Movie Haiku - Hidden (Caché)

www.sonyclassics.com/cache


Dir: Michael Haneke


Cast: Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, Maurice Benichou, Annie Girardot


Slow, silent puzzle

who's sending the tapes and why?

hear audience gasp


soulmining rating: ***

Terry Gilliam and Christopher Lee confirmed for BKKIFF

While I'm still waiting for the full programme of films to be announced, the BKKIFF have just confirmed a couple of mouth-watering special events for next month's festival.

The first is a masterclass with Terry Gilliam in which he will talk about his career as a film director, his involvement with Monty Python, as well as his early career as a cartoonist. There will also be an opportunity for members of the audience to ask their own questions.


The second event is a special screening of the classic 1974 Bond movie, The Man With The Golden Gun, which of course was partly filmed on the island of Phang Nga Bay in Southern Thailand. After the film, Scaramanga himself - the legendary Christopher Lee - will take part in a conversation and Q&A with the audience.

I think I have found two unmissable events for my diary!

More BKKIFF updates to follow...

Movie Haiku - Munich

www.uk.yahoo.com/munich


Dir: Steven Spielberg


Cast: Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, Ciaran Hinds, Mathieu Kassovitz


A return to form

as Spielberg gets serious

hunting terrorists


soulmining rating: ****

An open letter to Cameron Diaz

Dear Cameron,

It’s been a long time hasn’t it? Since we went our separate ways you’ve been an Angel, got yourself a celebrity boyfriend and moved to the Hollywood hills. And me? Well, I got my hair cut and finally threw away that horrible shirt.

It could have been so different for us.

It’s still not too late you know.

Frankly I’m concerned about Justin. Let’s be honest, he’s nothing more than a glorified dancer in boy band. And the idea of him being in that John Lydon biopic, well that’s just plain wrong. You really should come back to Brighton. You’re welcome to stay on our couch, I’m sure Stevie B won’t mind. The weather’s lovely at this time of year especially with all that bracing sea air. We could go down to the pier and then have a fish ‘n’ chip supper at Harry Ramsden’s. I’ll even let you be my +1 at the Concorde. Okay, you might miss some of your acting pals, but Brad’s been thinking of getting a place here and Cate only lives along the road. And the paparazzi aren’t so bad here, we never used to get too much hassle did we?

We really need to sort out your choice of films too. I mean, Charlie’s Angels was fun but that sequel… and The Sweetest Thing… and In Your Shoes? Whatever happened to those quirky indie movies like The Last Supper, A Life Less Ordinary and Very Bad Things? If you’d been working over here earlier you might have got the part as that cocky American girl in The Descent. I’m sure I could find you some decent scripts. Heck, one of my friends is a screenwriter, maybe I could ask him to write a role just for you in his next film. And there’s always British television – maybe you could take over from Billie Piper in Doctor Who? I’m sure you’d like it in Wales.

We had fun together. We should do so again soon. You know it makes sense.

Your good friend,

Soulmining

Bombay TV

I'm loving this Bombay TV website where you can make your own short films!

All you need to do is log on, pick your favourite film clip, add your own subtitles and away you go... it's that easy! And very funny too!

You can watch my action packed episode here and Darren's romantic comedy here!

The Poosday Drinks Project

Following on from a recent discussion in the pub, Kelly and I have been trading our respective offices' 'hot drinks' routines.

Kelly says: Wow, this is just like 24 but with hot beverages!

I am laughing so much I have tears in my eyes.

Three hot drinks in the first three hours... what's going to happen next?

Beep... beep... beep... beep!

(You can read the full unexpurgated transcript of our project on Kelly's blog here)

Movie Haiku - Memoirs Of A Geisha

www.thefilmfactory.co.uk/geisha


Dir: Rob Marshall


Cast: Zhang Ziyi, Michelle Yeoh, Ken Watanabe, Gong Li


Geishas do Showgirls

why are they speaking English?

who's throwing Revels?


soulmining rating: ***

Movie Haiku - Underworld: Evolution

www.entertheunderworld.com


Dir: Len Wiseman


Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Scott Speedman, Tony Curran, Derek Jacobi


First film shit so why?

more bangs, more blood, more leather

bad guy in blade too


soulmining rating: **

Three - My 2003 photo project is now online!

