Little Lion Man by Mumford and Sons. Stumbled across an advert for this while reading an Elvis Costello blog post on myspace. Wow, advertising that actually worked on me. I'm such a sucker... for a good tune, fast-fingered guitar playing, and a rocky-folky stomper with a chorus that cries, "I really fucked it up this time! (Didn't I, my dear?)"
Their debut album is released October 5th. I might just have to buy it.
As the masses go wild for the latest Dan Brown, it seems an appropriate time to review Michel Faber's latest, a satire on the kind of hokum that made Brown infamous, and of the cult of celebrity and controversy that is built around such authors. The Fire Gospel begins when writer and Aramaic specialist Theo Griepenkerl is caught in the bombing of an Iraqi museum and stumbles across a hitherto-undiscovered 'fifth gospel', written by Malchus - a disciple of Jesus who was actually present at the crucifixion. Despite the rather mundane secrets of the text (Malchus is more interested in his own bowel-movements than any miracles he might have witnessed), Theo's translation becomes an overnight best-seller, making him a target for religious extremists, nymphomaniac publishers, and sensationalist talkshow hosts the world over.
Faber captures perfectly the insecurities of being a writer, even one faced with unprecedented success. Theo's obsession with his book's ranking on Amazon, and with his own fleeting celebrity, drives the plot forward. As with all Faber's books, it's the smaller moments that make The Fire Gospel so memorable, lonely nights in hotel rooms, quibbling royalties with agents and arguing theology with kidnappers, trying to impress an ex-girlfriend who really couldn't care less anymore. The kind of moments Dan Brown wouldn't even think about writing.
Tom Hanks won't ever play Theo Griepenkerl. I think we can all breathe easily for that.
Back at work after a week on my sickbed, though in an ideal world I could have done with more time to recuperate. But like a lot of people, I feel bad when I'm off work ill, leaving my colleagues in the lurch with my nightmares when they've got plenty of their own to deal with. Add to that the fact that you can only self-certify for 5 days, after which you need a doctor's note... but, if you call the doctor right now, their first question is "have you got flu symptoms?" and if you answer yes - or even maybe - they don't want you anywhere near, just push you onto the national plague helpline to sign up for tamiflu and book a place in the mortuary.
For the record, I don't think I've had swine flu. I think I've had a seriously heavy cold that left me achy and weak and light-headed and unfit for work... but not as desperately, sweatingly bedridden as on the two occasions I've had proper flu in the past. However, as 33% of people who get swine flu won't even know they've had it, I suppose it's also quite possible I may just have had a milder, non-lethal version of it... but I'll probably never know.
Anyway, back at work, still feeling like death warmed up, but crawling on through till the end of the day.
Normal blog-service will be resumed shortly...
Still still ill, but fortunately most of this week's Top Ten had already been compiled. No time for a rambling intro though, except to mention a few notable runners up from The Wedding Present, The Donnas, Beck, Noah & The Whale (who would have made the Ten if this record hadn't suffered from over-exposure in the last 12 months), The Long Blondes, My Life Story and The Flaming Lips.
10. Charlotte Gainsbourg - 5:55
In which Serge's daughter is kept away at night by Jarvis Cocker (who wrote the lyrics). A strange coupling, but it works.
9. Johnny Cash - Five Feet High And Rising
Because later on in this countdown I'll commit the heinous offence of including some modern corporate country... here's the real deal.
How high's the water, mama?
Five feet high and risin'!
James Dean posters on their wall
{Five killed in a car-crash}
What a sad little end to it all
{Five killed in a car-crash}
Last seen having lots of fun
{Five dumped in a river}
Barefoot and on the run
{Five dumped in a river}
Getting involved in the small-press comics community all those years ago was one of the best decisions of my life. I've met some of my favourite people in the whole world through making comics, people who'll give you hours of their time, plus endless encouragement and support, and never ask a thing in return.
Two of them have new comics out right now, both highly deserving of your attention. Shameless plugs ahoy!
I've worked with Nige Lowrey on more comics than any other artist. I love his highly detailed style and somewhat juvenile sense of humour. Nige and I were united in our love of Giffen / DeMatteis JLI and the History Today sketch by Newman & Baddiel. You see that new comic Silver #1? That's you, that is. Well, no, that's you if you were a smart-mouthed super-investigator with a walking teddy bear sidekick investigating the whereabouts of the Minotaur in present day America. Longtime small-press followers will remember Silver from previous Nige-ventures, but this is his first proper-comic (as opposed to photocopied and hand-stapled) venture. As well as the title strip, the first issue also features an excellent EC-style sci-fi strip by Nige, a teen romance (no, really!) and extras. Well worth £1-75 of anyone's money. Pop over to Nige's Blog and ask him how to buy a copy.
