Get me out of here

A faint glimmer of sunshine this morning has made me all nostalgic for the lost summer.

This sequence, of a jolly-looking chap on a sunny day, seemed apposite.

I was full of good intentions this morning, of getting up super-early and going on an expedition.

My traditional winter lethargy has instead kicked-in.

Nonetheless, I don't think I can string out coffee and surfing any longer: the time has come for decisive action.

So today I'm taking advantage of London Midland's "Great Escape" promotion -- anywhere return on their network for a tenner (or, more likely, £20 for first class).

You'll need to print off a voucher from their website and take it to one of their stations to redeem (the offer is valid tomorrow, too).

It's part of their punishment for their crappy performance earlier in the year, that they have to offer these delightfully cheap fares from time to time. I'm off to explore!

Oh, come on!

Look, I know my tastes are pretty, er, specialised, but no-one has commented on the lovely fire boys in the post I did a couple of days ago.

Does no-one else like them? Really??

Click to enlarge. He's worth it.

And finally

Almost time to leave the London Film Festival behind us for another year, but here are a couple of my favourite movies which I haven't so far bored you about. First up: Patagonia.

So far ahead of its release there are almost no images anywhere for it, this is a sort of parallel road movie: a Welsh couple are on the road in Patagonia, while a Patagonian grandmother of Welsh origins is on the road in Wales. Delightful, slow, engaging, and featuring the scrummy Matthew "The Gay One In Brothers And Sisters" Rhys, too (who, alas, doesn't take his clothes off).

Enjoy that photo because the film has less nudity than that. Although I have to say I didn't really mind.

Lastly Archipelago. I can't find a single image for this delightful new British film (not released until next March) by director Joanna Hogg whose film about "The English Middle Classes on Holiday in Tuscany", Unrelated, was one of my favourites of a couple of years back. Archipelago explores similar themes and also stars Tom Hiddleston -- who is going to be huge as a result of playing Loki in some fan-boy comic blockbuster film called Thor (he's the one on the right):

Alas, Tom doesn't take his clothes off in Archipelago (well, not so's you can see any of the good stuff), although he's playing the lover in a rumoured up-and-coming film by favourite director Terence Davies (Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea). Rumours that he plays Loki completely naked other than a set of horns appear to be confounded by the above photo. Bugger it.

Banging on

And so the London Film Festival has come to an end for another year, not with a whimper but a bang. Or, rather, with the sharp cracking sound of James Franco deliberately snapping both the bones in his right forearm.

That was in 127 Hours, part of the new genre of endurance porn that sanitises torture porn and turns it into something weirdly uplifting. It's based on the true story from 2003 of a solitary climber whose arm became trapped under a rock in an isolated part of Utah and, with the alternative being death, after 127 hours of solitude he performed an auto-amputation.

The film is mesmerising and ghastly but, despite soaring helicopter shots of the glorious landscapes and the visceral horror of its subject matter, it feels strangely light and frothy -- an ephemeral film that's like a fairground ride: gripping while it's in progress but instantly disposable when it's over, fading rapidly from the memory. It's hard-core entertainment rather than Art (although James Franco's performance is utterly convincing).

Not out until next spring, there's a desperate shortage of images for it.

So it's time to move back a couple of days to another James Franco film: Howl.

On paper this looks like a car crash: Franco plays Beat poet Alan Ginsberg, a screaming homosexual at a time when such things were less easy than they are today.

The publisher of Ginsberg's eponymous 1955 poem was prosecuted for obscenity and, in a landmark case, was acquitted. This is the story of (or behind) the poem and the case.

The script is a deft mixture of Ginsberg interviews, transcripts from the court case, and an animated reading of the poem itself. You see -- sounds ghastly, doesn't it?

That it works -- that it more than works: is, in fact, an exquisite, engaging, moving film -- is in no small measure due to Franco's seemingly limitless skills.

What I find odd about him is that he's not exactly pretty, either, although he's indisputably good-looking and casually sexy.

But he has an ability to inhabit other people's skins that's surprisingly rare in movie acting -- like Julianne Moore's huge talent.

So it was fascinating to have an opportunity to see Franco attempt -- and pull off -- two such vastly different roles in the space of two days.

Also today was one of my favourite treats from the Festival: Gregg Araki's Kaboom.

An insanely messy, campy movie with all Araki's trademark over-the-topness, this one is carried forward by the pastel-coloured exuberance of the film-maker and the dedication of his cast.

Araki's excuses for getting his cast naked seem to get increasingly desperate (we even had a trip to a nudist beach in this one), while his extraordinary coyness about showing male genitalia is embarrassing in its contrariness (though we had a delightful opening sequence of Thomas Dekker wandering naked in a dream. Not my cup of tea, but very nice all the same).

