18th May 2012…22:03 UEFA EURO 2012
I was very lucky to hear on Monday that I have won a Carlsberg sponsored trip to the European Championships in Poland next month. This will be my first ever international tournament and I am beyond excited for it. I’ll be taking my brother John along and we’ll be attending the semi final in Warsaw on June 28th.
With that in mind, no doubt a lot of my blogs in the coming weeks will be regarding the tournament. I’ll be attempting to run updates while I’m there through my Twitter account @AndyGillooley. Hopefully I’ll be able to get into the aura of the festival in my two days in Poland and I’ll attempt to put across how it feels to be there.
I’m very grateful to Carlsberg Canada for offering me this chance of a lifetime and I’ll be sure to enjoy every second of it. To get into the spirit of things I’ve set up a Fantasy League on the Euro 2012 website, you can join here…
And here is the team I’ll be hoping to win with, lets see what you can come up with.
15th May 2012…08:54 The Good Intentions and 56 Up
Last night the 7 Up documentary series returned to ITV in the UK and Lovely Films was proud to be a part of it. 49 years on since the original series Michael Apted and his crew returned to see what had happened in the past seven years to the original subjects. Returning for the first time since 28 Up was Peter Davies of The Good Intentions, I had the pleasure of working with them, directing the 2011 music video for the track ‘Gone So Long’ so it was great to see them come cross so well in the show.
The Good Intentions are a very talented Americana act and 56 Up is a fantastic documentary, it’s place in UK culture can not be underestimated and it paints a fantastic picture of society over the past 56 years. I am immensely proud to have been involved (even in a small way) with the project.
You can watch the music video that I made, along with Rik Curtis and Stuart Bedford here.
14th May 2012…14:00 #SundayNightAnimation
#SundayNightAnimation is a new movement dedicated to promoting the wonderful pieces of animated film that are out there inspiring us. Established recently by @AndyGillooley and @NeilOlivier we will look to promote a new piece of outstanding animation every Sunday (night).
We welcome external input and contributions, especially if you would like to promote your own work; please remember to credit anybody else’s work that you recommend though. We’ll put as many as we can up on the site here, but most of the work will be done through Twitter, so just tag any posts with #SundayNightAnimation and we’ll make sure that they get seen.
21st April 2012…19:55 Team GB – 2012 Olympics
With us getting closer to the 2012 games in London and with news of Stuart Pearce narrowing his selection down to a final 80, I’ve been given some thought to the team that I would choose to represent Great Britain. Due to my mongrel makeup I’ve never really supported England at major competitions (aside from during Euro 96) and have always felt more British than English. So I’m probably more excited than most about supporting a united Great British team. Below is a team that I think could have a serious impact upon the tournament, it would have to be at its very best to win though, with Brazil, Uruguay and Spain all likely to send very strong teams.
GK – Paul Robinson (+) 
RB – Chris Gunter
LB – Leighton Baines (+)
CB – Martin Kelly
CB – Johnny Evans (+)
CM – Aaron Ramsey
CM – Joe Allen
CM – Jordan Henderson
RW – Alex Oxlaide-Chamberlain
LW – Gareth Bale
ST – Danny Wellbeck
(+) Overage
Subs: Ben Amos, Craig Cathcart, Jack Rodwell, Tom Cleverly, Henri Lansbury, Marc Albrighton, James Forrest, Jordan Rhodes
Admittedly there are a couple of players in there that might represent England at the European Championships but especially in Baines’ case if he isn’t going to play much football in Poland and Ukraine he might as well bring his undoubted skills to the Olympics. Whether this team would have enough to hold Neymar and Brazil or Suarez and Uruguay remains to be seen, but with Beckham nowhere in sight they surely have a much better chance.
12th February 2012…15:36 LEONARD COHEN
In the summer of 2008 I saw one the best performances that I’ve even been fortunate to catch when Leonard played the mid afternoon slot at Glastonbury Festival. It was a truely outstanding gig, which perfectly summed up a fantastic weekend, and I’ll remember that day as long as I live.
Now almost four years on and Cohen has released a new studio album ‘Old Ideas’, it really is another fantastic collection of songs, showcasing Cohen’s beautifully unique voice. I’ve been listening to it a lot lately and have been considering putting moving pictures to it.
I’ve played around a bit and illustrated his new song ‘Amen’ with some old WWII stock footage, I think it goes together really well, the song telling its own story and helping to bring the images to life. It was just a quick job which I did to hopefully get a few more people to give the album a chance.
You can watch the video that I put together here:
The stock footage was taken from The Internet Archive, from a video entitled ‘Rush repairs of supply ships etc’. It can be viewed in full here.
Meanwhile I advise you at least give Leonard Cohen’s ‘Old Ideas’ a quick listen, it really is fantastic stuff. You can find out more and buy it here.
28th September 2011…21:18 FUN WITH EDITING
As I said in my previous post I’ve been thinking for a while that I should start following through with a few more of my ideas and put them up on here rather than just sitting on them. So I’ll follow up with this one that I came up with a couple of years ago (it’s a bit outdated as a result, but nice to get started). I won’t go into to many details so as to avoid revealing to much of the video but you can watch it here…
22nd September 2011…16:30 EDDIE VEDER vs GODZILLA
Sorry that I haven’t been very actively blogging on here recently, I have been relocating from Pronce George to Vancouver so everything that goes along with a big move like that has been getting in the way.
I was thinking that I should use this blog to bring some of the more left field ideas that I have to you so that is something that I hope to do from now on; starting with this video that I have just put together…
While waiting for some files to come across for me as part of the ‘Dad’s Group’ project I am working on for Great Stories I was watching more news of global recession on BBC World News and also listening to the Eddie Vedder song – Society. As I sat listening to his lyrics being somewhat related to the problems of the world I thought that it would be great to contrast the song with some scenes of destruction from the Godzilla movies. So that is what I did, and I am quite pleased with the results (although I am pretty much always pleased when watching Godzilla movies).
Obviously I do not own the copyright to either the song or any of the video and this was done purely from a fan point of view, I respect both the artist and the makers of Godzilla and just wanted to play around a little.
Anyway it can be watched here and I’ll hopefully be adding more like this soon.
20th July 2011…20:15 LIVE AT SQUAMISH
I’m looking forward to my first Canadian festival proper when I head to Live at Squamish on August 20-21st. I’ve recently been checking out some of the smaller acts and here are my favourites and links to where you can listen to their tunes. I’ll take my camera and post some photos while I’m there!
The Belle Game
a seven-piece energetic, folksy band from Vancouver, B.C. with sparkling harmonies and dreamy melodies, sure to be a hit, especially if we get some sun.
Sweet Thing
Toronto based pop group specialising in guitar music you can tap a foot to. Interesting vocal set up and cool summer vibe.
Guilty about Girls
with Lou Reed style vocals and dirty guitars that effortlessly drift into pop choruses Guilty about Girls look set to put on one hell of a show.
20th July 2011…20:00 NEW BLOG
I’ve recently cleared all of my old blog enteries and will be starting afresh. Keep a look out for new updates, I like to comment on a whole range of things particularly football, film and music.
