late notice i know, but from 6.30 tonight, free screening of archive short films (seems to now be a regular part of the London film fest) in trafalgar square, this year all about transport.
http://www.bfi.org.uk/lff/events/outdoor_screening_in_trafalgar_square

wrap up warm now.

This Sunday 20th, at 8pm, Bridge Street
http://www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk/films/2009/silents-on-the-streets/

went to Kettles Yard on sunday to see upside down / inside out, which was lovely, especially the Winnifred Nicolson flowers on a windowsill (hung on the wall facing Castle Hill to be seen from the pavement) with sunlight through leaves and tissue paper, the gathering in one room of Kit Wood and Alfred Wallis paintings, and in the house, particularly the beautiful black and white pinhole photos of the house by Kathryn Faulkner, hung in visual echoes, and the grouped Edmund de Waal ceramics, at once domestic and refined. actually, there were a lot of echoes, what with photographs of the place hung in the place, or in a nearby room, or captured in a little camera obscura; paintings familiar from the house hung in the gallery; repeated motifs of collected pots, fake pets, glossy black acrylic screens across different rooms... it reminded me that a similar thing happened, albeit in a much more contained way, at the Roni Horn exhib earlier this year. Bought "Light Spells" last year, and really should look at it properly.

was referred to as a "gentleman" upon entering KY house. for a moment i wonder which of us, out of Liv and myself was the lady and which the gent, but i figured since i wasn't the one wearing the partly-pink swishy skirt, it was probably me... this sort of thing doesn't surprise me when people aren't really paying attention, but the other day i was in a bar/club, can't remember where but it had a toilet attendant. i was in there washing my hands and she said "are you a boy or a girl" "what?" "are you a boy or a girl?" "oh. um, a girl" (me looking confused). bit of clue there - i'm in the ladies aren't i? meh, whatever.

Kathryn Faulkner has been up to some good stuff in the several years since the Light Spells work, must keep an eye on it: http://www.kathrynfaulkner.com/

"film artist" Rosalind Nashashibi is showing at the ICA til 1st Nov. looks good?

just noticed a bunch of classic-films-i-haven't-seen coming up at the cinema-formerly-known-as-the-NFT, like Taxi Driver, Do The Right Thing, La Haine and Stranger than Paradise. also one-dot-zero is on soon. i like the look of stuff in it, but i've never actually made it to any before. partly full-price tickets just seem really expensive.

while i will inanely watch music videos for hours with my mouth slightly open, it's more a fascination than a particular enjoyment. the odd documentary is good. i find most soaps intolerable and dramas car-crashy but leave me feeling worse off for watching. what i actually cherish if such a word can be applied to TV, is the films they show late at night. why always late at night? i suppose it's the watershed thing, and then they wait for the news to be done. i have a fairly low tolerance for most made-for-tv shows but a very high tolerance for films - i love them, even with hammy acting and implausible stories and cardboard characters, i will lose myself in that little world for a couple of hours. i'm not sure what the difference is, really. i can recall quite clearly films that i watched by myself, late at night, ten or more years ago. not every single one, but i seem to remember them more clearly, concentrate better. watching films late at night and then going to bed pulls an echo into the next day, it's nice but sometimes a little distracting. something that only exceptionally happens when you leave the cinema and step back out into the city. in the last few days i've seen and enjoyed The Big Man, In The Cut, and Lawn Dogs and they've all stayed with me, to some extent.

Crying All the Way to the Chip Shop

Bright Lights Film Journal
(piece on Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death)

cheers to burkesworks for the leads...

http://bfi.mediastorehouse.com/dmcs_gallery.html
pretty cool, but cooler if they actually sold the poster-type ones as poster-quality posters, i think.

There's an Ingrid Bergman season on at the BFI and tonight i saw Notorious on Screen1 (the big one). Just wonderful. They also have a funny little zoetrope by the shop - a sort of modern version, so instead of having slits at intervals there are images printed all around the outside of a drum and there is a flickering strobe inside. the cool thing is the frequency changes and different words appear. is all words no pictures.

Looks like 2009 is going to be a year of shiny shimmery shimmery POP. it's gonna be big. i'm looking forward to it - hell i even spent most of yesterday singing that new Lily Allen single The Fear (it just sounds so lush). looking forward to new albums from Patrick Wolf and the Pet Shop Boys too (can't believe Fundamental was 2006!). i only hope it doesn't collapse in a big heap of mediocrity... here's something promising (and v shimmery):

and recently actually listened to Florence and the Machine after some email mailing thing kept going on about her. non-shimmery indie-pop this one. pretty good too!

9-18 january 2009: london short film festival 6
http://www.shortfilms.org.uk/
http://www.shortfilms.org.uk/

while the new regime of security going home at 9pm is a good thing. it's not so good when you haven't finished a drawing and the client needs it for a tomorrow 9am meeting. arse. right, gotta go...

just had a quick look over some up-coming possibly interesting stuff at the ICA:
Comica 2008
Dream Director - a curious event in which you sleepover in the gallery for a dream experiment. not here, but really curious nonetheless - it might be scary though...
some night in the bar involving music and projected drawings. might be good, especially if they're drawing live... is next Friday.
(i kinda like the websites for the drawers too, simple, remind me of a lot stuff using Indexhibit)
double bill of Chungking Express and Violent Cop. the latter i wouldn't really consider going to see on its own, but i do like Kitano, and hey, i should get out of my comfort zone every so often.

a couple of other things:
kinda tempted to do this - a meal with strangers at the School of Life. i won't do it of course, it's more food for thought...

also came across these photos by Sue Foll of the morning after rioting on Brixton Rd, 1985, pretty close to home. amazingly, the patisserie hasn't changed one bit.