“I hate digital cameras, you can’t even see what you’re doing!” says Anton Corbijn as he snaps a shot on a recce. Every time I see him on camera, he seems to struggle with technology, like the rented gear that won’t focus properly on the Joshua Tree shoots. And there was that time he took polaroids of me while complaining it was a borrowed camera and he didn’t know how to work it. The shots were blurry. In Quirijns documentary too he keeps saying: “That’s not in focus!” and claims his work is never “perfect”. But we get a very clear picture of him.

What a touching, skillful documentary it is. I love the shots of Anton alone, standing front of stage watching the Arcade Fire soundcheck, and the blurry shots of him watching them play table tennis. I almost felt a kinship with him. If only I were as tall, as talented.

The score, composed by our mutual friend, is very prominent and it does two things: It makes the documentary more of a “movie”, a drama. And it echoes the roar of the sea that also features strongly.

It’s the sound of this constant, stifling Dutch protestant oppression going on in the guy’s head: “must work harder, must be worthy”.

“I love this coast line,” Anton says walking on the beach near The Hague, “But I usually see it from up there…” The camera turns around and you find out he means he only ever sees it from an airplane. He’s always on the move, living out of suitcases and he says he loves travel, loves the idea of going somewhere and then bringing part of it, the experience, home. But his sister worries about his crazy work schedule and that one day, he might collapse.

Much is made of his ability to see things. See more of things. More than other people. Bono talks about ‘light’, the medium Corbijn works with, and framing it with shade, or darkness. I think his height helps too, a different angle on his famous subjects, who are so often vertically challenged.

There weren’t any icons on the wall when Anton grew up, not in his religion. His – mostly absent – father was a minister, his mother a minister’s daughter who wasn’t allowed to marry her real love. (“But you were happy with dad, weren’t you?” Anton asks her. “Ach, well,” she answers.) There was chapel, and at the dinner table talk of sickness and death passed as conversation. But never icons.

So he’s drawn to them and creates them.

After the screening, he’s called up on stage after the producers stumble through their presentation, cue cards in hand. Don’t let the Dutch speak in public. We’re not good at it.

Corbijn, in comparison, is eloquent for a self confessed loner. He thanks the director, in particular for the footage of his mother who died shortly after the documentary was finished, and he states:

“I’m glad we can go back to focusing on my WORK rather than my person.”

John Calvin has a lot to answer for.

Your obsession makes you interesting.

Actor Alan Cumming has started a website documenting people’s obsessions. On www.itsasickness.com you can join existing obsession groups (Shakespeare, sloths, Buffy, etc) and add your own, then upload photos, videos and articles.

“Itsasickness is an obsession network honoring sicknesses; the objects of our obsession. We believe that no one is ever more interesting than when they talk about what they love. To do your sickness justice is to own it.”

Here’s Alan talking about the project on the Joy Behar show.

While it’s painfully obvious what I have been obsessed with for the last 20 years, this project made me think about past obsessions. I have dreadfully bad memory, but here’s what I was able to dig up:

• James Bond movies
• Paul Newman
• AFN/BFBS Radio
• Film posters
• Joao Gilberto / Brazilian music
• Sports (tennis & baseball) and sports clothes (Adidas)
• Field recording gear
• U2 live concert tapes
• Ireland
• Robbie Robertson
• Eddie Izzard

via meg

Chef and restaurateur Lidia Bastianich and her mother, Erminia Motika interviewed by Christopher Walken about their shared roots in Astoria, Queens. Lidia and Erminia used to work in Walken’s father’s bakery. Listen to revel in Walken’s idea for a cooking show in three acts: “Buy the chicken. Cook the chicken. Eat the chicken.”

You may remember Walken has a thing for chickens.

Joss Whedon name checks our website (Whedonesque.com) at the Joss Whedon Experience panel, Comic-Con 2010. 7’35″ into the video he is asked to describe his script writing process: “It’s a little something like this: ‘Oh, I have an idea. OH GAWD. OH GAWD. I’m hungry. Oh, Whedonesque. [?] of me. I feel better.’

One more time before the new year I followed the music abroad, bringing me to a bitter cold Paris for a third time this year.

Though I found the second part of the concert, Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, a little hard going, I did enjoy Gavin Friday’s narration of Marquez’s ‘The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World’ as set to music by composer Ian Wilson better than I did the first time I saw it, in Brighton. It was the venue’s ‘recital’ setting, placing the musicians amidst the audience, that much improved the sound and intimacy. Gavin, hindered by the low lights and the yellow marker ‘popping’ on his print out, fluffed up a few times, but he also hit some sweet marks. Particularly the part of the text that goes ‘and the hidden strength of his heart popped the buttons on his shirt’.

Afterwards musicians, crew, friends – among which the lovely Fiachna O Braonain – and yours truly retired to a restaurant cellar where rustic food, sangria, wine, calvados and hearty laughter kept us warm, happy, handsome and quite, quite drowned.

Surrounded by Irishmen and women, I sometimes got a little lost – this Dutch fallen Prod doesn’t really ‘get’ the holy Host or Mise Éire, but it’s endlessly fascinating nonetheless and somehow I always feel more at home than I do amongst my own.

“While they fought for the privilege of carrying him on their shoulders along the steep escarpment by the cliffs, men and women became aware for the first time of the desolation of their streets, the dryness of their courtyards, the narrowness of their dreams as they faced the splendor and beauty of their drowned man.” Gabriel Garcia Marquez – The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World, set to music by composer Ian Wilson. Performed at the at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris on October 9, 2008.

More pictures of The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World

Drifting and Tilting – The Songs of Scott Walker
Barbican Theatre, November 13, 14, 15

review to follow

This is my most favourited picture on Flickr. Sixty-one people, mostly from Qatar or the United Arab Emirates, have clicked the little star since I uploaded it in 2005. It has only around 1300 pageviews.

It is my most favourited picture not because of my photographic skills, or my wonderful eye, but because it features Chanel decoration. It appeals to young, rich brand… well, let’s use the word fiends rather than invoking the w-word. I much prefer the picture next to it.

I’m *this* close to deleting this snapshot from my stream.

Most of my other favourited shots are of ‘pretty’ girls, like Shirley Manson, Summer Glau and, um, Brandon Flowers. Or cute animals. Ouch.

Canal Parade, Amsterdam Gay Pride 2007. View the whole set.

Woman weighs package and looks at pricing table. Then she starts giggling nervously.

Woman: ‘I’m not sure if Greece is in Europe or not.’