Tua Mak @ The Tramway Glasgow
I don’t often get out to The Tramway to see their exhibitions, they’re just far enough out that somehow don’t manage to find the time to head over in the regular course of things. I really should make the effort more often as all the exhibits I have managed to see…
You know, I didn't consciously pick this random week off work to coincide with the Winter Olympics, but I am delighted that it did. Enjoying getting way too invested in international ice hockey as per, and actually having the time to watch all the games I want to!
Another banger not in English, bit closer to home this time. (literally, I was in the audience of the gig this music video was filmed at!)
youtu.be/0ZaBEj1oqsQ?...
Post a banger not in English? With Pleasure.
youtu.be/QbrvwaVXJ48?...
oh no!
Celtic Connections: Chasing Off The Winter Blues
It’s Celtic Connections season once more, and I took myself off to Glasgow to resist the winter blues with a bunch of excellent gigs of various genres. As usual I had to fight against my own instincts to pack in too many things/activities for a long…
oooh that sounds like it could be amazing, good luck!
Revisiting Old Favourites
Regular readers of this blog will know that I love a themed film challenge. Over the years I’ve done a whole range of these challenges from diversifying my film tastes with the 12 film POC challenge to watching more documentaries, and from A to Z by title to films that my…
From Cuba to Japan: Exploring Unusual Art in London
While I was officially, in London for the - frankly excellent - Scottish Ensemble/Anna Meredith gig at the Barbican, one of my main priorities for this particular trip was to just spend time wandering about the city looking at art and…
Defining concerts as 'sit down gigs'- five concerts I've seen:
Scottish Ensemble & Anna Meredith
RSNO with Sheku Kanneh-Mason
Suzanne Vega
Rufus Wainwright
Julie Fowlis
Some excellent concerts in there! I am very jealous of Indigo Girls! (My personal definition is concerts are seated and gigs are standing room only, however, because I'm occassionally a little troll IRL, I have in fact told colleagues I was at an excellent gig the night before & it was the RSNO...)
I got some tiny snowflake lights for this winter, and we've had our first snow here, so up they've gone to do their job fighting the darkness!
I would say green is a hippo and blue is a cow though I see why you would think hippo there!
Phrenology for the 21st century!
IFF25 – Highlights
Sometimes in the past at this film festival, I have accidentally picked myself really grim selections of films, or really hard-going selections - whether that means lots of death and murder or lots of political heavy thinking films - but this year I appear to have picked myself…
A Heron standing tall on a grassy riverbank, looking very regal.
The Ness Islands in Inverness, a stone auditorium dominates the centre ground while a path leads away to the top right disappearing into a carpet of leaves from the very orange autumnal trees around it.
A tree in full orange and red autumn colour dips down towards the river, the bank is covered with an elegant scatter of darker red leaves. (Ness Islands again.)
View along the river Ness, from the bridge onto the Ness Islands, the trees are rich shades of orange, red, brown and green. In the distance, poking out of the trees, are the turrets of some posh flats on the far bank of the river.
Was backing up some photos from my phone from the last year and thought I'd share these recent favourites. (Finally got some decent shots of my local heron!)
IFF25 – Frederick Wiseman Retrospective
I do enjoy the slightly scattershot nature of the retrospective strands at the Inverness film festival. In 2023 it was a couple of Powell and Pressburger films as part of a larger BFI re-release of all their films, a few years before that it was Iranian…
having spent a while being - accidentally - a film review website's Hammer Horror expert (it was horror more generally but a lot of Hammer Horror got DVD releases during my tenure) I can confirm that it was indeed a time...
IFF25 – Small Docs
On of my favourite things about the Inverness Film Festival is the commitment to showing all kinds of short films, and as many Scottish shorts as they can. Short films are of course a vital part of the independent film ecosystem, but outside of specialist nights, they tend not…
Still the best of games! (Spent a lot of lockdown playing a port/simulator of it! 😆)
Three yellow cinema tickets in a fan formation on a table. Beside them is a white plate with a chocolate brownie on it and above them is a green insulated mug full of coffee.
Day 4 of the film festival and it's a three film day! (I learned the hard way over the years that that's my maximum for a day before my brain melts!)
IFF25 – Documentaries
The Inverness Film Festival is upon us once more! I’m planning to watch - and write about - twelve feature films and two sets of short films over the next week. In an exciting development, for me, the timetable for this year’s festival has worked out in such a way that it is…
Two yellow cinema tickets sitting on an iPad keyboard, a corner of a film review is visible on the screen. To the left is a bowl of tomato and basil soup with a spice of chunky brown bread.
Day 3 of the film festival - unfortunately something went wrong with the subtitles on this afternoon's four hour epic of a documentary so it won't play! (Digital projection problems!) More time to write up my notes I guess!
A collage of four different pictures of the Hive installation at Kew Gardens. The big one on left is an external view looking up at it. Top right is looking up through the layers from the inside. Middle right is a close up of the mesh and lights that make up the walls with one of the glasshouses visible in the distance. Bottom right is looking out the door from the middle of the Hive.
I really loved this installation.
The Hive at Kew Gardens
The other reason I never made it to the Waterlily House, was that the other - smaller but more immediate - reason that I wanted to go to Kew Gardens on this trip was a long standing desire to go and experience ‘The Hive’. The Hive is artist Wolfgang Buttress’ rendering of a…
Two yellow cinema tickets, a bowl of butternut squash soup and my iPad in it's little keyboard setup.
First day of Inverness Film Festival done! Excellent first day choices - even if I did have a wee cry at the end of Pyre!
A collage of images from the Flourishing Future exhibit in the Temperate House at Kew. The main image shows the north octagon dominated by a giant t-shirt shape made out of mycelium based fabric, the bottom two of the smaller images show details from that display. The second top smaller image is a close up of a slightly alien looking flower behind which are two manequins wearing outfits from the exhibit (it's got a bit of a 70s Dr Who vibe) the top small image is of another fabric exhibit though this one looks a bit more like a scarecrow/wickerman creature with softly glowing arms.
The cross-posting doesn't seem to pull the pictures through with it, so I need to remember to share them manually.
Material Worlds at Kew Gardens
I’ve wanted to visit Kew Gardens since I was a small child, but I can still remember, I must have been about six or seven, and the then Blue Peter gardener - I think her day job was in fact working at Kew - crouched by the side of a pool in one of the glasshouses at…
Phantom of the Opera (Dundead Variation)
This year’s Hallowe’en treat was a screening of Phantom of the Opera (1925) with a newly commissioned score for it’s centenary. Unusually, this isn’t actually the first time I’ve seen this film on the big screen with a live accompaniment. In fact I think it…
