A Phil Gyford project, ooh.directory is “a place to find blogs that interest you.”
Phil has long been an boon to the living web, and I think this project comes along at just the right time. There are something over 1200 blogs listed on the directory right now. Get yourself an RSS newsreader.
ON DECK: I rewrote two scripts yesterday, today I need to start the fourth script in the series and advance the other idea I’m working on to at least the concept-document stage, to see if it needs to be abandoned. Sometimes something needs to go back in the oven for a year or two
INBOX: 65. Available-ish, but I have some heavy mental lifting to do today.
Gallery: Michael Lange’s photos of the French Alps.
She goes on to say that she finds it “pathetic” that she has to “block out time for thinking.” Patchett is not alone in this dismay: many authors share a similar despair. (I remember my friend Ryan Holiday once putting it this way in an interview: “The better you become at writing, the more the world conspires to prevent you from writing.”)
Winter’s Watch (2017), a 14-minute 2017 film directed by Brian Bolster, presents a quiet portrait of nature, solitude — and the presence of one person on an island. From the website: “The quiet exuberance of wintering alone on an empty island off New England.”
I haven’t bought vinyl or cassette since I was a kid. All my adult music collecting has been on CD. People think I’m nuts. Marc Weidenbaum:
I sometimes wonder if much of the music I most enjoy wouldn’t have existed, wouldn’t have taken the form that it did, wouldn’t have risen to the prominence it did, without the arrival of the CD. The tabula rasa of digital sound, not only recording but reproduction, meaning production and consumption in union — the lack of surface noise, the lack of ground hum, the ability for the quietest, humblest sounds to make themselves present in a room — allowed for experiments in subtlety, in nuance, that wouldn’t merely have been drowned out on cassette and vinyl, but likely wouldn’t have been attempted, let alone flourished.
Wonderful gallery of small-scale long-exposure photos.
Related: the photography of Cristobal Hara, Debora Lombardi’s UV photos, and the double rainbow lightning bolt photo.
I recently caught up on the second season of SLOW HORSES, still remarkably faithful to the Mick Herron books and featuring Gary Oldman looking and sounding uncannily like my old grandad.
The thing about my old grandad, my mum’s dad, was that he was insane. Everyone agreed that he came back from WW2 a different person, and he’d never ever talk about his experiences. I knew him as affectionate, very difficult, a little magical and a lot batshit.
Back in the Seventies, pubs would have big perspex display lanterns hung over lamps on the front of the building to advertise whichever beer owned or supplied the pub. Some were like olde-worlde lanterns, some were bloody great plastic cubes. Because it was the Seventies, Grandad had a home bar of sorts – basically just a long run of cabinets and shelves made out of pressed woodchip board and plastic faux-wood laminate. But he was happy with it. It just seemed, somehow, unfinished.
And then I was dropped off at their little house on a Saturday morning to see a giant perspex Bass beer cube=shaped lantern sign balanced on top of grandad’s home bar.
What you need to know here is two things. One, I was pretty sure the Spread Eagle on Rayleigh high street used to have one of those on the front. Two: Grandad was an ice cream man.
Which means he drove to the Spread Eagle in his big old ice cream van on a Friday night, got pissed, staggered out, looked up at the big red and white Bass sign, realised in a moment of hoppy epiphany that this would complete his cherished home bar, got in his van, drove around for a bit until the pub was vacated and the high street was quiet, parked up his van, climbed on top of it, lifted the sign, tied it to the top of the ice cream van and drove home at high speed.
So, if you are an older reader from the area, and for decades have been telling people of that haunting moment when you saw what appeared to be a mobile pub that also sold ice cream ripping down the Arterial Road at midnight… that was my grandad.
(Taken from a recent edition of my free weekly newsletter Orbital Operations, which you can read and subscribe to at this link here.)
While similar art has been found at other ancient settlements in the region, the Sayburç images are unique in that they appear to be related to one another. The two panels are horizontally adjacent, creating a progressing scene. Each features similar images—someone facing off against dangerous animals—also indicating a coherent narrative.
“These figures, engraved together to depict a narrative, are the first known examples of such a holistic scene,” said archaeologist Dr. Eylem Özdoğan, from Istanbul University, “This was a picture of the stories that formed the ideology of the people of that period.”
Mikko Lagerstedt photo gallery. I do love a bit of Nordic photography. Good morning.
