It's pretty damn good,and well worth the effort of seeing on a big screen.Perlman is superb,and i was surprised at how good that guy from the dismally crap Eighties band ,Bros was.Obviously i use the term 'band' in the loosest possible sense and by 'dismally' i mean downright awful with a deep and abiding hatred at the very thought of his being.The chance of a successful transition from popstar to credible actor is not a good one,given past efforts.Having said that,under 18 inches of makeup,he is almost unrecognisable.He must have trained bloody hard for the role,so you gotta give him that.Same for Perlman,can't be that easy dodging around film sets under a good few pounds of prosthetics and makeup at his age.

The creatures are little short of awesome,i think i read somewhere there were less than half a dozen creatures in the first Hellboy film,in this one there are loads,each quite distinctive and some really spectacular and original.Everything is just so much more scaled up compared to the first film.Although i still think the first one is the better movie.

I just recently finished editing my Cinematography Reel. Check the High Quality Version on my website. But the waiting time may just blow you away.

http://www.liaojiekai.com/cinematography/cinematographymain.html

I have often thought that this tune is somehow a precursor to Dance/Rave culture,partly because of the lyrical content,but also because of the video..an idealised view of a bucolic England....Crusties must watch this and think it looks like Crusty Heaven.

A small footnote for trivia fans...if the video was better quality you might recognise Mike Edmonds,who played Og in Time Bandits.

I am so going to see this on the big screen,can't wait.

I want to see this for many reasons,

1:It's Hellboy II!

2:It's Hellboy II

3:Its got Ron Perlman in it,the man is a superb actor.

4 :Its a Guillermo del Toro film,the man is a genius.

Does four reasons count as 'many'?...it does in my book,even if there are only three.
If your a stranger to either Del Toro or Perlman,you should have a look at some of their films..Perlman is one of my favourite actors,he's brilliant in the much maligned Alien Resurrection and in the dreamlike City Of Lost Children directed by Jean Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro.
Del Toro directed the equally dreamlike and multi-layered Pan's Labyrinth,the first Hellboy movie and Blade II.
If you visit the Official Site,there's trailers to watch,downloads etc etc

Theatres of War. Stills from WWII US Navy training films.

I get waves of Pacific war fascination. Mostly because of it's role in propelling tiki culture. American thirst after prohibition, (Tales of the) South Pacific - the book, then musical and then the film.

Escapism from the horrors of war, a kind of safe way to process recent history.

The Tiki revival happening now has been credited in part to terrorism and economic crunch. Tiki was always about non threatening, easily accessible, easily consumable fantasy. Adult Disney.

Don the Beachcomber opened up a massive tiki place in Waikiki, kind of amplifying and actually creating the aesthetic that drew Americans to Hawaii in the first place. There were something like 38 Trader Vics around the world, with 27 still open or reopened today. No Don the Beachcombers remain. One did open up in Disney's California Adventure Park, but was short lived - it didn't serve any alcoholic drinks.

The Alchemists of Sound. Part one of a documentary from 2003, about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

"Radiophonic workshop was born out of a desire to create new sounds, for radio initially, and later, television. they were the sounds of nightmares, the sound of nervous breakdowns..."

I love the machines, proper physical things. I love the sounds too, the experimentation, and the aesthetic. Washed out black and white, everything is so close.

I watched this on tv a while ago, its pretty lovely.

“My father never, ever said anything to me about his theories. I was in the same house with him for at least 18 years but he was a total stranger to me. He was in his own parallel universe. He was a physical presence, like the furniture, sitting there jotting down crazy notations at the dining room table night after night. I think he was deeply disappointed that he knew he was a genius but the rest of the world didn’t know it.” - Mark Everett.

yeah, the guy from The Eels - the guy who IS The Eels

my favourite part is when he is listening to his father's old tapes and he can hear himself practicing drums in the background as a child.

There are several things to watch out for while this plays.First off,how much does the drummer look like Joni Mitchell?

