Urban Magic

Graffiti

Posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 in London | 4 Comments

I like graffiti!

But for now, I’ll let the photos do the talking….

Caledonian Road

Kings Cross

Waterloo Bridge

Lewisham

Essex Road

Rathbone Place

South Bank

Chapel Market

Moon/Apollo 13/Sunshine

Posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 in Misc. | 1 Comment

So, a few days ago, I went to the cinema with my Dad, to see Moon.  First up, don’t get the impression that my Dad is the only person I go to the cinema with.  He’s just the only person who is willing to see films with me that are either a) science fiction or b) very bad, since most other people in my life are either operating in different genres or suffer from taste.
Second, Moon is really very good!  I had hopes, since it seemed to be one of the very few films set in space which seemed to involve both a stark space station and a complete lack of drooling aliens.  Not that I have any problem with drooling aliens; some of the best bits of cinema I’ve ever seen involve ridiculous quantities of slime.  But Moon was something entirely different and arguably better, ticking all the boxes from disturbing through to quaintly comic with a hefty dose of countdown tension, jubilation and sadness.  A brilliant example of what can be done with one carefully and elegantly lived-in set, one extremely good actor and some amazingly good editing; recommended to all who like their science fiction high on the exploration-of-humanity and low on drooling aliens factor!

While we’re talking about the moon…

… I should probably mention that Apollo 13is on my shelf as one of my all-time favourite films.  Yes, there is quite a lot of America-praising going on in there, and it’s remarkable that one small space ship managed to fit three astronauts, a camerman and a small brass band which could come in movingly over particularly patriotic moments, but even if the story wasn’t gripping in itself, it’s a fantastic bit of craft.   Apollo 13 manages to pull off the ultimate narrative trick – it tells a story, the end of which we all know, and yet manages to keep you tense and gripped throughout.  It is a very difficult thing to describe without actually having the film in front of you, but it contains one of my all-time favourite pieces of narrative succinctness.  First you need the situation – the Apollo space module has been half ripped to shreds by an explosion in the oxygen tanks, it’s lost air, it’s lost power, it’s lost heat, the astronauts have been thrown onto the wrong trajectory, been poisoned by CO2, suffered disease, hypothermia and haven’t slept for days, and finally, the earth is in sight.  They de-couple from the module that suffered the original fault and for the first time see the extent of the damage.  They radio Earth, reporting on what they see, damage all along the side, right up to the heat shield.  It’s spoken calmly and carefully, professionals assessing the damage.

On earth, in the control room, character A receives the news, walks up to character B while all around them the room chatters with the planning process of how to bring the ship safely to land, and says flatly, ‘The heat shield.’

Immediately on every sofa and cinema seat where this is playing, the audience sits back, banging its head with its hands and goes, ‘no, seriously?  You’re shitting me.  They’ve gone through all this and now there’s something wrong with the heat shield?’

Three little words – the heat shield – and the brief burst of hope that the audience had at seeing earth out of the space module window is once again shunted back beneath a shudder of ‘oh shit really?’ and somehow, though we know, we all know, that they make it home, Apollo 13 manages to pull off the trick of making us cringe inside.

Thinking of mis-named ships…

… if you thought Apollo 13 was perhaps a bad name for a space mission, what genius decided in the film Sunshine to name the ship that has to fly to the sun and save all mankind, Icarus II?  It’s bad enough that they’ve called it Icarus – a boy who flew too close to the sun and whoops we all know what happened – but surely calling it the Icarus II after Icarus I has so clearly and disastrously failed, seems to be tempting fate.  Almost needless to say, Sunshine is also right up on my list of space-set films in which the sets are small and well-loved, the acting is excellent and you don’t need the aliens to dribble to feel your heart race and your stomach clench.

With all the talk these last few weeks of the 40th anniversary of man landing on the moon, I guess I should declare my bias now and get it out of the way.  I am entirely in favour of mankind exploring space, and landing on the moon was the first necessary step to achieving this.  I fully accept that the Americans landing on the moon was largely the product of the Cold War madness which kept the last 50 years so exciting and the spy thriller genre so brisk on the bookshelves, but science, and the exploration of space, is one of the very few areas where all mankind stands united.  Not united in that we all wish to walk on Mars, or visit the moons of Jupiter; but united in the sense that no one nation can lay claim to the products of discovery, of mathematical innovation or scientific wonder.  When man walked on the moon, and if man ever walks on Mars, it is as man that it is done, not as an American, or a European, or a Chinese or Russian cosmonaut laying claim for a nation.  Certainly that was the motivation that sent the Americans to the moon in the 1960s, and planted an American flag on its soil, but the whole world watched, and the whole world thought that this is mankindwalking on another world, regardless of race, creed and colour.  Sure, governments may scheme, derive political kudos and see the possible economic gains from being able to say, ‘here is Mars and I claim it for the people of Luxembourg’, but by very definition, the things that are out of this world, are not, and should not, be confined by the squabblings, the mistakes and the machinations that have defined so much of mankind’s past on this world.

