life and stuff – Page 2 – knee deep in static

2015 in films ‘n’ stuff

As for… probably the last 7 years, I remain largely not much of a blogger anymore. Every year that I’ve attended the London Film Festival, I mean to write about what I saw and…. never get round to it.

Well. Here goes – a few words about all the new films I saw last year. At least I got into the practice of keeping a list of all the new films I saw over on Letterboxd and every time I added to it, took a look to re-arrange everything in order of how much I liked the films.

In reverse order then, starting with the film I enjoyed the least.

Avengers: Age of Ultron – Ugggh. This film was mostly just disappointing. What was going on with the Natasha Romanov/Bruce Banner thing? It came from nowhere and the relationship seemed out of character for both Romanov and Banner. Probably more because there was no lead up for us to see how it could have developed. Maybe…Nick Fury and Maria Hill were consistent with the rest of what we’ve seen in MCU? Everyone else? Not so much. 🙁
I Am Belfast – A kind of wandering essay film about Belfast. It was nice to look at and the people in it were great to hear from. That’s all I’ve got.
Blood Of My Blood – Half the film is set in 17th Italy and the other half in the same village in the modern-day. Amusing but felt kind of like there were 2 different films that didn’t have quiet enough story on their own kind of smushed half and half together.
Exotica, Erotica, Etc. – So I saw this film and then a few days later I saw Jay Malinowski at the Lexington (ditching one of the films I had planned to see at LFF because live music will probably always trump a thing I can see on DVD later) AND it felt like both things kind of mixed together – Jay Malinowski’s set was largely stuff from Martel, an album with a sort of nautical journey theme woven through.
Elstree 1976 – A documentary about some of the actors who appeared in the original Star Wars trilogy and how the films has affected their lives. I
Office – I can’t say that I ever thought I would see a Chinese musical in 3D entirely set in the corporate world but there it was. I only wish I understood the language to better enjoy it because I am CERTAIN there was clever wordplay that could not be contained in the translation.
Truth – Even though I was about 20 in 2004 I had no idea that the events in this film were even happening so it was fascinating to watch.
Youth – All I remember is that while I enjoyed this film, it felt like nothing really happened for a really long time which may have been the point. Also, Rachel Weisz was awesome in it.
Suffragette – Enjoyable enough but the main character Maud was a bit empty and obviously it was implausible for a newly minted suffragette to be at all the big moments of the suffragette movement at the time BUT I guess they had to somehow have a self-insert character for the audience to move through the story with? Maybe. Perhaps a film that followed the story of a real woman who was fighting for the vote would have been better.
Twinsters – SO I heard about these two sisters who had been adopted as babies by parents in different countries and who had found each other on Facebook a while back BUT THEN I guess they made a film and people I follow on twitter mentioned watching it and THERE IT WAS on Mum’s Netflix so I watched it and it was delightful and moving and heart-warming and all the things.
Magic Mike XXL – A DELIGHT from start to finish. I don’t think I have ever watched a film where every single person in the cinema with me had such a good time.
A Perfect Day – I don’t think I expected to watch anything so funny when I bought the ticket for this film, thinking “Oh yes, a film about aid workers in a war zone will be interesting,” but it was and I recommend it to everyone.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. – All I knew about the series that this film was based on was that it had Robert Vaughan and Ducky from NCIS. Lots of fun to watch and obviously features Henry Cavill eating a sandwich as a key point in the film.
High-Rise – The thing about the London Film Festival is that I buy all my tickets in one go based on what the BFI website says the film is about and then I forget ENTIRELY what I have signed myself up to see. And it’s not like I know much about JG Ballard or Ben Wheatley anyway. I knew that this was about a futuristic apparently utopian 70s tower block with its social hierarchy arranged on the various levels and everything then degenerating into a dystopic horror show and at some point Tom Hiddleston got his kit off. It turned out to be GREAT and a DELIGHT and HILARIOUS.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens – I feel like I have only just seen this film (and kind of yeah, that’s true) and that I want to see it again in the cinema really soon BUT it is still my sixth favourite film of the year. Finn and Rey are ENCHANTING and I wouldn’t mind just watching a film where they go on an space-road-trip and discover the galaxy and everything they’ve never imagined.
Mad Max: Fury Road – While it feels like I only saw The Force Awakens five minutes ago, it feels like I watched Fury Road at least a year ago – even though this was my birthday film and that was only in May. I liked that this was basically the story of Furiosa and the Wives rather than Max.
John Wick – The violence and killing and everything was great and my Mum and I both enjoy violent action films but the REAL HIGHLIGHT was Keanu Reeves hanging out with a puppy.
Spy – So I guess a lot of my top ten includes film that were pretty funny but Spy is probably the funniest film I saw all year.
The Martian – I don’t like watching bad things happening to astronauts SO the idea of an astronaut being stranded on Mars was a bit daunting but this film is great and heart-warming and well-paced.
Jupiter Ascending – OF COURSE Jupiter Ascending was going to be my favourite films this year. It was ridiculous and awesome and Jupiter is a great heroine. It totally filled 2015’s Pacific Rim shaped space in last years cinema-going.

