The UK now has a Hollaback site. Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t need one? This was sent in by Clare:

I’m 23 and dress pretty conservatively – on Friday at about 9pm I heard ‘Hey’ ‘Hey, look up’ when I was walking home. I did, to a balcony on an upper floor of some block of flats near me. A man in his twenties(?) leant over and did the universal sex sign at me – you know, the one made with two hands that boys do in school. Then he said ‘I want your pussy’.
I walk past these flats everyday.

It’s grim reading, but you should subscribe or follow the site on Twitter. HollabackNYC now lists 19 sister sites around the world.

And to rub a little salt into the wound it’s also Equal Pay Day today:

the average pay gap between men and women is 17.1%, meaning that while men in work will be paid for the full year, women in work are effectively working for free from today until 2010.

Hollaback’s tagline is “If you can’t slap ‘em, snap ‘em“. I’m honestly surprised it’s only cameras they’re pulling on us. I was going to add Hot Topic by Le Tigre here, but then I spotted this live radio performance of I’m So Excited and it made me smile so much it seemed like a better choice to share:

Women hand me my ass on a plate every single day one way or another, always exceeding my (kinda high) expectations and generally putting the guys I know to shame. How they cope with idiots like me is a mystery, but that they have to cope with fucking idiots like the ones described by Clare is criminal.

Update: Forgot to mention that the still is from GUN CRAZY (1950)

I’ve never been happy with the way I’ve used video on this blog, even when it’s stuff I’ve created myself. Seeing as I’m still thinking about what I want this phase of the blog to actually do, I’m taking a few days to play around with how things should look going forward. Embedding video from elsewhere is fine and dandy, but it tends to disappear and I hate going back a couple of months later to find dead links and empty video players. To that end I’ll probably dust off my YouTube account and start self hosting bits and bobs.

In the meantime here’s a little embedded video to see if I’ve taught it to turn up in my RSS stream yet:

Linda, Linda, Linda is one of those films I was talking about with a lot of heart. Aside from that little ditty by The Blue Hearts it also features a score by James Iha (Smashing Pumpkins) and is well worth tracking down. More details here.

Don’t worry it’s not Jack Black’s School of Rock. It’s got more of an All About Lily Chou-Chou meets Ghost World feel to it.

Linda Linda

I wanna be beautiful like a water rat
He’s got beauty you can’t see in a picture

Linda Linda

If I see you and have a talk
Please catch the meaning of love

Linda Linda

Just like a water rat, nicer than anyone else
Just like a water rat, warmer than anyone else

Linda Linda

If I see you and have a talk
Please catch the meaning of love

Even though it may not be love, I’ll never leave you
I’ll get power, the only power nothing can beat

Linda Linda

You know, I’ve seen a movie or two in Leicester Square and even the best of them would have been improved if they gave out huge fucking helmets.

“I just torrented Testosteronin. Wanna come over and watch it?”

“Fuck that. I’m paying to see it in huge-fucking-helmet-vision”

Which is, I guess, what Hollywood hopes will come of all this nonsense with 3D IMAX.

I saw Pixar’s UP the other night on a screen bigger than God, but you know what… when a film’s got that much heart it’s gonna play as well on a watch dial. The stuff you are required to see while the very latest technology skull-fucks you into submission (Dark Gnat, Avatard etc) tends to lack something.

Heart usually.

My favourite movie as a kid was without a doubt Raiders of the Lost Ark. I was almost 9 when I first saw this:

Looking back it was probably Indy (and The Empire Strikes Back) that instilled in me a life long love of movies. When I go see most new releases its like looking into that empty armchair in UP and I guess writing Slingers is a result of finding a note telling me to go have my own adventure. If you wanna stretch that to breaking point I guess meeting George Lucas was a little like Mr Fredricksen meeting Charles Muntz. Lots of backing away slowly.

Anyways…

I wasn’t reading the Observer at such a tender age, but believe I would have found this review insulting even then:

“Children may well enjoy its simple-mindedness, untroubled by the fact that it looks so shoddy and uninventive.”

In reply; fuck you.

Luckily for us both I was too busy with Judge Dredd and building ramps for my BMX to be aware of Pauline Kael back then:

“Kinesthetically, the film gets to you, but there’s no exhilaration, and no surge of feeling at the end. It seems to be edited for the maximum number of showings per day.”

Which brings us back to the crux of the problem. Kael believed (wrongly I’d argue) that the movie let a commercial head lead a wheezing heart (maybe she just got a premonition of Crystal Skull) whereas the little idiot that I was saw nothing but heart. All be it wrapped in a ‘kinesthetic’ and overtly exhilarating package. Now I’m an older and wiser idiot and it remains one of my favourite examples of film making.

But I think her summary fits perfectly to a lot of the stuff I’ve sat through over the last couple of decades. Which is a damn shame.

But we’ll have time to talk about all that.

Go find your beat up old fedora while I adjust my huge fucking helmet. I seem to be blogging again.

Took me a while to track this down, but it was well worth the wait. Alexandra Dahlström was one of the leads in Lukas Moodysson’s Fucking Åmål (Show Me Love) and is as captivating as ever a few years on in Fröken Sverige (Miss Sweden). I have a lot of time for Swedish cinema and this was a joy to watch.

Alexandra is one of those actors I wish other people knew a little more about, but at the same time I’m happy she hasn’t been ‘discovered’ by America just yet. Couldn’t find a subtitled trailer, but the synopsis is here.

Great soundtrack too…

We’re in limbo.

Moving old site to new server.

New skin job to follow.

Fuck Mad Men.

A show about the only guys in the 60s who weren’t pulling guns on each other.