Anyone who read my previous post calling for a more intellectual approach to film criticism and felt a twinge of excitement or hunger should hunt down Michael Wood’s writing on film which regularly features in… yes, where else, the London Review of Books. Here is the end of his superb piece on Five Easy Pieces… “Dupea thinks piano practice is just practice, a form of avoidance, and claims to have played a certain Chopin prelude better when he was eight…

Friends of the heart, friends of the head and companions to my soul, apologises all for my recent absence from your servers, feeds and screens. I’ve been stretched thinner than the skin across a super model’s rib cage. Of this more later, but first I note that the period of my online silence happens to span the period between the birthday of Mr.Philip Ilson and that of Ms.Kate Taylor two of the finest gems on the crown of independent film…

There’s a japanese tv programme which you can find using your googling fingers called Pitagora Suichi which is a constant delight to me no matter how many times I put it on. The new video for “OK Go” steals the idea and whilst at first I found this a bit winsome and was childishly irked by what looks like a pretty obvious edit in the shower curtain sequence, I have to admit that by the end I was rather won…

I generally find January to the be slowest, longest, coldest month of the year. Whilst technically no longer than most others it usually seems to persist for half a year before finally succumbing to February. However this year it seems to have trotted past in a twinkle of snow storms and sleeplessness and already the Oscar nominations have been announced to my usual utter indifference. It’s all proof that I’m as busy as a monk in a plague. My brother…

When I first started making films I made it a habit to come home with some small item from the production as a memento. I’m sure you’ve all done it. Like a cricketer snatching a stump or a footballer taking his opponent’s shirt. Those first films were all so hard and so beautifully enjoyable that it felt vital that I clung onto some small piece of the divine wreckage. A crumpled envelope addressed to “no one, nowhere” from our film…

The magnificent seventh London Short Film Festival drew to a close last night with an event called Filmmakers In Bands in which… ok, I’m going to talk up to you and just expect you to work out what happened. I’ve played this night before at previous LSFFs and it was a joy to do so again with my current musical squeeze, the Glue Ensemble (of whom there is more here http://www.myspace.com/theglueensemble). In order to keep life simple you tend to…

You can tell it’s nearly Christmas because the arguments in the Shooter’s bulletins have descended to a seasonal lull of point scoring and scruffy logic. Glancing through today’s arguments about the National Minimum Wage and Rage Against The Machine was like trying to eat a massive fatty dinner whilst three generations of the same dysfunctional family squabbled over the party hats and who’s go it is with the remote control. I thought Rage Against The Machine had split up and…

Well apologises to all six of you who asked me where I was and why I’d stopped writing. Truth is I haven’t, I’ve just been concentrating on writing things other than rambling gibberish intended to distract and divert you from your day in the office… However, that’s not all I’ve been doing because I stumbled across a rather good site called The Open Video Project which offers an astonishing collection of old films for public use. On the whole they…

My friends and I played a gig at the Rhythm Factory last Saturday and as a result I found myself getting drunk, going to a party and walking through Brick Lane at six the following morning. Empty of people it had the same disconcerting unreality as a film set and the echoing automated voice of a reversing cleaning lorry down the way left me feeling like I was walking into Blade Runner. An impression not dispelled when I walked into…

Some friends of mine considered calling their kid Rocktober but alas they didn’t. But I digress. October has been a rocking month. I saw some great bands at CMJ, spending most of my time at Union Pool (because it’s close by and I’m lazy). La Société Expéditionnaire showcase last Wednesday was wonderful. There’s nothing I like more than sitting on a barstool in a cozy venue listening to people with lovely voices playing guitar. Check out all the artists on…