I've known Nige almost twenty years now yet we've only met once. (Then again, we're neither the most sociable of types - he's far more so than I am, though he'd probably deny it.) Nevertheless, I consider him one of my best friends and always look forwards to his letters (yes, even after all these years we still exchange snail mail) and emails. It's a funny old world, innit?
Another small-presser who has been endlessly generous with his time, advice and feedback is Paul B. Rainey, author of Book Of Lists and the ongoing graphic novel There's No Time Like The Present, both of which are available from Paul's website. TNTLTP #10 is now available and it's a twisty-turny headfuck of time travel and grumpy old bastards. Paul's work is funny and human and wonderfully engaging, and hidden among the nerdy grandpas and petty OAP agreements are some big and clever sci-fi ideas that are really beginning to come to fruition in the latest instalment. Read extracts from this and the excellent BoL at Paul's site... then go spend your money. Because good people deserve your love.
The countdown continues...
Ten...
Nine...
Eight...
Seven...
And then there were six. Nowhere near as popular a number with songwriters as seven, I even had to resort to using a couple of 60s songs to fill out this list. I mean songs with 60s in the title, not songs from the 60s. Although there is also a song from the 60s, but it doesn't have 60s in the title. Is that clear?
There were some runners up - John Prine, Hot Club De Paris, Larrikin Love, Mudcrutch, Elvis Costello & Allen Toussaint, Tom Waits and Half Man Half Biscuit - but none were quite good enough for a Top Ten placing.
I was almost tempted to break my 'numbers in band names' embargo for the sake of The 6ths and Electric Six, but no, I've got play fair.
Ten sixes then...
10. Ash - Princess Six
The opening line to this pretty Ash-by-numbers track appears to be "My heart is a tempest with blood and violency", which is utter bollocks, but we can forgive them because they're Ash.
Having recently sworn off making any more albums, Ash are set to release a new single every fortnight for a year. The first one is downloadable free from their website. They're also embarking on a 26 date UK tour, having chosen one town for each different letter of the alphabet. Astoundingly, they've picked Bradford for the B. If anyone can tell me where the fuck Zennor is, I'd love to know.
(Oh, and I haven't a clue what the amateur-produced video is all about. Some computer game or other.)
9. The Lovin' Spoonful - Six O'Clock
There's always something wonderfully uplifting about a John Sebastian composition. I must track down his theme tune to The Greatest American Hero. I used to have it on vinyl, but it's gone missing from my record collection.
The idea that the band's name is based on a euphemism for the same bodily function that inspired both 10cc and Pearl Jam is apparently an urban legend. Shame.
8. Laptop - Testimonial No. 6
Ah, the wry, urbane tones of New Yorker Jesse Hartman, who's currently in the studio recording his fourth album (or so his website would have us believe - he's been at it some time now). This is from the band's last offering, Don't Try This At Home, about a relationship that cures all ills, until it becomes a dangerous addiction.
7. Liz Phair - 6'1"
Someone on youtube sums this song up as "tall girls are ugly like giant skyscraper..short girls are cute w/nice butts..guys gets rejected and put down by women as well, its not just women". Which is certainly an interesting interpretation.
This is from Liz Phair's acclaimed debut Exile In Guyville. I suppose it's terribly unhip to say that I prefer her later stuff when she'd learnt to sing in tune.
6. Kenickie - 60s Bitch
I can't help it, even after all these years presenting culture programmes and wandering round Glastonbury in her wellies, there's still something undeniably cool about Lauren Laverne. She's not a Geordie, you know: she's a Mackem.
5. The Cure - Six Different Ways
"This is stranger than I thought", sings Robert Smith here. Blimey - imagine that, something stranger than Mad Bob can think of.
Featured in the soundtrack to the movie based on Bret Easton Ellis's Rules Of Attraction, which I thought was pretty damned good, even though it did star James Van Der Berk.
4. Mansun - Six
Reading John Niven's Kill Your Friends, I was amazed how many mentions were given to Mansun, a real Next Big Thing in 1997. Niven of course uses this to show how quickly some stars burn out, but I'll always have a soft spot for Mansun. Their heart was in the right place, even if it did occasionally disappear up their arse.
3. The Indelicates - Julia, We Don't Live In The 60s
Any excuse to play the Indelicates.
2. Kathleen Edwards - Six O'Clock News
I don't know how I discovered Kathleen Edwards. Probably had something to do with Bob Harris. She's a great storyteller anyway...
Copper on the corner and he loaded two rounds
And I can't even cross the line to talk you down
Peter, sweet baby, where'd you get that gun?