Its got to the stage i now tell anyone who will listen that how its a little known Rock Fact that Joni used to drum for Alice in the early days.
Second,watch the guitarist as he launches so earnestly into his solo,just as it comes to an end he glances over in Alice's direction and pulls this peculiar face that i think is meant to signify something like,'that was amazing,i am therefore superb',but instead comes across as a hilarious gurn,brilliant!.
The third thing comes straight after,as Alice starts singing the verse,he begins to wank the mic stand,theres a good ten seconds of this before the floor manager finally wakes up from whatever sordid little dream he's been having and the camera zooms in to hide the offending limb.You can almost hear him screaming into the cameraman's headphones,"zoom in,zoom in!!"...ah,the Beeb at it's best,and to think, we pay our license fees to be treated to this.

(time as an intellectual achievement rather than a perceptual category)

(music making time audible)

it's what i'm working on right now.

"Rhythm is one of the most basic ways that we understand and interact with time. Our first sensory impression as we float in our mother's womb is the rhythmic sound of her heart. The time between the opening and closing of the heart's valves is a clock that measures the passing of our lives. Breathing is our most lasting experience of rhythm."

"Rhythms occur at all time scales. The motion of waves against a beach, the daily flow of the sun and moon, the waxing and waning of the year; these occur at rates much slower than the heartbeat. Pitched phenomenon such as the rotation of an engine, the oscillations of a string, and the vibrations of our vocal chords occur at rates much faster than the heartbeat. At the slowest rates, we conceive of the rhythm via long term memory. At rates near that of the heartbeat, we perceive the repetition directly as rhythm. At the fastest rates, the repetitions blur together into the perception called "pitch." Thus we perceive rhythmic patterns differently at different time scales.

Dent was pretty amazing,he painted in a very fast,ferocious style,using his hands as well as several brushes at the same time,think Rolf Harris on acid.....and speed.He called it a "two fisted art attack".

Check some of his art here,and here he is in action...

Still from rushes 001

I am currently working on my new film, a Halfelephant productions by the way :-p This film continued a more spontaneous way of working that I have been trying since "The Inner City". It is a documentary about a previous film, "Sand Wind and Dreams" (SWD) which some have seen, some have not; about the relationship between Hiromi, the Lead actress in SWD and Hiroko, the role which Hiromi have played; about coming and going, states of sojourning and drifting.

Still from rushes 002

Productions continue as I held a couple of interviews with Hiromi, shot her in her dance class, and will be having a screening of SWD as part of the film shoot in the coming week. I think I'm thankful that I'm using a small handycam (Panasonic HDC-SD9) to make this film because of the convenience it had given me, both as a cameraman and a filmmaker. Being able to just switch on the camera in 1.5 seconds and start shooting is so important, especially when I'm so curious about everything that is happening during the interviews and shoots.

So, I hope that a rough cut can be assembled after next week, after which I will decide on what other footage I will need.

Jiekai

http://www.lighthouse.org.uk

Mette Ramsgard Thomsen talks about Slow Furl
03 July 08. Doors and Bar: 6.30pm (Cocktail Happy Hour from 6.30pm)
Talk: 7.30pm  At: Lighthouse, 28 Kensington Street, Brighton FREE

Mette Ramsgard Thomsen will introduce Slow Furl and its development, from concept to construction, and will talk about researching and developing interactive architecture work, and its creation.

Slow Furl is a room size textile installation that acts and reacts on its inhabitation. The installation exists as a soft and pliable skin that lines the Lighthouse space. The skin shifts.
As guests enter and move within the foyer, the skin moves imperceptibly at deep timeframes, creating new cavities and spaces, revealing slits and apertures.

The project explores the notion of flow. Rather than fixing the digital in a responsive relationship to the user, where every call defines a reply, Slow Furl finds its temporality outside the immediately animate. The thick skin envelops the space in a deep furl. Like a glacier, this robotic membrane, is formed by its slow action, reacting imperceptibly to its inhabitation.

Slow Furl is a collaboration between Mette Ramsgard Thomsen and Karin Bech of Centre for Interactive Technology and Architecture, Copenhagen, and the School of Architecture and Design, University of Brighton

Slow Furl is an INTERArChTIVE commission. INTERArChTIVE is a consortium of: Architecture Centre Network, Interactive Architecture dot Org, Lighthouse and RIBA Sussex Branch.