Four Minutes

I just happened across an upcoming movie called Four Minutes, (or Vier Minuten) a German indie film which appears to be gathering awards by the armful. It's about a violent murdering youth who happens to be a piano prodigy, and the strict music teacher who works in the women's prison and takes the girl as her pupil.

The trailer looks great, but it's the poster that really caught my eye. So dramatic and striking and sexy and well-composed. It's the little details I really enjoy, such as the handcuffs it takes you a while to notice, and the girl's bare feet.



I want to see this movie now. I bet the music will be great, too. I wonder when it will turn up at Cinema City?

Continuous Cities

On the agenda for today: Theo Ellsworth, an artist based in Portland Oregon. Makes prints, art zines and comics, including a zine called Capacity.

Topics covered: spacemen, contraptions, leaves, twining greenery, astoundingly complex cities, dryads, stars, monsters, little boats, impossible flight, beast people, creatures with frightening aspect but friendly agenda, canals, rooftops and weathervanes, prosaic captions for freaky things, giant heads, scaly lizard things and clouds.


Ellsworth's bio says that "He has a miniature city inside of his head that is overrun with funny monsters, yet he still manages to come across as a semi-normal guy." This seems likely, looking at his art. I also have my own miniature city inside my head, so I am pleased to identify with his work.

His bio also states that: "He is abnormally fond of clouds, and wants to build things out of them. He is prone to fits of whimsy, and tends to have weird dreams." Which is average Portland artsy hipster stuff, really.

I just love Ellsworth's stuff, especially the b&w incredibly complex images of repeating architecture, or the springs, levers and platforms of a nonsensical gadget (these remind me a little of Heath Robinson) I just wish I could draw that kind of multiplicity, but I've found that you have to have a fantastically thorough understanding of what you are repeatedly drawing in order to make it work. I get confused over the angles and in a frustrated mess about how everything connects up.

The coloured-in work is good too, he seems to have a muted autumnal approach to colour which is interesting, occasionally breaking out into a subdued rainbow.

Ellsworth has a stall at the Saturday Market, all those in Portland, although the last couple of times I've been in town he hasn't been there, which is a shame 'cause I wanted to buy a print. Capacity should turn up in all good zine-selling stores (and in the zine rack at the Paradox), and the Art Capacity website is worth a look.

One more thing: This is Theo Ellsworth's desk. I love this guy.

PBR Time Travel Rollercoaster

(Perhaps "rollercoaster" was a bit unnecessary. I'm just trying to sell this thing.)

So I have written about good old Pabst Blue Ribbon beer before. I am very fond of the filthy cheap and cheerful beverage, although I do not love it as much as Tim does. Tim repeatedly campaigns for people to bring him PBR back from the states in their luggage. I came across a few advertising posters from PBR, and discovered that this really is an aged and venerable brand.

1900, The Pabst Extract Girl

(I suppose you have to start somewhere on your quest to be Miss Universe. I personally would have started somewhere else.)

1940, Aren't You Glad I Remembered About "33 to 1"?

(Brewed 33 times? Eww. Regurgitation brewed beer.)

1940s, This One Has the Touch!

(Ha, this poster is my favourite. Someone is touched, alright.)

1945, Play on a One-String Harp?

(Apparently it would be like "trying to make truly great beer from just one brewing". For some reason playing the harp and drinking PBR are not two activities that go together naturally in my mind.)

1945, Write on a Typewriter With One Key?

(Writing on a typewriter with only one key is, once again, like trying to make a PBR-level beer without brewing it a million times. This woman is awesome. I enjoy the adorable gap in her teeth.)

1945, If You Can't Always Find Pabst, Remember

(Take heart, international PBR fans. It's coming for you.)


1946, It's Blended...It's Splendid!

(Creepy old man brings you PBR and a sandwich?! It's your lucky day!)

