Weblog | I don't like the word blog, it's ugly. Anyway, new content happens here. (Swedish dito)
About me and the site | Twenty-something male who likes text. Obsessed with things such as books, reality, communication, and one or two tv-shows.
Archives | Things written here since... well, 2001. Some of it is good, some is utter shait.
Books | Books read, not books written. So far I've struggled to maintain unpublished.
Photo | I like my camera and it likes me.
Links | Outwards, away, flee.
e-mail | J. Nicklas Andersson
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Mike Leigh
A lot of people had talked about it. With a lot I actually mean about one, two, three, four, five people. A few others as well, but only five had seen it and all of them thought it was great. So you understand that I just had to see it.
Secrets & Lies starts with an introduction to the characters. At first I thought it was nothing special, I had seen it before. Then the characters started to expand and I before I knew it half an hour had past. I sat still. This is good. Really good.
The story is thin, there is no action whatsoever and it is quite long and slow-paced. (Tommy, this isn’t your kind of movie. You’ll hate it.) The characters however continue to grow all the way, the fill up every frame and make it a joy to watch. You don’t know if you’re going to laugh or cry. Much of the actors performance is appearantly improvised, but my God, what improvisations. Better acting than all movies on this year’s Academy Awards put together. I eagely await the cinema release of Mike Leigh’s All or Nothing in January.
It's the small things
Small things are better and just as important as big when it comes to the building up the ambience of a movie or a tv-show. They’re also more time consuming when you create them. For instance, the brilliant tv-show Spaced has all notes, letters and such things actually written. Even though the viewer might not see it, and if they do it’s very briefly.
The scene which the still above is “stolen” from, Daisy just said that she left Brian a note. They didn’t need to show it, but they did. A handwritten one, with a small bit of tape and a drawing pin. Very small details that in turn adds up and make sure that one finds new things every time one watches it over and over again.
Favorite cover no. 6: The Art of Looking Sideways
I’ve got a cold and I didn’t get my copy of Re-Animator in the mail today. But no matter, there are more important things afoot here, such as the sixth favorite cover.
I can hear you mumbling to yourself, “What’s so special about this then?” For starters there are words, lots and lots of words. In fact words are all there is on it, which is a plus in my book. Another plus is that the typeface was rather neutral and not intrusive. Besides this, the sentences on it are taken straight from the contents within. If you like what you see at the cover, you’ll probably love the book.
Reality inflictions
I’ve had these thought for quite some time now, and I think I’m ready to write them down. I’ll probably revise it later and flesh out the text more.
What is reality really? The way I see it, reality doesn’t exist. Or id does exist, but my reality is not the same as yours or even that of my brother. Thank God. I don’t think I could live in his world — it is probably mutual. Instead reality is what we make up as we go along, constructed from our opinions, priorities, past experience, what we want to see and most of all what our subconscious tells us it is.
What is right for me might be wrong for you as well as the reality I see today will differ a lot from what I’ll experience tomorrow. It shifts constantly and at a very fast rate. So the phrase “Wake up and see reality” is rather dumb and wrong on several levels. You can’t pinpoint it at all, because like the vision that appears in the periphery of your vision it stops to exist the moment you align the eyes for a closer look.
Just got a writers block
Hallo.
Still pretty much alive, but I’ve been busy. There is no need to panic, I’ll soon finish the whole ‘favorite cover deal’ and do something more creative. I’ve been out, in the real world and done some of that pho-gra-phy. I’ve come to the conclusion that I like shadows and light. The shadows are the fun part, but you need light to have the shadows which is a bit of a downer.
A new definition on 'moving'
Best sight in all year, no doubt. I was driving along, humming on a Barenaked Labies song at a time which no man was ever constructed to adhere. Then I saw it, travelling in the opposite direction. My eyes tried to leave their hollow caves. A car with an Amish Trailer home. A movable cabin made of wood. Sure, they might not have been real Amish, the car that pulled it was a bit of a giveaway, but that is just splitting hairs. I’m convinced that it’s a prototype for a new more comfortable movable home to be used by rich people in the summers.
Favorite cover no. 7: The Sun, the Moon, & the Stars
(Orb 1996 edition)
Old fashion star charts and diagrams over planets is what comes to my mind, and not the paintbrushes in the center of the cover. The brushes looks old and used, but it is the circles that add life to an otherwise rather boring production (I’m not talking about the contents of said novel, you hear? The content is Near Fine Major.)
The charts are in German. At least it looks that way, the über was a bit of a giveaway. They also remind me of the manual to Zork: Nemesis, a straightfaced and far to Myst-influenced Zork game (who would have thought that was possible?) where the manual was the best thing, handwritten notes of the bad guy as well as lots of doodles in the margins.
Bones?
Favorite cover no. 8: A Liar's Autobiography
(Methuen 1999 edition)
Lots of pink and Graham Chapman in his army uniform holding a syringe. What is there not to like? There is that little blob of yellow down in the bottom-right corner that proclaims an afterword by Eric Idle. The afterword does, however, exist but why did they have to put it in a yellow ugly circle on the cover? I guess normal text wasn’t good enough.
Other people's photos
Lately I’ve been surfing around and looking at Japanese photo-sites. Sometimes I don’t understand a thing but they tend to be rather straight forward in design so that isn’t really an issue. The main reason for my facination is that the people being photographed seem so natural, as if this was a normal procedure of their lives.
One site in particular has burnet itself into my link-list. Nippongraphica. It has a great portfolio, so for now forget the people category. Although it is good as well, it’s just portraits and they’re not as interesting to watch as the others. (102 portraids all shot in a similar fashion gets kind of boring after a while.) For instance the
The person responsible for the site also has a nice little link-bar at the side to other photograpgy sites, some which are quite good.
(Damnation! My fingers don’t work like they should today.)
Favorite cover no. 9: The Sprouts of Wrath
(Corgi 1997 edition)
It has a pentagram on it, as well as embossed sprouts. It is in a twisted way pure genius, because if you think about it you realise that sprouts and the forces of evil have a lot in common. For instance, you’d be much better off if you don’t have to eat any of them. Embossed covers are generally nice as well. They add a new dimension to an otherwise rather limited depth in images.
Favorite cover no. 10: Pleasure of Ruins
Perhaps it’s the shear size of it that makes me like it so much (it is after all about 27 x 36 cm), but I don’t think so. It’s in the contrast. Black and white areas separated by a big, nice ruin. Now, I have this thing for ruins. They get me excited and I jump around like a kid. My eyeballs pop out of their wet icky sockets and I tend to forget the world around me. In an insensitive way to put it: it triggers my ADD.
Another thing is that the title is pushed aside to the corner at the bottom. It doesn’t try to force itself upon the viewer. It’s almost as it tries to say: “The ruin is the important thing, look at it instead of us down here.” You can just about see it, but there is this white glow around the ruin that creeps into the black area. Amazing stuff.