An old web tradition: Bruce Sterling’s State Of The World conference on The Well.
In 02023, people are becoming poorer, their lifespans are shorter; food costs more, and housing is worse. You'd think there would be more focussed, radical indignation about such an obvious bad scene -- a culture in visible decline -- but the temper of the times seems to welcome it, somehow. Events are indeed pretty bad, yet it doesn't feel like any collapse is near at hand; there's a mood almost of public penitence, like, "Man, we've got this punishment coming, but it could have been so much worse, considering what we deserved!"
Best headline I’ve seen today: Archaeologists Find Nine Mysterious Crocodile Heads Hidden in Egyptian Tomb
Magculture did a round-up of 2022 in magazines that I need to return to for an in-depth read later. Magculture’s shop is excellent, by the way.
Finally today, a new Bad Space comic short.
ON DECK: rewriting PROJECT WRITTLE 202 top to bottom, concept work on WRITTLE 3 after 6pm, may be a little slow to return email and messages.
INBOX: 70
LISTENING:
Gallery of Kim Simonsson’s latest sculptural work here.
Atmospheric images taken outdoors capture the self-assured figures as they wander through woodland, equipped for an expedition. The most recent characters feature edible greenery and cabbage that grows from their limbs, torsos, and feet, providing both protection and sustenance. By producing and carrying their own food, they are completely autonomous, self-sustaining beings.
Styled “Knives Out: Glass Onion,” but writer/director Rian Johnson prefers it to have the standalone title GLASS ONION. Quite rightly, too: the Poirot stories are not styled The Mysterious Affair At Styles: Murder On The Orient Express just because Styles was the first Poirot book. These are the Benoit Blanc stories, and GLASS ONION is a much more Poirot-like affair than KNIVES OUT, partly due to the set-up and partly due to Daniel Craig’s expanded portrayal of Blanc. Johnson and Craig add that note of infuriation: with himself, and with his suspects.
KNIVES OUT had tones of the Ustinov Poirot films – particularly the sense that most of the actors were having a great time – but the sheer exasperation with stupidity in ONION recalls the Suchet Poirots. And, this time, Daniel Craig seems to be having the most fun of all. With the stresses of Bond behind him, Craig has clearly entered his “fuck-it” years and visibly enjoys himself immensely in this neatly recursive and interconnected murder mystery.
Dave Bautista is putting together a really interesting CV, for an actor I’d originally considered limited. His bit in the BLADE RUNNER sequel turned me around – he’s on screen for five minutes, but what a careful, observed bit of work! The reserved breath! – and I’m looking forward to seeing what they give him in DUNE 2.
It is, of course, amusing to see the skewering of the Musk/Zuckerberg(/Brin?) analogue, and MuskZuck are definitely combined in Ed Norton’s Miles Bron, with the hydrogen fuel McGuffin as a combination of Musk’s businesses and Zuck betting the company on Meta. That was an elegant bit of synthesis.
And, equally obviously, the regal side-eye of Janelle Monae is a visual effect beyond price.
But the thing is worth studying for its nested structure. Layered like an onion, yes, sure, but also nested. An effect reminiscent of the way the third Bourne film is hidden within the ending of the second. In GLASS ONION, it completely supercharges the pace of the narrative.
The extension of “onion” as metaphor to the characters is entertaining, as layers get stripped away to reveal surprising interiors: some clever and unexpected character writing. This is the sort of film some people have been saying audiences have been crying out for in cinema, something fun that doesn’t insult the intelligence, and one hopes it would have made a killing at the auditoria. But it is the best new thing on Netflix right now. I can imagine it – and I imagine Johnson imagined it – as a great film to watch over Christmas, as we once did the Ustinov Poirot films. And that’s how I approached and viewed it. In that sense, maybe it’s a throwback? But it feels fresher in a great many ways. It invites us to play a game, while playing a different game with us, and it doesn’t punish us for guessing wrong. It’s a little gem. Not world-changing, just a bloody well-told story that doesn’t make me… infuriated.
(I’m going to note here that I enjoyed Kenneth Branagh’s first Poirot film and found his portrayal entertaining.)
This is me trying to start the habit of actually writing notes on the films I watch this year.
As noted, GLASS ONION is on Netflix, but I’ll see if I can remember to add a DVD link here when that happens.