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Real life Princes

The original foreign prince hero

Tonight's BBC 3 show 'The Undercover Prince' is 'Coming to America' in the real. The series follows 3 princes on the quest for love in the UK; Crown Prince Manvendra, India's first openly gay royal, his Royal Highness Prince Africa Zulu from Zululand and Prince Remigius of Jaffna, Sri Lanka. The three Princes will  share a 2 up 2 down in Brighton, get an ordinary job, and live amongst us common peeps for the duration of their search. Sounds like a good watch, but surely wont surpass it's film inspiration.

Watch it Tonight on BBC 3 at 10.30

A government white paper on social mobility which came out yesterday revealed something we probably already knew- british education is still not the level playing field its intended to be.  Infact, the report shows it is even more difficult for kids who don't come from middle or upper class families to ascend the social strata in 2009 than it was in 1997, despite the hard work put in.  Long gone are the glory days of the grammar school scholarship back in the 50s, which changed the lives of generations of families to come.  A whole host of new obstacles have sprung up. Today's is a grant free world of perpetual Internships, providing you have the right hook ups and know how to get them in the first place.
You only have to glance at the London Paper Party Pages at the mini Winstones and the Allens to see how the hook up works in the entertainment industry. It's no surprise that it extends across the spectrum. There's nothing you can do to prevent people using their networks for the benefit of those closest to them. It's only natural. So the governments policies to bolster the education system are welcomed, but I wonder how far this will  go to turn the tide? What we really need is more make or break TV. Law Idol anyone? Surgeons Academy?
Heres a big shout out  to all the self starters out there who've made their own contacts, (with a little help from some of the supporting institutions, supportive parents )  and a song from a good old working class hero, mark e smith.

Adventures in the local- Paks in Dalston High Street Hair Superstore Extraodinaire. See more here: www.flickr.com/photos/nefatron

London Short Film Festival is back with a whole host of screenings and film related events at venues accross London town all this week. To (kind of) paraphrase the good kids from 'Why Dont You?' Switch of your TV set, and go find a comfy seat in the cinema instead. Tonight's focus is 'Sound and Vision' at the Roxy, an evening with Zan Lyons, Thinksync Films and Warp Records.

http://www.shortfilms.org.uk/

Say the word Denmark and the first things that come into my mind are Lego-Land and top quality Bacon. But new year, new cultural radar. I can now add Danish  art collective Superflex  to my narrow word association game. Next Friday Superflex have their first ever solo London show at South London Gallery and will be following up  'Burning Car', (made in the wake of the civil unrest in Paris) with another visually captivating slice of destruction, designed to make you think. For  'Flooded McDonald's', the crew created a life-size replica of the interior of Maccy D's, only to fill it with water, hence the title. Eventually the fuses blow and the lot (staff not included) becomes submerged in what I imagine is a spectacular mess. Wait and see.

Read more about their antics and ideology here:

http://www.superflex.net/

See the show

http://www.southlondongallery.org

January 16th- 1st March 

South London Gallery

65 Peckham Road
London SE5 8UH

For the new ICA exhibition, 'Dispersion'  7 artists including Turner Prize winner for 2009 Mark Leckey, show work which explores the role of money, desire and power in an image saturated culture. But there's more than just images to glance over.
Download Seth Price Dispersion, 8-4 9-5 10-6 11-7, 8 hours (literally a full working days worth) of dance music or watch Leckey's live lecture- slash- performance on the history of television in relation to 'long tail economics', and pretend like you know what that is, cos I know that I don't.

http://www.ica.org.uk/Dispersion+17449.twl

'Untold Beauty' is an exhibition the Topshop Gallery space till the December 13th by  British Iranian photographer Sara Shamsavari. But Shamsavari's 'Portraits From The Street ' are not your run of the mill fashion straight ups that are ubiquitous  on every fashion blog today. The pics capture the essence of real london street life north south east and west, taken by a photographer who clearly loves her city and its inhabitants. Brave the Topshop Christmas Rush and Check them out for yourself.

http://www.iconiqueimages.net/

Hockey and Korean Air Crashes. Gladwell is the missing link. 

Malcolm Gladwell is back with another soon to be cult book. In 'Outliers; The Story of Success' the chief demystifier, has got a bone to pick with Genius, 'What I came to realize in writing Outliers, though, is that we've been far too focused on the individual—on describing the characteristics and habits and personality traits of those who get furthest ahead in the world. And that's the problem, because in order to understand the outlier I think you have to look around them—at their culture and community and family and generation.' According to his research, most high flyers 10,000 hours of practise or in graspable terms 10 years hard graft till they achieve greatness they are recognised for. 

Ok, so this seems kind of obvious, right? Nurture over nature? 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration and all that? Sure. But with Gladwell's flow and his knack of unpicking social phenomenon through drawing in a vast array of referents and anecdotes, I can bet it will be a worth a read. Korean Air-crashes, quiz show champions, canadian hockey players, atomic scientists- How many other books can say they span this distance? 'My wish with Outliers is that it makes us understand how much of a group project success is.' Here, here, Malc. For that I'm adding 'Outliers' to my christmas list.

Goldie

Head of the Family

To see more pics go here...  www.flickr.com/photos/nefatron/

Frazier now

Tonight More 4 screens new doc 'Thriller in Manila', the story of Mohamed Ali's legendary fight with Joe Frazier.According to the folks at Sheff DocFest where it was debuted earlier this year it 'Blows apart the Ali Myth, darker sides of his character are drawn into the light to cast a shadow over what the fight meants to sporting history and a country bearing social change'

Tonight More 4, 10pm

If you proper like zines you'll like Handmade and Bound. The Annual London Artists Bookfair isn't happening this year, but the good peeps at Handmade and Bound are stepping up to the gap in the market, hosting a book and zine fair at the Aloysius Social Club tomorrow. Zines, afterall, are the original blogs!

This Saturday 8 November 2008 ,St Aloysius Social Club, Phoenix Road, London NW1 (nearest tube Euston). 12-6pm. Free entry. 

http://www.handmadeandbound.com

Weirdo Dave

Free Collective

'Fuck this Life'  a zine straight outta the NY Bowery made by Weirdo Dave, apparently the  ultimate ‘zine about aggression, escape and attitude'.Its chockablock full of cut outs and cut ups. Below,'Protest is Beautiful' is the work of the UK's Free collective old skool arty agit prop-pers who like (long) one liners. Pick your motto for the week people. 

http://www.freee.org.uk/

On first glance these photos looks like some warped take on a Jamel Shabazz photo.  Boom boxes become shoe shine stands, Kangol hats balaclavas. And I guess that V sign is just universal first, second and third world over.

The pics (Shabazz aside) are from a series called Lustrabotas by photographer Phil Clarke-Hill, whose current exhibition documents the hundreds of shoe shine boys who work and live on the streets of La Paz, Bolivia. 

Apparently they don't wear the balaclavas to intimidate people, they're more about keeping anonymous.  It's not just street kids who shoe-shine-  a lot of  lower middle class boys do it too help fund them through college, but don't want to be spotted 'working the streets'

Aswell as shining shoes, many of the boys sell and produce Big Issue style newspaper. Pretty mental stuff that I wouldn't know about if I hadn't seen these pics. Last chance to see them in the flesh this week at Viewfinder Gallery in Greenwich.

http://www.viewfinder.org.uk/

http://www.photomonth.org/

Is this the best bedspread you've ever seen or what? As the winter nights encroach I want this to keep me warm. This quilt is made from ten thousand pieces  and is the labour of love of Siggi Eggerston, a London based designer who hails from Iceland, who grew up on a steady diet of lego and basketball. 

http://www.vanillusaft.com/

Norwegian photographer Sølve Sundsbø is best known for his fashion photographs, which are always supremely slick (he's done YSL, Harpers Bazaar, Hermes, you name it) , but  they're occasionally mad colourific and intense too (see old dazed shot above). In a new commission from the good people at Show Studio, Sundsbø has gone 'Back 2 Life', indulging his interest in the natural avian steez. PARROQUET is a series of shorts and photographic stills of a type of long tailed parrot. Check it here:

http://www.showstudio.com/project/perroquet

French film 'The Class' (Entre Les Murs) is killing at the Box Office in it's native country as it goes head to head with another another home-grown flick 'Faubourg 36'.

'The Class' depicts a year in the life of  secondary school class in the suburbs of Paris. Director Laurent Cantet embraces cinema verite techniques to create the 'slice of life' storytelling which won the film the Palme d'or award at Cannes earlier this year. The film is based on the original script by former teacher Francois Begaudeau who plays himself in the film, alongside a team of non professional actors. I haven't seen it yet, can't tell a word they're saying, but know I want to see more.

Shot on HD for £1.9m, a fraction of the price of 'Faubourg 36'(£22m) if the rave reviews are anything to go by 'The Class' is proof that bigger budget doesn't always mean bigger box office bucks. See it for yourself (with subtitles!) as part of the BFI Film Festival on Saturday October 18th at the Odeon West End. 

www.bfi.org.uk/lff/ 

Shutting Up Shop is a photographic homage to the traditional small shop, seen through the lens of John Londei. Londei (big surname!) started the project back in the late 70's, and spent fifteen years recording the independent stores of this kind, which are now a dying breed in London Town. Of the Sixty shops Londei Photographed, only one seven were still trading in 2004. I'd like to say hundreds of nu-skool home grown equivalents have popped up in their places, but that might be wishful thinking. According to a recent House Of Commons Report, 'if the steady demise of independent shops continues at its current rate, the majority of Britain's 26,800 independent retailers would be out of business by 2015'.

An exhibition of selected images from the book'Shutting Up Shop' opens today at The Museum of London.

Got to be the most ragga car I've seen in a while. Its all about the primaries. With those colours it could even be the Back2Life mascot...

On a Friday night when Mr Falafel has packed up and gone home, our man Harry steps up to keep the city full of colour. Start the week with a little bit of Plant Pot Pride London, courtesy of Harry.