Bristle’s Blog from the BunKRS

How choice is this? A dark, glitchey, ravey remix of Amy Crackhouse’s ‘Rehab’ by Twinkleboi. Goes by the name of ‘Hop, Skip And Jump Remix’. If you see it, wave a cheery hullo.

Twinkleboi’s website | Original download page link | Direct MP3 link (rehosted)

Tell me that seeing an advert for ‘Interracial Gay Dating’ on the front page of the Racial Volunteer Force forum doesn’t make you laugh…

(Tip o’ the titfer: IndyMedia UK)

It’s more about suggestion in this moment captured from The Constant Gardener, a fine adaptation of the John Le Carré novel.

British diplomat Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) is brought to a Kenyan mortuary to identify the body of his murdered wife Tessa, but it is his colleague Sandy Woodrow (Danny Huston), who cannot control himself.

From the beginning of Roger Avary’s excellent interpretation of Bret Easton Ellis’ The Rules Of Attraction.

We’re at one of the several bacchanalian college dorm parties which punctuate both book and film. A young woman has been half seduced, half knocked out with booze. Her seducer films her being - let’s face it, this is what it is - being raped by his friend. His friend, himself thoroughly intoxicated, vomits over her.

Apparently Polish Catholicism is big on throwing shapes in the church of dance.

Tip o’ the titfer: Polandians

If you think war is glamorous, then watch Elem Klimov’s Idi I Smotri.

The Nazi invasion and occupation of Belarus here is one long, terrifying, sickening, depraved carnival of venality.

We see through the eyes of an impressionable young peasant boy, Florya. We follow him as he desperately tries to join up with the partisans. We endure bombings, executions, dispossessions, humiliations, massacres. We are scared, numbed, shocked. This is film as total immersion: movement, colour, shapes, sounds, all conspire to drown us in a growing nausea.

As a confirmed insomniac myself, I was always going to identify with Insomnia. It’s about a Swedish cop, Engström (Stellan Skarsgård), who along with his colleague has been drafted in to help investigate the murder of a young woman in a Norwegian town in the Arctic circle.

It’s summer, so even the nights are illuminated by daylight; and yet it’s a noir thriller. The shadows are ever-present, but only in the mind - all the evidence is hidden in plain sight, under the glare of a sun which never goes down.

Engström is not a particularly likable person, but he is an excellent investigator. Unfortunately he has what in films like these are called ‘issues’; and thrown into a world where the nights never darken, he finds himself unable to rest, to sleep. He is tortured by the brightness, by his own hubris, by his desires and his fallibility - a photo-negative rendering of a classic noir story. He soon uncovers the murderer, but his own actions compromise what should be a simple takedown, compounding the evil rather than mitigating it. All the while, the sun beats down, and he cannot sleep. And as his decisions become ever more poorly chosen, so their consequences lead him further from the path of righteousness. He is a sinner who shuns salvation, a bright sun fast burning out.

In this scene we find him in a back alley, contemplating his mistakes early on, alone but for a dead dog. He has the chance to make amends, to repent, but he will not do that. He has become his own god, and he thinks he can save himself. He vomits, but he does not purge his soul of the growing madness that grips him. He is mortal, and we identify with him, despite his unpleasantness and the horror of his actions.

It’s all filmed with threatening stillness, in cold blue tones, by director Erik Skjoldbjærg and cinematographer Erling Thurmann-Andersen, with the occasional bursts of unexpected but realistically low key action. There are red herrings and MacGuffins, loose ends and loose characters. And there is an amazing electronic ambient score by Geir Jenssen (aka Biosphere). It was remade in an Alaskan setting by Christopher Nolan in 2002. Starring Al Pacino and Robin Williams, this version retains the basic tone whilst tweaking some of the characterisations and plot points, and is one of the better Hollywood retoolings.

But for a more raw exploration of morality and free will under guise of a cop thriller, go with the original.

From the animated opening title sequence to Dobermann, the breezy Jan Kounen/Joël Houssin caper movie with Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci.

If you’ve not seen it, give it a go - it’s got big guns, big bangs, ultraviolence, bent cops and amoral gangsters. Along with things like the Taxi series, Banlieue 13 and Nid De Guêpes it demonstrates that French film is not just about moody middle class chamber pieces, that yer Gallic camerajockeys are more than capable of outharvesting the Hollywood action blockbuster plums in their own orchards when they put their minds to it.

