20th century style culture

In the 21st century consuming culture is all about an online experience. We read websites instead of magazines and stream movies online. Thats why its sometimes refreshing to go back to the old style of experiencing culture.

Thats what I did yesterday before jumping on the bus to Jönköping.

S Magazine is a Bi-annual publication with a worldwide distribution growing with each issue. It celebrates diversity, decadence and the occasional libido enhancing gadget. It was created by 4 young danish photographers, but has grown to include some of the best photographers and stylists from London, Paris and New York.

20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth by Xiaolu Guo is a revised version of the author’s (and filmmaker) first novel. Its a story about a young peasant girl who travels to Beijing to experience the modern world.

Female Prisoner Scorpion is the japanese cult trilogy of the female prisoner Scorpion (portrayed by the beautiful Meiko Kaji) from the 70´s. Its a story about revenge which later became a huge inspiration for Tarantinos Kill Bill.

Suicide Circle

Japanese cult film Suicide Circle´s intro scene. The movie continues like this through the whole piece. Decide for yourself if this is your cup of tea =)

“I´m Here” short film

Spike Jonze’s collaboration with Absolut Vodka premiers at Sundance. Its a 30 min short film

Here’s the trailer:

Love exposure

I cannot describe this movie in words so I will quote Tillage blog entry.

“Ask yourself this question: when was the last time a movie really mattered to you, and shattered your world?

Every so often, a film comes screaming out of the ether that magically reveals a larger truth about this thing we stumble through called life, and the latest cinematic salve is the unforgettable, uncategorizable, unmissable Love Exposure, the brand-new behemoth from Sion Sono (Suicide Club, Strange Circus) that gleefully tackles life’s biggest issues: love, death, sex, revenge, religion and up-skirt panty photography. Winner of festival awards across the globe, and breaker of art house attendance records in Japan, Love Exposure has only been seen in the U.S. at a handful of sell-out screenings, with its initially daunting 237 minutes leaving audiences desperate for another installment. Purportedly based on the life of one Sono’s friends, the film tells the epic story of Yu, a teenager who loses his Catholic faith when his mother dies and his bible-thumping priest father demands that the innocent boy confess to sins that he hasn’t committed. As he manufactures sins to keep his father pleased, Yu trains in the ‘art’ of panchira (clandestine panty snapshots!), and all bets are off when he crosses paths with Yoko, the woman of his dreams (his “Virgin Mary”), at a streetfight. As he pursues his heart, Yu finds himself tripped up by apocalyptic religious cults, Catholic guilt and the call of pornography, and must use his love to fight his way out of darkness.“

Eli

The Book of Eli premiers at theatres in US on the 15th of January.

One of the more promising movies to come out in 2010.

I like the whole post apocalyptic feeling with environments much resembling those in the hailed video game Fallout 3.

Cursing as an art form

Recently I watched the british comedy In The Loop

IN THE LOOP is a foul-mouthed comedy that draws on non-specific events to create a world that is terrifyingly familiar: The US President and UK Prime Minister fancy a war, but not everyone agrees that war is a good thing. US General Miller (James Gandolfini The Sopranos, The Taking Of Pelham 123) certainly doesn’t think so and neither does the British Secretary of State for International Development, Simon Foster (Tom Hollander Pirates of the Caribbean, Pride and Prejudice). But when the mild-mannered minister inadvertently appears to back the war on prime-time television, he immediately attracts the attention of the PMs venomously aggressive communications chief Malcolm Tucker (reprised from The Thick of It by Peter Capaldi), who latches onto him like a hawk. Soon, the Brits are in Washington, where diplomatic relations collide with trans-Atlantic spin doctors and Fosters off-hand remark quickly spirals into an insurmountable mountain of conflict.

If like british comedies like the office, than this is your cup of tea.

It truly turns cursing into an art form.

Here are some of the goodies! Spoiler alert!

Malcolm Tucker: Within your ‘purview’? Where do you think you are, some fucking regency costume drama? This is a government department, not some fucking Jane fucking Austen novel! Allow me to pop a jaunty little bonnet on your purview and ram it up your shitter with a lubricated horse cock!

Sir Jonathan Tutt: Let me tell you the process here, Malcolm, and why that’s not possible…

Malcolm Tucker: Just fucking do it! Otherwise you’ll find yourself in some medieval war zone in the Caucasus with your arse in the air, trying to persuade a group of men in balaclavas that sustained sexual violence is not the fucking way forward!

Malcolm Tucker: You concentrate on nothing! You stay detached, or else that’s what I’ll do to your retinas.
Simon Foster: Can I go to bed now, please?
Malcolm Tucker: Oh no. We’re gonna stay here, and you are gonna rehearse saying nothing.
Simon Foster: …Am I being tortured?

Voddler review

First there was Spotify, now Voddler. I got my invitation a week ago. I have been trying it out and having no other experience of this type of movie services I am impressed.

While US is over flooded with streaming movie services, Europe is quite the opposite. Because of complicated copyright laws within EU, licensing copyrights is a problem for companies such as Voddler or Spotify. I wont bore you with the legal mumbo jumbo…so how good is Voddler?

Well..firstly if you want the latest movies…you are better off with the illegal alternatives. In this sense it is not as good as Spotify. On the other hand there is a big difference between the two. While you can listen to a song or album on Spotify, Voddler delivers the whole experience of watching a movie. What Im trying to say is, you rarely watch a movie twice. Therefore watching a movie is kind of the whole complete experience of that movie, while you often listen to an album many times. And therefore Spotify does not deliver the complete experience, for that you have to buy the album.

The newest movies on Voddler, you have to pay for. Its around 5 USD for a movie. Pretty much like renting one…except you dont have to go to the video store…and you dont risk fees for not returning the movie in time. I found this service merely interesting. What’s interesting is of course what is free? Voddler offers a pretty descent collection of movies and tv series. Completely free! I only tested a couple of movies but the quality was excellent! No hacking or lagging. Only downside was the 5 min commercials before the movie starts. But I can live with that, considering it’s free.

The interface is very simple. You only use your keyboard to navigate the client. I dont like that the client goes fullscreen, which kind of limits doing other tasks in the meantime as commercials, but maybe there is a way of turning this off.

All in all, I can see myself using Voddler at times when I have nothing in particular I want to watch. Usually though you want to see a specific movie, which makes Voddler kind of limited.