Encanto

Another solid Disney effort that won the Best Animated Feature Oscar in 2022.

It has all the usual Disney elements present and correct, but it's elevated by glorious visuals (the tale is set in a Colombian mountain village) and the impressive soundtrack is notable for the song We Don't Talk About Bruno, which has 607 million views on Disney's YouTube music channel and has entered popular culture in a similar way to Frozen's show-stopping Let It Go.

The best song for me though is the opening number The Family Madrigal, possibly the best song I've ever heard with 'Madrigal' in the title.

Rating: ***

Quote from: Slim on June 13, 2024, 01:35:37 PMWhat I'd really like is to be able to feed it chords - let's say I want two bars of CMaj7, then a bar of B half diminished then E7 .. and so on. Just tell it what I want in English like that. Ask it to make it sound like a jazz piano quartet but leave space for a guitar.

Then when it comes back with something you could say "good, but make the verse a bit more punchy and the whole thing a bit faster. Make it swing a bit more in the chorus".

It must be possible. Would be a fantastic compositional tool. Maybe it's already available. Actually Band in a Box can do that - sort of - but you can't give it instructions in natural English.

That's enormously exciting in principle, I just wonder if it's still an efficient use of time, as to explain the musical sound in your head to something that (presumably) doesn't have any intuition or empathy could be a laborious process.  I'd love to try it though and see.

A few weeks ago I (long story short) used an AI app mentioned in the Image Creation thread to create a movie poster for a film idea I have; I had a firm concept and theme of the image I wanted and added more and more detail to my description, my expectation being of course that it would be progressively fine-tuned toward the end result I wanted.  But I found that it had a habit of taking a step back rather than forwards and I ended up abandoning the whole process.

Had 2-3 inches of snow which started falling in the early evening yesterday. Looks like it's thawing now.

Nowadays at schools they have a lesson period called "Forest School", where children have hands-on learning in a natural outdoors environment.

The teacher designated for this at my young 'un's school is called Mr Wood.

Snow forecast to arrive by tomorrow morning. WFH it is, then...

Fri 9th Feb
STEWART LEE, Leeds Playhouse ****
Sat 16th Mar
SIMPLE MINDS, Manchester AO Arena ****
Sat 13th Apr
PAUL FOOT, Halifax Square Chapel
Thu 18th Apr
STEWART LEE, Bradford St George's Hall
Fri 3rd May
MOVING PICTURES, Leeds Brudenell ****
Sun 5th May
FM, Leeds Brudenell
Wed 22nd May
RICHARD MARX, London Royal Albert Hall ****
Thu 23rd May
YES, Manchester Bridgewater Hall
Thu 13th Jun
SHERYL CROW, Halifax Piece Hall ***
Sun 16th Jun
NILE RODGERS & CHIC, Halifax Piece Hall ****
Fri 21st Jun
THE KILLERS, Manchester Co-op Arena *****
Sat 22nd Jun
GRACE JONES, Halifax Piece Hall **
Sun 7th Jul
RICK ASTLEY, Halifax Piece Hall ***
Fri 12th Jul
TOM JONES, Halifax Piece Hall ****
Sat 31st Aug
BRAVADO, Sheffield City Hall
Fri 18th Oct
RITA, SUE & BOB TOO, Halifax Victoria Theatre ***
Sat 19th Oct
BRAVADO (Eucon), Chester Live Rooms ****
Tue 22nd Oct
The Libertines, Leeds O2 Academy #
Sat 2nd Nov
FM, Athens Piraeus Academy ****
Sun 10th Nov
FM, Wakefield Venue 23 ***
Thu 14th Nov
THE SAW DOCTORS, Leeds O2 Academy ****

2025

Sat 1st Feb
MICK MILLER, Bradford Tapestry
Sat 10th May
STEWART LEE, Leeds Playhouse
Fri 6th Jun
JAMES, Halifax Piece Hall (tkt for sale )
Sat 7th Jun
JAMES, Halifax Piece Hall
Mon 7th Jul
SIMPLE MINDS, Halifax Piece Hall
Sat 2nd Aug
THE SAW DOCTORS, Halifax Piece Hall
Fri 8th Aug
The Libertines, Halifax Piece Hall ##

# Chaperone duty
## Trying to get out of chaperone duty

From last night, really: I (along with seemingly quite a few others) have been pestering petitioning Irish folk-rock legends The Saw Doctors for quite a while via their social media channels to play at the Piece Hall, its size and surroundings being absolutely tailor-made for the band.

So, last night at their gig at Leeds Academy, just before their last song, guitar-vocalist Leo Moran announced that next summer they're playing the very venue I've been dearly wanting them to play, which had me literally roaring with delight as if my football team had scored a last minute winner in a cup final.

That didn't so much make my day as make my year - and next year, come to that.

A common theme of my dreams is being on a plane that takes off and struggles to gain any great altitude.

First ever dream I can remember that took place in space.

I'm an astronaut on some sort of lone space walk which initially feels exciting but then almost immediately feels uncomfortable, and then somewhat distressing as I seem to lose control of my bearings and start spinning around helplessly.

I can't see anything other than the blackness of literally empty space - no stars, no Earth, no space station...just the blackness.

No idea what might have prompted it.

No doubt it's all quality gear, but there's kit for a third of the price that would probably do just as good a job; it all seems priced with the exclusivity element for collectors in mind.

All his signature gear - amps, pedals, guitars - is fantastically unaffordable.

Quote from: The Picnic Wasp on November 12, 2024, 01:08:19 PM

Quote from: Matt2112 on November 12, 2024, 11:31:34 AMThe English equivalent is the letter p, of course, although the Greek letter π is still pronounced in the Greek as "pee", not "pie"; so, the English pronunciation of the Greek letter π is different to the Greek pronunciation, but the Greek pronunciation of π is the same as the English for the letter p - and all that is to avoid any confusion of course.

I suppose it might be pronounced pie in English to differentiate it internationally as its irrational number identity. At school we were taught to memorise it to seven decimal places in the following fashion: May I have a drink alcoholic of course. Strange, as the slightest whiff of alcohol would have earned at least six ferulae. Probably more.

Indeed, I just find the irony amusing, which I find is happening quite often the more I'm learning the Greek language.

As another instance, the Greek equivalent of the letter r (pronounced "rho" in the Greek) looks very much like the English letter p in both lower and upper cases, i.e.:

ρ and Ρ.

But I may be wavering slightly off topic now.

The English equivalent is the letter p, of course, although the Greek letter π is still pronounced in the Greek as "pee", not "pie"; so, the English pronunciation of the Greek letter π is different to the Greek pronunciation, but the Greek pronunciation of π is the same as the English for the letter p - and all that is to avoid any confusion of course.

Quote from: Matt2112 on November 11, 2024, 03:00:28 PMForecasted clear skies, too (at long last).

Well, so much for that forecast...! 

Shiva Baby

Critically-adored comedy/drama/farce about a promiscuous bisexual Jewish woman trying to deal with the consequences of her actions during a shiva (Jewish wake).

Even at a mere 77 minutes I found it so underwhelming that it outstayed its welcome for me; aside from a couple of decent supporting performances, there was nothing here that made the characters, story or script particularly engaging.

Rating: **