READING, WATCHING, LISTENING TO

Find out what has been entertaining the Entertainment Manchester staff this week...

THE EDITOR

READING: I've got two books on the go at the moment, My Life by Fidel Castro (still) and Phra Farang by Phra Peter Pannapadipo. I've already talked about the former, so I'll focus on the latter, which is a very interesting book by a guy who used to be called Peter Robinson, an English businessman who gave up his superficial life in London to become a Buddhist monk in Thailand. It's a massive leap for him and his experiences not only as a monk but also a Phra Farang (foreign monk) in a completely different culture. It's warmly-written, amusing and inspiring story.

WATCHING: The only film I've really seen recently is The Frighteners, which I'd seen a long time ago on video. It was the Director's Cut on DVD (owned by The Writer), but to be honest I couldn't tell the difference. It's an entertaining enough flick, but there's not much below the surface, so it doesn't stay in the memory long. The main thing I've been watching, with a hell of lot below the surface, is the last series of Six Feet Under, completing my six-month marathon. Having watched it all the way through again, it's probably jumped above The Sopranos as my favourite TV show, so honest, funny, tragic, intelligent, spiritual, shocking and just downright awesome... I could watch it all again now. Maybe I will.

LISTENING TO: Since finishing Six Feet Under the main thing I've been listening to was a mix-CD I made of songs from the show, and it's very good indeed. From classic rock tracks like Journey To The Centre Of The Mind by The Amboy Dukes and Don't Fear The Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult to modern stuff like A Rush Of Blood To The Head by Coldplay (which has taken a whole new lease of life since I watched series there again recently) and of course Breathe Me by Sia, every song is connected to a scene and the emotions of that scene. That's what makes great TV and that's why SFU will always stay with me while I have these songs...


THE WRITER

READING: In the last Reading, Watching, Listening To I said I was going through a bit of a Steven Spielberg phase. I’m still going through it, although this time my obsession is in book form only. Having finished Warren Buckland’s ‘Directed by Steven Spielberg’, I’ve moved on to Bob Balaban’s ‘Spielberg, Truffaut and Me’. It’s a fascinating diary from the set of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Balaban proves a fine host as he explains his role in the making of the film, the young Spielberg’s directorial style and, best of all, the friendship he built up with Francois Truffaut, who plays French scientist Lamcombe. Next up, Joseph McBride’s out-of-print biography Steven Spielberg. If I can find it…

WATCHING: Weirdly for me, I’ve not watched many films recently. I got through about fifteen minutes of The Phantom Menace the other day, but then Jar Jar Binks appeared and I gave up. So the last thing I watched was a TV show: Wonder Woman. And in a bid to hang onto the little shreds of credibility which have just been set alight and thrown into the air by that revelation, I’ll say it’s fun, frothy entertainment. Hardly classic television, but good silly stuff.

LISTENING TO: And on the other end of the superhero scale, I’ve been listening to the soundtrack for Batman Begins incessantly just lately, partly due to the fact The Dark Knight is tantalisingly close to being released, but mostly because of the fact I love the track Molossus. It’s the music used in the brilliantly orchestrated Batmobile chase about halfway through the film and is highly recommended if you want to make your weekly shop a bit more interesting. Composers Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard are hard at work on the music for Dark Knight at the moment and I can‘t wait to hear what they‘ve come up with.