Richard Kettlewell

Consider first https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCDIYvFmgW8 Weapon of Choice, in which Christopher Walken dances around a predominantly brown hotel, with occasional wirework flying and some good use of mirrors (you can just spot the camera rig if you look carefully). The lyrics have no particular connection to the video.

Next look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABz2m0olmPg KENZO World, in which Margaret Qualley dances around a predominantly brown (OK, verging on yellow) hotel, with some flying at the end (I don’t know what technique) and much better use of mirrors (they either did a better job of positioning the camera or edited it out). Also, laser fingers. If the singing means anything it’s not a language I speak, so I couldn’t say whether the lyrics are connected to the video. Anyway it’s very clearly inspired by Weapon of Choice.

After that see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QFvgHIJrEQ - Anna, in which Emma Stone dances around a substantially brown hotel¹, assisted by some quite buff sailors. This has less in common with the other two: the only mirrors are spotted are her shades, the only fx I spotted was a simulated roll, and the video does actually reference the lyrics at one point.

¹ yes, it’s a ship, but it’s been permanently moored since the 1960s and functions as a hotel.

I think the style and setting od these three music videos means they form a genre, although I don’t know what it would be called.

I’ve been wondering for a while whether there was anything else in the same genre, and recently ran into https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni75mYuwvlg Stay Awhile, in which Zooey Deschanel (in the company of M. Ward) dances around a residence rather than a hotel, with rather less brown (though it’s there if you look for it). On the one hand the lyrics don’t directly connect to what’s going on in the video, on the other hand the dancer is singing them. Instead of wirework I think the fx involve people in chroma key suites. I think there’s enough similarity here to say there’s a close relationship to the three videos above.

Does anyone know of anything else which might fit into the same category, or have a good name for it?

With a real likelihood of UK exit from the EU, it makes sense to move the bulk of any savings you may have outside the British economy, since there's a serious risk that they will soon become worth substantially less and stay that way. Where are you moving yours?

[Poll #2047249]

Either one of you lot has changed job and (more alarmingly) accent recently, or on the way home this evening I had a brief but friendly conversation with your doppelganger. Who is probably even more confused than I am, but (in retrospect) did an impressive job of hiding it...

[Poll #1938357]

I forgot to do this last year.

[Poll #1883228] [Poll #1883229]

[Poll #1875125]

I recently read Tony Blair’s autobiography. It’s an interesting enough read, but right now it seems worth highlighting a particular passage:

During the IOC preliminary visit to London to assess our bid, Buckingham Palace put on a dinner for the assessment team, whose chief I sat next to. It was only in the course of talking with her that I realised London’s bid had to be about them, not us; or more accurately what we could do to advance the ethos, the spirit, the inner emotions of the Olympic movement, rather than being simply about London, infrastructure, and so on. The IOC were a curious mixture of athletes, business people, royals and the general great and good; but whatever their origins, they were immensely sensitive to the charges that the whole thing had become commercialised and had lost touch with its inner self. They wanted the Olympics to mean something again, a higher and better thing, not just a great moneymaking celebrity fest.

I wonder how their immensely sensitive souls are coping with the nonsense about the Olympic chip monopoly?

I approve of this plan.

(Previously, previously.)