The Bitter Shandy

Mercury Music Prize 2010

2010-09-05T22:51:00.003+01:00

I love the Mercury Music Prize. It tends to make me simultaneously angry and happy at the same time - usually angry because I disagree with a lot of it and happy because I usually uncover some hidden gem that I would never have heard of otherwise.

This year, dare I say it, has been a really good list I think and I think its wide open. A lot has been said of The XX - from myself included because I was calling them a shoe-in for this prize ever since last summer - but I can't see them winning it simply because of them being the bookies favourites. It's typical of the Mercury to pass over albums just because they're the favourites - the most glaring recent one was Bat For Lashes losing out to the Klaxons who I'm still not sure can quite believe that they won.

Anyway to this years list. While I would've liked to have seen Noah and the Whale's The First Days Of Spring as opposed to Mumford and Sons, I don't think I would really change much about the list. It has a certain integrity to it and I don't think that there's any really stupid albums included.

Me being a betting man and all that, I've had a few small wagers on the event. My biggest bet was £10 on Laura Marling to win for her album I Speak Because I Can and I've had a couple of little £2 sniffers on Wild Beasts and Villagers.

Why Marling then? Well, as anyone who knows me will testify, I think that she is perhaps the most talented songwriter around in the world at the moment. I've been a big fan since I first saw her perform New Romantic aged 16 and her development in the ensuing four years has been fantastic. Her recent album is as good a folk album as I've heard for a long time and contains all that is great about her style and songwriting. And at 8-1 she's a hell of a bet.

I actually think that the album that's most deserving of victory is Wild Beasts, which is why I've put a couple of quid on them too. It seems like a classic mercury album too - completely different and of its own creation, there are very few bands around that sound even close to Wild Beasts. Furthermore, the album is excellent and is very much a grower in that you will still be listening to it many months after the first. It's inventive and melodic and would be a fine winner.

My other bet is on Villagers but to qualify this, I don't think that they'll (or he, as its the work of mainly one man) win. However, the album is a genuinely interesting listen and if the judges fancy going for something really left field then it stands a chance. I also think that although the performances on the night are not supposed to be a factor, there's a very real chance that Conor O'Brien could blow everyone out of the water with his amazing live show. At 12-1 he's an outsider but an interesting choice and I like the record.

Of the other challengers - and I've only heard 8 of the 12 albums - I like Mumford and Sons without really loving it, I think that if they win it will be purely on the back of wanting to award the prize to someone commercial successful after the Speech Debelle Debacle last year. There is a number of excellent songs and a number of songs that aren't quite as good. The nomination is enough.

It's great to see Paul Weller commended for what seems to be a very furtive period for the great man. That said, I kinda preferred his previous effort 22 dreams from last year more than Wake Up The Nation but still, I'm not going to argue with his nomination. That said, he has virtually no chance of winning.

Corinne Bailey-Rae's The Sea is a touching record and another worthy contender although it lacks a little consistency at times. The same can be said of I Am Kloot's Sky At Night which has some absolutely unbelievably good songs but doesn't quite nail it all the way through.

I haven't heard the token jazz album, the Dizzee Rascal album (not my cup of tea), the Foals record or the Biffy Clyro effort (although I'd quite like to hear that one) so I can't judge in full but for my money the winner should come from either The XX, Wild Beasts or Laura Marling.

And for everything I've written over the course of this article, I think that The XX would be deserving of the prize. It's a fantastic record - sparse and melodic and beautiful, but at the same time has had a little too much commercial exposure (how many adverts/sporting montages has it been used on now? It's the new One Day Like This).

So Wild Beasts for me. Or Laura. Yes, Laura - get in there and net me my £80 dear.

Oscars 2010: The Results

2010-03-08T21:24:00.003Z

Another year, another Oscars ceremony.

The Hurt Locker won six awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, trouncing Avatar which failed to a win any of the major gongs. Acting prizes went to the expected recipients and Precious won a writing award. Generally speaking, positive results across the board.

Staying up to watch the coverage on Sky was another interesting experience. Considering they probably pay a bit of money for the rights it seems strange that their studio guests were quite as irrelevant. Don't get me wrong, I quite like Ronni Ancona and David Baddiel but I'm not sure how exactly they were booked.

Anyway, to my central point: all four members of the studio team guessed every single one of the awards on a piece of paper before the ceremony began and the top score was 16 correct answers out of 24. Similarly, on the Guardian Unlimited podcast two critics that I admire immensely - Xan Brooks and Jason Solomons - managed the same score. This ultimately isn't important, but for the fact that I did the same exercise and got 17 correct (although admittedly the difference may have been a flukey guess on Best Short Documentary). This means either the awards are incredibly predictable or I am a genius and I'm fairly sure what the answer to that is.

The betting mentioned in previous blog posts wasn't quite as fruitful. I comfortably made my money back and although I wasted £8 of my £24 profit on my two outsider bets still ended with a £16 return on the evening. It added a little spice to proceedings, if nothing else.

The ceremony was actually not too bad; I thought that Steve Martin was exceptionally funny and made me laugh out loud on a number of occasions (Meryl Streep's Nazi memorabilia in particular). What unfortunately let the event down was the fact that the awards were so obviously nailed in, there wasn't really any tension except for the final and critical Best Picture decision going to The Hurt Locker.

That said, I can't pretend that I didn't whoop for joy when Tom Hanks read that result out. I had been certain - despite betting on Bigelow's masterpiece - that Avatar was going to win and it came as a real surprise that it lost out.

And finally, it was nice to see that the Academy managed to make their traditional balls-up with the Foreign Language film. Given that A Prophet and The White Ribbon were both films at a supremely high level, it rather tickles me how they can never quite get it right. I almost think that its a wilful attempt to be subversive in an award category that none of the voters actually care about. The White Ribbon? Boo sucks to you Haneke. A Prophet? Boo sucks again. Lets reward some film that nobody's seen, it'll be a right laugh.

Either way, there wasn't many wrong decisions on the night and I'll take a Hurt Locker victory any day of the week. Roll on next year.

Oscars 2010: The Betting

2010-03-07T22:47:00.005Z

Depending on how you look at it, betting on the Oscars is not an especially fruitful pursuit. The odds you generally get are hardly worth the flutter, especially if we have a procession of Award season winners floating through.

Because of the fact that nearly all the categories can be predicted without a great deal of ease, it means that you've got to put a few quid on to make any real return. Despite all this, I ultimately like to bet on who I think will win to try and spice up my evenings entertainment and this year thought I would publish who I've gone for and why. I put on £40 worth of bets (and got a free £20 bet courtesy of Paddy Power) and this is where my money lies:

Ms Bullock was obviously the free bet, chosen to try and bring in some cash. I've chosen to back The Hurt Locker for Best Picture and Best Director (and a double for both to happen) - and this is purely as an anti-Avatar bet. Bigelow is highly likely to take away Director although I still have the strong feeling that Avatar will nick the main prize.