GIVE ME BACK MY HAT

Posted on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 in Writing | 2 Comments

It has been pointed out to me that there’s a sequel to Madness of Angels due to be published at some point in the next few months, and in the interest of this not coming as a total shock, I figure that I might as well say a few things about it now in order to stir up a furor of… well… fervour…

However!  In the interest of not actually giving anything away whatsoever, I’m going to do this in minor drips and drabs.  So, I think the very first, and absolutely most important thing to say about Matthew Swift’s next adventure in the world of Urban Magic, is this:

GIVE ME BACK MY HAT!!!

A dog and a cat

Posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 in Writing | 2 Comments

I know that these aren’t strictly literary heroes, but since I’m covering my heroes generally, I figured I might as well throw them in.  Garfield the cat and Grommit of Wallace and Grommit fame are up there as two of my greatest heroes of all time.  I mean, you could make a loose case for arguing that Garfield is a literary figure… of sorts… but it would be a very, very loose case and I’m not really going to try and make it. 

I was introduced to Garfield by a friend at school, who for the purpose of anonymity we’ll call Galadriel, in little cartoon strips that would be emailed to me usually at the culmination of a particularly ridiculous and frustrating day, and quickly got the bug.  I was given the classic volumes 1 and 2 to read prior to taking Physics AS-Level, on the sound and sensible principal that the wonders of the universe and, more to the point, the failure of said wonders to give you the right answer when you wanted them to, were really nothing compared to the need to have a decent slice (or bowl, or bucket, or whatever the largest vessel was) of lasagna on your table.  Make no mistake, I have never encountered a fictional character more thrillingly cynical, nasty, lazy and overweight as Garfield, and the sheer joy taken in all of the above is utterly infectious.  I’m not even going to attempt to claim that the cackling it induces is anything other than totally malicious, and that is what makes it such a guilty, wonderful pleasure.  Garfield became a permanent fixture on my shelf the same day that I gave myself an asthma attack on the Piccadilly line for laughing too hard; he then became required reading for at least an hour prior to any university paper I ever sat.  I should add that Garfield is nothing without the characters that surround him, of whom, in its own quaint way, my favourite remains Pooky, Garfield’s much-beloved teddy bear.  An utterly inanimate object, Pooky is the only creature for which Garfield shows any warmth, probably because he is inanimate and thus incapable of annoying his owner.

At the other end of the spectrum… it has been my long-held ambition to evolve into the non-plasticine, non-dog version of Grommit.  Where Garfield is an entirely malicious, manipulative creature focused entirely on the next meal, Grommit is the living embodiment of patience, tolerance, hard work and sensible eating.  With one eyebrow he can inform the world around him that yes, he is aware that his owner is making a very foolish mistake that’s going to end in disaster, but that he, Grommit, will stick by him through anything that’s heading their way and won’t complain or ask for praise, but will merely assist in solving the oncoming disaster because he’s loyal and loving and that’s what he does – so sayeth the eyebrow.  More to the point, he’s the uber-techie, capable of making anything out of anything, which is the essential techie dream; always with a gadget to hand, silent and focused and unfazed by anything from rogue penguins to giant rabbits.  Where Garfield induces cackles of malign cynicism, Grommit induces the kind of reckless, mouth-aching grinning that comes from knowing where the story is going, and wanting to see how on earth he’s going to solve this one.

I know it’s a tad peculiar to have two fictional characters as heroes; but then again, the world is sadly lacking heroes who are quite as heroic as the ones that come out of the imagination.  Most of the real people who I cheer for as heroic are long-dead figures from the past or names half-glimpsed in the corner of a book about doctors or activists or scientists who stood up and said, ‘this is wrong; let me make it right’ and received a footnote worth of praise in a political tome in the back of a library.  When I think of people who I’d class as living heroes, I always end up thinking of a story I read about a team of fewer than ten Red Cross workers in Rwanda, who stayed during the worst of the genocide when everyone, including the U.N., had fled, and would stand in front of gunmen and say, ‘we will treat all, regardless of who they are’ and not back down; or of the firemen at the Chernobyl disaster who were given a shovel full of sand and told that they had four seconds to throw their sand onto burning uranium, after which their exposure would be too high, and they would die -  and yet, knowing this, they still fought the fire.  I don’t know their names, and probably never will, and their stories are so drenched in horror as to remove any flavour of inspiration and just put numbness into the soul.  Grommit and Garfield, a fictional cat and a fictional dog, are far more comfortable heroes to pin to the back wall of my imagination, and if nothing else, are extremely good at lowering the blood pressure just before an exam…

Through a Dirty Window pt.2

Posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 in London | No Comments

For those who are wondering about the previous post, I guess I should add 2 key bits of information.

1.  There are actually 2 dirty windows involved, although they are both on the same floor of the same building.

2.  It’s not the London Eye.

Through a Dirty Window

Posted on Thursday, July 9th, 2009 in London | 5 Comments

This is going to be another one of those blog entries which is mostly photographs, whose main theme, besides the obvious one, is that they were taken of London through a dirty window.  The game is guessing which dirty window…