Some amazing alternative posters for Moonrise Kingdom by Ben Whitesell (top), Ibraheem Youssef (bottom left), and Fran Asensio (bottom right). Shortlist.com has the full collection.
Gutted that this won’t be playing in Beijing theatres anytime soon.
Oncology wards, more than anywhere else I know, are musicless places. Instead of melody, there is constant beeping. Instead of singing, there is the steady medical call-and-response loop: nurses hollering to one another; patients calling, sometimes screaming, for their doctors; nurses scrambling to find the doctors; visitors searching frantically for nurses.
Other times, you hear nothing at all. In some ways, the diverse noises of a hospital — however annoying — remind us that the hospital “machine” is in healthy operation. It’s the silent moments, the hollow sounds of quiet suffering, that can be most frightening.
It was an evening of mediocrity between two strangers who possessed no chemistry, yet were obliged to stay together out of circumstance. Though the night redeemed itself with a summer breeze and the city lights passing over my resting head in a Beijing cab.
I was trying to write to someone in Chinese the simple idea of “I miss the ocean,” but it didn’t sound right without the English definite article “the.”
我真怀念大海
I miss oceans. I miss great oceans. No, I miss the ocean.
I had to resort to using reverse-Chinglish, or Zhonglish, for the time being.
我真怀念 the 海
wǒ zhēn huáiniàn the hǎi
Note to self: check this out when I return to SF.
“That same evening, all the participants got envelopes with a demarcated route, a detailed description of the dreams they were supposed to have at individual stages of the journey, and individual tasks. Immediately it became obvious that the warnings of the Grand Master’s emissary were not just empty phrases. Without those warnings, the tasks would have made everyone wonder. I will cite just a few: One Bicyclist, for example, was to buy ten grams of hashish in a certain street from a certain man in Istanbul, and then to smoke it during the month of September in room 213 of the ‘Paris Hotel’; another, on the other hand, was ordered to buy an old house in Smyrna, to renovate it, furnish it and then give it to a third Bicyclist who was to arrive in Smyrna on August 15 in order to set that same house on fire during the night of the 16th and 17th; one was actually supposed to open a fabric store in Athens, and another to become a chef at the residence of the British ambassador in Ankara.”
- Svetislav Basara, The Cyclist Conspiracy
(photograph via neoretro)
Amidst the glam rock and disco hysteria of the 1970s, Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis was a stark utilitarian. The image of a sweated shirt and haunting, static stare, caught in a moment of frenetic onstage convulsion, is representative of the singer’s passionate yet troubled existence, which spanned only 23 years. While his mind was manic and intense, Curtis adopted an austerity in his clothing: dress shirts with pockets on both breasts, simple suit trousers and polished brogues. A grey overcoat with an upturned collar, accessorised by a cigarette. He shunned colour, wearing primarily monotone shades. In Walk of Shame (1978) he speaks of “wearing the shame of all their crimes”. Hyped on The Sex Pistols and Bowie, Curtis was obsessed by music and escapism. He also demonstrated an intense fascination with the Nazi regime and the concept of suffering. The name Joy Division, formerly Warsaw, derived from the prostitute wing in the Auschwitz concentration camps. Future artwork for Joy Division would reflect Hitler Youth and he insisted that the German national anthem played at his wedding.“Curtis adopted an austerity in his clothing: dress shirts with pockets on both breasts, simple suit trousers and polished brogues”Even during an epileptic fit, Ian remained stiff; militaristically poised in the midst of a writhing contortion. There was routine within his clothing. He adopted a regimental stance, which was imitated by his idolising fans who swarmed in over-coated droves and matching angular haircuts. Curtis’s own loyal army. His chilling lyrics pulled from the darkest corners of literature. His lyrical confessions portrayed anguish and resignation: “They keep calling me” (Dead Souls, 1979) and the iconic Love Will Tear Us Apart (1980). He frequently tore apart his clothing: his wife Deborah recalls an early performance where he smashed a beer bottle onstage and consequently cut his leather trousers to shreds. Prior to adopting his utilitarian image, he dabbled in punk; he bought a khaki jacket and wrote the word “HATE” across the back in orange paint. Deborah’s parents were initially wary: “it had been the earrings, the sunglasses worn in the dark and the Marlboro smoke that bothered them.” While the world revered him, Curtis himself remained alienated and disparate. Torn between first love and illicit love, haunted by depression and tormented by his epilepsy, he sunk into his own isolated world of madness. Curtis lost his inner battle and took his own life on May 18th 1980, on the night of what should have been Joy Division’s first US tour date. He was found hanging from a washing line rope in his living room in Macclesfield, Iggy Pop’s The Idiot on play. Text by Mhairi Graham | Photographs © Kevin Cummins.
What keeps me smiling while trying to make that Guomao transfer in record time.
I’ve been in Beijing for three months without sharing any photos.
Finally.
Tres petit gangsters hipsters. I can hear the gunshots from Masculin, féminin.
French is work. I spent a good part of last night trying to call out a friend in French without any success. Trou du cul! True du cooo! Tu d’accord!? However, my blunders were redeemed when one of the girls said I sounded like a frog.
