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alexsarllI used to find the Tate gallery a joyous place. Then, roundabout the time its upstart sibling was born, it became confused, with 'themed' rooms befitting a school exhibition but not a great gallery. Yesterday, it was strangely depressing. Perhaps I spent too long amid the GF Watts, perhaps all those ruins and melancholy lights in the Turners got to me, perhaps it was just the absence of the John Martins, but something isn't right.
(I'm currently reading Alan Hollinghurst's The Spell* in which London's galleries and museums all seem to be awash with cruising. Is this simple fantasy on his part or is it just my World's Worst Gaydar again? I've never once seen anything of the sort.)
There was a book called Hadrian VII, by a man known either as Baron Corvo or Frederick Rolfe. Or at least I think there was. One used to see it in those classics-for-a-quid editions, and I am sure I bought it in one of the same. Then suddenly, one never saw it, my copy wasn't there and Amazon had no record of its existence. I became convinced it had fallen victim to one of the world's periodic revisions, but continued hunting. I've still had no joy but now I at least have tangential proof that it existed; a biography of sorts called The Quest for Corvo by one AJA Symons, whose own author bio describes him as "bizarre and baroque".
Dame Ian McKellen initially seems to be having trouble with a toffee, but once he's got into the flow of it he is positively glowing with evangelistic fervour about the glory of pantomine. Some of his answers/speeches on the subject are so stirring that he really should conclude them with a call to attack Mordor and/or the puny humans. Though he does seem a little taken aback once he realises he has just described the audience reaction as "a tsunami of love".
A shame some of the audience were so clearly care in the community cases, though.
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martylog's recommendation I gave Small Soldiers a try. As warnings on the perils of AI go, it's a damn sight better than T3. It's not quite on a par with Dante's Gremlins films (to which it makes sly references), has a few logic glitches (the toys can feel pain but not wind?) and features 'sh1t Bill Hicks' Denis Leary in a key role, but it's still a fine film. I especially like the line (to a useless customer complaints woman) "Is there a machine I can talk to?" Though the scene in which Kirstin Dunst is tied up by dolls with the voices of Christina Ricci and Sarah Michelle Gellar could easily have been so much sechsier...
Babysitting the Shameless way: "If they start crying or owt, just stick 'em upstairs". I'll remember that one.
*A book which could so easily be embarrassing, given one of its main themes is a middle-aged man's introduction to E**, but by heavens Hollinghurst can write, and instead it's wonderful, somewhere between Walter Pater and Iris Murdoch but a little more human than either.
**Reading this back, honesty compels me to admit that I am in no position to talk given I'm now ineluctably 'late twenties' and have never tried it myself.
(I'm currently reading Alan Hollinghurst's The Spell* in which London's galleries and museums all seem to be awash with cruising. Is this simple fantasy on his part or is it just my World's Worst Gaydar again? I've never once seen anything of the sort.)
There was a book called Hadrian VII, by a man known either as Baron Corvo or Frederick Rolfe. Or at least I think there was. One used to see it in those classics-for-a-quid editions, and I am sure I bought it in one of the same. Then suddenly, one never saw it, my copy wasn't there and Amazon had no record of its existence. I became convinced it had fallen victim to one of the world's periodic revisions, but continued hunting. I've still had no joy but now I at least have tangential proof that it existed; a biography of sorts called The Quest for Corvo by one AJA Symons, whose own author bio describes him as "bizarre and baroque".
Dame Ian McKellen initially seems to be having trouble with a toffee, but once he's got into the flow of it he is positively glowing with evangelistic fervour about the glory of pantomine. Some of his answers/speeches on the subject are so stirring that he really should conclude them with a call to attack Mordor and/or the puny humans. Though he does seem a little taken aback once he realises he has just described the audience reaction as "a tsunami of love".
A shame some of the audience were so clearly care in the community cases, though.
On
martylog's recommendation I gave Small Soldiers a try. As warnings on the perils of AI go, it's a damn sight better than T3. It's not quite on a par with Dante's Gremlins films (to which it makes sly references), has a few logic glitches (the toys can feel pain but not wind?) and features 'sh1t Bill Hicks' Denis Leary in a key role, but it's still a fine film. I especially like the line (to a useless customer complaints woman) "Is there a machine I can talk to?" Though the scene in which Kirstin Dunst is tied up by dolls with the voices of Christina Ricci and Sarah Michelle Gellar could easily have been so much sechsier...Babysitting the Shameless way: "If they start crying or owt, just stick 'em upstairs". I'll remember that one.
*A book which could so easily be embarrassing, given one of its main themes is a middle-aged man's introduction to E**, but by heavens Hollinghurst can write, and instead it's wonderful, somewhere between Walter Pater and Iris Murdoch but a little more human than either.
**Reading this back, honesty compels me to admit that I am in no position to talk given I'm now ineluctably 'late twenties' and have never tried it myself.
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Date: 2005-01-19 12:04 pm (UTC)Thank you for the mental image, dear. I'll treasure that. :)
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Date: 2005-01-19 12:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 12:05 pm (UTC)The Tate Modern is TOO BIG.
But the nice Tate Liverpool is juuuuust right.
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Date: 2005-01-19 12:07 pm (UTC)NuTate's problem isn't the size (the turbine hall's about the only good bit) but that most of that work has no bite once it's surrounded by other modern art and sealed off from actually confronting anyone.
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Date: 2005-01-19 12:10 pm (UTC)Tate Liverpool is still perfect though. Apart form the fact that it's in Liverpool and not Belfarce, which still necessitates Easyjet and the unspeakble Speke Airport (now John Lennon international, wiht the motto "Above us only sky" - yeughhhh).
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Date: 2005-01-19 12:08 pm (UTC)dolls... *shudder*
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Date: 2005-01-19 12:14 pm (UTC)I am suprised my Barbie's never got their own back on me for turning them into lesbians and making them have bondage sechs...*whistles*
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Date: 2005-01-19 12:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 12:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 12:18 pm (UTC)our barbies were always psycho killers, heh.
little girls rarely play 'normal' barbies. at least none that i knew!
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Date: 2005-01-19 12:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 12:23 pm (UTC)Sorry, what was the question?
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Date: 2005-01-19 12:24 pm (UTC)oh yes. dolls = scary.
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Date: 2005-01-19 12:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 12:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 12:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 12:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 12:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 12:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 12:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 01:07 pm (UTC)anyway, Small Soldiers is a me and angel film, we watched it on Upper Street. sweet, sweet Upper Street.
x
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Date: 2005-01-19 01:20 pm (UTC)escape from our history
Date: 2005-01-19 01:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 12:12 pm (UTC)never worked for me, though.
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Date: 2005-01-19 12:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 01:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 01:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 01:29 pm (UTC)Yuck, I hate the word "vibe"
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Date: 2005-01-19 01:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 12:18 pm (UTC)xx
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Date: 2005-01-19 12:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 01:59 pm (UTC)xx
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Date: 2005-01-19 02:33 pm (UTC)The 'machine' line is indeed great, and it's very likely that I would have quoted it at the time.
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Date: 2005-01-19 03:11 pm (UTC)