Some Bikes

Now, it seems like everyone I know is a total bike hipster at the moment. I have to say I am a die-hard pedestrian, and when Kaia got me on a bike the other week (the first time in ten years, maybe) it was half fun and half horror. I wasn't used to being on roads and I wasn't good on hills and my ass hurt and I was convinced I was going to die a horrible death. But: the streets of Portland are pretty and quiet and good to bike on, and it is quite fun the wind rushing past you, and you do get places (like the pub) faster. I must admit they can look pretty cool, too. Here are a few random recent bike pics:

Ashland, Oregon

Ashland, Oregon

Zoo-bomb bikes, opp. Rocco's, Portland Oregon

Portland, Oregon

I must remember to take a picture of Tim's fixie. He's just changed the frame, and it is very pretty all metallic pink and blue.

Big Four-Colour Love

These are a few of my favourite covers for the Penguin Great Loves series, a collection of twenty slim little volumes of stories, essays and extracts by various illustrious and often unexpected authors; all are about LOVE. Aww, isn't that sweet. Of course there is plenty of fucked-up, tragic, unrequited, doomed love; this, after all, is what literature is for.

The covers are thick paper rather than the glossy cover stuff, the designs are four-colour (or fewer) stylised images, largely of plants, which act as genius symbolism for the contents. The books are a good size to fit nicely in the palm, and in your bag so you can read about LOVE on the train.

Virgil - Doomed Love

Soren Kierkegaard - The Seducer's Diary

William Trevor - Bodily Secrets

James Baldwin - Giovanni's Room

(The one appearance of gay love on the list. No lesbians included, of course)

Anais Nin - Eros Unbound

Katherine Mansfield - Something Childish But Very Natural

Giacomo Casanova - Of Mistresses, Tigresses and Other Conquests

(Oh David Tennant, you scamp.)

D.H. Lawrence - The Virgin and the Gipsy

Francoise Sagan - Bonjour Tristesse

Stendhal - Cures For Love

(This is the one I bought for myself. Fantastic cover, looked interesting, I never mind some love advice...)

From the Letters of Abelard and Heloise - Fordidden Fruit

(I gave this one to my lover, because we write to each other a lot. I don't think the story ends well, though.)

Seasons and Rocks

Aah, Cannon Beach. A jewel of the Oregon coast. I went there for the weekend break with Kaia a week or two back. We had a wonderful time wandering around the town of Cannon Beach itself, buying books and saltwater taffy, and then lazing around in our special-offer ocean-view hotel room. That made the third time I'd been to Cannon Beach, and I realised I had a picture of the amazingly photogenic Haystack Rock for each visit. Cannon Beach, in three years and three seasons.

Haystack Rock August 2006

Haystack Rock November 2007

Haystack Rock April 2008

Music Expresses My Important Feelings

She & Him - M.Ward and Zooey Deschanel

(Beautiful people, standing in a graveyard and stuck in the past. I love them.)

I have been listening a lot lately to Volume One, debut album by She & Him, a sunny sixties-sounding pop power-duo made up of Portland man-with-guitar-and-emotions M.Ward (who I have seen in concert twice and love), and Zooey Deschanel (who I have seen in movies and on Weeds and love). The effect this record has upon me is tripartate: the sixties girl-group cheerful songs about meeting boys brighten my soul greatly, the lamenting country ballads bore me a little, and the song Sentimental Heart does all my emoting for me. I have been a little down this weekend, what with being heartsick and jetlagged, and listening to this song over and over improves things slightly.

Cried all night till there was nothin' more
What use am I as a heap on the floor
Heaving devotion but it's just no good
Taking it hard just like you knew I would

Oh old habits die hard when you got, when you got a sentimental heart
Piece of the puzzle and you're my missing part
Oh what can you do with a sentimental heart!

It is such a simple and beautiful song. Much apologies for actually being emo enough to post lyrics about my heartache on my blog.

(This is quite a boring post, and probably only Kaia will get it because I think she's been listening to this song a lot too. On the other side of the ocean. *sob!* Where's my CD player?)