Archive for December, 2010

Those of you who are avid followers of our little Bakery’s produce will remember that last Christmas Chefs Richard and Dan produced a lil ol’ package for BBC Radio Kent about the year that Christmas was banned, and how Canterbury defiantly stood up to the puritanical republicans in charge and celebrated it anyway (Chef Richard even blogged about it). Well I thought it’d be good to dust it off and present it once again! So sit down, kick off those snow flecked boots and take a listen below… Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!

‘Twas the night before Christmas, And all through the blog, A short silent film was our virtual Yule log. There has been a distinct lack of festive flavour in our recent blog posts, which I feel needs to be rectified. Furthermore, we spend so much time harping on about modern short films with all their computer trickery, I thought it was time for something a little older. Really old in fact. I love the magic of silent films. Their imagination and resourcefulness often seems so much more impressive than today’s special effects, which can usually be boiled down to some computers and a bit of green cloth. This film is only one minute long, but it is really beautiful. Ignore the modern music. In fact, mute it and pick something else to score it to. It was made at the dawn of film-making by British film-maker, magic lanternist and hypnotist, G.A. Smith. The little children in it could well have grown to 100 and died of old age long before now. Because this film isn’t just an evocation of Victorian Christmas, this film is of a Victorian Christmas. This really is a magical piece of a Christmas long ago,...

On the twenty third day of Christmas, The bakery gave to us all: An Indiana Jones Lego Figure. I’ve had to dig pretty deep into the Bakery archives to find this video. I made this stopmotion animation (also known as a brickmation!) back in 2006 for my media A-Level whilst a wee lad. Many hours were spent in a dark room, (bin bags work very well for blocking up windows), armed only with a few lights, a camera and some Lego. I’ve always enjoyed the stopmotion style and this was a chance to give it a go. I now have a lot of admiration for anyone that does stopmotion animation – truly the most patient of people. You’ll have to excuse some suspect green screening and post work, this was 2006 after all! Previously this film was only online for a few months before being removed by Youtube for “Copyright Infringement” – despite crediting Kasabian. However, here are some stats it got in that short time: Views: 60,226 Comments: 123 Likes: 247 Dislikes 17 Not too shabby. So here you go, I hope you enjoy some retro stopmotion on the 23rd day of Christmas! N.B You might have to...

On the twenty second day of Christmas, The bakery gave to us all: Tom German’s music taste. I know how much you all love death metal! So for my blog post today I thought I would put an excellent brutal technical death metal video, to get you into the Christmas spirit. The first track is by a band called Nile, who make death metal with an Egyptian theme. Please note the inability of metal bands, even when they are good, to make a decent video (Bakery opening possibly). There is more cheese in this one then in Cheddar Gorge! Please enjoy lyrics as well, reciting them to your grandmothers. So, I give you, Nile’s ‘Papyrus containing the spell to preserve its possessor from attacks from he who lives in the water’. Amun
Lord of the Gods
Thou who art of the Four Rams Heads upon thy Neck
Thou standest upon the spine of the crocodile fiends
To thine sides are the Dog Headed apes
The Transformed spirits of the Dawn

Drive away from me the Lions of The Wastes
the Crocodiles which come forth from the River
the Bite Of Poisonous reptiles
which crawl forth from their holes

Be driven back crocodile thou spawn of Set
Move not by means...

On the eighteenth day of Christmas, Chef Julian broke with convention So apparently I’m late or something, but WHATEVER I’ve been like ultra biz getting this new show on the road etc so apologies, but still not my fault. BTW I wanted to do another round robin this year, but frankly you don’t deserve my time. Besides, there was a drag queen, an interior decorator and an Ocada delivery man having a fight in the downstairs apartment yesterday, and I just couldn’t finish the thing off. As most of you follow me on twitter, you’ll already know I got a job at StudioDilbert, which is going AFRK if you know what I mean. Exchellente!!!! ATM I’m researching for a show called ‘Chip Shop Swap’ for Living TV, so obviously I’m talking to lots of exciting execs ALL the time, and even got to spend the day with Alex Reid yesterday, who’s writing and presenting the show. Info dump: the show’s a daytime slot about 40-something chip shop owners from north and south UK (I’m researching somewhere called ‘Cheetham Hill’ – WTF is that?!) who swap chip shops for a day to see how things are different across cultural boundaries....

On the twentieth day of Christmas, The bakery gave to us all: Something inexplicable. There’s something brilliant about the unexpected. From genuinely hilarious comments you’re sure you’ve just overheard an old man say in passing to moments that you know God made happen only so he could high-five St Peter as they watch the video again and again on youtube. So on this, the 20th day of Christmas, I give you something which I could genuinely not give a title to: http://sour-mirror.jp/index.html

On the nineteenth day of Christmas, The bakery gave to us all: A second round of controversy… Some faithful blog readers may remember a post from September last year titled ‘Creativity in Education‘. It was a talk given by a chap called Ken Robinson, who explores and later suggests that creativity is not being prioritised enough in education. That perhaps the current system stifles it. Well this post held the record for the amount of comments that was ever left on our blog – 25 in total. Which goes to show that he was talking about a subject that was quite close to all of our hearts. Well, you’ll all be glad to know that Mr Ken has done a follow-up speech on his original one… Once again, we have to thank Miranda Gerzon from the Bakery’s US branch for this. If it wasn’t for her inspiring and educational input, you’d be reading a special Al King festive spotlight post on the future of agricultural subsidy.

On the seventh day of Christmas, The bakery gave to us all: Two more nice videos to enjoy! So the 17th day of Christmas is upon us, leaving only 8 days till the big jolly fat man comes sliding down our chimneys, and how better to continue the count down by breaking the mould! Here are two videos doing JUST THAT* *that was a lie. But I enjoyed them.

On the sixteenth day of Christmas, The bakery gave to us all: A selection of Japanese videos Now you may or may not be one of those people that absolutely loves all things Japanese, but even if you don’t own Akira pajamas, listen to the Glay back catalogue or call rock-paper-sissors ‘janken’, we can all do with a little Japanese craziness from time to time. So take a look at the videos below and enjoy the warm feeling you get when you remember you’re not foreign. Apart from Chef Gate. He’s always foreign. And I really don’t know what is going on here…