Make Movies not Bombs!

No doubt you will have heard about the ‘Terror Arrests’ around London by now and I expect, like me, you’ll greet the news with incredulity, sadness, anger and a growing sense of foreboding.

For the past couple of weeks, everytime I get the itch to post up something I think might be of mild interest to those surfing into the vicinity, I’m put off by some murderous fool who either contemplates, perpertrates or participates in some godless act of violence.

I mean, I ask you – Crawley, Luton and Slough of all places – it’d be hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic.

Today I was going to proudly put in an entry about the Online Banglapedia: National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh and how inspirational an achievment this is for the beloved land of my ancesters but then I heard about the bomb making fertilizer stored in an Access Storage facility. I mean, how mundane is that! – not some secret shed hidden in the countryside but a public storage facility shared by people storing their, fridges, spare sofas and other ordinary stuff. Stuff that can’t be used to kill anybody (though I suppose the fridge could be dropped onto someone from a height but flying white goods aren’t quite the weapons of choice you’d think they’d be amongst terrorists). And how is it that fertilizer is so dangerous anyway? Is this the same stuff that they put onto cabbages and carrots to make them grow? If so, I’m starting to get a little concerned about the potential for mass destruction that my next vegetable stew may represent.

I thought about dropping a line or two about Letter from America’s – Alistair Cooke who just passed away. His regular 15-minute musings on the state of american life was a peerless inspiration for the whining self-publishing that these posts rarely escape being. But instead, I have to ponder the words of Massoud Shadjareh, chairman of the Islamic Human Rights Commission who says of the raids that netted 8 young muslim men today,

“These raids are usually given a lot of importance when they are taking place, but when people are released without charge, it is not news. “

Muslims may indeed be demonised in the press because of such raids but there’s somebody out there who isn’t concerning themselves with Human Rights – Islamic or otherwise – and frankly I’m happy if legitimate suspects are caught and locked up. I console myself that because we live in a society that at least attempts to implement due process, the innocent will eventually be released. As for the press – well what do you expect – Sven has signed up for an extra two years and there isn’t another pointless football story to be had anywhere so this story is a god-send for Rupert’s hacks.

Also not to be posted today (but at some point in the next few days) is something about the trip to Bradford I made to see the Shine04 – Short Film strand at the Bradford Film Festival which was genuinely inspirational. For now I’ve got to say that I was dissapointed to note that there weren’t more British muslims at the event. It’s a bit surprising given the sizeable, mostly Pakistani and Bengali, muslim population in the city but it seems symptomatic of the self-imposed apartheid that prevails in so many of our northern towns. Is this a sign of the ‘them and us’ mentality I fear that’s coming to pass? Perhaps in Birmingham things are a bit better (or am I deluding myself?)

Well, I say to all fertilizer hoarders – “Make Movies not Bombs”. (Of course you could still make a movie that is a bomb too!)

STOP PRESS: A good bloke did something nice!

The world’s gone mad! … democratic leaders … more like demoncratic leaders – fucking bush, fucking blair, fucking sharon, fucking arafat in fact fuck all of them old pricks and their Machiavellian “advisors”.

Anyway, some real news – on the way to West Bromwich yesterday, for a little work again, I had to stop at a car mechanics and get one of Bella’s tyres fixed. It was completely deflated and air pumps wouldn’t reinflate it. I thought I’d have to buy a new one but went into this mechanics shop and asked if they could fix it – if so it would be cheaper than a new one but I was stretched over the proverbial barrel here so I’d have to accept whatever I was told and however much it would cost.

The mechanic bloke took the wheel off my hand and took it into the workshop out back. He noisely did his business and emerged about 10 minutes later with the tyre in hand. I thought here we go – he’s about to tell me there’s nothing that can be done about the tyre and I’d have to shell out for a new one out of my equally deflated financial reserves but I was so wrong. He said that something had blocked the air nozzle and that he’d unblocked it and re-flated the tyre, then he took the tyre outside to Bella and replaced it.

Cynical old me thought that he did this in order to soften the demand for payment for his highly trained diagnosis and resolution to my pneumatic predicament so I asked,
“How Much?”
he looked at me smiled and said,
“Nothing mate”

Now there’s a real prince amongst men.

Hello World!

[Update: 17/03/04 - I know it's not a Shamrock!]

…and finally

I got to see the last two of the eight Screen WM – Digital Shorts yesterday at the Midland Arts Centre ( MAC). The other six short films I saw at the Birmingham Screen Festival last week but for various reasons a couple weren’t shown then. So yesterday, the rebel directors organised a private viewing for cast, crew, friends, family and assorted interested people at the MAC.

Afterwards, I thought that a regular screening at the MAC of indie-films that people have made would be quite good – I’m not sure that this kind of thing exists in Brum, (possibly it does but obviously I don’t get invited – have you seen my “King of Curries”? … No? … then just forget it … God knows I’m trying to!). But what better way is there to motivate yourself to just get out and make films than the prospect of getting it screened in front of a small audience and then getting feedback from your peers once you’ve created your mini-DV-zero-budget-masterpiece?

A Different Train Journey

… and on Saturday Rezwan boarded a train to Chittagong.

A prayer for the living

This morning feerozac offered up a small prayer before boarding the 8.33 to Kings Cross.

The Blame Game

I never wanted to write another word in this category but I couldn’t help it today – the day of the release of the ‘Tipton Three”. Their capture in Afghanistan and subsequent incarceration at Guantanamo precedes the War in Iraq but it’s all the same thing isn’t it!?

And now that Max Clifford is on the case the three midland lads will no doubt be reviled in the press (the ones who dont get to buy the story that is) for their mercenary exploitation of the situation (after all it was only two years of their young lives that they were locked up for for no good reason and without access to lawyers or family). Good luck to them I say, hope they can squeeze as much out of the situation as the press already have and will continue to do so.

