Detroit
Posted: Wed 9 August, 2017 Filed under: Domestic, Films, Reviews(ish), Seeing Films, Thoughts Leave a comment »In a weirdly – and unintentionally – connected thing to seeing the Soul Of A Nation exhibition over the weekend, I also ended up seeing “Detroit” last night.
“Detroit” is a new film from Katheryn Bigelow (the director of the original Point Break, Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty, and many others) about the Detroit (unsurprisingly) 12th Street race riot, and in particular the Algiers Motel incident.
That incident is (yet another) one I didn’t really know anything about until seeing the film. I don’t believe it’s one that has gone into ‘common knowledge’ – while I’m no expert on these things, it’s not one I’ve ever heard even mentioned, and I don’t honestly think it’s even left a large imprint on American history.
Anyway, the film is an interesting one – but (in my opinion) tries too hard, telling too many stories in one film. There could have been a film about the riots themselves, the causes, the people, the effects. There could have been a film about just the Algiers incident – although I suspect that the conclusion of that would’ve been deeply unsatisfactory. And there could’ve been one about the aftermath, the court case(s), the people, and what happened to them afterwards.
But trying to do all of those within the scope of one film – admittedly, a bloody long film at 14o-odd minutes – is difficult, at best. It starts with the riots, and we don’t even really meet any of the “main” characters for a good half an hour. Then we go to the Algiers, which is as bad as it could be – and probably pretty truthful, as one of the people involved was on set every day, advising and providing input. And then for the final half hour or so, we’re in the court case, the details, the results, and the aftermath.
If the film had been longer, it might’ve gelled better, become a whole story. As it is, it feels overly-edited, almost like a ‘greatest hits’ rather than a full story. It’s still a good film, and a story that should be told. It’s just that the story deserves to be properly told, not in a hodge-podge of setpieces.
Saturday – Soul of A Nation
Posted: Wed 9 August, 2017 Filed under: Art, Day Trips, Domestic, London, Travel Leave a comment »While I was in Tate Modern on Saturday, I also went to see the “Soul Of A Nation” exhibition, which is about Black Art during the Civil Rights movement. It’s not one I was really planning on seeing, and more of an impulse “Oh, why not” thing, but it was still interesting.
The Civil Rights movement happened in the US before I was born – not by much, but obviously by enough. I know the basics of it, but not a lot of the detail, and always feel I should know more about it. It absolutely amazes me that it was all relatively recent, that it was all happening fifty years ago. In that context, it’s amazing how far we’ve come – although there’s still a long way to go.
Anyway, it was an interesting exhibition – although there was a significant amount of (in my opinion) shite stuff, there was also enough to make it worth having gone in. I also got to learn about AfriCOBRA, the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists – most of which was admittedly bad, but still, made me laugh just for its honesty.
One of the other things I found interesting (and slightly sad) was that in an exhibition so deeply connected to Black Art, African-American History and Civil Rights, every single person viewing it was white. There was a quote on one wall, the gist of which was that Visual Arts were the biggest bastion of White Male artists, and the exhibition visitors certainly helped to reinforce tbat.
All told, it was interesting enough. I don’t think I’d bother seeing it again, but I’m still glad I did get to see it.
Saturday – Giacometti
Posted: Mon 7 August, 2017 Filed under: Art, Creativity, Day Trips, Domestic, London, Reviews(ish), Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »On Saturday, I went into London for a walk, and to visit a couple of exhibitions – which turned out to be three – as well as food and the like. As there’s other stuff going on this week that I can’t be naffed to go into right now, I thought I’d write a bit about some thoughts related to the exhibitions. So that’s the plan.
The first one on the list was Tate Modern’s exhibition of works by Giacometti. Up ’til now, I’ve seen a few of his works, but not loads – and I’ve honestly never seen the appeal of them. They’re certainly distinctive, strange, and of note – but I certainly didn’t love them, and didn’t really get why he’s so well regarded.
Having seen the full exhibition, I still don’t love them, but I understand more of why he’s regarded. Oddly, his statues still do very little for me – I find them kind of odd, and kind of unsettling, but nothing more than that – and I certainly couldn’t sit and just look at one block of statues, as one person was doing. (He’d even brought along his own camping stool in order to do so, God love him) However, I really liked some of the sketches, and some of his oil work that looked like it had been done in charcoal.
I think that in some ways I wasn’t convinced of Giacometti as being an actual artist – OK, he could do the sculptures, but that could’ve been just the one thing. Having seen the sketches, drawings, and paintings, I do realise that he’s a lot more of an artist than I’d thought, and a lot more talented.
That doesn’t make me like the sculptures and so on, and I still wouldn’t go from here to the bog to see another exhibition of his work, but all the same, I’m glad I did go.
Under The Knife
Posted: Fri 4 August, 2017 Filed under: 1BEM, People, Television, Thoughts Leave a comment »This could almost be a PIDU post – but it’s not, and I don’t quite know why myself. But anyway…
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been watching Botched, a programme about Plastic Surgery, and primarily fixing the bad jobs that’ve already been done on people. It’s a ‘reality’ series, and kind of annoying, but also weirdly interesting. I find it fascinating to see the things that people have had done to themselves, the things that they feel insecure about, and what they put themselves through in order to feel better.
