Kick-Ass

The Daily Mail had this to say of Kick-Ass -

"It deliberately sells a perniciously sexualised view of children and glorifies violence, especially knife and gun crime, in a way that makes it one of the most deeply cynical, shamelessly irresponsible films ever."

When I read that I knew it was going to be good. A one-star review from the Daily Fail? Condemned by their reviewer as evil? Yes, this is one to watch.

The film had some good lines (very much of the type you can imitate with your mates later for a laugh), fight scenes that were gloriously violent and visceral adrenalin-pumpers, swearing in just the right places, a cheeky bit of sex (not pornographic), drug-dealers, and a soundtrack (featuring The Prodigy, Ennio Morricone, Elvis Presley) so good I'm listening to it now, which I can't say I've ever done before.

The heroine of the film is Hit-Girl, and it is to her that the Daily Mail reviewer is referring with the "perniciously sexualised view of children" comment. She's about 11, is only at one point referred to as attractive - by a boy, not a man - and completely dominates every fight she gets into. I'm trying not to spoil by talking about specifics here, but suffice it to say that by about halfway into the film you're likely to be eagerly anticipating her next appearance in a scrap; it's guaranteed to be a well choreographed bloodbath.

I'm not going to go into any more depth about this film - it's not a deep piece of work, just really good fun. Go, watch, hopefully enjoy.

Blood Red Shoes: Fire Like This

If you're in the mood for something experimental, delicate, refined and with plenty of frills, you miiight want to steer clear of this album as you scan your collection. If on the other hand you've got an excess of energy; a desire to jump and pogo and scream like a child-actor on Nickelodeon then put this on.

Standout track is definately Keeping It Close with a truly infectious riff intro, but the band went with Light It Up for the first single, presumably due to the steady eighth-note drumbeats under a chant-along chorus.

The band haven't made this album difficult for themselves, or broken away from the style of the first album. If you didn't like 2008's Box of Secrets, then there is precious little to convert you to BRS on their sophomore record. If you did, this is a gentle step forward that promises an exciting career from Laura-Mary Carter (guitars, vocals) and Steven Ansell (drums, vocals).

A Selection of Images Intended to Illustrate Some of my Recent Activities

This is one of my favourite clusters of buildings in this city.

What the hell happened to this Mini Cheddar?!! It didn't really taste as good as a regular one either. I absolutely promise that this is the most banal photo of this post.

Green Day light up the stage at the M.E.N. Arena. In a week of four gigs (Green Day, Muse, Mew, and Eddie Izzard) this was the best. I didn't think it would be, they were a favourite band many years ago, but hadn't been so much in the run-up to this gig. I was a long way back as you can plainly see, whereas for Muse and Mew I was much closer to the stage. But these guys absolutely rocked it. Even a mile away I felt a connection, and Billie-Joe is a stellar performer.
I will post a few photos from the Muse gig soon.
Mew were moving, and made use of some pleasant, quirky animations.
Eddie Izzard was amusing, but his show lacked structure, there were plenty of times when he seemed to get lost in chatter without any of his ideas actually coming together. The show had a theme, but it really hadn't been developed enough.

Me with a dog on my lap, halfway between facial expressions. The dog is called Guiness, hopefully you can work out why, and he's so sweet.

My aunty, uncle and I took the aforemention'd dog and his brother, Beamish, out for a walk one weekend, through a fresh layer of snow.

When we returned to their constantly improving house (they are DIY-ing it to the max), we had a lunch of focaccia, parmesan, sausages, tomatoes, mushroom and chilli sauce. Delicious.

Today I went out with a friend who lives here in my halls, we bought a paper and then got ourselves settled in the Whitworth Gallery cafe. We worked our way through cappucinoes, brownies, and a pot of tea. It made me very happy; far too many Sunday afternoons get frittered away alone, which is depressing. Frittering away time with someone is, on the other hand, the best.

Jmalk x.

Storytellers

Last night I watched a DVD of Bruce Springsteen's performance on VH1 Storytellers, and was extremely inspired to do more songwriting. I've only seen two; the Boss and Green Day. I think I vaguely remember seeing Coldplay on there too. I'm definately going to keep an eye out for more DVDs and try youtube.

Round-up Of A Quiet Day

Took it easy today.

Had leftover lasagne (mummy taught me to cook it last night!) for lunch, and spent the afternoon jamming with Max. He taught me the jazz scale, and we messed around with all kinds of riffs.

Played Scrabble this evening and crushed my opposition; a victory hollowed only slightly by the fact that 2 out of my 3 opponents were children.

Yesterday I threw away a couple of bin-bags full of stuff. This sounds like incredibly boring news even by the standard of this mediocre blog entry, but I am an obsessive-compulsive hoarder so it was a big deal for me. Very proud of my efforts...

Jmalk x.

New Year

New Year's Eve is a weird night. Thinking about resolutions means taking a long hard look at your shortcomings and failings. The arbitrary marking of our pale blue dot reaching a certain point on its track once again, means you think about all the experiences of the last year. I find myself wishing there had been more, and that I hadn't missed so many opportunities; that I hadn't spent some of the year in a malaise, doing little besides watching tv or crashed out on my bed.

It's a time of melancholy, the middle of winter, the end of festivities, the holiday, and time to get back to work.

That said, I had a fairly lovely night in the company of friends I've seen far too little since moving away in September. And now that we're past the darkest day there'll be more minutes and eventually hours of light every day until June (marked neatly by Glastonbury Festival). More light, more time, more energy. I look forward to it.

Boring!

An excerpt from the wikipedia article on Found Poetry:

"---An example of found poetry appeared in William Whewell's "An Elementary Treatise on Mechanics":

"Hence no force, however great,
can stretch a cord, however fine,
into a horizontal line
which is accurately straight."

though when it was pointed out to him, an unamused Whewell changed the wording in the next edition.---"

I mean really! If I'd accidentally written a poem into my textbook and someone spotted it I would jolly well pretend it was deliberate! If engineers (and their cousins the mathematicians, physicists etc.) are ever going to lose the stereotype of being a bunch of boring old pedants they're going to have to start showing a little spirit.

Although... this gives me an idea. I'm going to try and turn some of my recent lecture notes into verses. I should probably study them instead, but then what I said above would become the pinnacle of hypocrisy, wouldn't it?