Music For Your Tape Recorder

I know. You don't need to tell me. Suffice to say I've not been motivated to write much this year and when it came to putting my playlist together it's apparent I haven't listened to that much music either. You can imagine I was dissuaded from bothering with that in mind when I realised I'd only left a few hours of 2014 to write it up. Here I am, though, two weeks later in what is my 10th year of blogging with a sense of obligation to drive myself to produce something. It may not be a long list this year (the shortest duration in the nine years I've done this), but there is plenty I want to get off my chest regarding some releases.

A Strangely Isolated Place

Piatra Galbenei, Apuseni Mountains, Bihor county, Romania
2005, Razvan Antonescu

Last year I presented a slice of the first steps toward the completion of my conlang project. So far the effort has taken £80 and roughly 1,100 elapsed days since embarking on the obscurantist desire in July 2011. In a way it was a reaction to the banal commonality of Romlangs and the impressive but not quite daring enough attempts at creating Indo-European daughter languages - often derived from the well documented Proto-Germanic or Proto-Slavic. I was attracted to the quirkiness of Albanian (the word for shore semantically drifting to mountain, etc) coupled with the general murky history of languages in the Balkans - only Albanian and Greek, and (in some theories) Armenian survive. The latter two are well attested back into antiquity, so the uncertainty of Albanian's origins and development left space for creativity. I like to think of this as a reverse-Brithenig - what if the Dacians/Romanians weren't romanised, compared to Brithenig's what if the Welsh/Britons were romanised.

Well, now I can show what a solid year of ripping up and starting again twice has finally yielded.

Also: I underestimated how long it would take to write this all up, so I've missed my traditional conlang date of October 25th. Eleven days isn't that late.

Note: Much of this is now deprecated. Don't calculate any interplanetary flight manoeuvres with this.

Blow Yr Mind / "Heroes"

Promo poster, 2014

When I reviewed Under the Skin in March I said that much as I bought into the idea that Scarlett Johansson is a sex symbol, I wouldn't see a film with her simply on that basis. Case in point - I haven't seen any of her Marvel appearances as the Black Widow, because the omnipresent comic book films do nothing for me. I nearly passed on seeing Batman Begins in 2005 for that reason. Lucy genuinely interested me because it looked like a strong female-led action film from noted director Luc Besson. I love Besson's The Fifth Element and I increasingly like Ms. Johansson's work (perhaps save for the Israel controversy). Indeed, I've been having something of a Scarlett year and Lucy made three after watching Don Jon, and intend to continue with Her at some point. So it was that I decided to repeat my little day out in March with a strong sense of déjà vu. Not only was I riding the train to see another 'ScarJo' (urgh) film at Cineworld, I was also in a new pair of Doc Martens - replacing the pair I broke-in seeing Under The Skin. I also didn't have a date again, so that's too many coincidences.

Spoilers, duh

Cold Earth / Семена Мёртвых

No spare fuel for cremation.

No spare fuel for bulldozers.

Wasteful of manpower to dig pits by hand.

Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851, Emanuel Leutze

It is a decade since The Day After Tomorrow was released. Not the exact date (May 28th), since I've remastered the art of missing deadlines and got beaten to the subject. It's not a seminal film, nor ground-breaking in narrative or special effects; it is, however, the last Roland Emmerich film I enjoyed. Emmerich is something of a fetishist for destruction having made many many films about disasters - most famously and well-received Independence Day, and most infamously and less well-received Godzilla. Then there was 2012 for which I presented many criticisms a year and a half ago, primarily that is was built on a non-premise and the idea that it was somehow sci-fi. Emmerich was originally going to step away from the disaster genre but unfortunately went back on his word because he believed it was too good a concept to pass-up. See my criticisms for why I honestly have no idea how those words could reflect what sets '2012' in motion. However, let's get back to discussing The Day After Tomorrow (herein TDAT).

Frigid Spring

El juicio de Paris, Enrique de Simonet, 1904

It's a title that works on so many levels. After writing the longest string of words I've ever put together, well beyond my Buffy retrospective and edging out my criticism of Star Trek Into Damnation, part one of my Scarlett Johansson indulgence left me a bit listless. And more than a little irritated that the review's been on the front page for exactly two months and garnered precisely one view - I feel like Rivers Cuomo after Pinkerton, which I haven't heard, or Bill Murray after The Razor's Edge, which I haven't seen. Er, point made. Having readers might help. All I need is a little discourage, or perhaps as with Donnie Darko over a decade ago I'm waiting for other people to discover it so that I can refresh the tree of smugness with the blood of latecomers. I haven't been as single-minded about a film since I saw Battle Royale - I've got the Under The Skin soundtrack on vinyl, a promo ad cut out of The Guardian I read on the day I saw it, and my DVD pre-order date stamped over a month ago. Despite that, I'm still far more restrained than the individual on IMDB who declared of Ms Johansson that he would happily "drink her bathwater". People like that make fans look like obsessives and ruin my chances of ever having children with her. It's spring after all - a time of fertility and flourishing of the quick.

Human Flesh is Porky Meat (Hee Hee Hee Hee)

Under The Skin, US poster, 2014

I'm not one for hype. I'm not one for opening day screenings. And I'm on holiday, so I'm not really one for getting out of bed. Despite that, I've been waiting several months now for the release of Under The Skin. The Guardian has until recently been choked (non-erotically) with articles about Lars Von Trier's magnus trollus Nymphomaniac to the expense of every other film. With that finally out of the way I saw the low-key promotion for Under The Skin begin in the run-up to a March 14th general release. Still, why so interested? Well, my interest was piqued over two years ago when I heard parts of the film were being shot in the area. And, most obviously and honestly, it's Scarlett Johansson. Not that I would see any old tripe just cause she's in it. Undeniably, though, she is a sex symbol - and I don't say that often. I once got into a minor brawl with a friend at the age of thirteen when I dared to suggest Britney Spears was unattractive. I was engaged in a daydream two weeks ago about meeting Scarlett on set via certain connections, although I realised my connection didn't extend over that boundary line. Ahem. Nonetheless, I've always been into sci-fi cinema beyond the space-opera of Star Wars and what little I'd heard of the premise intrigued me.

Spoilers for Under The Skin inbound after several paragraphs of travelogue twaddle.

COMPUTERLIEBE

Know All Men By These Presents, Coles Phillips, c1910

It seems like there should be a morose Morrisey-penned song about a flaming meteor saving us from Valentine's Day. There might well be - I haven't paid any attention to him in years, so I don't know. This isn't supposed to be my critique of Morrisey's latter-day output, opinions, and jack-assery; but consider that a summary. This is about Valentine's Day, OKCupid, and another Valentine's Day on OKCupid. Oh yes, I'm on there - I obliquely mentioned it in 2012. All that stuff I said years ago about throwing darts in lovers' eyes were the over-dramatic ramblings of a nineteen year old. Not that I retract my statements. It was two years ago while I was reading my more popular and less pseudonymous East coast counterpart's blog that I was ensnared by an OKCupid (hereafter OKC) personality test. In order to save the results of my test I had to create an account. Thus began a relatively lame journey. Sorry, that was a spoiler.