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Sunday, September 13th, 2009
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This is hilarious and brilliant. At the Trafalgar in Whitehall now. Hundred seater studio, designed to make you feel like you're in the room with the suicidal guy and his shotgun. British seventies nihilism and American nineties slack hit each other head on with poignant and hysterical results. I highly recommend this. Especially if you're my age (fortyish mumble mumble) and witnessed the cultural effects of both UK Punk and Seattle Rock .
- Dan
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Saturday, August 22nd, 2009
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The first studio album released by the legendary cult band in four years, “Bright & Dark” is BETTY’s most accessible pop project to date. Through the process of writing and recording this album, lifelong friends and collaborators Amy Ziff, Elizabeth Ziff and Alyson Palmer cemented their bond by undertaking the creative journey from the darkness of Elizabeth’s struggle through breast cancer to cathartic new heights of love and brightness. Like BETTY itself, the result is a fun, sexy, sad, happy, hard-hitting, dramatic, fierce, playful, tongue-in-cheek pop contradiction you can dance to. Produced by David Maurice (Garbage, Kerli), with Kate Pierson (the B-52’s) as standout guest vocalist, and artwork by Dan Schaffer (UK’s Dogwitch comix) songs from “Bright & Dark” have been placed already on Showtime TV’s The L Word and ABC TV’s hit Ugly Betty.
BETTY tours Europe in support of the release beginning in summer 2009.
www.hellobetty.com
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Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
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Those four people who fainted at the first screening of Lars Von Trier's ANTICHRIST must have missed Marina De Van's DANS MA PEAU back in 2002.
I haven't harped on about DANS MA PEAU for a while, but I saw ANTICHRIST last week and my mind automatically went back to this, one of my favourite pieces of cinema. Along with Charlotte Gainsbourg, Marina De Van is one of the most interesting and dangerous French talents working in film.
And ANTICHRIST is very good, by the way. All those critics who said it was boring and hard work for the audience must have ADHD. Film critics seem to have forgotten that artists sometimes place their work outside the moral spectrum on purpose when exploring ideas of human relevance. That doesn't mean they are immoral people. The most moral artists are usually the ones fascinated with immorality.
Anyway, enjoy this excerpt of DANS MA PEAU. I should put some kind of warning on it, but, you know, turn it off if you can't stomach it.
- Dan
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Friday, August 14th, 2009
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Earlier this year, Christina Cole (a fine British actress, look her up) turned me on to Pedro Almodovar films. I'd only ever seen "Bad Education" and hated it for a whole number of reasons, but she convinced me to go back and have another look at his other stuff.
I ended up going through the guy's entire catalogue back to back. I know Almodovar is a celebrated director, but from a screenwriting point of view, it was like finding a new favourite novelist. Like you think you read all the classics, but somehow missed The Bronte Sisters.
In an interview last week he pretty much addressed every thought I've ever had about screenwriting and films in general since I've been a grown up.
"I find most films now are made for a young audience, and I'm talking people between the ages of 10 and 15 years old, or of that mental age. Of course, there are exceptions - French films, German films, British films, and some independent American films - but I find the quality of films made this decade very low. They all feel the same. I can't tell the difference between Charlie's Angels, Spider Man and Men in Black, can you?"
No, Pedro, me old mate, I can't.
- Dan
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, August 12th, 2009
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This Scribbler thing seems to be going okay. All the people involved so far are very cool and seem like good folk to get messy with in the trenches - which is important 'cause nobody wants to work with arseholes. If you're working with enthusiastic, passionate people all doing the best work they can then you can handle all the other crap that comes in from the outside. That day to day experience is the stuff that adds up to equal your life when you string it all together anyway, but it sometimes easy to forget that and worry to much about the light at the end of the tunnel. That light's mostly an illusion.
Talking of light, I walked up nine flights of stairs in total darkness yesterday and nearly broke my fucking neck.
Should have some real news on Stingers soon. Looks like its shooting around October/November this year.
Dan
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danschaffer's journal