Better Late Than Never

I have just finished watching the film The Lives of Others (or to give it its proper German title, Das Leben der Anderen) I’ve been meaning to see it for 2 years now (I would have caught it in the cinema but was out of the country at the time) but somehow it kept getting bumped down the list.

On its release it seemed to get pretty universally rave reviews,  countless vigorous recommendations from various friends and it won the best foreign language film Oscar (not that an Oscar necessarily means much). All of which made me a little apprehensive as I sat down to watch it that it might not live up to the hype. I needn’t have worried, and oh how I wish I hadn’t waited so long to see it. All I want to do is talk about it, and everyone I know who’s seen it saw it 2 years ago. Set in East Berlin in 1984 its basically the story of a Stasi agent who spies on a playright. If you haven’t seen it yet that’s all I’m going to give away, but I implore you to see it.

The Lives of Others is utterly utterly wonderful. A beautiful piece of film making, compelling, moving, brilliantly understated, sublime. There just aren’t enough superlatives. Its the best film I’ve seen in years and goes straight into my top 3 or 4 of all time. Beautifully shot, wonderfully acted, especially by Ulrich Mühe playing the leading role who puts in an astonishing performance and who sadly died, aged 54, only months after the film was made. Even more astonishing is the fact that it was written and directed by the rather wonderfully named Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, and was his first feature film. That’s an astounding achievement. I’ll say it again, if you haven’t seen this film  I implore you to do so. You wont regret it.

Combined the likes of The Counterfeiters, Downfall and Der Baader Meinhoff Komplex it really seems that German cinema has struck a rich seam of talent right now. Right I’m off to watch The Lives of Others again.

Here’s the trailer.

European Court Condems Misuse Of Section 44

In an earlier post I commented on the police use of their stop and search powers under Section 44 of the Anti Terrorism Act 2000, specifically in relation to how its use has affected photographers, although I also touched on wider concerns regarding civil liberties in general. Well the European Court of Human Rights have just ruled that the police’s indiscriminate use of these powers without the need for specific suspicion is an infringement on the individuals right to privacy and is therefore illegal. It will be interesting to see the government’s response. Full story from The Guardian can be found here.

All Covered In Snow

I don’t know why all of a sudden I’m finding lots of really interesting arial photos, but here’s an awesome picture of the UK totally covered in snow. Taken by a NASA satellite. It certainly has been a wintery couple of weeks.

Some Interesting Stuff

I was spending the day today researching things for an upcoming job. As usual when doing this sort of thing you often find yourself wondering off down unexpected alleys that form the wonderful world of the information super highway.

I came across some old covers of Ray Gun. I’d completely forgotten how much I used to love the design of that magazine. The man responsible was Chris Ashworth, their art director. Turns out he’s done some pretty cool stuff since then too. He’s also apparently the “Executive Global Creative Director” of Getty Images, which sound pretty wanky, but I wont hold that against him. I think he’s a genius. If  you’re into graphic design check out his website

Then I came across some amazing aerial photographs. Turns out they’re RAF reconnaissance photos from World War 2. So obviously they’re predominantly of German cities. They’re part of an archive that’s been put online by the RCAHMS. Its apparently the largest collection of arial photographs in the world. In time they hope to make available their entire archive of over 4 million photographs. The website is not exactly user friendly, but a good place to while away a bit of time. Here are some pictures of the Olympic stadium and the rather wonderful and now sadly disused Templehoff airport in Berlin.

They reminded me of this rather amazing arial photo of ground zero

Amazing in its clarity and detail. You don’t really get to see such high quality images from this perspective very often. Also what struck me about it was that considering the scale of the destruction the actual area of devestation seems tiny. If you want to look for yourself you can find the link to download this image here. Its quite a big file though.

After wallowing around the world of arial photography for a while I found out via twitter that apparently 40cm of snow could fall on dear old London tomorrow. No doubt this prediction will prove to be somewhat hysterical but I had been planning to finally go and see the Design Real exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery. Seeing as even 1cm of snow makes London capitulate and grind to a halt I decided to hot foot it over to Hyde Park and check it out this afternoon. Glad I did it was pretty cool. Once you get over the Industrial design masquerading as art premise you can just appreciate the very diverse products, from the spoilers from a Lamborghini to aeroplane seats to robots to body armour, for what they are. There’s some pretty damn clever people out there. Well worth a visit. It’s on until the  7th February

If you can’t make it then there is this excellent website: www.design-real.com

At last its over

So twelfth night is almost upon us. Thank god for that, we can all get back to normal. I don’t mean to be all Scrooge like and bah humbug but; I bloody hate Christmas. I’m an atheist and my family is weird, disparate and not really very close. So really I have nothing much to celebrate. Christmas for me is just  an expensive time of misplaced obligations. There you are, that good old Catholic guilt. That’s why I’m an atheist. If I was a Christian I’d be well and truly pissed off at the sickly cheap commercialisation of what is presumably one of your most important religious celebrations. Even being the heathen  I am it still makes me faintly nauseous.

Want a festive photo? Well here you are, its as festive as you’re going to get from me. Its the Uskmouth power station as seen from the Newport Wetlands nature reserve. Ahh, the Boxing Day walk where everybody pretends to take a remote interest in each others lives, even though we can only be bothered to see each other once a year. The storm clouds rolled back, the winter afternoon light became really rather beautiful, a rainbow appeared and photographically speaking I got quite excited. See you can find pleasure in the strangest of places.

Then there’s New Year. Actually I was quite pleased for it to arrive. 2009 has been far from great for many reasons. New Year’s Eve is almost always anti climatic. Hugh Heffner once described it as “amateur’s night”, which I think is a pretty spot on assessment. This year it wasn’t too bad all things considered. A little bittersweet as four very good friends left London in mid December to go and live in Australia, it would have been nice to celebrate with them. Two of them married each other in Melbourne on 2nd Jan. Gutted I couldn’t have been there.

So here’s a New Years picture. Good spot to watch from eh?

I’m really not the cynical miserable sod these words appear to paint me as, although the words are genuine.

Happy New Year everyone. I hope 2010 brings you everything you hope for.