close to the edge

I just watched a television advertisement for Ebbsfleet, which is the intermediate train station for the Eurostar to Paris. I was trying to place Ebbsfleet, which isn't somewhere I've spotted in the past. There's a virtuality about some of the outer edges of London now, like the new green signs proclaiming the 'low emission zone' called LEZ, which is now another perimeter defence for the Capital.

There's nothing obvious as you pass these new signs, which seem to be on every side road into the centre, except if you are in a big truck with insufficient exhaust management when it will create an instant £200 fine for every visit. Apparently cameras spot the licence plates of undeclared vehicles and send bills to the driver.

And there's nothing obvious about Ebbsfleet either, except a train station and a football club that used to be called Gravesend. That gave me a clue to Ebbsfleet's location and I find fitting that its also declared itself very 'Green' no doubt because it, too, has those special signs. Roger Dean, the famous artist from nearby Ashford in Kent may have been prescient with his early drawings inspiring the M25 and these new worlds.

Shoot Bafta

After Saturday evening which involved very late car rides, private screenings and then an early start on Sunday, we finally arrived at the British Academy of Film and Theatre Arts at around 11:15, or putting it another way, just before the bar opened. Others drifted in shortly after us and by midday we were ready for a short screening before we were let loose to the streets around Theatreland to 'Shoot Bafta'.

The streets were closed to traffic in several areas, because of Chinese New Year, although that did mean that the areas around Lisle Street were rammed with people, and there was even a pedestrian one-way system in some parts.

At various times throughout the afternoon fireworks exploded loudly with plenty of smoke then curling across Leicester Square from Chinatown.

We eventually made our way to Covent Garden, checked out the red carpet which was still being prepared and then found some nice reserved seating from where we'd be able to watch proceedings in the evening.

Later we viewed the "15 shorts" (introduced by Mark Kermode). These are fifteen one minute movies - I liked "Frank", "Speed Dating" and the "Little Dinosaurs". Then (fanfare) we had a private screening of our own handiwork of the day in the "Shoot Bafta" Awards.

The scene by the red carpet area is quite amusing, with so many people jostling for views. Ubiquitous photographer step ladders and many people hoping for a glimpse, touch or autograph.

There's police everywhere and a huge procession of limos of all shapes and mainly large sizes.

We had our special wristbands which meant it was easier to wander past the various security folk with red jackets and into our special area.

So we watched a few friends from the movies arrive and then took our seats for the main event. Here's a short excerpt with Marion Cotillard winning best actress.

Technorati Tags: rashbre, bafta, shoot+bafta, shootbank, london, theatreland, chinese, new+year, marion, cotillard, keira, knightly

Covent Garden

One of today's destinations, along with 195 Piccadilly then Leicester Square, Chinatown for the New Year of the Rat and then later along to The Royal Opera House for some film celebrity moments.

With yesterday's unexpected two thirty bedtime and this morning's early start, right now I need sleep.

celebrity

Some of you will be aware of my prior Britney Spears collaboration, so would therefore understand that whilst I like photography and even candid shots, the hounding stalker-like paparazzi stuff is somewhat distasteful. So a simple shot grabbed at an unexpected moment of a few media celebs hi-jinxing is fine, but not exactly a calculated moment.

That will be different tomorrow though, when I join the gang trying to make sense of the awards in this list.

BEST FILM
AMERICAN GANGSTER – Brian Grazer/Ridley Scott
ATONEMENT – Tim Bevan/Eric Fellner/Paul Webster
THE LIVES OF OTHERS – Quirin Berg/Max Wiedemann
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN – Scott Rudin/Joel Coen/Ethan Coen
THERE WILL BE BLOOD – JoAnne Sellar/Paul Thomas Anderson/Daniel Lupi

BEST BRITISH FILM
ATONEMENT – Tim Bevan/Eric Fellner/Paul Webster/Joe Wright/Christopher Hampton
THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM – Frank Marshall/Patrick Crowley/Paul L Sandberg/Paul Greengrass/Tony Gilroy/Scott Z Burns/George Nolfi
CONTROL – Orian Williams/ Todd Eckert/Anton Corbijn/Matt Greenhalgh
EASTERN PROMISES – Paul Webster/Robert Lantos/David Cronenberg/Steve Knight
THIS IS ENGLAND – Mark Herbert/Shane Meadows

