Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Saturday, May 29, 2004
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Monday, May 24, 2004
"People with histrionic personality disorder are constant attention seekers. They need to be the center of attention all the time, often interrupting others in order to dominate the conversation. They use grandiose language to discribe everyday events and seek constant praise. They may dress provacatively or exaggerate illnesses in order to gain attention. They also tend to exaggerate friendships and relationships, believing that everyone loves them. They are often manipulative."
Who, me?!
Who, me?!
The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:
Take the Dante's Inferno Test
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:
| Level | Score |
|---|---|
| Purgatory (Repenting Believers) | Very Low |
| Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers) | Low |
| Level 2 (Lustful) | High |
| Level 3 (Gluttonous) | Low |
| Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious) | Very Low |
| Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy) | Low |
| Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics) | Low |
| Level 7 (Violent) | High |
| Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers) | High |
| Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous) | High |
Take the Dante's Inferno Test
What better way to wind down after a Molière exam than discovering that Victoria Beckham is picking on the poor. Er...still, more amusing than dissecting how education and marriage intertwine seamlessly...
Victoria Beckham has spent three days living with a poverty-stricken family in Peru as part of a secret charity mission. On behalf of Sport Relief, who provide aid to the country, Posh worked from 6am to 6pm washing and preparing food in people's homes in Las Lomas de Carabayllo on the outskirts of Peru's capital, Lima. Although bemused locals nicknamed her the 'Barbie doll' during the visit, it is clear she made a good impression. "She went everywhere and saw everything here," revealed Lillian Segura who runs a children's soup kitchen in the area. "She was wonderful, working and mixing with all of us. She went to see the kids at work in the recycling dump. When she arrived at first we thought she was a Barbie doll because she was so beautiful, but then they told us she was Victoria – David Beckham's wife… One of the first things she did was sing a song to a group of children." A friend of Victoria's added: "She lived the life of the villagers. It was an incredible experience for her. She found it amazingly moving."
Cringe. In a kindly, sleb free world this would be laudable. As it's a Beckham I just feel like pointing and laughing.
Victoria Beckham has spent three days living with a poverty-stricken family in Peru as part of a secret charity mission. On behalf of Sport Relief, who provide aid to the country, Posh worked from 6am to 6pm washing and preparing food in people's homes in Las Lomas de Carabayllo on the outskirts of Peru's capital, Lima. Although bemused locals nicknamed her the 'Barbie doll' during the visit, it is clear she made a good impression. "She went everywhere and saw everything here," revealed Lillian Segura who runs a children's soup kitchen in the area. "She was wonderful, working and mixing with all of us. She went to see the kids at work in the recycling dump. When she arrived at first we thought she was a Barbie doll because she was so beautiful, but then they told us she was Victoria – David Beckham's wife… One of the first things she did was sing a song to a group of children." A friend of Victoria's added: "She lived the life of the villagers. It was an incredible experience for her. She found it amazingly moving."
Cringe. In a kindly, sleb free world this would be laudable. As it's a Beckham I just feel like pointing and laughing.
Thursday, May 20, 2004
...And further to angry alien's Exorcist tribute last month, check out The Shining as performed by bunnies
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Oooh, blogger's been turned all fancy! Life has been short on the bloggin front recently, mostly due to oral exams coming up (twenty minutes to be precise) and excitement involving interviewing Delays and general faffing. Irony comes full circle - I got my first "first" for my last ever piece of formative work. Hey, at least I got one of the buggers at last! Things mostly joyful, have been watching "arthouse" french cinema in preparation for french; Baise-Moi (hum, good in spite of shock), Irréversible (very good, harrowing) and Intimacy (pile of crap but in english huzzah...). Wacthed Delicatessen too which had nothing to do with my project but was damn good all the same if thoroughly bizarred, first half comedy second half insane madness. Excellent then.
Saturday, April 24, 2004
I overheard two girls talking today; that's part of the loveliness about Vennel's, you can four feet away from someone and still feel privacy. They were talking about relationships, very frankly, and one of them said something rather nice. That saying "I love you" to someone means saying that you care about them just as much as you care about yourself. i'd say that's fairly true.
Friday, April 23, 2004
Check out some of the worst t-shirt transfers I've ever seen. mostly not purchasing these, although the Easter one is terribly fetching.
Thursday, April 15, 2004
Thursday, April 08, 2004
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
Monday, April 05, 2004
Sunday, April 04, 2004
An article for Artslink...
Money's Made of Miramax
There are currently enough film awards ceremonies to wallpaper Mount Everest, but what’s the point if the best don’t win?
