The Thick Of It: A View

Last week saw the end of the second series of Armando Iannucci's political satire The Thick Of It; eight episodes of sheer brilliance that was so good that I think it could well be the best British TV show of the year.

So good, in fact, that I'm going to moan about it for the next 400 words.

I had a few issues with the series, although a lot of these weren't actually related to the individual episodes. What troubled me was the way that the whole series knitted together and all too often, how it jumped from one storyline to the other without offering sufficient build up or back story.

I'm fairly sure that Iannuci's argument back to me would be that things in politics move that fast; one day things are fine and the next day you've been sacked. That viewpoint seems to forget the actual politics themselves though; the daily agendas, the negative undercurrents, the deterioration of professional credibility. What's more, basic TV writing suggests you need to introduce plots and characters with a degree of subtlety; not sledgehammer them to death in a quick and brutal murder.

The two things that irritated me were concerned mainly with the final two episodes. Firstly, the introduction of the character of Steve Fleming as Malcolm Tucker's rival press officer so late in the series seemed a little forced. We are encouraged to believe that there is a back story whereby Tucker shafted Fleming early in government life but for all that the viewer knows, he arrives without any prior warning.

The problem was that Tucker didn't seem to be losing his grip during the first six episodes. You could argue that his rants were getting increasingly more socially unacceptable (and punching a civil servant in the face is pretty socially unacceptable) but there was no evidence until - with two episodes to go - Fleming was introduced and the two engaged in a power struggle. Effectively, in thirty minutes we went from believing that Tucker was in complete control to being forced to resign. It didn't ring true.

There was also a fabulous cameo from Tom Hollander as Conservative Press Maniac “The Fucker” which was memorable and funny but completely at odds with the rest of the series. You can't just bring characters like that in for two minutes at the end of a series; it just unbalances everything else. What's more, The Fucker didn't really serve any great purpose in the programme other than to make the point that both politic parties are the same (i.e. as soon as the Tories get into power, a conservative Tucker clone would emerge to do the exact same thing). As a storyline it seemed forced and rushed; almost as if Iannuci was trying to throw as many things into the last episode as possible and hope it stuck.

The way in which it culminated with a general election being called also felt like a bit of a damp squid; no great resolve like the other individual episodes in the series, it just left a great deal of uncertainty.

Despite all of these things, The Thick Of It was an overwhelming success. It is a measure of the quality of the programme that it can have as many problems as this and still have at least four or five genuinely laugh out loud funny. The characters are superb, the quality of the satire in direct comparison to real life events was equally as good. It just needed a bit more thinking out when it came to the series as a whole.

Guardian Angels

It perhaps says more about me that I have formed huge attachment on several writers on the Guardian newspaper. It started with Laura Barton, a writer who seems to share all of my main opinions and tastes and can express them in a way that's so undeniably passionate that it makes me want to proclaim her my dream woman.

I feel the same way about Marina Hyde, the columnist behind the weekly Lost In Showbiz column and Charlie Brooker (although he at least doesn't conjure up the dream woman analogy quite as well). So much so, the last two books that I've read have been written by both of these two writers. The books in question are Marina's "Celebrity: How Entertainers Took Over the World and Why We Need an Exit Strategy" and Charlie Brooker's "Dawn Of The Dumb".

Hyde is best known for her Lost In Showbiz pieces, where her deeply satirical, whimsical and consistently hilarious pieces are published in Friday's G2 supplement. I was delighted to hear a few months ago that she was releasing a full length book based on these pieces but studying them in more detail. My copy was not sat on the shelf for very long before I devoured it in a few short bursts.

Stylistically, Celebrity is a mixed bag. One thing instantly sticks out as troublesome, whereby a lot of her jokes are stuck in footnotes* which takes a little getting used to. This device is used on most pages and although some of the jokes gain a little from the "Reveal" of having to go down to the bottom of the page to reach the punch line, it ultimately disrupts the rhythm and flow of the writing. You do get used to it as the book goes on but it does leave a lasting impression that it could’ve been handled in a more reader friendly way.

Another thing that becomes clear with the book is that there isn't quite enough material to spread it out over a full length piece of work. For the first half this isn't as much of a problem but as the book progresses, it tends to get a little stuck with the same cast of celebrity characters and similar stories.

That said, when it hits the mark it really obliterates its targets with Hyde's trademark wit. This book contains some of her best work when you boil it down to its smaller chapters and segments and perhaps that's the biggest problem.

When it comes down to it, the more successful of the two books was Brookers - which wasn't really a book as much as a chronological publishing of the already published columns in the Guardian from the past few years. In doing so, a lot of the writing was very much of its own time; for example lots of the pieces were about television shows happening at that time, like X Factor and Big Brother and this doesn't translate that well when these events have passed and the people involved in them are forgotten.

The reason why Dawn of the Dumb works better is purely its brevity and mainly because it hasn't been edited to try and become something other than a collection of newspaper articles already published.

Marina Hyde should be applauded for taking a subject that she's written about with great success and trying to craft a piece of work that's different in style and nuances, but expanding on all the main themes. It is a proper book rather than just a cynical attempt to move into the more lucrative paperback market.

Celebrity is still worth reading, make no mistake. Hyde's writing is perhaps the most engagingly funny and brilliantly satirical that I've ever read. But, as a style and a form, there's a reason why it was much more successful in short, sharp weekly newspaper articles.

* I'm not funny enough to do these as well as Marina.

Location, Location, Location

When going to some kind of prestige, serious musical concert ones of the most important thing for the organisers is to make sure that they get the right venue. Over the past seven days I've been to three wildly different concerts; the Wainwright family Christmas show at the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Halle Orchestra at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester and Spiritualized playing their 1997 album Ladies and Gentleman We Are Floating In Space at the Manchester Apollo. What's more, in all three concerts I was sat on the front row of the Stalls.

The unfortunate aspect of the three concerts was that the one I was most emotionally connected with was at a really poor choice of venue.

Since I bought Spiritualized's 1997 album Ladies and Gentleman We Are Floating In Space, it has been a record that I continually find myself coming back to. At the time, I thought it was a good album but as the years have gone on I keep finding new things from it. The songs are rich, full of colour both on the surface and underneath the sheen. In short, it is an amazing record.

Anyway, a huge stage of people (including a gospel choir, a string and brass section) descended onto the stage at the Apollo. What puzzles me is how anyone would think that the venue was capable of coping with this sound; having seen an orchestra there last year with the Last Shadow Puppets I can promptly confirm that it simply doesn't have the sonic capabilities to pull such expansive sounds off.

This time the sound was ruined by an increase in volume across the board to try and squeeze all of the sounds contained in that brilliant record to the rest of the theatre. All this meant was that singer Jason Pierce's voice was pushed over the top and the brass section in particular was reduced to a shrill high-pitched squeal. When the band went off on the noise-scape done so beautifully on the album, all that you could hear was just a stupid mess of loud noise.

Put Spiritualized at the Royal Albert Hall or the Bridgewater Hall and these problems could well have been resolved. In the surroundings of the Apollo, all that happened was that I came away disappointed and have a rather concerning level of ringing in my ears 24 hours later.

In comparison, the sound wasn't the best at the Royal Albert Hall for Not So Silent Night and the consistency of the evening struggled when there wasn't an eminent Wainwright on stage (Martha or Rufus). There were moments of magic: Guy Garvey covering Joni Mitchell's River, Ed Harcourt and Martha singing Fairytale of New York, Rufus and his boyfriend singing Silent Night in German. The problems with the sound were the complete opposite of Spiritualized in that if anything, the vocals weren't loud enough and the drums seemed a lot louder in the mix than they should've been.

As a confirmed fan of all of the members of the Wainwright and McGarrigle clans, it was an enjoyable enough evening. Reviews in the press afterwards were mixed and I can understand why; for non-fans I can imagine that the show dragged a little and lacked a little imagination at times. Considering I'd spent quite a bit of money on travelling down to London and all that entails, I came away with a slight feeling of disappointment too.

I didn't have too much time to dwell on this though. A few days later, I was at the Bridgewater Hall for The Halle Orchestra's "Halle Pops" evening, featuring some of the most famous classical music ever written with compositions from Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi and Mendelssohn. Being the first classical concert that I'd ever attended, I wasn't really sure whether or not I was going to enjoy myself but I soon settled in to the spirit of things and made the most of the occasion.

Some of the traditions of classical music - the soloist leaving the stage and then coming back on at the end of every piece, for example - seemed a touch unnecessary. Another striking difference I noticed was how members of the orchestra didn't particularly look like they were enjoying themselves, something that when pop performers would be critically mauled for.

The Bridgewater Hall is a fabulous venue, far and away superior to the Royal Albert Hall in every way other than size. Sitting on the front row for the event wasn't necessarily the great choice that I was anticipating though - too many music stands and large instruments obscure the view in these situations.

And then, on to the Apollo. The feeling of disappointment from the Wainwright concert was permeated; almost to the point that it detracted from one of my all time favourite albums. I would question why the slightly reclusive Jason Pierce wanted to re-enact what was a quite painful period of life and he never looked totally comfortable on stage performing. At a different venue, this wouldn't have been a problem. At the Apollo - with ringing ears and a front row seat of which a sound monitor obscured the entire middle of the stage (drums, brass and strings included) - it lost a lot of its magic.

So, what are my general conclusions about music venues?

A. If you have a prestige concert it needs to be in a prestige venue.
B. The Manchester Apollo is a dreadful venue for anything other than guitar-bass-drums basic bands.
C. Sometimes the front row tickets aren't always the best
D. Did I mention that I hate the Manchester Apollo?

In Treatment: A View

Having just watched the final episode of the first series of the HBO therapy drama In Treatment, I feel compelled to write of its virtue.

Staggered over five weeks, with one 30 minute episode showed every weeknight, I was initially slightly dubious about making the commitment to watching something so time-intensive as I'm not always at home every night to keep up. Fortunately, I started watching and the rest is history. Even when I wasn't at home, I found myself watching a week’s worth in one go at the weekend; each episode hungrily munching into the next.

For those who didn't see any of the mass media publicity geared towards its broadcast in the UK nine weeks ago, In Treatment follows the psychotherapist Paul (played in perhaps the role of his life by Gabriel Byrne) treating four new patients. Each one gets a 30 minute programme each week, with the Friday show being Paul attending his own therapy with Gina (another superb performance from Dianne Wiest).

Nothing much happens physically in these episodes; it is just dialogue, character-to-character. On a week-by-week basis, new developments emerge from each patient as we slowly build up their back-stories and this structure is one of the most entertaining parts of the programme. The reason it works, largely speaking, is the quality of the writing and the timing of new developments with each character and treatment. For the first few weeks as you got to know them, there was one key revelation in each programme - usually about three quarters of the way through and this key moment was often so impeccably timed that it made the whole programme.

The characters are a brilliant mix that illustrated the way that most humans are messed up - on one hand completely dislikeable and then on the other, hard not to love. Take Laura, for example. She's one of the main storylines of the first series, which begins with her announcing that she was in love with Paul in the first episode. On one hand she is clearly vulnerable and scarred but this manifests itself through a series of games and fanciful stories designed to unsettle the natural order. In doing so, she helps to manifest a mid-life crisis in Paul which reaches its climax by the final episode.

At this point, it is clear that she doesn't actually love Paul and that she was chasing after the unattainable, testing the boundaries as opposed to searching for anything else. She is a neurotic and unreliable character, yet still strangely sympathetic.

The other characters are a little more hit and miss. Alex, a traumatised fighter pilot is a riddle of contradictions and the least successful of the patients; he is difficult and cold and there are several puzzling plot holes that restrict him. In contrast, Sophie - a deeply troubled young gymnast who has tried to kill herself - is a much more loveable character and is perhaps the only one of the four that I found real sympathy with. I wanted her to sort herself out and I was concerned about her in a way that I wasn't with the others.

Finally, there's Jake and Amy. Jake is a hothead musician whose relationship with Amy is based upon a volatile dynamic that therapy manages to remove. Rather than strength their marriage, the lack of tension results in the end of it and by the end, the roles have reversed in that Jake is the sympathetic character - once the audience has the time to understand why he acts the way he does, it becomes a different storyline altogether.

Ultimately though, the best thing about In Treatment is that it takes place in a single room, conveying emotions and storyline through dialogue and extreme Ingmar Bergman style close-ups. It is reassuring that there is an audience for slow build up and that you can tell a story without having to lose all realms of subtlety. Sure, you could argue that the characters undergoing therapy are overly dramatic but that is part and parcel of the form that the programme has to take.

As far as fantastic television goes, In Treatment is up there. If you missed the series on Sky Arts then I'd recommend investing in the box-set and gorging on its 43 episodes.

The Vagaries Of Live Performance

Flaming Lips (Manchester Academy 1 – 16^th November 2009)
Laura Marling (Salford Sacred Trinity – 19^th November 2009)

Live music can be a wonderful experience; a thing of joy. It can also be a sober, reflective experience. Perhaps it is the range of emotions that seeing musicians perform can bring out which is one of the reasons why we – especially in the UK – are such avid gig-goers.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended two sold-out gigs within a few days of each other that couldn’t be more different in their execution. The Flaming Lips and Laura Marling are both critical darlings - although in different genres of music - and they are at different stages of their careers.

The Flaming Lips are well renowned for their live show, having honed it over the past ten years at festivals across the globe. Their antics range from the giant ball that front-man Wayne Coyne goes crowd-surfing in, from fake blood and close up cameras to a collection of people on the side of the stage dressed up in giant animal costumes. It is these actions that bring about a great expression of joy and fun between the band and the crowd and remains one of the fundamental things that bind the performance together.

From the moment the set opened with Race For The Prize and launching into songs from Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, the album which helped to break them in this country, the capacity crowd inside the Manchester Academy were with them for the journey and were jumping around in appreciation.

In contrast, seeing Mercury prize nominated Laura Marling perform solo to around 100 people sat cross-legged on the floor of a church in Salford makes for a different evening, but no less special.

There is something incredible about watching her perform completely solo, with just an acoustic guitar to accompany her haunting vocals. When everything is stripped back this much, it makes you realise just what a fantastic guitarist she is; delicate and simple but always inventive; from her folk-style fingerpicking to playing single bass strings on their own, she is a master of creating tension in her music and giving her voice the opportunity to resolve these tensions.

Having seen Marling play at much bigger venues than this over the past few years, it was refreshing to hear of her latest tour being a completely self-. Between Laura and her support act Pete Roe, they were driving up and down the country to gigs themselves, without any real entourage but a friend or two. They would then play tiny venues, without any great financial benefits presumably (given the number of people that they were playing to) and let these select people hear her new songs in a no-pressure environment.

It is almost hard to believe that a record company would allow such a tour to happen for one of their most up-and-coming artists, but it seems that Marling has already developed a sense of artistic control over all of her work. In Salford Sacred Trinity Church, her new songs shimmered around the incredible surroundings, with all suggestions being that her new album will be even better than her first.

Unlike Laura, the Flaming Lips neglected to play a lot of their newer material. Their recently released album Embryonic is a challenging, unconventional and high-concept double album which takes a number of listens to actively become involved with. It wasn’t surprising that they didn’t play a lot of songs from this album, mainly because it would’ve put a little bit of a downer on proceedings.

Whereas Laura Marling can perhaps get away with testing audience reaction of new material in small venues without any pressure, the Flaming Lips don’t have that luxury. Their live shows have audience expectations of joy, over-the-top antics and a healthy amount of the peace and love hippy philosophy.

Going to see the Flaming Lips is a fantastic experience and one of the few bands that I would recommend anyone that I knew to go and see, regardless of their taste in music. They have created this experience, as opposed to the normal formalities of a live show and it is a joy to behold. I do wonder how they manage to keep this level of joy so high up, especially when they seem to be making much darker, challenging music when they’re away from the stage.

As much as I love the Flaming Lips, I can’t help but want a slightly more authentic experience from them next time. They could do much worse than get advice from Laura Marling on that one.

Juliet Gloriously Naked

There are a few artistic releases every year or so that excite me. A new Woody Allen or Pedro Almodovar film; a new Radiohead album or a new series of HBO television magic all bring out that feeling of anticipation. When it comes to novels, I don't have the same number of exciting days with a single exception: A new Nick Hornby book.

It doesn't matter whether it’s a collection of his published essays (Polysyllabic Spree) or a novel for young adults (Slam) or his recent breathtakingly good novels (A Long Way Down) the quality and warmth of the writing makes it something that I always look forward to. It is also something that doesn't last; from the minute I started reading High Fidelity all those years ago I was hooked. Hooked to the point that I read High Fidelity in two sittings over a day and a half; highly inconvenient as I stayed up until 3am in the morning to finish it and had to get my zombified body to work a few hours later.

Ever since then it's been the same pattern; I would become that excited when a new novel came out that I'd have it over and done with in a few days. So, when his new work Juliet, Naked came out a few months ago I was determined to savour and enjoy it over a longer period of time.

Juliet, Naked is like High Fidelity set in the modern age. Gone are the compilation tapes, top 5 lists and record shops; this is 2009, man. This is the world of the internet, of bootleg concerts and obsessive fan worshipping. The basic story is thus: Man is obsessed with reclusive rock star to the point of destroying his relationship with Woman and is part of an internet community of obsessives. When Woman infiltrates this world and writes a review of a new CD of old demos, she causes a further rift with Man but embarks on a rather peculiar online relationship with the Reclusive Rock Star himself.

This is the celebrity age of fandom, where we are all consumers and are given so many more avenues to fuel this consumption. What is fantastic about the novel is that it spends the first half of the novel building this up, only to knock it down as you discover just how flawed the object of this fandom is as a human being.

Since the success of Fever Pitch and High Fidelity, Hornby has dabbled with different narrative structures on all of his novels. His big early success was writing from the male point of view, so he switched to the female with How To Be Good, making his lead character every bit as flawed and likable and amusing as the male ones that launched his career. Since then, A Long Way Down established a six way narrative where six characters told their individual stories in small segmented diary entries, while Slam focused in on teenage focused narrative.

Juliet takes the best bits out of all of these ideas. We have the story strands from all three main characters going concurrently and in doing so it makes all of these people identifiable. Sure, they're all flawed fuck-ups who are drifting through life but that's what makes the writing so warm. These are real people, with real flaws and real problems. Middle class existential problems admittedly but let’s not let that detract. By allowing all three story strands to develop independently, it gives us the opportunity to understand, like and empathise with each of the characters.

Ultimately, all Hornby books have similar themes and this is no different. His novels are about empathy and empathising with people; about family and how we struggle to understand how this fundamental part of our world works; about how the arts and music tend to reflect how we see ourselves; about how human beings often take a funny journey to get to a very obvious place or decision.

In summary then: Juliet, Naked is another work of triumph from Nick Hornby. And I finished it in a couple of days.

Inglorious Embraces

I go through phases of going to the cinema - often never going at all during the summer blockbuster season and going every week during Oscar season - but on a recent week off from work I was pleased to see that there were two films that I wanted to see at the cinny. Two films that on the face of it seemed polar opposites but I believe to be made by very similar directors.

The two films were Inglourious Basterds by Quentin Tarantino and Broken Embraces by Spanish film-maker Pedro Almodovar. The first film is a bloody, violent war epic that results in Adolf Hitler being blown up and the second is a melodramatic film about making films and how pretty Penelope Cruz is.

What ties them together, for me, is the populist nature of the films. Both are wildly entertaining, full of set pieces and dialogue and neither really actually amounts to much in the aftermath of watching. They are pieces of great art, designed to be thrown away. With a vast number of their films, you can easily come away from the cinema not entirely remembering exactly what you witnessed but yet you know you enjoyed it; you know you thought that the movie was good.

I'm a big fan of both directors. Almodovar is a man who tells stories of such flamboyance that tease between the lines of a daytime TV soap opera and a primetime HBO drama series. His early work was often more about the funny than the dramatic but as he's got older, a series of films such as Talk To Her, All About My Mother, Live Flesh and Bad Education has established this unique cross of trash TV and high art drama.

Tarantino on the other hand has always been about the trash, although in his career so far he has tended to focus on cinema rather than television. His later films have become less about telling stories and more about sneaking in subtle in-jokes about his favourite B movies that only he tends to understand. This is probably why most of his recent films have been widely criticised by the press.

What this isn't taking into account is the fact that the movies he produces are still every bit as entertaining as his earlier ones. At times they can be frustrating, egotistical and very self-indulgent but perhaps that is the work of a director that understands himself and his strange peculiarities, which is often the main reason why his films are as watchable as they are.

Almodovar is every bit as egotistical and self indulgent; in Broken Embraces the film that the characters are making is the same Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown that made Almodovar an international success. Could it be that the Spaniard gets a better critical slice of the pie because of his nationality?

The main difference that I see between the directors is that Pedro isn't quite as frustrating as Quentin. They both tend to make art out of the trash; it's just that Almodovar clearly knows how to reign himself in a touch better. Whether that is a positive or a negative thing, I'm not entirely sure. Self indulgent as Tarantino may be, his flaws are probably the most entertaining thing about him.

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival

There is something overwhelmingly strange about the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (and indeed the many other festivals that take place at the same time) and for once I’m not talking about the performers. For the month of August every year, Edinburgh is the kind of place where no matter what ridiculous costume you are walking down the street in, you fail to register any kind of shock factor.

No, what I find strange about the festival is how concentrated the programme is across what is quite a large period of time. I remember hearing a great quote about Edinburgh that if there’s any empty room in the city that it will be booked out to a performer within minutes. Doesn’t matter what the space is – public toilet, residential house or any other extreme places where performers might want to put a show on at.

Having spent the middle weekend in Edinburgh – my first time there during the famous Fringe Festival – the fantastic wealth of the programme strikes you almost instantly. With over 2,000 shows taking place in 265 different venues and many big name shows and comedians to go and see, it is clearly a great draw that brings visitors from all over Europe to Scotland’s capital city.

My problem remains that while there is so much choice for visitors to see, it is all done at an unrealistic pricing structure. For small shows, the average price remains around £10 and this is often for only 45 minutes of performance. At that rate, it doesn’t matter how many shows there are going on because the majority of people won’t be able to afford to see more than a few shows a day. Any more than that and a few days at the festival becomes more expensive than a foreign holiday.

With that in mind then, you would think that ticket sales would be badly down. However, this year’s Box Office has been extraordinarily successful. According to Wikipedia, Fringe 2009 sold 1,859,235 tickets for 34,265 performances at an average of 1,300 performances per day. There were an estimated 18,901 performers, from 60 countries.

My previous comments about ticket prices don’t really take into account the top name performers, who – as you would expect to pay in an open market – tend to cost £20-£30 in price. These shows, even without the festival banner, would make money in a city like Edinburgh and it adds a distorting effect to the box office. It is one thing putting on thousands of shows if only a few hundred make any money.

Despite all that, the figures do suggest a great appetite for the festival and a great appetite from the many performers who get involved. The problem is that putting on a show at the Edinburgh festival is notoriously difficult to make any money from. The smaller shows routinely make losses, even with the relentless promotion that goes on around the Royal Mile and in bars up and down the city. As a result, the only way to really recoup any kind of money is by charging unrealistic prices.

The festival is a fantastic thing, of that there is no doubt and there is a great argument for that scale of diversity. To my mind though, it dilutes the overall impact of the festival and creates such a hit and miss result with performances that it becomes less of a cultural epicentre and more of an unedited and unstructured mess of a festival. Quality always wins over quantity.

Mercury Music Prize 2009: The Nominees

I've been a long term admirer of the Mercury Music Prize since its inception 17 years ago. I still enjoy the day when the nominations are announced because invariably, it is a day when my world is opened up to 4 or 5 albums that I hadn't heard of and that will possibly adore.

Over the past few years, I do believe the quality of the list has started to go down markedly. There is still a few gems unearthed (I loved Rachel Unthank last year) but there seems to be a greater populist nod that has developed over time.

Before I look at the list, I'd like to comment on some of the exclusions. There are four that stick in my head as being harshly dealt with.

Micachu & the Shapes - Jewellery
Manic Street Preachers - Journal For Plague Lovers
Emmy The Great - First Love
Lily Allen - It's Not Me, It's You

I was seriously amazed that Micachu didn't make it onto the list. The album is one of the most innovative things that I've ever heard, full of strange sounds and genuinely original melodies. It takes a little bit of time to get into but once you've got over the experimental nature of the record, it is a fascinating and truly remarkable piece of work.

To me Emmy The Great's debut record is one of the best written albums that I've heard in ages. Although at times the music can lack an extra frontier and you could argue that there aren't enough memorable songs on there but I do believe that First Love is a work of brilliantly understated post-modern lyrics and sumptuous melodies with far more consistency than a lot of albums on the list.

I can understand a little more why Lily Allen and the Manics were left off the list (similarly with Doves, although I'm not a massive fan) but I do believe again that these two albums were better than the comparable genre nominee. Allen has made a fabulous pop record - which in comparison to (for example) Florence and the Machine stands head and shoulders above. Similarly, I would take the Manics record over Kasabian and Glasvegas without even having to have a minor debate.

To the rest of the list then. I'm a big fan of both Lisa Hannigan and Bat For Lashes and given their opposition would be happy for either to win. I do think that both of their albums are good but not great; specifically in Lisa's case. I love her voice and some of the songs are beautiful, breathy bunches of gorgeosity but over the course of a full album, it doesn't quite carry. That said, I would be made up if she won the prize as I do think there's a lot more to come from Lisa if she garners the confidence in her own ability.

I have an issue with Kasabian, Glasvegas and the Horrors, mainly because of the way they are all so derivative. I'm comfortable with people wearing their influences on their sleeves, but to become the Primal Scream/Phil Spector/Joy Division pastiches does absolutely nothing for me and I don't think that an award that rewards the most creative, original and ultimately best album of the year should be showering this kind of album with praise.

But then again, The Klaxons won a couple of years ago and that's on a different level.

As far as the list goes, at the moment I have heard 7 out of the 12 albums in full. This is normally at around the four or five mark and is testament to the fact that the list this year is a touch more mainstream than normal.

Every year a number of debates come out of the nominees (and its normally the same ones) - that the quality of the years music has gone down markedly, that women are taking over and that the list is trying to tie itself in with whatever music style or scene is on the up at the time (this year, 80s Pop reinvention). Ultimately, I don't believe that any of these applies to this years list, I just don't think that the judges have picked an especially reflective list of 2008-2009.

Conjecture aside however, the big question that it all boils down to: Who do I want to win?

Out of the nominees, I think that the La Roux record is the most consistently good and I would welcome Elly Jackson as the newest member of the Mercury club. On a differing note, if Lisa Hannigan or Bat For Lashes win I will be happy too as I think they are both fantastic artists in their own right. I don't necessarily agree that they have made the album of the year, but perhaps like Elbow last year, who's to say the amount of good it would do for mainstream music.

La Roux then. Though I would have loved it to have been Micachu.

Songs Of The First Half Of 2009

I have recently put together a CD for one of my friends with what I think have been the best songs in the first half of 2009. Here's the list (in no particular order other than what I thought what sound best on a CD):

1. Micachu - Lips (Jewellery)
2. La Roux - Bulletproof (La Roux)
3. Morrissey - Something Is Squeezing My Skull (Years Of Refusal)
4. Ipso Facto - You Don't Own Me (Myspace Release)
5. PJ Harvey & John Parish - Black Hearted Love (A Woman, A Man Walked By)
6. Bruce Springsteen - The Wrestler (The Wrestler OST )
7. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Heads Will Roll (It's Blitz)
8. Emmy The Great - First Love (First Love)
9. Manic Street Preachers - Jackie Collins Existential Question Time (Journal For Plague Lovers)
10. Gundogs - Call Out My Name (Call Out My Name (Single))
11. Doll & The Kicks - Roll Out The Red Carpet (Doll & The Kicks)
12. Eminem - 3am (Relapse)
13. Uncle Meat & The Highway Children - Streets Of Camden Town (Myspace)
14. Metric - Help I'm Alive (Fantasies)
15. Taylor Swift - Fifteen (Fearless)
16. Little Boots - Meddle (Tenorion Piano Version) (Little Boots EP (iTunes))
17. Franz Ferdinand - Ulysses (Tonight)

It soon became apparent that the majority of songs on the list were performed by female singers or bands. I do have a natural penchant for the vocal range that women can hit but even by these standards, to have 11 out of 16 tracks suggests a shift in either my tastes or the pop music culture.

This article serves as a nice warm-up for the Mercury Music Prize nominees piece that's coming in the next couple of days. Until then.

Antichrist: A View

Lars Von Trier's controversial new film Antichrist opened in cinemas at the weekend, having passed through the UK censors completely uncut. Ignoring the Daily Mail's traditional reaction, this is very much the correct decision.

Much has been made of some of the more shocking scenes (genital mutilation, full sex, talking foxes) that I'm not going to go into any of that because it has already been discussed to death by the worlds press. If you're not aware of the full extent of the graphic horror on display in the film click here for some more details on Wikipedia.

The film itself is a deeply shocking affair. From the beautiful opening scene, where the baby son of the two main characters (played by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) falls to his death from an upstairs window whilst his parents are having sex in another room.

The scene is shot in black and white, and in permanent slow motion, soundtracked by a delicate and moving Handel aria. The classical music fuses both the tender and beautiful act between the adults and the horrific accident to wonderful effect. It is a horrible scene and it is made horrible by the fact that it is filmed so beautifully.

The next forty five minutes or so are quite slow and more than a little dull. Willem Dafoe's character, a pompous and arrogant therapist, takes it open himself to treat his wife through her overpowering grief. This, naturally, culminates in Gainsbourg becoming convinced that everything (and more specifically, the entire of womanhood) is evil. To counterbalance this, she attacks both her husband and herself in the disturbing ways so well documented in the media.

When the film premiered at Cannes earlier this year, it was greeted with outrage. Journalists accused Von Trier of "rampant misogyny", that the film was “an abomination” and "proof that Von Trier hates women". Famously, at his press conference, a furious journalist implored him to justify not just his film but also himself to the world press.

I'm not really interested in the issue of misogyny. The film itself is in many respects a mediation on that whole topic and it has been argued that the main theme of the film is that women are essentially evil. Although Von Trier's attitudes towards women are - at best - suspect, to make such sweeping and generalised statements does nothing to actually critique the film. A much better discussion of the gender issue can be found at Guardian Unlimited.

In fact, all it really does is turn an arthouse film with limited appeal into a global talking point that more people will go and see.

Despite that, it still isn't the kind of film that a multiplex audience is going to devour and that is a good thing. To go and see Antichrist is because you have made a conscious decision that you want to make your mind up about it yourself. It is for that reason that it was crucial that it passed through the censors uncut; not because I believe that the film is necessarily a masterpiece but because the audience of Britain should be given the freedom and responsibility to decide for themselves.

To my mind, there are two pressing questions about the film and neither of them are about misogyny:
a) Was the violence/sex/graphic nature of the film necessary?
b) Does the film actually work?

I'm still unsure about the second question (and furthermore during the writing of this article I have struggled to settle on a definite answer). My normal argument in any situation like this would be that if a piece of art can polarise opinions in both directions (as many people hate is as love it) then regardless of individual opinion it must be an important piece of work.

Ultimately, the feeling of genuine shock as the film reached its conclusion suggested that it must have worked. I was open mouthed for a significant amount of time after leaving the cinema and even a day after it was difficult to explain in conversation just how powerful it was. A significant chunk of that was the beautiful way it was filmed by cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle and perhaps even more so for the performances from the always fantastic actors Gainsbourg and Dafoe. Both roles were understandably difficult but both actors came out with dignity and an intensely believeable character, which mightn't have happened in lesser hands.

I would like to go and see the film again, but I don't see I can physically put myself through it. It is by no means a piece of great entertainment; it was one of the more unpleasant 105 minutes of my life. Despite this, I firmly believe that art doesn't always have to be pleasant and nor should it be. In fact, the anarchist in me actually thinks that it has a duty to be nasty and ugly just as much as beautiful.

The question of whether the graphic scenes were necessary or not remain a difficult balancing act. I would argue that the opening scene, where you see a short shot of an erect penis thrusting in and out of a vagina was unnecessary. It didn’t add anything to the scene whatsoever, other than the initial shock factor and in all honesty, there’s enough shock factor by the end of the film to do without this initial one.

With regards to the violence, I don't have the same problems. The way that the film lags in the first half and builds the tension slowly through the psycho-analysis between husband and wife means that the violence has to finally manifest itself to bring meaning to the whole film. Unfortunately for viewers in the 21st century, violence needs to be taken to new lengths in order to sustain any real sense of psychological disturbance.

Ultimately it is a question of subtlety. I would compare Von Trier with Michael Haneke, who is the master of the subtle art of screen violence. Take Funny Games, which retains its sense of genuine shock without actually showing any violence on screen, and compare it with the sledgehammer impact of Antichrist.

There is no doubting that Antichrist is a flawed piece of work - as most of Von Trier's work is - but it is also a beautiful, moving and genuinely disturbing piece of art. It's most definitely not for everyone and I would even go as far to say that those who like the film probably didn't enjoy it - it's not the kind of film you enjoy - but there is definitely a reward in there for the viewer.

This is cinema as art, not cinema as entertainment. Whether you love it or hate it, there is a definite place for it in the modern world.

The Challenges Of Reading

I have an odd relationship with books. On the one hand, I love reading but on the other, I don’t really do enough of it.

When I was growing up I never read much fiction, I was mainly interested in biographies; of learning about the feats of those who had gone before me. I put this down to my desire to be a journalist; of wanting to know all the relevant information.

A lot of that desire went away upon finishing university, although I kept that key instinct of wanting to know stuff before everyone else. It wasn’t because I liked to know more than other people; it’s just that I liked to be the one to tell them. For example, my first reaction to the September 11th attacks was not to marvel at the shocking imagery, but to think of all the people who I knew that probably didn’t know about it that I could tell.

Since I finished university and focused more of my energies on writing fiction, I began to switch my reading to the land of the made up. I have a rotating category list of books to read; Classic, Modern Classic and Commercial that I try and switch my way through. For example, sat on my bookshelf at home I have a succession of Charles Dickens, followed by Heart of Darkness and The Talented Mr Ripley, right through to the more commercial work of Richard Milward or Bret Easton Ellis at the end of the pile.

The aim is this: if I can get my way to the end of a Dickens or a Doestevesky that I can be rewarded with a commercial book like Milward or Nick Hornby that I will devour in mega quick time. I can then go on to something in the middle.

What actually happens in this process is that I stop reading when I’m on the classic book. Over the last few years my reading habits have degenerated to the point now where I only read in bed, last thing at night. That’s fine, except if I’m especially tired the prospect of the hard work of a literary novel is often too much to deal with. It is not unheard of for me to not read anything for a week.

I’m sure I’m not alone in the pain of the classics. All that my reading policy effectively does is result in me spending two or three months reading a book when I could have possibly read four or five books in that time. I often come out of this experience very pleased with myself for getting to the end of it (especially the Russian novels, they fill me with a quite disproportionate sense of pride.) There is also great enjoyment of the journey, as typically once I reach the end, I have actually gained an understanding and enjoyment out of the process, even if it is not the same kind of enjoyment that I get from reading something a bit more page-turning.

This year, I am determined that I am going to read at least two Charles Dickens and the hefty copy of Anna Karenina that has been eagerly awaiting my attention for the two years that I’ve owned it. I have another 7 months to deal with this – by my earlier calculations I’m not going to read much other than these three books this year. Good luck to me.

Bat For Lashes: Coming Through The Trees

Every so often an artist comes along that is thunderously original and Natasha Khan seems to fit that bill like fingerless gloves. As Bat For Lashes releases her second album and Khan engages in a large scale media assault where she’ll be likened to Kate Bush or Tori Amos at every turn, I thought I would offer a different viewpoint into the wonders of her rich artistry.

To me there is little comparison between Natasha and either of these artists but for the fact that they are all multi-instrumentalist prodigal women. Their output is profoundly different in themes and texture and although I’m a huge fan of Bush and Amos in particular, I remain more excited about the work of Brighton’s recent arrival.

The key thing about both Bat For Lashes albums is that the songs are not so much about melody as about atmosphere. They are feelings that starts slowly, that you struggle to understand initially and then, as you listen to it more and more, begin to make sense.

The moment when the first album really hit me was not for about a year after I bought it. I was away from home with work, sat in a hotel room in the dark indulging my passion for David Lynch movies with the final episode of the final series of Twin Peaks.

That episode takes levels of weirdness to altogether new heights, as Agent Cooper enters the subconscious realms of the Black Lodge. I can’t explain quite what that means as the whole concept is difficult to whittle down into sentences but there is a great scene where he is in the woods, in the dark, as the light of the mystical other world opens itself up.

It was at this moment that I got a slow piano line in my head and the words “I saw a light / coming through the trees” suddenly made some sort of sense. The final song on the Mercury nominated Fur and Gold record, I Saw A Light is not so much a piece of music as a piece of dark atmospheric abstraction.

Once I finished watching the episode, I reached for my iPod and listened to the song over and over again. Although Natasha has been quoted in interviews as being a Lynch fan, it seems somewhat of a long shot to suggest that the two pieces of art are interlinked. In any case, it doesn’t really matter – the two combined for me and I remember them as such. It is such a brilliant finale to both TV show and album that the two remain inseparable in my mind.

This is the key thing with all kinds of art – the intention of the artist is always secondary to the intention of the person absorbing the art. Whatever meaning I can take away from it is more important than the artist describing how each individual component fulfilled her overall message. My message wins the battle, or at least it does for me.

As previously mentioned, the new Bat For Lashes album came out on Monday of this week and she began her tour in Manchester the following day, which I was lucky enough to attend. Both performance and recording excels and she was as engaging a performer as she has been previously. The beauty of the record is that as much as I like it now, it seems to be designed in such a way that it will take months to fully bring it into your consciousness.

It is one of those albums quite unique in the modern environment that is a "grower" and I can’t help but think that in a years time, I’m going to have some kind of Lynch-like moment where suddenly it makes sense. Who knows what I’ll be doing when it happens; I could be watching Neighbours, talking to a colleague at work or out at the pub. The moment of realisation – and consequently the power of her art – is something to look forward to and cherish.

The Sound Of Youth

I’ve become fascinated over the last few years with things that capture the feeling of being young. I’ve put this down largely to the fact that I’m no longer part of the first wave of youth – I recently was in a nightclub and felt comfortably the oldest person in there, a feeling that took a bit of getting used to.

Music is the easiest way to make people feel young again, by virtue of the fact that people reminisce about the songs that they listened to when they were young. Much harder is to make songs that capture the sound of youth, in all its messed up glory and these are generally the more precious songs. I used to consider that Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys was the most perfect surmise of what it was like to grow up, with its complex and subtle themes of love – be it gained or lost but I can’t help thinking that the record is missing a fundamental ingredient.

One band that I’ve been listening to a lot recently for this reason is Nashville punk band Be Your Own Pet, who sadly crashed and burned at the end of last year. Their songs are raucous, immature, brash, loud and ultimately perfect little anthems that could only have been created by the very young. This was true of the band who released their first album aged 15, and were practically veterans by the time their second (and final) record came out three years later. When they decided to split, they still had a number of gigs in the UK that they were forced to honour and, having witnessed their penultimate performance ever in Liverpool, was slightly amazed at the drug-addled mess that they had descended into.

There is an overwhelming sense of cockiness in the grain of the music, with the loud guitars almost acting as a metaphor for the aggressive pain of adolescence. My favourite lyric on the second album is “I know what I did was pretty rotten / Now its like everything you did is forgotten / So go ahead and tell your sob story / All I have to say about it is blow me”. It covers the broad themes of youth that Pet Sounds does, but it does so in the language of the young, the residue anger of your first love gone wrong. It is the kind of language that is meant to sound stupid to older people, that is meant to create that sense of anarchy.

In a similar scenario, I recently read Richard Milward’s book Apples which tells the story of two teenagers named Adam and Eve in Middlesbrough. Milward was a student when he completed the novel, which beautifully captures the spirit of the new generation of youngsters that have access to adulthood years before previous generations. There is no doubting that this is largely unpleasant with tales of drink, drugs, rape and teenage pregnancy proliferating on the page, all nicely summed up as an allegory to the biblical story of Adam and Eve.

What Be Your Own Pet and Milward have in common is the balance of equal parts dark and light. For all of the aggressive, loud functions of both works, there is a similar amount of beauty and romance that lingers on over the long term.

It highlights that no matter how many adults tell you that you know nothing when you’re young, you arguably have a much greater power. Once that innocence, naivety and aggression is over, you can’t re-create it which is why it is imperative that Be Your Own Pet or Milward created this before they were too old. More importantly, the art of youth is perhaps more flawed than anything, but it is these extreme flaws that tend to make it so engaging.

People say that youth is wasted on the young; perhaps that’s the whole point of growing up.

Remembering Sylvia Plath

There’s something desperately sad about the news of the suicide of Nicholas Hughes, the son of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.

He is understood to have hung himself aged 47, following in the footsteps of his poet mother who gassed herself when Nicholas was a one year old baby. This raises the obvious debate about whether or not there is a suicidal or depressive gene which encourages this final resolution. There are previous examples of people having suicide in their families continuing the legacy – Kurt Cobain for example suffered the suicides of two of his uncles over his traumatic childhood.

No doubt there are several far better scientific studies of this phenomena than I can muster – not least in today’s Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/mar/24/nicholas-hughes-suicide) so I’m going to instead focus on the thing that this story has reminded me of – the fantastic poetry of Sylvia Plath.

There’s a common put down of Plath’s work that it is a somewhat one dimensional version of adolescent despair. Woody Allen perhaps puts it more eloquently than most in his film Annie Hall when his character picks up a copy of Ariel and riffs at Diane Keaton: “Sylvia Plath - interesting poetess whose tragic suicide was misinterpreted as romantic by the college girl mentality”.

While that may be true of her audience, her poetry was certainly not one dimensional. She had a way with words that blew me away when I first read them and that still have the same impact now. It is the lilting, rhythmic feel that her words drop into, with a constant sense of longing colouring each word. My favourite Plath line - the opening salvo from The Munich Mannequins - seems to sum the two clear motivations that she had in life: the quest for perfection and the love for her children. It was also a sad indictment of the fact that she couldn’t combine both.

“Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children”

Away from that point, I particularly like the way in which she combines Nazi and Jewish imagery together in a way which is still slightly shocking now. She was writing these poems in the aftermath of the Holocaust at the end of 1950s, with the full terror of what had happened in Germany being felt by a world that would never be the same again. In her collection Ariel, there are German references in an overwhelming number of her poems, almost as a cut and dry way of describing the paradox of good and bad in all things.

Much is made of the poem “Daddy” in which amongst other things she describes the father figure of the work as “A man in black with a Meinkampf look” and how she “thought every German was you. And the language obscene”. This was a very specific attack on the two men in her life, designed for maximum effect and hurt. What interests me more is the way in which the German analogies continued into the less violent poems of her Ariel period. Using phrases such as “Bright as a Nazi lampshade” she made ordinary out of the extraordinary.

This gorgeous, bouncing lyrical style of writing was not just limited to her poetry. If anything, it was enhanced in her prose. This is obviously evident in her famous novel The Bell Jar, a painful study of the way that mental health was treated with in that era. What fascinates me more is to read extracts from her diaries that were published in the aftermath of her death, from which it is plain to see that this unique style was there from a very early age. Reading diary entries from her as a college girl, describing going on dates on a Saturday night somewhat forces home what a talent she actually was. The subject matter was largely dull but yet the writing sublime; anyone with the patience and perseverance to get through the 1000 pages of her collected diaries are rewarded not especially with a great insight into her life but more with the beauty of her sentence construction.

Part of me thinks that if Plath was born into the modern day, she might not have met the same end – with better health treatment and more support she could have gone on to be one of the most prolific female poets in history. More likely she would have been some kind of troubled pop star; such is the way that interest in poetry has submerged.

The sad truth is that had she been born into the modern day, Sylvia Plath would probably have ended up in the same situation. The unfortunate death of her son is a poignant reminder of the fact that we will never know.

You Could Have It So Much Better

I recently went to see the art-indie-pop band Franz Ferdinand live at the Manchester Academy. They delivered a good set, despite a few sound issues, but seemed to be a little short of momentum and energy.

Franz are a strange band to me; one that I have always liked but never really loved. They have created some of the greatest songs of the 21st century and yet at the same, have produced three largely patchy albums. All of the members are truly likeable but yet still strangely enigmatic.

This was my first time of seeing them live and I was surprised to see just how much front man Alex Kapranos controls the stage. The other three band members seem to fade into the background and Kapranos sings and plays the majority of the killer riffs - it reminded me more of the backing band for a solo act as a group that had been together for years.

Of the gig, my favourite Ferdinand song, Walk Away - which I was mildly obsessed with when it was released – was neutered into a slow-paced version which took away some of the fire and drive that made the song so infectious. They also didn’t play the coda at the end of the song; a strange aside about historical leaders that doesn’t really fit but in its idiosyncrasy was my favourite part. The song contains two of my favourite Franz lyrics too – “Mascara bleeds a blackened tear” and the beautifully elliptical “The sound of stilettos on a silent night”.

As the show went on, they chose not to play quite as many of their new songs as I would’ve expected for a band on tour in support of said record. This suggested a lack of confidence in the new album, which I can ultimately understand. In preparation for the gig, I bought the CD and put it in my car a week or so beforehand. I found that by the end, I was quite pleased to take it out and that I’d only really been focusing on two or three songs that I really liked.

For all this criticism, there is never a bad song on a Franz Ferdinand album, but what tempers this is that frequently only a few songs per album that are truly great. When it happens, there is no better indie band; certainly no one better at fusing danceable riffs with oddly eloquent lyrics.
Typically, these moments of magic only seem to come when they do something that sounds really original and fresh.

