Dreamer Easy

Can I just mention that music from the TRON soundtrack featured in Top Gear this season? I thank you.

Watching L: Change The World, and really enjoying it. I love this guy. ( SPOILERS )

Oh man, check out Our Cities Must Fight!, a US Civil Defence film from 1951 - apparently before they knew about fallout. If you get bored, fast-forward to the splendidly grim and pessimistic ending.

It's kind of interesting that the message to the public, both before fallout was understood and afterwards, both before intercontinental missiles and afterwards, was not to evacuate. Tens of millions of people are, effectively, an immobile target.

ETA: Bwa!!!! Tragedy or Hope? Damn Communist radical hippies!!! With their long hair and weird clothes and the funny way they speak - oh wait. You have to see this to believe it. Bonus appearance by Captain Jack. Begorrah.

Went looking for 50s "Duck and Cover" type official films in the hope of bleak lulz, but found Survival Under Atomic Attack rather less funny than I had hoped. It's the idea that the attack could come at any instant, with little or no warning, and you have to live your life in anticipation of that possibility. That unpredictability is a crucial part of modern torture techniques, it's part of the effort to control one's spouse in domestic violence, and, on a much smaller scale, I experienced it in bullying at school. Unpredictability keeps the target in a constant state of anxiety and helplessness. It is, of course, used by both terrorists and the governments they oppose to keep us all gnawing our fingernails.

Of course, we didn't have this problem in the 80s, thanks to MAD. If some fucker pushed the button, you didn't have to worry about closing the blinds and turning off the iron and shit, the world would just end quickly and efficiently.

Watched a little of Robot Monster over lunch. I must say it's the most eccentric adaptation of Alice in Wonderland I've ever seen.

Guys, I am overwhelmed by your birthday wishes. Thank you!

stevencaldwell took us out for a super treat last night - dinner + the Sydney Symphony Orchestra! I realised that I had never seen an orchestra perform live - I'd seen operas and Carmina Burana and had watched orchestras on TV, but had never sat in a concert hall and listened to just music. I knew it was going to be different from every other time I'd heard classical music when they started tuning up. We had a diagrammatic view of the players from the heights of our box. (We saw a contrabassoon! Jon spotted the tympani guy doing something clever and technical.)

The opening act was a local band called Tchaikovsky, with their smash hit "Piano Concerto no. 1". We had been cracking jokes in the peanut gallery about Hooked on Classics, so had to stick our fists in our mouths when it started. Further hilarity ensued when the orchestra struck up the piece we'd come to hear, The Firebird (aka the intro to Siberian Khatru). Mr Stravinsky pinched the beginning from the Curse of Fenric soundtrack! Who'd've thought it! There was a bit of TRON in there, too, and I think possibly a dab of Murray Go(l)d's score for The Sound of Drums. Igor you old plagiarist. Interest was added when one of the percussionists got up partway through and went out the side door. Smoko? Loo break? He'd finished his bit and was going home? Nope - it turned out there were tubular bells (or something similar) lurking out there. BANG CRASH WALLOP! Mr S. keeps your attention with lots of unexpected noises, notably the strings tapping their instruments (lots of little xs on the score, I imagine) and jolt-you-out-of-your-seat explosions from the percussion and the tuba. (The tuba mute had me in stitches. Presumably the tubist sticks a tap on the side afterwards and dispense boiling water for everyone's tea.)

All this uncultivated jocularity aside: the music was transporting. Thank you so much, Steven and Stephen.

Throughout the proceedings I was developing a ghastly sore throat which has laid me low today. I am ded but happy. :)

ETA: lol Koschei

I don't know what I'd make of Dead Poet's Society if I saw it again now. I'm a little afraid to find out. But this scene is just as wonderful as I remember. Look at Williams in those last seconds: kneeling, awed. Worshipping the Muse.

Speed Racer was fun. Solid script, good performances, bold style, gorgeous VR landscapes. The kid totally and unexpectedly stole the movie. Even the Inevitable Rap Cover Version Over The End Credits wasn't too noxious. My aging brain did have trouble following some of the action... or was it that the cars were unconvincingly massless, and so a lifetime's experience of how real objects move was useless? Or simply that my entire visual cortex burned out in the first five minutes?

Iron Man brought the lulz. Also squee. ( SPOILERS obvs )

I do believe that International Blog Against Racism Week is coming up in August, so there's plenty of time for my mad plan: ask you all to read one book (or watch one movie) and then review it during the week.

I have dozens of relevant books around here, and there are plenty of movies and documentaries, all of which I'd love to review, but there's never enough hours in the day. But if a bunch of people read/watch one thing each and then give their thoughts on it, I reckon that'd be a great contribution - bringing books and films to peoples' attention, sparking discussion, etc.

Pretty much anything that seems relevant is fair game, fiction or non-fiction. Posts in past ibarw have covered a broad range of topics, including anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and Whiteness (I might do a posting about Watching the English amongst the other stuff :-)

Life's busy; I'm not going to ask you to sign up or anything. If you don't think you'll have time, you could leave a suggestion here for a book or movie which you enjoyed or found thought-provoking.