A Welcome 'Revolution' in Art: the work of Gerard Hanson

Look out also for my comments (right off the bat, this is a must-see show if you're in Kingston!!) on the new exhibition by Anglo-Jamaican (actually Jamaican-Irish) painter Gerard Hanson at the Revolution Gallery.

Black Hair, Green trees: 2 book events

Check back over the weekend for my review of the new Natural History Society of Jamaica project, Endemic Trees of Jamaica,as well as noted journalist/commentator Barbara Blake-Hannah's memoirs, "Growing Out:Black Hair & Black Pride in the Swinging 60s.

Great Cities: London Alive

With October being britian's Black history month, there's even more reasons to brave the famous rainy weather.
For starters, there's the exhibition form Benin artist Julien Sinzogan, entitled Spirit Worlds, that explore what the artist describes as the "spiritual dimension" of the Atlantic slave trade. That show runs through November 6 at the aptly named October Gallery on Old Gloucester Street.

 Foodies should still be licking their lips and rubbing their tummies with the completion of London Choclate Week, a time of pure indulgence involving the country's best chocolatiers and chocolate shops holding events all over the UK. Chocolate Week was one of several major food events (there was also a Wine festival) that lured the hungry and curious to London in October.


For film buffs, the links below should prove interesting, whether you're looking for a Halloween fright or want get the "shorter side" of the story.

http://www.supershorts.org/

http://www.britishhorrorfilmfestival.com/


There are a host of other upcoming and ongoing eventsas follows:


International Ballroom Dancing
 Diwali on the Square 2010

November Events in London
 Spirit of Christmas Fair 2010
 Natural History Museum Ice Rink
 Country Living Magazine Christmas Fair
 The Lord Mayor's Show 2010

http://www.londonjazzfestival.org.uk/

And, for those interested in high-end watches, November brings the Salon Q show, with all the leading horologers showing their designs and innovations

Looking Beyond goes to London

As Black History month (UK) draws to a close, the city on Londinium (original Roman name) is buzzing with festivals and events of all kinds. we check the scene out - virtually of course. look out for it

grafikblog

Look out for TD comics - soon. That "Roaming Jackass" may not know it, but he's about to eat some crow (or what crows eat)

Tale of two highways: One actual; One virtual

An interesting 48-hour period began with a quick chute along the main highway, dubbed Highway 2000 (as the then Government had initially intended to unveil it in that year; I think it actually opened about four or five years later) outside of Kingston and into the central countryside. After about 20 minutes, we exited the tollway and came upon - what else - a road side tavern, named noble's Bar &  Restaurant, complete with international wine selection and Grey Goose vodka ( who says country folk have no taste for the finer things?) I opted for Boom! a local energy drink variant (gosh, we have sooo many).

Then it was off to the Longville Park farms, for a tasty and informative interlude, courtesy of agro-entrepreneur - and bon vivant - Donnie Bunting. Herb-stuffed tilapia on banana leaf, fried tilapia and - the piece de resistance!: Oven-roasted leg of lamb. Let's just say I was feeling no pain. 

The following evening, it was goodbye farmland, hello pristine hotel lobby. I bounded into Kingston's design-forward  Spanish Court hotel for some musings and ideas for writers, publishers and book lovers in terms of digitized content and social media. The most engaging prsentation came from David Mullings, of random Media (the "Creative Genius" in the photo) whose Florida-based company recently signed a tie-up with You Tube to become their official Caribbean partner. other interesting contributions came from the floor afterwards and it looks like interesting times ahead for the book business (at the moment still mired in textbook hell). Maybe even TD will be further digitized. We'll see (and hear) 

Looking Beyond: the new Berlin

This is the first of a new series (don't worry, Museum crawl is still on) where we look at some of the world's great cities and their cultural offerings. With Unification just about coming of age, Germany's capital is hotter than ever - and that's saying a lot.

Berlin's young generation has chosen to transform the past into something liberating. Everywhere, particularly in the fashionable Mitte district, former fortresses to fascism now shelter art galleries, museums and bars.

View Slideshow

Laurent Burst for The Wall Street Journal

Uhren Bischoff in West Berin near Kurfuerstendamm. See photos of other places around Berlin.

There are more than 500 galleries in the city—including cool new "pop-up" art spaces—and plenty of chic new boutique hotels, including the Amano, the Casa Camper and the party-friendly Soho House that has decamped in the former East German Communist headquarters. In the past month alone, a half-dozen notable fashion boutiques opened in Berlin, among them Pastpresent, an arty concept store selling vintage finds and Berlin buzz brands like Sleep is Commercial and 24/7 Suits.

