WATCHING, READING, LISTENING TO

THE EDITOR

WATCHING: Slightly strange Chinese film The Heirloom, which was a ghost story, kind of, but had a bit more depth than most of them. Wasn't great, but was ok. Which is more than can be said for Scary Movie 4. I liked the third one, which was an enjoyable mixture of the Zucker/Nielsen spoofs like Airplane and Naked Gun along with the Charlie Sheen Hot Shots films. Nothing amazing, but good fun. Unfortunately, 4 finds them trying too hard to get back to the spirit of the dreadful Wayans brothers films 1 and 2. And it's really not good.

READING: Still reading The Dream Life Of Sukhanov by Olga Grushin and still enjoying it a lot. Sukhanov is getting deeper into his dreams of his childhood and starting to realise what a sham his life has become. It's basically Russian (as opposed to American) Beauty, but it's really impressive...

LISTENING TO: It's all classic soul at the moment, led by Marvin Gaye. From his legendary Motown duets with Tammi Terrell, Kim Weston and Mary Wells to his great solo stuff in the 60s to his amazing 70s albums when he really took control, it's all incredible. But even he pales in comparison to the likes of Sam Cooke and Otis Redding, the two greatest soul singers (and arguably greatest singers) of all time. The only shame about them both is that they both died just as they were starting to transcend their genre and we will never know where their talents would have taken them...


THE WRITER

WATCHING: The Simpsons Season 7. Watching The Simpsons season-by-season on DVD rather than out of order on Channel 4 is an interesting experience as you really begin to get a sense of the show’s development and slow decline through the years. Season 7 is, for my money at least, where the cracks began to show. On the commentaries, the writers explain that they wanted to return the series to its family roots, and they achieve this with aplomb in episodes such as Mother Simpson, Bart Sells His Soul and Home Sweet Home-Diddly-Dum-Doodily. However, Homerpalooza and Sideshow Bob’s Last Gleaming, as funny as they are, display the roots of the show’s current obsession with zany humour and irritating tangents. Still, it’s a great season containing some truly great episodes which mostly stand up to endless re-watching.

READING: The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi by John Kenneth Muir. One of the few critical appraisals of Sam Raimi's career, this wonderful book strikes the perfect balance between intelligent insight and capturing the hedonistic joy of the director’s work. Indeed, it’s really quite amazing to read about his love of magic and the Three Stooges and see that such influences have survived even to this day and manifested themselves in that gloriously mad jazz club scene in Spider-Man 3. You don’t see Bryan Singer getting Clark Kent to swagger around Metropolis saying things like: “Now dig on this!” do you? Raimi gets Peter Parker to do it, though, and he’s all the better for it.

LISTENING TO: Batman Begins OST by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. These two composers have very different styles, but they come together on the superb soundtrack for Batman Begins to form a totally unique new sound for the Dark Knight - no mean feat considering how memorable Danny Elfman's scores for the original films were. The melancholic Corynorhinus is a heartbreaking lament, but it’s the orchestral drama of Molossus (the music used during the Batmobile chase), that leaves the biggest mark. Listen to it on your iPod to add extra intensity to your weekly shopping trip. Buying those peas will never be the same again!