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Kate Mara recommended Lady Jane (1986) in Movies (curated)

 
Lady Jane (1986)
Lady Jane (1986)
1986 | Drama
(0 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"You know, I haven’t seen the film in a very long time, but because it was another thing that my sister and I, as kids, would watch — the film Lady Jane, with Helena Bonham Carter. And Helena Bonham Carter was, I think she was like, 17. I feel funny saying that’s one of my favorite films, but it really inspired us, and we’re both actors now, and she is, to us, still amazing. When I watched it, I just remember thinking, “Oh my gosh, that’s my dream,” to play that role. I love her. Lady Jane started my love of period films and the British accent, which I’m obsessed with. I just did my first one. I did a medieval film [Ironclad] that… Do you know Jason Flemyng? He’s one of my really good friends. As soon as I heard Jason Flemyng was doing it and that it was medieval, I was like, I don’t even care what it’s about — I gotta do it just for the fun. I was the only girl on the movie. It was hilarious. And yes, I got to do my British accent."

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Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich
Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich
1998 | Classical
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I heard this through a journalist, Michael Azerrad, he's a good guy. We started direct messaging on Facebook or I met him, I don't know what happened, and he said, ""You should listen to this"" and then I got it. He said that you're either going to love it or it'll feel like you're getting punished by having water dripped on your head! And I said, ""Perfect, I'll do that!"" It's incredible; once again, I watched it on YouTube, him performing in Japan, like, ""Fuck, really?! You can do this live?!"" Also, I just like the atonal thing of it and what they get from composing. It's very neutral. I actually used it, it's a total influence, you can totally hear it, on 'Birthday Video', it's on Weeds. I layered a lot of guitars and to my surprise, a lot of these noises start coming through, these sympathetic notes, and I was like, ""Wow-whee! This is cool!"" Totally taken from him, I hear it plain as day. I also got his box set, it's great. He's always got some kind of concept to it. He wrote one for what it would be like on a train ride to the Holocaust [Different Trains], to reach finality. He's got all these studies, drums, all sorts of percussion, but ...18 Musicians, I love it, I listen to it in my bunk in the bus!"

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The Confessions of Frannie Langton
The Confessions of Frannie Langton
Sara Collins | 2019 | Fiction & Poetry, History & Politics, Mystery
9
9.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
“My trial starts the way my life did: a squall of elbows and shoving and spit.”

Sometimes a book just grabs you from the beginning, something tells you that treasure lies here. I felt that within a few paragraphs of The Confessions of Frannie Langton. Sara Collins prefaced the novel with an explanation of her enjoyment of stories from Georgian/Victorian era but also her disappoint that she didn’t feel represented in the literature from that time. Her love of literature and that lack of inclusion drove her to write a novel that filled a gap, filled a need for women like Frances Langton to have a voice.

And what a voice! The author embodies Frannie so well. The first thing that struck me was that Frannie’s voice shone through immediately. She sounds so authentic, within a few lines you are engaged and intrigued. So much of the prose is beautiful and evocative, truly poetic. Sara Collins describes the people and places so deftly, you sense the weight of a sultry Jamaican plantation and the drabness of a grey London suburb. You can almost taste the boiling sugar cane and fall under the sway of the delicious, devilish ‘Black Drop’. It’s difficult to read this book without imagining a BBC period drama, it really would make a good screen adaptation. There is no doubt that Collins is a gifted and accomplished writer, a weaver of words both seductive and threatening. I really enjoyed this novel and would like to read anything new from Sara Collins.
  
The Road (La Strada) (1954)
The Road (La Strada) (1954)
1954 | International, Classics, Drama
(0 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"The next I would say is La Strada because, well, do I really have to say? I feel like it’s sort of self-explanatory. Like [laughs] Giulietta Masina, I mean every performance, but particularly the last scene in the movie, with Anthony Quinn and just being on the beach, and everything about that movie is beautiful. And there’s something always about his films that, knowing that audio was recorded post shooting the film — I’m pretty sure that’s true with that movie — just to know, in a way, if it is true, it’s just to know that there are two sort of performances happening simultaneously. You can see and hear that. And I love that idea and what skill and sort of the presence to this day that movie has. And it’s also personally really resonant because my father said after he saw that movie, it was what made him want to make movies, and when I finally saw it when I was a teenager, I understood why. So it inevitably has a resonance beyond the brilliance of the movie itself."

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James Bagshaw recommended track It's Raining Today by Scott Walker in Scott 3 by Scott Walker in Music (curated)

 
Scott 3 by Scott Walker
Scott 3 by Scott Walker
1969 | Pop, Singer-Songwriter
7.0 (1 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"This was probably the first Scott Walker song that I heard, other than Walker Brothers’ songs. “I was in a friend’s car in London around eight years ago and ‘It’s Raining Today’ came on. At the beginning I thought it was unnerving, this weird cluster of notes. At the end of it I turned to my friend and asked, “What was that? Is it modern?” When he explained it was a record from the ‘60s I was like “Are you kidding me?” The production and vocal sound is so clear and hi-fidelity. “I fell in love with the sound of it from a production point of view first of all. I’ve always been interested in the crooner vocal and all that sort of stuff, but once I got into the songwriting it blew my mind, because this is stuff that you can’t sit down and play on an acoustic guitar. “There’s this theory that you should be able to sit and play any good song on an acoustic guitar and ‘It’s Raining Today’ throws that theory out the window. You couldn’t do that song, and songs like it, justice on a guitar, because the orchestration and the chord changes are more psychedelic than any psychedelic record I know. I literally can’t work out any of the chord progressions, and I’m usually decent at sussing them out. I still don’t know what these extended chords are. Maybe if I was a piano player, I would. So, I find that very, very inspiring. “I absolutely love the string arrangement to the song too, it’s so harmonious, even though it’s totally inharmonic. I don’t know how to do that. It’s so brave to have that ominous thing going on underneath these beautiful cadences. There are moments where it’s just on the cusp, but because it’s an orchestra playing it they’re all moving together. If you did the same thing with electronic music or all of it separately, it would be very hard to get that movement and that swell and modulation."

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Rat Scabies recommended Dummy by Portishead in Music (curated)

 
Dummy by Portishead
Dummy by Portishead
1994 | Rock
9.3 (6 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"It's an unstoppable record. I nicked my copy so I never had a sleeve for it, so I never got any of the song titles or anything like that. But again it's a very complete record. It's one of the few albums that I can just leave on and it can play all the way through and you don't go oh, not this track again, I hate this song. Everything on it sounds like it was recorded in somebody's bedroom. I've never even looked up how they actually did do it, but I just love that the machines and the loops they used were pretty much standard for the dance crowd, and things like where I would have said oh, not that beat again, everybody's heard that loop, you know, actually they turned round and said ah, but if we do it like this it sounds really good. And the production on it is amazing. Some of the things that are going on with the timings on the compressors and the noise gates, on that level there's plenty to listen to, as well as the songs being great. The dynamics and the editing in and out and the mixes are really quite something else. I wonder sometimes if it's only because I've made records myself that I get how much work must've gone into that to make it happen. But at the same time it still sounds like it was done in a bedroom. But again, they're very minimalist in what they use. They pick their shots. When they do something they make sure it's in the right way and in the right place. There's nothing in there that clouds the water or gets in the way of the vocals or loses the bass. It's always relevant."

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