INSIDE SYRIA

The Cut Hands composition Rain Washes Over Chaff is featured in VBS's new documentary film Inside Syria.

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Mandingo!
the recent VBS documentary Mandingo! about the Floridian interracial swinging scene features a new Cut Hands track, one that isn't expected to be included on the forthcoming album - in case you're wondering which it is, it's the one in the film that doesn't sound like a Led Zeppelin remix

Bijin Tokei
am suffering from a mad addiction to these bijin tokei iDevice apps; not sure what's cuter - the ones with random girls in the streets of Japan, or the ones with the photos taken with fish-eye lenses of kittens and puppies; not to leave anyone out, there's even one with boys now, not to mention a porn incarnation (it had to happen sooner or later)

The Wire
I didn't envy David Keenan's herculean task of transcribing the 4+ hours of dialogue for the Invisible Jukebox, which then had to be edited down quite a bit; anyway, I thought he did a great and meticulous job of making it all work pretty well; there were just a couple of minor corrections I'd like to point out: of course, it was Robert Rental who sold me the Wasp synth (not Daniel Miller), and Bad Girls Get The Fuck Over It is in fact Whitehouse (not a side project as was suggested in the feature's introduction); the magazine also have posted an exclusive short streaming extract from 'Extralinguistic Programming'

Movies
it was time last weekend, once again, to dust off the 3D glasses for the (presumably) valedictory Jackass movie, review coming for that soon, along with Enter The Void and much more; nor has the promised Disney special been forgotten about, I know how much people are not dying to read that

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NME
notice anything strange about the NME's Greatest Cult Heroes chart? ah, it brings back fluffy memories of when in 1977 chain store WH Smith listed the weekly pop charts in their windows with a blank at #2... The Sex Pistols' 'God Save The Queen' was gloriously absented (in fact, as everyone knows, it should have been in top position); as with the very same WH Smith's, the NME has been so painfully uncool for such a long time that I'm not sure how much vindication can be derived from this, though excuse me for enjoying this fleetingly sweet poetic irony

Webbys
on a vaguely related subject, what exactly are awards for? I'm not entirely sure what prestige means; however, semantic pedantry notwithstanding, yay! VBS's Liberia documentary has won two Webbys!

The Secret Of Scent
ever since starting this infuriatingly good book about the mysteries of fragrances, I've been sniffing around big store perfume departments like a truffle-starved black boar let loose in the woods; despite Luca Turin's slightly condescending literary tone, his scent descriptions are intoxicatingly evocative - I am now not a little impatient for even a four-hour stop-over at Schiphol airport, let alone the dream of one day visiting the Osmothèque in Versailles

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