You spend half your life trying to turn the other half around
And I tried to come clean, but I guess it's no use
Your face is all over six o'clock news
They cleared the street and then they closed the schools
I can't even get inside
I haven't got a great deal of time for celebrity reality shows. A load of squawking, attention-grabbing idiots trapped in a house, or putting the fear of god into killer sharks, or injecting themselves with botox to see who can create the best DIY-boob job isn't really my idea of fun. I haven't even been tempted by Louise's latest addiction, Rock of Love, in which porky-faced Bret Michaels of Poison (who now bears an uncanny resemblance to Marvel Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada) attempts to choose a soulmate from an ever more bizarre collection of tramps, ho's, skanks, strippers, hookers, trannies and psychopaths. Hilarious though it may be, I can't devote an hour of my life to it five nights a week... particularly as Bret's search has now reached Season 3, the first two winners presumably having OD-ed on his limitless charisma been scared away by the secret of what's really going on under that headscarf.
So no, I haven't got time for shows like this. I've got books to read, comics to obsess over, music to listen to, blogs to surf...
Wait a minute, did you say Ghost Hunting With... The Happy Mondays? Oh, come on, who could resist that? I'm only human...
See: Shaun Ryder's reaction to a wailing ghost:
"Sounds like my next door neighbour getting fooked on a Friday."
"Only on a Friday?"
"It's the only time she gets it, mate."
"Fook off! Fook off! Owww! Foook!"
"We're gonna escape tonight, man, every one of us is going freestyle, man!"
"That's dooble freaky - that 'oop's moving on its own, man. That's mad, that."
"I've got some, er, proper goings on, going on with me camera!"
"Aw, watch all them fookin' blips, man, all at once, man - it's mental!"
"Mad fer it! Mad fer it! Mad!"
"Aw, Bez - you've only gone and crashed the fookin' 747, man! Fook!"
Making jokes about dead celebrities may be considered bad taste, or just whistling through the cemetery, but the above line was the first thought to enter my head on hearing of the sad death of Patrick Swayze. Sure I couldn't be the first to coin the gag, I entered it into google with quotation marks to limit the search to only that phrase and came up with 1100 hits, most from the last few hours. (It's not even accurate - Jennifer Grey was Baby; Swayze was Johnny Castle, for crying out loud!)
Seriously though, has somebody put a contract out on the 80s? First Michael Jackson, then John Hughes, now Dalton from Road House. (Not to mention Keith Floyd!) It's all very depressing. Have I reached that age already where the icons of my youth start dropping?
I'm so old! I could even be next...
While watching In The Loop on DVD the other night, Louise remarked of Peter Capaldi's vicious spin doctor Malcolm Tucker, "you love him, don't you? He's exactly how you wish you could talk to people in your job, isn't he?"
Well... yes. As mentioned here previously, I have a particular penchant for angry, misanthropic, sharp-tongued anti-heroes. Gregory House, Andy Sipowicz, Al Swearengen. There's something wonderfully cathartic about these characters, and Malcolm Tucker screaming "if I could, I'd punch you into paralysis!" barges his way onto that list with pizazz.
Steven Stelfox, the protagonist (because in no way could he ever be described a hero) of John Niven's Kill Your Friends takes angry misanthropy to the extreme. Set in the music industry at the arse end of Britpop, it features the most bigoted, hateful, obscene and depraved first person narrator since American Psycho's Patrick Bateman. Yet to call Stelfox a sexist or racist or any other kind of -ist misses the point. He doesn't discriminate - he hates everyone equally. His friends, his colleagues, his bosses, his lackeys. The artists he represents and those he only wishes he represented. Man or woman, black or white, talent or tosser - he doesn't have a kind word for anyone. He does have a foul and derogatory mouthful for everyone.
Kill Your Friends is the kind of book you read with a huge guilty grin on your face. You know you shouldn't be enjoying it as much as you do - and if you enjoy it as much as I did, you'll probably hate yourself in the morning. You may even find yourself questioning what it is in your own nature - year's of repressed anger at the injustice of the world? - that makes this orgy of ignominy so deeply satisfying. You might not like the answers.
Beyond that, I felt a particular attachment to the era. 1997 was as close as I got to working in the music industry myself, albeit from the opposite side to Stelfox. Back then I was working in the radio station record library, having minor say on playlists, scrounging free CDs and gig tickets from pluggers, and dipping my toe in the cesspit this book wallows in. I recognise many of the obscure 'next big thing' bands Niven namechecks here (Ultrasound should have been massive - well, their lead singer was), and though I was never a part of the coke-snorting, prostitute-abusing, expense-account-ravaging world the author paints, I did occasionally peek in through the steamy window. If there's anyone out there who feels remotely sympathetic for the way the internet slaughtered the record industry, this book is essential reading. It's the Fall of the Roman Empire played out to a soundtrack of Radiohead and the Spice Girls. Nothing implodes like excess.