Jeff Bridges is another no-brainer and he'll win me next to nothing but its virtually money in the bank so there's not so much risk. That leaves my wildcard bets: if either works then it will bring in some excellent returns, although that is probably unlikely.

Inglourious Basterds would be a fantastic winner for the Academy, purely on the basis that it would be a massive shock and a popular result, given that Tarantino is a hero to many. The reason why I've bet on it is not as much a subversive piece of anarchy, but because a view expressed by many is that the new voting system could benefit Inglourious (prinicipally this view was championed by Harvey Weinstein so it isn't entirely ridiculous). At the relatively long odds of 12-1, it was worth a gamble.

Carey Mulligan is my other special bet. I don't think she'll win, but Best Actress is a seriously poor field this year and if Sandra Bullock can be considered a strong favourite then there must be issues. Mulligan's performance is exceptional and more importantly, she seems to be very popular in Hollywood so it's a good outside bet.

Anyway, the dead cert bets should result in me making a small profit guaranteed. Lets all hope Inglourious makes me some real money...

Oscars 2010: Why Less Isn't Always More

2010-03-07T22:15:00.003Z

So, it's Oscars night and in a matter of hours there will have been several bouts of tears, a load of undeserving awards (don't worry, I'm saving my Avatar rant until after it wins) and lots of expensive dresses waltzing up the red carpet.

This year sees a change of voting with the Best Picture award, with an increase in nominees up from 5 to 10. This means that there is room for films like A Serious Man and District 9 in the short-list and comes on the back of a number of issues from previous ceremonies.

Ultimately, this decision was based upon the performance of two movies last year: The Dark Knight and Wall-E. Both were good enough to be nominated for Best Picture but neither did; although they both picked up awards (Animated Feature for Wall-E and a posthumous acting gong for Heath Ledger). These were big, popular films that made the Academy seem out of touch with the general public who were increasingly switching off from the ceremony. What was billed as the Greatest Show on Earth was being serious questioned by the American public.

So this year, to accommodate such films the list was increased to ten. It was hailed as a good idea at the time, the chance to reward a foreign film perhaps or a film like Star Trek which was both successful and also an excellent production. Unfortunately these ideas haven't been followed through.

The biggest miss of the Academy was by ignoring any foreign films. Both A Prophet and The White Ribbon are better than any film of the Best Picture longlist but are left shunted out in their own Foreign Language category. When you take into account that Let The Right One In didn't even get nominated, it raises big question marks over the selection criteria.

So instead, we get District 9 and Up being nominated - two films that deserve such rewards and probably wouldn't have infiltrated the 5 film shortlist. You can probably add the Coen Brothers' excellent A Serious Man into that category too and I have no real complaints. My issues relate to two key points:

1) Most of the extra films nominated have absolutely zero chance of winning. It is ironic that in the year of widening the margins that there is the normal two horse race going on (with Avatar and the Hurt Locker)

2) By looking at the Best Director category, you can pretty much work out who would've been nominated if there was only 5 pictures in the category (i.e. those five films: Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Precious, Inglourious Basterds and Up In The Air). I can't help but feel that this devalues the whole process.

Finally - and this perhaps isn't the most important point for Hollywood - it allows a lot of substandard films into the list. An Education is a good film and I really enjoyed it but I struggle to feel that it is at the standard of an Oscar nomination. You can literally triple that sentiment for The Blind Side. Even films like Up and District 9 - despite my comments above - fall into that category.

For Hollywood, this is a side point. If it increases revenue to the film industry and gets a few more ticket sales for a few more films, then all the better. If it adds a little spice to an ailing ceremony and adds a few more million onto the TV figures then that's perhaps more important. Even if it actually adds no extra excitement at all.

BAFTAs Bang On

2010-02-22T20:49:00.005Z

Every year I tend to tune into the BAFTA awards and usually do so in the knowledge that I’ll likely come away from it thinking that the whole ceremony was full of spectacular misjudgements. Last night, for the first time in years, I felt quite proud to be British.

This was mainly to do with the fact that BAFTA almost completely ignored Avatar, aside from two minor technical awards. Instead, they chose to honour the superb The Hurt Locker with Best Film and Best Director for Kathryn Bigelow.

What has always annoyed me about previous ceremonies is the way that the show fawns over Hollywood in a really embarrassing way and then promptly awards a lesser British film with the important awards (see: The Queen and Atonement in particular). There was always a massive lack of balance, which helped to create a really peculiar series of contradictions, almost that they were acknowledging that they needed Hollywood's star appeal, but were going to ignore it in the end anyway. It's little wonder that not many of the big names turned up on Sunday night.

In fairness, they still did those annoying things, but this time they achieved the balance that they so desperately needed. In giving both lead actor prizes to Brits through Colin Firth and Carey Mulligan they secured a certain level of British victory and by gifting any B list Hollywood actor a chance to present an award (I’m thinking mainly of Matt Dillon and Uma Thurman to be honest, but there’s plenty to choose from) they managed to keep a degree of Hollywood swooning. The difference this year was that both actors completely deserved their awards but have been largely ignored during awards season because of the classic Oscar philosophy of rewarding actors who’s “time has come”.

While giving the awards to Firth and Mulligan as opposed to Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock like the Oscars will do in a few weeks time was purely a patriotic move by BAFTA voters keen to ensure that the British film industry had something to take home, it was ultimately the right move and ensured that at least one major awards ceremony had recognised the great work that the two Brits had committed to celluloid.

It all added to the balance of the evening; BAFTA rewarded virtually all of the top films in some way or another through either acting wins (A Single Man, An Education, Precious, Inglorious Basterds) or through writing and directing (Up In The Air and Hurt Locker). The latter film winning the main prize was a fantastic kick in the shins for Avatar director James Cameron, something that most industry people seem reluctant to do for fear of derailing his billion dollar machine. Well, in actual fact, the Hurt Locker is a far greater artistic achievement and that cancels out virtually any argument you can make for Avatar.

What does this all mean for the Oscars then? The answer to this is most likely to be nothing at all – Avatar will still win a number of important Academy Awards because of the sheer amount that Hollywood has invested in that film to get returning dollars through the multiplexes. A vote against Avatar is almost a vote against the highly lucrative 3D market, something which is practically saving the industry globally at the minute.

So, in real terms, the BAFTAs gave the British industry a huge lift, managed to reward virtually every major work that needed rewarding and ignored Avatar in favour of the far superior Hurt Locker. With the exception of Jonathan Ross as host (laughs were not a-plenty from the Americans), it was a great night for film and a reward for the art of film-making.

Albums of the Decade

2010-01-27T12:54:00.002Z

At the turn of the decade, I found myself reading a ridiculous number of lists. There are lists for the next big artist or band, lists for albums of the year, lists for the worst. In the main part, most of these lists mean absolutely nothing; robbing the contents of context and empathy.

