Monday, 16 June 2014

Whuh... What's happening to me?!

I LOVE YOU, DAVE FOLEY!

EXCITING SPACE ADVENTURE

inspired by this Alex Schomburg illustration, from the ever-inspiring 70s sci-fi art...

"How do you like travelling in our new hover vehicle, Zepina?"
"Guys, it's amazing! Which one of you is steering?
"Um - We both are?"
"Cool! Oh, here's a good spot. Can you set us down here?"
"Okay. Hold on to something."
"Hold onto- Why- OW! FUCK ME!"
"It's okay. It's okay"
"What the fuck- !"
"We're just tilting. It's fine, Zepina. That's just how it parks. Excuse m- "
"OW! I'm getting out. How do I get out? Where's the door?"
"... Ah."
"WHERE'S THE DOOR?"
"Um. It's that hatch."
"It's not opening! Why isn't it opening?!"
"It's fine, it's fine. Just - Okay, everyone move to the other side of the vehicle -"
"WHAT?!"
"We fell on the wrong side. It's fine! Just move- Everyone move really quickly... NOW!"
"OW!"
"Okay... we nearly had it. And AGAIN..."

Etc.
Nice aerial though.

Monday, 2 June 2014

Hey, hey, I'm the Monkees.

Remember how I occasionally went on about that film I wanted to make of "The Secret Agent"? Well this isn't it, but it has a tang. Presenting: Mirrorboy –

Embiggen.

Gerard suggested making a video for this song after he saw it performed at the fundraiser where my friend Katy broke her fist punching a fish which is why we have rehearsals. He also suggested the locations, mixed the track, and kept the camera rolling as I attempted to restage some happy accidents. So we had a hoot, met some Father Christmasses, and fourteen months later, here's the finished article. Enjoy responsibly.

(And if you liked that, or even if you thought "seven bloody minutes???" there's more of Gerard's magic here, featuring a robot, Nick "Colonel Dalby" Lucas, and a proper song from possibly London's Last Londoner.)

Thursday, 8 May 2014

We have moved

to Forest Hill. I've just unpacked some Citadel Miniatures. Translation: We're staying. We don't have internet yet. I'm in the St David's cafe, on a seat that I've just found out isn't attached to the chair, overlooking the foxgloves overlooking the pavement overlooking the railings overlooking another pavement. I am enjoying the levels, and keeping very still. The wifi password here is keithmoon. Let's catch up soon, yeah?

Friday, 21 February 2014

Two Towers

Sorry it's all gone a bit slack here. I intended to finish my review of 2013 last week with a stirring post about the value of boredom, typed up on tour in Aberystwyth. That never happened. But I did make a film. So here - in the spirit of boredom - is a twenty-minute long home movie.

A cheap experiment in dread

The Aberystwyth Arts Centre (10 minutes in) was a revelation - not just the eerie, free-standing concrete seats, lone bell-tower, and silvery bellow-shaped pods of uncertain purpose all pressing my 70's scifi buttons (although they were amazing), but because it all worked: a cinema, two galleries, theatres, shops, students, performance art, discos, parents dropping by for a coffee or beer and children dropped off for ballet lessons, all coexisting in a way that seemed unprecedentedly natural and unforced. I urge anyone interested in what "Arts Centre" might actually mean to head over there and eat your heart out.
How have they managed this? There's a view, which I suppose makes the Centre a destination. (It's a mile's steep walk out of the town.) But there's a great view of London from the fifth floor of the Royal Festival Hall as well, and how often do you see families up there? The architecture's important; you can wander through (13 minutes in) and see everything laid out before you. You don't have to awkwardly poke your head round a corner and be invited in by an usher to experience what's on offer, as you might in an older room-and-corridor set-up like the BAC (no matter how many doors you remove), or the Royal Festival Hall's too many floors (and to be fair the RFH must have recognised this, which is why their lifts sing so ingratiatingly) or the windowless Cabinet Warhol Rooms* of the ICA. In fact Aberystwyth's Arts Centre may have finally worked out how to bypass one of modern art's hugest dilemmas: how to go "No, come in." It's all about the view.
Hum. Maybe, if the Barbican let its hair down a bit...
So that's in the film, and some storms, and a search for supper where it all goes a bit Jimmy's End, and two towers, and the happy discovery - accidentally made 17 minutes in - that if the audio from a home video is suddenly replaced by something from Brian Eno, you get Ben Wheatley. I make no apology for my use of Vangelis. I'm knackered and knotted from rehearsing with a new bunch of actors with actual skills, the sods. When I'm recovered, we'll see in 2014.

*I'm firing myself.

Sunday, 16 February 2014

Monsters' Ball #34-48

Continuing the drawing-a-monster-a-day project (I think there may be one or two gods here as well). With one exception – the naramoeba – they don't have names now, let alone descriptions. But, like that judge in those things, I want to see where this is going.

This post is dedicated to Videogum, the much loved, and now much missed popular culture blog, often mentioned here, whose commenters provided the warmest internet community I've yet encountered. They called themselves monsters. Long may they monst.

Wednesday, 5 February 2014

November 2013 - BULA WHO! *

"Cowabunga, dudes!"

Fear not, twenty-fourteenies, though I may be from the Future, I have more than three thousand years of epoch-relevant slang under my belt: "Wash yer 'andies!" See?

Dr. Who turned fifty in November of course, which made it a particularly good month to tear round London in a '66 Routemaster while pretending to be a Time-traveler for the kids. But the Time Tour's always fun. Once, a whole party of schoolchildren asked to be taken back to the year of their parents' birth. Each child. Individually. I don't know what was going on there. Normally it's the Great Fire of London, or just "Egypt", and then I have to explain fire and time, which obviously I enjoy.

And I got back into the Ghost Bus Tours as well for Hallowe'en. That's still fun. And counts. (Andy Field filed a great piece about ghost walks here).

I suppose I should let people know I'm doing them...

Back to Dr. Who though, here's my Dad telling the one about acting in Planet of the Spiders: