PunchDrunk Pop

Under African Skies

2007-03-12T23:36:00.000Z

Tremendous:

Tinariwen and Ali Farka Toure. My musical horizons needed broadening and so a quick trip to amazon provided albums by these two artists.

Tinariwen are a tribe of musicians with no country in Northern Africa, homeless now for 60 years. Their music is a conglomeration of sounds from traditional campfire jams to blues and rock n' roll.

Ali Farka Toure is the recently deceased godfather of African music. One of the magnificent Senegalese musicians of recent times, he's been described by Martin Scorsese as "the DNA of the blues." It is amazing listening to these songs that share so much with a musical form so deeply associated with America. It obviously transcends time and place and gives you a sense of how important music is to heritage and people. It has carried 400 years over thousands of miles of ocean, achings of torment and torture in the slave plantations; and centuries of dilution in a foreign land.

Yet still present in music from Senegal is the familiar twang and vocal style of the Blues greats.

A reminder of music's ability to amaze and emote.

BAFTA Nominations

2007-01-12T16:57:00.000Z

We're well and truly into award-season madness and the year has only just begun. I have to admit I love this time of the movie calender. You're never stuck for something good to see at the cinema and the buzz, gossip, intrigue and general hysteria are so much fun to partake in and watch.

The BAFTA's are continuing their recent rejuvenation into proper-grown-up awards this year with possibly the most eclectic, diverse and interesting selection of nominees ever seen. Following their decision to become a pre-Oscars ceremony, the BAFTA's have successfully relaunched themselves as an important indicator of critical opinion coming up the big-daddy statuettes themselves.

However, this year we have some more alternative movies making richly deserved appearances on the shortlists. Little Miss Sunshine, United 93, Red Road and Pan's Labyrinth are just some of the films getting their just desserts with nominations.

Elsewhere, it's great to see The Departed getting so many nods and I literally am wetting my pants in anticipation of The Last King Of Scotland. The book is a masterpiece and from all accounts the film lives up to it's high standards. James McAvoy and Forest Whittaker are perfect fits for the lead roles and this promised to one of best films of the year.

Here be the main categories and nominees:

FILM

BABEL

THE DEPARTED

THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE

THE QUEEN

THE ALEXANDER KORDA AWARD for the Outstanding British Film of the Year

CASINO ROYALE

THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND

NOTES ON A SCANDAL

THE QUEEN

UNITED 93

THE DAVID LEAN AWARD for Achievement in Direction

BABEL - Alejandro González Iñárritu

THE DEPARTED – Martin Scorsese

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE – Jonathan Dayton/Valerie Faris

THE QUEEN – Stephen Frears

UNITED 93 – Paul Greengrass

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

BABEL – Guillermo Arriaga

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE – Michael Arndt

PAN’S LABYRINTH – Guillermo del Toro

THE QUEEN – Peter Morgan

UNITED 93 – Paul Greengrass

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

CASINO ROYALE – Neal Purvis/Robert Wade/Paul Haggis

THE DEPARTED – William Monahan

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA – Aline Brosh McKenna

THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND – Peter Morgan/Jeremy Brock

NOTES ON A SCANDAL – Patrick Marber

FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

APOCALYPTO

BLACK BOOK (ZWARTBOEK)

PAN’S LABYRINTH

RANG DE BASANTI (PAINT IT YELLOW)

VOLVER

ACTOR in a LEADING ROLE

DANIEL CRAIG – Casino Royale

LEONARDO DICAPRIO – The Departed

RICHARD GRIFFITHS – The History Boys

PETER O’TOOLE – Venus

FOREST WHITAKER – The Last King of Scotland

ACTRESS in a LEADING ROLE

PENELOPE CRUZ - Volver

JUDI DENCH – Notes on a Scandal

HELEN MIRREN – The Queen

MERYL STREEP – The Devil Wears Prada

KATE WINSLET – Little Children

ACTOR in a SUPPORTING ROLE

ALAN ARKIN – Little Miss Sunshine

JAMES MCAVOY – The Last King of Scotland

JACK NICHOLSON – The Departed

LESLIE PHILLIPS – Venus

MICHAEL SHEEN – The Queen

ACTRESS in a SUPPORTING ROLE

EMILY BLUNT – The Devil Wears Prada

ABIGAIL BRESLIN – Little Miss Sunshine

TONI COLETTE – Little Miss Sunshine

FRANCES DE LA TOUR – The History Boys

JENNIFER HUDSON – Dreamgirls

Top Stuff 2006

2007-01-04T14:36:00.000Z

Out with the old and in with the new.

Well, almost...

A few things that floated my boat, whetted my whistle and moved my mojo last year.

In the world of movies, it was a bit of a stagnant year. Not unexpectedly, my favourite films of 2006 were new takes on well-worn events. Inside Man elevated the heist genre to new levels of excitement, thrills and humour through a re-invented Spike Lee and charismatically electric performances from Denzel Washington, Clive Owen and Jodie Foster. Worth seeing alone for the legendary Agent Starling being called "a magnificent cunt" with heart-felt schaudenfraude.

Elsewhere, another pair of reliable directorial hands magiked up another take on gangster life - this time The Departed, itself a remake of the classic Infernal Affairs. Those gnarled hands were Martin Scorsesse's and his pulling power drew in a veritable feast of other expensive Hollywood hands, including: Leo Di Caprio in his most mature and captivating role yet; Matt Damon successfully subverting his all-American Bourne charm into a real malevolent presence; Alec Baldwin chewing scenery with tremendous relish; Mark Wahlberg with the most gratuitously offensive and hilarious insults known to man; and Martin Sheen doing what he does best - being grand and fatherly.

All of these pale when compared to the blinding fire with which Jack Nicholson lit up the film however. Deranged, violent, sexed-up and coursing with a humour blacker than coal at midnight - this was a virtuoso and scintillating performance.

In contrast to Jack's bombast was Tommy Lee Jones' directorial debut - The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada. A reinvention of the modern Western, this was an unexpectedly subtle examination of life on the border, both geographically and emotionally. Jones himself has surely never knowingly underacted in his life prior to this film but his presence here is solid, grave and absolutely spell-binding. Armed with a script from 21 grams and Amores Perros screenwriter Guillermo Arriga, it is less wilfully misleading but equally well and similarly constructed. With torrents of unexpected laugh-out-loud moments and touches of real sadness, this is a film not to have missed.

Other honourable mentions go to: The Wind That Shakes The Barley, United 93, The Proposition and Brick.

What an awesome year for music! There were welcome returns from Elbow and Snow Patrol, maturing and moving on musically in two excellently constructed records. Elbow are a national treasure, with Guy Garvey's wit and graft a palpable presence throughout the album. Yet Elbow remain strangely unvaunted. Compare that to Snow Patrol, who's success knows no bounds. Eyes Open contained more anthems than an entire World Cup - rock rarely gets this good or as precious as the achingly good duet with Martha Wainwright on Set The Fire To The Third Bar.

Debuts by the dozen battered and bruised the Top Ten all year, but none so forcefully and with such cheeky fun as The Fratellis' mixture of rock, pop, stoner stories and psychotic women. Hazily gliding it's way there though were Guillemots and their everything-including-the-kitchen-sink instrumental approach combining with woozy melody and occasional outbursts of stonking hooks to make a strange brew of bewitching pop.

Yeah, there was the Arctic Monkeys, Gorillaz and Gnarls Barkley. But take a break from such commercially shrewd hits and luxuriate in the sounds of Jenny Lewis, Josh Ritter and the utterly fantastic Duke Special: a piano-playing Belfast guy with dreadlocks, whose debut LP of meandering rock-a-longs cannot be lavished with enough praise.

2006 was also a year of the best Hip Hop I've heard yet - Plan B and the unshakeable Kanye West. Plan B has slipped almost completely under the radar, too brutal and honest for the charts but challenging, inspiring acoustic-driven rap for the home.

2007 has a lot to live up to.

Born To Run

2006-08-05T14:33:00.000+01:00

If you've been wondering (and I know you have) what OK Go have been doing since they last troubled the charts a year or two back with Get Over It , which was one of those songs that sets up shop in your brain and can't be evicted without some strong letters from the Citizens' Advice Bureau, then wrap your eyeballs around this.

OK Go, on treadmills. Does exactly what it says on the conveniently-embedded video.

Vivat Regina

2006-07-14T11:22:00.000+01:00

Women In Rock is one of these tedious subjects that keeps getting trotted out by the more waffly music rags and the more earnest Sunday broadsheets - whither the new Kate Bush, whose recent sectionable return should see her squarely packed away to Arkham, or the new Chrissie Hynde, who nowadays seems more concerned with licensing her tracks to groups with the musical nutrition content of a pack of Mini Rolls? There's Goldfrapp, there's Cat Power, there's Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls, but these kinds of people tend to put paid to the journos' Who Will Lead Us Now raging histrionics caused by the Cataracts of Righteousness (+2 saving throw against passive-aggression), so they tend not to get mentioned. Hurrah and huzzah, then, for Regina Spektor. Only she can slay these tedious retreads of the same old rants about how the Man is keeping the Woman down in the world of three chords and a cloud of dust.

You know why? Because she'll remind these journos of Kate Bush. She's 'kooky', you see. 'Kooky', in this instance, is a teeth-grindingly backward shorthand for someone whose songs are the kind of thing that would have Diane Warren retiring to bed with a mug of milky tea and an air of quiet bafflement. Her calling card, inasmuch as it's the closest thing she has to a radio-friendly unit shifter (it has a video! and everything!), is Us, a playful capturing of love-as-genuine-romance, love-as-excitement, with lyrics seemingly patched together from old cryptic crosswords and a violinist who's well on their way to RSI. If you can't cope with songs with lyrics involving rusting noses (on statues, obv) then you might want to pick up the new album by Katie Melua, or something else which is similarly punchable, instead.

If, however, you like Us, you'll like Spektor's new album, Begin To Hope. Less spiky and rough-edged than her most recent collection, Maryann Meets The Gravediggers And Other Stories, her fourth album proper has Spektor comfortable with a budget without losing any of the charming, touching flavours that run through her music. Spektor's got her full range on display here, from Samson, with its evocation of the heartache and loss that come with knowing that someone you love is now with someone else, through to That Time, a sweet summation of the kind of conversations that come with a long and comfortable relationship.

For someone who's so young (she's only six weeks older than me, and I'll fight anyone who says I'm not still young), Spektor is a remarkably assured songwriter, and Begin To Hope is a great album. Music may be a man's world, but it would be nothing without a woman, and a lyrically sharp Noo Yawk girl with a blisteringly good live show may be just the thing for you if, like the rest of the right-thinking world, you'd like to kick Sandi Thom down the stairs.

T Break 2006

2006-05-16T16:12:00.000+01:00

Unexpectedly, I was a finalist for the T Break 2006 Journalism competition and duly dispatched to review 6 unsigned bands last Friday.

Check out the hastily churned out article here folks.

Fingers crossed that I get that back-stage pass for T In The Park...

I have thought of a new slogan we should use for national tourism adverts

2006-05-12T19:18:00.000+01:00

"Britain: conveniently located near a Tesco"

Re-Doctorin' The TARDIS

2006-04-20T20:34:00.000+01:00

Is there a word for a person who, while being really great, thoroughly likeable and sometimes awe-inspiring is also, well, a bit of a twat? I’m sorry, I don’t have a Profanisaurus to hand so my lexicon is rather limited. It’s just that the thought occurred to me the other day while watching the first episode of the second series of the all-new Doctor Who. Could it be, I thought, that the good Doctor, for all his good intentions, may quite possibly tick that box marked T more easily than we thought?

I mean it’d be really great to hop on the TARDIS and go whizzing through time and all with the Doc and Billie Piper (‘Cause we want to! ‘Cause we want to!), but all that baton relay flirting, off-the-cuff one-liners and smug flippancy of the laws of society and physics – if you were right in the thick of it it’d really get on your nerves after a bit, wouldn’t it? You’d feel a bit useless in there. A bit of third wheel. A gooseberry. You’d start to resent the Doctor a bit. Think he’s a twat. Like I’m sure you’d think about anyone who certainly regards himself as a lot greater than you no matter how humble he appears. Unless you’re Mother Theresa. And she’s dead, and you’re not (her or dead).

You’ve got to think that the reason that Rose’s boyfriend, the hapless Mickey, doesn’t want to travel around the universe with her isn’t because he can’t take the excitement, it’s because he somehow knows he’d be carrying a torch that both Roy Castle and Bernard Cribbins held (then dropped, tried to pick up, burnt their fingers and sprang up to bump their head on the underside of a table). But then, the Doctor does that to other men.

Maybe it’s just the show’s focus on the eponymous Who as the centre of attention that his persona shall shine the brightest and dim those who stand in his light. As the man of the hour, and as anyone of a twattish nature shall show, assertion of their gender dominance is paramount to them, and in this case the writing of the show has justified that. Take heed that nearly all of the male characters who popped into the TARDIS during Ecclestone’s run have or developed some kind of negative flaw that let their sex-side down: Mickey, of course who’s a bit fick; Adam who teams up with the duo for one trip before succumbing to greed; even Captain Jack, who despite being the dashing hero stereotype, admits he’d tipped the scales towards number one and tried to fleece them. And he only gets away with it by being bi-metrosexual and thus less of a threat to the Timelord.

That a prominent force such as the Doctor has to force that authority and magnitude of personality via the conduit of Ecclestone’s cheeky-chappiness, inevitably results in this chipping away at his 'good' competitors for his benefit, blatantly or not. For all his own flaws, he's as critical of others'. Especially, when this particular incarnation of the series tips the wink at the Doctor glossing over the greater responsibilities and ethics of genocide and murder when he himself decides the end justifies the means. He has a great habit of pulling those carriages of doubt quickly back onto his own track of thinking before anyone, particularly Rose, can question his motivations. He’s the guy with his name on the canopy, that’s all we need to know, so why should his limelight be stolen?

Now then, why say all this about the last incarnation when we should be talking about Tennant’s relay run? The answer’s because it looks like not much has changed for series two. I can’t talk as a leading authority on Doctor Who, having not seen as much of last century’s output as I managed beyond the gaze of a child (yes, I literally did hide behind cushions during some episodes, no word of a lie), but I presume that each incarnation of the Doctor plays on a distinct variation of a main theme. That is, they may all be time-travelling aliens, but they each have room to manoeuvre in what they say and how they act. You’d have to agree that a Tom Baker is on an altogether different spectrum than a William Hartnell or a Sylvester McCoy.

Tennant, on the other hand, doesn’t have that; he’s far too much like Ecclestone to make that differentiation. Their personalities are interchangeable. That is, the one of the cheeky-chappy, charming, funny, arrogant, smug, really great guy. And a bit of a twat.

Two arguments: one, that it’s only the first episode (and a Christmas special), so he’s not had the opportunity to get into his own groove. Time will tell, yet at the moment he’s just a face to a name as opposed to a character of his own. He may be slightly better-looking, but he’s nothing more than a different ink ribbon for the same typewriter.

And two, the plots are more important than the characters. Which is plainly ridiculous as nearly all the humour and drama comes from that interaction between Rose and the Doctor, and their reaction to others. All of which is a roundabout way of saying that I believe a more conscious effort to write to type and find that ‘click’ for Tennant is necessary if they want to avoid getting stale. Particularly since this new era of DW depends a lot on recurring characters and themes to provide its entertainment. That means a constant requirement to inject fresh elements into the show and making sure they stay fresh. And surely nothing would be fresher than a new Doctor with a new way of doing things.

It’s all in the bag now, so we shall see how it develops, and maybe such a criticism shall be insignificant beyond this week. If you’re after criticism of the actual episode, though, well I’ve heard talk of people saying it’s pretty weak, and, yes, while it’s alright, it’s a little too much of a repeat on season one. Maybe if there’s eventual evidence of a series arc that doesn’t dead-end in quite the way the ‘Bad Wolf’ did, it’ll get more exciting. If one thing, this episode wasn’t an indication of a dip in quality quite yet, just a bit of a re-tread. I await this Saturday’s supposed scariest episode yet with anticipation. Until then, Tennant, Ecclestone, whoever, they’re all the same to me.

The two-hearted twats.

Oh, is that the time?

2006-04-20T16:21:00.000+01:00

I thought I had slightly longer than that. I was going to cram in another post, perhaps. Even as a 24 hour blogger, I am a failure.

So long.

Rube Goldberg round-up

2006-04-20T12:33:00.000+01:00

I swear to God, I'm going to get at least one comment before I've finished this thing (3 and a half hours remaining, probably imaginary readership).

Everybody loves deliberately over-elaborate machinery created to execute a very simple function in the most convuluted way possible, right? Lets hope so, because here are two videos involving Rube Goldberg machines.

First, some clips apparently culled from a Japanese television show. They've got everything: neurotically complex workings, inspired use of household objects, ingenuity to spare, and even a horribly catchy jingle. Neat!

And secondly, a computer-animated short film featuring cute robots, surprising sadness, noise words and plenty Rube Goldberg devices.

Super!

The two best things I never wrote.

2006-04-19T21:01:00.000+01:00

Or rather, the two best things I wrote that never made it in to print.

Why would two awesome things I wrote ever have been cut from print? Well, in instance number 1, the comment was entirely out of line with the editorial policy of the publication for which it was written. In instance number 2, I'm not sure, but it may have been that it was simply too awesome for human comprehension.

Another theory would have it that both instances are puns, and puns are rightly reviled and despised by all people of taste and discernment, and only ever greeted with glee by sub-human reprobates who take perverse pleasure in simple wordplay only because some terrible social incompetence prevents them from harvesting any meaningful emotional warmth from interaction with others, leaving them only the cold, unfulfilling solace of childish games.

Either way:

#1

In an article about Pete Doherty, and the possibility of him suffering an early, very public, drug and celebrity-fuelled collapse and death:

"a premature shut-down for the world's own virtual pet - a tamadoherty - continually resetting itself to perform seedy and self-destructive acts for our amusement."

tamadoherty

This is very clever! And still relevant! Apart from its reference, which was at least ten years out of date even back when I wrote it. Do the kids even remember what tamagotchis were?

#2

I still think #2 has a real good chance of taking off if we all stick with it and begin using it in casual conversation, as well as in print and on television, at any opportunity.

Describing Mike 'The Streets' Skinner, I referred to him as "the chav prince of Asboetry".

Asboetry

This is fucking genius, and increasingly relevant, as it can now also be applied to the likes of East London rapper Plan B. And doubtless other people too!

Never have a conversation about The Streets again without using the word Asboetry, and reap the benefits as people initially think you're simply very funny and clever, and then begin to realise that you are also part of the vanguard of an important, worthy neologism. I want this word to be part of common parlance by Christmas. I won't even mind if you refer to it as ASBOetry, Asbo-etry, or even ASBO-etry, or with any other legitimate spelling.

Take this: it is my gift to the world.

Sell-outs: #2, Jack White (and #3, the Rolling Stones)

2006-04-19T20:39:00.000+01:00

It was obvious to anyone that, as sure as we're all still suffering from Moby fatigue following the awful binge of 2000/2001, the White Stripes' simultaneous commercial and critical success after White Blood Cells would make them the easy first choice for advertisers the world over. What was less obvious was that Jack would decide that rather than making already-released material available to the baying pack of salesmen sniffing around the band howling for blood and catches, the only thing to do to preserve his artistic credibility would be to write a song specifically for Coca-Cola.

(Never mind Coke's particular attitudes to, for instance, exactly how many Indian farmers' livelihoods it's worth sacrificing to buy the world a Coke.)

Here's the advert.

And for some rock-context, and for sell-out bonus points, here's a Rice Krispies commercial with a jingle the Rolling Stones recorded in 1963.

Sell-outs: #1, George Clooney

2006-04-19T17:18:00.000+01:00

George Clooney has turned his chiseled jaw and women-want-him-men-want-to-be-him charisma to shifting product before, that much is true. Fiat, Martini and Budweiser have all enjoyed that Gorgeous George endorsement.

But the announcement that Clooney is to be the spokesperson for a brand of coffee from Nestlé of all people, isn't exactly doing much for his liberal credentials. What with Nestlé's ugly history of baby-killing and all. Plus there was that time they demanded millions of dollars from Ethiopia, while the poverty-ravaged country was in the grip of drought and famine that threatened the lives of millions of its inhabitants. To make matters worse, the coffee also has an awfully shitty name: Nestlé Nespresso.

Clooney's seriously risking my desire to bone him, right now. I'm going to begin boycotting his films immediately, starting with Ocean's 13 and moving on to the good ones if I really have to.

Why George, why?

:(

A farewell

2006-04-19T16:03:00.000+01:00

Well, 7 months and just 8 posts. As a blogger I am a failure and a charlatan. A witty and insightful failure, perhaps, but a failure none the less. So it's time to hang up the blogging shoes. They don't fit so good, and I just ain't wearing them in.

But, like an absentee father who makes one final showy grab for his children's affection before forever abandoning them in favour of the liquid embrace of an alcoholic stupor, I thought I'd make some posts first.

(NB Attentive readers will have noticed that alcoholism has been a leitmotif of my brief blogging career. Other leitmotifs have included physical disability as a metaphor for spiritual frailty; the comma splice; and the impossibility, within a patriarchal society, of sexually explicit material that doesn't by definition degrade women.)

In 24 hours I will be gone, never to blog here (or anywhere) again; never again to bother you. (Unless you know me personally, which, as a reader of this blog, there is a fairly strong chance that you do. In which case, I'm finally moving into my flat this weekend and we should totally meet up for a drink, or whatever.) Until then, maybe some posting?

Now, now, save your tears: they only make me despise you more.

Experiment begins!

The Darkness to appear in new Doctor Who story....

2006-03-10T16:46:00.000Z

...with The Daleks!

Great to see that they're not all bad then.

Notes From The Underground

2006-03-10T10:18:00.000Z

I feel justified.

No – I really do. It’s a bittersweet feeling, of course, as for years I was considered the strangest and most peculiar of creatures for wanting to listen to anything like Public Image Limited, No Wave and so on. Now, of course, everyone either does or is inspired by these people. Well – better late than never I suppose. Of course, one thing that could be commented upon is that, despite this, Dexy’s Midnight Runners seem to have been overlooked in some way!

Hmmm – well that’s fine by me as they sucked. Yeah! Ne’ermind Geno and Searching For The Young Soul Rebels (pretty fine though they are). Dexy’s always presented you with something akin to a manifesto that never went much beyond acting like the most celtic band in town. They titivated rather than testified. SO - Fuck Dexy’s Midnight Runners.

You see, Dexy’s always wanted to be as good as the 1990s US band The mAKE-Up. Whilst the sticker on the cover heralds Untouchable Sound (Sea Note Records) as the legendary ‘lost’ album, you have to view this with some suspicion. Lost albums are never as good as they threaten, and for anyone expecting this to be the zenith of the 1990s gospel yeah-yeah group’s career then it ain’t necessarily so. Still – as live albums go – you actually think that this was a gig you SHOULD have been at. Ian Svevonius’ breathy testifying electrifies what is a stunning set of raucous ragged glory. Here, you actually feel like you're in the presence of a messianic group: millenarian handclapping, Pentecostal guitars and a fervour to their (at times) highly improbable greatness. The mAKE-Up were everything Dexy’s never were.

As for testifying – let’s consider Mudhoney!!? Whilst not, technically, the first Grunge band (step forward The Wipers, Melvins and Green River – who splintered into Mudhoney and Pearl Jam fact fans), their place in history is assured for being the first group whom had the term ‘Grunge’ applied to them. Under A Billion Suns (Sub Pop) sounds like Mudhoney, yet sees them far removed from the “Fuck Me I’m Thick” sentiments of Touch me I’m Sick. As titles like “Hard On For War” evidence, Mudhoney have some issues to address in the world. The result is a little like listening to The Stooges fronted by Dylan. Not a bad thing necessarily. This is still sweaty, energetic, grimy and rocking – and has nothing wrong with it. It’s just that this won’t ever come top of the ‘Best albums by Mudhoney in the world….ever’ polls that Channel Four could be running.

Which, kind of/not really, neatly brings us to Liars’ latest: Drum’s Not Dead (Mute). After their second album seemed to promise so much on first listen, only to reveal a stinking lack of anything thereafter, you’d be right to be worried that the title alone heralds another shitty cuntscept album that fails to be even a millionth as good as anything by The Residents. Whilst this continues the percussive, John Cage like, quality of their second album, Drum’s Not Dead is actually pretty ethereal and dreamlike. Short on immediately memorable moments, sure, but effervescent and breezy: closing track The Other Side of Mt Heart Attack proving that some real emotions are still there, with its plaintive tone and weepy beauty. Still – we shall see in a year’s time whether this impresses on first listen alone or not.

Mogwai, however, are a band who have always remained excellent no matter how often you play their albums. Mr Beast (Play It Again Sam), is yet another beauty and should be investigated forthwith by ALL. It’s far too lazy to comment on how this retains their mastery of the quiet bit followed by bloody loud bit dynamic - as Mogwai are now all about crescendo and diminuendo. The piano led opener Auto Rock sets the tone for the album, with a dreamlike intensity that actually deserves the Slint comparisons that have dogged Mogwai’s career to death. Tracks such as Acid Food, Emergency Trap and Folk Death continue as Mogwai out art-rock all competition: further developing the more electronic hue that came to pass on Happy Songs For Happy People. And, whilst there are some stunning changes from can’t hear to can’t hear any more, Mr Beast also reaches moments of angelic beauty worthy of Labradford. And I cannot think of a greater compliment to pay a band!

Still – the best thing you can do currently is to go and find people who ignored the absolutely great McLusky and bury them alive underneath every copy of Come On Eileen and anything ever by the Kaiser Cheats. McLuskyism (Too Pure) is just a phenomenal reaffirmation of everything that was great about them and all that is good about punk rock. Short slaps of pure adrenaline, where 60s harmonies lie entangled in a quirky English Fugazi style bomp. Not as straight-forward as The Ramones or as hectoring as hardcore, yet McLusky always managed to combine the best of both. Green Day – take note: THIS IS WHAT YOU NEED TO DO IF YOU WANT TO BE GREAT.

Hell – the 3 CD set even has a quote from the NME on the sticker on the cover that says all you need to know – thus cleverly reversing the notion that CDs bearing such stickers should be micro-waved immediately “They might have been the best band in the universe without anyone noticing – in fact they might have been all along.” Joy, Whoyouknow, Alan Is A Cowboy Killer (incidentally, when is the obligatory porno cowboy flick Bareback Mountain going to bring this 'sensitive loving portrayal of adultery' juggernaut crashing back to earth where it belongs?), Without Msg I Am Nothing and the immortally brilliant Lightsabre Cocksucker Blues are all here. For that name alone, you just know how good McLusky were.

Graham – take note! You better allow me to play McLusky at your next party or there really will be trouble!!!

Till next time.

Richard Hurley

The Games People Play (Part Two)

2006-03-04T11:25:00.000Z

Have you ever played a game where you were touched?

No, hold on, that's not right at all. What I mean is, have you ever played a computer or video game which managed to connect with you on a level greater than the visceral, where the reward you get is more than a buzz when you unload a clip into a zombie or drop a banana skin in the path of the kart behind you? A game that actually manages to get inside your head?

Psychonauts is a game that gets inside people's heads, and in a pretty literal manner. Created by Tim Schaefer, one of the original Monkey Island team and the man who gave us Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango, it's his first foray into non-point-'n'-click platform gaming.

You play Razputin Aquato, a young and talented mental talent who attends a summer camp for similarly powered kids. You're trained up to enter into people's minds and take care of their personal demons with a variety of psychic powers that you've got up your sleeve. Under the veneer of the camp's hearty activities, though, there's something dashed sinister going on - a war is on the way, and the minds of the Psychonauts-in-training are at stake. It's up to you to fight your way through the mindscapes of sundry damaged mental cases to rescue the girl, save the world and reconcile yourself with your own dark secrets.

As with We Love Katamari, that's making it sound a heck of a lot more overlookable than it actually is. The game levels are beyond bizarre, from a neon-and-black-velvet bullfighting painting to a suburban conspiracy played out on a stage that looks like Escher and Moebius got drunk one night, wound up in bed together and had a freakishly deformed child. On top of that, the game mechanics are inspired, with Raz being able to generate a thought balloon which he can then grab, roll around on and use as a makeshift parachute, and an intuitive system of assigning your various psychic powers to the shoulder buttons of the controller.

However, it's the storyline which is the key element here - Psychonauts has an emotional centre to it which you'd never find in a Crash Bandicoot game, and Rayman never had parental issues driving him on the way young Raz does. As with Grim Fandango, Schaefer really makes the player care about the character, makes us root for him when he's winning and feel for him when he's met with setbacks. And it's not just Raz, either. All of the characters have personal traumas and sadnesses in their lives that can be discovered as you make your way through their mental furnishings, and these are only made more tragic by being thrown into relief by the whacked-out surroundings. These are characters, not caricatures.

I have one level left to play, and I don't want to finish it. Oh, I want to see how the story ends, of course, because I want Raz to get the victory he deserves and the closure he needs. But I want to be able to keep playing after that. I don't want to have to put these kids back in the box.

That's a game that touches you. That's why Psychonauts is so essential. Have fun, go mad.

The Games People Play (Part One)

2006-02-25T15:33:00.000Z

In a games climate where the topics which garner the most column inches are mainly concerned with what new one-on-one beat-'em-ups are available for Xbox 360, or how realistic the driving physics are in Burnout 3, it's a source of unalloyed joy to realise that February sees the release of not one (not one!), not two (not two!), but three (THREE!) games whose primary motivation is inventiveness rather than a high framerate - Psychonauts, Shadow of the Colossus (the sequel to the quite beautifully delicate ICO) and frankly mental rollaround We Love Katamari.

This latter one might take a little explaining. You play a bloke with a head shaped like a lozenge who has to roll a ball around to pick stuff up and make a bigger ball. Actually, that wasn't so difficult after all. It doesn't get across the charm of the game, of course. It doesn't get into the intricacies of it. There's no mention there of how you can pick up your own bizarrely-shaped cousins, and play as them. I didn't cover how you can get yourself to the kinds of size where you can roll up people, who will flee screaming from your advancing mass as you bear down on them with a stare of implacable determination, and yet it's all somehow fine, because the katamari is such a lovely thing that there's no way that they don't want to be a part of its joyous mass, at least in secret. I haven't dealt with the exceptionally intuitive control system, where both analogue sticks of the PS2 controller are used in conjunction, each controlling the force with which you're pushing on one side of the ball. Obviously, I haven't even touched on the variety of lunatic J-Pop tracks which populate the soundtrack, including a version of the main theme tune performed solely through sampled animal noises. Nor have I mentioned that the point of the game is to populate the sky with your planetised katamari, in order to be able (eventually) to roll the solar system up and eventually swallow the sun.

In short, and as you have probably already established from the above synopsis, it's a pretty special game (special here meaning both "worth looking out for as it's a breath of fresh air in video games, with nary a BFG to be seen" and "appears to have been dropped on its head"). It does take a little getting used to, particularly when you realise that you don't "die" as such, but rather have any katamari which fails to make the grade turned into stardust and get invited to do the level over again - the sense of urgency which would usually come from the impending sudden end of your gaming session instead coming from the time limits imposed.

I would be incredibly surprised if I'd actually managed to get across the ridiculous amounts of fun there are to be had in the playing of this game. If you've ever trusted me, though, trust me on this one. We love We Love Katamari. So will you.

Madonna-immune awesomeness

2006-02-09T14:38:00.000Z

What the fuck is a pop culture blog in this day and age without some You Tube embedded goodness? Not a goddamn thing. To address this omission then, here's a bit of awesomeness involving Madonna.

Now, I know what you're thinking. AWESOMENESS CANNOT INVOLVE MADONNA. And normally you'd be right. Just look at this equation:

A + M = Sh

However much Awesomeness you jam into that badboy, the moment you sprinkle on a dash of Madonna, the whole thing turns to Shit. But you best believe, science never anticipated this much awesome.

n.b. When, at the halfway point, Grandma Madge's Adopted Street-Kids Dancing Team take centre stage you can safely stop watching.

Did somebody say OSCAR?

2006-01-31T19:22:00.000Z

In the same way that when winter comes round you say "Oh the nights are fair drawing in" as if it is some sort of surprise even though it occurs every year at exactly the same time, so do we find ourselves in the midst of the hype and intrigue of the Oscar season. Even though it feels just like yesterday that Jamie Foxx and Hilary Swanky-dress were waltzing off down Hollywood Boulevard clutching their gold statuettes, today saw the anxiously awaited announcement of the nominations for The 78th Annual Academy Awards.

There were few surprises in the list, as you would expect from an institution with a record of risk-taking right up there with nuclear power stations and Westlife. The real shock for me was the omission of the frankly brilliant Ralph Feinnes for his lead role in The Constant Gardner, The Academy instead opting for the token black nomination for Terence Howard in the hardly awe-inspiring Hustle And Flow. Surely this is insulting the intelligence of black people as well as white, yellow and green folk?

In any case, the usual suspects are there, with the Spielberg Award Panel in hearty voice for Munich with 5 nominations whilst the worthy Brokeback Mountain picked up a massive 8 nods. An interesting choice is George Clooney's much feted, but yet to be seen on these shores, Goodnight And Good Luck in five categories, including Best Film, with the erstwhile Dr Ross getting recognition with a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Syriana. Also greatly welcome is the hugely under-rated Phillip Seymour-Hoffman (otherwise known as the token chubby guy in countless movies) as a nominee for Best Actor for the upcoming Capote, which also picks up 5 nominations.

My prediction for that one, however, has to be the simply wonderful Joaquin Phoenix in the Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line. Best Picture is a tough one but I reckon Brokeback Mountain will scale that particular peak. Best Director? Try Ang Lee for size. It's been a pretty fallow year for Best Actresses so pick one of five for that one whilst I'd love to see either Paul Giamatti or Jake Gyllenhaal nab the Supporting gong.

But what do you think? The full list of nominations (minus the fiddling with knobs ones, but that could include Brokeback Mountain I suppose) are listed in the comments section for your delectation and debate.

Happy Oscar season to you all!

MUSIC REVIEW - Ryan Adams

2006-01-16T11:38:00.000Z

29
Ryan Adams
Lost Highway

One of the most prolific songwriters of the last few years is back - and if he's still not quite at his best at least Ryan Adams' third release of last year is a more cohesive and sound prospect.

Following on from the disappointing Cold Roses and Jacksonville City Nights, 29 sets out to be a reflection on Adams' explosive past decade as he contemplates approaching his thirties but in reality sees a return to the songwriting form that brought us the magnificently tender but spiky Heartbreaker.

It's been a long road for Adams. After that stunning solo debut, Gold was the album which shot him to the big-time - it's mix of country, rock and pop garnering rave reviews as well as fans such as Dame Elton John. Then followed the rag-tag collection of off-cuts Demolition, which was good as these things go but hardly set the heather alight. Then it all started to go wrong. Flying high on his success, he was sent into a tail-spin by the three D's of rock n' roll stardom: drink, drugs and depression.

His next album, the simply awful Rock N' Roll was redeemed only by the companion release of the two Love Is Hell LPs, but even they were patchy at best. By this time, Adams' voice was stretched to breaking point, as was his fans patience with his behaviour. Arrogant, shit-stirring and petulant, it was best for all concerned when he retired due to injury on his British Tour.

So if 2005 signalled something of a renaissance for this comeback kid, it is only this release that sees him back anywhere near his best. Measured, cohesive and full of substance, this is no small part due to the return of Heartbreaker producer Ethan Johns on production duties. Opener 29 is sparse but melodic, full of nuances and whispered connotations. Strawberry Wine is epic but understated, echoing that ear for a tune and a lyrical hook so apparent on earlier releases. Night Birds, Carolina Rain and Starlite Diner show-off Adams the troubadour to maximum effect whilst The Sadness rocks the kasbah with mariachi guitars and a stomping rhythm.

A short and sweet album that doesn't outstay it's welcome, 29 show signs of recovery from the man many saw as the saviour of alternative country music. Lets hope that Ryan Adams sees that quality and not quantity is the way forward as he reaches the big three zero.

FILM REVIEW: Brokeback Mountain

2006-01-13T11:06:00.000Z

Brokeback Mountain
Director: Ang Lee
Starring: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal

You can almost see the Hollywood mogul checking his list of attributes required for an Oscar-winning film: big-name talented director? Check. Young, fresh actors as yet unrecognised by the Academy? Check. Worthy theme regarding some social inequality or intolerance? Check. Ponderous, epic shots of scenery, heart-breaking resolution, decade spanning storyline? Check, check, check.

Ang Lee's latest film has Academy Award Nomination written all over it. The tale of the forbidden love of two cowboys who first met in the 60's mid-west sheep-herding is a poised if ponderous film of undoubted depth and subtlety. There are the slow takes of the Wyoming mountains, drawn-out drawls of dialogue and tackling of tough topics. A solid if unspectacular performance by Heath Ledger anchors the film but it is Jake Gyllenhaal's turn as his lover and challenger that is truly deserving of the plaudits. By turns understated and explosive, Gyllenhall shows his strength and depth of acting chops, stealing every scene he's in.

Although this film is slower than a sheep on sedatives it manages to instill a real sense of emotional and philosophical depth through it's monosyllabic protagonist. Ang Lee's directorial style is as epic and encompassing as ever, accentuating the nuances of E. Annie Proulx's original short-story with a social commentary and sensitive communication harking back to Lee's debut feature The Ice Storm.

Brokeback Mountain is a rewarding, eloquent and emotive film destined for Oscar success. And Gyllenhall and Ledger sure do make a helluva sweet couple.

FIGHT TEST: iHate iPods

2006-01-04T16:14:00.000Z

The iPod has become the symbol of our generation: the de rigeur expression of modern, fashionable and forward-thinking 21st century boys and girls. Its clean lines, super-minimalist styling and seductively simple functionality should have my tongue lolling and my eyes popping. But I can’t stand them.

The iPod is the ultimate in monopolies. Apple have taken their sorely beaten egos at being Microsoft’s bitches and turned all their energies into being the daddy of the MP3’s. If Bill Gates wrote the book on dominating operating systems then Apple surely have sold their souls to produce the bible of MP3 players.

They control 90% of the hard-disk player market. iTunes provide 70% of all legal downloads. Even in the previously open flash-disk market, the iPod Shuffle now dances all over the competition with a 58% share. It is never, ever a good thing for one company to control so much of the market. Familiarity breeds contempt - from ubiquity grows laziness. The iPod is as lazy as it comes.

This is a bandwagon, an exercise in peer-group pressure. Flocking like sheep to become another recruit in Apple’s attempt at world domination. And all the black-sheep with their non-trendy but all-round better players get looked at with scorn.

Walk down the street and it’s attack of the clones: white earphones like billboards everywhere. It’s such a cynical marketing ploy that it’s evil genius is almost worthy of the deification heaped upon Apple. Yet now kids not only get beat-up for wearing the wrong brand of trainers but for having a mere Creative or Rio MP3 player. The Apple snobs are everywhere. If aliens were to try to control the human race, then an implant in every iPod would do the trick. Either that our putting explosives in every piece of Ikea furniture and watching the Western World collapse.

And then there’s the iPod music Nazis. You know, those guys (and it’s always, always guys) who are friends of so-and-so’s girlfriend who come to your party and plug in their iPod with it’s oh-so-trendy docking terminal and hijack your CD player with some god-awful obscure dance music.

And quicker than you can say overdraft extension, their iPod Mini has suddenly been replaced by an iPod Nano. Next up is the iPod Amoeba and imminently the iPod Moustache, all requiring a new investment and a new set of equipment. The latest offering sports colour video but at the cost of absolutely none of your previous iPod compliant technology working with it. Forget your firewires and tuners and egg-whiskers – you have to buy a whole new set of compatible gadgets. And where from? Why Apple of course, because the new jacks and inputs don’t work with any other company’s technologies.

iPod’s are taking over the world, taking over your minds and taking over your wallets. Damn the man and make a stand. Just say no.

Top Stuff 2005

2005-12-30T10:27:00.000Z

TOP FILM - Serenity

In a year where the blockbusters (the mighty Kong excepted, of course) were more vacuous than most, where the Four were less than Fantastic and even the Lonely Death of Samuel L Jackson couldn't raise the latest Star Wars movie out of the mire of its two immediate predecessors, there was one smart, funny shoot-'em-up that stood out from the crowd - Serenity.

Joss Whedon might be most famous now for his twin valleyspeak vamp shows, but in a previous incarnation he was a successful Hollywood scriptwriter, giving polishes to movies such as Speed and X-Men, and writing flicks like Toy Story. That expertise shows through in his first movie since the butchered Alien Resurrection, and it's obvious from the get-go that this is a much more satisfying affair than his ill-fated instalment in Sigourney Weaver's War of the Wombs saga.

Yes, it was a continuation of a cancelled TV show, but don't let that put you off - there's a full briefing in the first five minutes of the film (containing better explanations than the show itself ever offered, too). The movie hits the ground running, and there's no prior knowledge required.

Sadly, word is that if a sequel happens at all - which is unlikely - it'll most probably be direct-to-video, as the movie failed to recoup its budget. Why not check it out on DVD? You'll be buying a brown coat in no time.

TOP ALBUM - The Magic Numbers

Ah, the Magic Numbers. When the summers just keep getting warmer, it's gratifying to have an album to hand which can chill out even the stuffiest room, and the debut record from these two pairs of siblings fits the bill nicely.

It's the soundtrack to every car journey to every festival you've ever been to. It's the tunes that play as the sun goes down while you're out flinging a Frisbee around with your mates. It's a Mini Milk straight from the freezer, a day watching Wimbledon on telly, the smell of sun cream and freshly cut grass.

The girls in the group may look like Meg White's sisters and the boys may look like latecomers to the Honey Monster's family reunion, but it can't be denied that their music is both happy and clappy, with Brian Wilson hammering on their front door demanding to know if they nicked his sound. Quite superb.

TOP TV - Doctor Who

November 2003 was a month I thought I'd never see happen. Not that I thought the world was going to end, you understand - I just didn't think that then-Controller of the BBC, Lorraine Heggessey, was going to tell the world that what was long thought unthinkable was going to happen after all. Doctor Who was coming back.

From March to June 2005, Christopher Eccleston piloted the famous blue box around time and space - okay, admittedly it wasn't around very much space, but help an old cliché out, will you? - and together with executive producers Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner, producer Phil Collinson and co-star Billie Piper, managed to accomplish a feat equivalent to turning a moth-eaten old pantomime horse suit into a thoroughbred Derby winner.

Suddenly it wasn't a "what if" scenario any more - Doctor Who was back, and it was the biggest show in the country. The Mirror even went so far as to have a lead front-page story about the possibility that the show might be dubbed into German to show in… well, Germany, obviously. It beat ITV into a corner, was a highlight of Children in Need, and won its timeslot in the ratings comfortably every week for its entire run.

Alas, all things must end, and Eccleston left the series, to be replaced by David Tennant. We've only seen a grand total of just over one hour and seven minutes of Tennant's episodes so far, but he's already shaping up to be a grand addition to the line of actors who've made the part their own.

We're already guaranteed a further two series of the show and a second Christmas special, so it looks like this one could run and run. Doctor Who is back, and it's about time.

Top Stuff 2005

2005-12-23T11:17:00.000Z

TOP FILM - Sideways

Rarely does a film of such wit, emotion and belly-laughs come along. This ode to sex, relationships, depression, age and pinot noir was the sleeper hit of the year with a heart-wrenchingly good central performance from Paul Giamatti. A wonderful bouquet, sharp but smooth palate, leaving a warm, comforting aftertaste.

TOP ALBUM - Arcade Fire

Funeral beat off strong competition from the likes of King Creosote and Antony & The Johnsons in a year which saw astonishing strength and depth of solid original music. Crazy Canadians one and all, this is a stupefying LP of epic tunes and rolling soundscapes. When Coldplay are considered the best band in the world this is a welcome reminder of what music is really all about.

TOP TV - Lost

Not everyone's cup of chai, equal parts frustration and amazement. For believers, Lost is an original and stylistic show about human nature, remorse and the way your past influences your present. Great characterisation, tense cliffhangers and beautifully shot, you really should have lost yourself in this show.

Punchdrunk on Flickr

2005-12-18T00:43:00.000Z

Hands up who's got a phonecam or a digital camera?

Okay, then here's the plan; I've set up a group account on Flickr, and now we can all post our photos on it. Thanks to the miracle of modern technology, they'll be displayed on this very blog in a miniature slideshow down the right-hand column. You can see the first photo there now, though as more get added it'll get more interesting.

Think of it as a running commentary by Punchdrunk Pop, but told through pictures instead of words. The beauty of this service is it's free and easy to use; any questions about getting started can be found in this tutorial.

Your invitations should be winging their way to you now, so make with the clicky. If they haven't arrived, lemme know and I'll send them again.

LA Face With The Oakland Booty

2005-12-07T18:58:00.000Z

Anyone who has a passing familiarity with the kind of music I'm a fan of will know that I'm a sucker for a novel (rather than novelty, of course) cover version. From William Shatner and Ben Folds' brilliantly mental version of Common People to Green Day's ground-up reinvention of Lulu's Shout, if there's a bit of invention going on then get downloading that tab and cueing up that 8-track, I say.

There's one particular cover version that's been scurrying around the Magic Electric Interweb for the last few days, though, and it's Connecticut singer-songwriter Jonathan Coulton's version of Sir Mixalot's Baby's Got Back. That's right, the man who once exhorted all the ladies to put 'em on the glass has been covered by a professional software writer and recreational robot-builder with a guitar and a very finely tuned sense of irony.

Nothing that can be said in words can actually get across just how ridiculously inspired this cover is, so why not just go and hear it for yourself?

Coulton's talent doesn't just extend to versions of other people's tunes, of course - while you're on his site, you'd be a churlish dolt not to download tracks like My Monkey, a gentle tune about emotional displacement and primates, or Skullcrusher Mountain, a love song sung by an evil genius to the girl he's got tied up in his secret hideaway (and featuring the one-time-only line "Isn't it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?"). I couldn't recommend Coulton's site without pointing out his best tune, of course, and that would be the worryingly catchy Ikea, with its sharply smart refrain:

"Ikea! Just some oak and some pine and a handful of Norsemen!
Ikea! Selling furniture for college kids and divorced men!"

Why are you still here? Go go go!

Visual

2005-12-06T15:18:00.000Z

The movie posters for the next Alan Moore adaptation have been released... and they don't look half bad. Very catchy, and only a couple of them are what I'd consider generic.

You may remember the other two Moore adaptations. One is From Hell in title, and the other is from hell in actuality. I'm confident that the upcoming V For Vendetta will surpass them both, and not just because the original graphic novel finds a political relevancy today despite first being published in 1982.

