Oscar time

I was posting about the short animated film winner at last night's Oscars on the FPI blog earlier today and being the nosy bugger I am I had a look for something online so I could point readers to where they could check out a bit of the film, but couldn't see much more than a very basic website for Mikrofilm. So I dropped them a line and heard back very quickly from a very nice lady called Lise there who sent me a link to this fetching site where you can have a look at the (now Oscar winning) Danish Poet by Torill Kove, with narration by Liv Ullman, with a clip and various other snippets of this quite gorgeous looking animation (I thought the art reminded me of a cross between children's picture books and Metaphrog's lovely Louis comics).



On the other end of the Oscar scale how brilliant is it that Martin Scorcese was finally awarded the Best Director Oscar? Ironic that it isn't actually for his finest work which the Academy didn't recognise in previous years, although The Departed is still a damned fine movie (right to the end which I didn't see coming), but given they have overlooked him for decades and he is pretty much the greatest living American director (and still working) it is amazing he has been so overlooked by Oscar for so long. Thank goodness they finally gave it to him; I was worried Marty was going to end up with one of those 'lifetime achievement' awards which usually mean the recipient has about a year to live - those things are the kiss of death :-).

Banning words

Some librarians in the US have decided to ban a new kid's book despite the fact that the book - The Higher Power of Lucky - has just won the prestigious Newberry Medal. Why? Well because of one word in the book - 'scrotum'. Yup, that's a good reason for librarians to censor what books are available... Bad enough numpties demand books be pulled from libraries because stories of wizards might lead their kids into Satanism (it won't, that's we have good old rock'n'roll for) or that schools should ban Fahrenheit 451, but it is incredibly sad to me to hear about fellow book professionals indulging in this, they should hand in their cardigans in shame.

Small nation

The previous posted reminded me of one of my favourite quotations from the makkar Hugh MacDiarmid:

"Scotland small? Our multiform, our infinite Scotland small?
Only as a patch of hillside may be a cliché corner
To a fool who cries "Nothing but heather!"

Signs in the sky

This morning on my way to work I lifted my head out of my book for a few seconds as the bus crossed North Bridge, which spans the valley between the Georgian New Town and the Old Town which descends Castle Ridge. At this time of year, early in the morning the sun is still low in the sky and was behind the tall, old buildings on the ridge. I looked up and saw a Saltire fluttering on a flag pole high atop the old Scotsman building (once the home of the Scotsman paper, now a posh hotel). The breeze was blowing east to west, almost mimicking the arc of the slowly rising sun, making it fly fully out in line with the front of the building against a clear, blue sky. Just then the ascending sun struck the back of the flag making it glow; the light blue of the Saltire's background was illuminated almost to the same shade of the sky and the white Saint Andrew's Cross stood out proudly above the city.

Pure chance - for a few seconds the sun was at the right height and angle, the wind blowing in just the right direction and I was in the right place to see it. I pass this daily and don't usually see this. Little moments like that can make your day. Little moments like that make me think perhaps there is more to the myth of our national flag, how the white clouds in the sky bisected one another like the cross of Saint Andrew against a blue sky before a battle; the battle was won and the sign became the emblem of the land and has remained so for centuries. For a few precious seconds, nature, architecture and symbolism combined perfectly; I was reminded of the poetry of Hugh MacDirmid

It requires great love of it deeply to read
The configuration of a land,
Gradually grow conscious of fine shadings,
Of great meanings in slight symbols,
Hear at last the great voice that speaks softly,
See the swell and fall upon the flank
Of a statue carved out in a whole country's marble,
Be like Spring, like a hand in a window
Moving New and Old things carefully to and fro,
Moving a fraction of flower here,
Placing an inch of air there,
And without breaking anything.

So I have gathered unto myself
All the loose ends of Scotland,
And by naming them and accepting them,
Loving them and identifying myself with them,
Attempt to express the whole.

Naughty children

A court in Florida has prosecuted two people for taking pictures of underage kids in sexual acts; the kicker is that they are a teenage boyfriend and girlfriend who took snaps of each other for themselves. The court wasn't fussed about 16 and 17 year olds shagging, but how dare they take pictures of each other. That makes a huge amount of sense; I am sure these teens are now chastised and in awe of the majestic reason of the law.

Bruce loves a good road trip, as many dogs do - more of this though and we may need to get him a flying helmet and goggles.

Al for office!

Al Franken has confirmed that he will run for office as a senator of Minnesota in the next elections. Al probably isn't as well known in the UK as, say, Michael Moore, but I've been a big fan of his for years. Al wrote the brilliantly satirical take on the rabid right wing media in the US (you know, those racist, sexist numpties who flat out fib on air) with Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them (highly recommended; the audio book version, read by Al, is even funnier). Even if you haven't read this you may have heard of it because the subtitle was "a fair and balanced look" which pissed off Murdoch's Fox empire (and we know how hard that is because they are such a warm, cuddly and inclusive organisation). Why? Well apart from the fact that some of the more high profile media targets he went after were broadcast by Fox in the US (they have been told off by media monitors here since they started re-broadcasting them to the UK for the biased opinions and lack of facts) and also because the ultra-right wing Fox News has the slogan 'fair and balanced' in it.

So their Monty Burns' type gaggle of evil lawyers swooped and tried to get the book banned before publication in the US a few years back, which shows how much they believe in freedom of expression and debate in a democratic society. The judge laughed them out of court saying that this was pretty much the definition of 'fair use' for satire and there was no case; in the meantime the media coverage of this fiasco pushed the book to the top of Amazon's bestseller list in the US before it even came out. As own goals go it was up there with the time some of Fox's lawyers wanted to go after those left-wing pinkoes who write the Simpsons for always portraying Fox as a channel of right-wing news and mediocre, low-brow programming. Until someone pointed out to said lawyers that the Simpsons was actually a Fox show... And of course, years before this, back in the late 90s during the old dial-up internet days those same lawyers went after fans who ran sites celebrating the only two Fox shows anyone had heard of, the Simpsons and the X-Files and told them all to shut up shop, how dare they use pictures etc of Fox properties. So, yes, they were so stupid they attacked fans who were promoting their products free for them; today a PR person would be your best friend for running such a site.

I wonder how Al Franken will do with his campaign; I'd like to see him get into office - he certainly can't do a worse job than the other numpties who routinely end up in office in most countries. The subject was raised in the recent documentary And God Spoke where a team followed Al around and the subject of possibly running for office one day came up a couple of times (I caught it at the Edinburgh Film Festival last summer). I wonder if we can get Mark Thomas to be an MP here in Blighty?

French comic art auction to help the homeless

Mark Ajdarc of the Brazilian comics site Neorama dos Quadrinhos sent us a good item to put up on the FPI blog and since it involves A) good European comics art and B) raising money for a good cause I thought I'd repeat it on here too. 95 press cartoonists and comics artist are contributing their work to auction to raise money for the homeless charity Droit au Logement in France. Some of the top bandes dessinées artist are involved, with names like Bilal and Jacque Tardi (who did the poster for it).

I found it interesting that this came at a similar time to the 'red tent' happening in Paris, where les Enfants de Don Quichotte (how could I resist a story with a name like that?) distributed red tents to the homeless so a tent village sprang up, rapidly covered by the European media and shaming Parisian authorities into acknowledging the problem. You can look through the art on offer in the auction here.

Carbon indulgence

I was reading yet another article on carbon offsetting the other day; on one level it is good to see people taking some responsibility for their environmental impact. On the other hand giving a token amount to some company to 'offset' the damage your long haul trip for your expensive holiday in Barbados doesn't actually undo the damage and from a lot of the reports it looks like many of the companies taking money for this sort of thing do bugger all that could be considered helpful to the environment, but it does make wealthy but guilty-feeling folks feel better about themselves. And that's when I realised what these were: buying carbon offsetting is the 21st century equivalent of the old buying of religious indulgences. Buy a clean conscience and purer soul; done wrong? Spend for salvation. Several centuries later and the same old trick repeats, with worried folks seeking to use the wealth that helped create a problem to assuage their conscience while the descendants of those priests are only too happy to promise them pardons for a reasonable donation. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Assassination memorabilia for sale

