street art london

 I Know this great little place in London, the 'mother' of I know this great little place in Frankfurt have taken part in a guided street art tour through London. Watch here for their review on the london street art tour. I has been offered by a company called Street Art London, who do walking tours every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday and a bike tour on Sunday. This is what I will definitely do when I'm in London next!

Here are a couple of pictures of street art found in London:

taken from 'I know this great little place in London'

Boxi (Berlin-based)

Roa

World War Won

Swoon

Stik

Christiaan Nagel

James Cochran

Phlegm - pictures taken from 'Street Art London Tours' Gallery

beauty is in the eye of the beholder no 2

'beauty is in the eye of the beholder', a line i have used in the blog entry below about the poem, actually is a quote from a song by dan le sac vs. scroobious pip, called 'tommy c'. it has been combined in this video with footage of tommy cooper, who the song is about. check them out on their myspace-page, VERY recommendable! and listen closely to their lyrics when you do.

alan ayckbourn about writing and directing for the stage, and michael caine about acting for film

for those of you who are interested in theatre, writing, acting or the art of directing, i have two book recommendations to share with you. the first one is the book 'The Crafty Art of Playmaking', or the german translation 'Theaterhandwerk', written by alan ayckbourn, the famous british contemporary playwright, director and theatre practitioner (and translated into german by gustav e. grumbach). it is divided into two parts, the first one about writing a play, the second about directing one for the stage. in 101 guidelines, he gives advice on the how to do it best and describes the process of a play coming onto the stage in very entertaining language giving a lot of practical examples from his own work. Not only is it valuable for everybody who wants to adventure into the art of playmaking but also highly recommendable for those interested in the british theatre landscape and alan ayckbourn as a person.

 

'theaterhandwerk' on amazon.de     and 'the crafty art of playmaking', also on amazon.de  

the other brilliant book that i'd like to share is 'weniger ist mehr', written by stunning actor michael caine (and translated by petra schreyer). the original english version is callled 'acting in film: an actor's take on movie making' (this is the amazon.co.uk page). in it, caine takes the reader on a tour through what it means to act for film and advises on how to do it properly. with a lot of practical examples from his own career, the book makes you begin to understand why he is that good at his job. it gives you a great insight and makes you admire the art of acting.

banksy

the street artist actually has a website with footage of his work. very recommendable.

as is the film 'exit through the gift shop', a (fake?) documentary about a street artist.

some more banksy art

pictures taken from banksy.co.uk

kate nash

to complete today's exhibition of impressive female singers and / or songwriters, i would like to introduce you to several jewels from kate nash's latest album my best friend is you, in which she shows her artistic qualities, contrary to the 'girl-image' some people associate with her.

first one is 'don't you want to share the guilt'

apparently kate nash tries very hard not to have any original complete song from her album available for stream etc. on the internet. at least i could not find a page where the other two that i wanted to share are available in acceptable quality as a whole. the best i could find is a list of samples from the album on  itunes

the songs i want to draw special attention to are 'paris' and the 'mansion song'.

enjoy!

I know this great little place in Frankfurt

'The mission behind our company is to try and help people discover the greatest little places in their cities, through personal recommendations, which often go undiscovered.' Rossa & Rich from The GLP Team

it all started with a page about all the great little places in london. one day  when i was still living in london, i happened to discover this wonderful facebook page where so many people were sharing what they thought to be great little places in their town and which they wanted others to know about to share their experience. i immediately fell in love with the idea.

when i moved back to frankfurt a little later, the whole thing very much lost itself among so many other tasks and experiences that would come up in my new hometown, even though from time to time i would visit their page just to find out about new london recommendations and be reminded of my time there.

last thursday night, i stumbled over their page again, and the idea came to my mind that it would be wonderful to have such a thing about my now-hometown as well, knowing that i had had talk of that kind before  with many people from here who were all very fond of the idea to share their very own little favourite places with others and not only depend on city guides or the like to find new venues to relax, go out, enjoy themselves and have a great time. i had only never related these two facts in my mind.

after a bit of research i found out the email address of the start-up company that has created all these 'i know this great little place in...'- pages for various cities, and contacted them.

and guess what: they wrote back, telling me they only launch pages for cities after they have had someone interested from a new town asking about the idea in order to grow organically. and apparently i was the first person from frankfurt to go as far as to write them.

the result: from next week onwards we will have a page called 'I know this great little place in Frankfurt', administered by Rossa and Rich, and myself :) isn't that wonderful!

so now i encourage everyone from the rhein-main area to share their favourite little places and find out about where others enjoy spending their free time, and help and make this community grow!

once the page is up and running, i will post the adress here...

pj harvey's new single

 this is polly jean harvey's new single 'the words that maketh murder'. very impressive i find.

another one that i adore is 'black hearted love'. you can find it here on her myspace-page:

http://www.myspace.com/pjharvey/music/songs/black-hearted-love-42521160