27 February 2009

Black Box Recorder (Luminaire) 26/02/09

Setlist:
Girl Singing In The Wreckage
The English Motorway System
British Racing Green
Wonderful Life
Brutality
The Facts Of Life
Factory Radio
Straight Life
Child Psychology
I.C. One Female
Do You Believe In God?
Keep It In The Family
England Made Me

Encore:
Ideal Home
Swinging
The Art Of Driving
Lord Lucan Is Missing

23 February 2009

Cajun Squirrel

Walkers Crisps have been running a promotion recently, where they got members of the public to submit novel chip flavours, and then allowed the rest of the public to vote for their favourite. There are some obvious calls like Fish & Chips, and Builder's Breakfast, but also some more daring suggestions, like Chocolate & Chili and (pictured here) Cajun Squirrel. (Which was yuck, by the way. But vegetarian, in case youre wondering...)

The reason I'm sharing this on our blog is because Yahoo! did a cross-promotional deal with Walkers, and I wrote the contract which put a Yahoo! logo on the back of every such packet of crisps - all 55 million of them!

Weekend visit to the Wallace Collection

The Wallace Collection is a world-class private museum covering a range of fine and decorative arts (15th - 19th C), a hoarding of French paintings (18th C), fancy furniture, arms & armour, porcelain and a few choice works by the Old Masters. We didn't get as much time as we would have liked, but we did catch a tour which had some interesting background about the Wallace family - and the illegitimate son who inherited it, then left it to the nation. A condition of the bequest was that no object ever leave the collection, not even on loan.

It has the usual over-saturation of big names (like Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck, Canaletto, Velázquez, Gainsborough, Turner and Fragonard), plus mind numbing collections of porcelain etc. I can recommend ending your trip with a revivifying cream tea like we enjoyed...

The place really is a little-known gem, plus they have some suits of armour which you can try on!

It also has the advantage of being in the heart of Marylebone, a swanky part of London with lots of interesting sights, such as Ferraris parked on the side of the road, unusual statues... 

...and anti-fur protestors! (Shame on you MaxMara.)

Richmond Park Revisited

"Michael" party



03 February 2009

Yahoo! snowman

Walked to work in swirling clouds of plump, fluffy snowflakes. There certainly wasn't the usual number of pedestrians to get in my way, but it was slow going as I had to pick my way carefully - lest I slip on an icy patch or slosh brown ice slush all over my legs. Arrived to find that there was almost no-one else around, and anyone who did make it ended up leaving early before the transport packed a sad. 

Still, myself and Mr Luis Sanchez got up to some mischief by sneaking some snow into the office, and building a wee snowman out of stationery and pocket change...  

A photo of this wee fellow (the snowman, not Luis) later made its way into the Yahoo! Europe blog and the Yahoo! internal network homepage :)


Winter Wonderland

One little snowfall, and the whole city shuts down! No buses, no Undergound, just feet!

Little did I know, so it was up as usual, and trudging off to work through the snow and over the ice. Everywhere I walked, the city was transformed. The street and pavements had disappeared, I was leaving deep footprints, and people were snowboarding down the staircase at Hungerford Bridge.

It took me a long time to get to the office, both because of the treacherous terrain, but also because I had to keep stopping to take photos! I even took a detour through Trafalgar Square especially. 

Nelson's poor lions, muzzled with snow...


And the snow begins to fall...

Looked outside one evening, and to our disbelief, the air was thick with snowflakes of an unheard of density and magnitude! Dispite the bitter cold, we had to go outside and see it for ourselves. The fall was so heavy, that it piled up on our clothes as we walked about, and it was hard to look in pretty much any direction without getting snowflakes in your eyes. Just as well we had the big woolly hats we bought in Stockholm...

Down on the pier, underneath the London Eye, and overlooking Parliament:

My crappy snowman. The snow was beautiful to work with, and I would have made more of an effort, but my thumbs just about fell off while posing for this photo - it was so damn cold!

January round-up

January was a very busy film month for us. I have been working diligently on my spy film, plus helping out on a film shoot for my friend James. We also had a dozen screening/interview events to attend at the BFI, including Slumdog Millionaire (with Danny Boyle), Bolt (with John Lasseter), Milk (with Gus van Sant), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (with David Fincher), a 10 year anniversary event for The League of Gentlemen, and Encounters at the End of the World (with Werner Herzog). I managed to meet several of the directors, and handed out some rough cut copies of my short. Pretty amazing stuff!  

But we also caught up with friends and got out and about. Saw Darren's new play Saturnalia at the Putney Arts Theatre, went to see the Big Idea exhibition at the Natural History Museum (celebrating the bicentennial of Darwin's birth with Simon) and had a brief visit from Briony.

The fountains in Trafalgar Square iced over (this was before the February cold snap!)...

Caught Darren Aranofsky's new film The Wrestler with Simon and his friend Erica, and had a few drinks afterwards - while admiring the Chinese lanterns for new years outside...

Darren hard at work on the soundtrack for my short film, at the Royal College of Music...