Category Archives: Art

Chernobyl – TV mini-series.

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Shot in Fabijoniškės, Lithuania, this 5-episode mini-series by HBO is a cracker so far (one episode in). It puzzles me how there’s not, to my knowledge, been a major TV series or film about Chernobyl until now. One wouldn’t expect this would come from the Russian slice of the former Soviet Union, but you’d think Ukraine (its ‘western-oriented’ regions) would have put something together.

Documentaries have been galore, the main theme that the disaster was indicative of the pitfalls of communism, and a metaphor for the swift end of the USSR in the Gorbachev era of glasnost and perestroika.

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This is mind-blowing, though, a real-life 28 Days Later (2002) with wild animals replacing the ‘infected’:

I know a good lad I met in Budapest, a fellow traveller named Paul. He’s the only person I’ve met who’s wandered into Pripyat’s Zone of Alienation with a Geiger counter. I have an epic image of him strolling about in a Walter White biohazard suit, with a beer hat atop the garb.

Further reading/viewing:

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/chernobyl-review-episode-1-hbo-sky-trailer-watch-nuclear-disaster-cast-a8902986.html

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/may/07/chernobyl-review-chaos-reigns-in-confusing-nuclear-disaster-epic

https://variety.com/2019/artisans/production/hbo-chernobyl-lithuania-nuclear-plant-1203208391/

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Leith Walk trompe-l’œil.

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The highlight of Leith Walk. This reminds me of the (probably apocryphal) pretend convenience stores North Korea parades for tourists. Except this cultural gem has actual real-life Buckfast, and reasonably priced, too.

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Globalization.

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My attempt at ‘conceptual art’. There it is, scanned continent pages of an atlas all messed up. I want my Turner Prize now.

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Lost in Translation (2003) is garbage.

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Saw this in the cinema when I was 16 and thought it was incredible, my generation’s bit of peak Bertolucci or something. It’s been a long hiatus but I caught it again the other day. My god, it’s fucking appalling, an arty-farty piece of silly, trivial gibberish, and unbelievably racist. The characters are one-note, self-obsessed twats, and the picture depicts the Japanese as a mass of hysterical idiots. About 20 minutes in I couldn’t believe what I was watching. It’s concocted anthropology à la Nanook of the North (1922). Never again. Sad!

 

 

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Conceptual art is an abomination.

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Conceptual art is where the talentless can hide yet prosper, a contradiction laced with mountains of cash. You get these cretins taking shites on Pot Noodle cups or showing the world their unkempt sleeping quarters in an exhibition, equating the display as representative of the decline and all-round decadence of Western Civilisation. It’s poppycock. You look at a Rembrandt or a Caravaggio and think, “Fuck me, I wish I could paint that.” You view conceptual works and cringe that ivory tower society could ever even write copy about such meaningless garbage.

Here is my modern art masterpiece. It’s about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Enjoy. I expect to have this displayed in MOMA next year.

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