The one list that did prick my interest were the Albums of the Decade ones that proliferated on the internet in the last week of the year. What stood out for me was how many genuinely startling albums in this time; albums that sounded like nothing before them and which ultimately was copied by derirative bands over the following years until the fad wore off.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've thought about this more and more and evenutally set about making a list of 10 albums from the 2000s that I felt were completely fresh and life-changing. Putting them in any kind of order seemed to be an impossible task (and would make me highly hypocritical after the first paragraph of this blog) so here are the ten records in alphabetical order:

Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
Damien Rice – O
Eminem - The Marshall Mathers LP
Libertines - Up The Bracket
Lily Allen - Alright, Still
PJ Harvey - Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea
Radiohead - Kid A
The Streets - Original Pirate Material
The Strokes - Is This It?
The White Stripes - White Blood Cells

I would split these down into a few different categories:

Category 1: Startling original
Eminem, The White Stripes, Radiohead, The Streets

Category 2: Perfectly crafted genre pieces
Damien Rice, PJ Harvey, Arctic Monkeys

Category 3: Totally Of Their Moment
Lily Allen, The Strokes, Libertines

I don't think that it would be harsh to say that there are some average moments that don't necessarily work perfectly on the Category 1 records, but this is always forgiven when the effect is so startling. Eminem's Marshall Mathers LP is a great example; whether it be some of the more drug based songs or the skits that plague all of his releases, I challenge anyone not to listen to Kim or The Way I Am and not be amazed at his sheer achievement.

The three examples for Category 2 are perhaps what I would consider to be the best crafted records of the decade. The Damien Rice album is song-for-song the best Singer Songwriter album that I've ever heard; every single track hits the spot and does what it set out to do. PJ Harvey's Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea is arguably the best rock album that I've ever heard and the same can arguably be levelled at the Arctic Monkeys.

Category 3 albums are not perfect and tend to stick within a certain set of historical boundaries but sum up their moment in history so brilliantly well that they reinvigorate their own genre. The Libertines are a great example of this; you can pick out all of the post-punk influences like the Clash and the Jam mixed in with an Indie/Brit-Pop framework but at the same time, they are unmistakably The Libertines. On each of their albums there were massive highlights and some disappointments but it didn't stop every guitar band in the country suddenly abandoning their pathway and trying to imitate the sound.

The Strokes are a similar case in point and if anything there's even less originality but there's no doubting that when I hear it, it reminds me of the early part of the decade when the New York garage rock scene really took off. It is a good album - if not a great one - but it really summed up its time in a way that few albums released in the decade managed to do.

So what makes a great album? Simply grab one of these ingredients and watch the salt: Great songs, originality and fantastic craftsmanship. Failing that, just release it at the perfect moment and watch it fizz.

The Thick Of It: A View

2009-12-23T10:00:00.005Z

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

2009-12-21T15:32:00.003Z

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

2009-12-16T13:04:00.003Z

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

2009-12-06T18:46:00.007Z

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

2009-11-29T22:22:00.004Z

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

2009-11-13T12:04:00.003Z

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

2009-10-08T13:03:00.003+01:00

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

2009-09-26T17:40:00.003+01:00

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

2009-07-31T13:16:00.002+01:00

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

2009-07-30T12:45:00.007+01:00

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

2009-07-27T21:59:00.004+01:00

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

2009-05-08T10:07:00.003+01:00

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

2009-04-09T14:18:00.006+01:00

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

2009-03-30T11:46:00.003+01:00

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

2009-03-24T13:03:00.003Z

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

2009-03-11T11:59:00.003Z

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

2009-02-26T13:20:00.004Z

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)

2009-02-16T11:44:00.003Z

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)

2009-02-15T22:32:00.002Z

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

What constitutes Art?

2009-02-04T14:48:00.003Z

Once of the most popular discussions in modern art has always been the debate of what constitutes art. When anyone seeks to break new boundaries, it is the first thing that the media latches on to - how can this be art?

Great art does two things; it reflects the society in which it was created and it also reflects the person who created it. Sometimes the first function is difficult to achieve but the main stay of all artist work is the sense of personality trodden into it, either on the outside or buried deeply below on the inside.

The best two examples that I can think of in the 20th Century to illustrate my point are Andy Warhol and Tracey Emin - two of the artists that have produced hysterical reactions about their work at the time of release.

The image of a tin of Campbell's soup remains one of the most iconic pictures of the 1960s. At the time, it provoked a widespread debate about whether or not it was art (and by the same token, worthy of the substantial price tag hanging from it) and the popular consensus at the time was that it was not.

Going back to my previous two factors, Warhol satisfies both. The Campbell’s soup tin, Brillo pad boxes or Coke cans perfectly reflect the rising commercialism and commoditisation of the 1960s, the rise of branding and youth culture. The line to the personality of Warhol is less clear, but if you read many of the accounts of his life, the relationship with his Mother is one of the strongest ties

Many eyewitnesses have detailed how from his youth right the way through to his Mother's death, she used to make him Tomato Soup for his lunch. Even in the heady times in the Factory, where sex and drugs and art constantly overlapped, Warhol's mother lived with him and fed him soup. My argument is that the painting of the soup can reflected not only the rising commoditisation of the decade, but also commoditised Warhol's painful adolescence.

Fast forward to Britain in the middle 1990s, where the heady cocktails of sex, drugs and drink were lived not only by the rich but also by ordinary people. Tracey Emin was, to all intents and purposes, an ordinary young woman of the time. She was loud, argumentative, off the rails. Living in a London beset in the aftermath of a Brit-Pop and social revolution, her work is as much a product of the times as a reflection of it.

Her two most controversial 1990s works, My Bed and Tent, were both maliciously attacked by all sides of the press for not fitting in the traditional art stereotype. Their reaction was simple: This is not art.

In reality, My Bed (pictured above) - which won her the Turner Prize in 1999 - was a filthy, horrific piece of work that beautifully summed up both her life at that point and I can't think of a better analogy of the decay of society and modern living. I really feel that in decades time this will be seen as a great portrayal of the time.

The unique selling point however was that for all it reflected a society on the brink of degradation; it was intrinsically Emin’s world that it inhabited. It's hard to imagine another artist being able to produce not only such a brilliant concept but also for it to be done as brutally or as real. Not least because there was a significant amount of Emin's bodily fluid involved.

Ultimately, art becomes art if the person creating it suggests it is; if the piece means something (either conceptually or emotionally) and the chances are, if people are talking about it then it's art. People never have this debate about things that mean nothing.

The Great Ticket Disappointment

2009-02-02T14:31:00.005Z

2009 is going to be an interesting year for the music industry. Falling CD sales have been a problem for a number of years now, but rising concert ticket sales have managed to pick up the tab to cover it. If 2009, as seems to be the case, is the year when ticket sales fall sharply, could the recession take some substantial record labels out of business?

The rise over the past few years of the 360^ deal - whereby the record company receives a cut of ticket and merchandise sales - was largely seen as the way to keep the money coming in. What wasn't factored into this was the recession that we are currently feeling the pinch of.

This is not a message that is widely portrayed in the media, which still sees the way that a few key artists can sell out large venues at high prices and takes this as gospel. Unfortunately, these artists can be named on one hand. They are the likes of Take That, Oasis, Morrissey and maybe, at a push, Coldplay.

