A Bug's Life

Films watched: 14 (total 124). 8 cinema, 6 BluRay/DVD, 0 tv, 0 stream, 1 LoveFilm.
Bowfinger
Evolution (not David Duchovny one, weird arthouse one)
Days of Heaven
Suicide Squad
Wiener-Dog
Argo
The Apartment
Nina Forever
From a House on Willow Street (FrightFest)
The Chamber (FrightFest)
Mercy (FrightFest)
They Call Me Jeeg Robot (FrightFest)
Pet (FrightFest)
Tickled

Gigs etc: 5 (total 36)
Henry V (theatre, Cambridge)
Nine Worlds (convention, London)
Stuart Bowden: Wilting in Reverse (comedy, London)
Splatoon Fan Fest (gaming, London)
Little Shop of Horrors (theatre, London)
also FrightFest (film festival) but that's covered above

Quickly because in a rush today -
Good horror: Jeeg Robot, Nina Forever, Pet, The Chamber (why is this film about a submarine in a horror film festival? Oh, the claustrophobia. Oooohhhhh.)

Films watched: 20 (total 110). 8 cinema, 8 BluRay/DVD, 3 tv, 1 stream, 1 LoveFilm.
Confession
22 Jump Street
The Descendants
The Legend of Tarzan
Rear Window
Ghostbusters
The Neon Demon
Maggie's Plan
Appropriate Behaviour
The Woodsman and The Rain
The BFG
The Way Way Back
Star Trek Beyond
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeousie
Caesar Must Die
Jason Bourne
Finding Dory
The Commune
Napoleon Dynamite
Tower Heist

Gigs etc: 4 (total 31)
Shit Faced Shakespeare (comedy, London)
The Horne Section (gig/comedy, London)
Twelfth Night (theatre, Cambridge)
Millennium Mills, Aino Tytti (sound, Cambridge)

Millennium Mills was very interesting - a chap spent a year recording various sounds in a derelict mill in Docklands - wind, internal noises, mechanical, birds, water, traffic, singers echoing through the spaces. All layered to powerful and sometimes eerie effect, presented with stills of the area fading into each other to play with scale and texture.
EDIT: Now with pictures (on Facebook) here

I saw a lot of films at the cinema in July, I did the radio review show twice. Maggie's Plan was good (I've not been a Gerwig fan before, but the scene with the toe is one of the funniest I've seen this year), and I enjoyed Star Trek and Ghostbusters. BFG is sweet and dark and creepy, lovely details and design. I am having no end of fun comparing Jason Bourne and Finding Dory, as my twitter followers will know - an amnesiac tracking down secrets about their family! He's from the C.I.A., she's from the S.E.A.! When in a tight spot they look around, assess the situation, and use whatever is to hand - a biro, a chair leg, a fountain. Chase scenes!

Lots of good DVDs too. The Woodsman and The Rain is a good one to show friends who are becoming obsessive about filmmaking (I wonder why London Gigging Buddy showed me it?), wrapped up in the excitement and urgency of the shoot, also a subtle tale of father/son relationships and growth of confidence, all in a natural environment rather than Hollywood.
Caesar Must Die is filmed in a prison, with the inmates taking the roles in a production. It's the most affecting version of Julius Caesar I've seen.

Films watched: 7 (total 90). 3 cinema, 3 BluRay/DVD, 1 stream, 0 LoveFilm.
Blow Out
The Nice Guys
Mustang
Theatre of Blood
Tale of Tales
What We Do In The Shadows (rewatch)
Where You're Meant To Be

Gigs etc: 7 (total 27)
Stewart Lee (comedy, London)
Half Man Half Biscuit (gig, Cambridge)
Fear of Men (gig, London)
Autolux (gig, London)
The Play That Goes Wrong (theatre, London)
David Cross (comedy, London)
Yeti Lane (gig, London)

So few films! I thought last month was slight. Blow Out was recommended for sound recording purposes (John Travolta, conspiracy, and lots of magnetic tape); The Nice Guys was a hoot; Where You're Meant To Be was Aidan Moffat on a Scottish folk music tour, rewriting the songs for a modern audience - with Q and A and a live performance afterwards, very convivial evening.

Great gigs! Was having a glum and grim evening on 28th, then Yeti Lane started playing and all was good. Autolux are like the Sirens. You listen to their CD and it is haunting, intriguing and exciting, so you decide to go closer, to a live gig. Where they dash you to death on the rocks until you are just pulp and bone fragments. But in a good way.

On Saturday I was filming in Ely Cathedral.
"You'll be on the camera up in the niche by the clock. It's quite high up. Is that ok?"
Bridget looks down the nave. Can't see a clock. Looks up. And up. And up. Argh!

Really non-scary though, a yard-wide walkway set a foot deep into the stone, with close-ish pillars behind and that wall in front where the clock is. The wall is a yard thick and the solidity is reassuring, I didn't turn green at all.

