Kristen Sinclair

This piece also featured in The Indiependent  here . Lou Reads! Source: blogspot.com Lou Reed has always been something of a fascination and an enigma to me. The Velvet Underground are one of my favourite bands, and a handful of Lou’s solo albums are among my most treasured. Whilst reading Mick Wall’s hastily penned biography Lou Reed: The Life , the stories behind two of his most famous songs, 'Venus in Furs' (from the Velvet Underground’s 1967 debut The Velvet Underground & Nico ) and 'Walk On the Wild Side' (from Bowie-produced 1972 solo album Transformer ) sparked my interest. Even the band’s name was inspired by a book! I had a lot of reading to do, it seemed. Legend has it that Lou Reed and John Cale found a copy of journalist Michael Leigh’s 1963 paperback Velvet Underground on the streets of New York and liked its title so much they decided to name their band after it. However, it was the book’s title that caught their attention, not so mu...

There are so many gorgeous stills from this film I could hardly choose one Source: ourgoldenage.com.au “ Qu'est-ce que c'est ‘dégueulasse’? ” In theory, I’m watching this film to improve my French… or because I’m a total sucker for a pretentious romance film. À bout de souffle , or Breathless , is director Jean-Luc Godard’s debut feature length film, released in France in 1960. The story follows petty criminal and scumbag Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) who models himself on Humphrey Bogart and, having rashly killed a policeman pursuing him from Nice, flees to Paris and rekindles his relationship with American journalism student Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg). Poiccard attempts to collect debt from an underworld associate whilst trying (unsuccessfully) to convince Franchini, who sells copies of the New York Herald Tribune on the Champs-Élysées to supplement her studying at the Sorbonne, to escape to Italy with him. Breathless was very innovative in its tim...