Great comedy site

Just been introduced to this new comedy site featuring this clip amongst many others.

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Pictures of dying marine bring war home to America

I read this article this morning in the Guardian about a photograph of a young soldier fatally wounded in Afghanistan. It made me think about the role that Photographers have in reporting military conflicts and how important it is for the rest of us to see these images. At the same time it must be incredibly difficult for the family of this poor man. I can't imagine what they are going through.

The photographs of the late Philip Jones Griffiths (one of my heros), that great Welsh Photographer who reported on Vietnam, were credited by many experts as having a major influence on the American people and the movement to end the war. This illustrates how important it is for these images to be shown however difficult it is for the poor people directly impacted by these photographs.

The South West Coast Path

The South West Coast Path starts in Minehead in Somerset. It follows over 600 wonderful miles of the English coast line across 4 counties: Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and Dorset. You can walk the whole way if you have the time. Some people chunk it up and spend years of their holiday life 'bagging' parts of the path.

At the beginning of the path in Minehead, there's a fabulous sculpture designed by Sarah Ward depicting a pair of hands holding a map.

12 happiness-enhancing activities

These 12 activities were published in the Guardian this weekend. I thought I would jot these down for us all to remember and work towards together.
1. Express gratitude.
2. Cultivate optimism: visualise a future in which everything has turned out the way you want it, then write it down.
3. Avoid obsessing over things or paying too much attention to what others are doing.
4. Practise acts of kindness - more than you're used to.
5. Make time for friends; be supportive and loyal.
6. Develop coping strategies: write down your feelings when you're feeling upset and try to see that traumatic events often make us stronger.
7. Learn to forgive.
8. Immerse yourself in activities and be open to new ones.
9. Savour life's joys - linger over a pastry rather than mindlessly consuming it.
10. Work towards meaningful goals.
11. Practise religion and spirituality.
12. Exercise.

All words courtesy of Sonja Lyubomirsky (Professor of Pyschology, University of California)

Walk on the Wild Side by the BBC

This is so bleeding funny, it had me crying with laughter. Can't wait till I next speak to my Brother. Me and my Dad have a plan to bombard him with this when we speak to him on return from his holiday. Alan! Al! Al! Alan!

Not the Balloon festival

There's been quite a lot of festivals in Bristol over the summer as usual. This photograph was taken at the Harbour festival which happened the weekend before the internationally acclaimed Balloon festival. Although you could be mistaken for thinking otherwise.

Once Upon a Time in the West

I managed to get to see Once Upon a Time in the West last night at the National Film Theatre. If I’m not mistaken, this film was Sergio Leone’s first western made outside Europe. Although he had used American Actors in his Spaghetti westerns in Spain and Italy, he had never filmed in the United States before OUTW. His use of Charles Bronson and Jason Robards in familiar roles was reasonably safe casting but Henry Fonda as the evil Frank smacks as very risky.

Fonda, known mainly for more wholesome roles, plays directly against type and looks like he relishes the role completely. His tall, slim frame is mainly clad in black throughout the film and he chews tobacco and spits in the true spirit of the evil, rough, tough, gunfighter that he represents; his brilliant, tortured blue eyes caught magnificently in the extreme close up shots that Leone made one of his trademarks. It really is a terrific performance by one of Hollywood’s greatest Actors.

The film itself is a simmering, epic story that takes its time to deliver a typical good versus evil yarn in the true sense of the Western genre. It’s triumphant and sprawling and self indulgent and grandiose and takes such a long time to get going that at one point I almost gave up on it. I’m glad I held on.

Loosely speaking, it’s a tale of a man’s ambition to join the Atlantic with the Pacific by building a railway line from one seaboard to the other. However, the main themes in the film are really about the smaller tales of the men and women that get in the way of this ambition.

Charles Bronson plays Harmonica, Jason Robards plays Cheyenne and the beautiful Claudia Cardinale plays Jill McBain – the wife of the tragic Irishman who invites her to live on his humble farm with its rich secret. The musical score from Ennio Morricone is incredible and the first time we hear the piece that introduces Claudia to the audience must go down as one of the most beautiful film accompaniments of all time to one of the most gorgeous looking Actresses; it really made the hairs on my neck stand up.

The best line in the film has to be the one by Jason Robards. Upon receiving a first cup of coffee in a while from Jill McBain, he says, in his usual sardonic style, “You remind me of my Mother. She was the best whore in town and made my Father, in his hour or whatever amount of time he had with her, the luckiest man alive”. Brilliant stuff.