Hearing Ulysses for the first time amazed me; the weird and brooding sounds of the verses building up to the crescendo of the sing-a-long chorus is right up there as one of my songs of the year. I would love to see the band forget about their first album, experimenting with the forms of their songs and concentrating on the eccentricities that make them stand out from a crowd awash with generic indie bands.

They have the potential to be one of the great British bands – at the moment they will only be remembered as a good singles band.

Academy Awards Analysis

So the Oscars have been and gone without any real surprises. Slumdog Millionaire exceeded far beyond even what the most optimistic fan would have guessed at with 8 awards and Kate Winslet finally nailed her flag to the Oscar mast.

Firstly, to go over my predictions from before the event in last week’s blog entries – I decided to make the evening a bit more interesting my a succession of bets on the results. The trouble was that nearly all the awards were odds-on certs so it was difficult to make any money. Certainly getting 10p back for every £1 on Slumdog was poor value.

The trick is to sign up for a new account somewhere (I did at bluesq.com) and get a free £25 bet if you bet a similar amount on something. I staked my own money on Penelope Cruz at 2/3 on and the free bet on Kate Winslet at 1/3. For fun I also put ten £1 bets on all the rest of my predictions and preferred choices (if I’d put £25 on Sean Penn rather than a quid I would have made a killing). Overall, I got just under £60 back from my £35 stake – not bad for a bet with little genuine risk.

Sean Penn, then - the only real surprise of the night with the award previously looking destined to be dedicated to Mickey Rourke’s deceased dog. In reality, it wasn’t that much of a surprise – the acting awards are voted for by actors and Penn had already been rewarded by the Screen Actors Guild (which makes up the majority of the Oscar voters).

Ultimately, I think that Oscar voters were put off by the unpredictability of a Rourke acceptance speech. The whole show is the biggest and best advert that Hollywood has each year and the image is paramount. They weren’t willing to take the risk that primetime TV would be taken up by Rourke swearing or embarrassingly talking about Marisa Tomei’s figure. Sean Penn is the easy choice and fortunately for the Academy, the right one – although I doubt that really played much of a part.

Obviously it wouldn’t be an Oscars story without talking about Slumdog in more detail. While I’m still unconvinced by the film, it made for a great night for British film and all of the winners gave fantastic speeches – especially Danny Boyle who is perhaps the most likeable man in the industry. You couldn’t help but be pleased for everyone involved in the picture and at FilmFour who backed it, now rightly receiving plaudits for the amazing job that they do to get film projects to the big screen.

And Kate won too! I was pleased for her because she deserves the acknowledgment that I don’t think anyone realised was so important to her. I would rather that Kate have been rewarded for Revolutionary Road instead of The Reader or for one of her previously deserving works as I still stand by my opinion that Anne Hathaway was the best out of the five performances.

Similarly, I would have loved In Bruges to beat Milk in the Original Screenplay category and it was disappointing that the Academy chose to ignore the controversial Israeli film Waltz With Bashir in the Foreign Language category, but then every year they make a mess of that category.

The show itself was a sharp improvement on previous years of the likeable but ultimately not very glamorous Jon Stewart. Hugh Jackman made an excellent host, albeit one who was on screen for seemingly less time than it took Will Smith to present four technical awards. The song and dance numbers were vintage Hollywood, recession-busted good family entertainment. It's still a shame that it takes four hours to get through (I can't believe I stayed up until nearly half five in the morning) but it had enough about it to

Oscar Predictions (part two)

The acting awards at recent Oscar ceremonies have been largely predictable and somewhat of a precession. This is mainly because there is an overwhelming sense that this year’s ceremony (and the past few) will be more a celebration of timing than performance. Three of the acting categories will be won by someone because the timing is right; i.e. if they don’t give the award now they might not get another chance to.

Obviously this is quite obvious with Heath Ledger, now sadly deceased, but similarly Mickey Rourke will probably hit these actor heights again. If you want to recognise either of these two, it simply has to be now. There will not be another chance. Kate Winslet is in the same vein but although you imagine that she will continue to rack up nominations for as long as she’s in the game, if they don’t hand one to her soon then they run the risk of becoming a laughing stock.

Anyway over to the categories themselves and my thoughts and predictions:

Best Actor
This is very much a two horse race between Mickey Rourke and Sean Penn and one that the former is likely to muscle his way to victory. Out of the two, I would favour Penn for a performance well outside of his comfort zone, in a role that was as challenging to play gay as it was to achieve the kind of gravitas needed to become the USA’s first openly gay government official.

Rourke is fantastic as the down on his luck Wrestler, not knowing where to go now the glory days are gone. This is Mickey himself; this is his life since he went off the rails. It is not a breakout performance, it is something that was very much in his power and although he is terrific, an award for him would be as much for Rourke the person as the character he portrays.

The other nominees are all of high standard although highly unlikely to win. Frank Langella makes a superb Richard Nixon, all of those close-ups on his destroyed face as it all goes south make for fantastic viewing. Out of them all, Brad Pitt remains my least favourite performance, in a film that I actually quite liked. Fortunately, he has as much chance as his wife of winning (more on that in a moment).

Best Actress
Similar to the Actor category, this seems to be very much Kate’s award to lose, with the only competition coming from another highly decorated previous Oscar winner, Meryl Streep. Despite being nominated an astonishing number of times, it should be said that she hasn’t won for a while and it is unlikely that Doubt would be the one to break the habit. It is a pantomime performance that seems too hysterical and daft and I fear that if it hadn’t been Meryl, it wouldn’t have got a nomination.

My favourite performance was Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married, where she plays a drug addict who is on leave from rehab to attend her sisters wedding. As the emotional, mixed up, self-obsessed and difficult to watch Kim she is a revelation. Moments such as her speech at the meal on the eve of the wedding were so real and horrifically cringe-worthy that I almost couldn’t watch. A fantastic performance, albeit one that a nomination will likely be the sum of its glory.

A quick word on Angelina Jolie in the Changeling – if she didn’t win for crying a lot and being generally hysterical in A Mighty Heart, which was a better film, then she ain’t gonna win this time for crying a lot and being generally hysterical. Decent actress though she is, for her to be admitted into the special club of double award winners over someone like Winslet would be a travesty.

So, to Kate. She is nailed on to win for The Reader and that is probably fair considering we don’t want to end up in Peter O’Toole territory (13 nominations without victory for one of the finest actors of the 20th century). Kate does deserve one, as much this year for the fact that she is superb in both this film and Revolutionary Road, and so it shall be.

Best Supporting Actor
Not the best year for Supporting Actor performances, not that it would make much difference anyway as the late Heath Ledger is more certain to win this than he is to be dead on Sunday night. By voting for Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker, the Academy is fulfilling two aims: first, they are correcting the fact that they didn’t give it to him when he was alive and secondly, they are honouring the Dark Knight as a film without having to nominate it in the big category. All of Hollywood is grateful for the Dark Knight’s massive box-office takings last summer, it galvanised the entire industry and helped to get people back into cinemas again. Giving the dead guy the Oscar is the perfect way to hit both marks.

Personally, I flit between Philip Seymour Hoffman and Josh Brolin for this category and would probably argue that Hoffman’s was a stronger performance but that isn’t really saying much new. He is always that good (similar to Meryl Streep in that fashion) and ultimately, like Streep, Doubt isn’t good enough a film to take this home. So – I’m going for Brolin, although I doubt that he’ll have the last laugh…

Best Supporting Actress
This is my favourite category because it doesn’t seem quite so nailed on. By a long way my pick would be the delightful Penelope Cruz for Vicky Cristina Barcelona, a performance that enlivened the whole movie. Playing the crazed Marie Elena, she brought an overtly comic performance to the film which neatly paradoxes the subtlety of the other characters. Her Spanish screaming, crazed expressions and permanent looks of despair was a little locket of perfection in a joyous and entertaining movie.