Three was part of the Brighton Festival Fringe 1 - 23 May 2004.

"A unique picture diary" - The Argus

One great thing about Blogger is that you can make retrospective posts, so I've decided to upload all the photos from my Three exhibition onto this site. If you look in my Archives section (left) you'll see that I've already posted all my photos from January - June 2003, and the remaining six months should appear over the next few days.

So, what was Three all about?

It all started back in December 2002 when I was sat at work having a conversation about modern art with Jim. We argued that pretty much anything could be considered art nowadays, so long as you're able to bullshit enough about it. This got me thinking. I'd long hardboured ideas of doing a photography based project but didn't know quite where to begin. I'd seen the movie Smoke years earlier in which Harvey Keitel's character takes the same picture outside his shop at the same time every morning. This quirky idea had lodged in my brain ever since. With a new year fast approaching this seemed the ideal opportunity to start such a project, as I liked the idea of working on something for an entire year. It was time to define some rules:

1. All photographs should be 6 x 4 horizontal shots.
2. All photographs should include me somewhere in them.
3. All photographs should be taken at 3pm.

There was just no way that I was going to be in the same place at the same time every day, so I needed to think of something different. I liked the idea of having these photographs at the same time every day, but soon decided if it was only me snapping away in my own little world then it wouldn't really add up to anything at all. I needed another constant - me. By putting myself into each photograph I would be documenting a whole year in my life, and by allowing the people around me to take these pictures there would be scope for many different interpretations - or so I hoped. The time of 3pm was chosen as this was a fairly sensible time of day to work with - too early and I might be asleep, too late and I knew I'd encounter too many problems. Plus, in the middle of the afternoon I'd more often than not be stuck at work. What better way to capture the year in the life of my workplace at the same time? So with the blessing of my boss I was ready to go.

The equipment I used was a Fuji Fotonex 200 APS camera which I'd owned for many years. I wanted to prove that you could do something like this very cheaply, so there was absolutely no point in splashing out on a brand new camera, especially with there being no guarantees that I'd even complete the project. Developing was also done as cheaply as possible, using mail order companies - until Truprint ruined that idea - and later, local high street retailers. The picture quality was never of paramount importance, for this project the idea itself was king.

These new Archives include all photographs taken during 2003 and I've added notes to each picture with my comments and memories of that particular shot. I hope you like them!

Hippo Eats Dwarf

Thanks to Kelly for sending me this newspaper article which made me smile this afternoon.

If you are a circus dwarf who works with a yawning hippopotamus then please take note.

Loin Musing

Yesterday I discovered the Internet Anagram Server.

My favourite anagrams of soulmining are... lions in mug... slug minion... guns in limo... and loin musing.

Movie Haiku - Jarhead

www.uip.co.uk/jarhead


Dir: Sam Mendes


Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Jamie Foxx. Chris Cooper


Soldiers in the Gulf

doing nothing drives them mad

will he pull trigger?


soulmining rating: ****

More Snakes On More Planes On My Cat

Yes, I decided to combine the mighty talents of Stuff On My Cat and Snakes On A Plane to create these shots!

Don't worry, Lenny - Pepper the cat loved it and was purring and dribbling on his chair immediately after this photo shoot.

