Thursday, January 22, 2009

Two Photographs, Two Letters



In the first photograph the quiet man stands, smartly dressed, relaxed, his black-suited back to us, indifferent. He looks out across a bare industrial landscape of sloping concrete surfaces. The plane of his body appears to bisect this geometric concourse, imposing a symmetry that we can't help but feel exists only from this one vantage point.

Skinny light standards dot the horizon. Their long shadows echo, indeed incorporate, the shadow of the man himself. His form is subordinate to theirs.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009

New Features For The New Year

It's my habit to inform you of the little tweaks I make to this blog. I thought I'd clean house for the New Year in order to improve your reading experience. Take a quick look around... see anything different? Didn't think so. ;-)

But there are actually seven little tweaks. Read on for details.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009

"The Same Mistakes" -- A Music Blog

For some time I've been wanting to post about my favourite music blogs. But now I don't have to -- I've just received an email about a brand new site that might well act as a one-stop shop for anyone interested in obscure post-punk music. "The Same Mistakes" promises new wave and minimal synth, but with the range of experience the authors possess I think we're in for lots more than that.
Thursday, January 08, 2009

Seventy Films

It's the time of year for Top Ten lists. While I'd like to contribute to this questionable activity, the truth is that I don't hear enough contemporary music or watch enough contemporary films or read enough current books to provide any meaningful summary.

Instead, I have decided to share my favourite films, spurred on by the inane list Stanley Fish volunteered for the New York Times. Restricting himself to "American" films, he chose only one from the eighties, one from the nineties and none from the last fifteen years. Perhaps more incredible is the complete absence of cinematic marvels from that great period of film-making in the USA, the seventies.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Godfrey Reggio's "Evidence"

Watch this first; it's about seven minutes long. Commentary after the break.