Short review of everything

Waiting for Godot

I´ll start this list of reviews of recent culture activities with one of my favourite plays! I went to see Samuel Beckett´s Waiting for Godot at the Kansallisteatteri (in Helsinki) and my expectations were pretty high. Fortunately this managed to satisfy me almost on every level! I was a little worried in advance since one of the main parts was played by Esko Salminen who, in my opinion, is one of the most over appreciated actors in Finland. He however fit quite well to his part and his, yet again in my opinion, mannerism worked ok as Vladimir´s role. What lifted the play to really excellent level was Hannu-Pekka Björkman who made astonshing job as Pozzo! Every single time he opened his mouth, everything flowed towards more coherent conclusion! The setup was very traditional and I remember seeing quite similar background use in one of the television versions shown in Teema few years ago. It´s good but I think there should have been some modifications for more intense experience, specially in parts when audience was supposed to feel the "boredom" of the cast waiting for something to happen. Over all, this version was very well made and hopefully we´ll see some more Beckett in the future!

Le Havre

Aki Kaurismäki´s latest film is called Le Havre and it is really nice one! Kaurismäki has done lot´s of good films but the quality has been swinging from excellent to annoying. This time he is presenting much more positive future visions! This movie is very much a triumph of humanism and trust and caring of other people. The charachters that are naturally in tight position (ie. the police officer) are shown as people with social consciousness, though there is a distinct line between generations (contemporary world is shown in a bit ugly light). Kaurismäki´s greatest ability is to show us very beautifull scenes of the cities he is using as background, he definitely is fond of urban atmosphere! All the actors do excellent job and the soundtrack suits well to the over all feel. The theme is obviously quite hot topic and his message is clear! I would love to see a little more surreal elements in his future films, since they were the reasons why some of his works are so good!

Crazy Clown Time

Now this was unexpected! Though I knew David Lynch has had his fingers involved in the music production earlier, it was still very odd to hear the first single Good Day Today earlier this autumn. Crazy Clown Time is the first real artist album Lynch has ever made and if you are fond of his soundtracks you will not be disappointed. Some of the songs are in more typical vein, dark rockish atmospheres, but others have strange space disco, or balearic feel to them. Lynch sings himself in most of the tracks, if you can call this kind of vocal performance singing. His voice is esoteric and haunting and it does give the important impact to the end product! The album is also very long, but I think it is essential to get the hypnotic feel he seems to be chasing! I feel that he does achieve the correct vibe and in the end I will give this solid *****! It´s also note worthy that Lynch has opened a club in Paris that is trying to simulate the effect of Club Silencio in his movie Mullholland Drive. Unfortunately you can visit the club only by becoming a member and since I´m not living in Paris it would be somewhat pointless effort.

Religion & Magic in ancient Egypt

Last august I visited the British Museum to see the Egyptian section. After checking all the mummies and hieroglyphs I bought a book from the shop called Religion and Magic in ancient Egypt by Rosalie David. There was plenty of other choices available but this felt most coherent but at the same time enjoiable enough to keep my interest up. Now that I have read it I must say that the amount of information is almost overwhelming. The book is trying to cover the whole spectrum of Egyptian culture from the earliest known examples (some 5000 bce) until the demise of the ancient culture around 500 ace. It´s exhausting task even for the 400 pages it has space to show it´s contents. The book has been critizised of being mixed and incoherent in places, and I must admit that in some cases this is true. But I still think that it gains advantage with sheer volume of knowledge it can offer. Troughout the book you can get yourself sucked into the ordinary life of egyptian inhabitant and lot´s of customs are written open very well. It also works really well as a source material! One point is that some conclusions are controversial and reader must bear in mind that researchers are trying to interpret scattered writings and sources from thousands of years ago. Therefore everything you read is, in the end, only speculation. Anyway, this book is very much worth to read!

Black Swan (and the Finnkino experience)

We had some gift tickets for movies from christmas and their expiration date was yesterday, so it was about time to see one. After some negotiations Darren Aronofsky´s Black Swan won the ticket! And that was an experience!

I´m somewhat biased what to think of the film. I must admit that it really works on certain levels very well. But at the same time I´m also irritated about some crucial points. Yes, it is really captivating and intensive movie. It is also very good looking. Aronofsky knows how to make pictures look astonishing! He also builds the suspension very carefully.

But this is also the point where I´m not that keen on this business. Some of the effects are so overused that I would have expected him to be more creative (though they are well made). And the motivation behind characters is beyond being a clichê! First of all, I personally can´t accept the myth of artists being creative enough only when they are having huge mental problems. The second point is that the best experiences are not made to work with fear, I mean the working environment. And I see that Aronofsky has some issues with her mother (for example this theme is also seen in Requim for a dream).

Fortunately the actors save this in the end! They are all very good and they can breathe life to these forced characters. And the techno scene is very intensive!

