Spank The Monkey

MOSTLY FILM: LOLs Of Arabia

It would have been so easy for me to get confused last week. Friday evening, I was travelling on a plane from London to Aberdeen: but just twelve hours earlier, I'd arrived in London on another plane from Abu Dhabi. The two places sound almost identical, don't they? Except that Abu Dhabi has prohibitive rules in place relating to alcohol consumption, and Aberdeen, well, you know.

Anyway, you've probably worked out where this is heading by now. I spent a week in Abu Dhabi on business, and while I was there I did my usual thing of trying to catch a couple of local movies in the cinema, even though I don't speak the language. The definition of 'local' needed to be stretched a bit on this occasion, but I've still managed to get a review piece together for Mostly Film, which appears on the site today under the appalling title Monoglot Movie Club: LOLs Of Arabia. (Previously on Monoglot Movie Club: Eindhoven, São Paulo.)

And for the benefit of my regular readers, you also get a backup piece with additional behind-the-scenes content. Or something like that.

Easter Parade 2012

This is Easter. There are rules. You'll know them if you were around this time last year, but here's a summary: The Belated Birthday Girl and I try to spend each Easter Sunday in a different place, and watch a film that was made using that place as a location. Except on the years that we don't.

You'll be pleased to hear that 2012 wasn't one of the years when we didn't. So, welcome to Whitstable! It's not just for Peter Cushing fetishists any more.

MOSTLY FILM: City Of Drizzle

It's official: Monoglot Movie Club is now a series. Yesterday on Mostly Film, they published the second instalment, following on from the piece I wrote for them in January about what was going on in the cinemas in Eindhoven. The latest one, entitled Monoglot Movie Club: City Of Drizzle, takes a similar look at Brazilian cinema, based entirely on what local product was available in the multiplexes of São Paulo during the week I spent there in mid-February. As you'll see, there wasn't much, but I still managed somehow to get nearly nineteen hundred words out of it.

What else did I do in São Paulo during that week, you might be asking? Well, I did some work, obviously, and that needn't concern us here. But if you fancy hearing about everything that wasn't work or movies, then this is the place to be, because that's what your Red Button Supplement for this Mostly Film article is going to be about.

Year Of The Monkey 2011: The Shenzhen Interlude

Regular readers of the Travel section will know by now that there are certain traditions that need to be upheld. Since 1993, I've been travelling to Hong Kong once every four years. The last time was in 2009, at the tail end of a journey that took The Belated Birthday Girl and I around a number of cities in mainland China. By all accounts, I wasn't expecting to be back in that part of the world until 2013.

But by all accounts, I also wasn't expecting to have a job that would have me working on four continents in 2011, culminating in December of that year with a week in Shenzhen. All my previous trips to China have been documented on this site: just because this one was paid for, it doesn't mean I can't document this one too. (Even if I am doing it over two months later... although, come to think of it, that's a tradition too.) 

MOSTLY FILM: Astoria7 (and other stories)

Okay, this is going to get complicated, so bear with me. Yes, I’ve got another new thing on Mostly Film today, but it’s only a little one: a few paragraphs on the movie Dogs In Space, as part of a group post about Australian movies. Sadly, they’ve decided to call it Cult Australian Cinema, and ditched the much better working title of Oz Fest. (In a similar fashion, The Belated Birthday Girl wrote roughly the same amount there last week, talking about her favourite cinema in My Favourite Cinema.)

Do I have bonus material to back up my four hundred words on Dogs In Space? Not really, unless you count the trailer. What I do have here, though, is a backup feature on the piece I had published on Mostly Film last week, while I was churning out all the daily updates from Edinburgh. You might have seen it - it was about the San Sebastián cinema-turned-hotel Astoria7, where The Belated Birthday Girl and I went for our tenth anniversary back in June.

So, you're probably wondering, what else did we do when we weren't in this nice hotel? And the simple answer is, we ate and drank ourselves silly.

Kill And Wait: A Royal Wedding Holiday In New York (#2 of 2)

Picking up from where we left off in Part One, let's get back to The Belated Birthday Girl and her food recommendations.

Dinner was obviously the main feature of the foody day, and mainly was the highlight it should be. The only exception being our first night…

Kill And Wait: A Royal Wedding Holiday In New York (#1 of 2)

Exactly three months ago today, the wedding took place of Prince William and Kate Middleton. As far as I’m aware, he hasn’t subsequently tried to cop off with an older woman, and she hasn’t tried to chuck herself down a flight of stairs. I think that counts as a success, given the circumstances. Congratulations to them both!

Is it really three months? It seems like an age since all that nonsense at the Abbey. At the time, The Belated Birthday Girl and I were concerned that the nuptials would generate unnecessary amounts of hoopla, and we were looking for ways to avoid them. As we hadn’t yet got a big intercontinental holiday planned for the year, we decided to leave the country for a few days, and head for somewhere where they wouldn’t be making as much of a fuss about a royal wedding.

So we went to America. What the fuck were we thinking?

MOSTLY FILM: Manchester International Festival 2011

For a while there, it was nearly going to have the title Tits, Festival And United. Thankfully, common sense prevailed prior to publication. Besides, my latest article for Mostly Film isn't just a bit of standalone nonsense: at least two of MF's regular writers (plus an occasional one) were attending this year's Manchester International Festival, and so there are going to be two separate reports coming out of it.

Some time next week, MF's art critic Ann Jones will be discussing what's going on in the city's galleries for the Festival. But today, you've got me talking about what The Belated Birthday Girl and I saw when we went up to Manchester for the opening weekend of the fest. Three reviews of three very different musical performances, all stripped of the rambly travel writing that I sometimes lapse into when I'm covering stuff away from home.

If you'd like to see that rambly travel writing, then press the red button now.

Lunch At Dinner

We had a lovely time in San Sebastian, thanks for asking. We'll get around to writing about it eventually, I guess. And while we're on the subject of anniversaries, it's now over two months since Will and Kate tied the knot while we were in New York, and that still hasn't been written up yet either. Hopefully, I can get something posted in time for their one-quarter anniversary.

Meanwhile, I'm putting all that on the back burner to tell you about what happened the day after The Belated Birthday Girl and I came back from Spain, when we were invited to lunch at London's hottest new restaurant with no more than 90 minutes notice.

Year Of The Monkey 2009: Concluding In Cyberspace

[ prologue / Beijing / Xi'an / Li River / Shanghai / Hong Kong / epilogue]

July 28th, 2009: "A couple of hours more, and we'll be back home in London. And then there's one more small job that The BBG and I have to take care of: deciding what you get to see from the 18GB of photos and video we've shot over the last two weeks. We'll get back to you on that one. We may be some time."

August 1st, 2009: "It's currently a week since we got back home, and we still haven't really had time to look seriously through the photos and video we took while we were in China. As soon as we've sorted through the best bits and uploaded them to various places, there should be an epilogue piece with lots of handy links. Might be in August, might be later, we'll have to wait and see."

October 1st, 2009: "And yes, I do realise it's over two months since we came back from China, and the videos and photos aren't all up yet. Like I said, wait and see."

November 1st, 2009: "Meanwhile, those China photos and videos you've pretty much given up waiting for should be appearing later this month... maybe."

December 1st, 2009: "The main problem I'm having right now is trying to find the time to finish off the videos. Ideally, I'd like to get them up on the web before the end of the year, or failing that at least before the next total eclipse. I'll see what I can do."

January 1st, 2010: "If I get them done before the end of January, it'll only be a six month delay..."

July 22nd, 2010: Well, this is bloody embarrassing and no mistake.