And that’s it. Who would have thought that Jupiter Ascending would have been so much better than Avengers: Age of Ultron at the beginning of the year?

Weird Dreams and Old Clothes

This morning I dreamt that I bought roast duck, flew with a jet pack over London, got on the Tube, spotted Captain America in a restaurant and got a bit lost but eventually turned towards Wembley Stadium because obvs that’s a good landmark to head towards.

Not quite sure how I could see Wembley from central London (which was…. on fire from an alien invasion?).

I’ve been having a lot of wacky vivid dreams.

Also this morning, my Mum tried on all the clothes that we cleared out of my wardrobe as “things that Rachel has grown out of”.

She’s now going to wear my old Phonogram shirt to her line dancing class and has a new range of filn/band t-shirts for it too. 😀

On Mass and Moshpits

I’ve thought about this, on and off over the years, and while I tend to be fairly loathe to really get into it about anything to do with religion ¹, I figure sometimes you have to gather your thoughts and brain-dump them somewhere.

That and I’ve never been one for paper journals. Child of the internet and all that.

Plus I’ve been reading The Power of Place by Winifred Gallagher which touches briefly on some of the thoughts that I’ve had.

So. What was I thinking about? Mostly, the similarities between the experience of being in a moshpit and of going to Mass. Admittedly, Â it is possible that there isn’t an obvious connection. For the most part, I suspect it’s a very subjective thing – which, yes, that is entirely what experiences from my viewpoint are. That’s the thing with personal experience. 😉

To begin: The first proper gig I went to was AFI’s Nightmare After Christmas ² show at the London Astoria in January 2002 – before that, I’d been to the Reading Festival a couple of times. I would have been 17. It was amazing. AFI were and still are a band that I love with all of my heart – in the way that the bands you love as a teenager stay with you for the rest of your life and for me, it’s not just the music they made then, when I first got into them. I’m lucky enough that the direction their music has taken has coincided with the spread of my own taste in music.

Being there at the front, surrounded by other fans of AFI, was a phenomenal experience. It felt kind of transcendent – like we all had the same joy in our hearts and were all part of the same one thing. Which I suppose we were – we were all in the same crowd, pressed together with all the heat and sweat of the pit, connected by love of the same band. I’ve had the same kind of feeling at other gigs since then – usually when I’ve seen AFI but also at a few Alkaline Trio and Gaslight Anthem gigs. I think there’s something special about the first band to really grab your heart though.

Now, as some of you might know, I’m Catholic. I believe in God, transubstantiation, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, blah blah blah and all that. Â I go to church on Sundays and holy days of obligation. I go on pilgrimage to Walsingham every year³. Â I don’t feel especially religious ⁴, but I guess to a lot of people I am due to my somewhat active involvement with my faith. On the other hand, I guess since I’ve got a foot in the door, I get to see all the other people on the inside who are far more involved and active and who I would consider as “religious”. Now, that feeling of almost transcendent oneness is a feeling that I sometimes feel at Mass – mostly when singing certain religious songs, hymns or particularly rousing requiem Masses in Latin. It’s a thing that happens.

Now, I’m sure I had a point (other than this whole thing being a bit interesting) back in August when I started writing this post – but I remember that I got interrupted halfway through and it’s been sitting in my drafts ever since. I figured I should at least round it off a little and release it into the wild.

To finish, however, is a comment I posted on Frank Turner’s reddit AMA on a thread where someone was asking about reactions to his atheist hymn “Glory Hallelujah”.

I really like Glory Hallelujah as a song. I also really like singing along at gigs – it gives me a comparable high/buzz to when I’m really into it singing in Latin about death on Good Friday at church or like…a really good worship hymn that doesn’t make me cringe while I’m singing it.

I have discovered that I can’t sing along to Glory Hallelujah. At all. I open my mouth and nothing comes out. I think my brain short-circuits at the paradox.

¹Because, hey, each to their own really, so long as it doesn’t impact negatively on others.

²Â Which after a bit of searching is apparently the greatest show that AFI ever did. Or so I am told.

³ This one is a story all on its own, involving the unlikely but apparently somewhat miraculous event of my conception. Probably not one for sharing all the details.