Personally, I don’t get that whole surgical self-improvement thing – I’m far more of an “accept what you are/have” person, which seems to result in a lot less stress. Then again, I’ve never been pretty, so I don’t have that innate vanity that sees Just One Thing that’s wrong. I don’t feel the need to “fix” things, so it’s all just a bit… alien to me.
The people who do want work done (and in the greatest number of cases, it’s definitely ‘want’ rather than ‘need’) are of interest to me, looking at the mindsets that are so obsessed with that One Thing that needs ‘fixing’, that if they fix that, then everything will be fine (while also never actually addressing the underlying insecurities that are driving the desire for surgery in the first place) and wondering why they only look at fixing the physical, rather than the mental and emotional issues that cause them to focus on these things.
More than anything, I think I feel sad for a lot of the people, to have lives that are so focused on something like that, and to be so desperate to get it fixed.
Anyway, it’s a rotten reality programme, but it still interests me for the people involved. Which, I suppose, is the whole point of reality programming.
Bad Headline
Posted: Wed 2 August, 2017 Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Cynicism, Domestic, Media, News, People, Thoughts Leave a comment »One of my free local papers had an interesting front-page headline this week. It does seem a bit specific (and somewhat prophetic) though – I mean, if they already know that someone else will die within the week, wouldn’t you think they’d add in more guards, or make the area a bit safer during that time?
(And yes, I know what they meant to say – but it’s not what it actually says! Or at least it’s rather more open to interpretation, anyway)
Quiet
Posted: Mon 31 July, 2017 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Single Life Leave a comment »For the first time in far too long, yesterday I had a day of doing absolutely sod-all. And it was pretty good.
It wasn’t (quite) through choice – the friend I’d been supposed to be meeting up with was ill, and cancelled at pretty much the last minute. Which is fine, these things happen. So as a result, I didn’t have to do anything – and I chose to stick with that plan, for once.
This year so far has been pretty manic, and while the next five or six weeks are quieter than the rest of the year, there’s still a fair amount going on. After that, September and October are already booked solid, with November and December also pretty blocked up. So some downtime right now is no bad thing at all.
Of course, that doesn’t stop me from also feeling a bit guilty about it. As I’ve said before, I’m really not good at Doing Nothing. I get to the end of the day, and feel like I’ve wasted a day off by doing nothing, that I should’ve at least been doing Something.
It’s a guilt I should get better at assuaging. Sometimes, a day of zilch is no bad thing.
I’m just keeping on trying to remind myself of that at the moment – it was a good thing, not a waste.
Paying for Parking
Posted: Fri 28 July, 2017 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Geeky, Milton Keynes, Parking, Technology, Thoughts Leave a comment »During the working week, I regularly park in an area controlled by parking meters – not one per slot, but in big blocks, so you pay for your ticket/parking at a machine, and return the ticket to the car.
It’s an area/business that in many ways doesn’t seem to have kept up with progress at all, but in others is quite a way ahead of most other places. It’s very odd – and it seems like a lot of people are caught in that middle space between the two extremes.
You see, the meters themselves take cash, and only cash. There’s no facility to take card payments, let alone contactless. I assume that some of this is down to maintenance costs – the more things it can do, the more things there are that can fuck up.
Then at the other end of the scale, we can use online/mobile payment setups like RingGo to pay for parking, which is super-easy to do, and works really nicely. (There are other parking payment providers, most of which are worse than RingGo, but they’re still getting used by various councils etc. around the country) There’s no need for cash, it’s all smooth and simple to do, with the parking wardens having smartphone equivalents where they can check each vehicle’s registration and see if it’s paid for parking online.
Both solutions seem to work, either with the super-basic “put coins in the machine” or the semi-techie (but still really pretty simple once it’s set up) paying via mobile/online. There’s also the ability to pay by phone using RingGo, but that appears to be overly complex.
However, both options seem destined to confuse the majority of people. I regularly see people dredging pockets for change – which is becoming less common, with the prevalence of debit cards and contactless payments, so they’re surprised and unprepared for needing coins to park – or completely stumped by smartphone apps, or having problems with the paying by phone.
In some ways that harks back to people not being prepared, but at the same time I do understand that these meters are a bit of a surprise. They’re so low-tech in many ways, and people just don’t seem to expect that. But they’re also unprepared for using their smartphones – despite this whole pay online/app thing becoming more and more common for parking – and don’t have the relevant app, or have it set up. And even with 4G coverage etc., it seems that a lot of them are utterly unable (or just unwilling) to sort out installing the app and just doing things the easy way.
I don’t know what the answer is. I think we’re in this weird hinterland at the moment, where we’ve still got simultaneous low-tech and hi-tech solutions, and people are just caught in the middle, too advanced to be happy with the low-tech, but a large number also still unhappy or uncomfortable with the hi-tech alternative, so they’re stuck in some kind of mid-tech wilderness.
It’s very odd, but interesting to watch and see how things go.