Cruz does seem to be winning the battle against Marisa Tomei from The Wrestler, who I originally thought would win when I saw the nominations. The build up hasn’t been especially kind to her though and she’s lost momentum in previous award ceremonies. Her character is perhaps the most important in the Wrestler (even more so Rourke’s lead) to pin everything together and it’s a shame, as in another year she would have been a worthy winner. The two Doubt performances were decent too, although I preferred the virtuous Amy Adams to the single scene dramatics of Viola Davis.

Best Director
This is a bit of a wasteful category really, as it is seldom split from the Best Picture award winner. If Slumdog Millionaire wins the big one, expect it to win Danny Boyle a statuette too. Judged on its merits, I think Slumdog probably is the best-directed film on the shortlist so that isn’t a bad shout.

Best Screenplay
Two of this year’s real under the radar gems are featured in the Original Screenplay categories, with In Bruges and Happy-Go-Lucky fighting it out with Milk, Wall-E and Frozen River for the gong. I would love to see In Bruges win this award, as it was one of my favourite films from the entire year mainly because of the razor sharp writing and fantastic dialogue. I was also happy to see Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky nominated, although to win a writing award would be wrong considering the improvised way that he and his cast work. Either way, I imagine Milk is more likely to win it and similarly, with Adapted Screenplay, I suspect Slumdog Millionaire will be victorious although personally I would give it to Frost/Nixon.

Best Animated Feature
Wall-E. Will win, should win. I think there’s a significant argument that this should have been included in the Best Film category also.

My choice of award winners:
Best Actor: Sean Penn - Milk
Best Actress: Anne Hathaway – Rachel Getting Married
Best Supporting Actor: Josh Brolin – Milk
Best Supporting Actress: Penelope Cruz – Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Best Director: Danny Boyle – Slumdog Millionaire
Best Foreign Language Film: Waltz With Bashir (Israel)
Best Animated Feature: Wall E

Best Original Screenplay: Martin McDonagh - In Bruges

Best Adapted Screenplay: Peter Morgan - Frost/Nixon

Who I think will win:
Best Actor: Mickey Rourke – The Wrestler
Best Actress: Kate Winslet – The Reader
Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight
Best Supporting Actress: Penelope Cruz – Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Best Director: Danny Boyle – Slumdog Millionaire
Best Foreign Language Film: Waltz With Bashir (Israel)

Best Animated Feature: Wall E

Best Original Screenplay: Dustin Lance Black - Milk

Best Adapted Screenplay: Simon Beaufoy - Slumdog Millionaire

Oscar Predictions (part one)

With the Academy Awards just over a week away and the culmination of months of hard work by film studios and publicists about to be announced. It is not necessarily a celebration of great cinema but the art of self-publicity in the glamorous world of Hollywood.

This years five Best Film nominees are all good pictures, if not necessarily great. It is this fact that has resulted in Slumdog Millionaire becoming the odds-on favourite for victory as it has all the key requirements for an Oscar winner. Has it taken a lot of money? Check. Did it come from nowhere? Check. Does it vaguely fit some kind of cultural or forward-thinking maxim that Hollywood would like to be seen as embracing? Check.

One recurring theme across all of the films this year is how each of them seems to be told via flashbacks and using framing techniques and frustrating voiceovers. Benjamin Button has perhaps the worst version (Dying woman on deathbed with daughter reflecting on her life) with The Reader using a similar device with the grown up protagonist. Milk isn’t a lot better (lead character makes a tape in his kitchen reflecting on his life, just in case he gets killed) and the talking heads in Frost/Nixon was my only problem with the whole movie. The only film that feels inventive with its structure is Slumdog Millionaire, the only one where the flashbacks feel integral to the story, rather than a lazy way of telling it.

Anyway, here are my thoughts on the five films up for glory on Sunday week:

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
I have been slightly surprised by the amount of scathing criticism of this film from most areas of the media. It certainly isn’t a bad film as has been suggested (The Guardian gave it a one star review) and I think the key factor is that it isn’t as good as it probably should’ve been. Performance wise, all of the actors put in a decent shift and the technology deployed to make Brad Pitt age backwards is quite superb.

There were some areas that I didn’t like – as mentioned earlier I hated the structure with Cate Blanchett on her deathbed; it would have been possible to tell the story without having this to frame it. It was also too long, although I wasn’t bored at any real point – unlike a lot of other reviewers. That said, compress it down by 45 minutes and it would have made the same points without losing any depth of feeling.

I came out of the cinema feeling melancholic, although perhaps without having taken the emotional punch that I possibly could have. It is certainly not a bad film and wouldn’t be as diabolical a winner as you might think.

Milk
The great thing about Milk is that it is a brilliant story in its own right. Watch the recently released documentary about Harvey Milk’s life and the story is enthralling enough, even without Sean Penn pretending to be gay. Gus Van Sant’s direction is very steady – there is nothing flashy to this film, the focus remains purely on the story. Because of this, Sean Penn’s performance works to drives the film along - he really is superb as America’s first openly gay elected official.

It was exceptionally well written from start to finish. I was particularly impressed by the way that it attacked any gay prejudices in the first ten minutes by jumping straight into the uncomfortable scenes of Penn kissing another man. It acts as a desensitising moment, instantly humanising the characters and paving the way for the film to fight its cause without the audience focusing on their own personal prejudices. This it does with grace, style and more than a little entertainment.

Slumdog Millionaire
I was left a touch under whelmed by Slumdog – it had been built up by the press a touch too much. For it to be billed as the “feel-good film of the year” is slightly off the mark too. What the film does do well is to really capture the vibrancy of India, without hitting any false notes or stereotypes; the breath-taking opening sequence illustrating this superbly. There’s no denying that it is also extremely entertaining; there’s no hint of clock-watching despite the fact that the story does seem to go round in circles more than it probably needs to.

I’ve always enjoyed Danny Boyle’s films and this was no exception. In many ways it is his best film and he would be a great Oscar winner if he were to capture the statuette. That said, I’m still not convinced of its complete success and I have no particular desire to see the film again, even though I can’t quite put my finger on why. I guess I’ve never been especially drawn to happy endings…

The Reader
Out of all the nominated films, The Reader didn’t appeal to me in the slightest beforehand. Even the prospect of Kate Winslet didn’t enthuse me but I was pleasantly surprised once I finally went to see it. The performances were exceptional and although it hammered home its points about the holocaust and adolescence a bit too strongly, it was a decent and enjoyable two hours.
What I didn’t like was some of the writing; I felt that the court scenes could have been better and also the boy character Michael didn’t have enough development for my liking. There was such a marked difference between the boy and the man that I found difficult to accept; the sunny happy-go-lucky boy becoming the broody and repressed adult was a little too extreme. On the plus side, Kate was as good as ever and it would be surprising if she doesn’t bag herself that elusive first win. Her scenes in the court-room particularly stick out as bringing the whole film up to the next level.

Frost/Nixon
This was by far and away the film I enjoyed the most out of all the contenders, although it remains as the firm outsider along with The Reader. It smoulders beautifully and although the audience largely knows the outcome of the saga, there remains a fantastic Will he/Won’t he cliffhanger right to the very end. It is perhaps the subject matter that won’t be favoured by the Academy’s voters, not known for their penchant for political drama. It also did poorly at the Box Office, particularly in the UK.

I’m not the biggest fan of director Ron Howard (his films tend to become overblown Hollywood mess) but there is no doubting that he did a good job here; retaining the great elements of the original play but without seeming stagey. It was driven through with a great sense of pace but with still enough room for the characters to expose a level of realness to two well-known real life personalities. Both principal actors did a superb job and the writing – with the exception of the total unnecessary talking head interview clips littered throughout – was equally as good. A fantastic document of one of the most historical pieces of television in the 20th century.

My final choices:Who I want to win: Frost/Nixon
Who I think will win: Slumdog Millionaire
Outside bet: Oscar breaking with tradition and splitting the Film/Director vote

Later this week: Part two will cover the performances and other awards