Just Added

These albums have just been added to my iTunes - so far, excellent:

 1. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - The Best Of

2. The Brian Setzer Orchestra - Songs From Lonenly Avenue

3. Caravan Palace - Caravan Palace

  4. Marillion - Misplaced Childhood

 5. Manu Chao - Esperanza

 6. Gogol Bordello - Trans-Continental Hustler

Fashion Fruitography

"Taste" - a collection of light-hearted photographs by Fulvio Bonavia:

I sometimes get the feeling that photography, and especially "art" photography are taken too seriously. Black and white portraits, expression, tragedy - there always seems to be some deep meaning behind every shot, and to be honest, sometimes it just all gets a bit "heavy". Although I thoroughly enjoy seeing photography exhibitions, sometimes it's OK to have fun and lighten up. I came across this photographer when my dad bought my mum a Lancia - the pictures of the car were stunning, so I looked up the artist. 

 More examples of his work can be found on his website:

www.fulviobonavia.com

/viːˈɛnə/

The MUMOK (Museum Moderner Kunst) is part of the MQ (Museumsquartier). It is free for all students under 26 and also offers air-conditioning, which is extremely inviting given the current temperatures in Vienna. 
The exhibition at the MUMOK was called "Pictures on Pictures" and it focused on the abstract avant-gardes and reductive, conceptual movements from Bauhaus to contemporary art today. 

I have always been a fan of abstract art and it's concept :
Paintings do not need objects - nature, people, things - to make pictures 'speak'. 
Abstract artists worked on pictures that did not try to represent any specific object and explored the idea of a 'pure' work of art:
The work of art stands for nothing other than itself. 

  
I learnt about new movements such as "Geometrical Abstraction", "Hard Edge" (which I like) and "Post-Painterly Abstraction" - which surely must be a piss-take... but who knows? 

Anyhow, I enjoyed myself, and think that I will definitely be heading there again, or perhaps the Leopold Museum (largest Egon Schiele collection!). 

The MQ is a great place - culture and leisure combined. I do seem to spend my weekends there on a regular basis, but I just can't get enough of it.

Broken Embraces

 

 

I watched Pedro Almodovar's lastest film "Los Abrazos Rotos" the other day. I have always been a huge Almodovar fan and this film did not disappoint. If a film can keep me focused for more than 20 minutes, it serves as an indication that I am going to like it - when it comes to films, books and music; if I am not captured by it instantly, I tend to get bored. Boredom leads to me wanting to do anything but sit infront of a TV/computer and relax. 

Penelope Cruz's performance was fantastic, and she manages to look more and more Hepburn-esque with each film. If there is ever going to be a biopic of Audrey, Cruz will have to play her. 
The film revolves around the themes of seeing (watching) and feeling. Colours, especially red, feature a lot of the time: perhaps it is an "Almodovarian" theme too. 

Roger Ebert gave the film 100/100 (in my humble opinion, I would agree). 

Other Almodovar must-see films:

Entre Tinieblas (Dark Habits): The narrative centers upon a cabaret singer, who, running away from justice, finds refuge in a convent of destitute nuns, each of whom explores a different sin. The mother superior, a lesbian drug addict falls, in love with the singer. 

Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother): the story of a mourning mother who, after reading the last entry in her dead son's journal about how he wishes to meet his father for the first time, decides to travel to Barcelona in search of the boy's father. She must tell the father that she had their son after she left him many years ago, and that he has now died. Once there, she encounters a number of odd characters - a transvestite prostitute, a pregnant nun, and a lesbian actress - all of whom help her cope with her grief.

Hable con ella (Talk to her): The film revolves around two men who become friends while taking care of the comatose women they love. Their lives flow in all directions, past, present and future, pulling them towards an unsuspected destiny. Unexpected conclusion. 

La mala education (Bad Education): A richly baroque tale of child sexual abuse and mixed identities. Two children, Ignacio and Enrique, discover love, cinema and fear in a religious school at the start of the 1960s. Father Manolo, the school principal and their literature teacher, is witness to and part of these discoveries. The three characters meet twice again, at the end of the 1970s and in the 1980s, or so it seems.

vrai ou faux?

about to go and have a 'Kleines Eis' at Tuchlauben:
Raffaelo, Pistache and Schokolade will be accompanied by the above statement. 

sadness/anger

Monday bloody Monday. Two emotions are most prevalent today - anger and sadness. Everything was going well. Passengers on the '10' tram to Hietzing this morning experienced a scene which will surely remain engrained in their minds for a while to come. 

Traffic lights. Motorcycle. Truck. Screaming. 

I cannot describe the sound of metal being crushed under a truck. The eerie stillness that follows whilst people try to compute what they have just seen, followed by a sudden flurry of movements. 

A woman had just been run over by a truck, right in front of my very eyes. The piercing screams meant that she was still alive. Rushing out of the tram, a man stopped me. "Ohne dich gehts auch". Why wasn't I allowed to help? Surely I'd be of more help than those horrid boys photographing the scene on their i-Phones and exchanging inappropriate glances

Tram continues. 

People continue about their business as before. The lady next me fails to answer my question - perhaps she hasn't heard me. She grunts at me for not getting up the second the tram has reached our destination. 

I am angry and sad. Yet who am I to judge what the woman on the tram has been through/is going through? Her indifference to these events made me feel angry. The boys taking pap shots made me angry. 

Yet: 

This episode has led my mind to go into overdrive today. 

Thinking, thinking, thinking. 

what a mug

wish my mugshot was as cool as this.