A couple of weeks ago—when just about everyone seemed to be down with the flu—we started our 'Sniffle Special' where we'd post copies of Oh Comely to unwell readers.

So, in praise of fast recoveries and good health, our reader photo this week comes from Millie Popovic, who snapped her Sniffle Special Oh Comely next to a bowl of noodles. 

If you have a picture of Oh Comely at home we'd love to share them here. Send snaps to [email protected]. Happy Christmas and see you in 2013!

For a creative challenge this Christmas stop making homemade baubles! Instead, get your graphic design and illustrative teeth into a creative brief for Oh Comely #14 (Feb/Mar).

Here's the pitch: we have invented four paperback novels from different decades—complete with book titles, a back cover blurb and press quotes—and all that awaits is a cover design from you for one of them.

Yes, the feature is a straight-up parody of book genres. And your book, called 'Boot Hill', is a Stephen King inflected, 70s/80s horror novel. The kind of paperback that has a stark, clear cover; spiraling, cavalier fonts; perhaps even a splash of crimson red or a mad looking feline (see below). Or not. You decide. All we ask is that it feels of the decade: this is a period piece of graphic design, if you will.

The strongest entry will be published in Issue 14. For the complete brief, or if you've further questions, email [email protected]. The deadline is 7th January.

Photo: The cover of Stephen King's horror novel Pet Sematary drawn by Linda Fennimore. It was first published in 1983 and later adapted into a film of the same name. 

It must be Tuesday because we're back again with Five Questions and a Song, the weekly column where we pester musicians with a quintette of questions and ask them to share one of their tracks for your listening pleasure.

Today we're talking to Matthew Davies from drone-pop collective Milk & Biscuits. The band is something of a Brighton scene supergroup, beginning as the collaborative recording project of Matthew and Max Erle. After they released their debut EP Balcony Times in 2011, the band developed into a live group consisting of friends from other Brightonian bands, including Restlesslist, Brakes, The Electric Soft Parade, Muddy Suzuki, Do You Feel What I Feel Deer and Field Music. They joined forces with artist and poet Gary Goodman for their first full-length studio album, Spirit Nap, which is due for release early in 2013 on Big Salad Records. Head below to watch the video for the new single off the album, the sweet and dreamy ‘White Noise' (which just happens to feature in our own upcoming video project).

Photo: Milk & Biscuits

Tell us about your band.

Milk & biscuits started in the summer of 2010. I had some songs that I had been writing over the previous few years that had no place with the other groups I was in. So with Max's encouragement we started to make home recordings of them and that's how we came to release our first EP Balcony Times, which was largely made at my house. Then after a while we put a live band together. We did three or four shows, by which time we had written a bunch of new songs, and I guess there was enough confidence between us to start on a full studio album. Other than this, collectively we like reading, horses, cooking potatoes, long walks, knitting, socialising with friends and getting caught in the rain. We work well as a team and as individuals.

What's your favorite obscure instrument?

Life's never dull with a dulcimer.

Got any nice plans for the holidays?

I hope to spend Christmas being quiet. It's such a noisy time. All that mirth. People shout more, don't you find?

What's the name of your touring vehicle? [asked by last week's interviewees Stealing Sheep, who added: "Ours is called 'Hello Sarah' in the voice of David Bowie as the Gobblin King in the Labyrinth"]

Our van is called ‘Shazza'. She is about 15 years old. It used to belong to the Mystery Jets. I think they named her. Who are we to change it? It's white and the inside has some graffiti on it. If our van could talk (which it can't - it's a van) it would say "hey guys, let's just like take our time, ok? Like, what's the rush?". Its top speed is 60mph.

What can you tell us about this song?

‘White noise' is a pop song in three parts. It might be about synesthesia. There are lots of colours in it anyway. It was the first song we did with Gary Goodman the poet. It's quite warm at the beginning and quite hurried at the end.

Milk & Biscuits

For a technology that spent fifty years mouldering alongside curios like Illusion-O and Smell-O-Vision, the public perception of 3D has shifted massively in the past three years.

Widely acclaimed in the billion-dollar wake of Avatar, 3D’s value was irrevocably damaged by the cheap 2D-to-3D conversion jobs that followed: as dire blockbusters like Clash of the Titans and Alice in Wonderland sought to cash in on Avatar’s success, cinemagoers paid extortionate fees for dark, muddy 3D that felt like reading a bad pop-up book. By the time influential filmmakers like Steven Spielberg (The Adventures of Tintin) and Martin Scorsese (Hugo) got a chance to use the technology, audiences were no longer interested.

At least until James Cameron gets around to making his Avatar sequels, this is probably how the situation will remain, with audiences either indifferent or hostile towards 3D. The technology is a victim of its own success: seen by studios as a balm against piracy, its omnipresence means that films using 3D in interesting ways are doomed to be ignored amidst the dozens of releases blandly employing the format.

