Jaar Rules

Went to see Nicolas Jaar in fabric last night. Was incredible to say the least, I only wished he'd sung more. Completely different experience watching him live with his band than listening to the LP. It's as if his live music and recorded music are two mutually exclusive entities; they bare very little resemblance to each other - in a good way.


Lubezki


This comes out in England tomorrow, and I'm beyond excited. I've been a huge fan of Malick's ever since I was bored one night so decided to watch a film called "Badlands" which happened to be on BBC1.

His films have a patent interest in cinematography and light, so it comes as no surprise that Emmanuel Lubezki worked on this film and his previous one, The New World.
Some of Lubezki's best work, I think, can be seen in one of my favorite films of the last decade, Children of Men.

Tempests

Ok so at the moment I'm trying to watch as many adaptations of Shakespeare's The Tempest as I can find. In the last couple of days I've watched Julie Taymore's recent gender bending version, and Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books.

Greenaway's Prospero's Books is something to behold. More or less all lines of The Tempest are spoken or narrated by John Gielgud who plays Prospero. A Prospero who seems to be writing the play itself, with the scenes being played out in his mind(?). At least that's my interpretation of it.

I was familiar with Greenaway's style having watched The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover but it seems like any Greenaway film will take you by surprise no matter how  familiar you are with his work. For example this film opens with a young putto-looking boy perpetually urinating on model boat. This is Ariel causing the tempest.

Prospero does not live in a magical island, but rather in a towering baroque palace. Each scene, in typical Greenaway style looks like a renaissance painting to the extent where the majority of people on screen at any one time are naked. It’s a wonderful  piece that falls somewhere within the categories of theatre, opera, cinema and performance art. Gielgud's Propsero evades any of that pompous regal authority that other actors succumb to with the role, and instead seems positively human. His random interjections showing off the magical books he owns, were both amusing and touching.

Michael Clark's realisation of Caliban was sublime. Like all other characters in the film he doesn't speak his lines, but he moves, slithers and dances across the screen majestically.
Ariel unambiguously plays Prospero's muse in this version and is called upon every time he wishes to pen another scene. The spirit is represented as a young boy, an adolescent boy and a young man - perhaps with Prospero completing the final stage as the elderly gentleman.

Ariel


Either way, the film is a visual tour de force with the scenes involving Miranda and Ferdinand being particularly spectacular.

It seems a shame that Peter Greenaway's name is noticeably missing in any discussion of British Cinema, and indeed in 90s cinema. Very few of his films have received a Blu-Ray release, and they are in dire need of one as most DVD releases were sub-par and the films have suffered as a result. 

Julie Taymore's adaptation is some what less inspiring. The film boasts a strong cast with Helen Mirren, Ben Whitshaw, Russel Brand, and  Djimon Hounsou among the names you should be familiar with. Its main point of interest is that the character of Prospero has been changed to a female 'Prospera', however this sex change breathes no new life into the text, it just seems to have been done to allow Helen Mirren be in it.

The film has not been received well by critics, yet scathing one star reviews do seem a bit extreme. It’s a perfectly enjoyable straight-forward adaptation. I particularly enjoyed Whitshaw's Ariel, and Hounsou's Caliban. The main problem is that Shakespeare's play is so vociferous  in magic, rhythm and song  yet Taymore's version is noticeably lacking in these areas. Every now and then a brash rock soundtrack blares, and nausea-inducing special effects swirl around unnecessarily. The result is a stylised mess, which is shame because Taymore's first venture into filmic Shakespeare is the stylised treat of a film, Titus, which I would recommend to everyone. 

Eduardo Recife




Brazil's Eduardo Recife is an illustrator/designer, artist and typographer who specialises in digital collages of vintage prints and graphics. The results are breathtaking, and he's recently updated his commercial portfolio which can be found here: http://www.eduardorecife.com/. His personal website Misprinted Type  has been popular for many years, and offers his own fonts for purchase or for free, as well as some photoshop goodies such as brush packs and vectors. Most importantly you can check out his personal illustrations, and even see older versions of the site - a great way of seeing how his style has progressed over the years.

Arcade Fire

When I was 14, I found an odd album lying around the house. I played it, and within the first few seconds of the opening track I was blown away. I had never heard anything quite like it (but then again I was only 14). I somewhat naively thought that this was what all good contemporary music sounded like, only to be disappointed that this unique sound only belonged to one band, Arcade Fire.  I've been a huge fan ever since. However, I only attended my first gig of theirs a few days ago in London's Hyde Park. I was with a friend who had seen them on eight different occasions, and she remarked that all of those concerts were great, with perhaps the exception of Reading. I was beside myself with anticipation and excitement.
The stage was framed with aerial pictures of sprawling American suburbs, and the two screens in the centre spelt "Coming soon : Arcade Fire" in a small-town retro cinema sort of way.  And then they arrived, and the crowd roared, and a good night was had. I say 'good' quite deliberately. I was jumping around singing my heart out, but there was a faint nagging feeling that there wasn't much difference between listening to them at home on a laptop than listening to them and seeing them at Hyde Park.  There have been complaints that the show was rather quiet, but sound issues aside I was craving that energy and interaction with the crowd as documented in the fantastic film "Miroir Noir".  Apart from Regine floating about with tassels in her hands, and Win complaining that the locals wanted to keep the noise down, there wasn't much else going on. Nonetheless it was a great experience, and I'll be sure to attend more concerts in the future, though not for a while judging by Win's farewell: "See you in a couple of years London".