"We'll manufacture your records and put them in the fucking shops. We'll try not to spend a red centunless we're sure we'll get it back with interest. We'll second-guess you and interfere at every conceivable stage of the artistic process. We'll edit and remix tracks without your permission. We'll force you to appear on appalling, degrading kiddies' TV programmes where you'll shake hands with Dobbin The Donkey and have to explain yourself to a teenage VJ with the attention span of a Ritalin-fuelled infant. We'll work you until you can't stand up. In collusion with your publishers we'll try and license your music to TV adverts for everything from banks to multinational petrochemical companies. (We'd license it to whaling fleets and arms dealers too if only they advertised on TV.) We'll under-account to you and charge you for every recoupable expense from the staples used to knock your horrendous contract together to the Coke you had from the fridge in my office. And if it doesn't all work out, you'll be dropped faster than a Plymouth hooker's knickers when there's a big ship in town."
The Miser at The Royal Exchange, Manchester was my first exposure to French playwright Molière, largely an entertaining introduction, though it did raise an interesting question.
Molière is regarded as the father of French satire. He's possibly as well-respected in France as Shakespeare in England, though that might be pushing it a bit. According to Wikipedia, Laurence Olivier considered him "as funny as a baby's open grave", which seems a teeny bit harsh, but comedy could well be the most subjective of all the arts - well, it's up there with painting and poetry. Anyway, the thing that occurred to me is that we were watching a translation. A translation into Modern English from the original 17th Century French. So as clever and witty and chucklesome as The Miser may be, how much has been lost along the way? I presume that when Molière's work is performed today in his homeland, they stick to the original text. Just as English-speaking nations don't try to update Shakespeare's language when performing Much Ado About Nothing. But as one of the major tricks of comedy writing is wordplay, just how much gets left behind as Molière crosses both the channel and the ages to arrive in Manchester, 2009? Furthermore, does Shakespeare undergo a similar transformation when performed in present day Paris? And does that leave non-English speakers the world over scratching their heads and wondering what all the fuss is about?
The Miser stars Derek Griffiths, who children of the 70s will always remember from Play School and Heads & Tails, and who someone once told me is a trained Nuclear Physicist, though I can't find any online confirmation of that. He's excellent in the role, although he did at times remind me of Pop from The League Of Gentlemen.
Kasey Chambers may lay awake at night worrying that she's Not Pretty Enough, but what keeps me tossing and turning (never having cared whether I was a pretty boy or not) is the fear I'm not smart enough. And I never will be.
It's a recurring dread that periodically flares up, often through matters of cultural disagreement. When someone whose intelligence I respect holds a vastly differing opinion over the merits of some book or film or comic or play... when they judge something I've enjoyed wholeheartedly to be badly written, poorly performed, or tediously trite... or find hidden depths in some turd I've dismissed as shallow, throwaway tripe... I start to wonder if my own critical faculties are at fault. If my lack of intellect prevents me from appreciating what others consider festering dogs or stowaway gems. If I'm just too dumbed-down thick to appreciate things the way others do and should just keep quiet in future for fear of embarrassing myself. (You can all stop shouting 'yes!' at once, I can't hear you.)
It's ridiculous. So much is in the eye of the beholder, especially when it comes to art and entertainment. As Chuck Klosterman says, there is no right and wrong, only what works for you. But that doesn't stop me staring up at the 3am ceiling and wondering, "am I stoopid?"
It's usually about twenty past insomnia when I start to fret that this same lack of smarts might also explain my thwarted ambition and stalled career. My dead end job and frustrated dreams. My... Oh woe, oh woe is me! It's pathetic, isn't it? In the cold light of day, I can usually talk myself out of it. Most of it. But in the middle of the night...
What can I do? I'm stuck with the brain I've got, for better or worse. Maybe I should take up Sudoko...
Conversation in our office the other day while Band On The Run is playing on the radio...
A: Who's this? It sounds like Paul McCartney.
B: It is. It's Wings.
A: Wings? Who the hell are Wings?
B: God - I thought you were a DJ! Paul McCartney and Wings!
A: Was that before or after the Beatles?
