Here are the people responsible for this magazine: Cover Design: Johnny Shenton Contents: Stephen White Introduction: Stephen White The Offf Festival: Johnny Shenton Feat. Kenno, Berry Photography Music Review: Craig Mesham Wekindred: Peter Brown & Graeme Watson Creative Circus: Stephen White Fashion: Rachel Morris Tokyo: Theo Di Caprio No More Heroes: Ryan Williams Hope You Enjoy....
This is the preview issue of Media Biscuit, Media Biscuit will be filled with the latest media around Liverpool and the world (if its really special!). In this issue there will be an interview with Wekindred, an up and coming band in Liverpool and also a Music Review on the newest singles, gigs and albums. In May there will be a Media festival in Lisbon (Fail Gracefully at Offf), there is a full preview and also a review of last years event. There will be a review of Tokyo, a new film created by three of the craziest film directors and is of course based in tokyo, this film has some of the greatest visual effects to grace our screens. No More Heroes is an interesting article about the fall of the Superhero and some of the terrible films that have been made terribly for our friendly (make believe) allies. At the minute, Media Biscuit will be launched at every Creative Circus event, a lot of the bands in the magazine will be playing at Creative Circus so this will give you a chance to see the bands your reading about. Everything that is happening at Creative Circus is in the magazine. As we are a new magazine we are looking for as much feedback as possible on what we can improve on and what you would like to read about.
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By Jonathan shenton
Some p e motion ople took fan ta’s pro to a co mplete level an ly d spen t hours different drawin and ho g, pain ting an urs d even ing box weares.
Pictures courtesy adam Kenrick Lorna Berry
jonathan shenton Since 2001, OFFF festival has been held in Barcelona, becoming the globally recognized and trendsetting event it is today. The three-day festival showcases top digital artists, web, print and interactive designers, motion graphics studios, and new music adventurous. OFFF festival provides insight into all culture media platforms. But OFFF is more than an event about any of these disciplines. More than a design conference, a multimedia trade fair, or a digital animation festival. OFFF is an enthusiastic celebration of a new visual culture. After eight years on the frontline of digital arts events, OFFF has trascended its own nature as a festival to become a synonym for modernity, both aesthetic and technological. OFFF is spreading the work of a generation of creators that are breaking all kind of limits. Those separating the commercial arena from the worlds of art and design; music from illustration, or ink and chalk from pixels. Artists that have grown with the web and receive inspiration from digital tools, even when their canvas is not the screen. OFFF dreams about the future, and then writes the code for it.
The Milks Went Offf
As well as boasting a host of speakers and workshops Offf festival has the feeling of a night out, with afluent young designers at every corner showing their wares. From body painting to to stickers and Fanta’s amazing draw a box area which created and entire different way of looking at the festival, for those who went there just to watch, now they were creating. Offf festival is taking part from the 7th-11th of may in Osiras, Lisbon, Portufal. Tickets on sale now,
www.offf.ws
ay festival, the three d s a ll e w s A arty held o an after p there is als ccessful u s another te ra b le e c to festival, stivals from the fe with bands iant VJ/ ll ri b nd some a io p to p o issed. Lo it cant be m DJ shows
e where somewhere in the west part of Liverpool, just next to the main bus depot, when the rum began to take hold...
@ Barfly by Graham Watson & Peter Brown
I found myself, my photographer and the band on the staircase between the two floors performing the interview with WeKindred, in any normal circumstances, this wouldn’t be a problem, but unfortunately, I had been drinking spiced rum since about 4 o’clock it was now 9. I was unprepared, all the questions I had planned had left my thick skull, and all what was left was a mess of questions and bewilderment. I remember asking my first question, ‘So guys, what’s your favorite biscuit?’ I knew it was one the questions I had planned, but I wasn’t sure that I was going to use it, I didn’t know how the band would take it. WK ‘Aww man, I went through a Bourbon phase, but then a couple of friends came round with caramel digestives, you bit into it and expected it to snap, but then, it just bent!’ WK ‘Is it really boring to say Hobnobs? ‘Cause i really like Hobnobs, 38% whole oaks. Technically there not biscuits there just wheat.’ WK ‘I dunno, I still come back to Custard Creams, even though, there’s loads of other nice biscuits, the only one I ever come back to is Custard Creams. My 13th birthday my mum got me 4 packets of Custard Creams!’ The interview seemed to be going pretty good, so I decided to Probe the band a bit more. I decided on something a bit more on-topic this time, but given their last answer, maybe asking this next one would of been a bit too clean cut, but I asked; ‘So who are your influences?’ WK ‘Ohh crap, that’s too vast! Lets just say the one band I think we can all agree on is Jimmy Eat World!’ Photograph by Brian Roberts
WK ‘Okay, lets all do this individually’ WK ‘Pendulum, Muse, errrr, whatever man, tool? Tom Waits man, yea! Give a shout out to Tom Waits.’Ok , so what do you guys have planed for 2009?’ ‘To dominate the world! Na, we wanna do some more recordings, get some of our new songs down, go on tour in the summer, and were kinda just gonna do the band thing. There’s gonna be loads of fun involved aswell”. “and booze!” my photographer added. The interview seemed to go well, and as it was time for the band to get on stage, we decided to cut it there, hit the bar, then get over to the stage and get a good view. Soon the band kicked into life like some sort of electric beast, and the crowd jumped into action. I kept seeing flashes from my photographer’s camera, somehow it blended in with the music, as if the music and the flash were meant to be together. The band was on fire, and the crowd were really getting into it, a few were singing along and even some random coleagues who followed me there were impressed with the atmosphere. For me though, the best two songs where left for last,
‘As one two’ and ‘Tonight’. These songs for me sum up WeKindred, proud tracks which I hope will stand the test of times for years to come. The gig its self was great, I couldn’t fault the guys, but I felt it was time for me and my accomplices to leave, the scene had turned bad the second the bouncer walked in claiming everyone had to leave. It was time for the children to be hoarded out the door, and it was time for us to leave this crazy tale of drinks, biscuits and music.... and after all this, it just didn’t get weird enough for me...
