Skins on 4oD

Skins on 4oD
Originally uploaded by Catfunt.

Skins: very popular with "the younger demographic" as they say in marketing.

4oD: Channel4's VOD on PC service

4oD: Channel4's VOD on PC service
Originally uploaded by Catfunt.

Here's the current homepage of Channel4's new(ish) PC VOD service. Ugly Betty (eps 1 and 2) and Desperate Housewives are free at the moment - although you do need XP and you have to download and install an app.

The Flaming Scars at Bethan's Gig, the Spitz, 2007.

New video: Batman [doesn't] Return

From a two week animation course three years ago. The first week we messed around, and in the second week we each made a short piece. This piece is 18 seconds long although the actual animated parts are probably less than 8 seconds.

Bird: my EMO cat

This is Bird aka Cardiff aka Girlie. She's skinny and wears black all the time. She's got a weird relationship with food and won't eat if anyone's watching her. She also throws up quite a lot after having a food binge. Her favourite band is My Chemical Romance and she has a great purr (as you can hear in this video).

Spurs v Din Buc: Yol went to football, I stayed at home

Best Film, So-so Film: The Departed and Borat

The Departed is a great film based on an even better film. Borat is a so-so film that has its moments, mostly the ones that are excruciatingly painful to watch.

I'm a celebrity, get me out of here now!

'It's not "free", it's "three", "three contestants left", you fucking moron,' my wife shouts at the TV. More specifically she's shouting at the blond muppet who's presenting 'I'm a celebrity, get me out of here now!' and who turns out to be called Jeff Brazier. As a presenter he'd be described as being 'worse than totally useless' except that that accolade is more fitting for his co-presenter, the tragic Kelly Osbourne.

David Gest has just been kicked out. I blame all the kids who are voting for the young people.

Here's a picture of Myleene having a shower.

Best Book: Triksta

If you only buy one book this Christmas get Nik Cohn's Triksta, it's truly awesome. This is what the blurb on the back says:

"What lunacy would cause a 55-year-old white male, neither lean nor hungry, to embroil himself in the world of New Orleans rap, not merely as an observer, but as an active participant - ideas man, talent-spotter, lyricist, and would-be producer? And why did his experience, after many tribulations, end up so profoundly joyous and fulfilling?

Nik Cohn has loved (and hated) hip-hop since its birth, thirty years ago, and loved (and hated) New Orleans for even longer. The city has haunted him from childhood, an addiction he's never wanted to kick. But nothing prepared him for the experience of being pitched, more or less by accident, into the role of Triksta, rap impressario.

A white alien in a black world, with no funding or qualifications, and not a clue what he was doing, he had to rethink himself from scratch. Surrounded by a cast-list that included such names as Choppa and Soulja Slim, Big Ramp and Lil T, Bass Heavy, Fifth Ward Weebie, and Shorty Brown Hustle, he entered a world of tiny backstreet studios, broken-down slums and gun turfs, almost unimaginable to those who know New Orleans only as the touristic Big Easy.

"Triksta" is the story of a three-year odyssey that became all-consuming - a journey to the heart of rap, and New Orleans, and self-knowledge. Hilarious, tragic, startling, and exhilirating, sometimes all at once, it is Nik Cohn's greatest book."

But more than that and one of the many things that makes this book so good is Cohn's desire to confront what he perceives as his own internalised love (and fear) of "blackness".

Worst Film: Dreamgirls

At the end of the screener we attended the woman leaving the theatre
with her friend used the word "torturous" and she wasn't far wrong.
It's not a terrible film, it's just not very good. The songs
are bland, the script doesn't help and the characters' actions
largely don't ring true or make sense.

The film does have it's moments and the first half-hour makes promises that the film then fails to deliver on. The opening set pieces, the costumes and the drama of the talent contest creates expectations of a 'Ray'-like mix of drama, music and song with great costumes. From here it's downhill with a few bright spots: Eddie Murphy's great, mugging it up for the backrow, never less than imperious; Beyonce's performance suggests she might excel at something that pushed her a bit harder and no one's musical talent is in doubt, they've just been asked to perform some pretty plain songs.

UPDATE: My wife disagrees. She says it is a Terrible film.