I'm glad these Top Ten posts are proving popular. A quick confession - when I first started working in radio, I wanted to be a DJ. I could think of no better job than one that allowed me to go into a studio every day and put together a diverse track list that would entertain, educate (in the sense of introducing them to something new) and surprise the listeners. Sadly, shortly after starting in radio, this aspect of the job was taken away from most DJs, and the dreaded playlist became supreme. After that, I lost all interest. Who'd want to go into a studio every day and play a load of records chosen by somebody else... or worse still, a computer? I should have cleared out of the industry right then, but I hung around and found other things to do, just filling time until my writing career took off... and I'm still there twenty years later. Stuck. Institutionalized. Who else'd have me now... what else could I even do?
Anyway, short of podcasting my own radio shows (which always seems like far too much effort - plus, as I quickly learnt in my wannabe DJ days, I have a crap voice), these lists are as close as I can get. You find a way to live the dream, one way or another...
Ask someone to pick a number between 1 and 10, and apparently more people will choose seven than any other. I did read an interesting book all about probability and stuff that explained why this is, but I can't remember now. Useless, aren't I?
Anyway, this might explain why my musicplayer is positively brimming over with 7 songs, so many good tracks that I just couldn't limit this week's countdown to ten. I'll try to keep my waffle to a minimum...
Actually, I could easily have done a Top Thirty. Runners up included Cinerama, Scott Walker, The Boo Radleys, Madness, Bruce Springsteen, The Broken Family Band, Liz Phair, David Bowie, Saint Etienne, The Undertones, and the winners of last week's popular vote, REM. Some of those I do actually prefer to the tracks I've chosen below, but variety is the spice of life and you'd soon get bored if I filled this list with Bruce and David Gedge tracks every week.
20. Brian Eno - The Seven Deadly Finns
Brian Eno's only solo single? I'm not sure, but it's mad as a lorry, just like you'd expect.
19. John Martyn - Seven Black Roses
There's no doubt in my mind that the late great John Martyn is taking the piss with the lyrics of this song. Who else could get away with...?
"If you go looking down in the summer
To the village at the bottom of the well
You'll find nice things and butterflies' wings
And policemen's hats as well
The girlies there won't hurt you
'Cause they're all so very nice
There's cats and dogs and bats and frogs
And little pink sugar mice."
"On my tenth birthday, danced naked on the lawn
Making rain fall from a red watering can
On my twentieth birthday, slumped in a corner,
Wearing Rhiannon's make-up and pearls,
Clamouring, 'Give me attention, please!'
On my thirtieth birthday, drunk in the Rose & Crown,
Dissecting thoughts of everyone around.
It seems every time it gets easier and easier to die.
On my fortieth birthday, stayed in alone,
Ignoring the door and the telephone
On my fiftieth birthday, foolish tried to win a fight,
Spent three weeks inside, with bruised muscles in my side.
It seems every time it gets easier and easier to die.
On my sixtieth birthday, climbed a favourite hill,
Lay watching the swallows and the dragonflies
On my fortieth birthday, a fine meal with friends
Then collapsed gently on the table, spilling twenty year old brandy
As I expire
It seems every time it gets easier and easier to die."
"God made love to me
Soothed away my gravity
Gave me a pair of angels wings
Clear vision and some magic things"
"The voice of the great British beat boom is now holed up in Barcelona
Singing one song in eight in a barroom called La Paloma
And for the other seven, he's bored as hell
Distracted, drinking, out of step and out of time
He turns to the sax player behind, and he gestures wildly at him
And accuses him of drinking too much and playing out of time..."
Stab a sorry heart
With your favourite finger...
I see a house, a house of stone
(Seven rooms)
A lonely house 'cause now you've gone
(Filled with gloom)
Seven rooms, that's all it is, seven rooms of gloom
(Just seven rooms of gloom)
I live with emptiness
(Filled with emptiness)
Without your tenderness
So I'm behind on my movie reviews. A quick catch-up is required...
The most original sci-fi film you'll see this year, District 9 scores heavily with an excellent (unknown) cast and sfx that put the summer blockbusters to shame. After the muddy, blurry CGI of Transformers 2 , it's refreshing to see such believably rendered aliens. District 9 is proper sci-fi too, the kind they used to make before George Lucas mucked everything up with his cowboys-and-indians-in-space excuse for sci-fi. You know, back when sci-fi turned a spotlight on serious social issues like immigration, racism and the persecution of refugees. Well, that's the first half of the film anyway. After that it turns into more of a standard shoot-em-up alien thriller, though it does so with more humour, excitement, and sensitivity than Hollywood has managed with this sort of thing in ages. And you'll never look at prawns in quite the same way again.
Oh, and one thing I was amazed to discover... In South Africa, they say 'Fookin' just like Mancs.