Traditionally, I don't think I would've put Morrissey on that list but for the fact that his recent tour sold out three nights at a medium sized venue in around six minutes, causing great annoyance to myself in the process. The subsequent full tour, released a week later, sold out in the majority inside 10 minutes. I managed to get two tickets at the second attempt, being charged exactly £15 in booking fees and delivery for the honour.

It’s not just my wallet that’s suffering though. New and breaking acts are struggling to make a name for themselves as before because people aren't going to as many small gigs and even chart-topping artists like Lily Allen are struggling to sell out venues that would previously have been a walk in the park.

Action is clearly needed, Gordon Brown style, to get the live market booming again. I propose the following recession busting actions to get people out listening again:

Legislation to limit the Booking Fee that ticket providers are allowed to charge to £2.50
Reduce ticket prices themselves for the mid-range artists. There's no way that the market can sustain bands like Razorlight charging nearly £30. A simple but basic tier system of up to £10 for emerging talent, between £10 and £20 for those that have broken through and £20 to £30 for your track-record proven bands. Only bonafide legends like Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen or outdoor festival events should need to charge more than that.
Allow venues to take more control over selling their own tickets. Too often venues won't sell you tickets themselves, meaning you have to use a ticket provider that will charge a substantial booking fee and offer you no option on where your seat is. Box Offices at the venue themselves can do this and improve the system, offering an alternative to the monopoly of Ticketmaster and See Tickets.

The whole situation is something that seriously worries me. I am going to see a folk artist named Emmy The Great (pictured above), who comes with a good reputation and underground success and I am excited about seeing. However, I am only ticket number 8 and I imagine the venue will struggle to get 50 people to see her; I've been to the same venue with less than 30 people in attendance to see the mesmeric Kate Walsh. Not only will this gig lose any sense of atmosphere but it is also heart-breaking to see quality artists playing to nobody.

Unfortunately, this will likely happen and the main reason is because of the greed at the top end of the market. The £15 in fees that I paid for my Morrissey tickets is a sad indictment of this point and without some serious changes, the future of live music could descend into a plaything for the rich and powerful.

The Daily Struggles Of The Amateur Writer

2009-01-05T13:11:00.003Z

And as the turn of the year came, all non-professional writers opened their laptops to begin their new years resolutions. Unfortunately, they didn’t get around to actually writing anything due to a hectic morning playing Solitaire and writing To-Do-Lists.

It is a strange situation to have a day-job whilst trying to forge a career in writing. A lot of people perceive the notion of being a writer but rarely actually commit to paper the evidence.

Against all of my better judgement and desire, I have become one of those people. I spent six months of my life so obsessed with my first novel “Dazed, Beautiful and Bruised” in 2006 and the subsequent 18 months of rewrites that I have completely forgotten what it is to write 1,000 words a day. It seems that I can make as many resolutions as I want, the process of actually getting started seems so alien that it just won’t happen.

To read interviews with famous and successful writers, you typically are fed the stories of how that writer simply has to write. They wake up in the morning with a burning desire that can only be quenched by writing pages of prose; they simply have no choice.

In my experience, these stories are all fabrications. You wake up in the morning with a pressure to write; an unnerving feeling in the pit of your stomach. You spend the first hour of the day trying to come up with as many different activities as possible to avoid actually starting. Then, finally, you sit down and do your work for the day. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad.

The difference between writing and other jobs is that when it’s good – when you really write something that you’re happy with or come up with an idea that fits beautifully and ties your plot together, there is no better feeling. It is the equivalent of scoring a goal in football or of getting four numbers in the lottery. The euphoria is amazing.

Unfortunately, this happens sporadically. To me, it happens less than it probably should and that is probably why I still have a day-job.

It is not these moments of magic that define a writer though. To be able to write a beautiful passage of words is something that a lot of people are capable of – like singing, for example. You only have to go down to a karaoke night in a pub to hear that ordinary members of the public can possess wonderful singing voices and it is the same in writing. What distinguishes a writer from a would-be writer is dedication and persistence.

As I awoke at the crack of dawn to eagerly write for two hours before the day job in 2006, I felt like a writer. Not everything was good and not everything was bad but the most important thing was that it was consistently coming out of me. Since completing that novel and spending two years studying its inconsistencies, failures and frustrations, I’ve lost that persistence.

It’s hard to let go of one project and to start another. I’m not allowed to tinker with the novel anymore; it is officially finished, for better or worse. If I let myself, I could probably spend the next 10 years messing with it until it resembled little of the spirit that it was written in. Moving on to the next piece of work has been difficult; not least due to the self-doubt that creeps in when literary agents reject your submissions and picking yourself up in moments like this are difficult.

Unfortunately, my way of picking myself up results in me continuing to plan my next work in excruciating detail. This gets to the point where my head is so frazzled by To Do Lists and New Years writing targets that I can’t actually write anything anyway.

It is in these moments that I do still feel a little like a writer. The fact that I can write 700 words about my love/hate relationship as a means of not beginning work this morning somehow confirms that to me. I should really get back to it – well, maybe after one more game of Solitaire…

Charlie Chaplin: Champion of the Film List

2008-12-03T11:22:00.009Z

French Magazine Cahiers Du Cinemas have just published their list of the 100 greatest films ever (read the full list here). Most of the initial talk has been about the lack of British films on the list or Citizen Kane topping the poll, but something else stood out for me as soon as I saw the results.

Given that the list is French, I expected certain French ideals to shine through. Their fascination with Alfred Hitchcock is also well documented, as is their love of Film Noir and I also expected European film-makers such as Godard, Renoir or Fellini to feature heavily.

All of the film-makers mentioned in the previous paragraph were featured in the list with 3 movies, and the only man to garner more nominations is Charlie Chaplin. Five of his masterpieces (City Lights, The Great Dictator, Monsieur Verdoux, Modern Times and The Gold Rush) were crammed into the list, which is all the more remarkable when you consider that three of these films were from the silent movie era.

There are a number of anomalies in the list which can probably be put down to the French and their foibles. Take the lack of British films in the list (famous quote from Francois Truffaut: "A film is a born loser just because it is English") or the way that certain directors have been underexposed. Some Hitchcock classics, like Rear Window, Rebecca or Psycho, for example are not included and other directors like Bergman (only Fanny and Alexander and not The Seventh Seal or Persona) are likewise criminally underplayed.

In fact, other than Chaplin only the following directors are featured more than twice: Renoir, Ophuls, Murnau, Hitchcock, Godard and Fellini. Why have the French magazine managed to squeeze all of Chaplin's classic films into the list and not some of these directors? Is this a reflection of the French love of his particular brand of film or is Chaplin being recognised as the most important film maker ever?

While it is true that Chaplin is credited solely with the emergence of cinema as an artistic medium, he was left behind a little when talking pictures came to the fore at the beginning of the 1930s. It is perhaps incorrect to suggest that the two talkies on the list (Monsieur Verdoux and The Great Dictator) are better than some of the missing films but as a celebration of the vision of one man, I can think of no better candidate than Charles Chaplin.