Anyway, perhaps my confidence is misplaced, since, like most movies I look forward to, I actively avoid knowing too much about them in advance. Still, the poster art is pretty, and you can treat your eyes to it here.

Let's all go to the Gap

2005-12-02T06:41:00.000Z

Did Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) just jump the shark and land comfortably on a big pile of money and neatly folded, profoundly nondescript clothing?

Here's the Gap ad he directed.

My Harry Potter review...

2005-11-23T14:36:00.000Z

...has just been eaten by the computer. It was a stylish, thought-out and interesting piece of not insignificant length. And now it is gone.

In summary, the Goblet Of Fire is very good and you should go and see it.

Excuse me while I go and cry quietly in the corner.

Game Review: The Warriors

2005-11-20T23:30:00.000Z

The Warriors
PS2/X-Box
Rockstar

Before we begin, a note of caution. This game is rated 18 because of content which is violent, brutal and nasty in the extreme. It features grievous bodily harm, theft, vandalism, profanity, drug taking, and more besides. If little Timmy pesters you to buy it for him for Christmas and you agree without first looking for yourself, then don't be surprised if he has awful nightmares and wets the bed. You have been warned.

Based on the cult Seventies movie directed by Walter Hill, THE WARRIORS is a vision of urban hell where gangs of teenagers prowl the streets. This is a loving tribute to the source material, faithfully replicating every period detail right down to the soundtrack, fashions, and jive-talkin' dialogue. Ironically, the production budget was greater in real terms than the original movie, and it shows.

Playing it isn't half bad either. The purpose is simple; to revive the side scrolling beat 'em up as a three-dimensional experience, and to do so in a manner that's neither repetitive nor boring. This is done by a combat system that involves button-mashing combos, using the environment around you to cause maximum damage, and by commanding your fellow gang members to your strategic advantage. There're also a huge number of missions which are varied enough to have you playing for at least 20 hours before it's completed.

There's a lot of fun to be had with this title, and fans of the brawling genre will enjoy both the challenge it presents and the slick presentation. My only reservation is the moral vacuum at its heart, but what else should we expect from the folks who created GRAND THEFT AUTO and MANHUNT? Rockstar Games have some serious talent and creativity at their disposal, and it's a crying shame they're so hell bent on courting controversy in the tabloid press. But that said - come and have a go if you think you're hard enough.

Film Review: Tim Burton's Corpse Bride

2005-11-06T18:01:00.000Z

Oh, all you mockers and scoffers and hipsters and bandwagon-jumpers, lining up to scoff and decry, let me spare you the indignity of flogging a dead corpse before you begin - no, The Corpse Bride isn't as good as The Nightmare Before Christmas. Tim Burton's out on his own here, and doesn't have Henry Selick to back him up, carry the directorial burden and paper over the cracks. Don't get ahead of yourself, though - that's not to say that it's not a good film, because it certainly is - it just never quite manages to explode from the screen in the way that Jack Skellington's big day out did.

The story, like that of so many Burton movies, only works if you accept that an everyday situation - a wedding, a Hallowe'en party, a series of murders - can be twisted beyond its natural breaking point and still hold. Young Victor (Johnny Depp, in his Anglo-accent incarnation) is due to marry young Victoria (Emily Watson). This will elevate the status of his nouveax-riche parents, and give a bit of a cash injection to her cash-strapped family of aristos. Of course, the course of true love etc, and through a series of credibility-defying coincidences, Victor ends up married to a young lady who's more pallid than most. There then follows the contractually-obliged hijinks, involving a dastardly villain, a night of the living dead, and a worm who (in accordance with cinematic tradition regarding the depiction of characters of sinister aspect) has the face and voice of Peter Lorre.

So far, so good, you might say. The only problem with that is that in this case, "so far" really isn't all that far. The characters, aside from the titular cadaver herself, are as slim in personality as they are in physique, and the story is equally slight. Once again, Danny Elfman’s songs are too skittering and off-rhythm to work with a sufficiently high hit-rate to justify putting them in at all, but the Doctor John/Tom Waits wig-out ballad The Remains Of The Day makes humouring him worthwhile.

It’s easy to point out and pick at the faults, but then again there are so many things about it that make it worthwhile – the greatest of which, of course, is the design. Burton’s Oyster Boy drawings (whether or not you believe much of the Oyster Boy book to actually be Burton’s work being, of course, a wholly separate issue) have had their aesthetic transplanted wholesale onto the screen, and the blue, white and black palette casts the whole thing in an unsettling, off-kilter light. The voice talent, too, give their all, with Richard E Grant’s performance as the pantomimish villain giving him the best scenery-chewing moments of evil since he was in Hudson Hawk.

In short, then, it’s not as good as Nightmare. But then again, what in the wide, wild, wacky world of cinema is?

November 4, 2005

2005-11-04T22:28:00.000Z

November 4, 2005 is the 50th anniversary of the first conception of the flux capacitor.

Celebrate as appropriate.

I am now scared of seals

2005-10-31T23:45:00.000Z

Thanks to this Humans For Animals advert (click for full-scale horror):

For God's sakes man, they've learned how to use tools!

The seals must die so that we may live.

John Peel is still dead...

2005-10-24T11:19:00.000+01:00

...but his music collection lives on. An enlightening article in yesterday's Sunday Times revealed that His Peelness kept a secret stash of his most beloved 7" singles separate from the estimated 25,000 pieces of vinyl in his main collection.

My views on John Peel have been previously documented, yet there is no denying the pervasive influence of the man and how sorely missed he is to many thousands of music fans. This collection is therefore a brilliant insight into what this most voracious of music-lovers held most dear to his heart.

So flicking through the list I unsurprisingly recognised only 11 singles, which only goes to confirm that the Peel-meister and I most definitely didn't share the same taste in music.

So in the spirit of the list-mania introduced by Benny below - how many of these tracks have you heard?

THE FULL LIST OF JOHN PEEL'S 142 MOST TREASURED SINGLES

'New' Album Review - Gang of Four

2005-10-20T10:32:00.000+01:00

GANG OF FOUR – Return The Gift (V2 Recordings)
A conversation between a post-modernist and a modernist

Post Modernist: (tone indicating that he may as well be talking to himself) Hey kids! You remember Elastica?
Modernist: (casually browsing through the latest downloads online, trying not to sound like he’s been tracked down) Um no – oh wait a moment: didn’t they go out with Blur?
Post Modernist: So you do remember them then?
Modernist: I think I got that killer tune of theirs on my 90s indie compilation but………
Post Modernist: You mean that killer Wire tune?
Modernist: ………..
Post Modernist: You didn’t explore then? Never used the net since I guess!
Modernist: No !!! Anyway, there’s so much new stuff worth exploring now.
Post Modernist: What NEW stuff is this then?
Modernist: (frustratedly) God – Bloc Party? Franz Ferdinand? You can download these now you know!
Post Modernist: Ah yes! Not too bad. Why do you like them?
Modernist: Because they are so different and miles ahead of their contemporaries or any competition you care to mention……….
Post Modernist: But strangely still miles behind their predecessors………..Elastica?
Modernist:
Post Modernist: That’s the fickle nature of being so clearly indebted!
Modernist: To whom? (sarcastically) Wire again I suppose?
Post Modernist: No – The Gang of Four
Modernist: Who?

(Post Modernist pulls out a copy of Return The Gift, the Post Modernist places it into the CD player. For the next 50 odd minutes, the Post Modernist explains how this CD is the original line up of the Leeds band reformed. He points out that these tracks were originally from their 3 LPs released between 1979 and 1981 – Entertainment, Solid Gold and Songs Of The Free. Post Modernist goes on to explain to Modernist how this is updated, yet still faithful to the original material: right down to the cover art echoing and modernizing the original cover of Entertainment. To prove the point, Post Modernist then refers Modernist to the compilation he missed in 2004 when it was reissued: A Brief History Of The Twentieth Century. The Modernist listens to this too – recognizing the only difference being some production values and slight stylistic changes. The styles, moves and sounds of his current heroes are here in the originals and the sounds of his heroes are borrowed from this. Return The Gift suddenly makes sense – the original masters ripping off the original masters and doing it so much better than those who have also tried ripping them off)

Post Modernist: So then – do you really want to?
Modernist: Funnily enough – not any more.
Post Modernist: Why?
Modernist: Suddenly I feel strangely out of touch.
Post Modernist: What do you mean?
Modernist: All I ever did was hear the name Gang of Four and make some silly comment about it being ‘before my time’ when on the online chat boards.
Post Modernist: Nevermind. It can happen to anyone. Current doesn’t always mean new you know.
Modernist: yeah
Post Modernist: Sometimes people have been new and sometimes people are new. And sometimes so new that it takes the rest of the world nearly 30 years to catch up.

Fin!

Richard Hurley

Jack Thompson, this is not a death threat

2005-10-20T06:38:00.000+01:00

Just thought I'd make that clear as the man seems to have a history of making that assumption. Whereas my own history is one of superfluous postscripts to the musings of persons finer than myself.

Apropos: re: Jeff's post; just FYI:

So there we were, the early carefree years of the new century. Technological ambassadors busy themselves upping the pixel count on spurts of blood and the polygons of elaborately horrific head wounds; meanwhile, just who exactly is thinking of the children? Jack Thompson is.

Then, what he said.

(The particular highlight of those chronicles, for me, being the charitable cock-swinging contest in which Jack Thompson tries to engage Gabriel of Penny Arcade. Jack wants to know whether Gabriel has ever donated to charity, after, mind you, he has been informed of the half-million dollar charity drive Gabriel co-founded. Yes, Gabriel has donated to charity. Not as much as Jack Thompson. Jack Thompson's charity is massive. Monolithic. You wouldn't believe. Orphan children bed down in the comfortable folds of Jack's charitable scrotum. They forage and make flossy treehouses in the expanses of Jack's charitable pubic regions. The tiger cubs Jack rears use Jack's charitable phallus as a scratching post until they are ready for reintegration into the wild. He is all man. A big, charitable manly man. Until, obviously, somebody calls his bluff about a certain 10 grand.)

This post is, or was meant to be, about just one quote. Jack's approach to these things - that is, his crusade against the murder simulators produced by the video games industry - is single-minded, wrong-headed and riddled with logical fallacies. (His biggest, or at least most reasonable, problem is with video game ratings and with ratings going unenforced, but you wouldn't know it from the hyperbolic industry witch-hunts he conducts.) For a lawyer, he doesn't exactly rigorously exert sense in all he says. Sometimes, this is irritating; sometimes, comedy gold.

And so we have, 49 minutes in to this interview, this actual quote. By the way, he hates Take 2, who made Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and who have offices in Leith, Scotland (Rockstar are a Take 2 subsidiary).

Take it away, Jack!

Jack Thompson: There are sociopaths evrywhere. Some of them are in government. Some of them are in Take 2. In fact, we've got a bunch of sociopaths in Edinburgh, Scotland, sitting around in kilts, sipping their single malt whisky, spreading racial hurtful stereotypes in this country.

Well played, sir.

Jack Thompson

2005-10-19T14:51:00.000+01:00

Has anyone been following the exploits of Jack Thompson in the news, lately? The news is all over the gaming websites, but it's easy to follow along on the blog part of Penny Arcade (since part of it directly involves PA) starting a little ways down this page and continuing on in nearly each entry through today. But I'll give a brief rundown here.

The first thing that you need to know is that Jack Thompson is a lawyer who is a self-styled anti-video game crusader. He publicly and loudly proclaims that video games and other violent media cause today's youth to commit unspeakable acts of violence, and has singled out Halo as one of the "training" tools of one of the Washington D.C. Beltway snipers, and refers to the Grand Theft Auto series of games as "murder simulators."

The second thing that you need to know about Jack Thompson is that much of the gaming community thinks that he is a zealot, opportunistic, and quite possibly crazy. His arguments always deal with ridiculous extremes, he is known to contradict himself in public, and he picks any high-profile fights that he can, notably people who create webcomics having to do with video games.

(Here is a documented example.)

So, recently, Jack Thompson announced that he would donate $10 thousand to the favorite charity of Paul Eibeler, the head of Take Two Interactive (the makers of the GTA series), if someone would design a game about a man who takes violent revenge on video game industry employees, their families, the industry's lawyers, and even retail employees who sell video games. (Read the actual proposal here.)

It was pointed out at the time that not only was the proposal nefarious and hypcritical, but Jack Thompson was basically holding charity money hostage. The proposal was followed the next day by an anouncement by the National Institute on Media and the Family, a group that shares similar ideals as Thompson, in which they publicly and rather bluntly distanced themselves from Thompson, asking that he stop implying that he has the organization's support. Thompson replied publicly and harshly, basically accusing them of being sellouts. (An article and letter excerpts about the exchange can be found here.)

Then someone actually made the game that Thompson dared the video game industry to make. Thompson responded that because his original proposal was based after Jonathon Swift's "A Modest Proposal" satire, his own proposal was also satire. Essentially, his offer to give $10 thousand to charity was a joke. He refuses to give the money to charity.

Penny Arcade, who has had a couple of heated exchanges with Thompson since the proposal was first made, decided cowboy up and donate $10 thousand of their own money to what they believe Paul Eibeler's preferred charity would be: The Entertainment Software Association Foundation. They made the donation in Jack Thompson's name. (Take Two intereactive has a policy of not talking to the press about its politics, which can be interpreted to include Penny Arcade, and this is probably why PA can't find out from Eibeler himself what his favorite charity is.)

In response, Jack Thompson is trying to have the employees of Penny Arcade, Inc. arrested. A copy of the letter Thompson faxed to the Seattle Police Deparment is on the PA website under one of the October 17th blog entries.

The Best Novels In The World.... Ever!

2005-10-18T09:24:00.000+01:00

Time Magazine has a list of the greatest novels in the English language published from 1923 to the present (link). The books are arranged alphabetically instead of being ranked, which is pretty refreshing because I hate all that subjective league table crap. But the reason to read it and jump for joy and hug the nearest geek is because they have selected WATCHMEN for inclusion.

Yeah, that's right, a comic book. Chosen by Time Magazine. Comfortably nestled between mighty works like "The Great Gatsby" and "Animal Farm". Ladies and germs, if we hadn't arrived before, we certainly have now. Here's a gushing quote:

Told with ruthless psychological realism, in fugal, overlapping plotlines and gorgeous, cinematic panels rich with repeating motifs, Watchmen is a heart-pounding, heartbreaking read and a watershed in the evolution of a young medium.

Of course, being a card-carrying cynic, I might point out that Time Magazine is owned by AOL-Time-Warner, who also own DC Comics, who have just recently published a very expensive deluxe hardcover edition of Watchmen in time for the Christmas holidays. But I'm sure it's just a coincidence...

If all this talk of comics and conspiracy theories is sending you to sleep, then here's an interesting game to play; how many books on this list have you read? I can tick off twenty-three, but only because I studied English Literature at university and these books were on my course.

In fact, I probably should have read a great deal more, but that's another story.

New Album Review: Earth

2005-10-17T18:20:00.000+01:00

Earth - Hex: Or Printing In The Infernal Method (Southern Lord Records)

So here it is – 10 years on! The fifth ‘proper’ album from Cobain’s best friend/drug buddy and experimental guitar guru Dylan Carlson. Invariably waits of this length lead only to disappointment (Stone Roses anyone?) – that’s providing that they ever get to the point of having new product out – Guns N Roses or My Bloody Valentine anyone? Earth, however, well……….let’s just say it was a little different.

Different for 2 main reasons:
1) No one was quite sure Dylan – never mind Earth – would get this far.
2) Having seemed to pull that needle out from his arm, this new album sees him back, with a new line up and sounding healthier than he may ever have done before! And it is actually rather good too.