“and after all this, it just didn’t get weird enough for me...”
GONDRY/CARAX/JOON-HO TOKYO! Is a triptych film portrait of the dense, ever-growing Japanese metropolis. Directors Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Bong Joon-Ho each direct a short within TOKYO! and present vastly different views of the city. TOKYO! begins with Michel Gondry’s short INTERIOR DESIGN. The film follows much in suit with Gondry’s past hits ETERNAL SUNSHINE and THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP as a portrait of not-perfect coupledom and the trials of partership and breaking up. A young couple, Hiroko and Akira, move to Tokyo to discover a cramped city full of characters and a series of urban life obstacles. INTERIOR DESIGN charts the shift in this couple’s life as Akira gains recognition as an emerging filmmaker and Hiroko becomes increasingly jealous, feeling lost and useless.
“I like to have the viewers interact with my cinema.” Gondry pokes fun at his own art and serves up a hilarious scene when Akira screens his experimental film at a porn theatre. Filling the theatre with smoke from a smoke-machine as the uber-absurdist black and white film rolls, Akira is the perfect typecast of underground experimental film nerds. As the audience leaves the theatre coughing and rolling their eyes, Akira is oblivious, emphatically engaged in conversation with a viewer, explaining “I like to have the viewers interact with my cinema.” INTERIOR DESIGN focuses on Hiroko’s struggle and Gondry brings in his trademark cartoonish magical realism in the end, transforming her physically as her sense of security and spirit gradually break down. INTERIOR DESIGN proposes a view of partnership as a question of utility. As Hiroko feels increasingly useless in her relationship with Akira, she becomes quite literally physically useful to a relationship with a musician—I won’t spoil the ending. It’s always a pleasure to delve into Gondry’s magical surrealist mind and try and figure out how he manages those illusionist cinema tricks.
The second short in TOKYO!, Leos Carax’s MERDE is by far the most hilarious but also the most inaccessible of the three films. It begins with absurdist, dark humor: a grimy demented leprechaun-like creature (played by well-known French actor Denis Lavant) emerges from a man hole and proceeds to powerwalk through Tokyo, grabbing whatever he can from pedestrians: a child’s toy, a half smoked cigarette from a businessman’s hand, chrysanthemum flowers from a bouquet that he stuffs into his mouth. A French lawyer who bears resemblance to the terrorist claims to be the sole person in the world who speaks the creature’s gibberish-like language and arrives in Tokyo to represent him in a trial that could put him on death row. Despite some split screen pizzazz, the courtroom scenes slow down the film considerably, sacrificing some interesting ethical questions of the value of life—that of the creature’s victims and of the creature himself. MERDE ends with a little magic, proving that not all earth-bound things can be tamed by the law.
Bong Joon-Ho’s SHAKING TOKYO is the final short in this series. It is the most streamlined of the three. It’s simplicity makes it poetic and very effective as a short film (every filmmaker’s challenge with working in short format). It takes as subject a hikikimori, a shut-in, who has not left his apartment in a decade. The lush cinematography renders the man’s dark, musty apartment an enviable paradise.
“It is the most streamlined of the three.” Perfectly arranged stacks of pizza boxes make a wall, dust dances in a slender ray of sunlight and a beautiful clock ticks ever so patiently as the hikikimori softly describes a life utterly lonely but safe. Japanese Academy Award nominated actor Teruyuki Kagawa plays the lead role. His fragility reads tenderly and beautifully on-screen. Nearly trembling at the prospect of encountering others at the door to his apartment, the man’s subtle movements foreshadow an earthquake that will shake the city and an explosion of emotion for another hikikimori he meets, an unlikely teenage love object. Bong Joon-Ho’s ends his story with a wise moral: stray from safety (no matter how gorgeous it looks) and invite some risky passion into your life.
Fredrick&Maddison. Located slightly away from the main shopping area (14 Colquitt street), Fredrick and Maddison is a hidden gem, specialising in unique hand made designer clothing they are the only place in the city to offer the service for men aswell as women.