The biggest joy for me was Dekker's straight-ish roommate/fantasy lust object, Thor (I know, I know -- but so does Araki, and that's the point).

Delightfully played as a dumb surfer-boy/jock, by Chris Zylka, this actor's unstinting devotion to his character is truly noteworthy.

Like Dekker, I could spend hours contemplating Zylka's curves and planes, and admiring his audacity in what has to be one of cinema's best scenes ever. I give you the "roommate-caught-trying-to-suck-his-own-dick" scene:

Kaboom gets increasingly frantic as its running time passes, the plot ever more outlandish, and it all ends in a swirling mess of trite expositions and resolutions. It doesn't matter: this is triumphant campy film-making of the highest order.

Flames of Passion

A public-spirited blogger posted some smaller versions of these images on his blog, and that was enough to set me off to hunt down some larger sizes.

I'm delighted to say I succeeded -- and I am utterly hooked on these images.

There's something so compelling about them. I wish I was a hippy, playing naked with fire.

I love the contrasts, the darkness around them and the blazing flames, the soft tenderness of their exposed skin.

Why am I never invited to events like this, damnit?

Probably because I'd be hanging around like a rutting pervert, camera constantly flashing, desperate to capture the thrill and excitement of it all.

Yeah, probably that's why.

F/phantasy

Despite its seemingly inexorable downward spiral into the world of "sleb" culture and dumbed-down "features", I still read The Guardian on the grounds that there isn't a better alternative.

They've invested heavily in their website over the years, but they know a surefire way of generating gazillions of passionate comments is to feature articles on prostitution or pornography.

These split pretty evenly between the hard-core liberals who don't see anything wrong, and the hard-core feminists who argue all pornography is misogynistic and fundamentally anti-women (they studiously ignore all questions about how gay male porn fits into this world-view).

The misogyny comes, they argue, in sequences which show women being raped and tortured and gang-banged.

I dunno: I don't watch murder mysteries because I want to be a murderer, and nor do I think watching them makes me more likely to become one. Porn feels to me the same: it's sometimes a metaphorical expression of a fantasy, of a hyped-up internal yearning which is often unrelated to what is ostensibly on display.

Just as vampires are a substitute for thinking too hard about sex and sexuality, and forbidden desire and ecstasy/guilt, this sort of porn is often about something apparently unrelated (such as the anxiety generated by the fact that good sex often involves a degree of abandonment and loss of "control" to your partner).

The literal-mindedness of some of the critics of porn suggests they may not have the most fertile imaginations. I wonder what they're like in the bedroom? No, scrap that thought.

Kitchen concerns

The moka pot (or, more commonly, "stove top espresso maker"*), was invented by Luigi di Ponti for the Bialetti company as recently as 1933.

The bold geometric planes in dull aluminium have since become a ubiquitous design (well, in Italy, anyway. And elsewhere: even my childhood home had one).

In the moka express, a fine film of coffee residue is left behind after use which coats the aluminium wall. Providing the pot is not washed in detergents, the film is supposed to protect the coffee from being contaminated by the aluminium (which, in aluminium saucepans, is associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease).

On that cheery thought, Bialetti's market dominance has been surprisingly well maintained. The biggest competition seems to come from Alessi -- and here's the moka pot I use each morning:

Very clean lines and a delightful bakelite handle make this a real pleasure, although the espresso seems very slightly weaker than that produced by the equivalent Bialetti. Which led me to consider whether there might be another pot which is "perfect" -- this Alessi designer design, for instance:

Or this one?

This Alessi design is by Richard Sapper and is celebrated by design luvvies everywhere, but I am not at all convinced by the spout. Does that really pour without drips?

On the other hand it's made of stainless steel, which appeals to my lingering Alzheimer's-related hypochondria.

Any tips, suggestions or recommendations? Or should I just stop whining and enjoy my lovely Alessi?


* PS: In a nice example of the evolution of language, I noticed that "stove top espresso makers" are, in some stores, now being described as "hob top espresso makers".

So, so tired

Exhaustion is taking its toll and, as we come to the last couple of days of the LFF, my blogging has inevitably suffered.

But I still have time to post that gorgeous athlete. Why do they weigh them naked other than for reasons of sexual perversity? Surely a couple of grammes of fabric can't make that much difference?

We're squarely into random territory now, with no connection whatsoever between these first three images (other than them all awakening a bat-squeak of desire in me).

And this next one just plays straight into my "unusual angles" fetish:

A cute pair next:

This is what a proper artist's studio would be like in my fantasy world.

But let's finish with this, culled and cropped from a group shot:

I adore that chap on the left. Really: adore.

Maybe I'm not too exhausted then.