James Bell Central

Month: July 2016

  • Eulogize This: Adult Life Skills

    Eulogize This: Adult Life Skills

    My new favourite film:

    http://www.eulogizethis.com/adult-life-skills/

     

  • From The Vaults: The Greenhouse Effect

    From The Vaults: The Greenhouse Effect

    Not the highest of production values, but summer can be a time of dizzy highs and deep lows, and so I thought I’d dig out this video from 3 years ago again.  I still have that hat.

  • Margin Call

    Margin Call

    It’s about time I recommended something other than music, I think.  I liked this film when I first saw it, but better than that, it’s just stayed with me.  I keep thinking of lines from it.

    If you’re like me then you may watch this trailer and think: this is going to be a bit tediously macho, isn’t it.  Lots of David Mamet posing and Aaron Sorkin speeches and ‘You don’t understand how hard it is for me to be such an unusually gifted actor!’ shite.  Actually, there’s none of that.

    It is basically the story of the day that the 2008 credit crisis hit, told from the perspective of a fictional investment bank, in pretty much real time.  There’s comparatively little philosophising, and much more people rapidly alternating between (a) staring at computer screens and going “Oh shit… ohh shit… that can’t be… ?!!  oh shit…” and (b) wondering out loud how much money other people in the company make.

    Hopefully this isn’t a spoiler, but it doesn’t exactly have a happy ending.

    Current Favourite Thing: Stanley Tucci talking about how he used to make bridges.  In fact, just Stanley Tucci generally.  And not just in this film.

  • Kidlington does it again!

    Kidlington does it again!

    Photo by David Howard
    Photo by David Howard (Flickr)

    And then of course, there was the news about Kidlington!

    Unsurprisingly, packs of Chinese tourists have flocked to the now legendary suburban village just north of Oxford, just a stone’s throw from where I grew up.

    This whole thing is really starting to go a bit crazy now. (more…)

  • ‘There Is No Return’ by Strangers From Birth

    ‘There Is No Return’ by Strangers From Birth

    I’m not going to just keep recommending people I know, but I can’t let the passing of this month’s big album release pass by.  Science-fiction inflected, electronically induced and very occasionally chemically-inspired, Mass and Ossian have been making music of one form or another pretty much since I first knew them, which was pretty much an infinity ago.  Their latest, out on Body Control records, is a collection of 12 of the finest compositions of digital mischief and what-the-fuckery you are likely to encounter this side of that parallel universe where all the Star Trek crew are evil and have beards:

    https://bodycontrolrecords.bandcamp.com/album/bc024-strangers-from-birth-there-is-no-return (more…)

  • Nancy Spungeon

    Nancy Spungeon

    Nancy_SpungenIf you’re interested in the difference between a 20 year old man and a 40 year old man, and there’s really no reason why you should be but if you are, here’s a good example.

    Nancy Spungeon.

    (Who was neither, but I’m just being deliberately oblique.)

    When I was around 20 I studied popular music at Liverpool University, and I first learnt about Punk.  I’d been aware of it for years, but never really got it.  So I learnt about the New York Dolls and Television and CBGBs, and the Damned and Souixie and the Banshees and the Sex Pistols.  And I learnt about Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungeon.  Sid and Nancy. (more…)