THE CARL FOREMAN AWARD FOR SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT BY A BRITISH DIRECTOR, WRITER OR PRODUCER IN THEIR FIRST FEATURE FILM
CHRIS ATKINS (Director/Writer) – Taking Liberties
MIA BAYS (Producer) – Scott Walker: 30 Century Man
SARAH GAVRON (Director) – Brick Lane
MATT GREENHALGH (Writer) – Control
ANDREW PIDDINGTON (Director/Writer) – The Killing of John Lennon

DIRECTOR
ATONEMENT – Joe Wright
THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM – Paul Greengrass
THE LIVES OF OTHERS – Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN – Joel Coen/Ethan Coen
THERE WILL BE BLOOD – Paul Thomas Anderson

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
AMERICAN GANGSTER – Steven Zaillian
JUNO – Diablo Cody
THE LIVES OF OTHERS – Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
MICHAEL CLAYTON – Tony Gilroy
THIS IS ENGLAND – Shane Meadows

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
ATONEMENT – Christopher Hampton
THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY – Ronald Harwood
THE KITE RUNNER – David Benioff
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN – Joel Coen/Ethan Coen
THERE WILL BE BLOOD – Paul Thomas Anderson

FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY – Kathleen Kennedy/Jon Kilik/Julian Schnabel
THE KITE RUNNER – William Horberg/Walter Parkes/Rebecca Yeldham/Marc Foster
THE LIVES OF OTHERS – Quirin Berg/Max Wiedemann/Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
LUST, CAUTION – Bill Kong/James Schamus/Ang Lee
LA VIE EN ROSE – Alain Goldman/Olivier Dahan

ANIMATED FILM
RATATOUILLE – Brad Bird
SHREK THE THIRD – Chris Miller
THE SIMPSONS MOVIE – David Silverman

LEADING ACTOR
GEORGE CLOONEY – Michael Clayton
DANIEL DAY-LEWIS – There Will Be Blood
JAMES McAVOY – Atonement
VIGGO MORTENSEN – Eastern Promises
ULRICH MÜHE – The Lives of Others

LEADING ACTRESS
CATE BLANCHETT – Elizabeth: The Golden Age
JULIE CHRISTIE – Away From Her
MARION COTILLARD – La Vie en Rose
KEIRA KNIGHTLEY – Atonement
ELLEN PAGE – Juno

SUPPORTING ACTOR
JAVIER BARDEM – No Country for Old Men
PAUL DANO – There Will Be Blood
TOMMY LEE JONES – No Country for Old Men
PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN – Charlie Wilson’s War
TOM WILKINSON – Michael Clayton

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
CATE BLANCHETT – I’m Not There
KELLY MACDONALD – No Country for Old Men
SAMANTHA MORTON – Control
SAOIRSE RONAN – Atonement
TILDA SWINTON – Michael Clayton

MUSIC
AMERICAN GANGSTER – Marc Streitenfeld
ATONEMENT – Dario Marianelli
THE KITE RUNNER – Alberto Iglesias
THERE WILL BE BLOOD – Jonny Greenwood
LA VIE EN ROSE – Christopher Gunning

CINEMATOGRAPHY
AMERICAN GANGSTER – Harris Savides
ATONEMENT – Seamus McGarvey
THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM – Oliver Wood
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN – Roger Deakins
THERE WILL BE BLOOD – Robert Elswit

EDITING
AMERICAN GANGSTER – Pietro Scalia
ATONEMENT – Paul Tothill
THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM – Christopher Rouse
MICHAEL CLAYTON – John Gilroy
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN – Roderick Jaynes

PRODUCTION DESIGN
ATONEMENT – Sarah Greenwood/Katie Spencer
ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE – Guy Hendrix Dyas/Richard Roberts
HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX – Stuart Craig/Stephenie McMillan
THERE WILL BE BLOOD – Jack Fisk/Jim Erickson
LA VIE EN ROSE – Olivier Raoux/Stanislas Reydellet

COSTUME DESIGN
ATONEMENT – Jacqueline Durran
ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE – Alexandra Byrne
LUST, CAUTION – Pan Lai
SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET – Colleen Atwood
LA VIE EN ROSE – Marit Allen

SOUND
ATONEMENT – Danny Hambrook/Paul Hamblin/Catherine Hodgson/Becki Ponting
THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM – Kirk Francis/Scott Millan/David Parker/Karen Baker Landers/Per Hallberg
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN – Peter Kurland/Skip Lievsay/Craig Berkey/Greg Orloff
THERE WILL BE BLOOD – Christopher Scarabosio/Matthew Wood/John Pritchett/Michael Semanick/Tom Johnson
LA VIE EN ROSE – Laurent Zeilig/Pascal Villard/Jean-Paul Hurier/Marc Doisne

SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS
THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM – Peter Chiang/Charlie Noble/Mattias Lindahl/Joss Williams
THE GOLDEN COMPASS – Michael Fink/Bill Westenhofer/Ben Morris/Trevor Wood
HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX – Tim Burke/John Richardson/Emma Norton/Chris Shaw
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END – John Knoll/Charles Gibson/Hal Hickel/John Frazier
SPIDER-MAN 3 – Scott Stokdyk/Peter Nofz/John Frazier/Spencer Cook

MAKE UP & HAIR
ATONEMENT – Ivana Primorac
ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE – Jenny Shircore
HAIRSPRAY – Judi Cooper Sealy/Jordan Samuel
SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET – Ivana Primorac/Peter Owen
LA VIE EN ROSE – Jan Archibald/Didier Lavergne

SHORT ANIMATION
THE PEARCE SISTERS – Jo Allen/Luis Cook
HEAD OVER HEELS – Osbert Parker/Fiona Pitkin/Ian Gouldstone
THE CRUMBLEGIANT – Pearse Moore/John McCloskey

SHORT FILM
DOG ALTOGETHER – Diarmid Scrimshaw/Paddy Considine
HESITATION – Julien Berlan/Michelle Eastwood/Virginia Gilbert
THE ONE AND ONLY HERB MCGWYER PLAYS WALLIS ISLAND – Charlie Henderson/James Griffiths/Tim Key/Tom Basden
SOFT – Jane Hooks/Simon Ellis
THE STRONGER – Dan McCulloch/Lia Williams/Frank McGuinness

With the strange depletion of wordage from LA, this could be a strong year for London to strut its stuff at the awards. Roll out the red carpets. Good luck to Keira and Atonement to bring back some prizes.

ramble on

Some week. A deceptive one. No big travel. It started quite well planned, but was like one of those moving floors you step on in some airports that some how gets faster on the long straight stretches. Today was like a special extra mini dexterity test at the end, with lots of spinning plates to manipulate, including some early moments that could easily knock one off balance.

But by tonight I'm feeling sort of triumphant that all of the various ticks seem to be in the relevant boxes allowing me to pull out a few plugs for the weekend. With a bit of luck I'll be able to stay away from the blackberry until Monday when the floor will start moving again.

So tonight, I'l watch some television as well as this Super 8 based pop video from Noah and the Whale, directed by James Copeman who also made the Laura Marling video on here a couple of days ago. Laura also pops up in this video, which has some clever After Effects editing.

With this amount of attention to movie making detail anyone would think I'd be going to the Baftas on Sunday. Oh, yes, come to think of it, I am.

create your own political commentary

Pick and mix:

toe-to-toe, decisively, neck and neck, knockout;
super, coalesce, coast to coast unity;
smart time to get act together.

bread and butter issues;
rhetoric, spending and taxes;
watching the pocketbook.

serious economic problem;
crisis, recession, foreign policy:
not learning on the job.

technicalities.
super delegates into play;
grandees decide.
slap in the teeth for voters.

a long process.

a spatter a scatter a wet cat a clatter

Norwich today after a rainy and blustery hotel stopover.

I drove into increasing darkness, arrived in an anonymous car park, entered a modern hotel with Eurostaff on the lobby counter and then to a room that smelled of American air-conditioning.

As is the way sometimes, I found myself in autopilot mode and was just setting my phone alarm forward one hour when I remembered I was still in the UK.

Then today's chilly, subterranean day followed by resurfacing in time to watch the big red orb of a glorious sun set during the long drive home. In a flash-back moment, it reminded me of sun-sets in Key West.

sooper

I've only just got over Super (Bowl) Sunday - which has a slightly bizarre coverage on UK television because the extensive advert breaks are instead covered by three men wearing very large headphones and talking cryptically. I think its because the two American presenters didn't always understand what the Brit anchor person was saying.

And that brings me to Super Tuesday, which I think is pronounced Soooper Toozday if I'm to get it right. Its supposed to be the next critical moment in the American election campaign which some how runs all the way through to the end of the year. And most of the coverage seems to be about the Democrats and whether gender or ethnicity affects outcome. The other guys carrying the Dubya banner and hiding the recession don't seem to get a look in - I wonder why?

