Posts tagged "Culture"
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Belle and Sebastian
There's a short list of bands that I'll see every time there's an opportunity. Nick Cave, The Cure, Billy Bragg, The New Pornographers and... Belle and Sebastian. Always a great night out and this was…
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Genesis Owusu in The Tank
This was a bit of an unusual gig. The Tank is a giant underground oil tank previously used for ship oil by the Navy. Now it's been repurposed as a gallery space under the Art Gallery of NSW's new mode…
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Exxopolis by Architects of Air
Yesterday we took the kids in to see Exxopolis, a giant inflatable scupture sitting out the front of the Sydney Opera House. The first photo is one I took on Tuesday while walking down for the Matmos…
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Sydney Festival 2014
It's January in Sydney which means Sydney Festival time. That's when Sydney's centre is transformed for a pretty damn awesome art and culture festival. There's always a stack of awesome gigs, plus fre…
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Underbelly Arts
We went out to Cockatoo Island on Sunday to the Underbelly Arts Festival. It was a stunning sunny day and the kids had a fantastic time. Kids seem to immediately understand that "art" just means "play…
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Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ as a children’s book
via howtobearetronaut.com Awesome! From illustrator Andrew Kolb.
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MONA
Hobart is lucky to have the amazing Museum of Old and New Art. The collection is incredible and the building spectacular. Well worth a visit!
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Recent reading: gambling politics, nose to tail, non-rail public transport and the Chernobyl death toll
I've been using Instapaper to push longer articles to my Kindle for later reading. The tool isn't without some significant limitations but it works well enough for me. It's great to no longer skip rea…
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Shred the week
Time-Killing ‘Chrono Shredder’ is a Day-Dicing Wall Calender Wall clock, calender and mortality reminder all wrapped up in one odd work of (post)modern art. The so-called ‘Chrono Shredder’ provides a…
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Considering the Kindle
via amazon.com I've been keeping an eye on Kindles since launch. The idea of a very small, very light reading device is very appealing. Two things where I would use it every day are The Guardian and C…
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Fat Man in a White Hat
I discovered Bill Buford having watching Fat Man in a White Hat, a seemingly-truncated BBC4 series broadcast earlier this year. It featured a passionate and highly-articulate American guy who'd thrown…
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"Imagine you've taken half a tab of LSD and are at a very bad performance art installation"
No, not Club Kooky but Marcus Westbury at the Logies. Hilarious description of a surreal event. Red carpet arrival. A spotter peers in limo window to see who of any interest is in the limo. "No one!"…
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Where can I get Hogarth prints?
I've always loved Hogarth's Gin Lane and Beer Street engravings. The post-industrialized world's first moral panic was due to the flood of cheap spirits, coupled with a bored and concentrated populati…
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Postbox next to Central is good
Wow, the postbox outside Central Station gets fast delivery. I popped the DVD we watched on Saturday night into its Quickflix envelope and dropped it into the postbox yesterday. Quickflix have just em…
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Children of Men
I signed up to Quickflix recently on their free trial. The service is good, but I don't think we get through enough movies to make keeping it worthwhile. However, one of the movies we got was Children…
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Hanesy's film wins at Queens Film Festival
Hanesy's film, The Truth About Weapons of Mass Destruction, just won in the Best International Documentary category at the Queens International Film Festival. Congratulations Hanesy!
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Black Sheep
We just got back from seeing this great film. In the great Kiwi splatter tradition that brought us Derek (Dereks don't run), it's a zombie flick. With sheep. There's even a lawnmower homage. And Weta…
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The Truth About Weapons of Mass Destruction
I've built a web site for my mate Hanesy's film, The Truth About Weapons of Mass Destruction. Check it out. I'm still working on getting the blog embedded inside the design properly. And Hanesy hasn't…
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The Truth About Weapons of Mass Destruction
My mate Hanesy's film, The Truth About Weapons of Mass Destruction, after a long and tortuous birth, is about to hit the festival circuit. I haven't seen the final cut but the earlier cuts were great,…
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Tim Flannery tonight!
