Metamatic Forums Socialising The Green Room What are you watching?

"The Road" - phew. Reminded me of "Grave of the Fireflies" in some ways. A bit harrowing but absolutely stunning. One minor point, which is probably more to do with my substandard audio-visual equipment than anything, but I wish people would speak up in movies! The number of times I wind back just to catch what someone mumbled ... I know it's unrealistic and undesirable to expect perfectly proclaimed voices but surely the other characters wouldn't always hear what someone said EITHER. Not enough "pardon?"'s in films. There, rant over.

It's a great film.

A Man Within - trailers, profiles etc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHmmnGfgWPs&feature=player_embedded

Watched last night the bizarre Eurovision Song Contest. Very colourful with the usual touch of diverse English dialects from across the continent. For once, one of the "non-block" countries won and was a pretty good song. The highlights this year were an unexpected guest during the Spanish performance and the strange behaviour between last year's winner and this year's winner.

Before the contest I treated myself to The Nomi Song . A well produced documentary on the chanteur that makes him into a legend. One would have liked to have seen Joey Arias and David Bowie, his best friend and inspiration respectively, being interviewed but at least there were stage performances of course. Some rare footage in particular his first appearance at the Vaudeville show.

Interesting to note that he obtained his record contract from RCA France and not from a US label. It's funny that it was mentioned that Bowie and Pop were going to work with Nomi and his band but no collaboration took place. However, it is most probable that what Bowie did was to recommend Nomi to RCA, his record label at the time.

Despite his popularity, his records only sold well in France winning him a gold record. This might have been for his first album which is a classic.

Unfortuantely, he was probably the first celebrity to die of AIDS and his spectacular performance came to an end. He left behind two timeless albums and an open door for talents like Nomi to perform to the world.

Klaus Nomi RIP.

Chris

The first celebrity to die of AIDS was Patrick Cowley, who passed away almost one year earlier. Both Cowley's & Nomi's careers were very much too short.

Yes also enjoyed watching Eurovision SC on Germany's "Die Erste".
Clearly we've come a long way from Katie Boyle's bilingual presenting and the various 'Ding a Dong'' type song...or have we?
Great studio and set tho . .them Norweginas can really do a TV show!
I sort of preferred it when they had to sing in their own language, but I suppose that's going to be a disadvantage for some.
Anway the winning song - Satellite - was writen by an American and a Dane, sung by a German with a bit of an Irish accent? Wunderbar!
Royaume Uni - zero points!

Presently watching this, as forwarded to me in an email from a friend:

http://www.ted.com/talks/david_byrne_how_architecture_helped_music_evolve.html

(I recall many years ago reading John mentioning the ‘microphone and Frank Sinatra effect’ that Byrne also comments on here)


New series of That Mitchell And Webb Look now on ”that so called television”.

Tuesday 9PM BBC2: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0092s71

(great stuff, and I hope they also get to do another series of Peep Show).

Finally catching up with Doctor Who ..

Been catching up with the new and 4th series of The IT Crowd which started a few weeks ago. Ch4 Friday's at 10pm.


(An old clip from series 3 in which Roy and Moss set Jen up with a presentation speech they wrote for her on the subject of 'the internet') -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmjN6GWd_Xs&feature=related

My two latest DVD additions:

D.N.A., part of the John Foxx two disc set of the same name. It's a very interesting set of videos ranging from graphics to reel to reel. This mixture of ideas and interpretations through the tiny lens makes it all very avant-garde. Flightpath Tegel comes out as the lead track of the album. It's one of my favourite tracks up there with Underpass.

Micromusic - Gary Numan. This is from the Telekon Tour and yes it brings back memories of 1980 when I first visited London and We Are Glass was in the charts during the early summer. It's a very complete set including two tracks from his then forthcoming album Dance. The video centres around Gary of course but I would have preferred more shots of the band members like in Cold Warning. Anyhow, it's a great souvenir to have and by the way another great interview from Gary.

Chris

"Ugly Americans" on Fiver, another great animated comedy about zombies, demons, blobs, a wizard, and fornicating trees.