Who wants to spend little shy of a tenner to see some manky new Hollywood merchandising advert in an anonymous, neon shrouded battery farm of a ‘leisure park’ multiplex, where you’re surrounded by noisily grazing lobotomites with their facile heckles? Well, my chum Herman over at giallo site Bloody Italiana has had a brainwave which might appeal to those of us sharing that sentiment.

He’s started up another film blog, devoted entirely to movies you can (legally) download for free! (Which given the TorrentSpy and isoHunt cases, along with the withering on the vine of the various DivX sites, could be the way to go for wallet-wary square eyes.)

Called Subprime Cinema, it mines sources like Archive.org for out-of-copyright and public domain features, and even streams them direct. In case you were worried, it’s not just crappy drive-in fare either, yer man Herman’s exercising strict quality control like any good boy from the Valleys - titles so far have included Swamp Women, Five Minutes To Live, The Sadist and Last Woman On Earth.

So what are you waiting for? Go check it out, peckerhead! GO CHECK IT OUT!

I think I’m suffering withdrawal symptoms after getting through all five series of The Wire, especially after working the entirety of Homicide with its own attendant downward spiral.

This’un’s from the third series, which focuses on Bunny Colvin and his Western District drug strategy (expanding on ideas briefly entertained in Homicide: The Movie); here we are at yet another cop wake, again The Pogues play in the background, again with the euology and the Jameson’s. Bunk and McNulty are outside, fried. A shaved bollock-headed poh-leece staggers out with refills.

“Wake up and die right, you cunts.”

Now, you don’t get dialogue like that in The Bill.

I may have mentioned how I am not a fan of Southland Tales. However, it is good for one thing, and that’s a predisposition for the drama of the lavatory, which for Motion Picture Motions is definitely an asset.

Here we have a closeup on a screen in the USIDent building, monitoring the toilets at LAX, where at bottom right we have our eureka - or, if I may, ureaka - moment.

Ain’t movies grand?

It came as a shock to me when I read it on the Lancaster UAF blog, but how must his Ghostbusters co-stars Ernie Hudson (African-American), Harold Ramis (Jewish) and Dan Aykroyd (Roman Catholic) feel to learn that Bill Murray is, in fact, the BNP’s Welsh Regional Secretary?

Following last week’s elections the BNP bragged as loudly as it could at the fact that it had ‘won’ a further six new councillors in North Wales, putting the total up to nine (all of whom are, incidentally, town councillors, the equivalent of parish, and all of whom walked into office completely unopposed).

According to Bill Murray, the BNP’s Welsh Regional Secretary;

‘After the hard work of all our activists we will be taking a week break then it will be back to business as usual.’

Well, what with all this mad crazy summery sunshine (did you catch the perfume smog that enveloped the centre on Sunday, along with all the heat-maddened shiny shirt zombies jumping out into the roads?), I’ve having a quiet evening in with the fan on full blast (okay, if we’re being strictly honest, it’s on the first setting of three, but sheesh, get over yourself with the to-the-letter truthfulness) and a cruise through some all-time favourites. Tomorrow will be misspent drinking al fresco, methinks, so tonight is all about the chill.

Hence An American Werewolf In London. (And yes, I am aware I’ve done this before. It’s simply a fucking awesome film, though.)