Only in America: the window Lee Harvey Oswald is alleged to have fired from to assassinate President John F Kennedy in 1963 is up for auction on Ebay, according to Boing Boing, with a current bid north of $3 million. Got to love that American dedication to making a buck from anything, even the murder of a young president - I seem to recall the Zapruder family received a generous amount of money for the famous footage of the actual moment as well. It all seems rather ghoulish and vulgar to me. Meantime I keep remembering my patron saint, Bill of Hicks, talking about visiting the Texas Book Depository and the Assassination Museum (very Texan) where he said the room where the gunshots were supposedly fired from is extremely authentic in detail - because Oswald isn't there! And you can't get up to the window niche he was supposed to have fired from, "because they didn't want thousands of American tourists looking out the window and going 'no fuckin' way! I can't even see the goddam street from here, holy shit they lied to us!!!" How long until we see a Magic Bullet auction? "Back and to the left... back and to the left..."

Matters of the heart

No, I refuse to get all slushy for Valentine's day - just why people associate the slow and painful death of an early church priest with sweeping romance is beyond me and what idiot decided to make it the middle of the month two weeks from payday?? - but I passed this window in the British Heart Foundation's charity shop, festooned with little paper hearts with messages written on them (I was tempted to write 'lonely Aztec seeks warm, beating heart' on one) and a big stand-up of one of animation's classic ladies, Betty Boop. So a boop-oop-ee-doo to you all.

Guy 101

The winner of last night's BAFTA award in the short animated film category was Guy 101 by Ian W Gouldstone; it tells a story which plays out between two men talking on an online chat, using items like chat screens, pop-up video player windows and messenger as the basis for the animation to tell the story. I was lucky enough to see it last year when the nice folks at the British Animation Awards (BAA) sent me some material on disc and thought it was a very clever bit of animation. The problem with film awards, all too often, is that the works in the short animation (or short movie for that matter) never get seen by most people and you end up trying to describe it instead. As luck would have it though this very animated short is hosted on the BBC's Film Network site; there's a bunch of other material on there (live action and animated) including Run Wrake's 'Rabbit' which I also saw last year and is inventive and nicely disturbing.

Who's in the Beano?

The first edition of the new BeanoMax comic goes on sale on the 15th and will also be a special edition to raise money for this year's Comic Relief (for non UK readers that's a bi-annual charity event where money for good works is raised by comedians and thousands of ordinary people doing very silly thing and wearing comedy red noses all day, in finest traditions of British eccentricity). And along with some other celebs the comic will also have the Daleks forcing the Bash Street Kids to study, but luckily the Doctor will be on hand to help. Jamie Oliver will apparently be in the school dining hall; many a school child will cheer should he be exterminated.

Win signed books!

I used my book wheedling and scrounging skills (if I were in the Great Escape I'd be James Garner's character) to procure a couple of the latest graphic novels from Rebellion, home of 2000AD for prizes for a competition at work. Rebellion started a new series last year collecting classic material with the Complete Judge Dredd Case Files, which collect all of Dredd's adventures into chronological order, volume by volume, starting right back in 1977 (yes, I do have every volume so far - can't help it, I grew up with 2000AD from the first issue - or 'prog' as they call them - and am a total fanboy still). They've been hugely successful, I'm glad to say and on the back of this they have launched new series doing the same for other classic 2000AD characters, in the same format so they will all build into a classic library of Brit comics on your shelves. Jon at Rebellion not only obtained the Judge Dredd Complete Case Files Volume 5 for us, he got it signed by John Wagner and Alan Grant, two of the biggest names in British comics and the Complete Nemesis the Warlock Volume 1 signed by the equally legendary Pat Mills.



Incredibly collectible volumes for any fan to have on their shelves - I'm a bit jealous as I have these books myself but not signed! Anyway, with the 30th anniversary of 2000AD coming up in a couple of weeks (yes, it really is 30 years old) we have the competition to win these signed graphic novels running - details can be found on the (freshly made-over) FPI blog and the entry form (with oh-so-easy question to answer) is on the main FPI webstore; get those entries in by Wednesday 21st to be in with a chance of winning!

