WATCHING, READING, LISTENING TO

The staff of Entertainment Manchester reveal what's been entertaining them over the last seven days...

THE EDITOR

WATCHING: The last film I saw was The Strangers at the cinema. To be honest, we would rather have watched the similar Eden Lake, but that wasn't on anymore by the time we actually got round to going. The Strangers was well-made though and scary enough in a fairly obvious and predictable way, though it was rather unpleasant and pointless too. All in all, not bad, not great. The final episode of The Wire was much, much better, of course and a fitting finale to the best TV series I've ever seen.

READING: The House Of The Dead. No, it's not a novelisation of the arcade horror shoot 'em up or Uwe Boll's film adaptation, it's by Dostoyevsky and is a fictionalised account of his time in a Siberian prison. It's about as cheery as that sounds, but it's a great book so far and despite the subject matter it's very easy read. I finished by Sherlock Holmes odyssey a few weeks ago, just in time to discover that Guy Ritchie is making a Holmes film. Which is a really depressing prospect.

LISTENING TO: At the moment, lots of music by the genius that is Mike Patton. From his time as Faith No More singer to the quirky and fascinating Mr Bungle to the even more unconventional stuff he's done since FNM called it day, he's never less than interesting. One of his best projects has been the metal supergroup Fantomas, who have made some very unconventional music, like their collection of movie theme covers Director's Cut and the 74 minute single-track Delìrium Cordia, which is one of the scariest and weirdest pieces of music you'll ever hear.



THE WRITER

WATCHING: Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends. It may be cheesy and silly when compared with some of today's cartoons, but this 1980s Spider-Man show is, for me, the finest animated adaptation of a comic book outside of the Fleischers’ 1930s Superman shorts. Our friendly neighbourhood wallcrawler teams up with Iceman and Firestar (the Amazing Friends of the title) to take on the likes of the Green Goblin, Kraven the Hunter and Doctor Doom in a series of fantastically outlandish adventures. I‘ve only watched three episodes so far, and Spidey has already stopped dinosaurs, a megalomaniacal pensioner and a bid to poison New York‘s water supply. Brilliantly, there are still two more seasons to come!

READING: In terms of reading, I'm really just getting to the end of the books I've been going through for the last few weeks. Goldfinger, which I'd heard ends quite poorly, is still going strong into the final few chapters, with Bond and Goldfinger now at complete loggerheads after playing cat and mouse with each other for the first two thirds of the book. Meanwhile I’ve finished Star Wars Expanded Universe novel Heir to the Empire. A sequel to Return of the Jedi, it takes place five years after the Battle of Endor and author Timothy Zahn has set things up nicely for follow-ons The Dark Rising and The Last Command by putting the New Republic on the brink of civil war by the end of this book. Cracking stuff.

LISTENING TO: After being unsure on the first few listens, I've finally come around to the new Bond theme. Another Way To Die doesn't rank alongside the best Bond songs, lacking the kind of memorable hooks Goldfinger, Nobody Does It Better and Live and Let Die have, but it does have a real sense of drama to it that means it should work well in the title sequence - and that is far more important than it being a good standalone single. Plus, it finishes with the words 'Bang, bang, bang, bang'. And anything that ends quite as boldly as that is undoubtedly worthy of a place in 007 history.