The sound is the first thing you will notice……….warm, ambient, nearly soothing. Country pervades the air throughout Hex with a glow of fuzzy tones instead of the glower of thickly repetitive riffing of old. The thick igneous riffing has evolved into a more glacially arid sound: still slow, still intense, still somber yet strangely soothing. Slowly moving melodic shifts are built into the repetition, making Earth the companions to the nights that you choose to spend alone beneath the stars. As opposed to the enforced solitude of the bleak midwinter of old.

Guitar lines shimmer. Bass riffs provide a steady pulse whilst the drumming is much less punched and more sparse and light than before. The overall effect is still over-awing as tracks like The Dry Lake and An Inquest Concerning Teeth conjure up the scale and enormity of Earth’s previous work. Yet, listening to Hex, you hear Earth as contemporaries of Spiderland era Slint, or Labradford, or Codeine – more than you hear them standing alongside St Vitus or Melvins.

The aesthetic is not different to before. This is not a rejection of identities past, rather a reflection of new lines of vision and influences. This is most clearly witnessed in Raiford (The Felon Wind). In many ways it is the very crux of the album. A powerful, pile-driving riff is slowed to an imperial stateliness that teases and coaxes the power from within the listener’s mind: demanding that YOU engage and YOU fill in the gaps. It is an epic work that at once recalls every previous Earth work, whilst still reflecting the more gentle ambience that Earth in 2005 represent. If Jarman was still alive, he would be choreographing to this already. It is Epic! In every way.

If you played this in your office, and people asked “Who’s this?” and you said it was Ry Cooder or Neil Young, then people would be nodding in approval. If you mentioned to a sludge rock aficionado that this was Earth they may look surprised – but the appreciative nod would still be there. Hex is – in many ways – the Earth album that cannot fail to be liked by newcomers and old hands alike. An album for you all to listen to again and again.

So why don't you?

Richard Hurley

Game Review: Ultimate Spider-Man

2005-10-16T22:11:00.000+01:00

There are two things you need to know about me before we begin:

One. I've recently begun to suffer from repetitive strain injury, carpal tunnel, "one man and his whiplash," or whatever you want to call it.

B. Spider-Man is my favourite thing ever.

So you can appreciate that, while I may be posessed of the world's biggest pair of Nerd Blinkers, I've made no small sacrifice in bringing you this brief game-in-progress review of Activision/Treyarch's Ultimate Spider-Man. Seriously: ow!

Spinning out of, around, and back into the Marvel comic book of the same name, Ultimate Spider-Man is the action-adventure adjunct to the life story of Peter Parker, teenage misfit and sometime superhero. The game picks up where issue 38 of the comic book left off. Peter's childhood friend Eddie Brock has turned himself into the monster Venom (with a little post-mortem help from Peter's father), and in so doing has become a target of the military-industrial complex. Meanwhile, something odd - well, odder - has begun to happen to Peter Parker's blood, making both his civilian and crimefighter lives that little bit harder. And as if that weren't enough to deal with, the forces hunting Eddie Brock are slowly closing in on Peter, too...and they may know more about him than he would like.

"Are we having trouble with our proud warrior?"

Ultimate Spider-Man: The Game features script and dialogue by series author Brian Michael Bendis - so, naturally, the characters sound and act faithful to the comicbook. Additionally, the game is modelled on the character designs and artstyle of series artist Mark Bagley. Bagley has long been associated with the Web-Slinger, and combines a crisp, competent line in regular people with a Spider-Man that is both sinewy and agile. With a large extended cast, from Petey's sweetie Mary Jane to the Samuel L. Jacksonesque Nick Fury, Ultimate Spider-Man is a faithful yet fun adaptation of a great little comic.

The gameplay, which switches between Spider-Man to Venom from scene to scene, is pretty damn good. Spider-Man is less physically powerful in this incarnation than in previous outings (well, he is only fifteen), but that only means you have to work harder. The web-slinging is smooth, for the most part, and the combat employs all the character's trademark agility. Venom is the hammer to Spider-Man's nail-clippers, bashing around the place like an oily Hulk. His long-range attacks, including an ability to hoy cars at the enemy, and grasshopper locomotion work incredibly well.

He's just a big huggy bear, really...

The cel shading graphics engine that makes the characters look like they have been ripped from the pages of the book (or from the

recent cartoon) is a novel method of presentation. It works especially well during the cutscenes, which are framed and paced in a comic book style reminiscent of Ang Lee's Hulk movie. The camera hangs back a little too far for my liking, making all that lovely cartoony detail a bit pointless, but damn, if it doesn't look like the real thing.

Unfortunately, the graphics engine can be a little...buggy at times. And trust me, the irony wears thin when you're fleeing for your symbiotic life and you find that you're stuck in mid-air for three seconds being shot to pieces while the PS2 tries to remember what Fifth Avenue is supposed to look like.

The free-roaming New York backdrop, reduced from the last year's movie tie-in, has lost much of it's authentic architectural texture. This is a shame, but at least it matches the characters, with its slightly abstract, dayglo palette.

The story unfolds slowly - a criticism levelled at the comic on more than one occasion - and there seem to be more "chase X"/"run away from Y" levels than are totally necessary, but Ultimate Spider-Man has all the angst, suspense, and barrelling action that this writer has come to expect from the source material, with the added bonus that it's you who gets the girl at the end.

And as long as she brings me some painkillers and an ice pack for this wrist, we're all set.

//\Oo/\\

Rikki Lee Travolta is not James Bond

2005-10-13T23:55:00.000+01:00

'X is Bond' headlines have been cropping up every couple of months or so in the last few years. One tabloid confidently announced that Eric Bana had the role. Another claimed it was Dougray Scott's. Julian McMahon, Colin Salmon and some fellow named Pierce Brosnan were all heavily tipped to star in the next movie, depending on which rag you found on the bus.

Now it's Daniel Craig. But this time around, it seems a little more plausible. The next film, Casino Royale, goes into production in January, with GoldenEye's Martin Campbell at the helm, so a decision was overdue. In point of fact, Sony Pictures is making the announcement at a press conference in London tomorrow. So it's probably Daniel Craig.

Craig isn't a bad choice. He's not first choice - it's reliably reported that both Clive Owen and Hugh Jackman turned the role down - but he should prove a decent fit. Campbell wants to do away with the Arnie one-liners and preposterous sci-fi gadgets and replace it with dry wit and bloodied grit, something closer to Ian Fleming's novels - and Layer Cake's Craig, with his brutishly attractive ugliness, contained delivery and intense ice-cold eyes, is right for the job. (He is blond, it's true, but I'm confident that those crazy Hollywood special effects wizards can fix that.)

Campbell also apparently plans for this movie to be something of a Bond Begins, taking us back to the agent's early days in the service, when he first earned his double-O, his license to kill. It's a reboot, presumably re-establishing the character in the present day - and though Judi Dench reportedly will be reprising her role and John Cleese may not return as Q.

Because it's a reboot, Campbell was thinking of casting Bond much younger, with the exquisitely pretty Henry Cavill (22) or ER's brooding Goran Visnjic (33) tipped for the lead. Campbell actually said at one point that Daniel Craig was too old for the direction he was planning to take - but with Bond, the decision really isn't the director's to make. We'll know if the rumours are true soon enough. And then we can get to wondering about who'll play villainous assassin Le Chiffre, CIA agent Felix Leiter and beautiful archetypal Bond girl Vesper Lynd.

In amidst this casting hullabaloo there has been one glorious footnote. Some websites report that three actors actually turned down the role ahead of Craig. In addition to Owen (who seemingly didn't want to get tied down to the role) and Jackman (who already has a nascent franchise in Wolverine), it was also turned down by Travolta.

No, not that Travolta. Rikki Lee Travolta.

Rikki Lee Travolta is a revelation. He appears to have what would be a tremendous knack for self-promotion, if he were actually famous.

His website informs us that he was one of the five best Josephs to ever appear in Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. He has a holiday celebrated in his name in Round Lake, Illinois, and there's an ice cream named after him in Schaumburg. For his novel, My Fractured Life, he is acclaimed by editorial reviewers as "a literary Mozart" and "our decade's James Dean, Elvis, and Brando". He established the Rikki Lee Travolta American Hero Foundation to raise money for the victims of the September 11th attacks. Though he doesn't appear to be related to John Travolta, he boasts of being the first member of 'the family' to have appeared in a production of Grease in 25 years.

According to IMDB, Rikki Lee played an uncredited role in the movie Ed TV. It's his only credit, but he does have an extensive biography, created by his agent, Drake Miezel. His duet 'Dangerous Game' was one of only 67 songs from around the world to be on the 2002 Grammy nomination ballot for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals, Drake informs us. Yes, one of only 67.

It is possible that in the world of musical theatre Rikki Lee Travolta is a legend. But I'm afraid that I had never heard of him until he turned down the role of James Bond.

You can read the press release on that subject here. It seems there was something of a grass roots campaign to land Rikki Lee the coveted role. According to his website (and an unnamed 'source'), Rikki Lee was flown out to London to screentest for it. Yet on Tuesday, just as Daniel Craig was heavily rumoured to have won the title, Rikki Lee's people issued a press release declaring that he had graciously turned it down. "Although extremely honored, after very careful consideration I feel that James Bond might not be the best vehicle for me to commit to at this point."

And why? Well, according to Drake Miezel, it's because there are superhero roles that Rikki Lee would be better suited to, which he couldn't pursue if he committed to the Bond franchise. The press release notes that Marvel is developing Thor, Nick Fury and 'Captain American' movies, while DC is working on The Flash. Travolta isn't linked to any of these roles, you understand, but he would be perfect for them.

Watch this space. I'm sure we've not heard the last of Rikki Lee Travolta. There must be no end of other roles that the Grammy nominee and Ed TV star could yet graciously turn down.

Film Review - WALLACE & GROMIT

2005-10-11T13:49:00.000+01:00

Wallace & Gromit - The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit
Dir: Nick Park
Starring: Peter Sallis, Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham-Carter

The fear of the unknown has paralysed Hollywood in recent years. The money-makers and erstwhile risk-takers had grown too comfortable in their plushly upholstered leather chairs and wanted to stay in illicit, fat Cuban cigars and expensive mistresses for years to come. They couldn't risk another Waterworld, an expensive belly-flop of a film. So they started to play it safe. Producer after producer commissioned remakes and sequels and before we knew it, we were up to ears in God-awful TV movies and desperate superhero films. But we could always count on the good old English to come up with something original though, right?

Wrong. Here comes yet another blockbuster sequel. We are to believe that Nick Park couldn't bear to make another film without the bashful Wallace and silent Gromit, such was the strength of his bond to these dollops of plasticine. Never mind the fact that the Wrong Trousers took these characters as far as they could go. Stick with what you know and everything'll be alright.

And everything is alright. It's okay. The Curse of the Wererabbit is inoffensive and mellow and plods along nicely. It has a scattering of genuine laugh-out-loud gags but they are too few and far between to sustain any level of comedic rhythm. Wallace and Gromit are as likeable as ever but there is no spark of invention or pushing boundaries here. Park is definitely playing it safe.

And none of this would matter if the kids left happy. Unfortunately, they were bored and totally nonplussed by the experience. There were no howls of laughter and no excited chatter, just glum faces all round. And for a movie that's supposedly for kids that's the most damning fact of all.

Better Living Through Living

2005-10-10T18:44:00.000+01:00

I have a confession to make: I have become a little obsessed with Living TV. In many ways this is a very worrying development. Living TV, you see, shows an awful lot of Charmed. Although I secretly (or, given that I’m writing this, not so secretly) love it, even I have to admit that Charmed is consistently unimpressive television. The trick to enjoying it seems to be having a cup of tea and chocolate digestives on hand, having nothing else to do and setting your expectations really, really low beforehand. Even with the appropriate preparations made, Charmed occasionally outdoes itself and manages to pull off an episode which is so appalling that not even the remedial power of biscuits can save it. Such was the case with an episode shown recently, the heart warming story a couple who are cursed - she to be a wolf by day and he to be an owl by night and… if you’re thinking that this sounds eerily familiar, or more specifically, identical to the plot of Ladyhawke, then you’d be right.

Living also likes those slightly eugenicist shows that seem to require a certain level of disgust at huge swathes of society to be enjoyable. Extreme Makeover (you ugly people make me sick! Get some plastic surgery, munty!) and The Biggest Loser (run fatty! You deserve the pain!) are good examples of this œuvre, although they sit at different places along the spectrum of moral dubiety. Extreme Makeover is definitely the nastier of the two as firstly it involves knives and secondly it completely ignores the psychological problems that a person would have to have to want a TV show to take them from their families and friends and bring them back a few months later, post-major surgery, as a different person. No, none of that assessing people’s mental status nonsense – they just cut the uggers up as quickly as possible because, well, they’re not getting any prettier just standing around, hating themselves.

And the shame of it is that if they spent a little more time considering the factors which drive people onto Extreme Makeover, they could make a far superior makeover show. For example, in the big reveal at the end of last week’s episode, a twitchy badly coiffed computer boy was displayed, after various bits of facial and body surgery, with his new looks, in all their inbred Nick Carter glory. Cut to his wife – and there always seems to be a wife, or a husband or mother. His wife’s first reaction on seeing him? “Now he’s out of my league!” Aha! thinks the TV-watching public, you didn’t need surgery at all, computer boy! It was only the soul-destroying influence horror of a wife! All he needs now is an invasive makeover TV show to kill her for him.

But it’s not all bad. Among these dregs of entertainment, Living also has some really good stuff, including the main cause of my current obsession: Veronica Mars. The pilot was aired on Monday, at the bizarrely early time of ten past six of an evening. Presumably when buying the rights to the show the producers got as far as hearing “spunky young girl detective, who kicks ass and takes names (or, more accurately, secretly films people and notes numberplates)” and decided it to be family viewing. It has probably come to their attention that rape, murdered best friends and alcoholic mothers are not your standard teatime fare. Presumably to offset the criticism which showing fairly grown-up television in such an early-evening slot, Living are getting it all over and done with as quickly as possible, showing an episode every week night. If you’re speedy, though, you might be able to catch it. It is most entertaining.

Living is further redeemed by Grey’s Anatomy, showing on Monday nights at the properly grown-up time of ten o’clock. We can only assume that the premise of Grey’s (which would go something like: junior surgical doctors helping to heal other people, and each other, as they start their first hospital placement etc.) did not drive the Living execs to think “This could be the new Buffy! Put it on at teatime!” An excellent decision on their part, because it is not the new Buffy. It does bear more than a passing resemblance to some of the other decent hospital shows (that is, ER and Scrubs, rather than Casualty) what with being set in a hospital, but that’s not inherently a bad thing. Medical dramas already have the advantage, entertainment-wise, that you can also try and diagnose-a-long from your couch. I tend to go for Munchausen’s By Proxy for everything (possibly as a reaction to all of those Machiavellian spouses and family members from Extreme Makeover, who are getting away scot free). As a diagnosis, it’s yielded a fairly appalling hit-rate so far, but – like the emergency tracheotomy with a biro – it’s one of these things that has to appear at least once in every medical show, so my chances can only improve with each passing week. Even if you’re looking for some non-home-diagnosis based fun and just want some evening entertainment which splits fairly evenly between people talking and people talking while other people are cut open, then this is for you.

So there you go – I really do like Living TV. Do you want to make something of it, or do you want to sit down and pass the chocolate digestives?

If You Only Buy One Comic This Week...

2005-10-09T15:05:00.000+01:00

...then this is the one to get.

Eric Powell isn't a big name in comics yet, mainly because too many people have an inbuilt reaction to anything that doesn't have a Marvel or DC logo on it - they just allow their eyes to slide away from the offending comic, as one would try to make a subtle escape from a panhandler at a bus station at 2am. Don't make me look at the comic that doesn't have superheroes in it, mummy!

Powell's regular endeavour is The Goon, a dark comedy book about a big taciturn guy who solves problems with his fists. It recently won both the Best Humor Series and Best Ongoing Series awards at the Eisners (the comics industry equivalent of the Oscars, for the non-comicnoscenti among you), and Powell's heavy-browed hero is fairly reminiscent of everyone's favourite jade giant, the smashtastic Incredible Hulk.

All this background expositional waffle is by way of segueing neatly into Powell's Devil Dinosaur comic - it's by Powell, it's from Marvel, and it features the Hulk. See? Now it all makes sense. Cookie for Al. Of course, it wouldn't be a Powell comic if it were just about the Hulk wandering from town to town, solving people's problems before moving on. Maybe tomorrow he'll want to settle down; until tomorrow, he'll just keep smashing stuff - and so on.

No, Powell's comic features Devil Dinosaur, a 1970s Marvel character who is, as you might expect, a big red dinosaur. The premise is simple - the little monkey people who live in a prehistoric valley use Devil Dinosaur to chase off the bigger monkey people who are trying to kill them. The Celestials - big Marvel Universe space gods - are watching this, and one of them decides to even the score by bringing an equivalent creature back from the future. No prizes for guessing which particular creature they choose, and naturally, hilarity ensues.

For those of you who aren't sold on the idea of a big, stupid, fun comic about the Hulk fighting a big red dinosaur at the behest of giant space gods, let me put it this way: it's THE HULK, fighting a BIG RED DINOSAUR, and there are GIANT SPACE GODS in it too. It's ridiculously fun, deceptively well-crafted, and even has a classic reprint 1960 monster comic after the main feature. What's not to love?

Nothing, that's what. So go and pick this book up, and see why - if there's any justice - Eric Powell's on his way to becoming a big name in comics.

Album Review - THE ARCADE FIRE

2005-10-05T20:53:00.000+01:00

Funeral
The Arcade Fire
Merge Records

I finally got round to buying The Arcade Fire album recently after hearing endless harping on about how these boys and girls from Canada were definitely, positively and without a smear of a shadow of a hint of a doubt THE next-moderately-sized-thing. And yeah, it's pretty gosh-darned good. As well as being totally bonkers.

Anyone with even a twinge of interest piqued by the current glut of guitar-based Eighties/Nineties inspired bands will adore this release from a group of Canadians who've acquired something of a cult following in recent years. Lead vocalist (and one-half of the pivotal husband/wife backbone of the band) Win Butler comes across as a mellower and less whiney Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips. With a sound inspired by equal parts punk, rock, country and dance this is music to live, die, drive, sit, party and get fucked-up by. Butler's wife Renee Chassagne also contributes vocals, sounding like a depressed Bjork with an equally mentalist backing.

The Arcade Fire's sound is all over the shop - with cow-bells, slide guitars and out-of-tune pianos thrown in along with the kitchen sink to rabble and rouse a tune that stirs the soul and taps the foot. Sprawling, epic tracks such as Neighbourhood Number 1 and Wake Up are a montage of influences and instruments redolent of Mercury Rev but, y'know, better.

So all in all, a real sonic treat. Mightily satisfying and the best stomping, rock-a-long record this side of Franz Ferdinand's latest.

Game Review - Rainbow Six: Lockdown

2005-10-02T18:32:00.000+01:00

Rainbow Six: Lockdown
Ubisoft
Xbox

Ubisoft has made a mint thanks to Tom Clancy. His feverish brain has inspired three popular franchises for the French developer, SPLINTER CELL, GHOST RECON and RAINBOW SIX, and they're just like his books; tense military thrillers with plots loosely based on the global political landscape. A typical threat might be former communist states, Islamic fundamentalists, or – with this particular title – fair-trade campaigners. Which kind of makes sense considering the unctuous sanctimony of Chris Martin, Bono, et al.

LOCKDOWN puts players in charge of an elite counter-terrorism unit, where commands are issued to your squad using the headset microphone on your Xbox. This adds a tactical element to the typical first person shooter by, for example, enabling players to clear a room of terrorist bogies by attacking it from two different angles; you enter through one door, your soldiers are instructed to enter by another, and so hostiles are caught in the crossfire. It's a good concept, but one already seen in previous instalments of RAINBOW SIX, and it's not really improved upon here.

The developers have tried to spice things up a little. Between the longer missions are interstitial stages that focus on long-range sniper skills. From a lofty vantage point, players must guide their allies to safety by clearing a locale of enemies. Elsewhere, playing online with Xbox Live has an RPG element called "Persistent Elite Creation"; the more you play the more points you collect, which can be spent to improve your character's skills and attributes. Ultimately though, these features fail to keep your attention.

Tom Clancy has lent his name to some classic games in the past, but with LOCKDOWN players might be left wondering if this particular well has run dry. Compared to its predecessors, this is a case of one step forward and two steps back. You can tell as much by the tedious cut-scenes with slow-motion explosions and grinding guitar riffs. That kind of thing might work for Michael Bay movies, but we've long been accustomed to something of a different quality entirely.

Good news/Bad news: Geeks

2005-09-29T15:17:00.000+01:00

Good news:
Joss Whedon's Serenity is great. It (by and large) jettisons the constant smartarse quipping that can make his writing so one-dimensional and affectless, and it doesn't overplay the cowboys-in-space postmodern conceit (as Firefly did). If mainstream audiences aren't turned off by the fact that it derives from a cult, cancelled TV series they've never heard of, and can be convinced that no prior knowledge is required going into it (which is absolutely true) then it should be very big. It certainly deserves to be: it was a long time ago (in a galaxy...) since space was so exciting.

Bad news:
MirrorMask, written by Neil Gaiman, is poor. Too much attention has been spent lavishing on it an overabundance of visual grandeur, while the performances, drama and the particularly humdrum humour are all allowed to fall flat. The profusion of interesting but undeveloped visuals is such that none stick in the mind, but all blur together to create an elaborate but uninvolving swirl of painterly colours and cinematic shine. And, if you want to get analytical about it, the whole thing seems to feed a rather patronising view of female adolescence.

The undead demand better

2005-09-27T13:14:00.000+01:00

A quick post about Land of the Dead as an addendum to James' lengthier review, because while he conveys what is important to know about the film with great skill (it is alright) there is one point that I think could use some emphasis.

Here is a not exhaustive list of what makes zombie films awesome:
- Zombies are neither dead nor alive. Rather, they are UNdead.
- The undead belong to a special category of person - along with haughty British villains, killer robots from the future and communists (1980s only) - that it is alright to enjoy seeing brutally dismembered, decapitated, mutilated, eviscerated and burned.
- They'll also totally try to eat your brains.

In Land of the Dead (and the rest of this post may or may not constitute a SPOILER):

The zombies are getting smart.
Not only that, they are showing signs of empathy toward their fellow zombies.

This is not a minor alteration to the genre to keep it fresh (see: fast zombies). This is not an innovative adjustment to the zombie genome by the master filmmaker who crafted the monster in the first place. This is fucking stupid.

As soon as your zombies get smart, as soon as they start using tools, feeling sorry for other zombies and just wanting to get by, you are no longer making a zombie film. You are now making a horror film about people with Special Needs.

You might want to think on whether that's a good move.

On the plus side, a friend gave me a promotional bracelet for the movie that looks just like the white Make Poverty History bracelets except for two things: it glows in the dark; and it says 'Make Zombies History'. Not subtle, but enjoyable.

Channel 4 - The Adult Entertainment Channel?

2005-09-27T00:08:00.000+01:00

Channel 4 has just started a new PR push, so I guess it's a good time to assess just how much 4 really is "The Adult Entertainment Channel."

From this particular adult 4 receives a hale and hearty hell yeah of approval. Just about everything worth watching on the box requires me to press the by now worn and weary button underneath the 1 on my remote.

Fancy some drama? I'm there religiously for ER, West Wing and Lost. I've also dabbled in some Without A Trace and am itching for a peek at new show The Closer.

Comedy? Well, Scrubs does very well for starters, Desperate Housewives whet the appetite, The Simpsons continue to eat at our hearts and there were just desserts for Black Books and Spaced. The people at the next table seemed to like Meet The Magoons but I'm not entirely convinced. Perhaps Friday's special dish Spoons will serve up a treat. Either way, Green Wing will be back with a vengeance.

Politics is covered head to toe by the superlative Jon Snow and co whilst investigative journalism is alive and well (kicking and screaming in fact) on Dispatches with a brilliant array of targets and eye-opening displays of the facts.

And who could fail to include the much-maligned "lifestyle shows"? Well, me, mostly, but I do have a soft-spot for Kirsty and Phil when they're actually on a new Location, Location, Location, dammit.

So yeah, I rate Channel 4 pretty highly for my own personal adult entertainment. The real question is: how do you other adults out there rate the Big Four? Answers on the back of a comment, please.

Game Review - The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction

2005-09-25T20:15:00.000+01:00

The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction
VU Games
PS2/XBox/GameCube

Did anyone see that HULK movie from a couple of summers ago? It was bloody awful, wasn't it? The licensed videogame was much better, hence the appearance of a sequel - stripped of any associations with the film - bouncing into our living rooms like an angry green behemoth in a china shop. And believe me, calling it "Ultimate Destruction" is no idle boast.

But first, a bit of plot. Dr. Bruce Banner wants to rid himself of his troublesome alter ego, the Hulk, all the while pursued by shady military and government interests. Thus begins a quest that takes place in and around a "free-roaming" environment, occasionally having to fight opponents who are even bigger and meaner than the Hulk. Fortunately our hero is a wrecking-ball in purple diapers, and more than capable of destroying anything in his path. Pedestrians, vehicles, buildings, all of them are squashed, pounded and swatted aside, every lumbering footstep punctuated by a cloud of debris.

A potential pitfall for games in the "free-roaming" genre is that while players are offered a giant sandbox to mess about in, there isn't always enough to do before boredom sets in. In this case, motivation is provided by hundreds of unlockable moves, mini-games, cheats and power-ups to collect, and it just about succeeds. Particularly splendid is the ability to "weaponize" objects that are picked up; a bus, for example, can be moulded into a makeshift skateboard and grinded down the city streets. Rarely has public transportation been so exciting.

"Ultimate Destruction" delivers on its name, a three-dimensional rampage in one tidy little package, and nightmare visions of second-tier wrestling tournaments have thankfully been dispelled. Not very taxing on the brain-cells, certainly, but it offers fun by the jolly green bucket-load, and will keep younger players entertained for many hours. Best of all, hit the "select" button and the jade giant will turn his head and ROAAARRR!!! Hulk smash, indeed.

Album Review - KANYE WEST

2005-09-23T12:04:00.000+01:00

Late Registration
Kanye West
Rock-A-Feller

If you like your hip-hop with some genuine soul then this is the record for you. Kanye West has been making headlines for his fierce criticism of the Bush administration in the wake of Hurricane Katrina but it's truly this collection of songs that will sweep you of your feet and whirl around your brain.

Diamonds From Sierra Leone is a pacey, classy intro with a lyrical makeover of the single version, this one showing a social conscience and deliberate deconstruction of rapper culture. He calls into question the origins of his bling, the blood on his hands and the remorse he feels. If this all sounds very un-rap then in terms of content, it most definitely is. And this is what makes this release so refreshing.

Golddigger is the next highlight, featuring Jamie Foxx doing a cracking Ray Charles impression with a balls-out vocal cameo that adds a powerful depth to the song. West's rhymes are subtle but piercing ("I ain't saying she's a golddigger/But she ain't messing with no broke niggers") and the lack of full-on hip-hop grandiosty is welcome. West doesn't need to hype and holler and bloody the noses of his contemparies. He talks, we listen. He samples and loops and creates a slick musical landscape to his words with a skill that astounds.

The difference between him and his peers is never so clear as on Crack Music. West calls into question the sleaze and slime that has enveloped hip-hop, decrying the idiots that glamourise drugs and guns. He is making a stand here and showing the rest of them that it's possible to make a classic hip-hop album without referencing crack, smack, guns and bitches every second word.

With integrity, talent and musical nous, I have no doubt Kanye West will change hip-hop for the better. Register here for some epic rap with large spoonfuls of soul. West is making a new Motown and it sounds amazing.

Film Review: Land Of The Dead

2005-09-22T19:17:00.000+01:00

Back in the wastelands of movie production that executives probably like to term "presently non-marketable concepts", George A. Romero's zombie fan-trivia farm subsisted on just a few small things. One, the knowledge that Day of the Dead's script was meant to be far better than the actual movie (that film splits a lot of people - I think it's great but not the best). Two, that he'd filmed an ad for Resident Evil 2/Biohazard 2 that never aired over here. And, most important of all for the purposes of this review, three, that he wanted to direct a fourth film in the series provisionally titled Twilight of the Dead.

Twilight was George A. Romero's, half-joked idea, a movie in which the zombies had become so decomposed that they'd turned into more of an inconvenience than a problem, one that the living could easily ignore as they would other such outcasts of society. It was a stupidly ingenious/monumentally idiotic pitch depending on which side your fan club membership carded landed. Obviously, though, it never happened seeing as how this belated quad-rel hangs its conceptual hat on the idea of intelligent zombies sieging a bastioned city. Besides, with this post-millennial craze for the undead just now, it's probably what executives like to term a "presently non-marketable concept". No, wait...hang on. I mean, OR DID IT?

In presenting us with another chronological albeit unrelated follow up to his previous works, we're in a world where this hungry corpse invasion is old news. There may have been a rash of recent zombie movies these past few years, but they're all invariably origins of the apocalypse stories. Land is in the luxurious position of dispensing with the unnecessary, needing only a tiny recap of the "rules" over the titles to fill in the latecomers. It's several years after the event and as such, we're spared such tired ideas as the lover/family member who can't kill their zombified other because of their history together. In its place are weary people struggling to survive who just, er, don't really seem to care anymore...

It's hard to pin it down, really, but it's like the people in the movie have become jaded with the whole ordeal. Is it intentional? I'd say less so than anybody would realise. Nobody panics (unless it's really dangerous), as if they know this isn't going to end well and they might as well just stick it out. The main characters have fun raiding a zombie-infested small town in scenes reminiscent of the biker gang's shenanigans in Dawn of the Dead, as if it didn't really matter anymore. People do things like hang about in dark, lonely places which if this were an origin movie would be deemed as stupid; here it seems like reckless resignation. The zombies are a threat, yet nobody really cares as much as they should - Twilight of the Dead, here we come.*

Which would be more clear-cut if Romero hadn't tried to prove that the characters want to survive, mixing this with pretensions of lecturing on the disadvantages of society's underdogs against the rich and powerful. And the fact that he's had to up the survival ante by giving the corpses brains (Braaains!).

It's worth noting that the humans' knowledge of the zombies' IQ-ascension is barely comprehended in this film giving them an excuse for their characters' relaxed motivations. No, they're too busy railing on Dennis Hopper as representative of The Man in his Republican ivory tower. He's meant to be the real bad guy in here, the WASP who treats 'em mean to keep 'em keen, making sure the poor live in subdued discomfort in his fenced-off city while he bathes in champagne or whatever it is rich people do. But Hopper doesn't bring much to the character, lacking the despotic presence the film requires, and cloaked also in the script's oh-well-never-mind reaction to what's happening.

He's no worse than the others, though. Romero seems to have trouble differentiating his human beings, making it a bit of a free-for-all when it comes to characterisation. Apart from a lackadaisically rebellious John Leguizamo (who seems to forget his original intentions halfway through the movie), Simon Baker is an unremarkable focal point, and the rest are mere descriptions: tart with a heart, loveable retard, comedy fat bloke. Which naturally draws our attention onto the zombies and, hallelujah!, they're still as fresh (or rotting) as they were all those years ago.

One of the best scenes in the movie comes right after the titles, in which, as an introduction to events we track wordlessly through a village green as zombies shuffle about their daily routine with all the energy that a groaning cadaver can muster. Land wants us to empathise with their plight, turning the tables as the living rudely invade their haven for supplies, and they rise up as a form of revenge. Kudos, then, to Eugene Clark as Big Daddy (a name derived only from the garage mechanic boiler suit he wears) who, with nothing but a snarl and an emotive howl towards his ignorant horde, marks a semi-sympathetic presence to rival Bub, the docile flesh-eater used as test-subject in Day of the Dead. He commands the army, Clark putting his all into learning how to adapt to tools and strategies without ever losing his underlying zombie traits.

The trouble with this, though, is that turning the bad guy into the star is often the first route down a slippery slope of sequel poo, as both Freddy and Jason can surely testify. However, it's something that Romero has always touched upon, emancipated by the 'they're just like us' mantra. The director's remarked in interviews that the zombies aren't the problem in his movies; it's the humans who make the difficulties for themselves. This is true. Nevertheless, removing the zombies would pretty much make for a really average movie. Following the undead as they learn how to take on their oppressors is far more interesting than the derring-do of the real heroes and their own search for equality. He's been here before: it's something that feels natural when shaped by Romero's experienced hands. The turnaround is fine, but if he were ever to make us feel more for the humans the way he did in the claustrophobic Night of the Living Dead, Land would have been far better.

So, where would I place Land in the scheme of things? If Night and Dawn are interchangeable top dogs, then Day and Land are on a similar position one rung below. They're movies that just miss that reverential status, yet (not to be too presumptuous) affect a large level of fondness the more they're thought about. That's not an attribute that can be applied to many films. The Dead series, however, has been awarded such devotion because of its love of its subject matter and establishment of a rule set that still stands as the acknowledged template for today. As a horror movie it's not all that. As social commentary it's only slight above shopping mall location = cynical swipe at consumerism. However, as another notch in the zombie mythos bedpost, it fits its post-apocalyptic tone all too comfortably.

*For more good zombie material where humans don't really care about the undead as much as they should for long periods of time, check out Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead comic from Image. Thank you.

Bonus spoiler-free criticism for people who've seen the movie (highlight the blank space): The bit at the end where Riley discourages the shooting of Big Daddy because he thinks that the zombies are just looking for a place to live is plainly stupid considering his attitude before. It was just a badly-written confrontational moment between the two leads that may have, for instance, worked far better if it had echoed Ben's death in Night of the Living Dead. Ah well.

What Kind Of Fool Emmy?

2005-09-19T21:42:00.000+01:00

Look at this man. Look at his happy, smiling face. Aw, he looks so cute, doesn't he? Well, he'd be happier if he'd won the award he's holding all by himself, rather than having had to drag together his ensemble of buddies to help tear it from the grasp of three rather more deserving groups of people (and, of course, the cast of Will & Grace).

Let me explain. This chipper fellow here is Ray Romano, star of recently-deceased comedy show Everybody Loves Raymond.

(It's worth taking a moment here to note that everybody does not, in fact, love Raymond. My mum does, she thinks he's hilarious. I think he's a humourless gimp.)

But yes. He was the titular Raymond whom, until recently, Everybody Loved. Last night, his show won the Best Comedy award at the Emmys (Emmy, of course, being a corruption of "Immy", an term commonly used for the early image orthicon camera tube. But of course, you already knew that). Fair enough, you might say. I'm sure many people find his contrived, staid sitcom very amusing, on the basis that there are many people who find posters of kittens about to plummet to their deaths from a branch, subtitled with the phrase "Hang in there", amusing. When you consider, however, that he and his equally anodyne co-stars snatched the award from under the noses of the casts and production crews of Scrubs, Desperate Housewives and Arrested Development, you have to wonder what the National Television Academy have been mixing with their dashes of lemonade.

Of course, Everybody Loves Raymond won because it was ending, it had been a massive ratings hit (or, at least, a solid performer), and because it was a consistent family sitcom. That doesn't explain some of the other, odder winners, though.

Felicity Huffman, ex of Aaron Sorkin's poor-stepchild West Wing precursor Sports Night, deservedly won the hood ornament for her role as frazzled frump Lynette Scavo (although fearsome soldier Marcia Cross and slapstick cheerleader Teri Hatcher must be having a good old teeth-gritting seethe, not to mention what trophy body Eva Longoria is thinking as she drives her acupuncture needles deep into a little blonde voodoo doll).

To sideline two of Britain's greatest exports, Lovejoy and Bertie Wooster, both up for Best Actor in a Drama, on the other hand, is just churlish, even if it is in favour of the rather super James Spader. This obviously just goes to prove that being grizzled and having five o'clock shadow is no defence against having a sidekick who out-hammed both Ricardo Montalban and Christopher Plummer in their prime.

Best Drama, it seems, is becoming a case of rounding up the usual suspects. The West Wing was nominated again, despite John Wells' best attempts to turn the show into a politicised Sunset Beach. 24 was nominated, and although I have a huge soft spot for everyone's favourite one man army, he's hardly at the hollow point of quality drama. Six Feet Under is also still hanging in there, despite being the televisual equivalent of that last crumpet that you just know has gone stale but you can't quite bring yourself to admit it, and Deadwood is, once again, always the bridesmaid who says rude words quite a lot.

Of course, that meant that Lost won. Lost is pretty good, and it certainly deserved to win, although I suspect that an in-depth analysis of it is something for a later post. What's not so good is the list of shows it was up against. On present form, only Deadwood deserved its nomination. Where, we have to ask, was House? Where was Veronica Mars? Where was The Shield? Where was The Wire?

Maybe the Academy could tell us, but they'd have to remove their heads from their posteriors to be able to see.

Google Justice

2005-09-17T10:47:00.000+01:00

I'll keep this brief because any writerly twitterings with which I ornament this post will only diminish the unalloyed joy I felt for a brief moment when I read about this just now over at the Google Blog - shining joy like a glimmering, incandescent jewel amidst a junkyard of discarded dreams and incontinence pants.

Go and perform a Google search for 'failure' - heck, knock yourself out and make it 'miserable failure' - then look at the first result.

That nifty piece of comedy, nestled snugly at the top of the results page, is the outcome of a case of Google Bombing. Ah sweet temporary release from the joyless drudgery of life, how unexpected to find you somewhere other than the bottom of a bottle.

For further Republican-based Google Justice, try searching for 'Santorum'. You might expect some information on US Senator Rick Santorum, man of family values - by which I mean a man keen to vilify and outlaw sexual practices between consenting adults of which he happens to disapprove. Instead, listed first on the search page, is this.

Because sex columnist Dan Savage ingeniously decided that the Senator should be preserved forever in the lexicon of those deviant sexual practices which he decries so enthusiastically. So, the "frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex" was named after him, and now the defamatory definition overshadows the Senator himself on these great internets.

Thumb Bandits

2005-09-16T17:30:00.000+01:00

You see that? That's the new joypad for the Nintendo Revolution that is, held aloft by a pair of serenely unblemished Western arms.

It's totally wireless, enables a variety of playing modes using add-on periperals, and can simulate actions like a fishing rod, a sword, or a tennis racket.

I'm really really glad that Nintendo are prepared to stick their necks on the line and innovate like this, because gawd knows they need some kind of edge over the corporate might of Sony and Microsoft, BUT (I can 't believe I'm saying this) is it a step too far into the borderlands of "weird"?

Do they really expect mass numbers of people to suddenly drop their already established modes of play and adopt this totally new (and unproven) joypad? Won't owners be totally dependent on Ninty to build and design the games, assuming that other developers shy away from the risk? What about cross-platform games, won't the Revolution be left out in the cold?

*sigh*

So many questions. At any rate, the colour is appropriate. It looks like a white elephant.

Avast! (Change Of Tact)

2005-09-15T22:06:00.000+01:00

Cinema-going readers of this fine blog may have perhaps chanced upon the latest anti-piracy campaign prefacing their movie of choice lately. What starts as a whimsical spirited trailer for the fantastically magical albeit provisionally boring, Christianity-allegorisin' Narnia soon jerks back its cowl to reveal a sinister warning as to the risks involved in purchasing and watching pirated films. The picture will be too grainy, the sound too tinny, the screen too small. The perpetrator's camera shall wobble back and forth as he distractedly scratches himself in all the wrong places, and the view shall be obscured as the people in the front shuffle across the rows to get to the toilet, curse their eyes.

At which point the viewer sighs and resigns himself to another finger-wagging lecture on copyright crime. Yet this time, shock beghast, it appears that the anti-piracy league has finally caught up with me-me modern consumer culture and focused on a reason not to go the piracy route that could actually work. Sidelined are the sinister undertones that accusatorily state that purchasing a dodgy copy of Batman Begins off of Bloggo dahn the market is unwittingly funding the trading of drugs/guns/prostitution/slavery, what have you. In its place is the simple, unexpected message that it's the experience that counts. That's right, the latest campaign ad decides to detour from emotionally shocking the viewer with a warning of the purchaser's responsibility towards aiding underword ne'er-do-wells and concentrates its efforts on the selfish needs of the film-lover in their pursuit of an exquisite audio-visual experience. In essence, it's a campaign that parallels the kind of arguments that insist that game consoles play so much better with gold-plated SCART leads, or that music sounds a lot better because you can hear the drummer quietly break wind with a blow-up sextet of crystal-hewn speakers. It appeals to the techno-obsessive in all of us to get as much quality as we can with what we can lay our hands on.

But will it ultimately prove a success? Well for starters, the quality of pirate copies can, indeed, be atrociously bad, proving a truth to the ad's statement of poor picture quality and sound that doesn't need to be exaggerated in the slightest (having said that I did get the chance to view a bootleg copy of Bewitched while staying in a lodge in Bath that fulfilled the above criteria and the film improved immensely). They seem to have gone a little overboard by the end though. A warning that the picture may be interrupted by people getting up to go for a wazz? What just like in a real cinema? Surely that makes the pirate copy even more immersive? Own goal there, eh, folks?

In truth, for all its effort, it's hard to see who this really appeals to. The kind of people who believe that the experience really is the thing are also the type who own their own home cinema 7.1 surround sound bongo-blaster setup. Thus they're less likely to settle for fuzzy knock-ups in the first place. In any case, pirated internet downloads - bit torrents in particular - are proving the way to go which, thanks to various ranking systems, can usually be prejudged as to whether the movie in question is of a reputable enough quality to mouse-click up. The impatient are always going to be impatient - bootlegs do go cheap, but thanks to a prolific DVD culture, the legitimate ones are on the shelves of HMV, etc for a fiver far quicker than you'd think. Of course, one of the ways to curb that impatience is to ensure simultaneous global release both in cinemas and on DVD. It's a factor that would have been deemed unthinkable in the VHS days but seems to be surreptitiously sowing a few seeds of consideration in this pervasive information age.

But it really comes down to price, to be honest. £6 quid for a couple of hours at the cinema? I'd choke on my popcorn. As everybody knows, Hollywood don't deserve that money for what they're putting out now. But if cost is the truth of the matter, then it's only poor braggarts they have to worry about and if they can successfully sell them the claim that the experience is the thing then we can all move on to better things. Like figuring out how to crack open the Xbox 360.

Album Review - ELBOW

2005-09-15T21:29:00.000+01:00

LEADERS OF THE FREE WORLD
Elbow
V2

With song titles such as Picky Bugger and Station Approach, Elbow could only ever be Northern. Unlike soft Southerners, this Mancunian band don't blow with the prevailing musical wind - Elbow are very much their own men, still purveying the epic brand of English alternative rock that bubbled insidiously to the surface on debut Asleep In The Back in 2001.

They have demonstrated a consistent excellence ever since, with 2003's Cast Of Thousands consolidating their position as outsiders with talent, poise and attitude. Their sound is solid, distinctive and unlike anything else out there at present. Unlike their British rock contemparies, they are much greater than the sum of their influences.

Leaders Of The Free World will be well received by present fans and also act as a smooth introduction to newcomers. From the opening track (the aforementioned Station Approach), it is clear that their mojo is very much alive and well. Tingling guitars, vertiginous drums and Garvey's distinctively deep and mournful vocals are all present and correct, setting the tone for the following songs. First single Forget Myself is upbeat and catchy, a thinking man's rock song, whilst the title track displays a previously unseen political side to the band ("Passing the gun from Father to feckless son").

All in all, this is a refreshing and rewarding album full of life and musical expression. The future's bright up North, I tell thee.

Game Review: Nintendogs

2005-09-14T22:31:00.000+01:00

Nintendogs: Daschund & Friends
Nintendo
Nintendo DS

My girlfriend hates video games. And dogs. Especially dogs. Yet now, just a couple of days after she first looked over my shoulder while I was playing Nintendogs, she's forever badgering me to hand over the DS so she can take Erick, my virtual golden retriever, for a walk.

What this means is that Nintendo have got it spot on. Again. Nintendogs' designers freely admit that their aim was to create a game that would appeal to people who've never played a video game in their life. In this respect, they've clearly succeeded.

But non-game-playing spouses alone can't explain the game's phenomenal success in the States. No, the real genius of Nintendogs is the way that it can reduce even the most grizzled and jaded of gamers to fits of giggles and baby-talk in mere minutes.

True, the whole "virtual dog" thing has been done before, notably by the Dogz series. Whilst that may well have been enchanting to a nine-year-old Portugese child, it lacked the sophistication to keep adults' attention for more than a few minutes.

Nintendogs is different for one reason: realism. These puppies really do look and sound like proper dogs (and, knowing Nintendo, a crack team of boffins is probably hard at work finding a way to make them smell like real dogs, too). And they're so disarmingly cute and friendly that you'd need a heart fashioned from asbestos to resist the urge to look after them. It's like a form of mind control.

Once you've picked your pup (from an initial choice of six which varies depending on which of the game's three editions you own) and taken it home, the real fun begins. Now you'll have to start talking to it. Yes, talking. You name your dog and teach it commands through voice recognition via the inbuilt microphone. And this isn't optional, so you'd better get used to the funny looks as you sit alone on a park bench babbling: "Sparky! Roll over! No, ROLL OVER!"

You can also take your pedigree chum for walks around the neighbourhood and enter it in three competitions: frisbee, obedience and "agility", which is a bit like Junior Kickstart only for dogs. It's all good.

Well, to be honest, it's not all good. The voice control is a great idea in theory, but in practice it restricts where you can play the game without looking extremely foolish - which rather defeats the point of handheld gaming. And the game works in real time, which means your dog needs attention at least once a day or it'll get all unkempt and resentful.

But that's not really such a chore, and the game rewards you in so many little ways that keep you coming back. Nintendogs is set to become the defining game of the DS - and deservedly so.

Nintendogs is released in Europe on October 7

Retailer Rampage

2005-09-14T10:18:00.000+01:00

A comic shop in London put up a whiteboard explaining everything that's wrong with the modern industry. Click here to read the responses, courtesy of Flickr.

George Bush Don't Like Black People

2005-09-12T22:16:00.000+01:00

Anyone who saw the shocking scenes of impoverished black people and cowboy wanker George Bush finally slouching into town today will be glad to hear The Legendary K.O. giving a voice to many folks anger.

Click here for a free download featuring the fantastic vocals of Jamie Foxx.

Top Five Film Soundtracks

2005-09-11T19:17:00.000+01:00

We've all done it. No, not that, you filthy minded people. I meant walking down the street, listening to your Walkman or radio or (god forbid) your i(have no personality)-pod when you have that moment of clarity: when the tune perfectly fits your mood, the scenery or the beat simply matches your step. In our world of portable music collections this will become more a matter of intention rather than chance. We will increasingly be able to soundtrack our lives minute by minute. Just broke up with your partner? Slip on your headphones and cue up some Damien Rice. Heading out for a night on the town? Try some Prodigy on the way to the bus-stop.