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I´m sorry for the negative tone of this post, but it is partial caused by the stupidity of the Finnish movie monopoly: Finnkino. Here is a short rant about the bad experience:

- Their website is just horrible: it is heavy and doesn´t load well with mobile connections. It also doesn´t scale to smaller screens well.
- This gift ticket systems sucks big time. When you buy gift tickets for example christmas presents why on earth does the expiration date have to be so short? And why can´t it be randomly changing the last date? Because everyone had the same expiration date there were insane queues for the last day!
- The queues are caused by the fact that you can´t order gift tickets from their website! You can buy normal tickets there with your credit card and you can reserve them but you can´t buy gift tickets.
- You need a code from the ticket to get to the toilets at the theatre (and I assume this changes time to time) but you obviously can´t print the gift number to the ticket (to help the ordering and printing the tickets by yourself).
- Half of the toilets were broken and the room was in horrible condition.
- At the candy store you had to weight the candies youself with a machine that prints a barcode but the clerk still has to type the amount themselves.
- Before the movie you will have to watch half an hour of crappy commercials and even some idiotic propaganda about copyrights (I will write my view of this issue later). I understand that they try to make their business lucrative but the prices are already quite high.
- The movie selection is really week, the amount of independent and generally interesting movies is just really short. This is due to their absolute monopoly in Helsinki.
- and so on... These are the reasons that I don´t go that many times to movies these days. Thanks to internet there is so many alternative options to see some truly amazing films!

Random Arts

This Easter has involved some interesting art experiences. Here is a short description of them:

1. Miró exhibition @ Emma

Miró was on of the greatest modernists in the 20th century. A Year ago I went to see his exhibition at Fundacio Joan Miró in Barcelona and it was very very exciting! The place itself is really interesting and fantasy like. So I was likewise enthusiastic when I heard that his exhibition was coming to my close by museum. Though Emma has done some interesting but little bit disappointing exhibition earlier (Monét exhibition had only like 8 pieces on show, Malevits was a little bit better) this was for once something else. There was about 200 works available! And to my advantage these works were mostly from the Mallorca collection - so most of them were something that I had not seen before! Half of the works were sculptures. I must say that I´m more fond of Miró´s paintings. The Sculptures work better in their correct places and they were much better in Barcelona than Espoo... Anyway, the paintings were yet again a huge isnpiration, I should do some try outs myself.

2. Foot Prints on the Moon aka Le Orme by Luigi Bazzoni

This film has been waiting some time now at my shelf. I finally had time to check it out. I got this from the local movie dealer when I asked him to recommend me some old horror movies in the vein of Don´t Look Now and Wickerman. It does it´s job mighty fine, though this time it´s even slower and more hazy! But the visuals are astonishing and the suspension has been built very sophisticated. It´s a story about a woman who is haunted with dreams about a person stranded on the moon. She has to go to a small town of Garma to find the reason behind all this weirdness. Overall this works well, though some viewers may find the slow pace disturbing.

3. Some photography lessons

I was talking to a friend of mine last week about cameras and photography and suddenly I finally realised some major points in using my Canon 450D setup. Here is some firts results, though I´m still practicing some of the basics:

The first one is my cat Isis and the second one is just a rehearsal.

Recent activities

It´s all gone, Pete Tong

A co-worker gave this movie for me to watch. I was happy because I have been thinking of checking this out some time already. It was bit of a disappointment though. I´m a huge fan of clubbing movies such as Human Traffic, 24 Hour Party People and Studio 54 and I was expecting something in the similar vein. In a way I got it but the big problem there was that I personally see clubbing as a exceptionally good way to express your self by dancing and trough music and this film was from the beginning only the debauchery of disgusting people in the dirty side of the game. The main character does not change into good person by logic transition. The evolving goes a bit imblausible ways. The best thing however is the producer who has all the really bad and really good qualities tied together. Overall it was ok entertainment but was lacking the credibility for actual change of the characters.

Tuulamon tortut (or Mokkapalat)

I got these pastries for my birthday present and I´m not able to describe how much I love the taste of them! Everyone seems to have their own name for the square pastries topped with cacao and butter cream and nonpareils. This time the nonpareils were citrus flavored to give them a slightly different edge. I could just munch hundreds of these! The big secret here is that you should put the fresh baked things into fridgerator and keep them there for two days. Taste multiplies in this time and the sweetness goes straight to the base.

Mystery videos

Can´t describe what this video is about. It´s way too deep into some insane businesses. The only important thing is that it has music made by Error vs Toshiba (though the videos says that it is solely made by Error which is wrong or even error).

Rare Exports

I´m not a big fan of Finnish film industry and the last time I went to see a finnish movie in a theater was almost ten years ago. Yesterday we decided to go and check out Rare Exports and damn did my hopes for the better Finnish films increase a lot!

Yes, yes, it´s the different kind of Christmas movie and it has all the elements that a good fantastic film needs! The basic idea is excellent: Coca Cola did not invent Santa or "Joulupukki" that refers more to a goat than a red hooded fellow with sales on mind. Film is trying to avoid cliches and in places where it drifts to these territories it has a different angle.

Rare Exports is combination of horror images, ruffness of Lappland life, extremely beautifull landscapes, a real dramatic course with simple reasoning and therefore genuine feeling of alive people and fantastic sequences of imagination. But the greatest thing is the cast! These actors are definately the greatest that are available in Finland at the moment and Tommi Korpela leads the pack!

I remember years ago when I saw the Maximillian Tarzan and Ukkonen short movies and thought that it would be extremely good thing to let these guys to direct feature films. I was however convinced that it would never happen due to local film industry being driven by such a scheme that was concentrated on copying basic dramatic lines from international blocbusters and avoiding own ideas. It was kind of like the local music industry suffering years of "iskelmä" based music and supporting classical training in, for example singing.

Now that we are seeing movies made in internet (Star Wreck, Iron Sky) and the technique coming closer to the everyday users hands I´m hopefull that the big screen films would get competition from enthusiastic hobbyists that would throw all the assumptions to trash bins and do lots of low budget movies that would be out of the box and have some really fantastic elements tied to them. And form the local and fresh viewpoint too!