Liverpool[ Boutiques!
To the unbeknown eye the outside of the store looks like just another Georgian house with its grand bay windows and large black door, the front of the store does little to showcase the wonders within, only a small black and white sign placed just outside tells you any different. The day we visited, the pair behind the self titled label were rushed off their feet preparing for their catwalk debut at Liverpool Fashion week, a quick glance of the clothes modeled by mannequins or hung on rails either side of the store told me it was going to be a success. Their clothes are a flurry of colour and excitement a mini bright green shift dress stands out, as does a simple black cocktail dress given the F&M touch with a large flower corsage, starting at the shoulder and finishing at the hem. “We want our cus-
tomers to go away feeling and looking amazing!�
Amazing seems to be the buzz word in the shop but what sets F&M apart from anything else is that they do just that, give them any occasion be it birthday or wedding and they will personally design for you a one off garment to suit your character and bodyshape. As a finishing touch they also offer makup and hair styling, which you can make as bold and bright (think catwalk chic) or as natural as you like.
Raiders]
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A rail of vintage fur coats and jackets on one wall, shelves full of slingbacks and Mary Janes on the other and in between a collection of skirts, dresses, knitwear and handbags. Entering the shop is like looking at a Vogue article on fashion through the ages, from Victorian slip dresses to 80’s puff ball skirts this shop seems to stock it all which is why Raiders is widely considered to be Liverpool’s premiere boutique for vintage fashion.
“My favourite decade for style is the 1970’s. I love floral dresses and the liad back hippy look in general.” The shop started out as a stall in The Heritage market selling handbags, from there a small shop in the old Quiggins building to its current position on Renshaw Street. The store is beautifully decorated with its old fashioned white washed cupboards, comfortable arm chairs and gold framed mirrors it makes you feel like you are stepping into another world. A world of glamour, sophistication and original 1950’s prom dresses.
by Rachel Morris Photography By Craig Mesham
NO MORE HEROES ANYMORE By Dr. L. Weys Wright
This article was meant to be an overview of 2008’s ‘best’ movies. However, being as dim-witted and lazy as everyone else, I realised that I’ve only really bothered to see the latest batch of superhero epics, if that. Thinking about them, I’ve come to realise that it’s become the most idiotic genre polluting our screens. To which I say: enough is enough! First of all, let’s look at Iron Man; decidedly b-list in the superhero pantheon, but a runaway success in 2008. This tells the story of a pampered, decadent arms dealer who seems to gets big contracts from the ‘war on terror’ (or ‘keeping American boys safe’, as he says). Instead of becoming a paranoid, gibbering hermit in a hotel room for the next thirty years, he manages to have a literal change of heart (like the Tinman, geddit?). For this we’re expected to forgive him for the billions he’s made from trading in human misery and carnage. As he’s Robert Downey Jr. with that cheeky glint in his eye, we almost do. That is until the plot kicks in. Nasty terrorists (you can tell they’re nasty because their beards are scruffy) force him to make them some WMDs. In the hubbub the ‘good’ Arab (you can tell he’s ‘good’ because he speaks better English than the others) gets killed helping our hero escape. Somehow with the help of some scrap metal and a welding thingy he transforms himself into a one-man army. He gets home and makes himself into a one-man airforce too. His suit is so hi-tech it can even work out the difference between ‘terrorists’ and ‘civilians’ just by looking at their faces. Has he sold this technology to the Israeli Defence Force yet? When he returns, his new-found conscience is demonstrated as he makes himself much flashier, toy-friendly armour and flirts with Gwyneth Paltrow. He also pledges to use his awesome battle hardware to campaign for world peace. So without quite explaining how, Iron Man promises to stop war
with vague promises of ‘change’ and by aiming his lethal arsenal in other directions (where is not made clear). How he maintains peace is beyond me, as he the best parts of the film consist of him blowing stuff up. In other words we see him go from being George W. Bush to Barack H. Obama within 90 minutes. Someone got their market research spot on. There’s no need for market research when it comes to Will Smith. Although the US election seemed uncertain for a while, there’s no doubt that Mr. Smith would have gone to Washington without even bothering to count the votes. Only Tom Hanks can guarantee blockbuster profits like Will. In Hancock, he goes against type by playing a belligerent, lazy drunk who’s resentful at his superhuman lot. Well, actually he doesn’t go against type – he’s Will Smith. He’s paid to be lovable. What begins promisingly as a story of a deeply unpleasant man being ‘cursed’ by invincibility soon has to pay lip service to his ingratiating persona. Lest we forget that in the era of gangsta rap, Will rapped about doing his homework and being told off by his granny. So no prizes for guessing which way his character ‘arc’ turns. This is a guy who manages to stay chirpy and hospitable when he’s the last man in a world run by flesh-eating zombies. If he played Blade he would have had a chubby-faced child sidekick to teach him how to be sensitive and nurturing... ...TO BE CONTINUED!
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