Snakes On A Plane On My Cat

Play It Cool in January

Another busy month for music, I've been listening to tons of stuff in recent weeks, in fact it's been quite hard to narrow my list down to just five CDs. But I have, and here they are:

• Hot Hot Heat - Elevator (Sire)
• Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (Wichita)
• Bird - The Insides (Ice Cream)
• We Are Scientists - With Love And Squalor (Virgin)
• Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine (Epic)

1st Birthday

Yes, Feed The Pony is one year old today! This is the 360th post since I started blogging, so what insightful comments have I got for you on this momentous occasion? How about this little quotation that I found yesterday:

"If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet, what happens if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it?" - Steven Wright

I feel another experiment coming on here... especially if that damned cat won't pose properly for Stuff On My Cat. Photo-shoot #2 was curtailed prematurely this afternoon after I toppled off the armchair that I was perched on. Ouch!

Listening Posts

I am now blogging from Newcastle. Without broadband access. Oh my, this is so slow, it's taken me nearly ten minutes just to log onto Blogger. And the PC has already crashed once while I was trying to post. At this rate I'll barely get this posted before midnight!

I went into the local Virgin Megastore while I was in the toon today and I have to say I was very impressed with their new listening post facilities. All you need to do is wave the CD of your choice underneath the barcode reader at the listening post and it will then play a short snippet of every track on that CD. It's fantastic! Let's hope they introduce this service to all of their stores in the near future.

That's all, I'm not going to risk writing any more tonight! My new Arcade Fire CD beckons... goodnight!

Masters Of Horror starts Friday on Bravo!

I've just realised that the Masters Of Horror series begins this week on Bravo at 11pm on Friday night. They're opening with Don Coscarelli's episode Incident On And Off A Mountain Road. If any of my friends are reading this (hi Troy, hi Gary - I'm thinking of you chaps here) and are able to record it for me then I'd be very grateful seeing as I'm going to be home with my folks and they've only four channels to choose from... thanks!

For more details check out Bravo or the official website here.

And you can read my review of Dario Argento's episode Jenifer here.

Movie Haiku - Match Point

www.iconmovies.co.uk/matchpoint


Dir: Woody Allen


Cast: Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Scarlett Johansson, Emily Mortimer, Brian Cox


All change for Woody

being lucky important

in tense love affair


soulmining rating: ****

It's Lemon o'clock

Yes Stephen, it really works!

Clerks II - Open for business later this year!

Kevin Smith is one of my filmmaking idols and his debut feature Clerks is one of my all-time favourite films...

In August we finally get the chance to watch the further antics of Dante and Randall when the sequel is released in cinemas. And as of tonight, the teaser trailer for Clerks II is now available to view online!

Check it out at www.clerks2.com

And remember - just because they serve you doesn't mean they like you.

The free bar at our belated staff Christmas party proved to be a big success...

Bev & Cotton
Darren
Vic & Steve
John & Me
Dom














(Photos by Debbie Clare)

By the power of lemons!

Stephen turned up in Brighton unannounced yesterday so I ended up with a surprise Christmas present! Now, Stephen was the guy behind last year's Amazing Hair Growing Cat Soap so he'd already set himself a high standard to live up to... this year he's gone for the Lemon Clock. That's a clock powered by lemons.

Will the Lemon Clock actually work? Watch this space.

Making plans for Hong Kong

We had our belated staff Christmas party last night so I'm too tired to think straight or be creative today...

So, in a month's I'm going to be in Hong Kong which I'm quite excited about as I've never been there before. I've just booked a room at the Stanford Hillview hotel (left) in the Tsimshatsui area of Kowloon so I'm hoping that's going to be a good base for my five day stay.

If anyone has any good advice regarding things to do or places to visit while I'm there then please let me know!

EMB Top Ten Films of 2005

Arriving a few days after my own Best films of 2005 list comes the results of the Eat My Brains crew, polled from the whole team of contributors (including myself) involved in the website. I've supplied a few of the film summaries for the poll and you can view our selections here.

Oh, and just a reminder - don't forget to check out My Name Is Earl starring the wonderful Jason Lee over on C4 at 10pm this evening.

The Prodigy remake Intacto

Last night I was flicking around some of the music channels when I happened upon the latest video for Voodoo People (Pendulum Mix) by The Prodigy.

