I went to the panto at the Playhouse with Anders & Nick last week. Now, I've got to be honest, at about 2 o clock that afternoon I was feeling really tired and really just wanted to ditch the panto and have a night snuggled up on the sofa watching some dreadful TV and taking it easy. Partly this was down to the tiredness and partly down to my aversion to pantos. I've just always thought they would be bawdy, childish and get infuriated by all the "he's behind you" shouting. I think I went to see a particularly bad one as a child. I have a memory of tiny me all red faced and angry being made to shout "He's behind you" for about the fifteenth time. I used to hate it when people deliberately used to pretend not to know/see things. Sounds like I was an angry child. Weird.
Anyway, off we went to see Mother Goose, rather reluctantly, had a quick bite to eat at Cast (burger, very nice) and loaded up on sweeties for the performance. About 10 minutes in I think the first "Boo!" squeaked past my lips. About 20 minutes in I was laughing along at the one liners and ad-libs. Before the first act ended I was joining in with the singing, cheers and jeers with all my heart. I loved it! It was genuinely funny, the costumes and set were bright and spangly, the songs were fun and I didn't have to repeat chants 10 times to get anything to happen. They had a really nice balance between stuff for kids and adults, between playing it knowingly and getting involved in the performance and between the different characters. I've always been pretty certain that the panto wouldn't be for me, but I loved it and would recommend it to anyone.
On Friday we were hosting two gigs - one a proper Hello Thor gig at Spanky Van Dykes, with Injured Birds & We Show Up On Radar playing live - one a Broadway gig with Anders doing the organising, a celebration of Scandinavian sounds called Nordic Noise, with a Cardigans For Goalposts element thrown in.
Thankfully both were a great success, with lots of nice comments and some awesome performances. I won't talk about them all, but just want to record that We Show Up On Radar played with their full band for only the 3rd time. They were great. Having a fuller sound just totally makes sense and gives the songs a proper setting in which they can sparkle. The full band brings a bit more power and confidence to the performance as well as the tunes and everything just seems really right. I can't wait to see them again.
Here are a few of my favourite pics from the evening:
See more pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hellothor/sets/72157625467734169/
- Daddy Bones' Birthday at Broadway on Saturday - This is going to be great. The Yeah I'll Play It Later DJs will be on the decks, lots of lovely people will be hanging out and dancing. FUN.
Yesterday me and Anders saw Metropolis at the Broadway. I'll be honest, I really wasn't sure about going. In fact, I was chatting to Nick on the phone just before, declaring "I don't even like songs without words and they're only 3 minutes long!" I had reservations about the length of the film and the length of time it could hold my attention for without any dialogue. In fact I loved it. It was fascinating and beautiful and I barely missed the dialogue/ ambient sounds (footsteps, doors closing etc) after the first 5 minutes. It was definitely a bit long though and I definitely had a little cat nap at the end. In fact as soon as we got home after I had to go to bed. I felt really drained, I think something in the focus and concentration needed for a film without dialogue with a pretty involved storyline just wiped me out.
The film is amazingly well restored which makes it a pleasure to watch - not like some grainy/scratchy/blurry old films. You could see the nuance of expression and it didn't feel too broad and over-acted because of that. Plus you could really see the details of costumes & sets and (even though it sounds silly) I really appreciated much more how people from the olden days (1927 to be exact) actually look pretty similar to people from nowadays. I think they always look so different in photos - stiff & still - that they feel really removed from me and my life. Seeing them crisp and clear moving and talking (silently) made it feel much more relevant for me. In fact, I thought the central male character was reminiscent of Johnny Depp & Ray Liotta.
There were some amazing things in it, and I kept wondering afterwards how much of the stuff we were seeing had been invented by 1927 and how much was sci-fi prediction genius from the director.
For example, cars... I just checked, and they started being mass-produced in around 1910. Still, there were scenes with four lanes of traffic winding through the Metropolis, which just looked normal to me as a commuter, but in 1927 surely would have seemed a bit crazy?
The Empire State was built by 1931, so I guess the visual of this very tall, imposing, dominant city wouldn't be so unusual at the time. Still, if you were from a small town in England this would have been like Futurama looks to us now I reckon.
There's a scene where the boss of the city talks to one of his workers via telephone & TV screen - like the buzzer systems you get in flats. They were only just inventing television in the 1920s, never mind it being readily available in people's homes.
Finally then, here's the trailer:
And here's a clip I borrowed from Joey's blog, because it shows this incredible dance scene where the evil version of Maria dances and bewitches men into duelling and fighting. Check out how bewitched they are:
Plus you can see some of the effects Lang used, back in 1927 for chrissakes! They did stuff like combining miniature models of sets with real people using mirrors, with everything looking in perfect scale. They also did amazing scenes like the transformation (scene shown in the trailer) manually - exposing each individual piece of film as many as 30 times for shots which ended up lasting only about 10 seconds. Incredible.
I really enjoyed this as an experience at the cinema, and as an experience of seeing the result of lots of people's labours of love looking so beautiful up on screen.
I realised I haven't posted or put up any pics since the Hello Thor/ Fists EP Launch at the Rescue Rooms on the 9th April. What an amazing night. ALL the bands were brilliant. Escapologists had a hard slot being first on, but totally set the tone for a great night with their performance. Pilgrim Fathers killed with a big rock set and lots of great posturing from frontman Shelf. Swimming were brilliant and it was awesome to hear one of my favourite songs (Tigershark) live. Then Fists rocked up and played the best set I think I might've ever seen them play. It was an amazing way to launch the new Fists Olympic Hits EP and lots of people went home with copies. If you didn't get one you can buy them at http://www.hellothor.com/ or on amazon etc.
Here's some pics (apologies for the variable quality - not much light in the Rescue Rooms it turns out): (*Random order is due to the intensely annoying new Blogspot editing*)
Fool's Gold Loaf? It's what killed Elvis and recently our kitchen turned into a film studio when we helped Burly Nagasaki to try and make a music video for the release of their forthcoming album. We heard the album too, it's GREAT! They recorded it in a month for the RPM challenge, doing it all in February, and it sounds awesome. Can't WAIT for their Launch Party at the Chameleon on the 7th May (I think). Hopefully some of the footage we shot will also be useable so you might get to see the horror that is a FOOLS GOLD LOAF - AKA A jar of peanut butter, a jar of jam, a whole heap of bacon and a massive buttered loaf. It tasted disgusting and was definitely a month's worth of calories in one go. Elvis used to eat them as a midnight snack. Unbelievable. here we are filming:
Fun!
This week: off to see Greenberg at the Broadway on Thursday (part of Screenlit), hopefully just relaxing on Friday then it's Dolly Disco time on Saturday! It's at Moog, Nick (Hello Thor) & Daddy Bones & Abi are DJing, so it should be ace!
I've been super busy lately (studying, sorting out the next Hello Thor releases and snowed under at work) and so haven't had chance to post about this great looking event...
Prussian Projekte have been doing lots of great stuff - just round the corner from us in Sherwood too! - and this promises to be no exception.
To coincide with the exhibition launch at Broadway there's a free showing of Holes, a great film based on a cracking kids book. It's very charming and stars Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voigt, Henry Winkler (the Fonz!) and Eartha Kitt! As well as Shia LaBeouf before everyone started hating him.
To find out more you can check out the Facebook event or contact Broadway or email info@prussianprojekte.com
Hello and welcome to our blog.
It's about the things which are important in our lives: music, art, performance, parties, photos, food and friends. Plus we occasionally see fit to post up some fun things we've found on the net, or general meanderings about our day-to-day lives.
