Bye Bye Boat

Managed to catch the Roskilde bound Sea Stallion on it's way out of Dublin Bay, on Sunday. 

Darklight 2008

I spent chunks of the weekend popping in and out of various events running in the Darklight Festival. This is the second year the festival has run in June, having previously been an Autumnal thing, and to be honest I preferred the old time slot. The Summer is becoming saturated with things to do.

€50 bought you access to pretty much everything and considering the variety screenings and the caliber of some of the speakers, it was terrific value.

Friday involved running between different talks some of which were in Filmbase and some in the Lighthouse. 

The Lighthouse hosted the Virtual Cinema Symposium, and included on the panel Barry Ryan from Warp x "a sustainable digital studio driven by creative talent and a dynamic business model that rewards everyone involved in the films" His contribution was particularly interesting and inspiring to me. Warp X was created to fastrack low budget filmmaking by, well, just gettiing on with it. Their mission was to produce 6 films in 3 years and they are bang on schedule. At the Q&A afterward someone suggested setting up a film making manifesto based around darklight not unlike the Dogma movement. Personally I'd be more interested in "a sustainable digital studio driven by creative talent and a dynamic business model that rewards everyone involved in the films"

Viral Marketing was on the agenda later in a symposium chaired by Steve McCormack from Wildwave. There were some terrific panelists here too, the producer of Bebos Sophies Diaries and Bandy Toaster. 

It turned out that Darklight had indeed been behind the dodgy video that was knocking around last week. They seeded it with a bunch of bloggers and waited for things to take off. It was, sadly, rubbish and someone thought better of things and pulled it. 

I didn't get to see the Virtual Cinema Shorts, but no doubt they will be online soon, I heard they are fab.

On Saturday we went to a screening of Dead Mans Shoes, followed by a short film Dog Altogether and a Q&A with the Actor/Writer/Director, Paddy Considine.

The only thing we had a  chance to go to on Sunday was the 4Day Movie, a collaberation by 30 odd people, it was worth the trip into town and a great end to the festival. 

It's a definite on next years calendar!

Google Gay Pride

And you get a neat little rainbow divider between the search listings and the ads!

Don't tell Heinz

Joan As A Policewoman in Tripod.

We went to see JAPW in Tripod last night, Great show! It was just Ms Joan Wasser, drummer Parker Kindred (great voice too), and Bass player Rainy Orteca, who also played support as Dead Air.

The first 45 minutes or so was slow and Torchy and built up to a big drumming crescendo with Furious. After that she stayed up and loud to the end. 

Joan broke her guitar at her Cork Gig the night before, and was having tuning problems with the replacement, this led to a lot of tuning pauses, with the audience calling out requests. 

She's very cool and had us all giggling, "Yes, Yes", she'd drawl, "I'll get to that" To be honest, I think the crowd was a bit shy...then someone called out "Are you going to Electric Picnic?" and she shouted "Yes Yes", and we all cheered.

It was a fun night, and we came home with a signed CD!

Under My Umbrella

23rd June, 6.30am, Dublin City Council, Fishamble St Entrance.

Nicely Mixed and Mashed

Girl Talk is a US Club DJ whose real name is Gregg Giles, and his latest offering Feed The Animals is available here. It's not unlike The Evolution Of Dance, in that it contains so many snippets from so many tracks that as soon as you have your ears around one another has started. It's magical and massive and you can download it for whatever price you choose, I chose to pay, only fair with the dollar so weak I figure

Darklight? F*** Me.

The Darklight Film Festival, taking place in Dublin next week (seem to ) have created this video to, umm, I dunno, like, go viral on them or something. I say seem to because although Darklight branding is used, there is no mention of the video on the Darklight site.
For a festival that is so cutting edge, this is grim and disappointing fare indeed. The idea seems to be that vox popping people saying F**K is hilarious, hell, what do I know, maybe it is. Suffice to say my boat is not floated.
It's not that I'm against the F word mind you, and to prove it I'm posting a truly ingenious and hilarious scene from The Wire that uses the F word in all it's glory.




UPDATE - IF YOU CLICK ON THE LINK NOW YOU GET THE MESSAGE "This video has been removed by the user."

Hmmmmm....I wonder who had second thoughts?

Ireland rejects the Lisbon Treaty

Last thinking person out, switch of the light, these people prefer to be in the dark.

Fun with Mobiles

This is doing the rounds at the moment. Don't think it's really possible, though I heard them trying it on the Ray D'arcy show. First all their phones were diverting to voicemail before they had time to have any effect, after that it all went a bit messy....either way the corn didn't pop!

Much more realistic is this video., If I had microwaved my last phone I'm pretty sure this is what would have happened.

Vote Yes to Lisbon

I'm voting Yes today, and so should you.

If one more person tells me they are voting No the punish the Government I am going to hit the roof. (like dude, that's one of the many things elections are for, and this ain't that Duh)

Una Makes some pretty good points about the reasons for voting yes here, which I am in full agreement with, except for the bit about micro chips which I think are a little like cardboard.

Bye for now Hilary

"I endorse him, and throw my full support behind him. And I ask all of you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me"

It's Alive Inside

I've always loved this particular guiness building on James St. Any time I've passed the shutter door has been closed and I presumed it was some sort of Entrance for carts or trucks. Going past today the shutter was open and it turns out it really is alive inside.

It's some sort of pump house I guess.