    It's a looong story ....
  • Film of the Day: Addicted to Love (1997)
    Which features one of the best use of Camera Obscura I've seen in film. Even on VHS it pops out.
  • flash mobs are not dead.
    They've just been resting...
  • Full soundtrack listing for 'Lost In Translation'
    with scene descriptions. A real labour of love.
  • The Guardian's RSS feed page
    Just subscribing to their Arts coverage. Special one for football, which is I believe also quite popular
  • 100 Most Often Mispronounced Words
    While we're here. Why is English pronounced Inglish?
  • Tom Standage reviews the reviewers of his book 'The Victorian Internet'
    It's one of those books I keep returning to simply for the sheer oddness. It's interesting to see here that he agrees with some of the criticism which isn't totally justified.
  • Links for 2004-09-27 [del.icio.us]

    Links for 2004-09-27 [del.icio.us]

  • 2004 Hurricane Season May Be Costliest on Record
    I thought the bit of rain we got today was awful
  • 'I've taken a pounding'
    The Guardian interviews Minnie Driver about her possible new music career
  • Film of the Day: Jersey Girl
    Which appeared at WH Smith & HMV today months before I was expecting it to. Yes it's no 'Chasing Amy', but it's still very funny in places. Don't believe the unhype.
  • "The longest Lord"
    Lance Arthur predicts my Boxing Day
  • Free show as top band stages party in the park
    Top pop act Embrace play Sefton Park, literally under my nose and I've only just found out. I can see the whole of the park from where I am and I didn't see this. That *is* secret. Did I miss anything?
  • 'And that is that.'

    Film It's becoming thoroughly redundant posting links to top 100 lists of anything by newspapers and magazines. They're either polls by a very narrow readership or bunch of journalists throwing together something which they think that readership will agree should be in the list. But on this occasion I'm making an exception. Dane's top 100 films is inspirational. To quote from the introduction:
    "If you think your favorite film is one of the best one-hundred of all time, yet it appears not on my own Top 100 Films of All Time list (which I will shortly unveil), I am sorry to have to break you the news, but... your film (Magnolia, Titanic, Goodfellas, American Beauty, Forrest Gump, A Clockwork Orange, et cetera) is, quite simply, not as good as The Road Home (#100).

    And that is that.

    There is no use arguing the matter because you are wrong and should accept that you do not know what you are talking about. So stop complaining and leave this to the professionals -- yes, I was once paid twenty-five dollars for my review of Beautiful Girls and that indeed makes me a professional.
    It's also pleasingly idiosyncratic. Lots of Anime and European film with Before Sunrise appearing at #7 and the largely forgotten Snow Falling on Cedars in the top five. The design of the site is worth a look as well. Who knew you could do that in Blogger?

    'No. It's not a golfing term ...'

    Music Minnie Driver's new single Everything I've Got In My Pocket feels like opening a window into another reality where teenagers don't rule the pop charts and Madonna never happened, as though we're still getting over a Carly Simon/Carole King explosion. She has this strongly intangible vocal style -- it doesn't sound like anything you've encountered before yet utterly familiar (and no not because you've seen Good Will Hunting, I kind of etherial Jewel Kilcher. More importantly it doesn't sound like an actress putting out an album because her acting career is on the slide. Like Julie Delpy last year, some thought has gone into this -- especially in terms of evoking the personality behind the voice. An odd a spectacle as it was to see Driver on Top of the Pops the other week performing the live preview, didn't it just seem right somehow as though Minnie should have been doing the acting thing on the side of a thundering music career?

    [Just a quick on the format of the single -- its a three inch cd frames by an inch of clear plastic all the way around creating a standard five incher. It's a gorgeously space age thing which seems like just the right way to sell a two track single.]
    Art Spent yesterday at the Liverpool Biennial in the so-called Independent District. One of the more interesting bi-products of this year's festival is finding the venues. This in particular is in a place which you wouldn't necessarily go every day (or ever). As usual the map was no help at all in its emphasis of minor streets and including in the text on addresses which don't appear on said map. After scratching my head and an A-Z I called for a taxi. I'm happy to say that when I got there it was worth the expense.