I'm a massive David Fincher fan (Fight Club is one of my favourite movies), but I'd heard baaaaad things about The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button. I'd even heard it compared to The Movie That Dare Not Speak Its Name. As a result, I let it pass at the cinema and waited for the DVD. Better to be disappointed in your own home, I figured. Or pleasantly surprised...
I can just about see where the negative comparisons are coming from. For the first half of the movie, Benjamin Button does try far too hard to say deep, meaningful things about life and death and stuff - it breaks the fundamental rule of storytelling and tells rather than showing. It's nowhere near as patronising or hamfisted or downright EVIL as Gump, but I can see how it might have irked some.
But then, something rather special happens. When the central romance between Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett finally kicks into gear, the screenwriter discovers subtlety, and sneakily rips your heart out. Seriously, the closing moments of this film left me just devastated. I sat there and sobbed. Feel free to call me a big sissy, but boy did I sob.
I enjoyed the first couple of Final Destination movies, finding them a novel twist on the teen-killer genre, so when I heard about The Final Destination, I decided now might be a good time to finally sample this new-fangled digital 3D everyone's getting so excited about.
Now the last time I saw a 3D movie at the cinema, it was the woeful Jaws 3D, and the only bit of that I remember is when the frog jumps out of the screen at you. I had somewhat higher expectations of FD3D, if only because it's 25 years later: things are bound to look better in 3D now.
Hmm. It seems to me they still haven't conquered it. 3D looks just as unreal and blurry-at-the-edges as I remembered, it still gives you a headache, and it's still an excuse for film-makers to do pointless shit just because it's in 3D, never mind whether it makes a good story or not.
Here's something else I learned - 3D does not make a shit film better. It does however make an average film worse. There's a colossal lack of originality in The Final Destination (they even nick the pool death from an infamous Chuck Palahniuk short story), but they gleefully try and paper over this with the rubbish fx. "Yeah, never mind the lack of imagination, kids - look, it's 3D!"
Here's something else I learned - bad CGI (particularly bad CGI explosions) looks ten times worse in 3D. Really, what a bag of wank. I hope they're ashamed of themselves. Except they won't be, because they're raking it in with this 3D scam - charging an extra 30% of the ticket cost just to get in. Oh, and the 3D trailer to Jim Cameron's Avatar looks poo too.
"Very soon," says some schmuck whose name I've forgotten in Hollywood, "all films will be made in 3D." I bloody well hope not, mate.
Up Till Now isn't the greatest title you'll ever see for an autobiography, particularly one for the legend that is William Shatner, but at least it's not as cheesy as it might have been (To Boldly Go? Beam Me Up? Warp Factor 10?). Though Shatner works with a ghost writer here, I'm betting David Fisher didn't have too much work to do. The book is very rambling, almost stream-of-consciousness in places, and captures Shatner's voice perfectly. Well. Almost. It isn't. Written with. Strange breaks in. The sentences... though it does address that issue early on.
"Part of the reason I was becoming better known was what people perceived to be an unusual. Speech. Pattern. Apparently I was becoming known for. Pausing, between words, in. Unusual places. People have commented that it calls attention to the. Words, I'm saying. It provides a different kind of emphasis on a line. I have no idea where that. Came from... the reality is that I don't even hear it. I can mock the idea. I understand that people hear me speaking. That way... But it's certainly nothing I'm doing intentionally, nor do I do it in real life."
"I had always assumed my relationships with everyone else in the cast were fine... That's why I was shocked to learn about the deep animosity several members of the cast had towards me."
"When I considered this, I realised she was probably right... I was so focused on telling the story that I never focused on their needs or desires. The only thing I could say in my defence was that I never intentionally tried to hurt another actor. Perhaps I was ignorant, but I was never mean."
Inglourious Basterds has had mixed reviews, so let me come right out and say...
It's the best film I've seen all year. (Yes, even better than Star Trek.)
It's the best film Tarantino has made since Pulp Fiction.
And I haven't laughed so much in the cinema since In Bruges.
Yes, I'm a Tarantino fan, but he has been coasting a bit in recent years. I didn't particularly rave about either Kill Bill (especially not the second one), and while Death Proof was great fun, it doesn't really stand up as a classic.
Inglourious Basterds though reconfirms QT's position as the closest thing mainstream American cinema has to an auteur. It's bold, it's ballsy, it breaks any number of Hollywood rules, and it grips the hell out of its audience from the first scene.
Divided into chapters and telling a number of different interconnected stories like Pulp Fiction (though unlike PF, it does at least follow a linear narrative), the film may be nothing more than a series of set pieces, but they're damned fine set pieces and no mistaking.
