Quentin Tarantino: the true master of revenge.

Last night I watched Quentin Tarantino's new film Django Unchained. It was AWESOME! Everyone should go see this movie* it's incredible. In the mean time we have some of Quentin's other masterpieces in the library so be sure to check these out too!

Reservoir Dogs   Four perfect killers. They were perfect strangers, assembled to pull off the perfect crime. Then their simple robbery explodes into a bloody ambush, and the ruthless killers realize one of them is a police informer. But which one?

Pulp Fiction Low-rent hit men, their boss's sexy and wilful wife, a desperate prize fighter and the most outrageous pair of armed robbers to ever pack a rod in a wild mixture of explosive action and wickedly funny humour.

Kill Bill Volume 1 Four years after taking a bullet in the head at her own wedding, the bride emerges from a coma and decides its time for payback - with a vengeance. Having been gunned down by her former boss and his deadly squad of international assassins, it's a kill-or-be-killed fight she didn't start, but is determined to finish.

Death Proof  A deranged stuntman stalks his victims from the safety of his killer car, but when he picks on the wrong group of babes, all bets are off. He becomes involved in an automotive duel of epic proportions.

The Awesomeness That Is Austen

You may have noticed a trend amongst us bloggers over the past couple of weeks - a celebration of the 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice, which coincidentally, is today

So it will come as no surprise that I'm going to continue that trend with a post of my own.  For me it's not so much about the books (wonderful that they are) but the screen adaptions.

Personally I'm a sucker for any romantic, period movies or TV series and Jane Austen fits the bill wonderfully.

The visuals are always beautiful, the acting top-notch and the men, generally, are swoon worthy.  Most of us (well except for Scriven who is a complete anomaly) fell in love with Colin Firth's Mr Darcy, he of the wet shirt scene, the glorious sideburns and piercing gaze...

Okay where was I... oh yes Jane Austen adaptions.

There have of course been several over the years and everyone has their favourite.  Romantic that I am, I have most of them in my DVD collection.  You can, you see, never have too much Austen, because frankly Austen is awesome.

Those words, the hidden meanings, the characters and the romance - all in one glorious package and created by woman who lived in an age where women writers were few and far between.

Pride and Prejudice is probably the most recognised of her works but her other works are just as wonderful so if you haven't caught up with the awesomeness that is Austen or just want to indulge in a romantic feast check out the following.

Stalking the catalogue: The tiny book of tiny stories

"Hidden well beneath every snail's shell is a propeller for galactic travel"
- flight of the snail by blbest (check out all of blbest's records - some of them are so beautiful they make me want to cry. I'm not kidding)

The tiny book of tiny stories. Volume 2 / directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and produced by Jared Geller
I'll cop to it. The title made me curious. Requested the book and it came in and...I wasn't quite sure what to think of it. It feels somewhat incomplete. I thought it was just me, so I jumped on the intramanets (interwebs/intramanets = internet) for more info and discovered that this book works better if you know about HitRECord in advance. I didn't then. I do now.

This book is my first introduction to the HitRECord community. And I'm totally blown away. As collaborative communities go, does it get any better than this? People upload their work - video, text, images, audio - and others 'remix' (add to) them. There's some brilliant stuff. The book itself is fantastic, but I think it's a better experience if you look up the records on the website so you can see them both.

This stuff all reads like it's written/imagined up by people who know me. Strange feeling. Truly, you need this book in your life. And I'm off to stalk volume 1.

HitRECord - my recommendations:
Found 3 tracks I absolutely liked and so I'm sharing them. Deal with it.
1) Yes we're sinking
2) Garden
3) Do it like dial up

Peace out!

The finest of all the Mr Darcys

In celebration of the 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice I thought that I should do something to celebrate and what better way to celebrate than to appreciate Colin Firth. The finest of all the Mr Darcys.

Aside from the fact that Colin Firth is not at all hard to look at he's also pretty good at pretending for a living. He's well known for his signature role as the dashing, mysterious Englishman (Hope Springs, Love Actually) or the stern father figure to misbehaving children (Nanny Mcphee, St Trinian's) but he is best known for his roles as Mr Darcy. First in the BBC mini-series of Pride and Prejudice and then in Bridget Jones's Diary and it's sequel Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.

The Mark Darcy of the Bridget Jones franchise was based on the Fitzwilliam Darcy from Pride and Prejudice and even though the latter is clearly the better of the two, Firth pulls it off completely, making grown women swoon in the process.

If you're anything like us bloggers and you want to celebrate one of the true classics of literature then have a perve at Colin Firth. I couldn't recommend him highly enough.

(And yes, I'm well aware that most of my blogs are about aesthetically pleasing male specimens).

Stalking the catalogue: Is that a Picasso on your fridge?

"The message is clear: lighten up, surrealists. Sometimes it actually is une pipe."

Is that a Picasso on your fridge? : kids' "masterpieses" critiqued by an art expert by Dan Consiglio
Consiglio separates 'finger-painted genius from crayon-doodled crap.' In essence, parents submit their child's art, and a critic reviews them.

Tell me that doesn't make you curious. Tell me that doesn't make you think "Well, THAT has to be a major case of WTFery, right there, doesn't it?" Tell me you won't request it. Tell me so I can shake your hand because I don't have the won't-power to resist it. And now I'm waiting not-so-patiently for it to come through.