Channel Frederator

Posting on the Black Horse animation reminded me that I had forgotten to mention the recent Channel Frederator awards here. Frederator was set up to encourage animators and video makers; there's been a ton of interesting material on there and the recent awards page has links to the winners so not only can you read about them you can see them (too many to link to here, so just follow this main link). I wish the Academy would do something like this for the short animated movie nominees in the running for Oscars this year, since otherwise most of us will never get to see them. Some SF awards like the Hugos have done this with some tales in the short story awards nominations, making them available online so more people can get to read them and I think short animations could benefit from this in the same way, especially now it is so easy to upload short videos for mass viewing online.

Black Horse

I love the animation in this advert for Lloyds TSB bank (not that it makes me want to bank with them but the animation is nice), which is based around a train ride which also incorporates a couple's journey through life. The animation in it is lovely and is it just me or does a lot of the style in this advert look like it has been cribbed Les Triplettes de Belleville (probably better known here as Bellville Rendevous)? The faces of the characters (especially the long noses), the elevated train track and the style of the tall, skinny house all look like they've been borrowed from Belleville (perhaps another reason I like it since I thought Belleville was a great little movie with some brilliant animation and some almost Gerald Scarfe-like characters here and there).

Make believers

I came across this article the other day because of its mention of Jedis - it proves to be the most hilariously stupid and self-contradicting piece I've read all week. Don Walton, an evangelical Christian minister attacking others for their ridiculous 'made up' beliefs:

"In this day of rampant relativism, when everyone is encouraged to make up their own truth and no one is permitted to criticize another's concocted convictions, feelings have replaced facts as the foundation of faith. In other words, whatever you feel good about believing is "truth" enough, regardless of whether or not it flies in the face of facts and logic. Everyone is now free to make up their own beliefs, as well as their own "facts" in support of them. Consequently, today's world is becoming increasingly populated by "make-believers"; that is, people who believe what they or others have made-up. On the other hand, real believers — people who believe in real things — are becoming increasingly scarce."

What he was talking about was the SF fans in Britain who put 'Jedi' down on the last national census for the part asking about religious affiliation, as well as having a snigger at Tom Cruise and the Scientology malarkey thought up by a second rate SF writer. He totally misses the point that most fans in the UK put 'Jedi' on their census because it was a joke - it went round the web as a suggestion before the census and many fans put it on because if a certain amount of respondents had that the government statistics folks have to create an official category for it in the records (which doesn't make it an officially recognised religion able to make charity status for tax relief etc, just makes it funny because the grey suits in the statistic departments of government have to add 'Jedi' in as a category in official figures). So he starts from a flawed basis and displays not only ignorance of what he is talking about but also a lack of understanding of the humour fans were showing by making this their answer on their census forms (yeah, Don, it was a joke - most Brit Star Wars fans aren't seriously devoted to the Jedi belief system).

Now as for having a dig at the Scientologists, fair enough, they and their celebrity adherents do rather set themselves up as easy targets and it doesn't help that L Ron Hubbard just made it all up a few decades ago (Larry Niven took the mickey out of this in Inferno, his take on Dante in which he has an SF author go to Hell after dying at a convention; he is sentenced to Hell for the blasphemy of making up his own religion. It's a hilarious read). But whacky as Scientology seems to me I don't see anything weirder in it than believing in Virgin births, resurrecting the dead, burning bushes, women being turned into pillars of salt, humans being made out of dust (or a rib for that matter).

And I love the way he talks about 'real' believers and 'make believers' and how the former have religion based on logic and facts! I mean come on, are you at all familiar with the concept of irony, Don? Your religious cult differs in no way from these others you are bashing - it recognises no logic and picks and chooses what 'facts' it will accept and which it will ignore, even in the face of overwhelming evidence (like, for example, the evolution subject, where many of your fellow believers choose which 'facts' make them feel good - so much for logic and truth) so for an evangelist to invoke 'facts' and 'logic' is laughable and exposes your system for the ridicule it richly deserves. But you did make me laugh with your ignorant and self-contradictory statements (bit like the Old and New Testaments now I come to think of it, never seem to be very compatible). Just a shame some weak-minded numpties unable to think for themselves will blindly believe you and go along with what you say. Oh and one more thing, but after seeing your picture on this article I can only add "should have gone to spec savers."