In an ideal world—i.e., not this one—3D wouldn’t cost extra and only films that really benefited from the technology would use it. Falling into that category would be Ang Lee’s new film Life of Pi, which employs 3D not just for spectacle but as an important tool in establishing spatial relationships within shots.

An adaptation of Yann Martel’s middlebrow blockbuster, Life of Pi tells the story of a 16-year-old boy (Suraj Sharma) stranded on a boat with a Bengal tiger called Richard Parker. As reflective as it is exciting, Life of Pi is one of the year’s most beautiful films.

While the source material affords Lee many opportunities for immersive visuals, from Pi’s whimsical upbringing in an Indian zoo to a leaping, bioluminescent whale, his use of 3D is most effective during the film’s shipwrecked middle section. Lee ensures that the audience is aware at all times of the boat’s size and the tiger’s proximity. As such, he remains a constant threat, careful framing establishing that Pi is never further than a lapse in concentration away from his own death.

In large part due to its impressive CG rendering, Richard Parker is a wholly believable living creature, existing without pity and powered only by animalistic instinct. Representing the untameable danger of nature, the decision not to anthropomorphise the tiger adds tension throughout, and is crucial to depicting his association with Pi—the film concerning their ever-shifting relationship as much as Pi’s struggle to survive. Focusing on this is also essential to avoiding the quirkiness that might have engulfed the film in lesser hands. There are islands of meerkats, and strongmen uncles, yes, but at the film’s core is a desperate battle for survival.

It’s impossible for the film about a boy and a tiger trapped on a boat to feel entirely realistic, especially considering the amount of computer imagery involved, so Lee instead opts to make the struggle biblical in its size and grandness. Entwined with Pi’s practical difficulties, the film retains the spiritual dimensions of Martel’s novel, capturing Pi’s quest to hold onto his faith after everything in his life has been torn away—not just to survive but to find a reason to do so.

After a decade of running his own theatre company, Adam Brown makes his film debut in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Adam plays Ori, one of the thirteen dwarves travelling with hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) to defeat the dragon Smaug. A shy, gentle soul who wields a slingshot and yearns for chips, Ori is one of the film’s comic highpoints, and one of the most memorable dwarves—an accomplishment considering how many there are of them.

Ahead of the release of An Unexpected Journey, we chatted with Adam about working in New Zealand and finding his inner dwarf.

You’ve been working on the film for so long. It must be great for it to actually be out in the world?

We were down in Wellington for about eighteen months, just playing around in our little costumes and now it’s finally being released. It doesn’t quite feel real. I’m excited to see what people think.

Photo: Adam Brown as Ori the dwarf in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Ori is mentioned in some of Tolkien’s other works. Did you do much research about him, or just work from the script?

A bit of both really. Ori is one of the only dwarves who appears in four movies, because he’s in Lords of the Rings as a skeleton. I did a little bit of research about that, but mostly I went off the script. If you read the Hobbit, the dwarves aren’t mentioned a great deal—they’re not fleshed out. It was great having conversations with Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens about their visions for the characters.

The dwarves are each very different and I’m lucky enough to be the little nerdy one, the child dwarf. I play the innocent fish out of water that really shouldn’t be on the journey at all—he’s far too timid. That came from my audition, I guess. I don’t know what I did but I must have brought a nervous quality.

What was Peter Jackson like as a director?

He’s just lovely. For somebody so rich and powerful, he was incredibly normal. There were times where we would offer our opinions and I think you knew straight away with Pete whether it was going to land or not. If you had to take a few moments to explain your idea it never really worked. He knew straight away what he wanted—he was always two steps ahead of all of us. We’d think that we’d come up with a great idea but he’d thought of it and considered if it would work.

Did you form a bond with your fellow dwarves?

We really, really did. It’s funny, I remember watching the Lord of the Rings DVDs and on all the documentaries they say how it’s like a family and I’d think "Come on, that’s just something you say to the press", but it’s totally true. Pete and Fran and Philippa have got such a unique world down there. All of these actors, aside from the New Zealanders obviously, are miles away from home. So the only thing we could do is really bond as a team. We did lots of Dwarf boot camp training, learning how to walk as a dwarf and getting armour lessons. The process of finding our inner dwarf was ridiculous, but such fun.

How does a dwarf walk?

Our movement coach described the walk as if you’re ploughing a field and there’s a big crane on your back. The way a dwarf walks is completely different to the way an elf or a hobbit walks. Dwarves are very grounded and centred. They’re never light on their feet. It’s like a truck accelerating—it takes a while but as soon as they’ve got some power behind them dwarves can pick up some great speed.

Photo: Ian McKellen as Gandalf in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

What was the strangest moment when making the films?

I guess one of the oddest was being invited around to Pete’s hanger. He has a series of them in Wellington, and he’s really interested in World War One so he’s got lots of replica aeroplanes and guns in them. After filming all the dwarves were invited for pizza and beers and we were shooting guns in a hanger. It was one of those things you can’t really say no to. We ended the evening sitting in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the actual car from the film. That’s how random it got last year.

You’re also going to be an action figure. Have you thought about that?

I think my family are more excited about that than I am. I must admit on the last day of shooting when I received my Lego action figure I thought, well, this is it, I’ve reached the pinnacle of my career. I’m officially a piece of Lego: I can stop now.

Tuesday is upon us once again and tagging along is this week's Five Questions and a Song, the column where we pester musicians with a quintette of questions and ask them to share one of their tracks for your listening pleasure.

Today we're talking with the trio of Liverpudlians from Stealing Sheep. Their acclaimed debut album Into The Diamond Sun showcases their dexterous brand of psych-folk, brimming with vocal harmonies and charmingly off-kilter. Check out the geological video for the single ‘Rearrange' below. Filmed over the course of a month in various locations, including a disused quarry, the video involved some wily stuntwork: "We filmed throughout the night in harsh conditions, jumping on a giant trampoline, running in the dark, and animating the diamond eater on a giant crane with an industrial fan blowing in our faces." The band have been touring the UK throughout December and you can catch their homecoming Christmas show at The Kazimier in Liverpool on Friday.

Photo: Stealing Sheep by Nina Walbecq

Tell us about your band.

We are a three piece from Liverpool and we've been playing together for two years. Our music and visual world is very much in collision and we are always exploring new sounds and images. We like illustration, film, sound and performance to be integrated creating a 3-D world of Stealing Sheep.

What was the best show you've ever played? What was the worst?

We supported Alt-J on tour recently and the finale show in London at the Electric Ballroom was really good fun. It was the drummer Tom's birthday too and we brought a cake on stage for him! The worst? Well, we played on the Sunday morning of Secret Garden Party. By this time we were all partied out and so were the crowds. Everything was muddy and Becky had a swarm of flies surrounding her head. Lots of friends turned up and looked like zombies. It was horrifyingly good.

What's your best party trick?

Eating flames.

If you had your own airline what would you name it? This is assuming you don't already have your own airline. [asked by last week's interviewee Thao & The Get Down Stay Down]

Sheep in the Sky with Diamonds.

What can you tell us about this song?

It's a song with a lot of different sections that we've 'rearranged' several times in the studio. It's a bit like a jigsaw with the perfect fit but only when you get it right. It has sections that are medieval, you could call it a mental fugue. We wrote bits of it that we can't remember writing.

www.stealingsheep.co.uk

Before last week’s screening of Only Yesterday at the Oh Comely Film Club, we showed a special programme of animated shorts. For those who weren't able to get a ticket for the night, here's the line-up:

One of the most charming animated films ever made, Hedgehog in the Fog tells the story of a hedgehog trying to find his bear cub friend. A classic of Soviet cinema, its creator Yuriy Norshteyn has spent the past 31 years working on a feature film called The Overcoat, the longest production time in motion picture history.

Funny yet uncomfortably true, Lev Yilmaz's film How To Break Up With Your Girlfriend in 64 easy steps documents in painful detail the long, messy end of a relationship.

An adaptation of former U.S.Poet Laureate Billy Collins' poem, Diego Maclean's The Art of Drowning is a short, soulful reflection on the struggle to sum up one's life in any sort of satisfactory way, and the definite impossibility of doing so "after falling off a steamship, or being swept away in a rush of floodwaters".

Less abstract than his other shorts but just as mesmeric (and with a haunting ending), Malcolm Sutherland's Umbra is about a man suddenly besieged by tiny men, determined to fling themselves into the abyss of his shadow.

Featuring the vocal talents of David Cross among others, Dave Green's Meltdown is a parody of prison break movies. Animated using actual food, it depicts the perils of an overactive refrigerator.

Directed by Jenn Kluska and Anya's Ghost author Vera Brosgol, snow-bo is a dark, very funny short about a lonely little boy and his new friend.

Deck the halls with boughs of tinsel! Yes, the Christmas season is firmly here and if you’re looking for gifts to woo and wow your friends we know a good place: Bust magazine's Christmas Craftacular, taking place on 16th of December at York Hall in Bethnal Green.

We're fans of Bust's annual Craftacular. It plays host to lots of wonderful and intriguing craft stalls and promises cake, food, music to enjoy and tables of activities to get involved in. Like Hatastic, who'll show you how to fashion a fascinator, and GranMade who'll teach you how to make your own sequined bauble. You can even learn how to hula hoop with Miss Contrance Irkles!

Admission is £2 on the door with free goodie bags for the first 100 people. And, never wanting to be left out, we've provided Craftacular with some editions of Oh Comely to share in the bags. Here are some of the crafters we're looking forward to seeing on the day:

Photo: Cruel Tea who design and make beautiful tea cosies with bows on top.

Photo: Urban Cross Stitch who designed the above cushion.

Photo: Jim Bob Art who painted this stack of coffee cups.