culture

Flatpack – part of the furniture

Brum’s (perhaps the World’s) best film festival starts today — I’m off to the Stephen Duffy film on Sunday at least. But here’s some recommendations from other people Danny Smith (more here): “Down Terrace – Friday 26 march Normally I stay away from anything that even resembles a kitchen sink drama having been inoculated against the allure of grey bleak humanity by growing up in a house with EastEnders on every single day. But when you introduce Ben Wheatly (him what did Ideal and Modern Toss) and tense crime plot then I have to say I’m a little more than intrigued.” & PixieSixer from More Canals…: “Short Film Triple-Bill at VIVID on Thursday 25 March (6-10.30pm). With a selection of regionally made animated shorts, highlights from Shooting People’s Shooters Film of the Month competition, and an assortment of music videos and other shorts from London’s only weekly short film evening, Short and Sweet, it is sure to be a highly entertaining evening jam-packed with creative audiovisual goodness. And, what’s more, it’s free!” If you’ve got any yourself I’m sure we’d be glad to hear them.

The sound of metal

Dan Davies recorded recorded a Home Of Metal tour hosted by Chris Phipps in March last year as a series of snippets of audio — he’s now gotten round to getting it online as a sort of tour. Have a listen, where it’s posted on ‘woices‘ (the audio tour site):

Part of the build up to Brum’s City of Culture bid is the Canvas Birmingham site, where people can either say what culture they enjoy in the city or suggest odd ideas that they’d like to see. No idea is odder than the concept of a week long play version of a Cliff Richards film, but that’s what I wanted. Fierce have produced a ‘fantasy’ festival programme — which features some of the best ideas, including a giant sculpture of Spaghetti made out of spaghetti and art on the buses (go see it all here). And the Cliff Richards play: By the way, if you still haven’t seen the film it’s online here. It did amuse me a lot to see how the Mail couldn’t really cope with the idea of a ‘fantasy’ brochure and think that the ideas are going to happen.

BBC cuts

I’ve just got this from punch records and while it might not be _your_ niche Asian Network is an important part of the BBC’s output in Brum and I think you should have the chance for a read (and if you’re in a more sweary or indie mood — Derek and Clive try to save 6Music this is not suitable for the prudish): Why The BBC Asian Network Still Scratches My Niche. Please sign the petition: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/BBCcuts?source=homepage#petition The UK Asian radio & Media marketplace is thriving. Zee, TV Asia, Star and a galaxy of local stations like Sunrise & XL are still loud and proud; jostling for advertiser revenue. So why, you ask, is the one British Asian media giant that doesn’t have to worry about sponsorship bailing out in a bull market? How has the Asian Network gone from hyped powerhouse to the BBC’s most expensive listen? The answers are simple. On the air, the station has a clear line up of winners, all setting the pace for UK Asian music culture. In the back office, the BBC management has no clue what the station is for and partitions its airtime from above like Mountbatten in 1947. When...

Guesswork?

I’m quite “for” the idea of Brum being 2013 City of Culture. I’m not convinced that the council have the skills to make it great, and I’m still cynical about the idea that “the possibility” of hosting the “Brit Music Award, MTV music Awards, the BAFTAs, the Stirling Prize, the Turner prize” (all private organisations who can make their own decisions) will result in any of that actually happening — but in any event it’s better to have culture than not. I am interested in the means used to justify it all (when huge cuts are being foisted on the council workforce). Minister for Fun Cllr Mullaney says : “The benefits of winning this award will be enormous and can be summed-up as follows: 1. An estimated boost to the regional economy of £200 million. 2. The creation of thousands of jobs in our growing creative sector.” and so on to where the more esoteric, but obvious, points about raised profile are made. I’ve genuinely no idea how this is calculated, what I do know is that this sort of thing gets printed in the press and is then accepted as fact. I’ve wondered aloud before about how much benefit...

Brumcast – show 150

‘Little’ Chris Downing has brought the interwebs 149 podcasts full of “every conceivable music genre, from dubstep to thrash metal, from ska to folk. The only rule is that the music must come from the Midlands.” He’s now reached 150. You can listen live Monday’s at 8pm on Rhubarb Radio, listen again there straight after, or download for your keeping pleasure.

Danny Smith: Tag nuts

So I spoke to the Editor* about what to write about this week and he gave me this, probably to wind me up, which suggests that ten people are responsible for most of the graffiti in Brum. I knew my feelings on graff have been documented ad nauseum in other places. Also I find the weary ‘is it art?’ argument nonsensical and unhelpful and am at loathe to drag it out one more time. So, for once, I thought it would be good to give someone active in that world a chance to reply. The guy I spoke to didn’t want to be named so I haven’t. What do you think of the thought that there only ten people responsible for the graffiti in Birmingham? I doubt the council see it like this to be honest, I can imagine they have a wanted list a lot longer. But who knows. They will have probably whittled it down to their top ten targets who they have literally charted as the top ten. However what they don’t realise is that if your a “tagger” part of that concept is to get up. As many times as possible. More than anyone else....

wevee is a site that a tempts to do something with the vast amount of old film — and there’s a lot of stuff of the Midlands on there. The interface is very slick — you can trim the ends of the clip and place them together on a timeline (very much like simple video editors such as iMovie) and there’s some audio to use too. I was quite disappointed that you couldn’t use the audio from one clip with the pictures from another — meaning you can’t do cut-aways, and that does mean that you can either swap from speech to music (a bit jarring) or drop to silence (or have music over everything). I was enjoying cutting the “modern city” stuff with shots of riots and demolition, and wanted to mix it up that little bit more than the site would let me. At the moment it’s difficult to see how just uploading the archive films to YouTube wouldn’t achieve wider exposure — the editing isn’t really enough, however well the interface is designed, to drag people in. Maybe people sharing stuff might help — but apart from encouraging a little bit of creativity alongside the viewing,...

Books are easy to wrap up as Christmas presents, you know

I’ve read a couple of brilliant Brum-related books recently, and I thought I’d suggest that you should enjoy them too… The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson is a great book about Joseph Priestley — inventor of carbonated water (and hence fizzy pop), discoverer of oxygen and the first man in Birmingham to have what I fancy as a job (local luminaries paid him to muck about — erm, experiment — in return for hearing the results). His time in Birmingham — yes another Lunar Society member — was quite short, and ended in his house being burnt to the ground by religious zealots, but it was a time that epitomised the open collaboration between peers and the ground-breaking ideas that he had been striving for where ever he lived. The book is to a certain extent focused on his influence on the American founding fathers, Franklin and Adams, but it’s a read that doesn’t shy away from making parallels with the modern day — would that our scientists and engineers were equally at home talking politics and religion. If it whets an appetite for lunaticks try Lunar Men: The Friends Who Made the Future by Jenny Uglow which while...

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culture

Flatpack – part of the furniture

The sound of metal

Making it up as we go along

BBC cuts

Guesswork?

Brumcast – show 150

Danny Smith: Tag nuts

Zoom cut to the past

Books are easy to wrap up as Christmas presents, you know

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Is Brum Happy?

Birmingham's emotional wellbeing* on Thursday 17th of May 2012 08:25: 56.8 % (average)