Yet the realm of cinema and the scenes that inspire us on the silverscreen will still have the greatest muscial substantiation. Here I rank my top five Original Motion Picture Soundtracks for your delectation and debate.

Buena Vista Social Club - Ry Cooder will go down as one of the great film score composers but this trip to Cuba and his documentation of elderly musical geniuses will surely be his finest hour. This deprived and isolated musical community gave us sounds few had heard before, making the perfect soundtrack not only to the film but to parties, comedowns and road-trips all over the world.

The Blues Brothers - "We're on a mission from God" The blues. Aretha Franklin. Cab Calloway. James Brown. Ray Charles. Jake and Elwood. 'Nuff said.

Good Morning Vietnam - part hyperactive stand-up from a coked-up Robin Williams and part rough guide to sixties pop, this is one of the most fun and uplifting companions to a film ever.

Romeo and Juliet Vol. 1 - a musical and artistic extravaganza of a film, essential to Baz Luhrmann's re-imagining of Verona as sleazy, sexy nineties California were the tunes. Garbage even sound at home here alongside greats such as Radiohead with one of their career best compositions (Talk Show Host) and Des'ree with her aching Love Theme. It also boasts career defining and never bettered moments from the likes of The Wannadies, The Cardigans and Everclear. Rarely has music and film been combined so organically.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? - a sensationally and unexpected break-out success, it's possible more people have heard the soundtrack than seen the Coen Brothers filmic golden hour. Bluegrass and country were cool again, and this soundtrack was the catalyst that proved it. All together now: "IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII AAAAAAAAAAAAAMMM A MAAAAAAAAAANNNNNN OF CONSTANT SOOOOOOOORRRRRROOOOOWWWW..."

Film Review: Kiki's Delivery Service

2005-09-11T05:12:00.000+01:00

KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE
Starring the voices of Kirsten Dunst, Phil Hartmann
Studio Ghibli
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

I feel old. I'm only thirty, but even typing that qualifier makes me feel five years older. It doesn't help that my nephew has recently left the nest. And while my sister may be toasting her freedom with Champagne and Toblerones, I'm still just young enough to remember what it was like to leave this two-bit burg, myself. And frankly, I'm seething with jealousy at the thought that I won't get to leave home for the first time ever again.

("Don't you believe it," echoes the voice of my mother, whose optimistic Post-It notes yet call for the mysterious and as-yet-undefined "RENT")

It's a scary thing to be out on your own for the first time, and few things have captured that feeling of flying without a safety net as well as Kiki's Delivery Service. The film follows the adventures of a teenage witch as she moves to a new town, in order to train on her own for a year. Kiki, and her feline familiar Gigi, find it hard to blend in with the townsfolk, at least to begin with, but as soon as her broomstick-based delivery service...takes off (sorry), the trainee trickster starts to come out of her shell. A bout of 'flu and a lack of self-confidence threaten to rob Kiki of her powers (and her cat), but when push comes to shove, can she pull it together long enough to save her new home from disaster?

Well, of course she can. But this movie isn't about the Big Crash-Bang Finale. It's about the journey.

Kiki's Delivery Service fizzes along with the same mixture of excitement and nausea that I felt when I first moved away from home. The anticipation of breathing different air, meeting new people and learning new things, was always accompanied by the fear of failure, rejection, and embarrassment. I'm not sure you can truly enjoy the former without the latter.

Kiki's Delivery Service is a beautiful film. The animation and backgrounds are superb. Kiki's world has a continental European flavour - mostly French - that sets it apart from most Studio Ghibli films (including the delightfully Welsh Laputa/Castle In The Sky). The changeable late summer weather will be familiar to any Briton with access to a window. Kiki's eager, outgoing nature - as well as her endearing clumsiness and eventual confidence - is stamped on every frame. Kirsten Dunst's voice is perfect for the plucky little thing.

The supporting cast, from the TinTin-ish Tombo to the uncomfortably gravid Osono, are a jolly bunch in their own right. In that respect, Kiki's Delivery Service isn't as morally complex as, say, Princess Mononoke, but it's no worse off for the more upbeat tone.

Few films have the ability to pull off the joie de vivre that permeates Kiki's Delivery Service without also peppering the thing with saccharine montages set to bloody Coldplay. Kiki's accentuates the positive wherever it goes, perfectly capturing what it means to be young, free, and utterly terrified of the big wide scary world.

And while I can't help envying my nephew's new-found freedom, by watching this film, I can at least be reminded what is was like to step outside my comfort zone for the first time...but without the student loans.

Talk, Monkeys.

2005-09-10T14:22:00.000+01:00

We now have a decent comments system. So you can bitch at us or slap our backs without having to be Blogger users.

Huzzah! for technology.

The IMDB Keyword Drinking Game

2005-09-08T11:41:00.000+01:00

Like some lowest common denominator eagle relentlessly circling in the sky, keenly aware of every facet and nuance of the terrain below, every flicker of activity however minute, and then, at a precisely determined moment, swooping in, only to fart uproariously, I know a chance to lower the tone when I see one.

And so I present to you: The IMDB Keyword Drinking Game.

You may not have noticed, but the Internet Movie Database allows the assignment of plot keywords to each film. They are - or have been, prior to this momentous day - entirely pointless. For example, try to guess the film to which the following keywords apply:

'Head Butt', 'Disability', 'Filth' and 'Faked Death'.

That's right! It's kid-friendly CGI film Finding Nemo!

As you can see, the drinking game rules practically write themselves.

First, head over to http://www.imdb.com/Sections/Keywords and type in a keyword you'd like to start with. Maybe 'monkey actor' or 'piloted giant robot'.

Now select additional keywords until you have narrowed down the number of applicable film titles to approximately the number of players. For example, 'assassination attempt' and 'bodyguard' leaves 6 titles.

Ideally, you want films left that no one's too familiar with, but don't worry too much about it, because you've still got one more selection to make - 'Jedi Knight' is, let's face it, more likely to apply to Attack of the Clones than to 24, but 'set up'? Surely that could be any one of them?

Once you have spotted an additional keyword that will leave only one film remaining and is suitably befuddling, each player makes their guess at the outcome, and you click away.

You get it wrong, you take a swig. Repeat until drunk.

TV: Medium

2005-09-07T23:23:00.000+01:00

Medium
BBC One, Tuesdays, 11.05pm

Allison DuBois is a medium. But at Starbucks, she'd be a grande.

No, seriously folks; Allison DuBois is an actual medium, of the 'speaks to the dead' variety. Though that might be a slightly generous use of the world 'actual', depending on your credulity. She uses her eerie abilities to help the police crack difficult cases, she's written a book about her gift, tauntingly titled 'Don't Kiss Them Good-Bye', and she's been certified authentic by the University of Arizona's Human Energy Systems Laboratory, which sounds tremendously credible

Allison is also the inspiration for the TV series Medium, which stars Patricia Arquette as... Allison DuBois, a medium who helps the police crack difficult cases.

It's a peculiar twist on the police procedural genre. Much of the time the fun of these shows - from Columbo through to CSI - is in seeing how the crime is solved. But Allison literally solves crimes in her sleep, so the challenge for her is to convince people that she's right. Which she always, always is.

And it's hard to imagine that convincing people is much of a challenge. The TV Allison not only sees the future in her dreams, she can also see the past, talk to ghosts (and the ghosts haunting the ghosts), and read minds. And she does it all effortlessly, with nary a hair out of place, and still has time to raise three children and love her sickeningly devoted husband. She's some sort of Überwench. The only things that get in her way are the legal system and a hurricane.

Indeed, the Texas Rangers are so keen to buy in to Allison's gift that they send a plane to fly her to Texas, and greet her with a wholly redundant fleet of black cars. (Presumably they were expecting an entourage of the dead to accompany her.) The gruff, moustachioed chief ranger is a sceptic, but she wins him around by reading his mind and telling him she knows about his heart operation. But nobody knows about that! Oo-oo-ooh.

It's dreadful nonsense. With the real Allison DuBois acting as consultant, the show naturally treats her and her gift with absolute reverence. Even when another medium appears on the show - the perfect opportunity to suggest that at least some of these people are charlatans - she's only there to shore up Allison's confidence. She not only senses Allison's power, she senses that Allison is perhaps the bestest, most super-duper medium ever.

Medium is television for the Oprah set, combining female empowerment and supernatural ookiness with a social conscience (the crimes tend to be of the 'what is the world coming to' variety) and a hefty dose of God-bothering. Because Allison's mission is divine, you see. Otherwise, she'd be a witch.

Of course, once you've spent 45 minutes in the company of this wholesome, principled martyr, you too might be reaching for the firelighters and kindling.

Graphic Novel Review: Street Angel

2005-09-07T21:34:00.000+01:00

STREET ANGEL
Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca
Slave Labor Graphics

Every once in a while, a comic book comes along and whacks you about the face and neck –with a skateboard, for example – and reminds you why you started reading the damn things in the first place.

This is one of those books.

Street Angel is the story of a teenage orphan named Jesse Sanchez, living rough on the streets of Angel City. Jesse Sanchez, however, is no Artful Dodger: she’s an insouciant master of the martial arts; a skate-ninja supreme. And she’d kick your pasty website-surfin’ ass soon as look at you.

In between going to school and tracking down food and shelter, Jesse Sanchez fights ninja hordes (complete with name tags – those black outfits tend to work against individuality), mad scientists, demonic suitors, Space Irish and threats so terrifying and clanky that I dare not speak their name here. Her only allies are a sturdy deck, a quasi-limbless sidekick and a jive superhero whose ‘fro has gone the way of all flesh. And Jesus.

Street Angel could so easily have been a really dopey comic: the stories pretty much follow the same pattern of “Jesse meets Threat, Threat gets Slapped Down,” and so on. But Street Angel is far from dopey. The characterisation is spot on, from Jesse’s adolescent fearlessness to her moments of quiet sadness. The book is full of superbly judged humour, as well as pastiche of a number of well-worn tropes.

The artwork is phenomenal, combining the nervous mundanity of Daniel Clowes with the energetic abandon of Jim Mahfood. The fight scenes are fluid, bone-cracking things; the quieter moments are enclosed in a depressing urban squalor. Brian Maruca isn’t afraid to play with the page, either: ninjas fade to cut-outs against a black background, focusing attention on Street Angel. Occasionally, the sound effects go three-dimensional, almost tumbling out of the page with noise.

Street Angel overflows with a novel energy that you can’t help but love. Reading this book in 2005 brings back memories of first reading Tank Girl, in the 1990’s. It shares with that earlier work a palpable sense of unfettered joy. But beyond that, the character's situation adds a layer of melancholy that both grounds and balances the story, without crossing into mawkish, "issue" based plots.

If Jesse Sanchez is one of the best new characters in years – and she is - then Street Angel is one of the best new comics in years, raising the bar for new and veteran creators alike. Hit the official website, then buy this comic: it’ll be the best present you give yourself this year.

(Originally published at The Matthew Craig Dot Com)

Antony and the Johnsons win Mercury Prize

2005-09-07T14:35:00.000+01:00

I Am A Bird Now
Antony and the Johnsons
Rough Trade

It was with some shock that I woke up this morning and found that this cross-dressing ex-cabaret singer from New York had won the Mercury Music Prize. Not because of any hatred of transvestites and trans-sexuals or any deep seated love of Maximo Park. I just couldn’t believe that the judges had actually got something right.

This is a record that richly deserves recognition for being as innovative, inspiring and individual an album as this reviewer has heard in the last year. His fat-man's warble is an acquired taste but like your first ever sip of alcohol, you are quickly addicted. Soon it reveals itself as a beautiful and haunting voice.

The songs are piano driven with an epic, sensuous backing of strings and a changing line-up of musicians (The Johnsons) as well as numerous collaborators (including Lou Reed, Boy George and Rufus Wainwright). Antony's voice is the life and soul but his at times heart-breaking lyrics are the main body of these compositions. Many deal with feelings of trans-sexuality, such as the wonderful My Lady Story or the aching For Today I Am A Boy. Lines such as "My lady story is one of annihilation/my lady story is one of breast amputation" or "One day I'll grow up and be a beautiful woman/But for today I am child/But for today I am a boy" are set against soaring piano parts, symphonic harmonies and practically drip with emotion.

It is this which makes this such a worthy Mercury choice. I Am A Bird Now deals with such un-mainstream issues as these with a spectacular and original musical voice. Anyone who fails to be moved by opener I Hope There's Someone's ode to loneliness with its gorgeously layered vocals and climactic wash of pianos is truly without heart. No-one, however, should be without this record.

hear samples from the album here

Mercury: Rising?

2005-09-06T16:45:00.000+01:00

It's only a few hours until the Mercury Music Prize is awarded, and you could cut the tension with a damp slice of bread. Never has so much been made of so little (outside of Kiera Knightley's padded underwear, obv) - by this point, does anyone actually think that the prize is going to go to anyone exciting or innovative? The days when something challenging could take home the honours are long past, and the year M People swanned off with the cash is looking less like the aberration it was presumed to be and more like the terrible harbinger of an age where people have Somewhere Only We Know as the first dance at their weddings.

Let's take a look at the potential winners and weigh up the options, shall we? Yes, we shall.

Antony and the Johnsons - I Am a Bird Now

Antony Johnston designed the old Robotfist logo, you know. He appears to have gained a slightly puffy-faced namesake, though. Sings like a Moomin in a cave.

Bloc Party - Silent Alarm

Ha, we wish it were.

Coldplay - X&Y

Coldplay: the phenomenon of fat bearded men dressing up like characters from Sailor Moon and acting out little dramas where the world is saved by a little chibi character and some tedious whinging balladry.

The Go! Team - Thunder,Lightning,Strike

This is more like it. Crazy mental types with tunes called things like Junior Kickstart. NB: sounds nothing like the theme tune to Junior Kickstart.

Hard-Fi - Stars of CCTV

"Captain! The chronoton particles that swept the ship appear to have transported us to another point in time and space! Look, there's the Hacienda!"

KT Tunstall - Eye to the Telescope

Alanis Moreorless.

Kaiser Chiefs - Employment

Employment? Get down the dole office, you vacant merchants of paint-by-numbers sub-Franz lowest-common-denominator indie-trad!

The Magic Numbers - The Magic Numbers

Handclaps and everything. Bleeding excellence from every hairy follicle.

Maximo Park - A Certain Trigger

So dull that I can't actually remember what they even sound like. The NME likes them. Least said, etc.

M.I.A. - Arular

One of these people whose background makes them sound like their music should be much more interesting than it is. Where's the intrigue? Your dad was a Tamil Tiger, let's have something exciting, not this warmed-over Black Steel stuff!

Polar Bear - Held on the Tips of Fingers

Wouldn't it be ace if an actual polar bear turned up in the middle of the award ceremony, completely unexpectedly? It'd be like some kind of musical version of Lost, but without the "trapped on a desert island in the middle of nowhere" aspect. More's the pity.

Seth Lakeman - Kitty Jay

Twiddly-diddly folky pop. An agreeably handsome man, I'm told, but the music's a bit on the forgettable side.

So there you go. Two artists I'd like to see win, another couple I wouldn't drown and six sucking talent-voids. Make Mine Mercury! A big glass of it to drink while suffering through tonight's show, that is (arf).

The First Hit Is Free

2005-09-06T10:47:00.000+01:00

First there was Robot Fist. Then there was Robotfist. Now there is PunchDrunk.

We're all big kids now, and everything has its time. Robotfist has had its, and that's where PunchDrunk comes in.

This is where you'll be able to find your favourite Robotfist writers past and present sounding off about what's floating their boat and getting their goat in pop culture, whether that be features, reviews or random musings about movies, music, TV, books, comics, games or DVD. No editors, no safety nets, no flash - just the kind of pop-culture teeth-smashing you've come to expect from Robotfist.

Robotfist is dead. Long live PunchDrunk.

Seconds out - round two.