QT plays his best card up front, introducing Colonel Hans Landa, the notorious Jew Hunter, a starmaking performance from Austrian actor Christoph Waltz. With all the mannerisms of a sinister Rob Brydon, Waltz is mesmerising throughout. Charming, quick-witted, camp and cunning, you're unlikely to meet such a shamelessly lovable Nazi, and he displays all these qualities from the start in a scene dripping with menace and subtext that sets a high bar for all who follow.
It's Brad Pitt's turn next as leader of the eponymous Basterds, and though he's not quite in Waltz's league, he does bring his best to the role Lt. Aldo 'the Apache' Raine, with a hilarious Clark Gable spoof that provides the movie with some of its biggest laughs. I've seen IG twice now, and when Waltz and Pitt finally face off, I cried with laughter... both times.
The rest of the cast deliver too. Melanie Laurent takes on the dark, vengeful ingenue role that QT normally gives Uma - and you're left thinking "Whoma?" Daniel Bruhl brings the slime as hero Nazi Frederick Zolla. Eden Lake's Michael Fassbender stiffens his upper lip as cineaste Brit Lt. Archie Hicox (one of a number of characters who bring QT's film geek side)... even Mike Myers doesn't go too OTT with his surprising cameo. (Speaking of cameos, Tarantino regulars Samuel Jackson and Harvey Keitel both have satisfying moments, though neither is ever seen on screen.)
But this film truly belongs to Christoph Waltz. And to Quentin Tarantino himself, who's rediscovered the style, humour, nerve, and quotability that made him famous. "That's a bingo!"
I usually do these link-posts when I don't have anything else to write... but at the moment, I've got a backlog of posts just waiting to be published (including two film reviews - one excellent, one atrocious; and the Best. Autobiography. Ever.) But I've been collecting these links for a couple of weeks, and some of them really made me smile, especially the last one which made me laugh out loud (but not LOL; I refuse to use the annoying acronyms).
If your week's been anything like mine, I bet you could do with a good laugh on a Friday...
Star Wars anti-smoking PSA (from Samurai Frog).
Thom Yorke's moving tribute to WWI veteran Harry Patch (all proceeds to the Royal British Legion).
Joss Whedon bares all in Neill Cameron's A-Z of Awesomeness (If you've got the time, it's really worth clicking through the other 25 letters for such off-the-wall treats as Kiss King Kong; Dr. Who Defeating Dr. Doom in a Deadly Disco Dance-Off; Q and Q reading Q; Captain Britain Cuddling Cerebus; and Lois Lane, Lana Lang & Lori Lemaris Lasciviously Licking Lollipops at a London Landmark.)
Nobody Watches The Watchmen
And, the second funniest thing I've seen all week*. If you only click one link, this is the one...
Hitler's reaction to the Oasis split.
As to my own reaction to the Oasis split? Really, who cares? You know they're just doing it to make some headlines, and sell more tickets to the inevitable reunion gigs once Noel's solo album has flopped and Liam has threatened to kick his head in unless he writes him some more pointless shite to sing. They'll be back together by 2012 at the latest. Liam'll probably be on Big Brother next year. Maybe Gem'll use the time to record another Heavy Stereo album. That'd be nice.
*More about the funniest thing shortly.
Here's a question aimed at anyone reading this blog in the south of England...
How do you pronounce 'glass'?
Do you really say it so it rhymes with 'farce' or 'arse'?
How about 'pass' or 'class' or 'grass'?
Really?
Yesterday, I'm wading through my Penguin Rhyming Dictionary (don't ask - it wasn't for fun) when I come across the entry for words that rhyme with 'arse': carse, farce, class, glass, pass, sparse, brass, kvass (Russian booze).
Directly above it is the entry for words that rhyme with 'ass': bass, gas, lass, mass, crass, frass (insect excrement), sass.
Now I'm sorry, I know I'm a common northern hick, but does anyone - even the biggest toff in toffsville - really pronounce 'glass' as 'glarse', 'pass' as 'parse', 'class' as 'clarse' or 'grass' as 'grarse'? Surely not even Penelope or Vicus is that posh?
What about you non-Brit English speakers?
Is it just me, or does Mr. Penguin need to take that plum out of his gob?
Yesterday morning I was stuck in Tesco behind a 4-year-old in a trolley, wailing at the top of his voice a tuneless rendition of "My Sex Is On Fire" by Kings Of Leon. Which is, I'm led to believe, about STDs and stuff. They start that Sex Ed young these days, eh?
All of which is my completely irrelevant way of introducing this week's countdown - following my Top Ten Tens and Top Ten Nines... can you guess what it is yet?
I really struggled to make the ten this week (don't worry, I won't have any problems next time). The only leftovers came from David Bowie, Eminem, and E from the Eels (who featured last week, and will probably crop up again soon... plus, I couldn't find his song Eight Lives Left anywhere online).