Berlin's creative boom rivals even the smoky jazz club and flirty-flapper cabaret heyday of the early 1920s Weimar Republic. But while the city that embraced the rule-breaking Bauhaus movement may have found a new role as the unofficial art capital of Europe, it's nothing like Paris or New York: No one teeters around its cobblestone streets in high heels, no one asks what anyone else does for a living or how much they make doing it.

Art collector or starving artist, you spend your days navigating Berlin by bicycle and your nights gliding in and out of parties without lines and insider-y night spots (like the unmarked Tausend, hidden under an overpass). The Berlin party scene is not for the faint of heart, often wrapping up at 5 a.m.

A laid-back feeling hangs over weekends in Berlin, which consist of sleeping late and poking around the flea markets. The weekday social calendar, a shuffle of gallery openings and late-night DJ sessions, makes a visitor wonder if anyone in Berlin ever works. In fact, Berliners are on double duty: Their devotion to sustaining the city's creative life is matched by a determination to live it too.

-Wall Street Journal

Next In Your Cup - Wine?

Marks & Spencer

Mars & Spencer wine in a cup

Old-world oenophiles have raised an eyebrow or two over China’s wine-drinking habits, which includes mixing red wine with Sprite. What will they have to say about what British retailer Marks & Spencer is doing?

Enter the “Le Froglet,” individual wine glasses in a cup that are now available in Hong Kong at the M&S food shop in Wanchai. (The cups had their United Kingdom debut at Marks & Spencer stores in June.) At 38 Hong Kong dollars (US$5) for a 187-milliliter glass, the cup of wine comes in three flavors: Shiraz, Rosé and Chardonnay.

The idea seems a gamble, especially with the stigma that “wines in a box” have carried in the past. In fact, when the wine-in-a-cup creator James Nash initially presented his idea on “Dragon’s Den,” the popular BBC television show in which entrepreneurs pitch their business concepts to five venture capitalists, he got a resolute no from everyone. Afterward, Mr. Nash, a managing director of Wine Innovations Ltd., made a cold-call to M&S’s packing manager in the U.K. and the rest, as they say, is history. Today, M&S reports that more than one glass is sold every minute.

With M&S sales of mini-size and light-weight bottles on the rise world-wide — a more than 25% jump since March of this year alone – the retailer’s winemaker Belinda Kleinig said it was logical to take things “one step further” with ready-to-drink wines from a glass.

Originally conceived for customers going on “impromptu picnics,” in Hong Kong, it could be well-positioned for locals who are known to consume just a glass or two of wine with their meals.

The plastic wine glass itself took 18 months to develop, with all things considered including an “inert filling technology” — in which the oxygen is removed and replaced with an inert, heavier gas — to ensure that the wine in any given cup is not exposed to oxygen and guarantee a longer shelf life. M&S even conducted pressure tests on the cup’s paper seal to make sure it would not leak.

-Wall Street Journal

Putting "NINE INCH NAILS" into the Facebook movie

For the movie "The Social Network," composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross were challenged to score a film with a complex emotional range but little action, only a whiff of violence and no traditional love story: It's about starting a business that manufactures nothing. No major character, including Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is fully formed in the film, because "The Social Network" is populated by narcissistic youths who lack empathy, honor and an adult worldview.


Despite these obstacles, the movie pulses with skittish tension, dry wit and bipolar energy, all of which is intensified by the music of Mr. Reznor, who's best known as the founder of Nine Inch Nails, and Mr. Ross, who's worked behind the scenes on several NIN albums. At times, the score seems to provide commentary and, ultimately, a moral judgment about the characters' activities and missing values. (It's available as a digital download for $5 at Mr. Reznor's www.nullco.com.)

Mr. Reznor originally declined director David Fincher's invitation to score "The Social Network." He'd just gotten married and was coming off a long, grueling NIN tour. "My life has two modes. One is sitting around writing and contemplating or building things. The other is execution mode. It takes a while to switch from one to the other," the 45-year-old Mr. Reznor said by phone last week. "I read the script, but what was nagging me was the idea of committing the next year of my life to it. I told David, 'I don't think I can give you my best work.'"

But as he began to cool down from the tour, Mr. Reznor had second thoughts. "I realized I'd screwed up. I'd let him down," he said. When he called the director to apologize, Mr. Fincher told him he was still eager to have him. Mr. Reznor contacted Mr. Ross, who had recently scored the Hughes Brothers' "The Book of Eli," starring Denzel Washington. The duo already had several projects they planned to work on, including How to Destroy Angels—featuring Mr. Reznor's wife, Mariqueen Maandig—and some new NIN music. But a film score presented Mr. Reznor with the kind of challenge he relishes.

"Here was my strategy," he explained. "I really try to put myself in uncomfortable situations. Complacency is my enemy.

"My music, I hope, takes 100% of your concentration," he added. "I know how to do that. But here this music we were creating wasn't intended to be in the forefront." Mr. Reznor found precedent for the right approach in how he and Mr. Ross had created the long-form instrumental piece "Ghosts I-IV," a NIN album he called "soundtracks for daydreams" that has no narrative pull-through.

For "The Social Network," Mr. Reznor said, "We wanted something a bit more Tangerine Dream than Debussy," mentioning the influential German electronic group. "I started thinking about something synthetic for Zuckerberg, his choices, his path."

The music that emerged created an ambience, he said, one that was "sometimes chilly, sometimes warm, but always spoiling around the edges." The duo decided to place an acoustic piano amid a sea of synthetic sounds. In the film's first Reznor-Ross piece, individual notes on piano ring against what might be a rattling wire. Foreboding bass notes enter, as does a sound that could be the wind or a cry. But the tender piano prevails, and we've entered a complicated environment fraught with danger and human folly. Or, as Mr. Reznor describes it, "The piece communicates tension, vulnerability, sadness and something unpleasant."

Even before the Reznor-Ross score begins, Mr. Fincher subtly signals the role of the film's music as judge and commentator, rather than supporting and intensifying on-screen action with minimal opinion. When we first meet Mark, he's in a bar with a poised and witty date he insults repeatedly, both willfully and through his lack of social grace. His date soon ditches him, but not before defining Mark with a biting, one-word insult. As Mark retreats to his blog to seek revenge, in the background pounds the White Stripes' "Ball & Biscuit," with its lyric, "And right now you could care less about me, but soon enough you will care by the time I'm done."

At the film's end, we hear the Beatles' "Baby, You're a Rich Man," with the lines, "How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?" and "You keep all your money in a big brown bag behind a zoo." As he sings, John Lennon seems to mock Mark and his blithe, unsavory partner Sean Parker. The soundtrack also contains Bob Marley's "Crazy Baldheads," with its lyric, "Here comes the con man, coming with this con plan," and the Dead Kennedys "California Uber Alles," with the line "Zen fascists will control you."

Though Mr. Reznor didn't discuss the other tunes on the film's soundtrack with Mr. Fincher, he said he wasn't surprised the director found that level of detail in them. "Nothing David does is accidental."

For the composer, "The Social Network" assignment wasn't without its complications: Mr. Reznor said it took him and Mr. Ross "three seven-day weeks of 12-hour days" to get the right tone for their just-short-of-silly adaptation of Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King," which accompanies a frantic sequence at a Henley Royal Regatta on the Thames. "That was David's idea," Mr. Reznor said. "Never in my normal life would I think of covering that track."

Still, for all the score's icy abrasiveness and reflected aggression, the repeated piano motif suggests a trace of sympathy for Mark.

"I don't know the real Mark Zuckerberg," Mr. Reznor said, "but I understand that character. The act of creation at any cost, I can relate to. The pursuit of my vision of Nine Inch Nails caused betrayals and cost me friendships. But the goal was No. 1. Now as an adult I think I would've done those things differently."

-Wall Street Journal

@ the Facebook "movie LIME"

Amid Nicole's lingering and unwelcome presence (more rain), TD ventured to the Palace Cineplex for the LIME-sponsored premier of the much-hyped Facebook movie, The Social Network. Passing through the slightly-less-than-receptive receiving crew, we made the usual rounds, the sweltering heat of the packed Cineplex balcony a sharp counterpoint to the cool drizzle on the streets

Outside, the cocktail bar kept a steady flow of social media-themed drinks. Inside,the rectangular glow of BlackBerry screens was near overwhelming. Next to me in the row, newly minted adman (actually seasoned marketing veteran) Zachary Harding discussed his Twitter and corporate social media learning curve while wife Tamara secured the snacks.

Oh, and the movie itself? Definitely one to add (see my extended review at www.mikethemovies.blogspot.com