Wonderhorse

The smile isn’t quite so infectious, but I find it easier to reach things on high shelves.

24.

Why on earth do I want to work with films?

It all started in the Regal cinema, Cirencester, in the very early nineties. Somewhere in that smoky, dodgy building with its sticky floor and bingo hall, is where the spark started, that I’ve never been able to shift. I graduated at 23 thinking I didn’t have a clue about my aspirations, like so many others. I have come to realise that my childhood daydreams, of one day owning my very own cinema, maybe weren’t so fantastical after all.

I don’t want to make films. I often want to write about films, but that’s certainly not my main goal. I want to show people films. I want to watch films and understand they’re worth something incredibly important and find space to share these magic creatures with a wider room of eyes, all staring and sparkling and flinching and crying in the dark. I want to witness that loaded silence, afterwards, when they know they’ve witnessed something special. And then I want them to all go to the pub, together, and discuss in minute detail, and with potent enthusiasm, the excitement, the music, their favourite parts, their favourite people. In short, going to the cinema, and then putting the world to rights afterwards is my absolute favourite thing. Such a wonderful escape. Sitting in the dark, all alone in a crowded room.

I love passing it on. I would love to be able to pass it on without 3D, or overpriced popcorn, or supersized drinks. I want to learn more about management, about marketing, especially digitally, about venues and shaping incredible film nights and events and festivals which do justice to the magic. I want a job which gives me hope that I am edging towards my childhood daydream, because who in this world gets to do that? In the hope that I could one day pass on the pleasure, the spark, to someone else, someone who didn’t have the good fortune to be born round the corner from an independent cinema. Granted, I seem to remember the Regal once being voted the UK’s third worst cinema – perhaps due to its sticky carpets – but it was my cinema, and it was cheap, and cold, and real, and had history, and I learnt a lot staring at that screen. Cinema doesn’t have to be shiny. Cinema doesn’t have to only be business. Cinema is true passion, entertainment, and love. It should still be as exciting as your first ever visit, when your legs didn’t touch the floor and you felt like the screen was going to swallow you up in an instant. And that’s why I want to work with film.

I couldn’t save the Regal. It lost its place in the modern landscape of film and got bulldozed when I was about fifteen. I never got to go on a date there, and I will never get to take my kids there and bore them with stories of my celluloid education. But if I could pass on that feeling, see it being created somewhere else, it would be worth it. 

Here is a man, a wonderful man, And I should remember more often that I love him.

What I Have Been Watching (3)

Scorsese. Buscemi. And HBO’s ongoing dedication to bringing cinematic quality goods to your small screen - Boardwalk Empire. Really, really, very good, and I’m only three episodes in. Seems my current visual obsessions are stuck somewhere between the 20s and 50s. Oh well, they look fantastic. 

What I Have Been Watching (2)

Any Human Heart. Basically, to be used as a blueprint for how incredible books should be adapted from now on. Sunday night TV has never been better.

What I Have Been Watching (1)

Rewatched Glorious 39, by the glorious Stephen Poliakoff, and wondering again why people don’t rave over him so much. Perhaps it’s all the BBC dramas, but stuff like this was made for the big screen. Can’t say no to Bill Nighy and Christopher Lee amongst others, but if you stumble across Perfect Strangers, bloody well give that a watch too. Gorgeous.

What’s The Blues, When You’ve Got The Greys?

For those of you occasionally read my many internet ramblings, or in fact know me in real life (the lines are blurring), I do probably seem to bang on about Frightened Rabbit rather a lot. So on this grey Sunday I thought they deserved a blog post all of their own. And due to the fact that in a mere five days I will watch them for the second time, almost exactly a year since the first, I probably won’t listen to anything else all week.

In what has turned out to be one of the best gestures ever, my brother heard the second album, immediately decided I would love it, got a copy and posted it my way. Surely a surprise CD through your letter box is one of the most lovely ways to discover what would turn out to be one of my favourite bands.

In fact, something about a craggy Scottish accent makes me gravitate towards certain music like a sneaky mouse towards cheese. From age old appreciation of Idlewild, to a teen love of Biffy and now The Twilight Sad, and of course Frightened Rabbit. The melancholy twang of a Scot does something to me. 