AAWWIL: Lunar cycling through 28 reasons why it is the wolf’s bollocks

1. Jenny Agutter. As a nurse. “Nurse Price shall see to all your needs” indeed! And lest we forget, “You put me in a very awkward position…”
2. Waking up naked in London Zoo, and the exchange with the deadpan balloon kid…
3. Brian Glover in his prime - post-Kes, pre-Tetley.
4. The whole crossover angle with the Muppets!
5. The way David and Jack’s backstories are only ever implied, and yet we still get a sense of who they are - like the banter at the beginning, and David’s brief conversation over the phone with his ten year old sister (okay, ten-and-a-half year old sister) to say goodbye, after he’s decided to commit suicide - of which we only hear one end.
6. Dr Hirsch trying to order a Campari and soda at the Slaughtered Lamb (where, we may remember, they serve only beer, spirits and tea), and his subsequently rising and falling half of Guinness.
7. The soundtrack - only five tracks, three of them different versions of the same song, but all moon-related, and all fitting perfectly into the film.
8. See You Next Wednesday, the porno movie-within-a-movie, and the ‘Naughty Nina Carter’ News Of The World TV advert.
9. The dude from the American Embassy trying to talk to a majorly freaked out David - “I appreciate how upset you are, but this is no reason for hysterics!” Because waking up in hospital following an attack by a werewolf which has killed your best friend and turned you into a lycanthrope really needs to be put into perspective…
10. The Underground chase - how terrifying is that, and with no gore! “I can assure you that this is not in the least bit amusing!”
11. The Slaughtered Lamb - a typically inviting northern hostelry. Probably a three star gastropub these days.
12. “I think he’s a Jew…”
13. Taking the piss out of postcard punks on the Tube.
14. Benjamin, the smiley kid in the hospital who would only say ‘no’.
15. “The police say they were attacked by an escaped lunatic…”
16. Elmer Bernstein’s frantic cues (sounding not a little like they were recycled from The Great Escape, which is no bad thing).
17. “If I survived Rommel, I’m sure I could survive another excruciating evening with Roger Matheson!” You tell her, Dr Hirsch
18. Superintendent Brownlow, the louche Sun Hill commanding officer in The Bill, turning up as the constable in Trafalgar Square who won’t arrest a guilt-stricken, upset David, despite his treasonous and Tourette’s-like outbursts (”Queen Elizabeth is a man! Princes Charles is a faggot! Shit! Fuck! Cunt! Shit!”)
19. “You ever talk to a corpse? It’s boring!”
20. The clumsy copper who knocks over the kidney dishes and annoys his guvnor being, in essence, completely correct about everything.
21. The wild venison buffet.
22. The increasingly shocking nightmare scenes (as teefed for Weird Science?), with proper jump-out-your-seat moments.
23. “But there’s only one bed…” Crikey!
24. A dead and decomposing Jack - “a walking meatloaf” - constantly appearing and trying to convince David to kill himself before he completely turns.
25. The exuberant (and still convincing, in small doses) make-up and effects, and especially David’s terrifying first full transformation, to the tune of Blue Moon. And the inspiration for this blog’s header logo.
26. The cabbie - “Puts you in mind of the days of the old Demon Barber of Fleet Street, dunnit…”
27. The Piccadilly Circus finale - total carnage!
28. Did I mention Jenny Agutter? As a nurse?

“It’s a full moon…”
[Chorus] “Beware the moon”
“…And stick to the road… [Looks down] …Oooops…”

After all the hullabaloo in London, Paris, Frisco and the rest, it seems the Olympic flame finally sucked on the breath of discontent on home territory, being extinguished by a pair of Chinese labourers at a parade in the Shenzhen industrial zone:

In a stunning blow to China’s prestige, two local protesters shocked hundreds of cheering bystanders when they unexpectedly extinguished the Olympic Torch today near the Window of the World, a theme park in the Shenzhen industrial zone near Hong Kong.

The protesters’ motives were unknown. As the unsuspecting crowd cheered Beijing’s Olympic success, an eyewitness heard one of the two men, both of them Chinese, say “mission accomplished” after the torch was put out. Chinese television, which was filming the progress of the torch, hurriedly cut away. Television presenters said the transmission was having technical problems. However, the eyewitness was able to film the disturbance and made it available to Asia Sentinel. The film is being prepared for publication and was to be put on the site later today.

It is unknown what happened to the two protesters, who appeared to be common laborers. Some of the bystanders ended up with blood on their faces, the eyewitness said. It took about an hour of confusion, with the torchbearer being escorted to a military van, before it could be relit and start the procession again.

The Chinese could be excused for thinking with a sigh of relief that they were home free. The torch, traveling across the world to open the Olympic Games in July, has become a lightning rod both to enthusiastic Chinese citizens and to protesters who have attempted to pull it away from runners in cities from Paris to Seoul. Many in Asia itself have come to regard the torch processions as a manifestation of Chinese triumphalism rather than a symbol of the international brotherhood of sport. A rising tide of Chinese nationalism has become increasingly apparent as angry crowds of Chinese showed outrage at the treatment of the runners. Local television has been inundated with pictures of the runners, appearing to cheering crowds as they went. Pictures of demonstrators by and large have not been publicized.

None of the protesters was able to get to the torchbearers in any of the cities that it has been carried through, although large security details have been necessary to protect it in many and numerous scuffles have broken out. Wheelchair-bound Chinese paralympian fencer Jin Jing was attacked by a Tibet independence protestor as she carried the Olympic torch in Paris. Her successful defence of the “sacred flame,” as the Chinese state media refers to the torch, made her an instant icon in China.