Seems like director Ron Scalpello has been watching Spanish thriller Intacto as the video plays homage to the film's most iconic scene of a group of people running blindfolded through a forest...

You can see the video for yourself by clicking here.

Love Is Stronger Than Death

Katherine Horton RIP.

I make no apologies for this more sombre post this morning. I'm not keeping any kind of diary this year, so therefore from now on my blog may well include some more personal entries in addition to the usual film and music stuff.

I was shocked to read about the murder of 21 year old student Katherine Horton on the island of Koh Samui, Thailand, this week. She was staying at New Huts on Lamai beach - the exact same place that my friends have stayed the last two times that they've been on the island.

It made me remember the backpacker Kirsty Jones who was murdered in Chiang Mai in 2000, at a guest house adjacent to the bookshop where my friend John lives and works.

It made me remember the terrorist bombing at the Sari Club in Bali which killed 202 innocent people - a club that I used to drink at regualrly when I was staying at Kuta beach.

And it made me remember the police shooting of John Mark Scott last year in the sleepy Northumbrian village of Stocksfield where my parents live.

So what's the point I'm trying to make here? There are so many atrocities and killings happening around the globe, yet most of the time they pass us by unnoticed unless they happen to someone we know or a place that we know intimately well. These events serve to remind me of our fragile existence in this world - and how precious life is.

Invisible Waves to open BKKIFF

Pen-Ek Ratanaruang & Christopher Doyle on set
(photo from www.twitchfilm.net)

BKKIFF have confirmed their first film screening by announcing that Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's Invisible Waves will open the festival on 17th February.

"The psycho-thriller, Invisible Waves stars Tadanobu Asano (Zatöichi, Ichi The Killer), as a hard-working chef living in Macau who inadvertently kills his girlfriend and is then consumed with guilt. To escape both his turmoil and possible arrest, he travels to Thailand only to discover that the troubles of his former life follow him. On the journey he befriends an attractive young woman (played by Gang Hy Jung who also starred in Sympathy for Lady Vengeance and Oldboy), but he soon discovers that his supposed friends are not to be trusted and he is in serious danger. Not only does he have to battle his feelings of guilt, but also the more immediate threat to his life."

I'm a big fan of Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's previous films Last Life In The Universe and Monrak Transistor, and what with Christopher Doyle on board as cinematographer plus its intriguing cast, Invisible Waves sounds like it's going to be a must-see movie for me! The only drawback - my Press pass doesn't cover any gala screenings, so it looks like I'm going to have to do some serious blagging to get to see this one...

January Live

There's so little happening in January that I even forgot I was supposed to post this at the start of the month! I've just checked all the listings I can lay my hands on and these are the select few shows that have grabbed my attention:

04/01 - Daniel Kitson begins his new UK tour with two nights at the Komedia. I'll be there on Thursday!

21/01 - Another Komedia show, this time an evening of Words and Music with Skye, former vocalist with Morcheeba.

26/01 - It's a welcome return to Brighton for local lovelies The Pipettes who are headlining at the Concorde.

And that's about it. Aside from the female singer / songwriters which I've already mentioned recently, what else is there to look forward to this year? Well, it's early days, but the Concorde is getting off the mark with some potential good nights out, with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Wonderstuff, Graham Coxon and The Dresden Dolls all booked in for the coming months.

New Year Resolutions

I made a few resolutions last year (see my Reflections on 2005 post) but am finding it hard to think of any specific things I want to achieve this year, aside from perhaps the general healthier eating / being more self-confident kind of thing.

So maybe I'll just make the one resolution this year - to post something on this blog every day.

Hey, it's never going to beat 2003's 'Take my photograph at 3pm' idea, but at least it's something to aim for.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!

I've had a very drunken evening at home and welcomed in 2006 across the road, glass of wine in hand, watching the fireworks explode over the pier and talking to random strangers.

I hope all your dreams come true in 2006.