“All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” How sad that Shakespeare never expanded on this idea, as today it seems we’re lucky if actors are players at all. Clothes-horses, models, party-goers, today’s ‘stars’ are just that: replaceable newspaper filler. The whirl of the awards ceremony has overtaken performance in terms of popular interest, as magazines spend a good ten pages assessing the outfits while the results get slotted in somewhere inconspicuous next to Celine Dion.
Media organisations the world over have awards presentations coming out of their ears, rewarding the brightest and best (or most unfeasibly chested) with enough ceremonies to mark each day of their year and well into the next. There are of course the ones with obvious clout that can further the course of the winner’s career immeasurably – the Tonys are tellingly on the same day as the D’Oscars this year – but who decided which ones actually mean something? Wouldn’t it just be easier to give everyone a lollipop and a pat on the back?
This would of course be missing the point entirely: with this many ceremonies, it’s a survival of the fittest in terms of glossing up your product. Heaven forbid it should be enough to be reviewed well, now you have to consolidate that with an Oscar and several ‘lesser’ awards to back it up. Today’s cinema goers are so spoilt for choice that it’s not longer a case of picking something that sounds good but the one with the most decorations. Reviews lie after all – how many people expected ‘Matrix Reloaded’ to be good?
In the case of the Academy Awards, the losers are often leagues better than the winners, but we’ve got quite used to seeing good films overlooked and think of it as just the Academy’s way. For every hit (eg;
(‘American Beauty’) you’ve got a veritable slew of misses or worse: rewarding someone for a performance entirely inferior to their capabilities (Gwyneth Paltrow). This is the tendency, but is that acceptable thinking? Surely the role of awards is to reward the best, not the ones with the most screenings or ad campaigns backing them up (I’m looking at you Miramax).
You can spot an Oscar contender a mile off: a worthy topic, stars putting on weight or losing it and jam-packed with drama - which made up 49% of nominated films between 1927-2001. In short, take a challenging (but not too much) subject and dumb it down for a middle-class middle-aged audience, but make them feel they’ve broadened their horizons by doing so. Not too broad or you’ve got a ‘The Color Purple’ on your hands (11 nominations, no wins). The recent piracy furore has meant screen copies of films on DVD may no longer be made available to Academy members so that unless they live near a damn good cinema, smaller films may not get a shot at all unless picked up by the critics.
The Academy has a phobia of anything remotely innovative touching the principle category winners – ‘The Jazz Singer’ lost out to silent film ‘Wings’ for being too “newfangled” - regarding a nomination to be sufficient reward for the obviously outstanding outsiders but leaving the actual trophy to go to something safe (the first ‘LOTR’ missing out to ‘A Beautiful Mind’ was typical.) With over 5,700 members voting the Academy should be far less predictable – a small board of crusty old WASPs I could understand, but some of the oversights made by this many voters are little short of outrageous. I don’t mean taking the caring beard stance and voting solely for ginger-balding-black-transsexual-one-legged Europeans with a lisp, but some variation on the traditional solidly-marketed Miramax output would be welcome – if it were merited. You could almost hear the Academy bursting with pride at its own broadmindedness when Denzel Washington and Halle Berry won two years ago, but as usual they missed the point entirely: Berry was in a typical Oscar winner’s role (no make-up, courageous, single mother yada yada ) and in an indie film i.e. she wins, we don’t have to nominate it. Forget Denzel, Morgan Freeman should have won years ago.
Despite all this, the Oscars continue to be the last bastion of acceptance for actors everywhere – who can forget Sally Field’s butt-clenching “You like me, right now, you like me!” Well, most of us really, it was 1985 after all but you see my point. Who really gives a crap about the BAFTAS, Césars or Empires when everyone’s gagging for a bite of the apple that counts? The BAFTAS made a cunning bid at importance by situating itself ahead of the Oscars, but the fact remains that their value is not primarily as an award in itself, but as an indication of who might be tearfully thanking God the next month. Even they are taking after the Oscars in the conservative nature of their nominations with all Best Picture nominees this year being blockbusting high budget films, or ‘Lost in Translation’.
It’s a typically naive form of idealism that hopes for quality to be recognised over quantity, but until films get greater exposure and true talent is rewarded, money and Miramax are going to continue keeping the world spinning. That board of WASPs may be slightly bigger than previously thought.
Money's Made of Miramax
There are currently enough film awards ceremonies to wallpaper Mount Everest, but what’s the point if the best don’t win?