⁴ There’s probably also a story here where I talk about how atheists/agnostics I know have told me how “normal” I seem for a practising Christian, how with the blue hair etc I look a little unconventional and how my faith, appearance and taste in music are all tied into not caring if I’m like anyone else.

Global Truce 2012 NGO Coalition

During the course of the work that I’ve done as part of my Masters course, especially in peace-building, there has been an emphasis on the importance of relationships and providing opportunities and spaces for these to grow and flower in a positive and constructive way. I believe, and am very hopeful, that this Global Truce Coalition can very much help to further that process.

It is, in itself, a coming-together of a number of organisations with a similar goal: to improve the lives of all people, and especially the most vulnerable, by working to reduce and eliminate conflict of all kinds.

By working together, the whole can have a far greater reach and more effectively carry out the individual mission of each part where it is needed. Furthermore, the idea behind Peace One Day – that if we can all work together to achieve one day of non-violence, then we have taken the first steps towards a global community where conflict in all forms can be reduced or even eradicated – can only reach a wider audience and inspire the hope that is necessary for such an undertaking.

I wish the Global Truce 2012 NGO Coalition every success in achieving its goals.

Other points mentioned during the launch:

Conflict (along with disease and lack of food, which are connected to war) affect the vulnerable members of society most – the children. Peace Day is used very effectively to try to work against the spread of disease, especially among the young.
Peace work is often met with reluctance from governments – this is where NGOs can step in, with the benefit of them having a great passion for doing this.
Peace is justice, equality and freedom for all – conflict has to be managed.
Skepticism and cynicism Â are the biggest hindrance when it comes to the hope for peace – people can do it (reduce conflict) and we can help to foster that hope.
Peace has to be locally owned (something that’s also come up on my course) – the most effective peace happens when local communities take matters into their own hands and set up their own local Â government which they feel is legitimate and can be respected. The communities can take control of their own destiny and this makes the hope of peace a reality. There’s something in there about empowerment.
Transitional environments offer tremendous opportunities for change (heh actually wrote an essay vaguely related to this idea about the “necessity for conflict transformation”)
People living in situations of conflict are twice as likely to be malnourished and three times as likely to be uneducated
Securing a fragile peace, where there is violent conflict, means taking out the fuel for further conflict – the weapons and ammunition.
Coalitions and relationships are the way forward.
NGOs are among the most trusted organisations – governments and banks have become less trusted due to current economic and political issues, but NGOs are more trusted due to their primarily social concerns.

I can’t quite remember the question OR the responses to this one exactly (which is terribly frustrating, because at the time it was really interesting to me and is probably handy for the essay I’m working on now), but the issue of violence against women was brought up and the male-dominated nature of a lot of the organisations that deal with the various routes towards reducing conflict. I suspect I’ll have to corral my thoughts about that one and squeeze it into my essay for my course rather than blogging about it!

Emmanuel Jal mentioned that Jeremy Gilley had told him that his grandfather had been a Japanese POW during the Second World War and that part of his motivation to create Peace One Day had been that no one’s grandfather should have to go through that treatment. My own grandfather was interrogated and tortured by the Japanese soldiers in Malaysia, because they believed that he would know where his Communist brother-in-law was (he was probably hiding somewhere in the jungle, but no one knew where – including my Gua kong). It took some serious bribery from my grandmother’s mother to get him released – if he hadn’t been, then my mother wouldn’t have been born and I wouldn’t exist! The stories I’ve heard about what happened to my mother’s family while the Japanese occupied Malaysia really bring the reality of conflict close to home – while I live in the UK, war has directly touched people who I share close blood-ties with. The Second World War isn’t really something thatÂ justhappened 60 years ago to people who are elderly now for me – it’s something that happened to members of my family. And conflict still happens now, all around the world, and people suffer because of it.

But peace does not rest in the charters and covenants alone. It lies in the hearts and minds of all people. So let us not rest all our hopes on parchment and on paper, let us strive to build peace, a desire for peace, a willingness to work for peace in the hearts and minds of all of our people. I believe that we can. I believe the problems of human destiny are not beyond the reach of human beings.

â€” John F. Kennedy

More information

Global Truce Day Campaign Launched

Peace One Day and Interpeace Launch NGO Coalition

PeaceOneDay and InterpeaceTweet’s storify accounts of the launch

MAG (Mines Advisory Group)Â

ACCORD (African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes)Â

Viva RioÂ

The Kids Are Sick Again

I actually hate being sick. It’s normal to dislike it, I know, and most of the time I ignore it and carry on with what I am doing until it goes away.

What I hate most is when I am too sick to carry on with what I am doing and yet not tired or lethargic or whatever enough to be content with doing nothing. It sucks.

On the other hand, at least I don’t get throat infections every year, now that I have grown into my tonsils.