Even if you take out the sheer virtuosity of his work (he wrote, directed, starred and composed music for all of his movies), it is humanity of his film-making and not just his humour that stands out when you watch his films in the 21st century. I honestly believe that City Lights is perhaps the perfect example of this; not only is it incredibly funny throughout but it also draws on moral themes of poverty, alcoholism and love. What's more, the ending to City Lights remains perhaps the pinnacle of artistic film-making, even more than 75 years on. Perhaps even more so than any of the 16 films above it, City Lights is the pinnacle of cinematic creation.

This highlights what Chaplin was best at: fusing the popular with the artistic. His films were undoubtedly art-house in their style but people all over the world would queue around the block to see his films at their local theatres because he would make them laugh hysterically at the same time.

To watch all of his films in a modern environment - as I have over the past 12 months - provokes the same kind of reaction even now. Even the most ardent Hollywoodised young film consumer (you know the kind - won't watch films with subtitles etc) would be captivated by Chaplin by the end of one his films. There is even an argument that the films are even better now - helped largely by the fact that with the advent of sound, Chaplin composed musical scores to go over all of his films in the 1940s and 50s.

Lists such as the Cahiers Du Cinemas are not designed to be a definitive idea of what is best. They are to encourage debate and to get people revisiting and redefining classic films. Chaplin's Tramp remains one of the most striking and recognisable figures of the 20th century and it is critical that he remains as such for future generations.

He was more than just a funny man; he was the arguably the most important film-maker the world has ever seen.

The £100 Million Question

2008-11-25T15:46:00.005Z

The recent news that the National Gallery has to come up with £50million to keep the Titian masterpiece Diana and Actaeon in this country has caused widespread debate (read about it here).

The basic deal is this: £50m will buy you the first Titian painting and a second (Diana and Callisto) will be offered for the same price in four years time. Once both of these paintings are secure, the rest of the Bridgewater collection will be secured on a long-term loan to the galleries also, which is a significant extra to the deal.

When you consider some of the substantial sums that are traded in the art world, £50m for each of the paintings isn’t actually too bad. I have no issue with paying that much money; in market terms it is a bargain. Furthermore, £10m has been pledged by National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF), which is a wonderful donation.

However, there is bound to be a shortfall and eventually help will likely be asked for from the government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Given the current economic constraints on the country as a whole, should we be more cautious in spending such an amount of money on a painting?

The only problem that I have is not with paying the money, but from where the money is coming from – if it comes from the Government, it has to be as part of its budget and not a special magic fund. We have borrowed enough money as a country to suggest that we shouldn’t be pulling £50m out of a magic hat.

Another factor that irks me somewhat is the continual argument in favour of the painting: that it is part of our heritage. Various artists assisting in the campaign have described how inspired they were as children or students by being able to see the painting at its long term home in Edinburgh.

To me, this painting is not our heritage. It is a masterpiece from a great Italian renaissance painter which we have been lucky to have been able to display in galleries in Britain. To claim it as part of our heritage just because a wealthy British aristocrat bought it so many years ago seems a little misguided to me. Think of all the artists in different countries of the world who might have been inspired by it but haven’t had the opportunity.

People can buy great works of art, but they never own them. These Titian paintings belong to the people who spend hours looking at them. In recent times, this has been a British audience but if Lord Sutherland were to sell the paintings privately, it is likely they would go abroad and a whole new set of people would be able to spend time staring at them.

Despite this, from a selfish point of view, I hope that Britain keeps these masterpieces on our shores, providing the money is generated sensibly. But it is important to remember that we have no divine right to them.

The Truly Great Gatsby

2008-11-20T14:58:00.004Z

The boom of the 1920s has long interested me, since I first learned of the period in my early teens. Perhaps more than any other time in the 21st Century, the 1920s helped to shape the world we live in today.

I recently finished reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 masterpiece "The Great Gatsby" which is an interesting portrayal of this period which he coined as The Jazz Age. It was a period of decadence, of popular entertainment through the first wave of cinema and of economic prosperity, particularly in America. It was the land of opportunity.

The 1920s is almost a historical allegory for the current economic downturn that we are facing. Everyday families played the stock market as if it was a game (and one that for the majority of the century, was easy to win) before it all ended dreadfully with the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Consider the parallels with the housing market of the early 2000s and its sharp recent collapse and you can make an easy case for the parallel.

"The Great Gatsby" is more than merely a reflection of the boom of the 1920s however. I'm not going to go into the story in any great deal (you can read about it here) but I am going to describe the things that I think make it so special and far before its time.

The story of Gatsby is told through the eyes of a young man, Nick Carraway, and what I like about this is that the story is told almost completely without judgement on the central characters. This is quite unusual for a first person narrative in itself and made more so by the moral decisions that pins the plot together. The characters are so self-absorbed that they don't realise the importance of their wrong choices but at no point are we made to choose sides. By the end, Nick has made his own mind up and his allegiance is to Gatsby but the crucial thing is that the reader is afforded the option to make their own decision.

The ending is also stunning and yet at the same time, probably the reason why the book was unpopular on its release. Given the boom that the audience of 1924 were experiencing, it is perhaps only natural that they would reject the bleak and unhappy ending. At the same time, this is probably the part that helped an audience rediscover it as Fitzgerald's masterpiece after his death. Not only did it brilliantly surmise his riffs on the sanctity of marriage, of the falseness and loneliness of society and the way that things are not always as they seem but it has also inspired influential artists since. The mental image of Gatsby being shot dead in his swimming pool was almost certainly the inspiration for the Billy Wilder film Sunset Boulevard - an iconic image that helped to redefine Hollywood in the fifties.

And finally, what drew me into the story was the entertainment of Fitzgerald's writing. It had pace, elegance and wit, yet at the same time was garnished with beautiful descriptions that in most other circumstances would slow down the novel. It was almost like it had been glossed with the modern sheen; that it was not of its time. If the same novel came out today, people would not question its writing style as being old-fashioned.

What's more at under 200 pages, it delivers an astonishing number of themes and motifs, proving that brevity is not something to be scorned. In today's publishing market, research suggests that people don't like to buy short books and more than likely, The Great Gatsby would be treated as a novella if it was written today. Not only would render it unlikely to ever receive the audience it deserves, it would also be a massive disservice to the work as a Novel in its own right.

This would be a sad indictment on modern culture. Given the parallels with the twenties, the world needs works of art like The Great Gatsby to remember that with every boom there must come a bust.

Fun and Games

2008-11-13T13:51:00.006Z

I recently watched Funny Games US, the shot-for-shot remake of the original Michael Haneke film from 1997. What makes this unique is that it was the same director who made this virtual replica, albeit in English language with Hollywood actors like Naomi Watts and Tim Roth.

Haneke has suggested that the reason for making this film is that he saw the target audience as the American society that has notably been consuming "torture-porn" style movies like Hostel and Saw. With his earlier version being in foreign language, he argued that in order to get the film out to this audience, he had to remake it in English.

Unfortunately, this wasn't a success. Mainly due to its limited distribution across America, the wider audience that the remake was aiming at was simply not penetrated. If anything, the film was watched mainly by people who had already seen the original version or who had enjoyed Haneke's recent successes with Hidden (Cache) or the Piano Teacher.

The teen audience that attends multiplex showings of Hostel-like films were not there and the stats back this up - Funny Games US opened to 274 screens in the USA and took a total of $1.2million dollars in the month it played. To put this into context, Hostel Part II took seven times that amount on its opening weekend in 2007 ($8.2million) and grossed fourteen times the amount ($17.5million) in total.

The figure that most stands out is that it cost $15million to make and as such, even taking into account DVD sales, makes for a low level of profit overall. All things considered, surely it would have made more sense to just re-release the original film in the USA and spend a bit of money on marketing it?

While it is an interesting concept to remake his own film for such a reason, Haneke fundamentally failed. What's more, the actual films themselves are so identical that they is nothing to differentiate them. It is neither better nor worse than the original; they are identical in shots and dialogue and the performance from the cast is just as strong, especially from Naomi Watts. What's more - and this is perhaps testament to Haneke's skills as a director - the same repulsion and horror are impinged upon you and it maintains the same psychological bite as the original.

Based upon this, the conundrum that I keep contemplating is this: Which version would I recommend to a friend to watch over the other?

My gut reaction is that if I watched the two of them side by side, and independent of thought, that I would prefer the remake. Most of this is probably due to the familiarity of it - not in just the language but also the fact that the cast is known and with it comes a certain extra intimacy and connection. For example, I have watched a large number of Naomi Watts films purely on the basis of her participation and it is this warmth and familiarity that draws me to the remake.

There is an obvious cultural distaste for remakes, especially those of foreign language films into English language. This is invariably due to the inferior quality but there is often a more snobbish element at play. Why watch the remake when you can watch the original? Ultimately, I think Haneke's response would be that it doesn't matter which version you watch, as long as you watch it.

With Funny Games US, I think I can comfortably say that it is a great film, like the original. The logic behind making it however does not quite befit the same genius.

Long Gone

2008-11-05T14:29:00.001Z

It is now nearly three weeks since the break up of Sheffield indie band The Long Blondes after their guitarist suffered a stroke in the summer. It was sad news at the time and their absence on the modern music scene will continue to leave a gap in the market.

They were always a slightly off-kilter band, full of seemingly different personalities. To watch them live was a strange experience as the charismatic singer Kate Jackson captured the attention of the audience, whilst the rest of the band - in particular Emma and Reenie - looked deeply uncomfortable.

What I loved about the band was the way their lyrics was full of pop-culture references, drenched in glamorous asides from years gone by. They name-checked, amongst others, Edie Sedgwick, Scott Walker, Billy Wilder films and Erin O'Connor whilst at the same time reflecting the difficulties of youth. They were exciting and, perhaps most importantly - and this is often overlooked or scoffed at in modern music - a lot of fun.

Their first album was critically well received on the most part but didn't sell particularly brilliantly. Someone To Drive You Home was full of well-paced, youthful sounding indie pop songs: it smashed you over the head before putting its arms round you and inviting you to the local disco.

Their second album Couples was a different affair, almost a specific attempt to sound grown-up in response to their earlier releases. It fused lyrics of mid-20s displacement with a more openly pop sound that made use of electronica as well as their normal guitar sound. There was a critical backlash as well as a confused reaction from fans expecting the second installment of Someone To Drive You Home and it reached only number 48 in the album charts.

It may not have sold many CDs but there was undoubtedly a massive record company push behind them; faith they never repaid in monetary terms. They had an unbelievable opportunity but somehow the mainstream couldn't seem to take to them, no matter how much hype surrounded them.

Because of this, it was perhaps an inevitable split - even if Dorian Cox's stroke was a quite shocking final chapter of the story. It is a sad reflection of the UK music industry that if you don't shift units, you will probably end up losing your record deal and it is unlikely that the band would have been given the opportunity to release another record.

Part of me is sad that the Long Blondes are no more. In time, I can't help but feel that their second album - for all the bad words said about it - will stand up as a much greater work than their first. Whether the band will end up as a cult forgotten act like many that have gone before is debatable, that they'll always be hovering around my CD player is not.

Marina Lewycka: A Modern Great

2008-10-29T14:05:00.002Z

Marina Lewycka's comic tales of the troubles of immigrants moving to the UK are the most accurate depiction of our country in the 21st Century.

That's quite an outlandish statement, considering some of the fantastic writing that has been published in the early part of the new millenium but one I feel justified in suggesting.

Across the ages, the best writing reflects the generation that it came from. Think of a Dickens novel and you think of Victorian Britain and a very particular British environment. The same goes for Oscar Wilde or F. Scott Fitzgerald who pin-point a particular time in UK and US society before and after the turn of the 20th century. You can argue this continues right the way through to modern authors like Nick Hornby or Zadie Smith - they all sum up a particular micro-period of British history and a particular place (in both Smith and Hornby's case this is London).

I can't help but feel that Lewycka is currently doing that now. Both of her two novels Two Caravans and A Short History Of Tractors In Ukranian are superbly written and exquisitely funny depictions of the effect of immigration on the person themselves as well as the society around them. The proliferation of migrant workers have become one of the key changes to multi-cultural Britain in recent times.

This topic is difficult to write about (it is all to easy to offend) but it is something that has affected British society in both positive and negative ways. What I particularly like about her books are that they tackle both sides of the coin - in Tractors, the main plot is about a Ukrainian woman coming over to this country for its riches (and marrying an elderly man to achieve this) whereas in Two Caravans, the characters come over for the same riches but end up being mistreated and taken advantage of.

What links both books together is the way that the characters (despite their numerous collective flaws) are so loveable and how entertaining a read it is as a result.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter what a book represents when it is so damn fun to read. There is a quote from Nick Hornby that says "If reading books is to survive as a leisure activity then we have to promote the joys of reading, rather than the (dubious) benefits". What I think he is basically saying is, why force your way through Russian literature or literary novelists like Ian McEwan when you can breeze through the entertaining ride that writers like Lewycka can provide.

On the other side of this coin, it is often suggested that books that are easy to read are somehow lightweight; easy entertainment for the throw-away culture that we live in. In reality, the skill of writing in such a page-turning style is something that is incredibly difficult to achieve; just as difficult as creating the literary masterpieces described in the previous paragraph. There are merits for both.

Only time can ever tell how a work of art will age, but it wouldn't surprise me if people are still reading Lewycka's comic masterpieces throughout the 21st century.

The Orchestra As Pop Decor

2008-10-15T20:35:00.001+01:00

On Sunday night I ventured out to see the Last Shadow Puppets in concert at the Manchester Apollo. The band is the side project of Arctic Monkeys front-man Alex Turner and Rascals singer Miles Kane which resulted in their Mercury Music Prize nominated album The Age Of The Understatement.

