What I like about this sweet, cleanseaside postcard is that the couple are not necessarily dismissive of the sculpture, they just don't know what they're looking at or how to engage with it. This may eventually make them angry but, for now, it leaves them perplexed and slightly embarrassed, a not uncommon reaction to the unfamiliar - and one that is infinitely preferable to some of the too cool for school pseudery that can pass for reaction when it comes to art.
It's my birthday today. I'm fifty six, which seems ridiculously, farcically old. I can no longer tell the front from the backside.
Without wishing to give too much away about the mesmerising God Told Me To, here are five images of Richard Lynch as a glowing, golden haired hermaphroditic hippy will-o’-the-wisp star child who lives in a squalid underground furnace room and uses mind control to direct a cabal of fanatical followers.
Filmed in the old, scuzzy, dangerous New York - often without permission - Cohen's movie starts out as a tense thriller. as a wave of bizarre murders sweeps the city, each one committed by a seemingly normal member of the public who suddenly feels compelled to kill everyone around them. Their explanation to the authorities afterwards? 'God Told Me To'.
The second half of the film goes nuts, and so do all of the characters.
I have an ongoing fascination with Cliff Richard, actually more of a morbid obsession that I can't shake off. I've been aware of him all my life, not surprising given that he's loomed over British popular culture since the 1950s. His shadow has now diminished somewhat, but a sinister, slightly distorted trace of it remains - and occasionally lurches into sharp relief. It's incredible just how many 'careers' Cliff has had, and just how many different Cliffs there are: you never get to the end of him. I expect he will outlive me. He'll outlive all of us.
In this clip, it's 1968, and nobody knows what's going on anymore to the extent that an utterly incomprehensible, drug adjacent toytown psych ditty called The Sound Of The Candyman's Trumpet is seriously under consideration as the UK's entry into that year's Eurovision Song Contest.
Cliff, looking buff but rather like a shaved chimp, does his best but seems slightly bored. He gets some fiddly hand movements in at the end, but there's only so much even he can do with such lukewarm material. Anyway, in the end, Congratulations is selected as our song for Europe, and Cliff is pleased: he can really go to town on it, and there's no lingering ambiguity about penises*.
* Congratulations came second. But try remembering the winner, Spain's 'La La La', and see how far you get. Happy Eurovision, everyone!
Have you ever wondered what might happen if, at the point of his own death, a serial killer was absorbed into a powerful computer network and then continued his murderous career using microwave ovens, hand driers, dish washers and ATM machines? No, me neither, or no yo tampoco, as they say in Spanish.
The main issue with this film* is that it is just so creaky and stilted, with the actors clearly being unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the 'state of the art' (see above) effects they were supposed to be reacting and responding to. Nowadays, of course, movies use CGI for even mundane things, so actors have got much better at this sort of pretending.
Ghost In The Machine cost $12m, made less than half of its budget back and would have been pretty much completely out of date before the credits finished rolling. Oh, well, mas que nada, as they say in Portugese.
* The dialogue is also awful, and the lead kid is annoying.
Last year, at Easter, I found myself alone in the house for a day. Before I set to my assigned task - decorating the spare room - I took advantage of the empty space to hold an impromptu recording session using some metal kitchenware, some wooden utensils, two desk lamps, and some old electronic devices.
I haven’t quite known what to do with the results, so I’m going to share some of them here. I know.
Secret Ceremony, which, I'm afraid, is ten minutes long, consists of me trying (and eventually succeeding) to get some nice sounding clangs out of a set of suspended steel bowls. The title references both the 1968 Joseph Losey film I re-watched the night before, and how it felt to be in an empty room in an empty house, banging stuff with a spoon and recording the reverberations.
Towards the end, it starts to rain, which was unplanned, but completes the ritual.