It seems odd that everyone votes at different times (presumably so the candidates can visit more areas) and then the big places like New York, Califormia and another 22 States all vote on the same day. A strange dance.

Someone has worked out that a single candidate needs to accumulate 2025 delegates to be in the lead, and I guess it makes me wonder just how many delegates there are crammed into the main Houses of the US Government machine. And what's a super delegate? Do they have special powers? Can they fly? Do they get a 'by' into the next round? Its all very confusing.

Maybe thats why it seems to be mainly about two personalities rather than the intricacies of why 26 of the 53 Democratic congressional districts in California will award four delegates requiring a candidate to get 62.5% of the vote in that district to be sure to win.

I still apply my 'racing to Calais' model to this type of thing. You start in Cannes and drive to Calais to catch a ferry. At the start you only need to average 45 km per hour and can have two pit stops. Somehow, by the time you get to Dijon, after a couple of major delays, the average for the rest of the journey has become 95 km/hr. Still doable, then that big roadworks with the white robot flagman costs an hour and mysteriously you now need to do 120 km/hr. And then each time the brakes go on, the average speed for the remainder mysteriously increases. When it gets to over 150 km/hr, you finally phone ahead for another hotel night somewhere.

I guess one of the candidates will be doing that at some point near Dijon Denver, when it becomes inevitable that the lead has moved incontravertibly to the other person. Its a great tactic at the moment though, because the rest of the world is hardly even hearing about Republicans and thinks that McCain is a type of (ironically) French Fry.

blue

I've noticed flickr has been somewhat unreliable over the last couple of days. It used to be very stable, but its just started giving little times when the pictures don't display.

I recollect that its part of Yahoo, so perhaps its some kind of side effect of the planned Microhoo amalgamation. As Microsoft's influence is pretty pervasive in any case, I thought it was time to post one of those blue screen collections.

We've all seen them when we are out and about. Forlorn devices that have temporary lapses of concentration when the infamous 'blue screen of death' comes to town.

arriving on the Blue airline

Park in the Blue Zone

Don't phone a friend when you are feeling Blue

Ready for take-off?

New revenue model, with advertising?

Roger, Ready for Take off?, Over, Blue (okay, this one is a fake)

Swedish Make-over

But when I loaded these pictures, for some reason, none received any hits, except this one which got 13 hits in the first two seconds.

my manic and I

Talented singer songwriter Laura Marling has just released a first album and I thought it would be good to feature a little piece here. She's been around since maybe early 2007 and popped up on a few radio shows on XFM and even Radio 1 but I suspect is still largely unknown.

The album comes in a proper collectable box with some intriguing puzzles and artifacts, including a ticket to an upcoming gig. Those that know me know I usually throw the album cases away unless they are really good (I do keep the little pamphlets though). I will certainly keep this one. And the music is something of Suzanne Vega blended with Sandy Denny, with some ghostly, intriguing and sometimes deceptively steely lyrics. About time alt.folk had some new names.

Birds are singing to calm us down.

underground thrills

Thanks, Annie Mole at the excellent Going Underground for drawing my attention to this amusing video, filmed on the Tube.

Micheal Jackson's 'Thriller' is 25 years old and a group of dancers decided to do a commuter recreation of the video on the London Underground. With typical London commuter stalwartness, the passengers around the action stay seated and firmly looking forward at the small adverts over the seats.

unit of one marketing

A sort of marketeers holy grail is to get the right information to land at the right time, so I was slightly suspicious today when I opened a couple of emails to be greeted with pictures of refrigerators. You see, the thing is, yesterday I was out for part of the day at a kitchen appliance showroom, as part of the slow march of redecoration through rashbre central.

Admittedly, it was a first visit, so I was going through the 'education phase' which is when I have explained to me why all of the cooking and general kitchen technologies I am familiar with are no longer applicable because of induction cookers and steam ovens and so forth. Actually, the demonstration of the induction hob was somewhat flawed because it has a pin number before it could be fired up and then the light sensitive controls didn't respond after the turbo setting had been engaged. The fridge had some kind of rain-forest parrot certification and as for the steam oven they wanted to send me to get a demonstration appointment at a manufacturer's showroom. Why am I thinking this sounds expensive?

So today's mails are something of a mystery. I didn't give the showroom my email (not this one anyway) and I haven't been looking things up on the internet. So are these just random mail-shots that now seem more of interest than they would usually, or has some kind of demographic tracking system figured that I might be up for a new cooker because I bought some graphite coloured match-pot paint samples recently?