Films watched: 12 (total 83). 8 cinema, 3 BluRay/DVD, 1 tv, 0 LoveFilm.
Point Break (rewatch)
Son of Saul
Demolition
Captain America: Civil War
Tindersticks pre-event screening, four local filmmakers
The Look of Silence (rewatch)
Ryd Cook - local short film screenings
A Hologram For the King
All Is Lost
Sister Act (rewatch)
Zero for Conduct
Love and Friendship

Gigs etc: 5 (total 20)
Linton Zoo
Fred's House (gig, Cambridge)
Sara Pascoe (comedy, London)
Eddie Izzard (comedy, Cambridge)
Shit-Faced Shakespeare (comedy theatre, London)

Not my filmiest month! Love and Friendship was very funny, Jane Austen adaptation, in cinemas now and recommended. Also liked A Hologram For the King, and Son of Saul. Zero for Conduct is one of these terribly influential films, 1933 French about anarchic schoolkids, with some amazing scenes. I'm now getting copies of things (like If....) that it influenced.

Ryd's screening included (links here) Single to London, which I did 1AD for (various screenings, is at Toronto Smartphone Film Festival this weekend).

A much better month for gigs, but I missed two due to bad health (Dandy Warhols and Suuns), and we only caught the last 20 mins of the Shakespeare due to an incident on the train line. I'm still ambivalent as to whether it's cringey or funny, to watch a show where one actor is thoroughly drunk. Bit of both. Lots of opportunities for improv.

Films watched: 16 (total 71). 11 cinema, 1 stream, 3 BluRay/DVD, 1 tv, 1 LoveFilm.
Histoire(s) du Cinéma
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
Barton Fink
Eddie the Eagle
Run Lola Run
Eye in the Sky
Runaway Jury
Stalker
The Sacrifice
Midnight Special
The Jungle Book
In the Heat of the Night
Mapplethorpe: Look At The Pictures
Louder Than Bombs
Sci-Fi London Shorts 5
Fireworks Wednesday

Gigs etc: 4 (total 15)
Rob Beckett (comedy, London)
AKDK (gig, London)
Bridget Christie (comedy, Cambridge)
Bank of England museum

And watched the last 16 episodes of Breaking Bad over a week.

The Godard Histoire(s) was pretty hard going, 3 DVDs (from Lovefilm), juxtaposition of images, also of multiple voices and printed text. It felt like it ought to be profound in an expressionistic or Jungian way while watching, but I remember little of it. The last two Tarkovskys were easier, but it will take a second watching (in my Copious Spare Time) to say anything much intelligent about them.

Been a long time since I did a Gratuitous Icon Post! Location sound recording. It's about time I had one for filmmaking. This is from a set of photos by Dave at Cre8ive Spaces.
A film (Life) I did sound for last year has been accepted to a film festival competition, so that's good news.

Films watched: 20 (total 55). 12 cinema, 1 stream, 3 BluRay/DVD, 4 tv, 0 LoveFilm.
Waitress
Ivan's Childhood
Hitchcock/Truffaut
Hail, Caesar
Watersprite Award winners (shorts)
The Mirror
Andrei Rublev
Taxi Driver
High-Rise
Zodiac (rewatch)
Zootropolis
Nostalgia
10 Cloverfield Lane
Marguerite
High-Rise (rewatch)
Pacific Rim (rewatch on friend's New Large Telly, vg)
The Adjustment Bureau
Time Bandits
War Horse
Bad Teacher

Gigs etc (8-11)
Alice in Wonderland (exhibition, British Library)
Of Montreal (gig, London)
Akhnaten (opera, London)
Bo Ningen (gig, London)

I think I filled March with interesting things to take my mind off work! Akhnaten was amazing, stunningly staged, I was gripped throughout even though it was nearly 3 hours of hypnotic music and slow slow movements.

My film watching was driven by Bums on Seats radio show and a Tarkovsky season - I'd only seen Solaris, and the Picturehouse were showing all seven films, one per day. They're repeating them in batches to mid April and I hope to complete the set. I need to not pick my favourite seat though, it's far too comfortable, and in the snug cinema I found it hard to keep awake, which was a massive waste of the experience. I watched High-Rise, Marguerite, 10 Cloverfield Lane and Zootropolis for the radio - High-Rise twice as I wanted to catch more of how the edit and sound worked. The kaleidoscope motif used in the posters appears in the editing too; the jumble through of close living. Marguerite was just lovely, but with an interesting darker undercurrent of deception running through the whole piece, not just people kindly mis-praising her singing. I enjoyed watching the elements of that unfold and entangle. Hail, Caesar was good fun. No, I had never seen Taxi Driver or Time Bandits before March.

Harvest, for the Sci Fi 48 Hour Film Challenge - filmed this weekend

Sci-Fi 48HR Film Challenge - HARVEST from Little Dragon Films on Vimeo.

The Altar, shot in the Leper Chapel in January to get some period footage. Under a minute! We got to the final three for a project bid with this. You may remember this from posts such as "Help, Tudors wanted" - thanks for the Tudors!
https://vimeo.com/153551045

... is perhaps not the best day to start telling people "I left my job and now I'm making films" but it is true! That's what's been going on in the friends filter for the last couple of months, my last day was Thursday.

I had probably the most thoughtful leaving gifts ever - a book I'd had on my Amazon wish list but the colleague didn't know that when he picked it, a director's chair with my name printed on it, and one person gave me an amazing gift - an 8mm camera she'd had lying around forever. 1960s but in great condition. Need to figure out how to work it now!

I've got a good head of momentum up and am rushing straight into doing sound recording this weekend for Sci Fi 48 hour challenge, then learning and doing sound design for a short that someone in my filmmaking group made. It's a good film so I have high standards to immediately acquire and live up to...

After seven years, four months and three weeks, it's time for a change.