alexsarll: (bernard)
Alex ([personal profile] alexsarll) wrote2010-11-15 11:41 am

You know the Holocaust? Picture the opposite of that.

Harold and Kumar Get The Munchies is not only a very funny film; it has more to say about race in America than all that Oscar-winning dreck like Monster's Ball and Crash could even dream of.

Went to see the Cuming Museum's exhibition of painter-magician Austin Osman Spare's work last week, and very good it was too; it's finished now, but here's Alan Moore with his thoughts and a brief tour. A slight trek, but aside from finally getting an excuse to use the Waterloo & City line on my return, it was more powerful seeing Spare's work on his old turf than it would have been in the centre, more in keeping with how he exhibited during his life (in local pubs, for the most part). It makes sense that I heard about him mainly through comics - Moore and rival writer-magus Grant Morrison are both enthusiasts - because most of the things his art reminded me of were comics art. The self-portraits reminded me of Glenn Fabry, the pencils of Dave McKean as much as Aubrey Beardsley, the most deeply spiralling magical pieces of Billy the Sink if he had more respect for anatomy. And Spare's vision of the collective unconscious as landscapes made of faces...it was a little bit Source Wall, and even more the garden of the shamans from The Authority. Two pieces particularly wowed me - L'Apres Midi d'un Faune, which I think was done without taking the pencil of the page, and looked to me less like a faun than a satyr or maybe Machen's terrifying Pan, and The Evolution of the Human Race*, a still image which somehow evokes the vertiginous quality of deep time.

Other than that, a quiet weekend; it's hardly been the weather to encourage much in the way of Outside. But of course I made it along to [livejournal.com profile] angelv's apparently, regrettably final Don't Stop Moving for pop galore. If this really is the end, it will be missed.

*Speaking of evolution, I loved the way David Attenborough's First Life packed the whole story of vertebrates into its last five minutes. And pointed out that the way insects come together into colonies, or superorganisms, is basically the same process which first saw cells aggregating into multicellular life. But in particular, the section on eyes - ranging from the adorable Cambrian sea creature which had five, to trilobites with crystal lenses - should be injected directly into the brain of every creationist moron who says "What about the eye, eh?" and then thinks they've won.

[identity profile] davegodfrey.livejournal.com 2010-11-15 01:38 pm (UTC)(link)
I do love it when creationists come up with the eyes. Because 1. 5% of an eye is better than 4%. 2. Vertebrate retinas are the wrong way round. Which cowboy deity put the nerves and blood vessels in front of the photoreceptors eh? It'll all have to come out you know.

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2010-11-15 01:43 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, yes, aren't there 30-odd stages between skin and eye, each of which is better than the one before? And then, totally different solutions to the same problem throughout evolutionary history. Yes, the gradual improvements of an eye are probably too complex for the creationist mind to understand - but then so is Where's Spot?

[identity profile] kerrypolka.livejournal.com 2010-11-16 02:07 pm (UTC)(link)
Harold and Kumar Get The Munchies

Aw man, I got all excited about a sequel I hadn't heard of yet, but it turns out that's just the international name. Boo! :(

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2010-11-16 03:55 pm (UTC)(link)
I was a little surprised to find out that White Castle (and indeed, Hot Dog Heaven) are real chains - White Castle in particular looked like a made-up one a la the burger place in Kevin Smith's Clerks 2. But having seen this, I am v.keen to see Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay.