FEEDSTOCK.
Get this now!! Herr Müller, a friend of mine finally put this great piece of Flash shorts dealing with consumerism online. It’s a huge download, but it’s well worth it! Get it while you can. I’m sure that if you have a really slow connection you also can get a cd-r of it from him. If you contact him, also ask for his new comic. It’s awesome. You can get an older one, “Wasteland” also from www.tsunamigraphics.de.
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I fixed a date for my first solo live appearance but it looks like it won’t be as solo as I was afraid it would be: Cris Koch, a friend whose guitar style and vocals I like as well as all kinds of sound effetcs he does, will most probably join me.
You can take a look at some of the many things he does here:
www.unmono.com
www.sonicmono.com
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It was a bit of a hectic week, from highs (I can finally confirm that BLONDE REDHEAD play one of their two shows in Germany at our venue, on the third of june!), to lows I don’t want to mention here. All in all simply too much work. That’s why I suffered something like a little overload yesterday, unable to do anything at all. I hate it, this either / or lifestyle, running on energy limits until you break down.
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What’s privacy?
What’s intimacy?
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This morning I felt okay again, yawned, stretched myself from the foetal position, got myself a cup of Earl Grey and some cereal, and watched 28 DAYS LATER. All I knew was: it’s by Boyle and Garland, like THE BEACH, so I was afraid it’d turn out equally cheap in evoking serious questions about what does this or that situation make of human beings and all that and there are some outlines of social concepts (a rather darwinian view offered by the female heroine who then progresses via family values to some more independent human-relationships-are-what-makes-you-go-on, or the ‘homo homini lupus’ position the major gives), but whenever you might think you might get a moralistic undertone one of these Zombie splatter scenes release you of that suspicion with a rush of adrenaline. Like other Boyle movies (Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, A Life Less Ordinary) he uses the art of turning simple stealing into postmodern pastiche or collage technique, and I like this not only on the content level but also formally – somewhere between newsflashes and dogma this movie is presented in a low quality style, that often makes you feel like you missed something cause you don’t clearly see it. Then you have these really beautiful moments, like when they drive through the city and you see Jim’s face through the car’s window while a scenery of dead bodies and ruins is not only reflected in the window but also in the despair on his face. Or the scene with the crow picking a dead man’s head where we suddenly get thrown in the perspective from within a deadly drop of blood falling down straight into a man’s eye, infecting him – it nicely shows the cruelty and vulnerability and suddenness of a possible death.
Some scenes brought back to me the pictures of the silent and empty Chernobyl that a girl who drove there with her motorbike put up online here: http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/
Pretty impressive.
Well, what more would I like to add about 28 DAYS LATER? If messages are being told in this movie, it could be: All extremists are equally shitty and dangerous in their narrowmindedness, no matter if animal lib people (they set the monkey who spread the disease free) or if scientists (who created the virus). Or that military rule is as scary and inhuman as what it’s out to keep under control (the soldiers have the choice, but behave as monstrous as the unwillingly infected Zombie humans).
I like the gender aspect of the movie. It’s not really usual that the androgyn guys are the heros and heroines. Here we get a cute longlashed sensual man, Jim (Cillian Murphy), who develops from a rather vulnerable, weak character into someone who can be tough if the ones he loves are threatened. On the other side we have Selena (Naomie Harris), who first appears as fighting soldier, then learns to show emotions and then testosterone-dripping soldiers (what 28 days without sex can make of men… 😉 ) try to force her into something between mother Eve and prostitute Roxanne, the female stereotypes, but she manages to escape with not only Jim’s help but also the help of the girl Hannah, who also has a nice strong role, she’s not only the usual child-accessoire.
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And for all the XIU XIU fans out there – a generous person put up lots of mp3s of their live shows online: http://xiuxiu.tomstyle.com