SPIKE JONZE

It's not new, he's not new, but it's been reignited. It being my like for Spike that is. Not content with creating numerous brilliant music videos that I always enjoy telling people to watch (watch Sabotage). So I got his DVD out of the university library (it's from the Directors Label series that also do the Michel Gondry, Chris Cunningham and Anton Corbijn DVDs), and I went ahead with cutting straight to his Documentaries, the music videos could wait.

I watched through them and the stand out for me was a 30 minute documentary of the making of a video for Fat Lip, of 90s hip hop collective Pharcyde.

What's Up Fat Lip? deals with Fat Lip, Derrick Stewart, and the concept is a series of simple interviews throughout the creative process of the music video. It's witty, clever, tragic and beautiful which seem to be the four things that sit on my current 'to view' check list.

It's the access and the way it slowly reveals so much about this man. Fat Lip is a poet, he's vulnerable, he's on the verge of looking for a job and he isn't some angry coke dealing murderer, he's just an honest guy who wants to make things.

It's worth tracking down the DVD for his Transvestite story.

It's also worth tracking down for his Clown dance at two bemused Security guards.



In other news... Where the Wild things are is shaping up to be worthwhile as well, I'm judging it all on the film poster, which is a good effort.

Paul Merton

"I cannot speak to people in France but I can make a very bad trowel"

Stewart Lee

My day at home writing has been made better by comedian Stewart Lee.

Ill

I've been awake 12 hours 3 minutes but in that time I have slept for an extra 96 minutes. I only get a cold late at night, in the morning I am healthy.

I keep sneezing, sneezing is really annoying.

Anna Karenina

After a very long time she has finally put her face under a train and the book is all but over. Not only has this book taken all of my recent time but I've been reading it for such a long time that I'm going to miss reading it. It's so incredibly written each character with their own sense of logic is so right. A point where Levin is hunting and we are given a chapter from the perspective of Laska, his dog, is so wonderfully observed a narrative. It has also managed to get me to write more of this damn film script I've been trying to write for a good deal of time for my film course. I can't help but think, if I was a bit more Russian I would probably travel on trains more often.

Today I have also watched LifeSpam, a sketch show on BBC iPlayer, which apart from being filmed all about my area includes Steve Brody, a man most watchers of notable recent comedy will probably have seen at some point in a Ricky Gervais or Steve Coogan related program playing some small part and never realising who he is. LifeSpam is hopefully not another BBC sketch show that only sees the light of day two or three times before we see no more. I miss Cowards.

"But there'll alway be a hole, a deep hole inside of me, nothing will really fill that hole. I mean Rob fills that hole a little bit, but not enough, not like a child fills that hole." a woman who has abandoned her son in Calais.

I am also slowly becoming more and more addicted to Bach.