It’s tragic that on the day they’re finally free from ‘coalition of the willing’ hands, that real ‘evil-doers’ are killing hundreds of innocent spanish commuters.

I’ve just caught the BBC News 24 lunchtime bulletin about it and perhaps it’s as a result of my share of the collective sense of persecution that muslims (even nominal ones) have but I’m sure the journalists were bending over backwards in their efforts to link Arab terrorists to the attacks. Were it in a court of law, they could have been accused of leading the witness for the way they were trying to get the various experts to say that Al-Qaeda could have done the bombings. But it wasn’t a court of law and sadly it could very well have been Osama’s lost boys – this despite the insistance at this stage, by both the Spanish police and a spokesman from the ruling Popular Party, that it was probably ETA.

Anyway, whoever it turns out to be – it’s just disgusting and I can’t see how murder (or kidnapping) helps any cause.

Two weblogs are better than one?

They have a new UK correspondent over at Cinema Minima – me! It’s voluntary but I get a weblog and Austin, the editor, can get press passes to festivals for the LA-based but international news digest for digital movie-makers.

Cinema Minima [CM]’s focus isn’t so much upon the established movie making scene as it is upon the developments in the industry that effect independent filmmakers and the technologies that can enable them. In Austin’s own words,

CM is not directed at people working in Hollywood, rather to persons who — had it not been for the availability of inexpensive, easy-to-use, and broadcast-quality digital movie making tools — would not be even considering making movies.

The first entry was about the 10th Bradford Film Festival, running later on this month. There’s a short film strand at the festival which I’ll attend and scribble some notes about.

The Louvre Museum

Had to do the museum thing when I was across in France. No doubt – conditioning which is the result of countless rain soaked school trips during childhood. Though why that hasn’t built up a mortal fear of museums in me I don’t know – okay I was a nerd then and I’m still a nerd … and I go to museums. But as museums go the Louvre isn’t half bad.

Having descended into the lobby of the museum via a huge glass fake pyramid you climb into the various wings of the Museum (oooh those Parisians do like their stairs). But the vast majority of culture vultures were there heading for one exhibit only. The Mona Lisa.

The Museum authorities know a good thing when they have one so ‘La Giaconda’ is sign posted very clearly right from the entrance onwards. The same, unfortunately, can not be said for the exit signs but that’s another story. So a steady train of humanity dutifully marches on through the halls of the French, Spanish and eventually Italian Schools of paintings, apparantly oblivious to their charms until they emerge into ‘her’ presence.

Stunning is all I have to say … not the painting but the effect of 1oo’s of flashguns going off in your eyes as the vultures swoop upon her. She might have been a pop star judging by the way the hoardes mill around her, elbowing each other viciously in the battle royale that takes place for the best camera vantage points. It’s a bit of a surprise that flashguns are allowed by the Museum anyway but I guess they know what they’re doing. Well, if it didn’t bother the American/Japanese/French tourists I certainly wasn’t going to let it bother me so I pulled out my Fuji and joined in the flashing frenzy.

Anyway, it’s probably a fake – they wouldn’t keep the real one there now would they … would they? Still, you have to say – she does seem quite serene despite all the fuss going on around her.

Having thus abandoned all pretence of being interested in the art for art’s sake I rushed ahead looking for the ‘celebrity’ paintings which I could tick off my list of famous things I’ve actually seen. There weren’t that many exhibits that I knew anything about and one I did want to see, an El Greco, was actually not available to view but I did find a couple of others. The first being Gericault’s “The Raft of the Medusa” which I’d read about in Julian Barnes’ ‘History of the World in 10 (1/2) chapters’. (I went through a very pretentious phase about a decade ago and would read lot’s of stuff without gaining any understanding, thinking that at some point in the future I could talk about it at length during some sort of dinner party and thus impress some young lady – surprisingly that scenario never happened).

So what can I say about the “The Raft of the Medusa” … it’s really big. In fact, a lot of the paintings were really huge, which is great – you can sit in front of them for hours, resting your feet which are tired from all the walking up and down stairs, noticing the details like how many little dogs you can see in the picture. Who needs Open University Lecturers hey?

Of course, the Louvre has more than just paintings and as I was strolling through the corridors trying quite hard to get back to where I’d left my companion, who’d very sensibly long since given up walking, I wondered into Napolean III’s home. It seems as if they’ve given over an entire wing to HR Napoleon H and you’ve got to hand it to the guy – he knew how to live like a king. You may remember him as being the one who cut huge swathes across Paris in order to build the Grand Boulevards. Apart from drastic town planning he seems to have had a thing about chandeliers too … he’d have got on well with my mom.

Eventually I managed to work out that ’sortie’ means ‘exit’ and found my way out of the painting wing. This still left the Egyptian wing, the African and Oriental Arts wings and Chicken wings (probably not that last one) but I’ll have to save these for some future trip to Paris … (yeah sure) but one thing I won’t have to come back for, to tick off my list, is the Venus de Milo.

I aint too sure if I agreed with the blurb about her which suggested that she’s the ideal of womanhood but she is about 2200 year old and not looking too bad for all that. Of course it’s impossible to look at something as famous as this without having some cigar advert force it’s way up into your conciousness. So I stood there looking at this masterpiece of classical art all the time imagining some ancient sculptur lighting up a slim panatella while he contemplate’s lopping off the second arm. It’s probably a fake anyway.

God and Treadmills

Before Natalie over at Augustine’s Blog began an interview with God she had time to tell me about Demian’s take on treading the (call centre) mill … (*SHUDDER*)