More obscure classics from Farnham film course’s favourite lecturer. This week; Italian Neo-Realism, please excuse the acting. This week we watched Roberto Rossellini’s groundbreaking neo-realist war trilogy, films very few will have heard about. For some reason, Rossellini (right) is one of those directors no one has heard of, but [...]
Entries from February 2007
February 27, 2007
Cultural Meanderings: Plagues, Car Crashes and Bo Diddley
‘Miss You’ – What a fantastic hook; it’s enough to have you dancing around the room chanting, almost religiously, wa wa wa-wah-wa-wah-wa, or something like that anyway. Of course, it’s far from the only catchy riff Keith Richards’ guitar has given the world – I’m thinking ‘Satisfaction’, ‘The Last Time’ (the two stand-out tracks on [...]
February 26, 2007
Trumpeter: The Democrats in ‘08
The President of the United States of America is said to be the most powerful man (and man he always has been) on Earth, a leader who controls the most powerful military, the strongest economy and the country with the most cultural influence. For good or ill, he probably lays a better claim to the [...]
February 25, 2007
The Arty Bit: Who Is Matthew Barney?
In 1994 Matthew Barney exploded onto the contemporary art scene with a video piece named ‘Cremaster 4′, named after the male cremaster muscle, which ‘controls testicular contractions in response to external stimuli’. The series continued with another 4 ‘Cremaster’ pieces, supported by sculpture (generally made from his ’signature materials’ plastic, metal and Vaseline) and drawings [...]
February 25, 2007
The Baguette – Inside In Inside Out
It’s time, dear readers, to raise your glasses once again to the greatest music column in the history of the world, the ONLY regular album review to systematically compare its subject with a specific foodstuff. That’s right, people, for the first time since The Hashmark’s printed editions wowed the masses, “The Baguette” is returning to our pages.
February 23, 2007
The Sauce, With P-Unit: The Marshall Mathers LP; A Retrospective
Dr. Dre can be called many things; influential, certainly, popular, without a doubt, even the most talented rap producer of his generation, arguably. But despite his many accolades, he is not original, or at least not lyrically. In the early 90s he was doing tracks with MC Ren and Snoop Dogg about guns, weed and [...]
February 22, 2007
The Hashmark Week – 22/02/07
A word from the editor concerning the current state of affairs: This week saw the launch of some new regular columns, most notably Pascoe’s hip-hop feature and JR’s piece chronicling his trawling around t’internet:
“Introducing a blogular column by jr2015. “Its gonna be totally fuckin’ mexico”.” (Read the full post here)
With next week’s set to be [...]
February 21, 2007
The Andy Lectures: Soviet Propaganda
Film fans rejoice; a review of the obscure classics shown each week at Farnham University Film course by favourite lecturer: Andy.
This week: Soviet propaganda classics; what’s with the montage? Potemkin it isn’t. This week, the first film for our consideration was the 1930’s Soviet classic Earth by Aleksandr Dovzhenko. Designed to convince farmers to join [...]
February 20, 2007
Cultural Meanderings – Steinbeck, The Boss And Vintage Classics
The concept is simple. Take a book, a film, a piece of music, a person (etc.), ramble for a couple of hundred words, and see where you end up. This week – Steinbeck, Springsteen, Woody Guthrie and Penguin Modern Classics. I’m going to begin with the first book I read on this trip, ‘Travels with [...]