Hit the countdown music, Fluff!
10. Paul McCartney - Figure Of Eight
Slim pickings this week means Macca - of all people! - gets a rare look-in. This is taken from Flowers In The Dirt, which I'd argue - thanks largely to Elvis Costello's involvement - is cheeky old Sir Thumbs Aloft's best solo album. Not that I'm an expert, but back in 1989 I still had a little time for the grinning Scouse gimp, and I probably listened to this record more than it deserved.
9. Super Furry Animals - Baby Ate My Eightball
The older they get, the madder they get. Gone are the days when the Super Furries peppered their insane psychedelic Welsh indie with little nuggets of pop gold like Something 4 The Weekend or Juxtaposed With U. The madness is still there since their move to Rough Trade, but they seem to be going the arthouse route more and more as evidenced by this nutty cut from their last-but-one album, Hey, Venus! Still fun, but I'd like them more if they remembered the pop.
8. Thea Gilmore - Eight Months
Taken from Thea's most commercial, and in some ways least successful album, Avalanche. As with most of Thea's output, I can't find any trace of this online to play you. But here's another track from the same album.
7. Hazel O'Connor - Eighth Day
This week on I Love The 80s, I have been mostly watching Hazel O'Connor dressed in a Tron suit from the movie Breaking Glass (which I've never seen). Behold, what I have done!
6. Rufus Wainwright - Dinner At Eight
The last thing you expect is Rufus Wainwright calling you out for a scrap. Yet here he is, talking the talk...
"No matter how strong
I'm gonna take you down
With one little stone"
At the sign of The Cross
We eat our falafel in peace
The girl lets her uniform slip
The boy cracks a joke he is sweet
He listens to Hip Hop in Gaza
She listens to Coldplay in Lod
You know it really won't surprise me
If you're a wreck by the age of fourteen
The way you look
The way you look is fine
You say your life will be the death of you
Tell me, do you wash your hair in honey dew?
Run away to a bed and breakfast
Console yourself with the Reader's Digest
Ringing the Yellow Pages all alone
Wuthering Heights is my favourite classic English novel; you can keep all your Jane Eyres, Sense & Sensibilities, Middlemarchs, or anything by Captain Miserable (The Hardy Boy) or Mr. Twiddly-Pomp (Chuck D), none of them can hold a candle to Charlotte Bronte's doomed romance as far as I'm concerned.
So this weekend I was forced to break my self-imposed ban on TV costume dramas and cast a literary-snob eye over the latest Bronte adaptation... though inevitably it was doomed from the outset. The fact that it was on ITV didn't bode well for a start, the Beeb do this sort of thing with far more class. The cast didn't particularly inspire me either - Raquel from Corrie, Egg from This Life, and the bloke who starred in the particularly unpleasant-looking Bronson as Heathcliff. And then there were the accents. Why is a decent Yorkshire accent so hard to pull off by the majority of British actors? Instead we get this generic northern mishmash including some of the most random vowel sounds you'll ever hear. You certainly wouldn't hear them in any part of Yorkshire or Lancashire... except maybe Hull, the place where vowel sounds go to die. The cross-eyed lass playing Cathy sounded like she ought to be shagging Kevin Webster in Weatherfield, while Bronson reminded me so much of Oscar Lomax from Psychoville that I kept expecting him to say "What do you think, Tea Leaf?" To be fair to Tom Hardy, I guess that was a pretty decent stab at Bronte Country, being Lomax is from Ilkley which is just over the hill from Haworth, but he still didn't meet my vision of Heathcliff. A difficult role for any actor to play; Hardy didn't quite capture the charm or the malevolence the character possesses in my head. Still, at least nobody's accent was quite as bad as Josh Hartnett's woefully miscast Keighley hairdresser in the abysmal Blow Dry.
Someone who did manage to pull off a vowel-perfect Yorkshire accent recently was that there Bradley Pitts. Admittedly this wasn't in an actual real life performance, just a dream I had the other night. Turns out me and the Bradster were in a band together, about to go on stage at a local Working Men's Club. Except I had a terrible sore throat and wasn't sure I could perform. (Don't worry, I was only on backing vocals.) Brad was whinging on about "kids these days" and how they wouldn't know proper music if they heard it (presumably our band isn't doing too well in the land of nod), and he had no time for my excuses. "Pull tha'sen together, lad - we're on in five minutes." It was one of those dreams that are so real you can't believe it didn't happen - I woke convinced I still had a sore throat, it took minutes of forced swallowing to convince me otherwise. It took slightly less time to realise I wasn't actually best mates with Brad. Sorry, ladies.
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