Large and unruly demonstrations associated with protest against the Chinese occupation of Tibet and other causes greeted the runners in London and Paris, for instance. In India, one of the country’s largest ever security operations had to be mounted to protect the torch and even then the route had to be shortened. In San Francisco, the route had to be changed at the last minute to throw demonstrators off the trail.

In South Korea, thousands of Chinese students attacked Koreans demonstrating against the Tibetan oppression and China’s forced repatriation of North Korean refugees. There were also clashes in Japan between Chinese students and local protesters and elsewhere in Asia there was little celebration. Thailand delivered massive police protection and threats of deportation should Tibetan exiles cause trouble. Indonesia kept the whole torch ceremony private.

It wasn’t until the torch got to North Korea to see a truly trouble-free passage. With authorities undoubtedly breathing a sigh of relief that the torch was on home soil, the Shenzhen leg of the trip actually had to be delayed from early morning to noon as Chinese mountaineers carried it to the top of Mount Everest, known as Qomololongma to the Chinese, earlier in the day No changes were were made or contemplated in the Shenzhen route although the distance run by each torchbearer was shortened from 200 meters to 100 because of the Qomololongma delay.

From Asia Sentinel (massive tip o’ the titfer to Blood & Treasure, an excellent blog pulling together many fascinating stories from across Cathay, especially on Chinese civil society and protests, which are rarely - if ever - reported in the mainstream western press).

One more for the road, it’s a From Here To Shiternity and it’s definitely borderline.

The other week I went round Eastville Park with my mate Andy (he of the harsh musical opinions) to walk a dog, and I got talking about all the Motion Picture Motions stuff I’ve been doing. I said how I’d noticed what had seemed to have been a distinct and relatively recent rise in the number of scenes in TV and film in which you actually see people puking; but that this contrasted with how few (in comparison) I’d seen with crapping and hosing. I think at that point there was a straight 8:2:1 ratio between sick/piss/shit emerging. I wondered out loud whether it was some kind of sexual thing, or to do with taboos surrounding ‘hidden’ body parts. I pondered the recent willingness of dramatists to take us into the toilet and the bathroom, when once this was strictly exeunt left territory. In fact, at least half of the lake endured such musings as we mooched round it.

But basically, what I’m trying to say is that I simply can’t get by with the same strictness in Shiternity and P&V as with Honk without risking a runaway race, with a trail of diced carrots and pea soup dribbling at high speed into the distance and over the horizon. No, we need to stick some stabilisers on this fucker and give it a helping hand.

Accordingly I’m letting non-faecally explicit scenes pass muster, as with this one from the opening to Shrek. So long as we are left in no doubt that a throne has received a mighty sceptre (and hear we have just heard Shrek going about his business, with the bonus of him using a book of fairy tales as an improvised source of Andrex), then it’s getting a green light. As long as we’re clear on this.

Now back in the liquid El Dorado we see Elvis-obsessed comics store cowboy Clarence (Christian Slater) having a wazz whilst his idol (or at least an imaginary incarnation of him, played by a halfway bearable Val Kilmer) delivers a motivational lecture, all whilst a Mexican standoff involving Feds, gangsters and movie producers develops in the room next door over a bag of coke. True Romance, naturally.

Now deftly switching over to HonkWatch, here we have Karen’s feckless and pharmaceutically hypercharged fuck buddy Billy (Paul Kaye) enjoying a cheeky early afternoon recth in Pulling.

Now for a bit of Phoenix Nights.

After Brian Potter lost his licence following the whole burning down incident at the end of the first series, he’s been trying to score a decent line in cheap booze to peddle, and after a chance encounter with reps promoting a new Japanese beer at the cash-and-carry, he’s secured the rights for the UK launch of the brew, Kamikaze Lager. This logically leads us into a quiz night, with a year’s supply of Kamikaze for the winning team; Potter and his arch-nemesis Den Perry (he who actually burnt down the Phoenix) both enter teams. Meanwhile Jerry has thrown a hissy fit over his regular night being relegated to the back room, and managed to wash down his cocktail of medication with a pint of saké by mistake, which has the result of sending him a little over the edge.

It all comes together with Potter’s team of ringers victorious over Perry’s champions and scooping the booze prize, whilst a most intoxicated Jerry passes out on his back beneath a geyser of piss of his own creation.

Crikey, been getting well behind with all the Motion Picture Motions lately, so to make up, here’s a bit of a salvo, starting off with this from the aforementioned and most good indeed The Wire.

Here we have one of the lazy, drunk Irish cops foisted on Cedric Daniels’ investigative detail taking a late morning leak on the roof whilst keeping the terrace crews under surveillance.

And that, my friends, is Piss & Vinegar.

Best Photoshop Disaster of the year, methinks:

This is the back of a bus in Bergen, Norway. Bob Megleren is some sort of realtor there. Be very careful if he asks if you have enough living space.

Unnerving translation: “We are ready… with 60 years experience… Bob Megleren - that’s why.”

Apparently a somewhat pished John Reid gave Bristol-based tinfoil nutter Tony Gosling a midnight call in order to discuss Bilderberg. This is what the conversation sounded like…

(Tip o’ the titfer: IndyMedia UK)

A lush, somewhat soulful Greg Wilson mix in two parts from Bonfire Night 2005, available at Cosmic Boogie Collective.

Mmm, Thelma

One year shy a day, one year and a day, one year dead.

Real life rarely hits the mark precisely, it’s all laws of averages and accumulated medians and compromise. That’s just the way it is. Fuzzy logic governed by guesswork and decisions taken always with the benefit of experience but never guided by foreknowledge. Mistakes compounding mistakes, regrets, I’ve had a few.

So let’s call it a year. A dead year.

I think that I probably shouldn’t, but I do rather enjoy Pulling. It’s three women past their youth but not yet at middle age coming to terms with the fact that they’re probably not going to change, that they’re stuck with what they’ve got.

The main character is Donna, a somewhat unpleasant passive-aggressive person, with the occasional blast of aggressive-aggressive for good measure. Here we are in the first episode. Donna’s about to get married to her boyfriend Karl when she starts thinking about all the things she wanted to do but didn’t, all the things she wanted to be, but couldn’t. So she dumps Karl. Karl is upset. Karl throws up.

There’s been some top remixes and bootlegs built around M.I.A.’s ‘Paper Planes’ in recent weeks and months - in case you haven’t heard them, here’s four of the best, all of which have been caning it on pootie…

• ‘Paper Planes (Big Beat Cut & Run)’ - M.I.A./World Famous Audio Hacker
  
  

WFAH hacks audio, and is world famous. Nuff said. Big up the Oregon massive!

• ‘Under Paper Planes’ - M.I.A. vs Cléan/DJ not-i
  

Cléan was a band I came across in Bristol. They were a lovely group of chaps from Mittel Europa, boasting roots in Switzerland, Austria and Hungary (non-EU status for some of them meant not a little dodging the authorities here in the Yookay when it came to small matters like visas and whatnot).

They put out a couple of albums on local label Sugar Shack Records, gigged loads (they ended up with a big following in Downend, of all places), and toured with The Stranglers. I really liked them, and even got to hear songs they were writing at the early demo stage (which were very different to the finished tracks, almost techno-like in their sleek, pounding way). My girlfriend at the time, who was in a band which shared the bill with them a few times, did think they were a little lazy in the ol’ flyering department, though

Anyway, I lost contact with them, but their tunes were only ever a playlist away, and every so often, when I was putting together a folder of music to share with someone, I’d drop some of their stuff in there. So that’s how I ended up hooking up my bootlegging chum DJ not-i (himself esconced out in Österreich - now that’s synchronicty…) with some good, Cléan fun a few weeks back. And lo ! He liked them enough to put together this rather spiffing mashup!

There’s a postscript - I ended up wondering what happened to the Cléan chaps, and managed to track them down via the magic of MySpace. Seems they regrouped as Temple Thief, who I think are based in *spit* London. Pascal from the band likes the bootleg (I think… These Europeans can be a little difficult to understand sometimes ).

• ‘Paper Planes (Philly Club Remix)’ - M.I.A./DJ Sega
  

DJ Sega is a Philadelphia-based producer whom I came across via the Mad Decent blog. He specialises in this, well, mad decent hybrid of Baltimore Club, back-in-the-day British rave stylings and Boston Bounce which seems to be driving a thriving scene in Philly, with more than a sprinkling of Carioca pixie dust (well, what do expect in Diplo-endorsed tuneage?) colouring things well over the lines.

Listen to this remix and tell me it’s not got a great vibe!

• ‘M.I.A. Wanted Dead Or Alive’ - M.I.A. vs Bon Jovi/DJ Schmolli
  

Damn, these Austrians get everywhere…. This is the Schmollmeister’s beautiful pairing of Maya with Jon. Would sound perfect over the end credits of a really exhilarating yet dramatically satisfying movie, I reckon.