“All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” How sad that Shakespeare never expanded on this idea, as today it seems we’re lucky if actors are players at all. Clothes-horses, models, party-goers, today’s ‘stars’ are just that: replaceable newspaper filler. The whirl of the awards ceremony has overtaken performance in terms of popular interest, as magazines spend a good ten pages assessing the outfits while the results get slotted in somewhere inconspicuous next to Celine Dion.
Media organisations the world over have awards presentations coming out of their ears, rewarding the brightest and best (or most unfeasibly chested) with enough ceremonies to mark each day of their year and well into the next. There are of course the ones with obvious clout that can further the course of the winner’s career immeasurably – the Tonys are tellingly on the same day as the D’Oscars this year – but who decided which ones actually mean something? Wouldn’t it just be easier to give everyone a lollipop and a pat on the back?
This would of course be missing the point entirely: with this many ceremonies, it’s a survival of the fittest in terms of glossing up your product. Heaven forbid it should be enough to be reviewed well, now you have to consolidate that with an Oscar and several ‘lesser’ awards to back it up. Today’s cinema goers are so spoilt for choice that it’s not longer a case of picking something that sounds good but the one with the most decorations. Reviews lie after all – how many people expected ‘Matrix Reloaded’ to be good?
In the case of the Academy Awards, the losers are often leagues better than the winners, but we’ve got quite used to seeing good films overlooked and think of it as just the Academy’s way. For every hit (eg;
(‘American Beauty’) you’ve got a veritable slew of misses or worse: rewarding someone for a performance entirely inferior to their capabilities (Gwyneth Paltrow). This is the tendency, but is that acceptable thinking? Surely the role of awards is to reward the best, not the ones with the most screenings or ad campaigns backing them up (I’m looking at you Miramax).
You can spot an Oscar contender a mile off: a worthy topic, stars putting on weight or losing it and jam-packed with drama - which made up 49% of nominated films between 1927-2001. In short, take a challenging (but not too much) subject and dumb it down for a middle-class middle-aged audience, but make them feel they’ve broadened their horizons by doing so. Not too broad or you’ve got a ‘The Color Purple’ on your hands (11 nominations, no wins). The recent piracy furore has meant screen copies of films on DVD may no longer be made available to Academy members so that unless they live near a damn good cinema, smaller films may not get a shot at all unless picked up by the critics.
The Academy has a phobia of anything remotely innovative touching the principle category winners – ‘The Jazz Singer’ lost out to silent film ‘Wings’ for being too “newfangled” - regarding a nomination to be sufficient reward for the obviously outstanding outsiders but leaving the actual trophy to go to something safe (the first ‘LOTR’ missing out to ‘A Beautiful Mind’ was typical.) With over 5,700 members voting the Academy should be far less predictable – a small board of crusty old WASPs I could understand, but some of the oversights made by this many voters are little short of outrageous. I don’t mean taking the caring beard stance and voting solely for ginger-balding-black-transsexual-one-legged Europeans with a lisp, but some variation on the traditional solidly-marketed Miramax output would be welcome – if it were merited. You could almost hear the Academy bursting with pride at its own broadmindedness when Denzel Washington and Halle Berry won two years ago, but as usual they missed the point entirely: Berry was in a typical Oscar winner’s role (no make-up, courageous, single mother yada yada ) and in an indie film i.e. she wins, we don’t have to nominate it. Forget Denzel, Morgan Freeman should have won years ago.
Despite all this, the Oscars continue to be the last bastion of acceptance for actors everywhere – who can forget Sally Field’s butt-clenching “You like me, right now, you like me!” Well, most of us really, it was 1985 after all but you see my point. Who really gives a crap about the BAFTAS, Césars or Empires when everyone’s gagging for a bite of the apple that counts? The BAFTAS made a cunning bid at importance by situating itself ahead of the Oscars, but the fact remains that their value is not primarily as an award in itself, but as an indication of who might be tearfully thanking God the next month. Even they are taking after the Oscars in the conservative nature of their nominations with all Best Picture nominees this year being blockbusting high budget films, or ‘Lost in Translation’.
It’s a typically naive form of idealism that hopes for quality to be recognised over quantity, but until films get greater exposure and true talent is rewarded, money and Miramax are going to continue keeping the world spinning. That board of WASPs may be slightly bigger than previously thought.
Saturday, March 27, 2004
Friday, March 26, 2004
Thursday, March 25, 2004
I love cute things. If they involve animals that is! The Exorcist is a terrible, terrible film (for now) which is why I'm so thrilled they'v remade it in 30 seconds using bunnies!
Monday, March 22, 2004
Thursday, March 18, 2004
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