Last night I went to the launch of Ryan Heath's book Please Just Fuck Off, It's Our Turn Now (Holding Baby Boomers to Account) at Australia House. Quite a fun evening, and the debate was quite enterta…
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More 4: how long until it's wall-to-wall Friends?
Channel 4 launched their new "adult entertainment" channel, More 4 last night. It was pretty good, all things considered. The Daily Show was great, and the comedy about David Blunkett was pretty funny…
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Springtime for Hitler
Went to see The Producers last night with Dad, Holly and Rachel. What a fantastic musical, best I've seen in years. Absolutely hysterical. Couldn't recommend it more. Highlight: the scene with dancing…
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Snow Crash, again
I'm out of books (read all the ones I bought off Amazon with my xmas gift voucher) and am back to reading the excellent Snow Crash yet again. Loving it, but I'd like to discover something written this…
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Free DVD rental
I've been using the free trials of all these companies providing DVD rentals by post. Quite a nice idea and if we watched more films, it would be worthwhile. As it is, I'm storing up movies to watch a…
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Stamping Butterflies
I really like Jon Courtenay Grimwood 's books. He writes science fiction that tends to be based in North Africa, with all the flavour you would expect from that. This, his latest, is a bit more sedate…
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Jerry Springer: The Opera
Does it mean we're getting old to say we stayed in Saturday evening to watch opera on the telly? Of course it wasn't just any opera but Jerry Springer: The Opera. I never thought I'd see an opera with…
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pred.txt arrived
I just got my copy of pred.txt, the book form of the collected writings and rantings by pivotal C@talyst hardware geek <predator> who died this year and will be sorely missed. The book collects his va…
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Omega by Jack McDevitt
Just finished his book. It's a great sci-fi novel in the post-space opera vein. The story is quite understated, but involving. Drags you in but isn't an adrenaline rush. Basic story is this: A future…
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DVD rental gold rush
There's currently something of a gold rush mentality going on with the DVD rental companies here in the UK. Dozens of them have sprung up in the last few months and they're all trying to get your busi…
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Guantanamo Baywatch
Just went and saw Guantanamo Baywatch, one of the trilogy by the same writer as The Madness of George Dubya. That hysterical counted as the funniest live comedy I've ever seen. Baywatch was good too,…
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This movie doesn't want to be seen
We keep trying to see Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut and being foiled. A week ago we tried to see it at The Other Cinema only to be foiled by the person I spoke to giving me the wrong time. Then we…
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Quicksilver
My copy of Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver arrived last week and I've been reading it. Quite good so far, though not the roller coaster ride that was Snow Crash. Anyway, page 92 appears to abruptly end.…
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Looks like I have another favourite director
I've got a new director to add to my list of favourites. Sofia Coppola has now joined the other two directors whose films I will always see (yes, even if they cast someone ghastly). Lost in Translatio…
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New Battlestar Galactica
Well it seems that the US Sci-Fi Channel have remade Battlestar Galactica, the classic 80s sci-fi miniseries. Hopefully they haven't revived the floppy-haired kid and his annoying monkey creature thin…
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Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
There are two big sci-fi book releases I've been hanging out for this year. The first is Gibson's Pattern Recognition and later this year will be Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver. So this one was pretty…
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Visions of Tokyo
I've just discovered an incredible site that uses Flash in a way that actually enhances the information. Amazing, really. Mid-Tokyo Maps presents a range of different views of the city of Tokyo, looki…
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Play: The Madness of George Dubya
I saw this play last night in Camden, London. It supposedly finishes on 8th February but I certainly hope it goes longer. Think a musical update of Dr Strangelove. I was expecting a fairly amateurish…
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Two new books from the cyberpunk masters
Advance warning that two new books will soon be out by cyberpunk masters Neal Stephenson and William Gibson. Pattern Recognition by William Gibson will be released in February, at least in the US. Qui…