2 Years On…

Last month it was two years since my Dad passed away. It’s hard to imagine that so much time has passed, when at the same time it feels like so little. Sometimes it still feels like he could be sitting downstairs listening to his music with headphones on and it feels a little weird when I do go downstairs for whatever reason to find that it’s dark and he’s not there. Plus, of course, if he was listening to music on his headphones? I would have been able to hear it upstairs.

I don’t think it really gets any easier, but you just get used to it more.

There are so many things that have happened in the last two years that make me think of my dad – like going on holiday with mum and thinking that he would have liked to see those places. Or going to see bands! I really got into The Gaslight Anthem a few months after he passed away and whenever I listen to their music, I am stuck every time by the thought that he would really have liked it. He would have enjoyed going to see them live with me (rather than gone to a gig and thought they were merely “OK” like with AFI). I’ve considered getting a tattoo for the last like… ten years (it’s the kind of permanent decision I won’t rush into) and my dad always said to me “When you go and get one, let me know and I’ll come get one too.” This won’t even happen now but I’ve thought about it a lot recently since I’ve mostly likely settled on what I’d like etch indelibly on my person now.

I’m getting used to it yeah, and it feels more real, but it’s never going to be easy.

Fenech-Soler @ Camden Barfly 28/09/10

DSC01648

Originally uploaded by Jasminge

Just a mini-gig for various competitions winners for the album launch so started pretty early and finished pretty early but the songs were rockin’ and definitely convinced me to get the album.

Fenech-Soler do remind me a bit of Head Automatica – not just for the vocals but sort of generally too. Not in a bad way though as I love Head Automatica.

While I was listening, thanks to having listened to a radio program about the whole fade-out thing on Classic FM last week, I noticed that all of their songs fade out. None of them just end. Which (and I noticed this there also) can make it difficult to tell when a song is over. Gaslight Anthem do the other trick of a fake almost ending before the actual ending.

I am such a nerd.

Alkaline Trio @ The Relentless Garage 25/08/10

Matt and Dan of Alkaline Trio

Originally uploaded by Lucy Havok

Aside from being weaksauce at keeping this blog updated in any way other than being the latest version of the software….I’ve been busy. Going to gigs mostly, although not really that often when I think about it.

Last night was Alkaline Trio, who I saw at the Slam Dunk Festival and at The Roundhouse earlier in the year. Slam Dunk was fab and I was only really there for the Trio and got bonus Against Me! AND caught Your Demise, whose guitarist I went to primary school with*.

The sound at the Garage was WAY better than at the Roundhouse – I think the acoustics there just didn’t work for it. Generally they were amazing, especially since they’d just hopped off the plan from the US in the morning.

Can’t remember the setlist, I never do, but they played Sadie, Radio…and looking on last.fm has found it for me.

I less than three Dine, Dine My Darling big time – mostly for it’s morbid sentimentality I suppose, and it was epic. Radio and This Could Be Love got the usual massive singalong. All round it was fab.

The support were rockin’ too. Loved The Exposed who were on first – definitely going to check out more of their music and probably actually buy the album I didn’t want to spend my emergency just-in-case tenner on last night.

Off With Their Heads were ok too – jetlagged but funny. Just wasn’t feeling their music as much as The Exposed’s though.

*It’s weird, that. Really weird.

Renegades – The Lexington, Islington 04/02/10

Project 365 – Day 70

Originally uploaded by Mishb1981

Renegades last night were AMAZIN’. They’re a sort of Feeder side-project and a tiny bit ramshackle, what with playing new songs and getting it wrong occasionally. Only makes them move lovable I say. 😀

I rocked out so hard, I hurt today. Or maybe I’m just getting old!

The support, the Cherry Break Wells were wicked too, should try and find out if they have any CDs out.

Local Elections

So. Today is polling day. I will, of course, be voting.

The only problem is that the candidates that I get to pick from for my ward all kind of SUCK.

Aldenham West

Caroline Boydell – Green
Sandra Huff – Labour
Simon Patnick – Conservative

Out of these three, only Simon Patnick has bothered to get a leaflet dropped through my letter box and he does seem to have made some comment to the Jewish Cronicle. Caroline Boydell doesn’t seem to exist on the internet other than as a “Representatives of the Green Party were not immediately available for comment.” note on the Borehamwood Times website. Sandra Huff, I suspect, does things in Aldenham, but again, I can’t seem to find any kind of comment from her anywhere.

You see my dilemma. Vote for a candidate who I have heard from, but whose policies I don’t really agree with and whose leaflet was full of boring personal details that I just don’t care about. Or vote for someone I know nothing about.

Augh.

On a more fun note: