Behold.
A man.
A ledge.
A man on a ledge...sometimes.
Now, this could have been something quite beautiful, moving and clever.
Just picture it; a man, a suicidal man, a man with nothing left to live for, a hopeless man...perched high above a city that doesn't care whether he lives or dies...looking down on the half lives, half lived...feeling more alive than he ever has at the moment that his life is about to end.
Phew.
Sadly this is not that film.
This is a film about an innocent man, wrongfully arrested, his life taken from him and his attempts to make those responsible pay.
Actually that sounds pretty good too.
No?
Yes.
Even more sadly this is a film that cannot manage to take a good idea and make a good film out of it.
This is dumb, dumb, dumb and dumber.
Plot holes bigger than Michael Fassbenders magic wand.
Acting so stiff and wooden that you could smell the MDF from the back row.
A script that makes the writers on "The Archers" look like Aaron Sorkin.
Honestly, I know that this sounds terribly mean and that it reeks of the sort of "look at me" film criticism that nobody likes but this is a truly horrible cinematic experience.
Even Ed Harris is simply going through the motions...you can see the pain etched on his face as he delivers every ridiculous line he's given.
You don't believe me?
This film actually contains the line; "Nobody's getting into that beast" which is uttered by a security guard who is awe-struck by a safe.
A safe.
We are meant to believe that anyone would be wowed by a safe?
"Nobody's getting into that beast"
I mean, really.
Leading man Sam Worthington has appeared in;
"Terminator: Salvation"
"Avatar"
"Clash of the Titans"
He is currently slated for "Wrath of the Titans" and "Avatar 2".
This should tell you something about Worthington and everything about "Man on a Ledge".
To appear in one "Avatar" is unfortunate but to agree to appear in a second is just perverse.
No, I'm afraid that "Man on a Ledge" is just about the least amount of fun you can have in a dark room.
Boo.
Wednesday, 8 February 2012
Saturday, 14 January 2012
Shame
Disgusting.
Absolutely disgusting.
Honestly, why do film-makers feel the need to do it?
Nobody wants to see it.
It just makes me so angry.
Anyway, enough about Carey Mulligan...
Actually, no, let's have a little bit more about Carey Mulligan.
What is the point of Carey Mulligan?
We already have Kiera Knightley to be a posh English girl who can't act and who isn't as pretty as people keep telling us she is so why do we need another one?
Possibly Mulligan is styling herself as arthouse Knightley..."An Education", "Drive" and now "Shame" are all fine, fine films (apart from "An Education" which was a steaming turd of a film but one that, like "The Kings Speech", really played well with middle-everything audiences...imagine the Daily Mail rage if "An Education" had been about a comprehensive school, black girl who set off on the same "journey"!) and Mulligan has made very good career choices.
My question is why do fine directors like McQueen and Refn cast her?
She is, at best, a capable performer and I'm sure she is very lovely but she is so far behind her co-stars as to make her performances seem little more than am-dram by comparison.
She is also absolutely incapable of a convincing American accent for any longer than three syllables.
One minute she is John Wayne and the next she is Joan Bakewell.
It's irritating and breaks the connection with the character.
OK.
I think I'm done with the Mulligan rant.
"Shame" is a tremendous film.
However, it is also a tremendously difficult film to watch.
Billed as a film about a sex addict there will, I have no doubt, be packs of young men turning up to see it in the hope that it will be some of multiplex porno...they will leave sorely disappointed because this is a film where sex is mere background to the real pornography of the empty, hollow, unfulfilled nature of modern life.
Opening on a shot of a corpse like Brandon (Fassbender) lying wrapped in blue sheets "Shame" like McQueens previous feature "Hunger" is never anything but beautiful to look at...even when what is happening on screen seems unbearably ugly. Color, shots, mise-en-scene and costume are all carefully selected and tenderly managed by the director making the experience feel like a walk through a contemporary art gallery.
As Brandon rouses himself from his catatonic state we are confronted with his naked self as he parades around his hipper than hip New York apartment readying himself for a day at work and a night hunting. A voicemail message from a woman begging for Brandon to pick up is dismissed by him and by us as just another notch on his bedpost who has become "needy" or "clingy".
On the tube Brandon fixes an unhappy, beautiful but married young woman with a gaze that leaves her in doubt as to his intentions and desires. She is interested, flattered but unsure. She exits the carriage and makes her way through the crowd to street level...evading Brandon who follows her like a shark cutting through the water. On this occasion he fails to catch his prey but it isn't long before someone else is filling the emptiness of his life.
We learn that the voicemail message has been left by his sister Sissy (Mulligan) who drops into his apartment and into his life and immediately begins to unravel the world that Brandon has constructed. As they stand on the platform of the underground together we see a loose thread on the shoulder of his jacket...his life, like his jacket, in the early stages of decay.
Sissy sleeps with Brandons boss, Brandon sleeps with some other people, a palpable tension grows and swells between the brother and sister and one cannot help but feel that there is another source of shame other than the one we assume is Brandons own at the nature of his addiction...a love that dare not speak its name may exist between these two and it is that love that has driven Brandon to avoid "relationships" and use sex as a means of control.
This is a film that asks questions and delivers few answers.
"Shame" is an emotion that few of us have a real understanding of...it is more intense than disappointment, more jarring than upset and more devastating than regret. Shame is the name of the thing that drives people who are empty, who are disgusted with their choices, who are out of control and who don't know where they are going. It is a powerful and awful thing.
McQueens "Shame" is equally powerful and beautifully, delicately awful in places.
Absolutely disgusting.
Honestly, why do film-makers feel the need to do it?
Nobody wants to see it.
It just makes me so angry.
Anyway, enough about Carey Mulligan...
Actually, no, let's have a little bit more about Carey Mulligan.
What is the point of Carey Mulligan?
We already have Kiera Knightley to be a posh English girl who can't act and who isn't as pretty as people keep telling us she is so why do we need another one?
Possibly Mulligan is styling herself as arthouse Knightley..."An Education", "Drive" and now "Shame" are all fine, fine films (apart from "An Education" which was a steaming turd of a film but one that, like "The Kings Speech", really played well with middle-everything audiences...imagine the Daily Mail rage if "An Education" had been about a comprehensive school, black girl who set off on the same "journey"!) and Mulligan has made very good career choices.
My question is why do fine directors like McQueen and Refn cast her?
She is, at best, a capable performer and I'm sure she is very lovely but she is so far behind her co-stars as to make her performances seem little more than am-dram by comparison.
She is also absolutely incapable of a convincing American accent for any longer than three syllables.
One minute she is John Wayne and the next she is Joan Bakewell.
It's irritating and breaks the connection with the character.
OK.
I think I'm done with the Mulligan rant.
"Shame" is a tremendous film.
However, it is also a tremendously difficult film to watch.
Billed as a film about a sex addict there will, I have no doubt, be packs of young men turning up to see it in the hope that it will be some of multiplex porno...they will leave sorely disappointed because this is a film where sex is mere background to the real pornography of the empty, hollow, unfulfilled nature of modern life.
Opening on a shot of a corpse like Brandon (Fassbender) lying wrapped in blue sheets "Shame" like McQueens previous feature "Hunger" is never anything but beautiful to look at...even when what is happening on screen seems unbearably ugly. Color, shots, mise-en-scene and costume are all carefully selected and tenderly managed by the director making the experience feel like a walk through a contemporary art gallery.
As Brandon rouses himself from his catatonic state we are confronted with his naked self as he parades around his hipper than hip New York apartment readying himself for a day at work and a night hunting. A voicemail message from a woman begging for Brandon to pick up is dismissed by him and by us as just another notch on his bedpost who has become "needy" or "clingy".
On the tube Brandon fixes an unhappy, beautiful but married young woman with a gaze that leaves her in doubt as to his intentions and desires. She is interested, flattered but unsure. She exits the carriage and makes her way through the crowd to street level...evading Brandon who follows her like a shark cutting through the water. On this occasion he fails to catch his prey but it isn't long before someone else is filling the emptiness of his life.
We learn that the voicemail message has been left by his sister Sissy (Mulligan) who drops into his apartment and into his life and immediately begins to unravel the world that Brandon has constructed. As they stand on the platform of the underground together we see a loose thread on the shoulder of his jacket...his life, like his jacket, in the early stages of decay.
Sissy sleeps with Brandons boss, Brandon sleeps with some other people, a palpable tension grows and swells between the brother and sister and one cannot help but feel that there is another source of shame other than the one we assume is Brandons own at the nature of his addiction...a love that dare not speak its name may exist between these two and it is that love that has driven Brandon to avoid "relationships" and use sex as a means of control.
This is a film that asks questions and delivers few answers.
"Shame" is an emotion that few of us have a real understanding of...it is more intense than disappointment, more jarring than upset and more devastating than regret. Shame is the name of the thing that drives people who are empty, who are disgusted with their choices, who are out of control and who don't know where they are going. It is a powerful and awful thing.
McQueens "Shame" is equally powerful and beautifully, delicately awful in places.
Thursday, 5 January 2012
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
David Fincher is one hell of a director.
"7even"
"Fight Club"
"Zodiac"
"The Social Network"
What a set of films.
However...one has to remember that in between each of those films Fincher also delivered;
"The Game"
"Panic Room"
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
And now his remake of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo".
Fincher giveth and Fincher taketh.
The novel which has now served as the source material for two films is (whisper it) rotten and about as close to literature as anything by Dan Brown.
It's like Harry Potter for big people...not very good, a bit diverting on a long train/plane journey and it lets you convince people that you are a "reader".
The original movie version was reviewed by me here and I stand by every single word of that.
This version has also been receiving rave reviews but the truth of the matter is that you cannot make a silk purse out of a sows ear.
The whole thing is so outrageous that if it didn't include "that" scene then it would be sitting alongside the likes of "Twilight" and "I Am Number Four" as teen-girl fodder. Salander is the sort of superhero that boxroom rebels of the female persuasion would love to be like and that their boyfriends would like to be with. She's a computer whiz, she's got a wacky haircut, she don't take no shit from nobody and she plays by her own rules.
The problem is that both films do contain "that" scene...where Salander takes a terrible but justifiable revenge on a man who has raped her. That means that the sort of audience who could buy into the nonsense that bulks out the rest of the running time can't see it.
The mystery of the missing girl is resolved very neatly but one can't help but feel that the whole thing could have been solved a lot quicker...both on screen and in the "real world" of the story. I mean, forty years to figure out that "Harriet" is still alive? Really? Only the combination of a disgraced journalist and an autistic cyber-punk could work this one out?
So, a film about child abusing, women hating, murdering, psychopathic, Nazi sympathising, multi-millionaire Swedes and a deranged, man hating/man loving, rapist torturing, genius/idiot savant, cyber-punk AGAIN but this time in English and with the added bonus of the opening title sequence looking like a video for a Marilyn Manson single.
In every way, pointless.
"7even"
"Fight Club"
"Zodiac"
"The Social Network"
What a set of films.
However...one has to remember that in between each of those films Fincher also delivered;
"The Game"
"Panic Room"
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
And now his remake of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo".
Fincher giveth and Fincher taketh.
The novel which has now served as the source material for two films is (whisper it) rotten and about as close to literature as anything by Dan Brown.
It's like Harry Potter for big people...not very good, a bit diverting on a long train/plane journey and it lets you convince people that you are a "reader".
The original movie version was reviewed by me here and I stand by every single word of that.
This version has also been receiving rave reviews but the truth of the matter is that you cannot make a silk purse out of a sows ear.
The whole thing is so outrageous that if it didn't include "that" scene then it would be sitting alongside the likes of "Twilight" and "I Am Number Four" as teen-girl fodder. Salander is the sort of superhero that boxroom rebels of the female persuasion would love to be like and that their boyfriends would like to be with. She's a computer whiz, she's got a wacky haircut, she don't take no shit from nobody and she plays by her own rules.
The problem is that both films do contain "that" scene...where Salander takes a terrible but justifiable revenge on a man who has raped her. That means that the sort of audience who could buy into the nonsense that bulks out the rest of the running time can't see it.
The mystery of the missing girl is resolved very neatly but one can't help but feel that the whole thing could have been solved a lot quicker...both on screen and in the "real world" of the story. I mean, forty years to figure out that "Harriet" is still alive? Really? Only the combination of a disgraced journalist and an autistic cyber-punk could work this one out?
So, a film about child abusing, women hating, murdering, psychopathic, Nazi sympathising, multi-millionaire Swedes and a deranged, man hating/man loving, rapist torturing, genius/idiot savant, cyber-punk AGAIN but this time in English and with the added bonus of the opening title sequence looking like a video for a Marilyn Manson single.
In every way, pointless.
Thursday, 29 December 2011
Is it Really so Strange?
“I wear black on the outside because black is how I feel on the inside”
“I am the son and the heir of a shyness that is criminally vulgar”
“I am sick and I am dull and I am plain”
“Call me morbid, call me pale...”
“Sixteen, clumsy and shy...”
“Don’t try to wake me in the morning ‘cause I will be gone”
I was, and to a certain extent, remain the archetypal boxroom rebel, the ambitious outsider, half a person, a sweet and tender hooligan desperately pleading for someone to please, please, please let me get what I want.
It’s very difficult to explain the why and the what of The Smiths now.
In 1989 shortly before my sixteenth birthday a friend gave me a cassette with two albums recorded onto it. On the “A” side was an album by a band called “Westworld” who are now only remembered by the members of the band and their parents. On the “B”side was an album by a band I hadn’t ever heard of; “The Smiths” and the album was a compilation of singles and album tracks called “The World Won’t Listen”.
When I finished listening to “Westworld” I turned the cassette over and started to listen to “The World Won’t Listen”. I can remember, quite clearly, thinking that it was an odd name for an album and that “The Smiths” was an even odder name for a band...it was so, well, dull. My expectations were not high.
The first track was called “Panic” and the first thing that struck me was the peculiar, and peculiarly English, vocal of the singer. Then the chiming, crashing guitar. Next the references to Leeds and Dundee. Finally, most importantly, came the line that changed my life forever...oh, I know how melodramatic that sounds but it’s true...”Burn down the disco, hang the blessed DJ because the music that they constantly play, it says nothing to me about my life”
That was it.
Everything changed.
Nothing would ever be the same again.
I had always felt that I didn’t really fit in...I had friends but no “best” friend. I didn’t have a girlfriend. I had acne, greasy hair and was a bit, well, eccentric in my own way. I wanted to belong, I wanted to fit in but I just didn’t. I wasn’t bullied or ostracised but I just didn’t feel like I was a part of what was going on around me.
To hear someone say something as shocking as “...the music that they constantly play, it says nothing to me about my life” was just incredible. Here was someone who understood, someone who knew what it meant to be, forgive me, me. What was more astonishing was that I didn’t even know who I was yet but this voice, that voice, did. The next track was “Ask”; “...shyness is nice and shyness can stop you from doing all the things in life you’d like to”, then “London” with its desperate tale of a young man running away from home and heading for the smoke, the bloody and brutal violence of “Bigmouth Strikes Again” with it’s smashing and bludgeoning, references to Joan of Arc, “Shakespeares Sister” a hymn to suicide...on and on it went, each and every track doing exactly what every other song I had heard couldn’t manage; to say something to me about MY life.
From then on I searched high and low for everything I could to do with this band...I bought all of their albums then began an expensive and extensive hunt for the singles, the 12” records, posters, magazine articles, fanzines. My bedroom became a shrine to The Smiths...not an inch of wall left uncovered.
The voice, of course, belonged to Morrissey and soon his beatific face looked down on me from every corner of the room. I hung on his every written, sung and spoken word...I was a disciple; “Meat is Murder”...I became a vegetarian, a photo-shoot with a bottle of Ecover washing up liquid used as a water bottle...I did the same, never seen without it, flowers in his back pocket during the early days of The Smiths...I had a bunch of flowers at every social occasion, a reference to Oscar Wilde...I bought his complete works and memorised witticisms, Shelagh Delaney...I found and learned every line from her “A Taste of Honey”, name-checks for bands like the New York Dolls or Patti Smith...I gobbled up their back catalogue.
I even adopted the look...hair quiffed, vintage Levi jeans, suit jackets. Wherever He went, whatever He said, whenever He spoke...I was there, a clumsy, pale immitation. Like hundreds of other young men up and down the UK I had found something to make life...livable, bearable.
The developmental psychologist Erikson argued that the conflict that must be overcome during adolescence is identity versus role confusion. In other words the adolescent must fashion some sense of who they are, begin to “fit in”. For me that was impossible in high school...I wasn’t popular enough, clever enough, handsome enough or athletic enough to ever truly “belong” but in the world of The Smiths I found an identity. I entered a world with a moral code...respect for animals, tolerance of all sexuality, where knowledge and intelligence were praised and desired. It even gave me a “look” and opened up doors to other worlds...books, theatre, music, film and more.
Clever old Morrissey...the saviour of the rebel without a cause.
Even now, some years later, I cannot escape the influence of The Smiths and Morrissey. My walls are lined with framed Smiths/Morrissey related artwork, I still use lines from their songs in conversation, I still have the quiff (however thin it might now be), I still buy magazines He appears in, even as I write this I’m listening to His music. Why? Oh dear, I’m afraid I can’t answer that...a psychologist would have a wonderful time attempting to! A desperate desire to cling to my youth? Maybe, but I didn’t much like my youth. A stubborn refusal to let go? Maybe, but I’m not really sentimental. I think it comes down to the fact that He and they got me at the right time...they wormed their way into my life and into my heart and they'’ve never left. I'’m happy (as happy as I can ever be) about that.
Depressed Beyond Tablets
There are few things in life that are more miserable than "comedy" songs.
You know the sort of thing "Weird" Al Yankovich gurning his way through a Michael Jackson parody. The Mike Flowers Pops smirking through their easy listening version of "Wonderwall". Alexei Sayle and his suicide inducing "Hello John Got a New Motor".
The last time I saw the wonderful Stewart Lee he ended his set with a song.
The moment I saw the guitar being handed to him I could feel a lonely teardrop work its way down my cheek.
Here was someone I adored and admired about to ruin everything good by performing a "hilarious" song.
Thankfully Lee is a gifted enough performer that it wasn't in the same league of dreadfulness as the other acts I have mentioned but my devotion to Britains second best comic was tested to the limit...don't do it again Stewart; you need me as much as I need you. Maybe. OK, you don't but still.
Half Man Half Biscuit are a band who have a name so painful that it would be easy to dismiss them without ever having listened to a single note. For a very long time I refused to listen to them simply because of the name...it seemed a bit, well, "wacky" and student union for my liking.
The song titles didn't help either..."All I Want For Christmas is a Dukla Prague Away Kit" for example.
I couldn't get past it.
I don't want musicians to be comedians.
I want musicians to be musicians.
I want them to write songs that lift me, crush me, console me, destroy me and understand me.
If I want jokes I'll pull a cracker with my nan on December 25th.
This year however I was persuaded to listen to HMHB by a very dear friend, the singer-songwriter, wit and raconteur Ben Gunstone. He was evangelical in his defense of this band...they were clever, they were knowing, they were scathing, they were political and, yes, they had the ability to make you smile and laugh out loud (lol for younger readers).
I trust Ben.
He is, without a doubt, my closest and oldest friend...he's also the most gifted person I have ever met.
So...off I popped to the local record emporium and selected "Achtung Bono"(2005) and headed home to place it gingerly on my record playing machine. As the needle hit the vinyl and the room was filled with that anticipatory hiss I felt nervous. If this was just a collection of comedy songs with wacky lyrics I wouldn't ever be able to forgive Ben and a friendship would be forever damaged. A lot was resting on this.
I had put the future of my friendship in the hands of some Tranmere supporting Northerners.
What was I thinking?
Surely this wasn't a risk worth taking.
Before I could swipe the needle off of the cold, black, disc the first song had started...
"Here she lies in a fleecy gown, by my side in the eiderdown but she can't get a ticket to morning town, cos I've got restless legs"
Ah.
This was funny.
Silly almost.
But...importantly...it wasn't wacky and it wasn't a comedy song.
This was a song reveling in the ordinary.
An ordinary man, in an ordinary town, with an (extra) ordinary problem...he's got restless legs.
I was smiling but I wasn't laughing.
There weren't any puns.
There were no comedy musings.
"In the kingdom of the blind it's said the one eyed man is king...and in the kingdom of the bland, it's 9 o clock on ITV"
"You never hear of folk getting knocked on the bonce but there was a drive-by shouting once"
"I could have put my head in a bucketful of porridge and moaned about the hospital parking scheme, I would have saved fourteen pounds that I just splashed out on your second album, for that's what it's akin to..."
Every track contained an insight into the world that people actually live in.
The lyrics were clever, thoughtful, acidic, vitriolic but also full of warmth, wit, verve and guile.
Praise be.
Ben hadn't let me down.
My friendship was in tact and I had found a band to listen to.
That is the greatest compliment you can play to any band.
"I listen to them"
Few bands are worth actually and actively listening to.
I could name a few but you will have your own.
Songs appear on the radio and you tap a toe, hum along and swing your hips a bit.
You hear the opening bars of some indie anthem at the alternative night in the local nite-klub and you hit the floor with arms aloft.
You're not listening.
You're participating in something...and there's nothing wrong with that...but you are not listening.
That is quite often a good thing because the moment you do stop and listen you are, more often than not, left with a feeling of crushing disappointment...Razorlight, Kaiser Chiefs, Oasis and a host of others are all bands who sold records to people who were not really listening. These are songs for drunk, stupid people made by drunk, stupid people. Good for them.
I want more care.
HMHB...despite a name that makes you squirm whenever you tell people about them are a band who are worth listening to.
You should listen to them.
Now.
You know the sort of thing "Weird" Al Yankovich gurning his way through a Michael Jackson parody. The Mike Flowers Pops smirking through their easy listening version of "Wonderwall". Alexei Sayle and his suicide inducing "Hello John Got a New Motor".
The last time I saw the wonderful Stewart Lee he ended his set with a song.
The moment I saw the guitar being handed to him I could feel a lonely teardrop work its way down my cheek.
Here was someone I adored and admired about to ruin everything good by performing a "hilarious" song.
Thankfully Lee is a gifted enough performer that it wasn't in the same league of dreadfulness as the other acts I have mentioned but my devotion to Britains second best comic was tested to the limit...don't do it again Stewart; you need me as much as I need you. Maybe. OK, you don't but still.
Half Man Half Biscuit are a band who have a name so painful that it would be easy to dismiss them without ever having listened to a single note. For a very long time I refused to listen to them simply because of the name...it seemed a bit, well, "wacky" and student union for my liking.
The song titles didn't help either..."All I Want For Christmas is a Dukla Prague Away Kit" for example.
I couldn't get past it.
I don't want musicians to be comedians.
I want musicians to be musicians.
I want them to write songs that lift me, crush me, console me, destroy me and understand me.
If I want jokes I'll pull a cracker with my nan on December 25th.
This year however I was persuaded to listen to HMHB by a very dear friend, the singer-songwriter, wit and raconteur Ben Gunstone. He was evangelical in his defense of this band...they were clever, they were knowing, they were scathing, they were political and, yes, they had the ability to make you smile and laugh out loud (lol for younger readers).
I trust Ben.
He is, without a doubt, my closest and oldest friend...he's also the most gifted person I have ever met.
So...off I popped to the local record emporium and selected "Achtung Bono"(2005) and headed home to place it gingerly on my record playing machine. As the needle hit the vinyl and the room was filled with that anticipatory hiss I felt nervous. If this was just a collection of comedy songs with wacky lyrics I wouldn't ever be able to forgive Ben and a friendship would be forever damaged. A lot was resting on this.
I had put the future of my friendship in the hands of some Tranmere supporting Northerners.
What was I thinking?
Surely this wasn't a risk worth taking.
Before I could swipe the needle off of the cold, black, disc the first song had started...
"Here she lies in a fleecy gown, by my side in the eiderdown but she can't get a ticket to morning town, cos I've got restless legs"
Ah.
This was funny.
Silly almost.
But...importantly...it wasn't wacky and it wasn't a comedy song.
This was a song reveling in the ordinary.
An ordinary man, in an ordinary town, with an (extra) ordinary problem...he's got restless legs.
I was smiling but I wasn't laughing.
There weren't any puns.
There were no comedy musings.
"In the kingdom of the blind it's said the one eyed man is king...and in the kingdom of the bland, it's 9 o clock on ITV"
"You never hear of folk getting knocked on the bonce but there was a drive-by shouting once"
"I could have put my head in a bucketful of porridge and moaned about the hospital parking scheme, I would have saved fourteen pounds that I just splashed out on your second album, for that's what it's akin to..."
Every track contained an insight into the world that people actually live in.
The lyrics were clever, thoughtful, acidic, vitriolic but also full of warmth, wit, verve and guile.
Praise be.
Ben hadn't let me down.
My friendship was in tact and I had found a band to listen to.
That is the greatest compliment you can play to any band.
"I listen to them"
Few bands are worth actually and actively listening to.
I could name a few but you will have your own.
Songs appear on the radio and you tap a toe, hum along and swing your hips a bit.
You hear the opening bars of some indie anthem at the alternative night in the local nite-klub and you hit the floor with arms aloft.
You're not listening.
You're participating in something...and there's nothing wrong with that...but you are not listening.
That is quite often a good thing because the moment you do stop and listen you are, more often than not, left with a feeling of crushing disappointment...Razorlight, Kaiser Chiefs, Oasis and a host of others are all bands who sold records to people who were not really listening. These are songs for drunk, stupid people made by drunk, stupid people. Good for them.
I want more care.
HMHB...despite a name that makes you squirm whenever you tell people about them are a band who are worth listening to.
You should listen to them.
Now.
Wednesday, 28 December 2011
Songs to Save Your Life
Antony and the Johnsons .
What a terribly good name for a group.
Very often in popular music groups are let down by their name (hello to the "Arctic Monkeys") and it can be very difficult for them to get past that initial hurdle.
Groups can also be let down by their look (hello again to Sheffields "Arctic Monkeys" who look rather like Anthony from the Royal Family...not a good thing) and this can detract from the power of the music.
Artwork can be another stumbling block (oh dear, once again we have to point to the "Monkeys"...have you seen their "art"work?) because, as Oscar Wilde put it; "only a fool doesn't judge a book by it's cover". He was, as always, absolutely right.
Only once these obstacles have been overcome can one get down to the nitty-gritty of actually listening to a band properly. There is nothing more depressing than hearing a song on the radio, enjoying it and then discovering that the band are called, well, The Arctic Monkeys and that they look like Anthony Royal and have spent about 5 minutes on their artwork.
Look at The Strokes...a fine band, good songs, good name, good look but dreadful artwork and that is why I will never really love them.
Pop music should be about the complete package...why settle for anything less?
I was wary when I first heard Antony and the Johnsons...he/she (I wasn't sure at that point) sounded incredible. The voice of a castrato angel. Songs so gentle that one was afraid to sing along in case they broke. But would he turn out to be dressed in a Ben Sherman shirt and have a picture of a "tasty bird" on the front cover?
No and no again.
Antony was a giant of a man...like Roald Dahls BFG but clad in black. He looked as delicate, despite his size, as his songs sounded. No "laddish" affectations. No desperate attempt at fitting in. No desire to be "hip". This was an artist who looked like he sounded...beautifull, ethereal, hopeful and hopeless.
The artwork was achingly wonderful. Simple. Plain. Stylish but never stylised.
The Mercury prize winning "I Am A Bird Now" is both haunting and affecting but never gothic or affected. It is full of beautiful songs of the sort not heard since...oh goodness only knows.
This is no rock 'n' roll spectacular.
This is no "indie" pop moment.
This is a record to be cherished.
Every single song should be listened to time and again so that you can be sure that your initial impression that this is one of the greatest albums of all time is correct.
You will meet people after you hear it who will say cruel things about this record.
Cut those people out of your life.
They are not worth knowing.
Find the people who appreciate this record...they are your people.
Try this...when Antony performs "You are my Sister" live with Boy George...if you're heart melts then you understand. If it doesn't then you are either Liam Gallagher or dead.
What a terribly good name for a group.
Very often in popular music groups are let down by their name (hello to the "Arctic Monkeys") and it can be very difficult for them to get past that initial hurdle.
Groups can also be let down by their look (hello again to Sheffields "Arctic Monkeys" who look rather like Anthony from the Royal Family...not a good thing) and this can detract from the power of the music.
Artwork can be another stumbling block (oh dear, once again we have to point to the "Monkeys"...have you seen their "art"work?) because, as Oscar Wilde put it; "only a fool doesn't judge a book by it's cover". He was, as always, absolutely right.
Only once these obstacles have been overcome can one get down to the nitty-gritty of actually listening to a band properly. There is nothing more depressing than hearing a song on the radio, enjoying it and then discovering that the band are called, well, The Arctic Monkeys and that they look like Anthony Royal and have spent about 5 minutes on their artwork.
Look at The Strokes...a fine band, good songs, good name, good look but dreadful artwork and that is why I will never really love them.
Pop music should be about the complete package...why settle for anything less?
I was wary when I first heard Antony and the Johnsons...he/she (I wasn't sure at that point) sounded incredible. The voice of a castrato angel. Songs so gentle that one was afraid to sing along in case they broke. But would he turn out to be dressed in a Ben Sherman shirt and have a picture of a "tasty bird" on the front cover?
No and no again.
Antony was a giant of a man...like Roald Dahls BFG but clad in black. He looked as delicate, despite his size, as his songs sounded. No "laddish" affectations. No desperate attempt at fitting in. No desire to be "hip". This was an artist who looked like he sounded...beautifull, ethereal, hopeful and hopeless.
The artwork was achingly wonderful. Simple. Plain. Stylish but never stylised.
The Mercury prize winning "I Am A Bird Now" is both haunting and affecting but never gothic or affected. It is full of beautiful songs of the sort not heard since...oh goodness only knows.
This is no rock 'n' roll spectacular.
This is no "indie" pop moment.
This is a record to be cherished.
Every single song should be listened to time and again so that you can be sure that your initial impression that this is one of the greatest albums of all time is correct.
You will meet people after you hear it who will say cruel things about this record.
Cut those people out of your life.
They are not worth knowing.
Find the people who appreciate this record...they are your people.
Try this...when Antony performs "You are my Sister" live with Boy George...if you're heart melts then you understand. If it doesn't then you are either Liam Gallagher or dead.
Snowtown
The Australian film industry has been responsible for, at least, two of my favourite films of the last few years in "Samson and Delilah" and "Animal Kingdom" both of which were powerful, original and visceral. Much of the power of those films lay in their honesty and their almost stubborn refusal to gloss over the hideous reality of the lives of ordinary people.
Now comes "Snowtown" from director Justin Kurzel.
"Snowtown" tells, in the most brutal fashion, the true story of serial killer John Bunting and his awful crimes.
Bunting, unlike many other serial killers, was not a lone operator and unlike some other serial killers he was not part of a deadly duo but was, uniquely, a man who involved multiple players in his sickening crimes.
Driven by a seemingly far right ideology that focused on "weak" or "disgusting" people including homosexuals, pedophiles and the obese he murdered at least 11 people in increasingly sadistic ways and claimed victims from a fairly small geographical zone. Often he would force his victims to record farewell messages to their families in order to mask their disappearance and on other occasions he, or his partners, would fake such messages.
Bunting is played here by Daniel Henshall (the only professional actor in the film) and it is a performance of such conviction that it is unlikely you will ever forget it. He embodies the idea of evil absolutely and is terrifying in a way that dozens of "Buffalo Bills", "Freddies", "Jasons" and "Hannibal the Cannibal" could never be.
The focus of this film, and the source of the fear, is Buntings relationship with Elizabeth Harvey and her family. Harvey is depressed, battered and beaten...her latest partner has been revealed as a pedophile who has been taking pornographic photographs of her sons and who is living in the sort of run down, sink estate that drains hope from even the most hopeful. She tries to find some solace in the local evangelical Church but it is only when Bunting arrives and drives out her former lover (in a scene that involves the mutilation of the corpses of two kangaroos) that she is able to smile again.
That smile doesn't last long as Bunting quickly asserts himself as the head of a group of locals who are hell-bent on ridding their community of the sick and diseased...by which they mean gays, transvestites and pedophiles. Bunting whips the group up into a frenzy and encourages them to discuss the ways in which they would punish pedophiles and strategies for driving homosexuals out of teaching. At the same time he develops an awful fixation on Harveys son, Jamie Vlassakis (Lucas Pittaway) who is desperate for a father figure and for a way to escape the "attentions" of his older brother Troy who has been abusing him since he entered his teens.
Slowly, steadily and with increasing assurance Bunting draws Jamie into his world and soon the boy is involved in the murder of his own brother and in helping Bunting and his other "friends" target victims and dispose of bodies.
Pittaway gives a superb performance as Vlassakis...quivering with fear, sobbing with regret and continuously submitting to the will of men in whom he has placed his trust and from whom he receives nothing but further abuse. This is a calling card performance and Pittaway will surely now develop into a performer to watch in the future.
"Snowtown" reveals the terror that can exist in the most normal and dreary of worlds. Buntings crimes are messy, brutal and with the flimsiest of motives behind them. That he was able to co-opt multiple players into his sickening game is, perhaps, more horrific than the crimes they committed. It is not a film for the faint of heart and it is not a film that one could recommend or enjoy but it is magnificent and important film-making.
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