The Borders

My mate Gordon wanted to give his old MG a decent run so at the weekend we headed off south of Edinburgh and down through the lovely rolling hills of the Scottish Borders. We even had the roof down, although it was a little chilly for that, but it was too much fun not too, before stopping for a break in Peebles and being astonished when we looked in an estate agent's window and saw the size of house you could buy for the same as a small flat in Edinburgh.


Peebles has an awful lot of kirks for such a wee town
A view from near the river


Church spire - stupidly I forgot to note the name of the church
As we passed this church I noticed the doors were open and the stained glass caught my eye; I was wary of going in on a Sunday - not just in case I burst into flames but in case there was a service, but there wasn't another soul there and I had it to myself for a few moments. There's always something peaceful about a quiet, stone church.


If you look to the lower left panel in this one you can see a stained glass image of the actual church the window itself is in (you can compare it to the spire in the earlier pics - I noticed the spire has a 'crown'-like top similar to the one on St Giles in Edinburgh)



And back home in Edinburgh this was the view this evening after a sunny but cold winter's day, just after the sun had dipped below the western horizon. I snapped this through the window of the bus as it passed over North Bridge (surprised it worked), which strides over the valley between the Old Town and the New Town. This is looking west over the Waverly train station, with the Bank of Scotland building and the Castle up on the left, the National Gallery and Royal Scottish Academy in the centre and the Gothic rocket of the Scott Monument standing proud on the right. And that's a view that gets even my head up out of my book as I make my way home.

Dig that Castle

Interesting article in the Evening News today of an archaeological dig by Historic Scotland which has been going on underneath Edinburgh Castle, where they have been surprised by finding part of a two-metre thick defensive wall added after the attacks by the Covenanters and then that barrel of laughs that was Oliver Cromwell in the 1600s. The access tunnel used to explore this find under the Castle is, coincidentally, pretty much under where I stood on the Esplanade (where the Tattoo is held in August) to take the photos of the Castle by night a couple of weeks back with my new camera. Fascinating to think that with all of that history right in front of me there was even more hidden history a few feet below my boots.

Of course, with Edinburgh being built on a number of hills (which terrifies many an American tourist - walking around town is a shock to most of them, walking up and down hills is their nightmare) it means that much of what you see if built atop older structures. Recent relaying of cobbles on the Royal Mile (which runs from the Castle gates down the ridge to Holyrood Palace at the other end) revealed more bits and pieces from the 18th and 18th century (what passes for modern or recent history to us) and, famously, Mary Kings Close is an old street built over after plague and then rediscovered and now open to visit beneath the City Chambers.

Who knows how many other layers of deeper history lie below the Castle though? There is a reason why such a massive castle is built where it is, rising out of the volcanic rock, man-made structure and the hand of nature combining to create something which dominates the city (I love passing it every day to go to work - beats the hell out of passing high rise offices on your commute, doesn't it?) and it is thought that some forms of fortified dwellings would have been there pretty much since people have lived in the land after the great glaciers retreated, carving out the hills and mountains that shape that land and the people; literally thousands of years of history beneath us, sleeping in the native earth, the ancient structures we see, old as they are, only the surface of a history stretching back millennia, through Scots, Celtic tribes, Roman visitors (who didn't stay long) and back and back before even the Celts. Were there small groups fortifying that impressive rock back when the Callanish Standing Stones were being raised on the opposite coast? And if we consider the geological events which shaped these landforms we find we're walking through not mere millennia, which flit past swiftly like birds, but the deep, deep time of the Earth itself; almost inconceivable timsescales we attach numbers to as if we really can understand a concept such as millions or billions of years. All of that comes together in what I see every day as I go past. I like that.

Factional struggle

The violent struggle in the Middle East has taken a turn for the worse as followers of the Humus faction clash with the supporters of the Fatter Party; fundamentalist dietary Muslims, who knew it would come to this? Meanwhile the flames have been fanned still further from Europe as a Danish pastry in the shape of the Prophet Mo'Betta Blues went on sale causing outrage among the fundamentalist confectionery and bakery wing of Islam. Has the world gone mad? Still, most haven't tumbled to the fact that the humble croissant is actually shaped so Westerners can celebrate defeating the Ottoman Muslim hordes by eating the symbol of their land. Phew, thank goodness they haven't cottoned to that one yet. Welcome to the next phase of the War on Terror - now even food isn't safe...