Where the Hell Is Matt?

Meet the man with the best job in the world.

For the last 10 years this is what Matt Harding has been doing with his time. To find out more about the man (and to see his other videos) visit his site.

Review – Life of Pi

Life of Pi

Ang Lee

2012, USA

A young writer is recommended to visit Pi: a man who has a story to tell. A story he believes could make you believe in God. Pi narrates his life to the man, from his early life in India where he first discovers faith, beauty and love to the decision of his father to move to Canada and with that decision, a journey, a journey that will change him forever.

2013 Oscar Predictions – Father Vs Son

Each and every year, my father and I go head to head in predicting who will be victorious on Oscar night, and with this being the most open ceremony in recent times, it could go either way.

Good luck Dad!

The Hallucinogenic Toreador

The Hallucinogenic Toreador (1968–1970) is an oil painting. Salvador Dalí painted it in 1970, following the canons of his particular interpretation of surrealist thought. It is currently being exhibited at the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. In this piece, Dali transmits his wife’s dislike for bullfighting. By combining symbolism with optical illusions and estranging yet familiar motifs, he creates his own visual language.

Stephen Fry on Ulysses

Last lines – Ulysses

Ulysses
James Joyce
1922

“I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another… then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

Wilhelm Scream

I watched ‘The Hobbit’ today (review on its way) and somewhere in the middle I noticed the Wilhelm scream, so thought I would add some info for those unaware of the most famous soundbite in the film business.

The Wilhelm scream is a film and television stock sound effect that has been used in more than 200 movies, beginning in 1951 for the film Distant Drums. The scream is often used when someone is shot, falls from a great height, or is thrown from an explosion.

Apparently voiced by actor and singer Sheb Wooley, the sound is named after Private Wilhelm, a character in The Charge at Feather River, a 1953 western in which the character is shot with an arrow. This was believed to be the third movie to use the sound effect and its first use from the Warner Bros. stock sound library.

The effect gained new popularity (its use often becoming an in-joke) after it was used in Star Wars, the Indiana Jones series, Disney cartoons and many other blockbuster films as well as television programs and video games.

Happy Birthday Sammo Hung!

In appreciation and celebration of the legendary Sammo Hung’s 60th birthday. We present to you with this compilation of some of his greatest moments on screen.

John Donne | Death Be Not Proud

“Death Be Not Proud” is a poem by English metaphysical poet John Donne, written around 1610 and first published posthumously in 1633. It is the tenth sonnet of Donne’s posthumously published Holy Sonnets.

The poem is addressed to Death, telling him not to be proud, because death is not to be feared.

The poem explains because sleep is a type of death, and that it is pleasurable, then death must be even more so; that death is a slave to fate, chance (accidental death), kings (who have the power of life and death, such as the ability to levy war and command executions), and men. The theme of the poem is generally describing about mortality.

Review – Quartet

Quartet

Dustin Hoffman

2012, UK

A company of aged opera singers living a quiet life in Beecham House, a rural, picturesque retirement home are surprised to find that their old associate, connected to them through love, friendship and betrayal, become their latest resident.

A film about Opera set in an old-people’s home. Transformers it aint. Nor is it Eraserhead, Solaris, or Spaceballs. It’s as hard edged as a toothless pensioner so if you feed your celluloid need on the Saw movies or the latest Nicolas Winding Refn outing then you could feel a bit short-changed with Quartet. But Dustin Hoffman’s first film behind the chair is sweet and optimistic, aided by a cast of first rate veterans. Pauline Collins takes a part that could have become exasperating with a lesser talent and gives it a soul, Billy Connolly never lets his ability as a comedian overstate his performance and Tom Courtenay and Maggie Smith are what you would expect, but the film helps itself by populating the halls of the retirement home with genuine musicians; singers, pianists, an orchestra’s worth of matured talent. There are some points where you feel a more skilled director could have got more out of the technicalities of the filmmaking process and plot points come and go without much thought at all but essentially this is an actor’s film and who better to get the best of out the cast than one of cinemas greatest?

It’s also important to say that in the cinema, as I sat with my Grandmother, the average age was easily above 55, and it went down like a polite, well-behaved storm.