The band is also notable because it contains the 22-piece London Metropolitan Orchestra.

On the record, the orchestra adds an extra, lush dimension to the songs, helping to bring out the 60s-fused melodies into the forefront. I was hoping that the live experience would be a similar affair but it was ultimately a disappointing exercise.

In their defence, the biggest problem was probably that of the venue; I'm sure that the cramped housing at the back of the stage and the acoustics that were more geared towards your traditional guitar/bass/drum did not help to bring out the best of the orchestral sound. At a more appropriate place, like the Royal Albert Hall or in Manchester, the Opera House or Bridgewater Hall it might have been pushed to the forefront a bit more.

In reality however, all that the orchestra did was provide an expensive and visually arresting piece of decor. It was a bonus rather than an integral part of the music, which is the usual way that pop music seems to treat its more sophisticated cousin. Even songs with beautiful orchestral refrains, like Standing Next To Me, seemed to be washed away by the energy of the guitars and the crowd, rendering it largely devoid. If they weren't so obviously stacked up at the back of the stage, you would not notice they were there at all. Perhaps more damagingly, they wouldn't be missed either.

In recent years, this fusion between the classical and the pop nearly always ends with the same result of a superfluous and largely without merit gimmick. The arrangements are usually dull and devoid of inspiration while in live performance, such greater prominence is given in the mix to the other core pop instruments that it hardly seems worth the bother.

The question of the performance, or the energy of the performance is perhaps just as important. It remains easy to whip up an atmosphere whilst playing a guitar that you can jump around with rather than the rather static positions that the violinists have to adopt, for example. The sit-down and observe nature of classical concerts is simply over-powered when put on the same stage as the pop performer.

The only example of the two styles merging successfully that I can think of recently was that of Elbow on their Mercury winning album The Seldom Seen Kid, where the orchestra had become the driving force of a number of tracks. The other instruments had become the secondary part of the makeup of tracks like One Day Like This or Friend Of Ours and this is what makes it work.

Perhaps it all boils down to the simple equation that there isn't enough room (both physically and aurally) for the orchestra on a pop stage.

Unpleasant Weddings

2008-10-06T15:34:00.000+01:00

I watched Noam Baumbach's second film, "Margot At The Wedding" last night, the critically panned follow up to his critically loved debut "The Squid and the Whale".

The main bone of contention in all of the reviews in the British press was that none of the characters - specifically the adult ones - are in any way likable. In actual fact, they are all distastefully selfish and egocentric characterisations of middle class bourgeois.
Despite that and unlike many others who have seen it, I still believe that it is a good film. It's just not particularly pleasant to watch.

With regards to Noam Baumbach's two films; they are telling similar stories but the key difference is the perspective. "The Squid and the Whale" is the story of two kids going through the divorce of their neurotic, unpleasant parents from their point of view. "Margot at the Wedding" is telling a similar story - albeit with a sideline of sibling squabbling - but is told from the perspective of the neurotic, unpleasant parents.

To me, this raises two interesting points. Firstly, why as human beings do we need to feel empathy with film characters to enjoy a movie? We need someone to root for; to be able to decide who's side we're on. We also need to feel that there has been some change in the characters by the end; that they have learnt from the mistakes made and have grown.

A great example of this, albeit in a different medium, is the third album by The Streets, "The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living". The main character of the record was a self-obsessed celebrity who was out of touch with reality and, consequently his fans. The success of the two earlier Streets records had been the way that everyman listeners could relate to the lyrics, describing stories of life in working, binge-drinking Britain. These same fans couldn't relate to the third album, once Mike Skinner had disappeared into a world of celebrity culture - but does it make it any less of a work of art?

It has been said that cinema is the truest of all art forms; but if that was the case then we would be able to objectively look at it without the gratification of having to like the characters. When you go to an art gallery and look at a work by another modern narcissist painter, you do so because you can take something away from it, even if you don't like the ideas behind it.

This links into my second point which relates to the way that we consume films. There is a much bigger focus on entertainment than there is in books or music or art. We go to the cinema expecting to be entertained, even when watching an art-house picture or bleak documentary. Faced with unpleasant characters telling unpleasant stories and we tend to come away thinking that we have seen a bad film.

There are occasional exceptions - the films of Michael Haneke for example are afforded a certain critical and cult success despite being bleak and immeasurably unpleasant, but invariably this is because the audience goes into the cinema knowing roughly what to expect and also because the craft of the film is so good. In any case, Haneke remains a love/hate figure for many cinema-goers.

So to take this back to "Margot at the Wedding"; I came away with a particular dislike for all of the main characters (and quite especially Nicole Kidmans) but equally, that the general critical response to the film was undoubtedly harsh. It is unfortunately quite true to life that a lot of people are unpleasant and sometimes their stories still need to be told.

The balance isn't always in offsetting the bad guy with the good but in remaining true to the characters themselves. Too often we are left with the clear conclusion that Character A was an unpleasant dickhead but - Praise Allah! - he/she has become a better person by the end of the film. All they needed was to fall in love, etc etc.

In reality, people don't change overnight. More often than not, when bad, life-changing things happen, we respond in the same screwed up way that we have always done. Perhaps this is why our natural reaction is to respond badly when art mirrors life in this way; we need change, growth, fulfillment and people we can root for.

Ultimately, the cinema is our escape; whether the film we're watching is a work of art or not.

Edie: The Birth Of Celebrity Culture

2008-09-30T15:11:00.001+01:00

I'm becoming somewhat of an Edie Sedgwick expert in recent times. She truly fascinates me as both the beautiful icon of a decadent era and as the birth of celebrity culture.

Edie was Andy Warhol's muse in the 1960s, appearing in his films and photographs as well as gaining notoriety on the New York fashion and social scene. She also was allegedly involved with Bob Dylan during this period and ended up dying of a drug-overdose in the early part of the following decade.

I finished reading a rather substantial biography of her a couple of weeks ago, entitled "Edie: An American Biography" and sealed the deal with a second viewing of the biopic "Factory Girl". I've also been listening to Bob Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde" of whom (allegedly) a number of songs were penned about.

There seems little point of referring to the film in this piece, because despite Sienna Miller capturing the spirit of Edie brilliantly, it isn't a very good film. It is also somewhat misguided
factually on several occasions.

The book is a different matter however, as rather unlike most modern day biographies it focuses a significant amount of time to her childhood and family setup which nicely sets up the tales of excess later on. It is well over 70 pages before Edie actually enters the story; her family, a rich and aristocratic family steeped in the history of America (a Sedgwick was present at the declaration of independence, for example) that was so spectacularly screwed up that it resulted in nearly all of the Sedgwick children being housed in mental hospitals at some point, two suicides and a drug overdose. It was little wonder that the rest of the book is detailing a sad and
inevitable demise.

What interests me about Edie is how she really seems to signal the beginning of celebrity culture as we know it today. Despite the fact that in the decade before we had stars like Marilyn Monroe and Katherine Hepburn who were famous because of their talent and acting skills (Monroe especially is a criminally under-rated actress), Sedgwick was a different kind of celebrity.

Edie came to prominence because she was Edie Sedgwick. She drew people into her personality with her natural charm and charisma. She was capable of innocence, charm, confidence and doubt all in one single look, which consequently led to the camera loving her like few before. When you parallel the journey of Edie with the emergence of tabloid celebrity culture, you can see a clear line. Our Heat magazine need and Big Brother obsessions were started in the 1960s and Edie was the first major breakthrough. She was a model and an actress, true, but this work was very Warholian underground. The reason she became well-known was through her association with Warhol and her activities in New York society. How different is she really to a Jade Goody figure?

What I like about Edie is that she links three of my favourite 60s icons together; Bob Dylan who she famously fell in love and was left heartbroken by, Andy Warhol who created her superstar image and marketed her so successfully and the Velvet Underground (although this is perhaps more of a shaky link) who she was known to have performed with during the Factory years and to whom the parallels of rock and roll excess are perhaps most relevant. She is the all-encompassing 60s icon, summing up both the heady times and the decline into the 70s.

It is rather fitting that we feel the urge to repackage Edie into films and books in the great Rock and Roll image of decadence; of crashing and burning like the rest of the 60s. She is the poor little rich girl, the lost soul and the glamorous socialite all in the rather handy package of beautiful, trend-setting and unique looking woman.

Neither the books nor the film does her any kind of justice; a more fitting tribute would be the two songs Bob Dylan allegedly penned about her: Leopard-Skin Pill Box Hat and Just Like A Woman. Two contrasting and haunting songs that summed up the inconsistencies of her personality that in no small way helped make her a superstar.

Salvador Dali exhibition, Barcelona

2008-09-18T10:18:00.002+01:00

On a recently holiday to Spain, I spent an afternoon in Barcelona where I chanced upon a career retrospective of the great Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali at the Real Circulo Atistico Museum of Barcelona in the Gothic Quarter of the city.

I knew a little of Dali's surrealist films, having seen his work with Luis Bunuel on Un Chien Andalou and L'Age D'Or from the 1930s but I wasn't particularly au fait with his paintings. Being a keen advocate of surrealism in all forms though, I paid my 8€ and entered.

I'm glad I did, mainly because I saw what has become one of my favourite pieces of surrealist art. It seemed to sum up everything that I liked about the genre, even by just looking at the title. It was called "Automobile Giving Birth to a Blind Horse Biting a Telephone" (pictured below). Even for someone like myself who doesn't always understand the meaning of artworks, the recurring themes were easy to pick out. The biggest singular theme was the image of a naked woman; of which nearly every picture seemed to have one buried under the absurd imagery on the surface. There were also recurring works of Don Quixote and a number of animal sculptures and paintings.

This all made me think about the way that my thought process works. Is there a naked breast hidden amongst the majority of my thoughts and ideas if I search hard enough? There has been scientific research that suggests that men think about sex every 52 seconds (or 7 seconds depending on what research you read) and Dali was obviously a repeat offender in this. It was most notable in a small series of what appear on the surface to be scribbles on pieces of paper, which almost like a Magic Eye poster from the 1990s revealed a subtle breast or genitalia if you stared closely enough.

Perhaps Dali was highlighting the fact that however we present ourselves as humans, the only thing that remains true of everyone on earth is our collected animal instinct.

Mercury Music Prize 2008

2008-09-10T17:15:00.000+01:00

So Elbow have won the Mercury Music Prize; a feat that has been met with almost universal applause. The Seldom Seen Kid - a slow-burner like all of their albums - was pronounced the best album of the last year.

I like Elbow. I have all their records, have seen them live and consider myself a fan. Their records seem instrically Northern; which is something that always appeal to my regional sense of satisfaction. They are also quite obviously nice, down-to-earth blokes and you tend to see Guy Garvey knocking about Manchester regularly too. Which is cool.

So - A Mercury Prize winner? I'll go with that. Album of the year? I don't think so.

To first of all specifically look at the Elbow record. It's certainly their best offering of the last few years and is perhaps on a par with the 2001 Mercury nominated album Asleep in the Back. My main gripe is that it has four or five stand-out tracks and the rest of the album just blends into that. There is no real "wow" factor that makes this stand out more over the others. I would argue that it is inferior to several other albums on the shortlist but the reason that they have been given the award is because Elbow are the band who would make the biggest gain from receiving the prize.

I have been a long term supporter of the Mercurys as a useful tool for bringing great bands and artists into the mainstream. I would argue quite ferociously in favour of this style of decision making for the Mercurys. What annoys me is that it is then presented as the "Album of the Year" and the likes of Lauren Laverne and the judges go on about how it is only judged on the album itself. Looking at practically every winner that has ever gone before, I find this incredibly hard to believe.

Lets just examine the favourites for this years title:

Radiohead - (in my opinion) they have released the best album for the third time in their Mercury life but haven't won. Reason: They are the most important band in the world already. And they won't turn up.

Burial - I'm quite curious about Burial's record, mainly because its completely not my cup of tea. I listened to it a few times from start to finish in the hope that it would turn me on to dub; it didn't. However, from the looks of it the main reason why Burial didn't win is that he didn't turn up and he was a massive favourite. By merely becoming the bookies sure-fire winner, Burial has already gained the same kind of exposure, record sales and hype that he would have got if he had won.

Last Shadow Puppets - I think this is a better record than the Elbow one. There is an argument that it is looking backwards in style rather than looking forward but it doesn't detract from the quality of tunes. Reason it didn't win: Alex Turner won two years ago. Nobody has ever won the order twice.

I can't for the life of me ever imagine Portico Quartet, Estelle, Adele, British Sea Power or Rachel Unthank win; regardless of how fond I am (particularly of the latter). So when you take out three of the big-hitters and the ones highly unlikely to win you are left with a sublist of the following people: Laura Marling, Elbow and Neon Neon.

So, now we're down to the shortlist of three; i guess it's Elbow isn't it?

I actually had a crafty £5 bet on Laura Marling at 10-1 when the shortlist came out, mainly because of the reasons that I had detailed above and because I think she is the most extraordinary of talents. I was hoping that she'd pay back the silly sums of money that I spent trying to gather her early EPs on eBay, as much as anything else.

The popular consensus is that it might do Laura more harm than good to win. Arguments that she's too fragile, too young, too nervous around the press and too frightened of publicity to be able to handle it. I'm not sure whether I agree with this or not and I guess we'll never know. I'd much rather trust in her talent and obvious wisdom.

So that all boils down to Elbow again. They are great Mercury winners; a worthy band making a worthy album that finally is granted some mainstream success and the audience that goes with it. I have no bones about that; this is what makes the Mercurys so fantastic.

Well done Elbow. But next time you hear Lauren Laverne or one of the judges comment that it is judged purely on the individual albums, don't believe it. Nothing is ever that black and white.