So roll on Friday at the Phoenix, and roll on trying not to cry, and remembering why things like this carry me through, and make it all worthwhile.

And get some Frightened Rabbit in your life:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThshO9gQwy8

When it’s all gone, something carries on

And it’s not morbid at all

Just that nature’s had enough of you

When my blood stops, someone else’s will not

When my head rolls off, someone else’s will turn

But while I’m alive, I’ll make tiny changes to earth

I want to get drunk and dance.

I am feeling a strong, creeping and imminently overwhelming sense of claustrophobia. Itchy feet. Constant murmuring. My brain is slowing down. Frustration.

What has this got to do with Patti Smith? Not heaps, granted, but why does it matter. You should always have something to look forward to. I am job hunting, and though this has the (slim, distant) potential for excitement, the real thing I am looking forward to is space. Space away from bags and boxes, space away from this crowded room, space away even from people. My own space, and noise, where I can sing when I want and dance when I want and be me again.

This is where Patti Smith comes into the mix. So there will be a playlist, just watching and forming and waiting and growing for that roundabout time in the not too distant future when I get to be me again. And in actual fact, and in all honesty, I am rather a noisy horse.

So here’s to Patti. Here’s to noise. Here’s to me dancing in my own house. 

‘You should always have something to look forward to, even if it’s just lunch’

Today, in the charity shop haul, a cocktail shaker was purchased for the admirable sum of fifty pence. The recipes printed on said (brilliant) cocktail shaker include that of a Hell Man. As far as I can make out, it’s basically a Pink Gin Tonic with the ratios altered to get you far more drunk.

It seems wonderful.

And when we see in the new year, and housewarm, simultaneously, this may be my drink of choice. As far as guinea-pigging the recipe goes, I may even combine it with the above - alone, of an afternoon, and at the next available opportunity.

I wonder what Patti Smith would say.

POP IS NOT A DIRTY WORD*

I don’t listen to the radio**. When I do, I get annoyed that I dislike so much new music. I’m better off finding the bits I really enjoy through recommendations, playlists, music blogs and the like. However, this is a shame because I do, in fact, love good pop music, and not just the eighties kind. 

When pondering this on the bus the other morning, (after having Cheryl Cole stuck in my head) I remembered Biology by Girls Aloud, the most weirdly structured popular song of the decade - enjoy above. It was always one of those pop songs which was just a cut above the rest, as was much of Girls Aloud’s output before they disbanded, or went on hiatus, or whatever. Oh, except their ballads; they were pants. 

So it’s songs like Biology which act as a reminder to me that sometimes I should listen to the radio, or watch shitty music tv, just in case I stumble across something I don’t find entirely reprehensible.

Also as a reminder that despite all evidence, I don’t hate Katy Perry nearly as much as I’m supposed to. She, like Girls Aloud, I’m sure has some great producers behind her. In my longtime love of both covers and remixes, here are a few reasons why I’m currently, embarrassingly, enjoying Teenage Dream, and less embarrassing ways for you to do so:

http://stadiumsandshrines.com/?p=519

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYKnTeclmOs&feature=channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THUk6dVwbyE

Maybe I will listen to the radio this week.

* I’m sure this phrase has been uttered before, but I personally stole it from Dan Beames. You can read these six words, and more, here: 

http://danbeames.blogspot.com/

** except Radio Four.

Barefoot In The Park

Oddly appropriate this week, though has now raised concerns I may act as ‘crazy’ as Jane Fonda when we move into the new flat. But her getting excited when furnishing the tiny abode, getting excited when Robert Redford comes home from work and generally getting excitably tipsy at any opportunity is perfect.

Getting the phone connected.. wondering how to fit the bed into the tiny room.. being freezing because you haven’t worked out how to turn the radiator on.. Sit back for the next couple of weeks and witness me do a Jane Fonda.

I thought I had seen it before.. now I want to watch it again. 

Also, I want us to be living in NYC and I want it to be 1967.