    'Life is full of small surprises. It's a never ending game..."

    Site News The previous attempt at email the links in didn't work, but at the risk of this becoming the plan scene from Shaun of the Dead ('Oh - ok - gaaay ...') You may have noticed, I think I've cracked it and without fighting through hundreds of zombies to get to the pub. Here is the new methodology:

    (1) I've set up a Blogspot weblog just for the purpose with an atom feed turned on.
    (2) Gone to FeedBurner and used this empty atom feed for that weblog to create a smart feed which includes my Delicious links
    (3) Subscribe to this new FeedBurner at Bloglines.
    (4) Wait fir the Delicious links are collated together at the end of the day by FeedBurner and posted to the feed
    (5) When this post appears at Bloglines, using the feature there to email the post using the Blogger email-to-blog facility.
    (6) Go into the edit posts feature at Blogger and edit out all of the header and footer html gunk that Bloglines has sent with the post.
    (7) Repost.
    (8) Mutedly cheer at a marginal success.

    It's not the automatic approach I was hoping to come up with, but it works fairly well as you can see. Luckily I haven't been using Delicious all that long, so it didn't take too much time to go back in and repost all of the previous entries retrospectively so that a true picture can be found now. It means that people can continue to keep using the old RSS feed as everything is going to appear there now, and also people who read the blog from the web won't be missing out on anything if they don't want to fish about in the Delicious link. And all with hardly any coding experience whatever.

    [del.icio.us] links for 2004-09-26

    [del.icio.us] links for 2004-09-26

  • Fantastic Four costume pictures
    Just right. Although I suppose the fact that in the comics they're already dark blue loses the cheese factor straight away -- unlike yellow spandex
  • A Brief History of Korean Cinema
  • A to Z of excuses from the UK Railways
    My favourite that I've heard was: "I'm sorry the train is delayed. We just don't know what we're doing?" I think the announcer was drunk.
  • The Complete Far Side
    For that price, I'd expect free cow tools.
  • April Winchell: Multimedia
    Extraordinary variety of music and sound files. Hard to explain in such a small place. Just click!
  • amy winehouse 'frank'
    BBC Collective page, including tracks and live material
  • Doctor Who New Series News @ BBC
  • Film of the Day: Smoke (1995)
    Slow burner
  • 'Prozac Nation' actually available in Norway
    Just one positive review away from having a punt -- anyone know what the exchange rate is like?
  • Gathering at the waterhole
    A Del.icio.us review from The Guardian

  • Underneath the Eiffel

    Photography


    tour eiffel
    Originally uploaded by Vic.



    Unusual shot of the Eiffel Tower from underneath with the lights on which expresses how even the largest structure can appear tiny and alien from a different point of view.

    Michelle Dillon pulls a fourth

    The Road To Beijing Michelle Dillon pulls a fourth at the Gamagori Triathlon World Cup. As usual her running carried her through with the fastest split time of the day.

    'I have a bad feeling about this ...'

    Site News I've been a bit pre-occupied with the fact that the links in Delicious aren't appearing the main weblog. It feels like something is missing from the narrative. My latest attempt is using RSS-by-email. here is the methodology:

    (1) I've set up a Blogspot weblog just for the purpose with an atom feed turned on.
    (2) Gone to FeedBurner and used this empty atom feed for that weblog to create a smart feed which includes my Delicious links
    (3) Logged into Info Aggregator and changed the email address it uses to reflect the posting email address from Blogger and made sure the only feed in use is the FeedBurner
    (4) Cross fingers.

    I'm not sure if it'll work, and grippingly we'll only find out if it's worked tonight when Feedburner pulls the Delicious links. Also I'm not sure how the links themselves will look after all those different ports of call. So it's either going to post gunk or magic. It's going to be interesting finding out.