HYPERTEXT WONDERLAND

The endlessly re-created image of the The Great Wave Of Kanagawa bears an unshakeable print on the mind. I remember reading that it's one of the most reproduced images of all time. It's certainly the most well known Japanese painting ever-made, and its artist, Katsushika Hokusai, one of the most important painters to ever grace this blue planet we call Earth. The subject of Miss Hokusai , a film I watched earlier this week, is not the great master himself but rather his daughter, Katsushika O-Ei. The film portrays her as a proud and independent artist. Very talented but struggling to emerge from the shadow of her father. He acts as a source of great frustration for O-Ei, who's still looking for that magical spark to call her own. Influence is a key theme, both because the plot so heavily centres around the father and daughter relationship, and also because the animation revels in blurring daily life with scenes of majestic fantasy. These often come in waves, much ...

There's a scene early in  Nightcrawler that I think sums it up quite well. After stealing a bulk of scrap metal from a construction yard, main character Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) remonstrates with a foreman unwilling to take stolen goods of his hands. Instead of conceding defeat, he argues in depth about its 'real value'. At a different point in history, his business savvy might be rewarded, but here it’s cynically rebuffed. The conversation ends with Lou asking for a job. A real one, even if it’s unpaid; a perfectly viable way for people to earn their stripes in the current economy. Lou Bloom is Nightcrawler's anti-hero - an under-educated, internet-addicted, twenty/thirty-something trying to make ends meet. When he stumbles on a horrific car crash, he learns the way of the Weegee : freelance photojournalists who shoot footage of criminal incidents to sell to media channels. Naturally, the bigger the story, the bigger scoop and anything highlightin...

Over the past couple of months, one of the ways I’ve kept myself busy is by volunteering for a Film Festival. Broadly speaking, this has meant spending a few hours each day to help promote the festival online. It’s been an interesting experience but it’s also been quite lonely too. I’ve been working from home most days and haven’t had the usually social experience of working with others. I’m not trying to complain because I value the organisation I work for but that’s just how it's been. It’s the type of fate that I suspect more people are experiencing these days. Pulling up a list from the  Office for National Statistics I saw this week, I've found that more people than ever are working in self-employed positions. It stands to reason that this is the case in the modern ‘gig economy’ but let’s assess the facts because they're quite interesting: Almost one million people registered as self-employed between 2008 and 2015. Overall part-time self-employment grew by...

If I were to rate the things I genuinely love then I’m fairly sure Neon Genesis Evangelion would rank somewhere close to the top. This I say somewhat self-consciously. Evangelion is, after all, a cartoon. One you’d be forgiven for thinking was aimed squarely at teenagers. I sympathise with this view but it's both true and isn't. If you aren’t familiar then let me recap. Neon Genesis Evangelion is a science-fiction anime made in 1995 by Studio Gainax. It follows Ikari Shinji, a shy boy of fourteen who's suddenly called upon by his father to save the world. He's eventually joined by Asuka Langley, a feisty and obstreperous girl of around the same age, as well as Rei Ayanami, a shy and taciturn girl of, yeah, the same age. Together they become a jigsaw of confused teenagers sent out in giant robots to wage battles against strange alien creatures. One per episode. I suspect this sounds like yet another typical wet dream teenage fantasy but the show eventually develo...