YouTube Goes Widescreen

 

Compare and contrast.

Drifting And Tilting: The Songs Of Scott Walker

Birthdays are a big thing with The Belated Birthday Girl: you want to get them right. So last weekend, when her birthday came around, I wanted to take her out to something special. "Tell you what," I suggested, "how about we go to a concert featuring some of the most atonal popular music released in the last fifteen years?"

In retrospect, I could have sold it to her better.

In the end, we went for a compromise solution. On the night of her birthday, we had dinner at St Pancras Grand (a neat tie-in with last year's celebration) while jazz vocalist Lee Gibson warbled pleasantly in the background. And then, on the following night, we went to the Barbican to see Drifting And Tilting: a show based on Scott Walker's last two albums, Tilt and The Drift. If you're familiar with the records, then you'll know that we're talking the polar opposite of background music here.

Spank's LFF Diary: The Wrap Party 2008

[LFF index: 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008]

In a tradition that's now lasted eleven years and counting, here's our final summary of the high and low points of the 2008 London Film Festival, brought to you about a week or so after everyone else has stopped caring.

Sarah Palin, 13/09/2008 - 04/11/2008

Because I fancied having all of these in one place, as a memento. Or a warning to the future. Acknowledgements to Tina Fey and the Saturday Night Live people.

September 13th, 2008 - Sarah & Hillary
September 27th, 2008 - Sarah & Katie
October 4th, 2008 - Sarah & Joe
October 18th, 2008 - futile damage limitation exercise #1
October 23rd, 2008 - Sarah & George
November 1st, 2008 - futile damage limitation exercise #2

(NB: all above links are to streaming video on the NBC site. If you think they're running slowly, you should see what the bastards look like embedded.)

Simian Substitute Site for November 2008: Me Cheeta

You know who I really feel sorry for? The people on this site's mailing list. Subscribers get an email from me whenever I post an update, which of course means that they've had me cluttering up their inboxes on a daily basis for the last two and a half weeks. Happily, now that the London Film Festival's over for another year, they shouldn't be getting so much junk in the mail from me for a while. (But if that sort of thing gives you a weird thrill, you can always subscribe yourself.)

Of course, the LFF coverage isn't quite over yet: we still have the post-Festival analysis to come in The Wrap Party, which should be appearing here in a week or so. As for the rest of the month, I suspect that I'll be taking it a little bit easier, and falling back on those racked-up book reviews I've mentioned in the past. (Though whenever I say those are coming, I always seem to find new stuff to write about instead. We'll see how it goes.)